Three approaches are used for coming towards a definition of Biblical spirituality. The first approach is from lived spirituality. We see always a bipolarity of text and reader. The reader attributes meaning to the text guided by the data of the text. The second approach is the analysis of literature discussing Biblical spirituality. There are many spiritualities both in the Bible and in its readers, influenced by their contexts. The third approach is the discussion of the composing terms. A definition is given: Biblical spirituality is about the divine human relational process in the Bible and about the Bible in the divine human relational process. A dialogue of spirituality and exegesis is needed. For doing research a threefold competence is needed: in exegesis, in spirituality and in the integration of these two. The final section is about intertextuality. Intertextuality may help to understand the spiritual process in reading biblical texts.


After the hurricanes, faculty asked the students to help with the relief efforts in different ways. Most students volunteered to work in shelters directly with individual or groups of children, youths, and adults. After their experiences, they wrote brief reflections about what they had done. Their comments show that they developed a better understanding of the impact of the crisis and life in the shelters, strong impressions about specific children, a sense of community with their fellow classmates, or learned about the importance of flexibility and supervision in early childhood programs.


Political scientists generally agree that contiguity is a significant predictor of interstate conflict; that is, they observe that it is neighbors that most frequently fight one another. Defining contiguity, however, is an unsettled matter. Still dominating conflict studies is the view that neighbors are those who share physical borders, or spatial delineations, between one sovereign territory and another. Yet an increasingly integrated international system, accompanied with shifting political identities and technological advances in communication and transport, suggest that power relations are more than a function of sheer corporeal distance. To anticipate contemporary interstate relations, therefore, we might tap the potential of constructivist theory to derive new understanding of what it means to be a neighbor.


Coral reefs are one of the most biologically diverse habitats in the world, host to an extraordinary variety of marine plants and animals. They are also one of the world's most fragile and endangered ecosystems. The growth of mass tourism, combined with the boom in popularity of scuba diving, has brought these spectacular ecosystems to public attention across the planet. Coral reefs provide essential fish habitat, support endangered and threatened species, and harbor protected marine mammals and turtles. They are a significant source of food, provide income and employment through tourism and marine recreation, and offer countless other benefits to humans, including supplying compounds for pharmaceuticals. Yet coral reefs around the world are rapidly being degraded by a number of human activities, such as overfishing, coastal development, and the introduction of sewage, fertilizer, and sediment. World Atlas of Coral Reefs provides the first detailed and definitive account of the current state of our planet's coral reefs. With its wealth of authoritative and up-to-date information, the finest maps available, and detailed descriptive texts and images by leading experts, this full-color volume will be a critical resource for anyone interested in these vital environments. World Atlas of Coral Reefs contains eighty-four full-page newly researched and drawn color maps, together with more than two hundred color photos illustrating reefs, reef animals, and images taken from space by NASA astronauts during the 2000 and 2001 space shuttle flights. The authors provide a wealth of information on the geography, biodiversity, and human uses of coral reefs, as well as details about the threats to their existence. Prepared at the UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge, England--the United Nations office responsible for providing authoritative information on the condition of global biodiversity--the Atlas will be a critical tool for scientists, students, policymakers, and planners at local, national, and international levels alike. Publication of the World Atlas of Coral Reefs is supported by international institutions including the United Nations Environment Programme; The Marine Aquarium Council, The International Coral Reef Initiative; ICLARM--The World Fish Center; the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, and the Aventis Foundation.


Massive discharges of freshwater from the glacial lake Missoula to the northeast Pacific Ocean are thought to have sculpted the Channeled Scablands of eastern Washington and debouched via the Columbia River near 46°N. The dynamics and timing of these events and their impact on northeast Pacific circulation remain uncertain. Here we date marine records of anomalous freshwater inputs to the ocean based on freshwater diatoms, oxygen isotopes in foraminifera, and radiocarbon data. Low-salinity plumes from the Columbia River reduced sea-surface salinities by as much as 6 psu (practical salinity units) more than 400 km away between 16 and 31 cal (calendar) ka B.P. Anomalously high abundances of freshwater diatoms in marine sediments from the region precede generally accepted dates for the existence of glacial Lake Missoula, implying that large flooding or freshwater routing events were common during the advance of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet and that such events require multiple sources.


Extradition poses a set of unique challenges for current theories of international law. State decisions regarding extradition involve the intersection of domestic criminal law, complex international treaties, and often overtly political considerations, thus defying neat explanation by legal theorists. This Article argues that current theory fails to adequately explain the international law of extradition because it relies on state-centric models of international relations. By focusing our attention on unitary state interests, commentators overlook the important ways in which domestic politics shapes and influences state behavior. More particularly, this Article argues that domestic groups and institutions both constrain and empower government decision-makers in structuring international extradition arrangements. Government officials often have conflicting incentives regarding extradition decisions, and these tensions help explain the tradeoffs states have made between commitment and flexibility in extradition treaties. A closer examination of the incentives of domestic actors in extradition decisions also reveals a deeper issue that current theory overlooks: the possibility of "compliance uncertainty," or situations where states are unsure what actions count as compliance. Compliance uncertainty has fundamental consequences for the structure, substance, and practice of extradition treaties, as well as for international law in general.


The Bomanins (Boms) are a family of a dozen secreted peptides that mediate the innate immune response governed by the Drosophila Toll receptor. We recently showed that deleting a cluster of 10 Bom genes blocks Toll-mediated defenses against a range of fungi and gram-positive bacteria. Here, we characterize the activity of individual Bom family members. We provide evidence that the Boms overlap in function and that a single Bom gene encoding a mature peptide of just 16 amino acids can act largely or entirely independent of other family members to provide phenotypic rescue in vivo. We further demonstrate that the Boms function in Drosophila humoral immunity, mediating the killing of the fungal pathogen Candida glabrata in an in vitro assay of cell-free hemolymph. In addition, we find that the level of antifungal activity both in vivo and in vitro is linked to the level of Bom gene expression. Although Toll dictates expression of the antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) drosomycin and metchnikowin, we find no evidence that Boms act by modifying the expression of the mature forms of these antifungal AMPs.


At row 2n in the cellular automaton rule 30, a region of the initial condition reappears on the right side, which causes the automaton to "begin again" locally. As a result, local nested structure is produced. This phenomenon is ultimately due to the property that rule 30 is reversible in time under the condition that the right half of each row is white. The main result of the paper establishes the presence of local nested structure in k-color rules with this bijectivity property, and we explore a class of integer sequences characterizing the nested structure. We also prove an observation of Wolfram regarding the period length doubling of diagonals on the left side of rule 30.


Conidia and ascospore release of Neonectria ditissima, the causal agent of European canker, was investigated using rainwater traps and Vaseline®-coated glass slides in the Tasman region, New Zealand. Trapping of spores was carried out from May 2013 to June 2015 in three separate apple orchard blocks planted with 'Scifresh'/Jazzâ"¢, 'Royal Gala' and 'Braeburn', respectively. Conidia and ascospores were both produced at any time of the year when rainfall occurred. The numbers of both conidia and ascospores trapped peaked in April—May, but were produced throughout the year. There was a trend for lower spore numbers with increasing number of non-rainy days prior to rainy event 2mm, while more spores were trapped under frequent rainfall conditions. There was a significant correlation between mean conidia trapped and total monthly rainfall in all three orchards, but ascospore numbers were significantly correlated with rainfall on glass slides only in the 'Braeburn' orchard.


If you're vexed and perplexed by PowerPoint, pick up a copy of Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances. This funny, and often opinionated, guide is chock full of tools and techniques for eliminating all the problems that drive audiences and presenters crazy. There's nothing more discouraging than an unresponsive audience--or worse, one that snickers at your slides. And there's nothing more maddening than technical glitches that turn your carefully planned slide show into a car wreck. Envious when you see other presenters effectively use nifty features that you've never been able to get to work right? Suffer no more! Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances by Microsoft PowerPoint MVP Echo Swinford rides to the rescue.Microsoft PowerPoint is the most popular presentation software on the planet, with an estimated 30 million presentations given each day. So no matter how frustrated you get, you're not about to chuck the program in the Recycle Bin. Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances, presents smart solutions to a variety of all-too-familiar, real-world annoyances.The book is divided into big categories, with annoyances grouped by topic. You can read it cover to cover or simply jump to the chapter or section most relevant to you. Inside its pages you'll learn how to create your own templates, work with multiple masters and slide layouts, and take advantage of various alignment and formatting tools. You'll also learn how to import Excel data; insert graphics, PDF, and Word content; create, edit, and format organization charts and diagrams; use action settings and hyperlinks to jump to other slides; and add sound, video, and other types of multimedia to spark up your presentations.Entertaining and informative, Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances is filled with humorous illustrations and packed with sidebars, tips, and tricks, as well as links to cool resources on the Web.


Abstract Introduction: A board review question bank was created to assist candidates in their preparation for the 2015 EMS certification examination. We aimed to describe the development of this question bank and evaluate its successes in preparing candidates to obtain EMS subspecialty board certification. Methods: An online question bank was developed by 13 subject matter experts who participated as item writers, representing eight different EMS fellowship programs. The online question bank consisted of four practice tests, with each of the tests comprised of 100 questions. The number of candidates who participated in and completed the question bank was calculated. The passing rate among candidates who completed the question bank was calculated and compared to the publicly reported statistics for all candidates. The relationship between candidates' performance on the question bank and subspecialty exam pass rates was determined. Results: A total of 252 candidates took at least one practice test and, of those, 225 candidates completed all four 100-question practice tests. The pass rate on the 2015 EMS certification exam was 79% (95%CI 74–85%) among candidates who completed the question bank, which is 12% higher than the overall pass rate (p = 0.003). Candidates' performance on the question bank was positively associated with overall success on the exam (X2 = 75.8, p < 0.0001). Achieving a score of ≥ 70% on the question bank was associated with a higher likelihood of passing the exam (OR = 17.8; 95% CI: 8.0–39.6). Conclusion: Completing the question bank program was associated with improved pass rates on the EMS certification exam. Strong performance on the question bank correlated with success on the exam.


THE EFFECT OF COMPUTER-ADAPTIVE CONTROL (REMEDIATION) ON ACHIEVEMENT AND TIME ON TASK IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING Leslie R. Bachelder Center for Language Studies Master of Arts Technology has provided the means for the creation of many tools to facilitate the teaching and learning of foreign languages. These tools include computer programs designed to aid language learning by providing various levels of control to the language learner. This control allows the learner to make decisions regarding some or all of the elements of a program such as the pace, sequence, and content to name but a few. Because the amount of learner control can be varied, many research efforts have sought to determine the optimal level of control for learning. These efforts have produced mixed results, with some research suggesting that learners perform better with less control while other findings suggest the opposite. The purpose of this research was to investigate the use of remediation, a computer-adaptive control, in Swahili 101 university level courses and its effect on achievement and time. Participants included Swahili language learners from two universities, three colleges, and one student not affiliated with any school. The study required that participants complete a pretest, a background survey, the Swahili 101 online lesson materials, and an opinion survey. "Gate pages," or webpage-based assessments, were used throughout the online course to assess participant progress. The participants were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups. Those in the control group completed the online component at their own discretion, working through assigned tasks with review as desired. Those in the experimental group were required to obtain a minimum score on each lesson's gate page in order to advance in the lesson and thus in the course. If that score was not met, then the software assigned a series of remediation or review pages. Scores from the gate pages and time spent on the gate pages were stored and analyzed for both groups. The results from this study suggest that language learners benefit from computer intervention and guidance (remediation). The participants in the experimental group learned more Swahili than the control group, despite spending the same amount of time on the gate pages as the control group. Therefore, remediation, as defined and implemented in this study, can increase language learning while at the same time not requiring the learners to significantly increase the initial time they spend responding to questions presented on the gate pages.


Concern exists that polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) may be contributing to the current decline of shovelnose sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus platorynchus) and the US federally endangered pallid sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus albus). Waterborne exposures with newly fertilized eggs were used to assess developmental and morphological effects of 2 of the most potent aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) agonists, 3,3′,4,4′,5‐pentachlorobiphenyl (PCB‐126) and 2,3,7,8‐tetrachlorodibenzo‐p‐dioxin (TCDD), on early life stage shovelnose and pallid sturgeon. No dose‐related effects of PCB‐126 were observed on percent development or hatch in either species at concentrations as high as 1711 ng/g egg. Effects of TCDD on percent development were not assessed in shovelnose sturgeon. However, percent development was not affected by TCDD in pallid sturgeon, and percent hatch was unaffected by TCDD doses as high as 60 ng/g egg to 81 ng/g egg in either species. Morphological pathologies such as yolk sac edema and craniofacial deformities were typical of AhR agonist exposure and were similar in both species. Calculated PCB‐126 50% lethal dose (LD50, 95% fiducial limits) values were 196 ng/g egg (188–203 ng/g) for shovelnose and 159 ng/g egg (122–199 ng/g) for pallid sturgeon. Likewise, calculated TCDD LD50 values were 13 ng/g egg (11–15 ng/g) for shovelnose and 12 ng/g egg (10–14 ng/g) for pallid sturgeon. These LD50 values are among the highest recorded in early life stage fish, suggesting that early life stage Scaphirhynchus sturgeon may be comparatively insensitive to AhR agonists. Environ Toxicol Chem 2015;34:1417–1424. © 2015 SETAC


ABSTRACT Over a million smokers are admitted to hospitals in the UK each year. The extent to which tobacco dependence is identified and addressed in this population is unclear. Data on 14,750 patients from 146 hospitals collected for the British Thoracic Society smoking cessation audit were analysed to determine smoking prevalence, attempts to ask smokers about quitting, and referrals to smoking cessation services. Associations with hospital organisational factors were assessed by logistic regression. Overall hospital smoking prevalence was 25%. Only 28% of smokers were asked whether they would like to quit, and only one in 13 smokers was referred for treatment of tobacco dependence. There was a higher chance of smokers being asked about quitting in organisations with smoke-free sites, dedicated smoking cessation practitioners, regular staff training, and availability of advanced pharmacotherapy. Treatment of tobacco dependence in smokers attending UK hospitals is poor and could be associated with organisational factors.


Turkey is considering privatizing its telecommunications system. Any developing country must analyze whether its economic, social, and institutional environment is appropriate for the privatization of a utility. The purposes of this study are (1) to establish a model to assist policy makers, (2) to analyze whether Turkey meets the prerequisites for telecommunications privatization, and (3) to provide Turkish leaders pragmatic policy alternatives pertaining to privatization of the Turkish Telecommunications system.High inflation rate, weakness of the private sector and the lack of regulatory regime are the major impediments facing Turkey's privatization efforts. Turkey might consider several options including (1) not privatizing at all, (2) retaining public ownership of the network operations while privatizing only the physical equipment market, or (3) following the British privatization model.


The maximum concentrations of individual contaminants that will be allowed to remain in the environment after cleanup are developed on a case-by-case basis and may depend on site-specific risk analyses as well as stakeholder concerns. A database of cleanup criteria has been established from site-specific agreements at US Department of Energy (DOE) remediation sites and was used to analyse the ranges and variations in surface soil cleanup criteria for selected radiological contaminants (137Cs, 238U, 90Sr, 60Co, and 238Pu) commonly found at DOE sites. Criteria were compared to pre-cleanup concentration, background level, date of agreement, and assumed future land use. The assumption of future residential land use predominates for radionuclide contaminants in the database and suggests a parameter to investigate for cost and policy implications.


Description: The gendered impacts of infectious disease outbreaks and their propensity to increase Gender-Based Violence (GBV) have been well-documented in each of the most recent major epidemics including Zika, SARS and Ebola. Early evidence indicates that COVID-19 is no different in this respect, with GBV providers and community groups reporting a sharp increase in reported incidents of Intimate Partner Violence. Adolescent girls are particularly vulnerable. Studies of past disease outbreaks and other humanitarian crisis have shown that without targeted intervention, COVID-19 will heighten pre-existing risks of GBV against girls, stymie their social, economic and educational development and threaten their sexual reproductive health.3 This paper looks to set out the particular vulnerabilities for adolescent girls and provides practical guidance on how to provide girls with targeted support during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.


With the promise that new technologies, and in particular smartphones and virtual reality, may make everyday life easier, numerous apps have been created over the last years for the architectural lighting and acoustic assessments of buildings. This trend opens new opportunities for teaching acoustics and lighting. Meanwhile, the possibilities of augmented and virtual reality are still largely unexplored. The pedagogical aim of exploring new pedagogical approach is to allow students to engage beyond the traditional building physics approach to these subjects and to get a better quantitative and experiential understanding of light and sound parameters. First, the possibility of massive use of auralization is described. Then, the present paper discusses some opportunities for introducing building acoustics and lighting assessments through apps in both courses and architectural studios. The goal is to support experiential learning opportunities for concepts such as the warmth or the enveloping of a space from both an acoustic and lighting perspective. Many questions raised from the first few years of experiences in using smartphone apps are discussed. Comparing different apps on the same or on different smartphones resulted in significant fluctuations in the observed quantities. Since illuminance or sound levels were better detected with professional tools than by smartphones, several challenges of using these apps are discussed. Knowing the limits of current smartphone apps, this paper reflects on how much apps could be integrated into both university teaching and practice approaches. The experience confirmed that smartphone apps cannot yet replace professional measurement tools, while there is evidence about the benefits that modern technologies and in particular virtual reality, can provide to architectural acoustic and lighting teaching and practice.


The path of data exchange on the network what if it gets a lot of requests then the possibility of the occurrence of Overload is very risky, many overcome by increasing the Bandwidth on the path of data exchange on the network. But the way it can not be called a reliable solution, given the increasing number of users and more and more requests entered into the server. Load Balancing by Round Robin method is one of the techniques of distributing the traffic load to two or more connection lines in a balanced way, by dividing the loads in sequence and rotating, in order to get optimal traffic, maximize throughput, and avoid overload on one connection path. Because all processes have the same interests so that there are no priorities, then Load Balancing is one of the best solutions to use as a way out of the problem. Or when one of the connection path to the server is interrupted then Load Balancing can divert the user to another server as an alternative destination. With this project then problems such as server down and slow connection when the number of user requests at the same time will be resolved, because the project has been implemented Load Balancing using Round Robin algorithm. And got the average result that is for throughput 3,969,328 kbps then for response time 18,860 ms. With this method internet connection will be faster because the concept of Load Balancing with Round Robin method is to share the average load connection, so the server can complete many requests from the user at the time bersaman without experiencing overload.


Low-cost sensors have the potential to facilitate the exploration of air quality issues on new temporal and spatial scales. Here we evaluate a low-cost sensor quantification system for methane through its use in two different deployments. The first was a one-month deployment along the Colorado Front Range and included sites near active oil and gas operations in the Denver-Julesberg basin. The second deployment was in an urban Los Angeles neighborhood, subject to complex mixtures of air pollution sources including oil operations. Given its role as a potent greenhouse gas, new low-cost methods for detecting and monitoring methane may aid in protecting human and environmental health. In this paper, we assess a number of linear calibration models used to convert raw sensor signals into ppm concentration values. We also examine different choices that can be made during calibration and data processing, and explore cross-sensitivities that impact this sensor type. The results illustrate the accuracy of the Figaro TGS 2600 sensor when methane is quantified from raw signals using the techniques described. The results also demonstrate the value of these tools for examining air quality trends and events on small spatial and temporal scales as well as their ability to characterize an area - highlighting their potential to provide preliminary data that can inform more targeted measurements or supplement existing monitoring networks.


Abstract This article contributes to the debate over the whether or not the mainstreaming of Corporate Social Responsibility/Codes of Conduct should be welcomed. It suggests that to grapple with this question requires an engagement with the multiple and necessarily situated performativities (or jursigenerativities) of these codes. The article illustrates the argument through an analysis of two jurisgenerative processes (linked to regulation and to politics) triggered by Codes of Conduct in commercial military markets. It shows that the codes are creating both a hybrid regulatory (or constitutional) network that makes it possible to hold firms accountable and a militarization of politics. It does so by showing that the codes create first-, second- and third-order rules but also processes of misrecognition through distraction, distinction and diffusion that empower military professionals. It draws on a study of three cases involving ArmorGroup, a forerunner and advocate of regulation in military markets. This argument makes sense of the disagreements surrounding the virtues of global constitutionalism by highlighting the tensions that become apparent once it is acknowledged that Codes of Conduct are not only performative but are so in multiple ways. It can provide no easy way to dissolve the specific dilemma this multiple jurisgenerativity poses in the context of military markets specifically. But logically flowing from the argument is a suggestion that encouraging and empowering a broader, non-military/security professional involvement in the debate over the regulation of commercial military markets would be the appropriate way of handling it.


The history of scholarship narrates a complicated past for the interpretation of the «Shepherd Discourse in the Fourth Gospel. Both the internal and contextual integrity of John 9: 39-10: 21 have been compromised by a misapplied analogy dividing the passage into a parable and explanation structure, and by reading models that favor historical approaches. As a result, the images and figures encountered in the discourse have not been allowed their full imaginative impact and the tendency is to look outside the Gospel for their referents and explanations. The meaning of the «Shepherd Discourse lies not in its relation to the rest of the Fourth Gospel, but to that which is imported into the narrative. Moreover, its function as the discourse to chapter 9, and in the whole of the Gospel, is overlooked. Lewis employs the strategy of rereading, borrowed from literary theory, to address the internal integrity of the discourse and the relationship of the discourse to the rest of the narrative. The literary phenomenon of rereading highlights the interconnectedness of the whole of the discourse and allows all of the imagery to be assessed at a figurative level. Rereading also foregrounds the function of John 9: 39-10: 21 as the discourse to the healing of the blind man in chapter nine, and calls attention to the importance of the «Shepherd Discourse for the interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, especially the often-ignored image of Jesus as the door. This book suggests that rereading is necessitated by the Gospel itself as a fundamental feature of its unique theological expression.


The use of plants to treat skin ailments has strong support in the current trend of drug discovery. Propionibacterium acnes, an anaerobic pathogen, plays an important role in the occurrence of acne. The present study was conducted to evaluate the antimicrobial and antioxidant activities against P. acnes and cytotoxic effects of 48 medicinal plants grown in South Africa. The broth dilution and DPPH radical scavenging methods were used to determine antibacterial and antioxidant activities, respectively. Cytotoxicity was determined on mouse melanocytes (B16-F10). The ethanolic bark extract of Acacia galpinii Burtt Davy. (Leguminosae) exhibited the lowest minimum inhibitory concentration of 62.5 µg/mL. Excellent antioxidant activity was shown by Aspalathus linearis (Burm.f.) R. Dahlgren (Leguminosae), Combretum apiculatum Sond. (Combretaceae), Harpephyllum caffrum Bernh. ex Krauss (Anacardiaceae) and Sclerocarya birrea Hochst. (Anacardiaceae), with 50% radical scavenging activity (EC50) at concentrations ranging from 1.6 µg/mL to 3.5 µg/mL. Greyia sutherlandii Hook. & Harv. (Greyiaceae) also exhibited good antioxidant activity with an EC50 value of 7.9±0.23 µg/mL. A. linearis, G. sutherlandii and S. birrea showed low toxicity with 50% viability of cells (EC50) at concentrations of 125.09±0.71 µg/mL, 107.85±1.53 µg/mL and 92.07±0.09 µg/mL, respectively. The extracts of A. linearis, G. sutherlandii and S. birrea showed good antibacterial and antioxidant activities and low toxicity. Therefore, these plants can be considered as possible anti-acne agents and warrant further investigation.


The Chimarra lehibemavo group is described to include thirteen new species: Chimarra lehibemavo sp. nov., C. cebegepi sp. nov., C. fenoevo sp. nov., C. forcellinii sp. nov., C. fotobohitra sp. nov., C. gattolliati sp. nov., C. gensonae sp. nov., C. jejyorum sp. nov., C. hamatra sp. nov., C. makiorum sp. nov., C. moramanga sp. nov., C. saha sp. nov. and C. tamara sp. nov. The adults are easily recognizable by their large size, yellow colour and the structure of the male genitalia. The membranous tergum IX and the absence of the mesal lobe of tergum X are observed in other lineages, but the strong asymmetrical deformation of the phallotheca is apomorphic. The group is monophyletic with unknown affinities, but a preliminary phylogenetic placement is suggested following genetic analysis of two specimens. With one exception, the species have restricted geographical distributions in Madagascar and inhabit rivers in eastern pristine rainforests.


The threat of global climate change has pushed governments around the world to consider alternative energy sources, including nuclear energy. As the interest in nuclear power increases, serious discussions on safety must resume before moving forward. There is no better time than now, the twenty-fifth anniversary of Chernobyl, to revisit the causes of the worst civilian nuclear disaster in history in an attempt to prevent future accidents. The author reviews initial reports that accused operators of violating instructions, but also looks at evidence that surfaced in the early 1990s, which suggested that the reactor design, combined with a lack of information sharing, were to blame for the explosion. While it is imperative to address human error, design flaws, and communication failures, the author argues that organizational characteristics of the Soviet nuclear power sector deserve more attention by scholars and policy makers. Chernobyl was not a disaster waiting to happen, the author writes, but occurred despite ongoing efforts to improve technical design, operator training, and inter-organizational communication. Chernobyl, in this interpretation, illuminates that what the nuclear industry considers "safe enough" is always linked to specific historical periods, cultural settings, and institutional arrangements, and that even the best efforts to ensure nuclear safety may not be good enough.


Litter, one of the forest habitats includes the layer of dead plant materials present on soil surface, comprising the surface litter (L-layer), the partially decomposing layer beneath it (F-layer) and the humus layer (H-layer). It plays a major role in the transfer of energy and nutrients in the forest ecosystem; litter fall data is often used to predict the productivity of ecosystem. The natural forest litter, surface and associated ground with its floral diversity and specialized micro niches support a variety of macro and micro arthropods including spiders through variations in moisture, cover materials, litter depth and structure. A strong correlation between species diversity of ground dwelling spiders and litter habitat is thought to exist because habitat affects spiders through prey availability, temperature fluctuation, moisture content and harborage. Ecological importance of spiders is undeniable as they are abundant predators of other forest litter arthropods. Globally people are laying emphasis on the studies of litter and ground dwelling spiders while India is yet to jump into. It is believed that the monograph is the first comprehensive study on the forest litter and ground dwelling spiders of the reserve forests of Dooars, West Bengal, India.


We consider the problem of estimating causal DAG models from a mix of observational and interventional data, when the intervention targets are partially or completely unknown. This problem is highly relevant for example in genomics, since gene knockout technologies are known to have off-target effects. We characterize the interventional Markov equivalence class of DAGs that can be identified from interventional data with unknown intervention targets. In addition, we propose a provably consistent algorithm for learning the interventional Markov equivalence class from such data. The proposed algorithm greedily searches over the space of permutations to minimize a novel score function. The algorithm is nonparametric, which is particularly important for applications to genomics, where the relationships between variables are often non-linear and the distribution non-Gaussian. We demonstrate the performance of our algorithm on synthetic and biological datasets. Links to an implementation of our algorithm and to a reproducible code base for our experiments can be found at this https URL.


This column consists of selected traffic from the comp.arch newsgroup, a forum for discussion of computer architecture on Internet---an international computer network.


In the academic literature, mainstreaming is conceptualized as a shift in policy focus (from specific to generic), as well as in governance (from state-centric to poly-centric). Whereas mainstreaming has been applied in various areas, such as gender, disability and environment, a more recent application concerns migrant integration, which has so far been under-studied in academic circles. This article provides a critical analysis of mainstreaming as a supposed 'trend' in migrant integration policies. It provides a conceptual discussion of what mainstreaming might mean in the field of migrant integration in an effort to connect the concept of mainstreaming as used in other fields to the literature on migrant integration, and notably the emerging concept of interculturalism. Following this, it provides an empirical analysis of shifts in integration governance and policy in Denmark, France, Germany and the UK in an effort to explain whether mainstreaming, as conceptualized, is taking place. The article concludes that mainstreaming as a concept in the field of migrant integration can only partially explain policy developments. There is, indeed, a clear trend towards more poly-centric governance and towards generic policies. However, such policies rarely involve efforts to create a generic awareness of migration-related diversity, and are often overshadowed by broader national narratives on migrant integration, and pre-existing governance structures. However, the existence of an explicit pursuit of replacement strategies at the local level suggests that mainstreaming approaches may be a way of circumventing these national narratives and governance structures. Points for practitioners Potential degenerative effects of target group constructions can be averted by proxy strategies that are defined area- or needs-based rather than group-based. Mainstreaming also demands poly-centric governance structures that allow for horizontal (interdepartmental, multi-actor) and vertical (multi-level) coordination mechanisms to avert policy decoupling. Mainstreaming does not mean total group-blindness; mainstreaming works best when combined with knowledge of and sensitivity to these groups, while preventing formalizing target group constructions. Mainstreaming is not just an option, but also a necessity, for policies in super-diverse cities, where group distinctions can no longer be made.


In this paper the authors utilise leximetric analysis, which involves the numerical coding of the strength of formal legal protections, to document changes in the level of worker protection and shareholder protection in six countries (Australia, France, Germany, India, the United Kingdom and the United States) for the period 1970-2005. Both worker and shareholder protection increased in five of the six countries and in the sixth country (Australia) shareholder protection increased and the level of worker protection in 2005 was similar to the level of protection in 1970. The results of statistical tests show that increased formal legal protection for shareholders is not obtained at the expense of formal protection for workers. Implications of this finding are explored by the authors.


We assessed the occurrence and specificity of bacteriophages of Bacteroides fragilis in swine farms for their potential application in microbial source tracking. A local B. fragilis host strain, SP25 (DSM29413), was isolated from a pooled swine feces sample taken from a non-antibiotic farm. This strain was highly specific to swine fecal materials because it did not detect bacteriophages in any samples from human sewage, sheep, goats, cattle, dogs, and cats. The reference B. fragilis strain, RYC2056, could detect phages in swine samples but also detected phages in most human sewage and polluted urban canal samples. Phages of SP25 exist in the proximity of certain swine farms, regardless of their antibiotic use (p > 0.05). B. fragilis strain SP25 exhibited relatively high resistance to most of the veterinary antimicrobial agents tested. Interestingly, most farms that were positive for SP25 phages were also positive for RYC2056 phages. In conclusion, the swine-specific SP25 strain has the potential to indicate swine fecal contamination in certain bodies of water. Bacterial isolates with larger distributions are being studied and validated. This study highlights the importance of assessing the abundance of phages in local swine populations before determining their potential applicability for source tracking in local surface waters.


sUMMArY Medicines have an important role in providing health for all people. National medicines policies can help to achieve this goal. Delegates from the Asia Pacific region have met to discuss how to actively implement national medicines policies. Although the countries are diverse, they have common challenges such as access to medicines, antibiotic resistance and the rational use of medicines. Health insurance schemes can improve access to medicines. The pharmaceutical industry also needs to be involved in achieving universal access and rational use. Consumer groups have an important role in ensuring policies are implemented. They can also be involved in promoting health literacy. There is a need to build the capacity of drug regulatory agencies in the region. Regional cooperation will be needed to tackle problems of medicines quality, safety and rational use.


The paper aims to discuss concerns and possibilities of risk assessment of young parolees. The main objectives of the study are: (a) to describe prevalent risk for re-offending factors and (b) to evaluate a target group on three psychological scales (sense of coherence, aggressiveness, and hopelessness), and to analyze inter-correlations and their prognostic value. The sample consists of 265 male delinquents (aged 15-21) who served their probation sentences under supervision at three Lithuanian correctional institutions. The data on individual, social and criminological factors (historical as well as current) was sought from personal files and 137 participants (52%) attended a semi-structured interview. Antonovsky's Sense of Coherence Scale (SOC-13), Beck Hopelessness Scale and Buss - Perry Aggression Questionnaire were used for psychological evaluations. The results show prevalence of some individual and social characteristics of the target group; linear regression analysis suggested historical variables as strong predictors for criminal conduct within young parolees; significant correlations between scores on coherence and scores on aggressiveness and hopelessness were confirmed, though moderate level of coherence was prevalent in a sample. Some insights and practical recommendations for risk assessment within this target group have been developed.


Automated image annotation consists of a number of techniques that aim to find the correlation between words and image features such as colour, shape, and texture to provide correct annotation words to images. In particular, approaches based on Bayesian theory use machine-learning techniques to learn statistical models from a training set of pre-annotated images and apply them to generate annotations for unseen images.

The focus of this thesis lies in demonstrating that an approach, which goes beyond learning the statistical correlation between words and visual features and also exploits information about the actual semantics of the words used in the annotation process, is able to improve the performance of probabilistic annotation systems. Specifically, I present three experiments. Firstly, I introduce a novel approach that automatically refines the annotation words generated by a non-parametric density estimation model using semantic relatedness measures. Initially, I consider semantic measures based on co-occurrence of words in the training set. However, this approach can exhibit limitations, as its performance depends on the quality and coverage provided by the training data. For this reason, I devise an alternative solution that combines semantic measures based on knowledge sources, such as WordNet and Wikipedia, with word co-occurrence in the training set and on the web, to achieve statistically significant results over the baseline. Secondly, I investigate the effect of using semantic measures inside an evaluation measure that computes the performance of an automated image annotation system, whose annotation words adopt the hierarchical structure of an ontology. This is the case of the ImageCLEF2009 collection. Finally, I propose a Markov Random Field that exploits the semantic context dependencies of the image. The best result obtains a mean average precision of 0.32, which is consistent with the state-of-the-art in automated image annotation for the Corel 5k dataset.


The fading of persistent luminescence in Sr2MgSi2O7:Eu2+,R3+ (R: Y, La-Nd, Sm-Lu) was studied combining thermoluminescence (TL) and room temperature (persistent) luminescence measurements to gain more information on the mechanism of persistent luminescence. The TL glow curves showed the main trap signal at ca. 80 °C, corresponding to 0.6 eV as the trap depth, with every R co-dopant. The TL measurements carried out with different irradiation times revealed the general order nature of the TL bands. The results obtained from the deconvolutions of the glow curves allowed the prediction of the fading of persistent luminescence with good accuracy, though only when using the Becquerel decay law.


In archaeological Cultural Heritage study 3D modelling has become a very useful process to obtain indispensable data for documentation and visualization. Nowadays the continuous request to achieve photorealistic 3D models has led to testing different techniques and methodologies to speed up both data acquisition and the data processing phase. There are many examples of surveys conducted with the use of range-based and image-based techniques, but, in the last few years, the scientific research has been increasingly moving towards automatic procedures using Computer Vision approach to reduce time during data processing. Computer Vision approach offers a great opportunity for archaeological survey since it can be very easily used by existing Computer Vision interfaces such as 3D web services and open source or low cost software. The aim of this work is to evaluate the performance offered by Computer Vision interfaces for 3D survey of archaeological ruins using some 3D web-service tools and a low cost softwar...


To assess how contemporary crustal extension is accommodated in the central Apennines, we use a new continuous and survey-style global positioning system velocity solution and model the velocity field using a bicubic spline interpolation method. The partitioning of contemporary deformation over the ∼100-km-wide central Apennines belt reveals a pattern of strain accumulation that largely reflects the spatial distribution of historic and recent seismicity. The highest gradients of horizontal velocities are observed across those faults associated with M > 6 historical earthquakes. Dislocation modeling shows that interseismic elastic loading, in which creep occurs below the seismogenic upper crust on the downdip extensions of historically active faults, reproduces the observed velocity gradients. The current resolution level of Quaternary fault slip rates estimates hinders the comparison with past deformation patterns and, in particular, the discrimination between (1) migrating episodes of short-term focused activity, (2) a distributed pattern of simultaneous deformation on parallel fault systems, or (3) long-term localization of active extension. Taking into account geomorphological evidence, we propose that the geodetically observed deformation spatially corresponds with a long-term localization of strain along the long-wavelength (>100 km) topographic bulge caused by its highest gravitation potential energy relative to surrounding lowlands.


Namibia-Germany in the 1980s. East and West German narratives about Southwest-Africa
Dating back to the beginning of the armed struggle of the Namibian liberation movement, and culminating in the almost simultaneous achievement of national independence in the African country and the reunification of Germany, the "shared history" (pace Larissa Forster) of the two countries has from the mid-1960 until 1989/1990 actually been a threesome arrangement including Namibia, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the GDR. In essence, the relation(s) between the two Germanies and the actors involved in the Namibian theatre of liberation war were contradictory. While the communist East German state clearly championed the cause of Namibia's SWAPO and PLAN, the stance of the FRG, its elites, political decision makers and societal stakeholders was more ambivalent, ranging from diplomatic, humanitarian and other types of aid for the independence movement in Namibia to a repudiation of the movement's tenets and covert or overt support of the South African apartheid regime by conservative politicians and parts of the industry. A look at the 25 year-old chapter in Namibia-Germany's "shared history" therefore reveals a criss-cross pattern of changes (in the plural) of power. The two caesuras of 1989/1990 include the downfall of that respective societal/political system which had established connections with the respective prevailing societal/ political system in the other country, Namibia. Repercussions of these crosswise changes of power can up to the present day be identified in the field of German-language literature. This article highlights examples from prose fiction which had been produced immediately before 1989 in the two Germanies. The texts under discussion comprise the works by former GDR authors Jurgen Leskien and Dietmar Beetz, and West-German writers A.E. Johann and Immo Vogel.


Approximately 20 percent of Americans today resist traditional religious classification and practice a personalized, eclectic faith. California9s Esalen Institute reflects this development. Since its inception in 1962, this human potential center, which drew on San Francisco9s vibrant East-West scene, has offered a cornucopia of spiritual possibilities. Leaders and participants from around the world shared religious beliefs and scientific theories there. Through these exchanges, Esalen, both a physical and spiritual borderland along the Pacific Rim, served as an experimental hothouse for germinating a variety of religious hybrids and contributed to the changing nature of religion in late twentieth-century America. In the process, it helped revitalize religious notions within a scientific culture. By highlighting this cross-fertilization of ideas and practices, this article adds to our understanding of the dynamic process in which religion is made, remade, and rejuvenated by combining and adding beliefs and practices.


The image-based discourse on clay figurines that treated them as merely artistic representations, the meaning of which needs to be deciphered through various iconological methods, has been severely critiqued and challenged in the past decade. This discourse, however, has largely shaped the way that figurines are depicted in archaeological iterations and publications, and it is this corpus of images that has in turn shaped further thinking and discussion on figurines, especially since very few people are able to handle the original, three-dimensional, physical objects. Building on the changing intellectual climate in figurine studies, we propose here a framework that treats figurines as multi-sensorial, affective and dynamic objects, acting within distinctive, relational fields of sensoriality. Furthermore, we situate a range of digital, computational methods within this framework in an attempt to deprive them of their latent Cartesianism and mentalism, and we demonstrate how we have applied them to the study of Neolithic figurines from the site of Koutroulou Magoula in Greece. We argue that such methodologies, situated within an experiential framework, not only provide new means of understanding, interpretation and dissemination, but, most importantly, enable researchers and the public to explore the sensorial affordances and affective potential of things, in the past as well as in the present.


Over millions of years, terrestrial plants have competed for limited resources, defended themselves against herbivores, and resisted a myriad of environmental stresses. These struggles have helped generate more than a quarter million terrestrial plant species, each possessing a unique strategy for success. Yet, as Resource Strategies of Wild Plants demonstrates, the constraints on plant growth are universal enough that a few survival strategies hold true for all seed-producing plants. This book describes the five major strategies of growth for terrestrial plants, details how plants succeed when resources are scarce, delves into the history of research into plant strategies, and resets the foundational understanding of ecological processes.

 Drawing from recent findings in plant-herbivore interactions, ecosystem ecology, and evolutionary ecology, Joseph Craine explains how plants attain available nutrients, withstand the immense stresses of drying soils, and flourish in the race for light. He shows that the competition for resources has shaped plant evolution in newly discovered ways, while the scarcity of such resources has affected how plants interact with herbivores, wind, fire, and frost. An understanding of the major resource strategies of wild plants remains central to learning about the ecology of plant communities, global changes in the biosphere, methods for species conservation, and the evolution of life on earth.


Background Hyperuricaemia, the biochemical precursor to gout, has been shown to be an independent risk factor for mortality from cardiovascular disease (CVD), although studies examining the clinical phenomenon of gout and risk of CVD mortality report conflicting results. This study aimed to produce a pooled estimate of risk of mortality from cardiovascular disease in patients with gout. Design Systematic review and meta-analysis. Methods Electronic bibliographic databases were searched from inception to November 2012, with results reviewed by two independent reviewers. Studies were included if they reported data on CVD mortality in adults with gout who were free of CVD at time of entry into the study. Pooled hazard ratios (HRs) for this association were calculated both unadjusted and adjusted for traditional vascular risk factors. Results Six papers, including 223,448 patients, were eligible for inclusion (all (CVD) mortality n = 4, coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality n = 3, and myocardial infarction mortality n = 3). Gout was associated with an excess risk of CVD mortality (unadjusted HR 1.51 (95% confidence interval, CI, 1.17–1.84)) and CHD mortality (unadjusted HR 1.59, 95% CI 1.25–1.94)). After adjusting for traditional vascular risk factors, the pooled HR for both CVD mortality (HR 1.29, 95% CI 1.14–1.44) and CHD mortality (HR 1.42, 95% CI 1.22–1.63) remained statistically significant, but none of the studies reported a significant association with myocardial infarction. Conclusions Gout increases the risk of mortality from CVD and CHD, but not myocardial infarction, independently of vascular risk factors.


Drawing on social exchange theory and research on organizational commitment, we developed a model of contingent workers' commitment to two foci: their hiring agencies and the organizations to which they have been assigned. Hypotheses were tested using survey data from 197 contingent workers. We found that commitment to the hiring agency was positively related to pay satisfaction and perceived organizational support from the agency. Commitment to the client organization was positively related to perceived organizational support from the client, co-worker relations, and job satisfaction. Preference for contingent work exhibited a positive relationship with pay and job satisfaction. Holding job and pay satisfaction constant, we found that commitment was negatively related to preference for contingent work. Of the factors studied, perceived organizational support exhibited the largest effect. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.


We have investigated the use of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in a ring resonator to reduce the threshold of SBS phase conjugation for radiation from a frequency-narrowed Cr, Tm, Ho:YAG laser operating at 2.12 μm. Compared with an alternative scheme for threshold reduction, the loop scheme, we find that the ring resonator has a lower SBS threshold and a similar fidelity, but exhibits large fluctuations in output. We attribute these to fluctuations in the cavity length that detune the mode frequency from the center of the Brillouin gain bandwidth. Mode beating is occasionally observed with the beat frequency's being strongly influenced by the effect of a Brillouin-induced phase shift.


A rich literature links knowledge inputs with innovative outputs. However, most of what is known is restricted to manufacturing. This paper analyzes whether the three aspects involving innovative activity - RD innovative output; and productivity - hold for knowledge intensive services. Combining the models of Crepon et al. (1998) and of Ackerberg et al. (2015), allows for causal interpretation of the relationship between innovation output and labor productivity. We find that knowledge intensive services benefit from innovation activities in the sense that these activities causally increase their labor productivity. Moreover, the firm size advantage found for manufacturing in previous studies nearly disappears for knowledge intensive services.


Despite extensive research on durability of building materials and components performed over the past two decades, no reliable quantitative method of service life prediction (SLP) has gained wide acceptance. Generic guidance is provided in documents published by ASTM, RILEM, EOTA and ISO. Although the methodology is logical and easy to understand, its application is not simple, since much judgement is required in the interpretation of the results. Recently, a more specific method of estimating the service life of sealed joints has been proposed. The paper discusses the key requirements relevant to any service-life-prediction methodology, critiques the preliminary method proposed in the literature, and proposes a possible extension of this method.


Newly developed GaN technology offers great potential for military and space, as well as some high volume applications. The devices are grown on different substrates (sapphire, silicon and silicon carbide), involving differences on the performances, price, and technological complexity. The design of a fully integrated transceiver in such a technology necessitates great noise performances for the linear (low noise amplifiers, LNA) and non-linear (voltage controlled oscillator, VCO) applications. The low noise figure already published on this technology up to X-band, associated to the capability to handle high power levels avoid the integration of a limiter stage that deteriorates the overall noise figure in conventional architectures. The low frequency noise performances are useful both for the technology assessment (maturity's indicator) and for the non-linear circuit design (conversion to phase noise around the carrier). This paper presents the noise performances of AlGaN/GaN HEMT grown on SiC substrate. Low frequency noise contributors in the ohmic and saturated regime are discussed. Residual phase noise characterization at 10 GHz correlates the results about the noise sources involved, and linear high frequency noise figure measurements are also presented, targeting respectively VCO and LNA applications


Two major programs have been conducted by representatives of the private sector, College of Agricul-ture/lANR administration and staff, and representatives of other public agencies primarily to: 1) identify how to enhance the economic performance of Nebraska agriculture, and 2) determine through specific recommendations what programs and facilities were needed in the College of Agriculture/lANR to accomplish the goals. The findings and recommendations of the first of these were published in STAR in 1976, and those of the second in 2001 Ne-braska Agriculture in 1984. Important similarities and differences in the two programs, and in the publications emanating from each, are summarized in the table on the next page. STAR had its origin in the early 70's, a concept that Dean Frolik promulgated after learning of a similar program underway at the University of Florida College of Agriculture. The program consisted of developing an inventory of the major segments of the state's agriculture, including both human and natural resources, of identifying trends, and of suggesting challenges for the future. Extension Director John L. Adams provided the primary leadership early in the program. However, as his health deteriorated, he was replaced in this role by Station Director Howard W. Ottoson. At the time the STAR program was in its initial stages, the University Foundation was somewhat passive with respect to raising funds for the College. Although progress had been made by the private agricultural sector in supporting the College, such support had not crystallized to the extent that it has since. There was hesitancy on the part of College administrators to ask the private sector, especially farmers and ranchers, to devote very much of their time and personal expenses for travel to participate in conferences to develop programs aimed at strengthening financial support for the College. Hence, it is understandable that much of the effort in developing STAR was provided by IANR administrators and other College staff, and by representatives of other public agencies having an interest in agriculture. During the period of the early work on STAR, University administrators and staff were rather guarded in their efforts to gain financial support for the Institution. To be too obvious and direct in using staff time and state appropriated funds to generate more funds, would have been considered inappropriate and possibly fraught with some danger of arousing the wrath of the State Legislature. Thus, the indirect approach was used. However, it must be …


ABSTRACT This study examines the retirement income of women in Europe, focusing on the effect of motherhood. Due to their more interrupted working careers compared to non-mothers and fathers, mothers are likely to accumulate fewer pension entitlements, and consequently, to receive lower incomes in later life. However, pension systems in Europe vary widely in the degree to which they compensate for care-related career interruptions by means of redistributive elements or pension care entitlements. Therefore, care interruptions may matter for the retirement income of women in some countries, but may be rather irrelevant in others. On the basis of life history data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARELIFE) for women aged between 60 and 75 years in 13 European countries, the interplay of individual lifecourse characteristics with institutional and structural factors is examined. The results show that the lower retirement income of mothers is mainly a result of fewer years in employment and lower-status jobs throughout the lifecourse. The analysis of institutional factors reveals that pension care entitlements are not able to provide a compensation for care-related cutbacks in working life. A generally redistributive design of the pension system including basic or targeted pension schemes, in contrast, appears as an effective measure to balance differences in employment participation over the lifecourse.


Due to its completeness, the A.L. 288-1 ("Lucy") skeleton has long served as the archetypal bipedal Australopithecus. However, there remains considerable debate about its limb proportions. There are three competing, but not necessarily mutually exclusive, explanations for the high humerofemoral index of A.L. 288-1: (1) a retention of proportions from an Ardipithecus-like most recent common ancestor (MRCA); (2) indication of some degree of climbing ability; (3) allometry. Recent discoveries of other partial skeletons of Australopithecus, such as those of A. sediba (MH1 and MH2) and A. afarensis (KSD-VP-1/1 and DIK-1/1), have provided new opportunities to test hypotheses of early hominin body size and limb proportions. Yet, no early hominin is as complete (>90%), as is the ~3.67 Ma "Little Foot" (StW 573) specimen, from Sterkfontein Member 2. Here, we provide the first descriptions of that skeleton's upper and lower long limb bones, as well as a comparative context of its limb proportions. As to the latter, we found that StW 573 possesses absolutely longer limb lengths than A.L. 288-1, but both skeletons show similar limb proportions. This finding seems to argue against a purely allometric explanation for A.L. 288-1's limb proportions. In fact, our multivariate allometric analysis suggests that limb lengths of Australopithecus, as represented by StW 573 and A.L. 288-1, developed along a significantly different (p < 0.001) allometric scale than that which typifies modern humans and African apes. Our analyses also suggest, as have those of others, that hominin limb evolution occurred in two stages with: (1) a modest increase in lower limb length and a concurrent shortening of the antebrachium between Ardipithecus and Australopithecus, followed by (2) considerable lengthening of the lower limb along with a decrease of both upper limb elements occurring between Australopithecus and Homo sapiens.


Dr. Gary Francis from the University of Minnesota moderated the topic "Type II Pulmonary Hypertension in the Setting of Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction" with Drs. Michael M. Givertz from Brigham and Women's Hospital, Gregory D. Lewis from Massachusetts General Hospital, and Marc Pritzker from the University of Minnesota, participating. The discussion focused primarily on: The increased prevalence of so-called reactive pulmonary hypertension; a clinical case of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (or diastolic heart failure); variability in the clinical terminology describing this condition; triggers in echocardiogram reports that may lead to the reporting of additional indices of diastolic function that can be valuable to clinicians; features other than left-heart disease that may mediate pulmonary hypertension; and therapies for patients with pulmonary hypertension. (Med Roundtable Cardiovasc Ed. 2014;4(1):e1–e7) ©2014 FoxP2Media, LLC


Simplified tax regimes reduce both tax rates and compliance costs for small firms. On the one hand, these regimes increase the number of businesses formally registered and have the potential of also expanding the safety net when they subsidize the contributions to social security of workers in micro firms. On the other hand, they likely incentivize tax evasion due to the discontinuities in the tax schedule they introduce, and distort several micro-level margins, distortions which potentially accumulate into lower levels of aggregate productivity and GDP. In this paper, we exploit data from household surveys and administrative records for Peru, Brazil, and Mexico to examine the likely effects of special regimes on tax revenues, social protection, and resource misallocation. We find bunching of firms around the eligibility threshold of various tax regimes in Peru. This can be due to misreporting to tax authorities or to firms limiting their size to enjoy the benefits of the special tax regimes. In Brazil, we document how the introduction of a special tax regime benefiting the self-employed might have generated incentives for workers to register as entrepreneurs. Finally, in Mexico we find suggesting evidence showing how the introduction of a new special tax regime for small businesses in 2014 might have led to an increase in the number of employers contributing to the social security of their employees and in the number of self-employed making voluntary contributions to social protection. In all these instances we do not quantify exact causal effects, but we present instead descriptive evidence undoubtedly helpful to direct future research.


We examine the ability of existing and new factor models to explain the comovements of G10 currency changes, measured using "currency baskets." A clustering technique reveals a clear two-block structure in currency comovements, with the first block containing mostly the dollar currencies and the other the European currencies. A factor model incorporating this "clustering" factor and two additional factors, a commodity currency factor and a "world" factor based on trading volumes, fits currency basket correlations much better than extant factors, such as value and carry, do. In particular, it explains on average about 60% of currency variation and generates a root mean squared error relative to sample correlations of only 0.11. The model also fits comovements in emerging market currencies well. Economically, the correlations between currency baskets underlying the factor structure are inversely related to the physical distances between countries. This paper was accepted by Kay Giesecke, finance.


Results from this exploratory study of incoming college freshmen indicated many students already had access to credit or had acquired debt. Sixty-two percent had access to a credit/charge card and just over half (50.9%) had some type of debt. Older students had significantly more credit/charge cards, as well as higher levels of debt. Single, never married students tended to have lower levels of debt than currently/formerly married students. Most students in this study knew little about credit and credit knowledge was not significantly related to debt levels or access to credit/charge cards. The findings suggest that credit education may be needed before students enter college (or shortly thereafter) to help them make informed decisions and avoid having excessive debt affect current/future financial security.


The Bible's grand narrative about Israel's Exodus from Egypt is central to Biblical religion, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim identity, and the formation of the academic disciplines studying the ancient Near East. It has also been a pervasive theme in artistic and popular imagination. Israel's Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspectiveis a pioneering worksurveying this tradition in unprecedented breadth, combiningarchaeological discovery, quantitative methodology, and close literary reading. Archaeologists, Egyptologists, Biblical Scholars, Computer Scientists, Geoscientists and other experts contribute their diverse approaches in a novel, transdisciplinary consideration of ancient topography, Egyptian and Near Eastern parallels to the Exodus story, the historicity of the Exodus, the interface of the Exodus question with archaeological fieldwork on emergent Israel,the formation of biblical literature, and the cultural memory of the Exodus in ancient Israel and beyond. This edited volume contains research presented at the groundbreaking symposium"Out of Egypt: Israel s Exodus Between Text and Memory, History and Imagination" held in 2013at the Qualcomm Institute of the University of California, San Diego. The combination of 44 contributions by an international group of scholars from diverse disciplines makes this the first such transdisciplinary study of ancient text and history. In the original conference and with this new volume, revolutionary media, such as a 3D immersive virtual reality environment, impart innovative, Exodus-based research to a wider audience. Out of archaeology, ancient texts, science, and technology emergean up-to-date picture of the Exodus for the21stCentury, and a new standard for collaborative research


In this book, leading CEOs, CIOs and experts from international corporations explore the role of digitalization and cloud-based processes as the main business drivers of the 21stcentury. Focusing on how to get started with digitalization and how to handle the technologies involved, they employ analyses and practical case studies to demonstrate how to unleash the potential offered by the cloud, and how to achieve the most critical success factors quality and security through the right partnerships. Readers will discover why the cloud will soon take over the drivers seat in cars, and why Heineken CIO Anne Teague claims that innovation is impossible without high-quality IT. The book reveals what IT managers can learn from Silicon Valley and China today, and why Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Hoettges believes Europes future depends on successful digitalization. In a closing strategic assessment, the editor Ferri Abolhassan presents the cloud as the essential backbone of digitalization. In short, the book provides readers the first comprehensive, high-level assessment of cloud-based digital transformation in the era of Industry 4.0.


The paper analyzes the accuracy of publicly available object-recognition systems on a geographically diverse dataset. This dataset contains household items and was designed to have a more representative geographical coverage than commonly used image datasets in object recognition. We find that the systems perform relatively poorly on household items that commonly occur in countries with a low household income. Qualitative analyses suggest the drop in performance is primarily due to appearance differences within an object class (e.g., dish soap) and due to items appearing in a different context (e.g., toothbrushes appearing outside of bathrooms). The results of our study suggest that further work is needed to make object-recognition systems work equally well for people across different countries and income levels.


The industrial fabric of the province of Alicante has long been made up of various types of agglomerations of companies, including local productive systems, industrial districts and clusters. These enterprise systems are currently facing challenges to their competitiveness brought about by global markets and transformations in technology and production. In this paper we analyze the transformation processes introduced by businesses in the footwear components industry and the importance of the Regional Innovation System in the recent economic context. We demonstrate how companies in the footwear sector have sought various alternatives, especially innovation strategies, internationalization, diversification towards different productive sectors, and specialization in different market segments. We also analyze the role of the Regional Innovation System of the Valencian Community (Spain) (e.g. the Chamber of Commerce, technological institutes, universities and innovation policies) in these transformation processes.


The eclipsing white dwarf plus main-sequence binary NN Serpentis provides one of the most convincing cases for the existence of circumbinary planets around evolved binaries. The exquisite timing precision provided by the deep eclipse of the white dwarf has revealed complex variations in the eclipse arrival times over the last few decades. These variations have been interpreted as the influence of two planets in orbit around the binary. Recent studies have proved that such a system is dynamically stable over the current lifetime of the binary. However, the existence of such planets is by no means proven and several alternative mechanisms have been proposed that could drive similar variations. One of these is apsidal precession, which causes the eclipse times of eccentric binaries to vary sinusoidally on many year time-scales. In this Letter, we present timing data for the secondary eclipse of NN Ser and show that they follow the same trend seen in the primary eclipse times, ruling out apsidal precession as a possible cause for the variations. This result leaves no alternatives to the planetary interpretation for the observed period variations, although we still do not consider their existence as proven. Our data limit the eccentricity of NN Ser to e < 10−3. We also detect a 3.3 ± 1.0 s delay in the arrival times of the secondary eclipses relative to the best planetary model. This delay is consistent with the expected 2.84 ± 0.04 s Romer delay of the binary, and is the first time this effect has been detected in a white dwarf plus M dwarf system.


Background: Aberrantly expressed miRNAs promote renal cell carcinoma (RCC) growth and metastasis and are potentially useful biomarkers for metastatic disease. However, a consensus clinically significant miRNA signature has not been identified. To identify an miRNA signature for predicting clinical outcome in RCC patients, we used a four-pronged interconnected approach. Methods: Differentially expressed miRNAs were identified and analyzed in 113 specimens (normal kidney: 59; tumor: 54). miRNA profiling was performed in matched normal and tumor specimens from 8 patients and extended to 32 specimens. Seven aberrantly expressed miRNAs were analyzed by qPCR, and their levels were correlated with RCC subtypes and clinical outcome. miRNA signature was confirmed in The Cancer Genome Atlas RCC dataset (n = 241). Results: Discovery phase identified miR-21, miR-142-3p, miR-142-5p, miR-150, and miR-155 as significantly upregulated (2–4-fold) and miR-192 and miR-194 as downregulated (3–60-fold) in RCC; miR-155 distinguished small tumors (<4 cm) from benign oncocytomas. In univariate and multivariate analyses, miRNA combinations (miR-21+194; miR-21+142-5p+194) significantly predicted metastasis and/or disease-specific mortality; miR-21+142-5p+194 (for metastasis): P = 0.0017; OR, 0.53; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.75–0.33; 86.7% sensitivity; 82% specificity. In the TCGA dataset, combined biomarkers associated with metastasis and overall survival (miR-21+142-5p+194: P < 0.0001; OR, 0.37; 95% CI, 0.58–0.23). Conclusions: The interconnected discovery–validation approach identified a three-miRNA signature as a potential predictor of disease outcome in RCC patients. Impact: With 10% survival at 5 years, metastatic disease presents poor prognosis for RCC patients. The three-miRNA signature discovered and validated may potentially at an early stage detect and predict metastasis, to allow early intervention for improving patient prognosis. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 27(4); 464–72. ©2018 AACR.


Dyslexic people face particular problems in employment. These problems,
coupled with a lack of specialist support, create a critical need for specially tailored
computer assisted careers guidance (CACG) systems. The primary objective of
this thesis is to establish guidelines for the design of such a system.
Section one examines the possibility of providing training or guidance for dyslexic
people via computer, and focuses on the use of symbolic information. The results
of Study 1, using British road traffic signs, indicate that dyslexic people are
deficient in implicit learning, even for symbolic information. Consequently,
despite the advantage of symbol based systems for dyslexics, explicit training in
system use is likely to be essential.
Section two examines the potential of such systems for delivering specially
tailored CACG to dyslexic people. The literature on careers guidance for dyslexic
people suggests that they particularly benefit from increased insight into the nature
of their disability, and knowledge of its implications. Careers guidance for
dyslexics would therefore be optimised by guidance in: the nature of their
disabilities; likely effects of their disabilities; implications for careers decisions;
and opportunities for overcoming dyslexia-related difficulties. It is argued that
multimedia systems, encapsulating an open learning approach, are particularly
appropriate for dyslexic people. Modern multimedia computer assisted careers
guidance (CACG) systems have the potential to facilitate these beneficial
processes, and to provide valuable information and support materials. However,
presently available systems of this sort are far from suitable for dyslexics.
Unfortunately, little information on multimedia or CACG relates directly to
dyslexia. To counter this, three studies were conducted; an interview study of
selected dyslexia professionals, a questionnaire study of a wider range of dyslexia
professionals, and a questionnaire study of dyslexic adults. Each was designed to
establish: how careers guidance for dyslexic people can be improved; the
feasibility and desirability of multimedia CACG for dyslexic people; and the
design characteristics of such a CACG system. Not only was it generally agreed
that such a system is feasible, and desirable, but also strong support was voiced
for the central use of video resources. However, it was stressed that the system
should not be allowed to replace human guidance. The results of these studies are
combined with the conclusions from the literature, to construct a detailed design
and description of a multimedia CACG system for dyslexic people.


Facing growth in demand, dairy production in peri-urban areas of developing countries is changing rapidly. To characterise this development around Bamako (Mali), this study establishes a typology of dairy production systems with a special focus on animal genetic resources. The survey included 52 dairy cattle farms from six peri-urban sites. It was conducted in 2011 through two visits, in the dry and harvest seasons. The median cattle number per farm was 17 (range 5–118) and 42% of farmers owned cropland (8.3 ±7.3 ha, minimum 1 ha, maximum 25 ha). Feeding strategy was a crucial variable in farm characterisation, accounting for about 85% of total expenses. The use of artificial insemination and a regular veterinary follow-up were other important parameters. According to breeders' answers, thirty genetic profiles were identified, from local purebreds to different levels of crossbreds. Purebred animals raised were Fulani Zebu (45.8%), Maure Zebu (9.2%), Holstein (3.0%), Azawak Zebu (1.3%), Mere Zebu (0.5%) and Kuri taurine (0.1%). Holstein crossbred represented 30.5% of the total number of animals (19.0% Fulani-Holstein, 11.2% Maure-Holstein and 0.3% Kuri-Holstein). Montbeliarde, Normande and Limousin crossbreds were also found (6.6%, 0.7% and 0.3%, respectively). A multivariate analysis helped disaggregate the diversity of management practices. The high diversity of situations shows the need for considerationof typological characteristics for an appropriate intervention. Although strongly anchored on local breeds, the peri-urban dairy systems included a diversity of exotic cattle, showing an uncoordinated quest of breeders for innovation. Without a public intervention, this dynamic will result in an irremediable erosion of indigenous animal genetic resources.


This Independent Study is divided into four chapters. The first chapter examines the role of capitalism in the formation of our culture. The argument presented here is that culture plays an important role in reinforcing modern neoliberal capitalism and that neoliberal capitalism has massive control over the dissemination of culture and the arts. The chapter concludes that it is necessary to utilize socio-cultural means in combating the influence of capitalism, and there does indeed exist emancipatory potential in artistic political praxis. The second chapter focuses on Theodor Adorno's aesthetic theory in articulating his conception of the emancipatory potential of art. This chapter explicates on Adorno's idea of a sovereign and autonomous artistic praxis and looks at his objections to the politicization of art. Finally, the chapter looks at what Adorno considers legitimate artistic political praxis and attempts at an understanding of Adorno's concept of aesthetic negativity in relation to artistic political praxis. The third chapter focuses on the political theory of Chantal Mouffe; specifically, it is an explication of her theory of agonistics as a democratic political praxis. The chapter will explore Mouffe's concept of hegemony in relation to how she conceives of agonistics. It will also explain how Mouffe understands public spaces as battlegrounds for agonistic struggle. The fourth chapter focuses on how Mouffe conceives of the role of art in agonistic political praxis. The fourth and final chapter of this study evaluates the two different conceptions of artistic political praxis presented by Adorno and Mouffe on their respective merits and deficiencies. It will attempt to adjudicate the differences between the respective theories and try to formulate some kind of practical frame for how artistic political praxis ought to be conducted.


This paper presents the Moreau envelope viewpoint for the L1/TV
image denoising model. The main algorithmic difficulty for the
numerical treatment of the L1/TV model lies in the
non-differentiability of both the fidelity and regularization terms
of the model. To overcome this difficulty, we propose five modified
L1/TV models by replacing one or two non-differentiable
functions in the L1/TV model with their corresponding Moreau
envelopes. We prove that several existing approaches for the L1/TV
model essentially solve some of the modified models, but not the
original L1/TV model. Algorithms for the L1/TV model and its five
variants are proposed under a unified framework based on fixed-point equations (via the
proximity operator) which characterize the solutions of the models. Depending upon whether we smooth the
regularization term or not, two different types of proximity
algorithms are presented. The convergence rates of both types of the
algorithms are improved significantly by exploring either the
strategy of the Gauss-Seidel iteration, or the FISTA, or both. We
compare the performance of various modified L1/TV models for the
problem of impulse noise removal, and make recommendations based on
our numerical experiments for using these models in applications.


Oligonucleotide-directed triple helix formation is one of the most
versatile methods for the sequence specific recognition of double helical
DNA. Chapter 2 describes affinity cleaving experiments carried out to assess
the recognition potential for purine-rich oligonucleotides via the formation
of triple helices. Purine-rich oligodeoxyribonucleotides were shown to bind
specifically to purine tracts of double helical DNA in the major groove
antiparallel to the purine strand of the duplex. Specificity was derived from
the formation of reverse Hoogsteen G•GC, A•AT and T•AT triplets and
binding was limited to mostly purine tracts. This triple helical structure was
stabilized by multivalent cations, destabilized by high concentrations of
monovalent cations and was insensitive to pH. A single mismatched base
triplet was shown to destabilize a 15 mer triple helix by 1.0 kcal/mole at 25°C.
In addition, stability appeared to be correlated to the number of G•GC triplets
formed in the triple helix. This structure provides an additional framework
as a basis for the design of new sequence specific DNA binding molecules. In work described in Chapter 3, the triplet specificities and required
strand orientations of two classes of DNA triple helices were combined to
target double helical sequences containing all four base pairs by alternate
strand triple helix formation. This allowed for the use of oligonucleotides
containing only natural 3'-5' phosphodiester linkages to simultaneously bind
both strands of double helical DNA in the major groove. The stabilities and
structures of these alternate strand triple helices depended on whether the
binding site sequence was 5'-(purine)_m (pyrimidine)_n-3' or 5'-
(pyrimidine)_m (purine)_n-3'. In Chapter 4, the ability of oligonucleotide-cerium(III) chelates to direct
the transesterfication of RNA was investigated. Procedures were developed
for the modification of DNA and RNA oligonucleotides with a hexadentate
Schiff-base macrocyclic cerium(III) complex. In addition, oligoribonucleotides
modified by covalent attachment of the metal complex through two different
linker structures were prepared. The ability of these structures to direct
transesterification to specific RNA phosphodiesters was assessed by gel
electrophoresis. No reproducible cleavage of the RNA strand consistent with
transesterification could be detected in any of these experiments.


This paper studies the patterns of fiscal stimuli in the OECD countries propagated by the global crisis. Overall, we find that the USA net fiscal stimulus was modest relative to peers, despite it being the epicenter of the crisis, and having access to relatively cheap funding of its twin deficits. The USA is ranked at the bottom third in terms of the rate of expansion of the consolidated government consumption and investment of the 28 countries in sample. Contrary to historical experience, emerging markets had strongly countercyclical policy during the period immediately preceding the Great Recession and the Great Recession. Many developed OECD countries had procyclical fiscal policy stance in the same periods. Federal unions, emerging markets and countries with very high GDP growth during the pre-recession period saw larger net fiscal stimulus on average than their counterparts. We also find that greater net fiscal stimulus was associated with lower flow costs of general government debt in the same or subsequent period.


This paper studies the influence of family, schools and neighborhoods on life-cycle earnings inequality. We develop an earnings dynamics model linking brothers, schoolmates and teenage parish neighbors using population register data for Denmark. We exploit differences in the timing of family mobility and the partial overlap of schools and neighborhoods to separately identify sorting from community and family effects. We find that family is far more important than community in influencing earnings inequality over the life cycle. Neighborhoods and schools influence earnings only early in the working life and this influence falls rapidly and becomes negligible after age 30.


Current carbon dioxide emissions are an assumed threat to oceanic calcifying plankton (coccolithophores) not just due to rising sea-surface temperatures, but also because of ocean acidification (OA). This assessment is based on single species culture experiments that are now revealing complex, synergistic, and adaptive responses to such environmental change. Despite this complexity, there is still a widespread perception that coccolithophore calcification will be inhibited by OA. These plankton have an excellent fossil record, and so we can test for the impact of OA during geological carbon cycle events, providing the added advantages of exploring entire communities across real-world major climate perturbation and recovery. Here we target fossil coccolithophore groups (holococcoliths and braarudosphaerids) expected to exhibit greatest sensitivity to acidification because of their reliance on extracellular calcification. Across the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (56 Ma) rapid warming event, the biogeography and abundance of these extracellular calcifiers shifted dramatically, disappearing entirely from low latitudes to become limited to cooler, lower saturation-state areas. By comparing these range shift data with the environmental parameters from an Earth system model, we show that the principal control on these range retractions was temperature, with survival maintained in high-latitude refugia, despite more adverse ocean chemistry conditions. Deleterious effects of OA were only evidenced when twinned with elevated temperatures.


X-ray diffraction has been used to investigate the kinetics of amorphization through ball-milling at 20 Hz, for five zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs) - ZIF-8, ZIF-4, ZIF-zni, BIF-1-Li and CdIF-1. We find that the rates of amorphization for the zinc-containing ZIFs increase with increasing solvent accessible volume (SAV) in the sequence ZIF-8 > ZIF-4 > ZIF-zni. The Li-B analogue of the dense ZIF-zni amorphizes more slowly than the corresponding zinc phase, with the behaviour showing a correlation with their relative bulk moduli and SAVs. The cadmium analogue of ZIF-8 (CdIF-1) amorphizes more rapidly than the zinc counterpart, which we ascribe primarily to its relatively weak M-N bonds as well as the higher SAV. The results for the ZIFs are compared to three classical zeolites - Na-X, Na-Y and ZSM-5 - with these taking up to four times longer to amorphize. The presence of adsorbed solvent in the pores is found to render both ZIF and zeolite frameworks more resistant to amorphization. X-ray total scattering measurements show that amorphous ZIF-zni is structurally indistinguishable from amorphous ZIF-4 with both structures retaining the same short-range order that is present in their crystalline precursors. By contrast, both X-ray total scattering measurements and (113)Cd NMR measurements point to changes in the local environment of amorphous CdIF-1 compared with its crystalline CdIF-1 precursor.


Coastal stratigraphy near Port Blair, Andaman Islands, where the A.D. 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake was accompanied by ∼1 m of subsidence, provides evidence for two prior earthquakes, perhaps both from the past 400 yr. The first of these (event I) is marked by an abrupt mud-over-peat contact best explained by subsidence similar to that in 2004. Event II is evidenced by an overlying chaotic layer composed of mud clasts in a sandy matrix that is connected with feeder dikes. These mud clasts, probably produced by liquefaction, are capped by laminated sand and mud that we ascribe to an event II tsunami. Radiocarbon ages of plant remains in the peat give discordant ages in the range 100 B.C. to A.D. 1950. Event I probably resembled the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake in that it was accompanied by subsidence (as much as 1 m) but not by strong shaking near Port Blair. If event II was the A.D. 1762 Arakan earthquake, the laminated sand and mud provide the first evidence that this earthquake was associated with a tsunami.


This paper deals with the Bluetooth technology in telecommunication networks. The basis for the data transmission is a packet which has its own specifics in the wireless communication. The more important is signal level, but other parameters like transfer time and a number of transferred packets are interesting too. The output of this paper is a proposed mathematical model which describes dependencies of this output parameters on the distance of communicating devices and on the environment where these devices are placed. Some input criteria and conditions are defined for the functionality of the proposed model. The file transfer between both devices depends on the distance between communicating devices and on the surroundings, where the slave device is placed. For our purposes were selected some possible surroundings that might be encountered, it is free-space, paper with variant thickness, PVC or leather and wood with their density. Equation of mathematical model thanks to application of logarithmic regression analysis on graphical output was found out the equation of output function of mathematical model. Because partial equations were multiplying, it is multiplicative (additive) type of regression model.


This paper reviews extant agent applications and describes the Agent Development Environment (ADE) toolkit. ADE is the integrated development environment to design, develop, debug, simulate and deploy agents. ADE supports the development of multi-agent applications capable of running on a single machine or on a distributed network. ADE has been used to build commercial applications in the area of: (i) manufacturing scheduling, (ii) manufacturing process control, (iii) network information filtering, and (iv) network load balancing. We present intelligent supply chain agents for the software procurement process using electronic commerce. The paper highlights the use and utility of intelligent agents in electronic commerce using ADE. Supply chain management represents a critical competency in today's fast-paced, global business environment. However, in the current transition from EDI to Web technology, most of the capability for process integration is being lost. The integration of buyer and seller supply chain processes is critical for speed and responsiveness in today's hypercompetitive product and service markets. Intelligent agent technology offers the potential to overcome this limitation and effectively integrate buyer and seller processes without the rigid inflexibility of EDI. We use domain knowledge in software procurement and distributed problem solving approaches. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research. Commerce Through Intelligent Supply Chain