Description of 18 types of bhutonmada or grahonmada (psychiatric diseases caused by idiopathic factors) has been documented by Maharshi Vagbhata. Pischacha grahonmada (PG) is one among those 18 types. No works are available on PG till date. The concept of PG and its clinical application is unclear due to the scarcity of published literature on this topic. The aim of the present study is to explore the condition of PG in terms of contemporary psychiatric literature. Ayurvedic literature pertaining to "Pishacha grahonmada" has been collected from major classical Ayurvedic texts and their commentaries. Electronic databases have been searched to find out the relevant psychiatric and/or neuropsychiatric conditions which are similar to PG by using relevant keywords. PG is characterized by clinical features like Aswastha chittam (feeling uneasy), naikatra tishtantam (unable to sit at one place), paridhaavinam (wandering/pacing/running), dayita nritya geeta haasa ucchishta ratim (hypomania or mania like features), madya maamsa ratim (fond of eating meat, alcohol abuse), shunya nivaasa ratim (staying alone/social withdrawal), nirbhartsanaat (threatening others), deena shankita vadanam (depression with suspiciousness), nakhai aatma vapushi likhantam (self-injurious behavior with nails), nashta smriti (memory loss), baddhaabaddha bhaashinam (irrelevant speech), akasmaat rudantam (crying suddenly), dukhaani aavedayamaana (sharing his sorrows to everyone)/dukhaani avedayamaana (unable to feel pain), uddhvasta (nakedness), rooksha deha and swara (rough emaciated body and voice), durgandham/ashuchi (unhygienic), rathya chaila trina aabharanam (gross abnormal behavior), and bahvaashinam (hyperphagia). "Nashta smriti" is the unique symptom of PG and it denotes memory impairment commonly seen in conditions like dementia. The clinical features of PG have shown similarity with "Frontotemporal dementia" associated with malnutrition and/or Vitamin B12 deficiency. The present study provides inputs for future research works.


Recommender systems provide users with content they might be interested in. Conventionally, recommender systems are evaluated mostly by using prediction accuracy metrics only. But, the ultimate goal of a recommender system is to increase user satisfaction. Therefore, evaluations that measure user satisfaction should also be performed before deploying a recommender system in a real target environment. Such evaluations are laborious and complicated compared to the traditional, data-centric evaluations, though. In this study, we carried out a user-centric evaluation of state-of-the-art recommender systems as well as a graph-based approach in the ecologically valid setting of an authentic social learning platform. We also conducted a data-centric evaluation on the same data to investigate the added value of user-centric evaluations and how user satisfaction of a recommender system is related to its performance in terms of accuracy metrics. Our findings suggest that user-centric evaluation results are not necessarily in line with data-centric evaluation results. We conclude that the traditional evaluation of recommender systems in terms of prediction accuracy only does not suffice to judge performance of recommender systems on the user side. Moreover, the user-centric evaluation provides valuable insights in how candidate algorithms perform on each of the five quality metrics for recommendations: usefulness, accuracy, novelty, diversity, and serendipity.


Due to the rising shares of renewable energy sources, future power systems are facing significant changes in control complexity and system inertia, thus making frequency regulation in power systems more challenging. This paper proposes a novel control scheme based on model predictive control for grid-forming Voltage Source Converters (VSCs), with the goal of exploiting their fast response capabilities and available DC-side energy storage to provide fast frequency control service to the system. An observer based on support vector machine regression detects and estimates system disturbances using only locally available measurements at each VSC. Frequency evolution is then anticipated through state-space predictions and the VSC power output is adjusted to compensate the disturbance and prevent frequency threshold violations. The proposed control scheme is evaluated and its effectiveness demonstrated through detailed time-domain simulations of the IEEE 39-bus test system.


The Sigma deposit is a large network of Au-mineralized veins that crosscut a sequence of andesitic volcanics and volcanoclastics intruded by porphyritic diorite and feldspar porphyry dikes of the Archean Abitibi greenstone belt of Canada. The network is mainly made of shear zone-hosted, steeply dipping veins and subhorizontal extension veins filled for the most part by quartz and tourmaline. Hydrothermal alteration around these veins is made of coeval albite-rich and tourmaline-rich visible haloes, and formed during multiple stages of shearing of the host rocks, opening, growth, and interconnection of vein segments, and during gold precipitation within veins and wall rocks. Appropriate scale mapping of vein outcrops located within a 1.3 km-deep section of the deposit is used here to gather quantitative geometrical data on the vein network and the alteration haloes developed at the vein walls. These data show that the albite- and tourmaline-rich haloes have no preferential distribution within the deposit, form patterns that are asymmetrical along and across vein strike, and are mainly controlled by the local three-dimensional arrangement of the veins. Vein gold grades do not correlate with metric properties of veins like thickness and depth. Results suggest that the hydrothermal alteration at Sigma developed mainly from diffusive transport of mass through the wall rocks. They also suggest that the control of local topology of vein arrays on alteration patterns, underestimated by previous studies of Sigma, may be important in other structurally complex vein network deposits. Scale mapping of both mineralized veins and hydrothermal alteration envelopes has proved useful in constraining the structural relations between vein growth and fluid-rock interaction and in determining locations of most intense wall-rock metasomatism, which provides an objective guide to the choice of samples for geochemical studies.


A new class of renewable diesel fuels has been synthesized by acid catalyzed condensation of 2-tridecanone with a series of diols that can be generated from biomass. These fuels exhibit comparable net heats of combustion (NHOCs) to conventional biodiesel, while maintaining derived cetane numbers between 82-91, values which are 20–30 units higher than conventional biodiesel and 40–50 units higher than petroleum-derived diesel fuel. The short combustion delays of the dioxolane fuels make them compelling blendstocks to enhance the combustion efficiency of petroleum-derived diesel fuel by increasing the cetane number and oxygen content of the blends. In addition, careful selection of the renewable diol allows for custom tailoring of viscosity and freezing point. Unlike conventional biodiesel which is often generated from plant or animal derived triglycerides, 2-tridecanone and other methyl ketones, along with the diols, can be efficiently generated from biomass sugars or CO2/H2 via fermentation with metabolically engineered microorganisms. This biosynthetic approach may allow for the generation of these fuels on industrially relevant scales while eliminating competition with food sources and promoting responsible use of land resources.


Vidal Sassoon's extraordinary life has taken him from an impoverished East End childhood to global fame. The father of modern hairdressing, his slick sharp cutting took the fashion world by storm and reinvented the hairdressers' art. Before Vidal Sassoon, a trip to the hairdressers meant a shampoo and set or a stiffly lacquered up-do that would last a week -- or more. After Vidal Sassoon, hair was sleek, smooth and very, very stylish. Along with his lifelong friend and partner in style, Mary Quant, who he first met in 1957 and who to this day sports a Sassoon-style geometric bob, he styled the 1960s. As memorable as the mini -- be it car or skirt -- he is one of the few people who can genuinely be described as iconic. His memoirs are as rich in anecdote as one might hope and full of surprising and often moving stories of his early life -- his time at the Spanish & Portuguese Jewish Orphanage in Maida Vale, fighting Fascists in London's East End and fighting in the army of the fledgling state of Israel in the late Forties. And then there's the extraordinary career, during which he cut the hair of everyone who was anyone, launched salons all over the world, founded the hairdressing school that still bears his name and became a global brand, with Vidal Sassoon products on all our bathroom shelves.


textabstractLet $X$ be a L\'evy process with regularly varying L\'evy measure $\nu$. We
obtain sample-path large deviations of scaled processes $\bar X_n(t) \triangleq
X(nt)/n$ and obtain a similar result for random walks. Our results yield
detailed asymptotic estimates in scenarios where multiple big jumps in the
increment are required to make a rare event happen. In addition, we investigate
connections with the classical large-deviations framework. In that setting, we
show that a weak large deviations principle (with logarithmic speed) holds, but
a full large-deviations principle does not hold.


This paper presents an algorithm for inferring a Structured Hidden Markov Model (S-HMM) from a set of sequences. The S-HMMs are a subclass of the Hierarchical Hidden Markov Models and are well suited to problems of process/user profiling. The learning algorithm is unsupervised, and follows a mixed bottom-up/top-down strategy, in which elementary facts in the sequences (motifs) are progressively grouped, thus building up the abstraction hierarchy of a S-HMM, layer after layer. The algorithm is validated on a suite of artificial datasets, where the challenge for the learning algorithm is to reconstruct the model that generated the data. Then, an application to a real problem of molecular biology is briefly described.


Priestly functionaries occupy a paramount position in the study of the Hebrew Bible. Despite more than a century of critical research, questions still abound regarding social location and definitions of the various priestly groups, the depictions of their origins, their ritual functions, the role of the laity and family religion, the relationship between prophecy and the priesthood, and the dating of texts. Making use of cross-disciplinary approaches, this volume provides a representative look at the state of current research into various aspects of priesthood in ancient Israel.


This PhD thesis is concerned with the social psychology of cooperative learning and its effects in cognitive and social-emotional domains. It comprises two main studies and two exploratory studies undertaken during two 10-day, 16-hour learning intervention programmes for Maths Word Problem-Solving (MWPS), respectively for 285 and 451 Grade-5 students in Singapore.

Study 1 used a quasi-experimental design to investigate the outcomes of task-structures in an Individual Learning condition and three dyadic Cooperative Learning conditions that varied in the key elements: positive interdependence, individual accountability and group goals. The results indicated that a Cooperative Learning condition with a high level of positive interdependence in combination with a low level of individual accountability resulted in significantly lower MWPS academic achievement and peer-self-concept outcomes than the other conditions; whereas the other Cooperative conditions with lower levels of positive interdependence did not differ significantly from the Individual Learning condition in MWPS academic outcomes but produced better peer-self-concept outcomes. The discussion theorises how task-structured positive interdependence in cooperative conditions can potentially be so rigid that it limits individual control in overcoming a dyadic partner's error. In turn, this increases the likelihood that members of dyads would 'sink together' (rather than 'swim together') - which appears to produce relatively worse MWPS academic outcomes as well as being detrimental to peer-self-concept outcomes. Therefore, optimal cooperative learning conditions for mathematics should allow interaction amongst student partners but not preclude individual control over any stage of the learning task.

Study 2 comprised three interrelated investigations of the effects of rewarding learning behaviours and the effects of ability-structures on Individual, Equals (homogeneous) and Mixed (heterogeneous) dyads. All children were eligible to be rewarded for their own MWPS academic mastery achievements, but comparison groups in each of the ability-structures were either eligible or not eligible to be rewarded for displaying target learning behaviours (LB-Rewards or No-LB-Rewards). The academic programme was based on Polya's problem-solving strategies of understanding the problem, devising a plan, carrying out the plan, and checking the results. Children in all learning conditions were instructed to use these problem-solving strategies and, according to their differently assigned learning conditions, to use learning behaviours (LB-s) either 'for helping oneself' in Individual conditions or 'helping one's partner' in Equals and Mixed conditions. In 'LB-Rewards' conditions, teachers rewarded the children's displays of the assigned behaviours for learning alone or learning together, whereas in 'LB-No-Rewards' conditions they did not.

The investigation in Study 2a encompassed the same dependent variables as Study 1. The results indicated that for maths (MWPS), Learning Behaviour rewards were detrimental to Individual Learning conditions with significantly lower MWPS gains when the rewards were used compared to when they were not, whereas the opposite pattern was found for Equals where the effects of Learning Behaviour significantly enhanced MWPS outcomes. For peer-self-concept, effects varied across the Cooperative conditions' Learning Behaviour rewards conditions. An exploratory analysis of High-, Low- and Medium-ability revealed patterns of the inter-relationships between ability-structures and effects of rewarding.

Study 2b is exploratory and involved traversing the traditional theoretical dichotomy of individual vs social learning, to develop a measure combining them both in 'self-efficacy for learning maths together and learning maths alone'. The effects of the various experimental conditions on factors in this measure were explored, allowing detailed insight into the complex, multi-dimensional and dynamic inter-relationships amongst all the variables. The findings have been developed into a theory of Incentive-values-Exchange in Individual- and Cooperative-learning, arguing that there are four main cooperative learning dimensions - 'individual cognitive endeavour', 'companionate positive influence', 'individualistic attitudes development' and 'social-emotional endeavour'. The argument is that students' motivation to learn cooperatively is the product of perceived equalization of reward-outcomes in relation to each dyadic member's contributions to learning-goals on these dimensions. Hence, motivation varies across ability-structures and reward-structures in a complex manner. A further proposition of the theory is that social-emotional tendencies and biases form a dynamic system that tends to maintain dyadic partners' achievement levels relative to their ability-positioning.

Study 2c is exploratory and extends Study 2b by illustrating its Incentive-values-Exchange theory. Samples of children's written descriptive reflections of their experiences in cooperative dyads are provided to illustrate the point made about the children's relationships and effects on each other for each of the factors on the individual- and cooperative-learning scales. As such, this section of the thesis offers a parsimonious explanation of cooperative learning and the effects of various learning conditions on the integrated cognitive, social and emotional domains.

Practical implications in light of the study's findings of optimal conditions include the possibility of practitioners more closely tailoring cooperative learning conditions to meet the academic or social-emotional needs of learners at specific ability levels. Future directions for research include testing some of the learning dimensions and proposed theoretical configurations for them using controls identified by the statistical analyses together with qualitative observations, and further developing new methodologies for investigating the social-psychological causes and consequences of learning motivation.


The 17th Conference on Database Systems for Business, Technology, and Web (BTW2017) of the German Informatics Society (GI) took place in March 2017 at the University of Stuttgart in Germany. A Data Science Challenge was organized for the first time at a BTW conference by the University of Stuttgart and Sponsor IBM. We challenged the participants to solve a data analysis task within one month and present their results at the BTW. In this article, we give an overview of the organizational process surrounding the Challenge, and introduce the task that the participants had to solve. In the subsequent sections, the final four competitor groups describe their approaches and results.


This study reviewed outdoor play articles published in Korea during past 10 years. The purposes were
to determine the main themes of outdoor play articles and the research methods used in the studies.
To summarize the main findings: (1) seven research themes were identified, with 'outdoor play
environment' and 'children's outdoor play behaviors' being the major research topics. (2) With regard
to research method, approximately two-thirds of studies employed a quantitative methodology, with
survey being the most frequent. However, when exploring the theme of 'outdoor play experience,' all
studies used qualitative research methods such as participant observation, interview, or archival data
collection.


A simple fiber-optic probe suitable for remote analysis with the use of resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization has been developed and demonstrated by measuring vapor-phase toluene and gasoline above aqueous solutions. An optical fiber transmits a high-power laser pulse (266 nm or 532 nm) to the sample, ionizing it, and the subsequent ions are collected with a platinum electrode mounted at the fiber tip. Measurements take approximately 100 s to perform, require no sample preparation, and have been demonstrated over a distance of five meters. The limit of detection for toluene in water with the use of this probe is 1.47 ± 0.02 ppb (wt/wt). In addition to two-photon excitation at 266 nm, the feasibility of a 2+2 excitation scheme using 532 nm has also been shown.


Abstract Detrital garnet compositions can be used to help determine the provenance of sedimentary rocks. In this study a garnet compositional database consisting of more than 2500 wet chemical and electron microprobe analyses was compiled from the literature. For the garnets in the database the six principal garnet end-member compositions (pyrope, almandine, spessartine, uvarovite, grossular and andradite) were calculated. A multi-stage methodology was devised to match garnet compositions to source rocks, and a series of garnet provenance fields on ternary plots were identified. The method was tested using compositional data from detrital garnet studies in several areas where provenance has already been identified, with good results. The methodology was then used to assess the provenance of detrital garnets from Neogene sandstones of northern Sabah, Borneo for which provenance is unknown and in a region where there are few garnet analyses for comparison. Comparison of garnet compositions from possible sources on Palawan, Philippines and in Borneo combined with the ternary plots excludes some known garnet-bearing rocks as potential sources and suggests derivation of metamorphic and igneous garnets from Palawan during the Early Miocene. Supplementary material: The compositional database and garnet data plotting spreadsheets are available at www.geolsoc.org.uk/SUP18649.


The journey from coercion to persuasion to drive tax compliance started gradually for the Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA). This is shown in the mission and core value statements that underpin the tax administration's activities in service delivery and trade facilitation. Recently the RRA has undertaken aggressive tax education and sensitisation campaigns in order to influence taxpayer behaviour towards more voluntary compliance, having limited resources to undertake enforcement. In the absence of any significant impact evaluation, however, it is hard to determine the effect of these endeavours on the intended outcome of voluntary compliance. The tax administration had the opportunity to review the effectiveness of its communication strategy through a tax compliance experiment, which involved delivering various messages using different means and evaluating taxpayer behaviour. Although many taxpayers reacted positively to these messages, particularly through upward revisions to their tax returns, there were a significant number whose reactions were not captured – necessitating a further study to investigate why these taxpayers had not reacted in any way. This paper reveals some interesting findings from this study, including the need to remind taxpayers more frequently, and to provide additional information on top of reminders. The paper also shows that taxpayers prefer to receive information on usage of public funds instead of threatening messages (deterrent), which is consistent with the findings of the tax compliance experiment.


Systems that measure service quality in disability organizations commonly review service delivery processes, rather than quality of life outcomes for service users. Disadvantages of measuring processes rather than outcomes are that funders and regulators may failto identify poor quality support until major crises occur. One solution has been the development of quality systems that combine measuring processes and the personal outcomes of service users, though the efficacy of such systems has not been explored. The aim of this article was to identify quality systems that combine measurement of processes and personal outcomes, and explore the advantages and limitations of these to inform future development of quality assurance systems. The study used an internationallyaccepted eight domain quality of life framework and a qualitative content analysis to map and evaluate the characteristics of three combined quality systems currently used in the disability sector; the Care Quality Commission framework for community adult social care services, the adult social care outcomes framework and personal outcome measures. The three systems were unbalanced,focusing more on procedure than personal outcomes. None of the systems measured personal outcomes comprehensively against all eight quality of life domains and the rigor applied to such measurement varied markedly. Combined systems have potential to compensate for limitations of systems that measure either processes or outcomes, but could be improved by a greater focus on measuring service user outcomes, including all quality of life domains and use of mixed methods such as interviews and observation of the support people receive.


Vehicular Ad-hoc network (VANET) has gained huge attraction from research community due to their significant nature of providing the autonomous vehicular communication. The efficient communication is considered as prime concern in these networks however, several techniques have been introduced to improve the overall communication of VANETs. Security and privacy are also considered as prime aspects of VANETs. Maintaining data security and privacy is highly dynamic VANETs is a challenging task. Several techniques have been introduced recently which are based on the cryptography and key exchange. However, these techniques provide solution to limited security threats. Hence, this work introduces a novel approach for key management and distribution in VANET to provide the security to the network and its components. This approach is later incorporated with cryptography mechanism to secure data packets. Hence, the proposed approach is named as Secure Group Key Management and Cryptography (SGKC). The experimental study shows significant improvements in the network performance. This SGKC approach will help the VANET user's fraternity to perform secured data transmission.


The relevance of applied economic and social analysis stands or falls with the strength of the analytical tools, on the one hand, and the appropriateness of the underlying data framework, on the other hand. Whereas virtually all economic and sociological research focuses on the analytical tools, this book deals with the design of an appropriate data framework. In many countries, it is not so much a lack of data per se that is the problem. Official statistics often comprise a wealth of information, laid down in many different publications. The main difficulty then relates to the lack of integration of these statistics, so that all kinds of events that are interrelated in reality can only be studied in isolation. Of course, the lack of integration of statistics applies less to economic data, as the national accounts function as a coordinating information system for these data. In fact, an important aim of this book is to demonstrate that the basic principles of national accounts can and should be extended to a wider range of statistics, notably social and environmental statistics. For this purpose, a so-called System of Economic and Social Accounting Matrices and Extensions (SESAME) is designed and applied in this book, following its announcement in the 1993 System of National Accounts, the guidelines of the United Nations and other international organizations.


The correct translation of verb tenses ensures that the temporal ordering of events in the source text is maintained in the target text. This paper assesses the utility of automatically labeling English Simple Past verbs with a binary discursive feature, narrative vs. non-narrative, for statistical machine translation (SMT) into French. The narrativity feature, which helps deciding which of the French past tenses is a correct translation of the English Simple Past, can be assigned with about 70% accuracy (F1). The narrativity feature improves SMT by about 0.2 BLEU points when a factored SMT system is trained and tested on automatically labeled English-French data. More importantly, manual evaluation shows that verb tense translation and verb choice are improved by respectively 9.7% and 3.4% (absolute), leading to an overall improvement of verb translation of 17% (relative).


Because of the prolific scholarship on legal theory by Judge Richard Posner, especially since his turn away from law and economics toward "pragmatism," legal scholars began reading "legal pragmatism" as references to Posner's thought alone. My present task is part of a larger process of rethinking Posner's version of legal pragmatism. Posner's inspiration for his turn toward pragmatism can be attributed, in large measure, to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Posner buys into three central insights of legal pragmatism, whose origins lie in the work of Holmes, anti-formalism, the prediction theory of the law, and a modicum of indeterminacy in judicial decision making. Further, Posner is a methodological pluralist, refusing to reduce the process of adjudication to any one method or approach, such as textual literalism or originalism. He takes the mask off of these judicial theories and claims that underneath each is a pragmatist. But Posner's central position, to which the present article is a propadeutic to a more substantial criticism, is that academic philosophy and philosophical pragmatism in particular have no role to play in legal pragmatism as it manifests itself in the process of adjudication or in the process of legal scholarship. Since the legal theory Posner thinks useless is so infected by philosophy, legal theory, according to Posner is not relevant to the law either. If legal theory is not relevant to the law, legal institutions seem intellectually impoverished, ignoring the storehouse of wisdom in philosophy and depriving law of the intelligence necessary for social growth. Posner's polemical stance has not gone unnoticed in the world of jurisprudence and legal theory. But the result has been that legal scholars have now begun to associate legal pragmatism with Posner's seeming anti-theory. Thus, an important element in rethinking Posner's version of legal pragmatism is presenting a defense of Holmes as a philosophical pragmatist and a pragmatist in the tradition of his contemporary, Charles Sanders Peirce. Such is my present task. Holmes's scholarship resides at the intersection of philosophical and legal pragmatism, where Posner imagines that these roads run parallel to each other and therefore do not intersect.The central position I advance here is that Holmes's historical legal scholarship and several of his judicial arguments evince the pragmatic sensibility of C.S. Peirce. Holmes puts to work several elements of Peirce's pragmatism: (1) that we must infer knowledge internal to the mind by external signs; (2) that the best method to fix our beliefs and settle our doubts relies on a communal inquiry as opposed to authoritarian dictates; (3) that the meaning of a concept, such as law, is found in the effects of its enactment; (4) that falliblism, liberalism, and skepticism of absolute truth are the proper norms to deter dogmatism and authoritarianism; (5) that the reality of values and ideals are found in their functional effects; and (6) that the norms, principles, standards, and rules, which guide the process of judicial inquiry, are generated by the facts of the case, as opposed to being a priori principles (versus natural law theory) and as opposed to lacking any reality at all, (versus nominalism). Peirce offered us the idea that to understand the meaning of a concept, we must look to its practical effects. I offer the idea that if we want to know the meaning of pragmatism itself, we should look to its practical effects in the scholarship and judicial decisions of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.


We describe a new terrestrial genus of the family Gymnophthalmidae, subfamily Cercosaurinae, from central Peru on the basis of genetic and morphological characters. The monotypic Wilsonosaura gen. n. can be distinguished morphologically from all other genera of Cercosaurinae except of Proctoporus by having lower palpebral disc semi-transparent and undivided, dorsal scales weakly keeled to smooth, lateral scales distinctly smaller than dorsal scales, lateral scales forming a distinct longitudinal line of smaller scales, and absence of distinctly enlarged gulars. Wilsonosaura gen. n. can be distinguished from most species of Proctoporus by following characters: frequent occurrence of prefrontal shields, presence of weakly keeled to nearly smooth dorsal scales, by having a continuous line of lateral scales at the middle of flanks occasionally widened vertically by additional lateral scales interspacing the dorsals. Nevertheless, an unambiguous morphological character distinguishing the new genus from Proctoporus has not been identified. Phenotypic synapomorphies are not known for the new genus. In previously published phylogenies, Wilsonosaura gen. n. was identified as a distinct clade separated from all other cercosaurines. Wilsonosaura gen. n. is distributed in the regions of Junín, Pasco, and Huancavelica in upper montane forests and puna habitats from 2400 to 3726 m a.s.l. of the eastern Andes. We transfer Euspondylus josyi Köhler, 2003 as designated type species to Wilsonosaura gen. n. as Wilsonosaura josyi (Köhler, 2003) comb. n. and update the species diagnosis, description, and distribution.


Cyberlaw scholars have suggested that the outcome of many cyberlaw disputes depends significantly, if not entirely, on a judge's perspective of the Internet and how it works. Much of the debate among scholars focuses on figuring out which is the right perspective and which is the wrong perspective. There are two dominant perspectives of the Internet: an external perspective and an internal perspective. From the external perspective, one perceives the Internet in terms of its technical real-space operations - the Internet is a global meta-network that serves as an open platform for the transmission of information among end-users that connect computers to the network. From the internal perspective, one perceives the Internet in terms of the applications it enables and the ways in which those applications affect end-users; the technical operation of the network infrastructure may be largely irrelevant in terms of one's experience. This internal perspective leads to the conception of cyberspace as virtual reality. In "The Problem of Perspective in Internet Law", Orin Kerr demonstrates the pervasiveness of these perspectives and observes "[b]oth internal and external perspectives can appear perfectly viable depending on the circumstances, and courts and commentators switch between them frequently without even recognizing the change." Kerr argues "we need to be aware of the problem of perspective and develop tools that can help us choose between real and virtual understandings of the Internet when we apply law to it." While I agree with Kerr that "we need to be aware of the problem of perspective," I do not believe that a choice should be made (by courts, legislators, academics, or anyone else) between an external perspective focused on the technical operations of the Internet and an internal perspective focused on end-users' experiences. The perceived need to choose among perspectives is itself problematic. In this article, I contend that both perspectives are descriptively valid and real, and both perspectives yield important insights about the facts of the Internet and the interests at stake in a legal decision. Choosing either perspective may lead to a partial view of the underlying facts in a given dispute (essentially, tunnel vision), which may effectively determine the outcome of a legal decision and bypass the difficult legal (normative) analysis that courts, legislators, and academics should undertake. Choosing a perspective subtly substitutes fact-finding for legal analysis and thereby masks policy decisions in the rhetoric of metaphor and factual analogy. Recognizing that both perspectives provide valid and accurate renditions of the underlying facts will allow courts (and scholars) to better examine the sets of interests at stake in a given dispute and engage in a principled application of relevant legal doctrines designed to address such interests. Cyberlaw disputes tend to involve the following types of interests: (1) physical, tangible assets like computer network facilities, routers, and servers; (2) intangible information assets ranging from copyright-protected expression to public domain data; and (3) relational assets like goodwill, trust, and community values - in other words, assets based on relationships among people. Legal doctrines tend to focus on a particular set of interests. (For example, property law focuses on physical, tangible assets.) Courts applying traditional legal doctrine or developing new doctrine in cyberlaw cases should appreciate the connections (or links) between the three types of interests made possible via the Internet. Courts should be open to the prospect of reconsidering (and perhaps recalibrating) the balancing of interests struck by existing law, and also should consider the complex intersections among different areas of the law. It is well understood that law develops to protect and balance particular sets of interests in a given factual context, and that evolving technology can change the factual context and thereby disrupt previously-struck balances, e.g., consider copyright law in the digital age. However, it may be less understood that a change in factual context may bring into relief complex intersections between traditionally independent areas of the law. When evaluating and applying law and creating new law, courts must understand and fully appreciate the significance of changes in factual context. Recognizing the validity and utility of both the external and internal perspectives may engender such an appreciation; whereas choosing one perspective over the other may simply lead to tunnel vision.


In recent years, the mobile phone has become a ubiquitous communication channel. The global adoption of the device and its technology by users has increased exponentially. The rise in the number of mobile phone subscribers globally is well documented and this can be attributed to the mobile phone's unique features, such as its portability, mobility and convenience. Marketers have recognised the emerging value of the mobile phone as a new channel of marketing and have an increasing interest in employing mobile marketing as one of their strategies. Whilst marketers should be lauded for embracing the new technology, there are concerns as to the manner and form which mobile marketing takes. To the consumer, unknown commercial text messages are seen as nothing more than unsolicited commercial messages (spam). Spam is the subject of regulation in a number of jurisdictions. The aim of this paper is to firstly examine what spam is and its implications. Secondly, the paper briefly considers some of the promulgated legislations. Finally, the paper evaluates the factors that should be considered to enhance a consumer's experience in mobile marketing.


Summary.
How
do we ensure that public policy represents the interests of all, rather than a select few? How will we ensure it draws upon the best insights and talents of key stakeholders? The European Commission's DG CONNECT recently announced the results of its Stakeholder Engagement Survey, which is designed to 'provide empirical results and feedback about existing practices and signal gaps and challenges for action in the area of stakeholder engagement.' (Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Stakeholders Unit D4, 2013, p.4). The survey launched a new round of reflection on the Commission's relations with its stakeholders by asking respondents to reflect on the way in which they interact with DG CONNECT. The strategic objective is to see how ICTs can be used in novel ways to enhance support for policymaking from stakeholders in the EU. The Stakeholder Engagement Survey makes a start at answering critical questions about use of ICT as a tool to build 'smarter policy' as part of DG CONNECT's wider step toward defining a strategy for stakeholder engagement. This IES Policy Brief welcomes this current work-in-progress, and outlines some of the challenges that may await the European Commission as it seeks to exploit the full potential of ICT in stakeholder engagement. It provides an initial analysis of the results of this first Stakeholder Engagement Survey, and concludes that whilst many things have changed with regards to tools that policymakers can use to elicit input into policymaking, certain challenges have remained very much the same.


Optical data are reported on a spectral weight transfer over a broad frequency range of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ, when this material became superconducting. Using spectroscopic ellipsometry, we observed the removal of a small amount of spectral weight in a broad frequency band from 104 cm−1 to at least 2 × 104 cm−1, due to the onset of superconductivity. We observed a blue shift of the ab-plane plasma frequency when the material became superconducting, indicating that the spectral weight was transferred to the infrared range. Our observations are in agreement with models in which superconductivity is accompanied by an increased charge carrier spectral weight. The measured spectral weight transfer is large enough to account for the condensation energy in these compounds.


The emergence of cloud computing infrastructures brings new ways to build and manage computing systems, with the flexibility offered by virtualization technologies. In this context, this PhD thesis focuses on two principal objectives. First, leveraging virtualization and cloud computing infrastructures to build distributed large scale computing platforms from multiple cloud providers, allowing to run software requiring large amounts of computation power. Second, developing mechanisms to make these infrastructures more dynamic. These mechanisms, providing inter-cloud live migration, offer new ways to exploit the inherent dynamic nature of distributed clouds.


IMPORTANCE
Sensory overresponsivity (SOR) in adults is frequently overlooked and misdiagnosed. In some cases, the sensory symptoms are attributed to psychopathology or negative emotionality. Developing sound tools for examining various dimensions of sensory overresponsivity in adults, particularly sensitivity versus habituation, can more precisely guide scientific and intervention efforts.

OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the psychometric properties, content validity, internal reliability, and construct validity of the new Sensory Habituation Questionnaire.

DESIGN
A Classical Test Theory approach and a multitrait-multimethod matrix was used to evaluate the questionnaire's psychometric properties.

PARTICIPANTS
A nonclinical sample of 160 adults ages 18-65 yr (mean = 31.85, standard deviation = 10.72); 56.87% were female.

MEASURES
Participants completed the Sensory Habituation Questionnaire, Sensory Perception Quotient, Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile, and the Brief Symptom Inventory.

RESULTS
The Sensory Habituation Questionnaire had high internal reliability (α = .88) and was significantly correlated with other standardized SOR questionnaires (rs = .57-.61). In contrast to the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile overresponsivity score, the perceptually oriented measures (the Sensory Perception Quotient and the Sensory Habituation Questionnaire) were not associated with the Brief Symptom Inventory.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
The Sensory Habituation Questionnaire is a tool that can evaluate the ability to ignore daily sensations independent of psychopathology symptoms. It can guide practitioners and researchers in breaking down the dimensions of SOR.

WHAT THIS ARTICLE ADDS
This article introduces a questionnaire for evaluating the rate of sensory habituation in adults, a dimension of SOR that greatly affects daily functioning. The questionnaire is also advantageous in identifying sensory difficulties that differ from psychopathological symptoms. Habituation is a crucial factor to consider in intervention, because it calls for work on the capacity to adjust to bothersome sensations.


The Dido Batholith is a large north- to northeasterly-trending batholith, ~90 km long and up to 30 km
wide, located along the southeastern margin of the Precambrian Georgetown Region (Greenvale
Province), northern Queensland, Australia. It overlaps the contact between the Georgetown Region
Precambrian rocks and the Early Palaeozoic volcano-sedimentary units of the northern end of the
Tasman Fold Belt System. Hornblende-biotite tonalites and granodiorites are the dominant lithologies
comprising this batholith, although an intermediate phase comprising hornblende-biotite diorites and
gabbronorites dominates the southeastern quarter. Four elongate, km-scale, and several smaller mafic to
ultramafic bodies (UMB) are hosted within this intermediate phase. All UMB are crosscut by abundant,
texturally variable felsic to mafic dykes. New U-Pb zircon dates indicate that the diorite-gabbronorite
phase crystallised at ~470 Ma, whereas the tonalite-granodiorite phase (named the Main Felsic Mass:
MFM), UMB and associated mafic dykes crystallised at ~430 Ma. These new dates have led to the
informal renaming of the older dioritic-gabbronorite phase as the Phantom Diorite, whereas the 430 Ma
phases remain a part of the Dido Suite.
The km-scale UMB, which form the focus of this study, are layered cumulate sequences which
represent open-system intrusions emplaced at shallow- to mid-crustal levels (15 – 25 km). They are
divided into two petrographically and geochemically distinct varieties: (1) the low-Fe UMB (3
intrusions), comprising dunites, wehrlites, troctolites and olivine gabbro which contain variable amounts
of olivine (Fo85 – 72), clinopyroxene (Mg# 0.87 – 0.73), plagioclase (An92-72) and chromites; and (2) the
high-Fe UMB (1 intrusion), comprising dunites, wehrlites and pyroxenites which lack chromites and
contain abundant, early crystallising Fe-Ti oxides and hornblende and less primitive olivines (Fo78-72)
and pyroxenes (Mg# 0.87 – 0.73) than the low-Fe UMB. The high-Fe UMB displays moderate
87Sr/86Sr(430) (0.705932 – 0.706231) and negative eNd(430) (-3.1 to -4.0), whereas the low-Fe UMB
displays lower 87Sr/86Sr(430) (0.703836 – 0.705318) and more positive eNd(430) (-0.9 to +3.7) values.
Using the composition of cumulus minerals and mafic dykes, it is estimated that the parent magmas of
the low-Fe UMB contained 8 – 10 wt.% of both MgO and FeOt , whereas the high-Fe UMB parent
magmas were more evolved, having higher FeOt (12 – 16 wt.%) and lower MgO (6.2 – 8.2 wt.%), Ni
and Cr contents. The primary magmas of both the high- and low-Fe UMB are interpreted as mantlederived
arc rift or back-arc tholeiites. Crustal contamination during ascent is suggested to be responsible
for the LREE-enriched and Nb- and Ti-depleted nature of the UMB parent magmas. Two-component
isotope mixing models suggest that the addition of variable amounts (<5% in the low-Fe UMB and 9-
10% in the high-Fe UMB) of 2000 – 2500 Ma igneous crustal contaminant to tholeiitic melts derived
from a slightly enriched mantle source can account for isotopic compositions of the UMB. Although
both the high-Fe and low-Fe UMB are interpreted as initially evolving along the tholeiitic liquid line of
descent (LLD), the ultimate differentiation trend recorded by the high-Fe UMB is more akin to calcalkaline
fractionation, leading to tonalitic compositions. The higher volumes and relatively late addition of crustal contaminants to the high-Fe UMB magmas (i.e. after they had experienced strong Feenrichment)
is suggested to have resulted in this apparent shift in LLD.
The 430 Ma Dido MFM is a medium-K calc-alkaline intrusion, with relatively low 87Sr/86Sr(430)
(0.706746), negative eNd(430) (-4.8) and a TDM age of ~1390 Ma. It shows fractionated REE profiles
([La/Yb]CN = 9.0 – 10.3) and contains magmatic zircons with negative eHf(430) values (-0.9 to -5.9). The
MFM is interpreted to have originated from a fractionated, mantle-derived melt which assimilated
~12% of 2000 - 2500 Ma igneous protocrust during ascent.
It is difficult to establish the exact relationship between the different phases of the Dido Suite although
it is thought likely that most of the differences in magmatic trends between the individual phases are
attributable to the physical conditions of magmatic evolution in the crust, rather than differences in
initial magma types as: (a) isotopic differences between the individual UMB and MFM can be
explained by variations in the amount of crustal contaminants assimilated into a common, mantlederived
magma, and the timing of this assimilation; (b) fractionation of cumulates similar to those
comprising the low-Fe UMB likely drove the residual tholeiitic magma to become more enriched in Fe
and H2O; and (3) later crustal contamination of such an evolved, Fe-enriched magma, and fractionation
of Fe-Ti oxide-rich cumulates to produce the high-Fe UMB, may have generated a calc-alkaline LLD,
eventually producing magmas with MFM-like compositions and isotopic signatures akin to the high-Fe
UMB. As the latter process would require large volumes of mafic magmas and produce large cumulate
sequences not seen at the current exposure level, these processes are required to have occurred at deeper
crustal levels.
The 470 Ma Phantom Diorite is a medium-K calc-alkaline intrusion. It is geochemically similar to the
Dido high-Fe UMB, displaying relatively low 87Sr/86Sr(470) (0.705775 to 0.706100), negative eNd(430) (-
3.0 to -4.3) and TDM ages of 1333 – 1461 Ma, with fractionated REE profiles ([La/Yb]CN = 6.1 – 10.4)
and containing magmatic zircons with negative eHf(470) values (-1.64 and -8.69). These similarities
suggest that (1) the Phantom Diorite and Dido Suite originated from the mixing of geochemically
similar mantle-derived and crustal components and (2) that there was little change in the tectonic
setting, and composition of the lithosphere beneath the Greenvale Province between the MidOrdovician
(470 Ma) and Silurian (430 Ma). The striking geochemical similarities between the Dido
high-Fe UMB and Phantom Diorite suggest both underwent a similar degree of crustal contamination
(~8 – 12%).
Geochemistry and mineral compositions suggest that the 470 Ma Phantom Diorite and 430 Ma Dido
Suite originated in an arc-backarc setting. Furthermore, although no Proterozoic rocks outcrop east of
the Dido Batholith (the approximate position of the Tasman Line), the identified involvement of
Proterozoic crustal contaminants in the genesis of the Dido Suite supports the ascent of these magmas
through the Georgetown Region Precambrian crust of the North Australian craton. This, in turn,
indicates genesis in a continental margin (Andean- or Mexican-type) arc setting, probably in an arc that was actively rifting, given the tholeiitic nature of the primary magmas of the Dido UMB (and possibly
the Dido MFM and Phantom Diorite). This finding largely supports the presence of a west-dipping
subduction zone beneath the Greenvale Province during the Ordovician and Silurian.
As most of the large Ni-Cu-Platinum-group element (PGE) deposits worldwide have formed where
mantle-derived melts intersect or are focussed along large faults in continental rift zones or rifted
continental margins, Anglo American plc identified the southeast margin of the Georgetown Region,
and specifically the Dido UMB, as a target for magmatic Ni-Cu-PGE deposits. No mineralisation has
been found associated with the UMB. Rocks comprising the low-Fe UMB contain <1000 ppm Cu and
<40 ppb of both Pt and Pd, whereas the high-Fe UMB rocks have similar Cu concentrations to the
former but are generally more PGE-enriched (containing up to 160 ppb of both Pt and Pd). Geochemical
discriminators suggest that the magmas that formed the km-scale UMB were chalcophile elementdepleted,
having undergone a previous S-saturation event (i.e. significant sulphide-deposition) at depth.
Furthermore, based on their lower Cu/Zr ratios and highly Ni-depleted composition, the high-Fe
magmas are interpreted to have experienced greater chalcophile metal loss than the low-Fe magmas.
The PGE-enrichment in the high-Fe cumulates is therefore explained by the addition of PGE to the
high-Fe magmas from an external source. Many economic Ni-Cu-PGE intrusions are interpreted as
being formed from (a) the addition of batches of PGE-enriched magmas to resident, chalcophile
element-depleted magmas (e.g. the Maracas deposit); or (b) scavenged PGE-rich sulphides which were
carried to accessible crustal levels by later injections of magma (e.g. the Platreef). Either of these
mechanisms could potentially account for the minor PGE-enrichment in the high-Fe UMB.
Although there is no evidence to suggest that large volumes of PGE-enriched sulphides were added to
the Dido UMB magmas, considering the minimal exploration completed to date and the new PGE data
suggesting the likely presence of significant volumes of PGE-rich sulphides at depth in this magmatic
system, the UMB cannot be ruled out as potential targets for Ni-Cu-PGE deposits. Furthermore,
although convergent settings rarely host economic Ni-Cu-PGE mineralisation, important exceptions
such as the Aguablanca deposit (Spain), indicate that feeders or conduits to intrusions emplaced in local
extensional regimes within subduction-related environments can generate important Ni-Cu sulphide
deposits. Small mafic intrusions in convergent margin settings, particularly where local extension
regimes are evident, should therefore not be overlooked in exploration for new Ni-Cu sulphide deposits
and the remaining unexplored Dido UMB, including the high-Fe varieties and any other
contemporaneous mafic-ultramafic intrusions in the surrounding area, should be evaluated on a case by
case basis.


The 28 essays reprinted here are arranged in four sections that offer theoretical, historical, educational, and community perspectives on the whole topic of literacy. In addition to their substantial introduction, the editors provide an exhaustive bibliography based on the citations to the essays.Kintgen, Kroll, and Rose see literacy as an extremely complex area of inquiry in which all aspects are interrelated, and they hope to avoid creating or perpetuating false boundaries within the field.The book s first section contains articles dealing with various psychological and economic consequences of literacy. The second provides an introduction to the development of literacy in different eras of the West, from its inception among the Greeks to the teaching of it in North America during the past century. The third section treats the teaching of literacy in educational institutions, primarily at the secondary and post-secondary levels. The final section discusses literacy outside the traditional classroom: the development of literacy among children and adults, the functions and uses of literacy in the workplace and elsewhere, and the identity and problems of those who have not mastered literacy skills."


First we reviewed studies examining the role of climate on physical activity (PA) behavior. This highlights the limited knowledge and guidelines currently exist on the moderating influence of a tropical or hot climate on the PA behaviors of individuals.
Secondly, we examined the role climate on PA in children and clinically obese individuals. Contrary to previous findings from Caucasian young children, our data on habitual PA levels in Hong Kong primary school-aged children seem to suggest no seasonal variations. From the Chinese medicinal perspective, "sweating" was considered as a sign of good health as expressed by the Hong Kong young children we recently interviewed. Therefore, Hong Kong children and parents may regard PA in the heat as beneficial to health. Alternatively, the increasing physiological evidence indicates that young children"s thermoregulatory ability during exercise in the heat is not necessarily inferior to that of adults, thus biologically, children"s habitual PA may not be prone to climatic changes in the tropics as commonly believed. Given the possible subjective climatic constraints, Hong Kong young children appear to favor indoor sporting options like swimming and activities that are likely to generate "breeziness".


Happiness here is investigated by means of 12 young people from Serbia and Norway. The main instrument was interview with a short questionnaire. Happiness is in line with other studies found to be a complex human quality with a variety of meanings and numerous influences. These meanings can be divided into actual happiness (predominant positive feelings and satisfaction of life), ideal happiness (complete and lasting one), good fortune or luck, the pursuit of happiness, creation of happiness and meanings of happiness within the terms of Aristotle"s Eudaimonia (leading a virtuous life). The influences on happiness can be broadly divided into three groups. Important external influences are state policy and living conditions, work, money, free time and mass media influences and standards of physical beauty. Interpersonal influences are relationships, whereas important intrapersonal influences on happiness seem to be personality factors, cognitive factors and personal goals. Differences between two countries are emphasized regarding the satisfaction with state policy and living conditions. Cultural effects are taken into consideration when making comparisons between the two countries. Regarding the stability in happiness, we found that happiness rather goes up and down depending on what happens in one"s life. Regarding the effects of happiness, it seems that being happy brings numerous positive effects. We concluded that happiness can be changed (despite our relative control and responsibility) and that it is a desirable goal. When our results are confronted to the major theories of happiness, we argue that none of them (set-point theory, cognitive and affective) can by themselves explain all the variance in happiness. Critical questions were addressed to every theory of happiness. The important challenge for further research is to uncover how internal factors and events and circumstances interact (Diener, 1984). Very important is also to identify universal and cultural specific factors of happiness and to uncover how universal causes might be channelled by culture (Diener, Oishi & Lucas, 2003). One general future perspective is the methodological and theoretical sophistication. In this area there seems to be many self-help books and as the scientific studies of happiness are pretty new (they started in 1960), there is a great need for explicit scientific research. Even more so, as happiness is the bottom line of all desire, (Csikszentmihalyi, 1999) the supreme good where all the rest is means to attain it (Aristotle in Myers, 1992).


Anthracnose is a serious disease that affects several grape cultivars. Infected leaves drop prematurely, and severe epidemics result in poor or no yield. Because the factors associated with grape defoliation in vineyards with a history of anthracnose were not well known, this study was undertaken to investigate the relationship between weather-, disease-, and host-related factors and survival of leaves. From 2006 to 2008, weather, anthracnose severity, and leaf emergence were monitored in an unsprayed experimental vineyard naturally infested with Elsinoë ampelina. Each year, two to three times weekly, the number of leaves and the proportion of leaf area diseased (PLAD) were monitored on 10 vines and 2 shoots per vine, for a total of 785 leaves. Survival analysis was used to investigate the factors influencing defoliation and to model time-to-death of grape leaves. Estimated median survival time was 117 to 121 days. Based on Kaplan-Meier estimates of survival probabilities, season type, PLAD per leaf and PLAD per shoot at first assessment, duration and amount of rain at first infection, severity of infection and leaf age at first infection and at first severe infection significantly influenced leaf survival. Based on accelerated time failure modeling, using the Weibull distribution, the most significant variables were PLAD per leaf and PLAD per shoot at first assessment, leaf age at first infection, and duration of rain. Each additional percent increase in PLAD per leaf, in PLAD per shoot, or in rainy days accelerated the time-to-death of grape leaves by 2.84, 1.02, and 0.66%, respectively, whereas for each additional day of leaf age at time of first infection, there was a 2.88% deceleration of the time to death. Results suggested that to avoid premature leaf drop, disease severity should be maintained below 25% leaf area diseased, which can be achieved by sanitation measures designed to reduce inoculum levels and by applying fungicide early in the season to prevent infection of young leaves.


Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) serve a large and increasing portion of today's web content. Beyond caching, CDNs provide their customers with a variety of services, including protection against DDoS and targeted attacks. As the web shifts from HTTP to HTTPS, CDNs continue to provide such services by also assuming control of their customers' private keys, thereby breaking a fundamental security principle: private keys must only be known by their owner. We present the design and implementation of Phoenix, the first truly "keyless CDN". Phoenix uses secure enclaves (in particular Intel SGX) to host web content, store sensitive key material, apply web application firewalls, and more on otherwise untrusted machines. To support scalability and multitenancy, Phoenix is built around a new architectural primitive which we call conclaves: containers of enclaves. Conclaves make it straightforward to deploy multi-process, scalable, legacy applications. We also develop a filesystem to extend the enclave's security guarantees to untrusted storage. In its strongest configuration, Phoenix reduces the knowledge of the edge server to that of a traditional on-path HTTPS adversary. We evaluate the performance of Phoenix with a series of microand macro-benchmarks.


Title of dissertation: SELF-ORGANIZING MAP NEURAL ARCHITECTURES BASED ON LIMIT CYCLE ATTRACTORS Di-Wei Huang, Doctor of Philosophy, 2016 Dissertation directed by: Professor James A. Reggia Department of Computer Science Recent efforts to develop large-scale neural architectures have paid relatively little attention to the use of self-organizing maps (SOMs). Part of the reason is that most conventional SOMs use a static encoding representation: Each input is typically represented by the fixed activation of a single node in the map layer. This not only carries information in an inefficient and unreliable way that impedes building robust multi-SOM neural architectures, but it is also inconsistent with rhythmic oscillations in biological neural networks. Here I develop and study an alternative encoding scheme that instead uses limit cycle attractors of multi-focal activity patterns to represent input patterns/sequences. Such a fundamental change in representation raises several questions: Can this be done effectively and reliably? If so, will map formation still occur? What properties would limit cycle SOMs exhibit? Could multiple such SOMs interact effectively? Could robust architectures based on such SOMs be built for practical applications? The principal results of examining these questions are as follows. First, conditions are established for limit cycle attractors to emerge in a SOM through self-organization when encoding both static and temporal sequence inputs. It is found that under appropriate conditions a set of learned limit cycles are stable, unique, and preserve input relationships. In spite of the continually changing activity in a limit cycle SOM, map formation continues to occur reliably. Next, associations between limit cycles in different SOMs are learned. It is shown that limit cycles in one SOM can be successfully retrieved by another SOM's limit cycle activity. Control timings can be set quite arbitrarily during both training and activation. Importantly, the learned associations generalize to new inputs that have never been seen during training. Finally, a complete neural architecture based on multiple limit cycle SOMs is presented for robotic arm control. This architecture combines open-loop and closed-loop methods to achieve high accuracy and fast movements through smooth trajectories. The architecture is robust in that disrupting or damaging the system in a variety of ways does not completely destroy the system. I conclude that limit cycle SOMs have great potentials for use in constructing robust neural architectures. SELF-ORGANIZING MAP NEURAL ARCHITECTURES BASED ON LIMIT CYCLE ATTRACTORS


In 2011 the authors created a model of self- and peer-assessment known as Authentic Self and Peer Assessment for Learning (ASPAL) in an attempt to better engage seemingly disengaged students in their undergraduate coursework. The model focuses on authentic assessment tasks and engages students by involving them in every step of the process from the creation of the criteria on which they will be marked, through to providing exemplars of work, pilot marking and providing peer feedback. This article examines the ASPAL process with regard to whether or not the students are better engaged in their studies as a result of taking part in this process. Although the results are not definitive, the present study shows that the majority of students who undertook the process found it beneficial and were open to try it again. This article seeks to open a discussion as to the capacity for a specific model of self- and peer-assessment to better engage students in their learning and discern the reasons why students found the model engaging so as to better inform future applications of the model and how it can be applied to a wider audience.


The workplace in the modern world continues to demand higher qualifications and refined competencies. In the recent past, workers would respond to such demands through learning by correspondence. When the Internet and e-Learning emerged, it received widespread accolade as a solution to the challenges experienced by distant learners. The technology was also seen as an opportunity for educational institutions to leverage their technological uptake to benefit regular students. However, desktop computers and Internet connectivity, which were the drivers of e-learning technologies, were expensive, bulky and scarce. So when mobile technologies emerged, educationist saw an opportunity for addressing the limitations associated with correspondence, "e" and tethered learning. Mobile devices being cheap, portable and reliable received widespread acceptance and possession. So, educators, hardware designers and program developers started to design hardware and applications that would infuse learning content into the devices. The purpose of this review is to demonstrate the potential of mobile technologies in the education market place, highlighting global initiatives and trends. The paper will also review how universities around the world, Africa and in Kenya have oriented themselves for learning with mobile technologies. The study was a documentary analysis of virtual documents stored electronically for access through the Internet, text books, archival repositories and encyclopedias. The study observed a significant high global mobile ownership and usage rates, but was able to demonstrate that despite its pedagogical advantages, the use of the technology for learning purposes at university level is still at the infantry. Keywords: Mobile, Technologies, Universities, adoption, ICT, eLearning


A total of 150 children with acute otitis media were randomly allocated to treatment with amoxicillin-potassium clavulanate (Augmentin) or with cefaclor. Each drug was given in a daily dosage of approximately 40 mg/kg in three divided doses for ten days. Tympanocentesis done before treatment yielded specimens that contained pneumococcus or Haemophilus sp or both in 67% of specimens. Viridans group streptococci were isolated from 10% of specimens and Branhamella catarrhalis from 6%. Patients were scheduled for follow-up examinations at midtreatment, end of therapy, and at 30, 60, and 90 days. Of the 150 children, 130 were evaluable. Five of 60 patients (8%) treated with cefaclor were considered therapeutic failures because of persistent purulent drainage and isolation of the original pathogen or suprainfection. There were no failures among patients treated with Augmentin (P = .019). Rates of relapse, recurrent acute otitis media with effusion, and persistent middle ear effusion were comparable in the two groups of patients. Diaper rash, or loose stools, or both were significantly more common in children treated with Augmentin (34%) than in those taking cefaclor (12%), but in no case was it necessary to discontinue medication because of these mild side effects (P = .002). Cefaclor therapy was discontinued in one patient because of severe abdominal pain and vomiting. In this study, treatment with Augmentin was superior to treatment with cefaclor in the acute phase of acute otitis media with effusion, but Augmentin produced more adverse effects. The rates of persistent middle ear effusion and recurrent acute otitis media with effusion were comparable with the two regimens.


As out-of-hospital emergencies become more commonplace, so does the call for a "doctor in the house". New York City paediatrician Mitchell Rubin has responded to numerous such crises over the past 25 years. He explores reactions on all sides of this peculiar physician–victim relationship, his growing concerns and fears, and possible reasons why many doctors hesitate to act. His thoughts and experiences instigate the discussion about the need for a universal system of Good Samaritan physician responders

While flying to Italy last spring, the pilot's voice came over the loudspeaker: "Is there a doctor on board"? How many times have I heard this request in the last 25 years? A passenger had fainted. As I began caring for her, the pilot asked me, "Should we take the plane down?". Surprised to be given this responsibility, I took my best guess and answered "no". After a stressful landing, while I gave oxygen to the prostrate woman, we were met by an ambulance on the tarmac. The woman was appreciative and gracious, the pilot scarcely offered thanks, and I began my vacation exhausted.

Having been trained as a paediatrician, I have responded to nearly two dozen "Good Samaritan" scenarios, where a person was injured or became critically sick in a public setting. Perhaps I have had more than my fair share, but I wonder if this is an important and mounting phenomenon. With America growing older and more and more people with serious, chronic illnesses remaining active in the community, we should not be surprised to see increasing numbers of out-of-hospital emergencies. And, as this becomes more commonplace, I become less and less certain of the role I—and other physicians like me—should have.

When I was young, cocky and fearless, the call to meet an emergency was exciting. Shortly after training, an …


This paper starts with the assumption that the EU will decide to open accession negotiations with Turkey at the end of 2004 and in this context it explores the potential for the integration of EU and Turkish foreign, security and defence policies in the pre-accession period. The evolving nature of both the EU and Turkey as foreign policy actors is considered, with attention drawn to the effective graduations in the nature of the EU's external borders as it extends its membership and association arrangements deeper into the south-eastern periphery. Turkish capabilities are reviewed, ranging from the subjective arguments about its experience as a democratising, secular state of largely Muslim culture, through to objective assets such as military capabilities and cultural affinities with various neighbouring peoples. With the Turkish neighbourhood thus becoming the EU's wider neighbourhood, the paper reviews how far the EU and Turkey may be convergent in their interests and complementary in their capabilities in such regions as the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East and Central Asia. The paper concludes with the assessment that Turkey stands to be an unequivocal asset for the EU's external policies.


Several studies conducted from an evolutionary perspective have documented differential investment in grandchildren by lineage. The majority of these studies have used retrospective ratings by grandchildren, but only a fraction of these studies have examined actual grandparental behavior. Here we focus on the interaction between distance and lineage on face-to-face contact with a (random) grandchild in a large scale sample. Our main prediction is that maternal grandparents are significantly more willing to travel in order to see their grandchild. While controlling for initiative of contact, urbanization, sex and age of the grandchild, educational attainment, marital status and age we found a significant interaction between distance and grandparent type on frequency of contact with a grandchild. Maternal grandmothers were significantly more inclined than paternal grandfathers and grandmothers to maintain frequent face-to-face contact, as distance between grandparent and grandchild increased. The results are discussed with reference to evolutionary theories of grandparental investment.


Recent studies have analyzed theoretical models of sport participation. They claimed that sports activities relate to health and happiness and that there are various factors which determine sports participation, be it individual, sociological or psychological. Whilst some countries in Europe experienced an increase in sport activity over the past few decades, others saw a decline in the number of individuals who commit to physical activity. Several models have been constructed to explain and determine involvement in sports namely, 'The Beckerian Approach', 'The SLOTH framework' and 'Green's Model of Sport Development'. These models have unearthed specific important factors, which encourage people to take part in sports activities. These concerned age, gender, time constraints, income and level of education.In fact, findings has shown a positive and statistically significant relationship between age and frequency of sport participation and as age increased walking increased as well. Education plays an important role as well especially where adolescents are concerned. School was a key contributor to adolescents increased participation in physical activity and more specifically as they transitioned into secondary school.A successful example is that of Norway where a sport and physical recreation culture is deeply rooted in society and is supported by strategic socio-economic circumstances, high standards of living, equality between genders, abundant sporting facilities, a school system that keenly promotes physical activity, a strong voluntary sports clubs sector and high levels of parental contribution. Recent research has also focused on the sociological and psychological factors which contribute to increased physical activity. Social networks and friends significantly impact one's decision to take part in sport, while the involvement of parents in sport affects sport frequency in a positive and significant way.


Pure aluminium and aluminium alloy 1100 samples were anodized by one step and two step process. The foils were anodised in 0.3 M sulphuric acid solution at constant voltage of 25V and the temperature was maintained at 20 o C. The effect of increase of exposure time in second anodization step on the structural features was studied on AA 1100. A well ordered nanoporous structure were produced. It was found that in two step anodization process the produced film have very regular hexagonal cells with uniform pores as compare to single step anodization in both Al and AA 1100. The two step anodization improves both pore diameter and uniformity. With the increase in second step anodization time the complexities of porous film increases due to formation of sub pores.


On June 23, 2017, the Supreme Court's 5-3 decision in Murr v. Wisconsin provided some long-awaited guidance for courts to use in defining the relevant unit of property to perform regulatory takings analyses. The Court announced a new three-part test, tasking lower courts with two different multifactor inquiries to determine whether a federal regulatory taking has occurred. First, the court must figure out the right unit of property, and second, it must determine whether just compensation is owed using the three-pronged test articulated forty years ago in Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City. Despite its resort to multiple factors to determine the relevant unit of property, Murr is most striking because of an important one it minimizes: state-specific positive law. Takings doctrine has long valued, incorporated, and awarded protection to varied unique forms of state property. This constitutional property federalism is widely perceived as desirable, encouraging beneficial competition and innovation in the forms and content of property rights in different jurisdictions. This Essay argues that the Murr decision threatens constitutional property federalism by inviting courts to define the scope of protected property interests using law and regulation across jurisdictional boundaries. As lower courts and scholars struggle to give meaning to Murr, its effects on the federalist structure of property should not be neglected.


Although cell signaling is often investigated as though it involved a linear response to an isolated stimulus, many receptors generate multiple––sometimes antagonistic––signals. For instance, the proapoptotic and proinflammatory cytokine tumor necrosis factor (TNF) not only activates caspases to promote cell death but also activates prosurvival mechanisms. Moreover, cells in vivo must often integrate opposing inputs from multiple stimuli. Janes et al. stimulated human colonic adenocarcinoma cells with 10 combinations of saturating or subsaturating concentrations of TNF with epidermal growth factor (EGF) or insulin to investigate crosstalk between proapoptotic and prosurvival signaling pathways. They made sequential measurements over 24 hours of 19 different intracellular signals known to be associated with TNF, EGF, or insulin signaling. Each cytokine elicited multiple classes of signals––for instance, high concentrations of TNF elicited signals associated with both TNF and EGF signaling. Surprisingly, TNF rapidly activated the EGF receptor and its downstream targets MEK and ERK about as well as did EGF. Analysis of conditioned medium and experiments with an antibody to the EGF receptor indicated that TNF rapidly stimulated the release of TGF-α (transforming growth factor-α, a prosurvival factor). Further analysis revealed the existence of an autocrine cascade: The combined effects of TNF and TGF-α led to release of the proapoptotic interleukin 1α (IL-1α, starting about 4 hours after TNF addition), which stimulated a late phase of IKK and nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) activation. Eight to 12 hours after TNF addition, cells began releasing the IL-1 receptor antagonist IL-1ra. Similar autocrine cascades were seen in two other epithelial cell lines. Thus, the eventual response to TNF appears to involve not only intracellular crosstalk between proapoptotic and prosurvival signaling pathways but also an autocrine cascade of pro- and antiapoptotic signals. Loewer and Lahav provide thoughtful commentary in a Preview. K. A. Janes, S. Gaudet, J. A. Albeck, U. B. Nielsen, D. A. Lauffenburger, P. K. Sorger, The response of human epithelial cells to TNF involves an inducible autocrine cascade. Cell 124, 1225-1239 (2006). [PubMed] A. Loewer, G. Lahav, Cellular conference call: External feedback affects cell-fate decisions. Cell 124, 1128-1130 (2006). [PubMed]


We consider a scene containing two independently and generally moving objects, viewed by two general perspective views. Using matching points arising from both objects simultaneously we derive a geometrical constraint, applicable to points from both objects, we call the segmentation matrix. We then use this constraint in order to recover the fundamental matrices associated with, each object, or simply to segment the scene into the two objects. Moreover, when the two bodies move in pure translation relative to each other we can both segment the scene and recover the affine calibration (homography at infinity) of the camera geometry. Unlike algorithms suggested in the past we need only two images, we work with general projective cameras (rather than affine or orthographic) and with general body motion, and no prior information beyond point matches is required.


The rising need for high-accuracy location-based services in mass-market applications has boosted the demand to improve GNSS positioning in low-cost receivers such as those found in smartphones [1]-[6]. Newer applications in autonomous navigation, sports, gaming, bicycle rentals, personal navigation and fitness tracking make use of low-cost or ultra-low-cost GNSS hardware. Smartphones contain extremely low-cost GNSS chips with very low-cost antennas which are, mostly, GPS single-frequency (L1) receivers. Smartphones tend to provide locations based on a combination of GPS code-only Single Point Positioning (SSP) aided by an internal inertial management unit (IMU) and cell tower ranging information. The accuracy of such a technique is at the metre or tens-of-metres level with drifts in cases of signal loss from either satellite or cell towers.

The quality of the new generation of low-cost (<100 USD) GNSS chips has improved drastically over the last few years. In 2018, dual-frequency, multi-GNSS chips made their way into smartphones, with the Xiaomi MI 8 phone being the first one, with a Broadcom BCM47755 chip. Since 2016 and with the advent of Android N phones, both carrier and pseudorange measurements were made available to the public [5], [8].

The realistic usage of smartphones lies in semi-urban, urban and forested areas with the phone in hand or on the dashboard of a car when it comes to positioning-based applications. Such usage brings with it numerous challenges and limitations such as missing measurements, poor multipath suppression as well as a low and irregular carrier-to-noise-density ratio (C/N0), which need to be analysed and addressed. Hence, this research focusses on the analysis and conditioning of raw measurements from smartphones for use with Precise Point Positioning (PPP) augmentation in realistic environments. PPP processing is preferred over relative positioning techniques for smartphones since the technique functions without any base station and baseline distance limitations.

This research dwells deeply into the following aspects: 1) Analysis of the carrier-to-noise-density ratio, multipath and frequency and length of data gaps in different multipath environments and their correlation with each other; and 2) Prediction of missing measurements and its impact on the availability and accuracy of the positioning solution.
The analysis indicates that in semi-urban areas, the rms multipath affecting the code observations can be as high as 16 m with an average of only 55% of the total epochs having both code and carrier-phase measurements from both frequencies present. After utilizing a C/N0-based measurement weighing strategy and prediction model, results indicate achieving nearly 100% positioning availability in semi-urban scenarios and a 35% decrease in the standard deviation of the horizontal positioning error.


This study investigates the genetic basis of lamb vigour (defined as neonatal lamb activity and sucking ability) and lambing difficulty as potential traits to be included in selection programmes to improve ewe and lamb welfare. Scores for lamb birth difficulty, vigour and sucking ability were collected shortly after birth on 1,520 lambs born in 2006 in 19 different flocks that were members of the UK Suffolk Sire Referencing Scheme. Scores evaluated each trait on a scale of 1 to 4; 1 being no assistance given either during birth or to suck, or excellent vigour, through to 4 where a large degree of assistance was required, or poor vigour. Genetic parameters (heritabilities, genetic correlations) were estimated by fitting an individual animal model using ASREML. Variance components obtained from univariate and bivariate analyses were averaged to provide genetic parameter estimates. Heritabilities for birth difficulty and vigour were moderate but heritability for sucking ability was not significant. The genetic correlation between vigour and sucking ability was positive and high, that between vigour and birth difficulty moderately negative, and that between birth difficulty and sucking ability not significant. Birth difficulty and vigour could be included in Suffolk breeding programmes to help reduce health and welfare problems associated with these traits in Suffolk sheep, and in flocks producing crossbred lambs sired by Suffolk rams. Further work is required to evaluate correlations between these traits and performance traits and to comprehensively validate the scoring system once more data become available.


The decades-long resilience of Middle Eastern regimes meant that few anticipated the 2011 Arab Spring. But from the seemingly rapid leadership turnovers in Tunisia and Egypt to the protracted stalemates in Yemen and Syria, there remains a common outcome: ongoing control of the ruling regimes. While some analysts and media outlets rush to look for democratic breakthroughs, autocratic continuity - not wide-ranging political change - remains the hallmark of the region's upheaval. Contrasting Egypt and Syria, Joshua Stacher examines how executive power is structured in each country to show how these preexisting power configurations shaped the uprisings and, in turn, the outcomes. Presidential power in Egypt was centralized. Even as Mubarak was forced to relinquish the presidency, military generals from the regime were charged with leading the transition. The course of the Syrian uprising reveals a key difference: the decentralized character of Syrian politics. Only time will tell if Asad will survive in office, but for now, the regime continues to unify around him. While debates about election timetables, new laws, and the constitution have come about in Egypt, bloody street confrontations continue to define Syrian politics - the differences in authoritarian rule could not be more stark. Political structures, elite alliances, state institutions, and governing practices are seldom swept away entirely - even following successful revolutions - so it is vital to examine the various contexts for regime survival. Elections, protests, and political struggles will continue to define the region in the upcoming years. Examining the lead-up to the Egyptian and Syrian uprisings helps us unlock the complexity behind the protests and transitions. Without this understanding, we lack a roadmap to make sense of the Middle East's most important political moment in decades.


The much-understudied Chinese Pidgin Russian (CPR) has existed at the Chinese–Russian border since at least the 18th century. Unlike many Western-based pidgins, it was formed in a territory where the lexifying language (Russian) was dominant. It also uses a typical inflecting language as its lexifier and an isolating language (Chinese) as its substrate. This paper considers the influence of both 'parent' languages at all CPR levels. The sources of CPR include: pidgin records and descriptions; 'Russian' textbooks compiled for the Chinese going to Russia; and works of literature depicting contacts between the Russians and indigenous peoples of Siberia, who often spoke a variety of CPR. Some of these sources are rarely accessible to Western linguists. The paper discusses all key aspects of CPR: history (both of the pidgin and its study), phonology (segmental inventory, stress, tone), morphology (verbs vs. non-verbs, final particles), syntax (syntactic roles, sentence and phrase word order, postpositions and prepositions, comparatives), and vocabulary (synonyms, loanwords, structural and semantic calques, 'diminutive politeness'). The study provides new translations and etymologies for 'difficult' CPR words and sentences.


The Nootka fault zone (NFZ) divides the incoming Explorer and Juan de Fuca plates of the Cascadia subduction zone. Three months of seafloor monitoring using 33 ocean‐bottom seismometers off the west coast of Vancouver Island has allowed us to better understand the tectonic configuration and seismogenic characteristics of the NFZ. We have learned that the NFZ is comprised of northern and southern primary bounding faults, and several conjugate faults developed subperpendicular to the primary faults. Earthquakes typically occur over the depth ranges of 15–20 and 6–15 km along the primary bounding and conjugate faults, respectively. Focal mechanisms reveal that the most common modes of failure in this region are left‐lateral strike slip, with normal faulting occurring along the southwestern extent of the NFZ and thrust faulting to the northeast before the subduction front. Seismic tomography suggests that the oceanic Moho is at a depth of 12–14 km below sea level (10–12 km below seafloor) just seaward of the Cascadia deformation front, and that it deepens to 19 km (17 km below seafloor) approximately 20 km landward of the deformation front. Converted phase analysis illuminates four velocity‐contrasting interfaces with average depths below sea level deepening landward of the subduction front at ∼4–6, ∼6–9, ∼11–14, and ∼14–18  km. We interpret them as the sedimentary basement, upper–lower crust boundary, oceanic Moho, and the base of the highly fractured and seawater or mineral enriched veins within mantle. The precipitation of minerals such as quartz or the formation of talc, which is made possible by the intense degree of fracturing within the NFZ facilitating the infiltration of seawater, may reduce mantle velocities, as well as VP/VS ratios. The lack of seismicity observed along the interplate thrust zone in northern Cascadia may suggest that the megathrust fault is completely locked, consistent with prior studies.


Secrecy to protect intelligence sources and methods appears often in the nation's discourse about controversial national security matters. Often it is asked whether such secrecy is consistent with the nation's democratic principles and processes. I argue such principles and processes provide a framework through which we try to answer questions about secrecy and indeed legitimate them, but are often too broad to provide definitive guidance in specific cases. At the same time, the sources and methods argument itself is overbroad because of the nature of the sources and methods themselves; the tentative nature of intelligence assessments derived from those sources and methods; the often modest role intelligence plays in policymaking; the sometimes flawed logic of the sources and methods argument; and the costs incurred by information asymmetries. This has several implications for the use of secrecy in decisions of national moment; the protection of civil liberties and the state secrets privilege; and oversight of the intelligence community and others who make the sources and methods argument.


INTRODUCTION For art to flourish in our culture, society must set artists free to follow their vision wherever it takes them. In an effort to protect artists and their work, Congress passed the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 ("VARA") (1). However, VARA's application is extremely limited. In Europe, an artist is afforded greater protection than artists are afforded in the United States. Artists in Europe are legally protected because they are permitted to safeguard the works that form their reputations. The interests protected by this right concern how artists present their works to the public, and the way they preserve their identifications with the works. This protectable interest is referred to as the artist's "moral interests" and the specific right guarding the interests is called droit moral, or the artist's "moral right" (2) Neither moral right nor the preservation of the national cultural heritage is specifically provided for in the United States (3). The focus of this article is on protections for the visual arts, focusing on fine art photographers and their images. This article compares the French droit moral with the rights provided by the United States under VARA, illustrating the differences between both systems. This article argues that VARA is too narrowly applied to photographic works of art, while distinguishing photographs from other types of visual art media such as painting, sculpture, and drawing. This article contends how fine art photographers in the United States should be afforded the same protections that fine art photographers in Europe are afforded under droit moral. VARA provides artists with a minimum threshold of protection, and this article emphasizes the importance of strengthening that protection. BACKGROUND The doctrine of moral right originated in France as the civil law doctrine of "droit moral (4). Droit moral protects artists' personality rights in their works of art based on the belief that an artist's personality is embodied in, and inseparable from, the artist's work of art (5). Therefore, injuring an artist's work of art also injures the artist's reputation (6). Many countries have protected artists' moral rights in compliance with their membership in the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (7), which have afforded comprehensive moral right protection to authors (8). The United States resisted joining the Berne Convention for over a hundred years, in a large part due to its difficulties in meeting the requirements of Article 6 bis, which requires member countries to recognize moral rights (9), specifically Article 6 bis that provides: (1) Independently of the author's economic rights, and even after the transfer of the said rights, the author shall have the right to claim authorship of the work and to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to, the said work, which would be prejudicial to his honor or reputation (10). (2) The rights granted to the author in accordance with the preceding paragraph shall, after his death, be maintained, at least until the expiration of the economic rights. (11) (3) The means of redress for safeguarding the rights granted by this Article shall be governed by the legislation of the country where protection is claimed (12). On March 1, 1989, the United States joined the Berne Convention (13). The Final Report of the Ad Hoc Working Group on United States Adherence to the Berne Convention reported that the United States still did not create a federal statute when the existing United States law was complied with Article 6 bis (14). However, one year later Congress passed the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 ("VARA") (15). In enacting VARA, Congress sought to strengthen its commitment to the Berne Convention (16) ant to provide uniformity to national copyright laws, believing that a uniform federal law would more effectively stimulate artists' creativity (17). …


Oyster mushrooms usually can growth at any planting medium, are naturally like wood of tree or another medium, such as sawdust, straw, groundsel, waste of sugar cane. That sawdust or straw still need to added with other material, like ricebran, limestones, gypsum, etc. The composition of medium have various formulation. Everyone who cultivate of oyster have special composition for their medium that made from their personal research, e.g the secret of base material, suplement material, and the precisely of mixing. This research has the purpose of (i) knowing of growth and yield of oyster mushroom at various of composition of growing media, and (ii) obtain the best composition of growing media. The research was conducted in the Village of Banjang, Districts of Banjang , HSU and started from March 2012 to June 2012, using a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) one factor. Factors tested were composition of planting media (sawdust : rice bran : limestone : gypsum), ie k1 = 90% : 7,5% : 2% : 0,5%, k2 = 80% : 15% : 4% : 1%, k3 = 70% : 22,5% : 6% : 1,5%, k4 = 60% : 30% : 8% : 2% dan k5 = 50% : 37,5% : 10% : 2,5%. The results showed that the composition of planting media determine of growth and yield of oyster mushroom and the composition of planting media that showing of the best of growth and yield is k3.


A growing body of evidence supports the hypothesis that humans infer future states of perceived physical situations by propagating noisy representations forward in time using rational (approximate) physics. In the present study, we examine whether humans are able to predict (1) the resting geometry of sand pouring from a funnel and (2) the dynamics of three substances—liquid, sand, and rigid balls—flowing past obstacles into two basins. Participants' judgments in each experiment are consistent with simulation results from the intuitive substance engine (ISE) model, which employs a Material Point Method (MPM) simulator with noisy inputs. The ISE outperforms ground-truth physical models in each situation, as well as two data-driven models. The results reported herein expand on previous work proposing human use of mental simulation in physical reasoning and demonstrate human proficiency in predicting the dynamics of sand, a substance that is less common in daily life than liquid or rigid objects.