Background: Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Tuberculosis (TB) co-infection is a lamentable medical phenomenon and CD4 count among them is a surrogate marker of their immune status. Objectives: 1. To study the epidemiological profile of HIV –TB co-infected subjects. 2. To study the CD4 count status among HIV, TB and HIV-TB co-infected patients both at diagnosis (pre treatment) and after initiation of treatment. Methodology: This was a hospital based comparative cross-sectional study conducted at Agartala Government Medical College between May & June 2013, among 60 patients in each group of HIV, TB and HIV-TB coinfected patients. Results: The study revealed that the HIV-TB co infection and HIV infection was more prevalent among males and in the age group of . Majority of the HIV-TB co-infected patients had CD4 count less than 200 cells/μl at the time of diagnosis and there has been a significant rise in CD4 count level with the initiation of treatment in all the three groups of HIV +ve patients, HIV-TB coinfected patients, and TB patients (P value <0.00). Conclusion: Sustained efforts are needed to detect and treat tuberculosis among HIV infected patients to curb the dual menace of HIV-TB epidemic.


In linear image deconvolution problems, the blur operator is usually assumed to be known, but in practice, this information is mostly unavailable. Therefore, image restoration must be done using only the observed noisy and blurred image. Recently, a blind image deconvolution method which utilized a two-dimensional version of the constant-modulus algorithm was proposed, but it had a problem such that as the bit number representing the pixel value increased, the performance of the method decreased. It worked for six- or less-bit images. In the work presented here, we address this problem and develop a solution by using a complex mapping diagram for image values and utilizing a complex-valued adaptive filter. The visual and numerical results show that the proposed method can remove the blur from the degraded image even when the bit number is as high as eight (which is usually the case in practice).


Introduction Diarrhoea is a leading cause of death globally, mostly occurring as a result of insufficient or unsafe water supplies, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene. Our study aims to investigate the impact of a community-level hygiene education program and a water quality intervention using riverbank filtration (RBF) technology on diarrhoeal prevalence. Methods and analysis We have designed a stepped wedge cluster randomised trial to estimate the health impacts of our intervention in 4 rural villages in Karnataka, India. At baseline, surveys will be conducted in all villages, and householders will receive hygiene education. New pipelines, water storage tanks and taps will then be installed at accessible locations in each village and untreated piped river water will be supplied. A subsequent survey will evaluate the impact of hygiene education combined with improved access to greater water volumes for hygiene and drinking purposes (improved water quantity). Villages will then be randomly ordered and RBF-treated water (improved water quality) will be sequentially introduced into the 4 villages in a stepwise manner, with administration of surveys at each time point. The primary outcome is a 7-day period prevalence of self-reported diarrhoea. Secondary outcomes include self-reported respiratory and skin infections, and reported changes in hygiene practices, household water usage and water supply preference. River, tank and tap water from each village, and stored water from a subset of households, will be sampled to assess microbial and chemical quality. Ethics and dissemination Ethics approval was obtained from the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee in Australia and The Energy and Resources Institute Institutional Ethics Committee in India. The results of the trial will be presented at conferences, published in peer-reviewed journals and disseminated to relevant stakeholders. This study is funded by an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) project grant. Trial registration number ACTRN12616001286437; pre-results.


Given a link map f into a manifold of the form Q = N ×R, when can it be deformed to an "unlinked" position (in some sense, e.g. where its components map to disjoint R-levels)? Using the language of normal bordism theory as well as the path space approach of Hatcher and Quinn we define obstructions ω̃ε(f), ε = + or ε = −, which often answer this question completely and which, in addition, turn out to distinguish a great number of different link homotopy classes. In certain cases they even allow a complete link homotopy classification. Our development parallels recent advances in Nielsen coincidence theory and leads also to the notion of Nielsen numbers of link maps. In the special case when N is a product of spheres sample calculations are carried out. They involve the homotopy theory of spheres and, in particular, James–Hopf– invariants.


Abstract : Defense budget cuts and the recent peace dividend have made weapons systems development decisions increasingly more difficult and subject to scrutiny. Meticulous planning is required to ensure tax dollars are spent wisely and effectively. This thesis presents a decision support system designed to aid a senior official in making such investment decisions. The system combines a graphical user interface embedded in a hypertext environment with a multiple attribute decision making method. Architectures, consisting of weapons systems development projects from each major program within a warfare area, which provide the best overall benefit versus cost are presented as solutions. The hypertext interface allows convenient access to benefit and cost data, and easily displays the solutions generated by the multiple attribute decision method.


ABSTRACT:Investment promotion through tax incentives has been a key component of the growth strategies pursued in Uruguay by the last three administrations. A new regime was established, regulated by Executive Decree 455, which implemented a major overhaul in the main channel for subsidizing investment. This regime immediately generated a battery of researchable questions about its effectiveness and efficiency. Using a large data set, first put together for this study from firm-level administrative records kept by the tax collection and pensions institutes between 2005 and 2011, we test the hypotheses of significant and positive effects of obtaining a tax credit through the new regime on investment and employment outcomes. A matched difference-in-differences strategy confirms that the promotion regime introduced in 2008 had a statistically significant effect on the firms' rate of investment (around 11 percent), while the effects on employment growth rate were more ambiguous. These findings are buttressed by several robustness tests. Further probing uncovers heterogeneity along the promotion timeline, with the greatest effect on the investment rate occurring in a project's first year.


Background: Cervical cancer is the leading cause of death in young women in developing countries which includes those in Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Some of the highest rates of cervical cancer deaths in the world occur in the Atlantic, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, South China Seas(AIMS) and Pacific SIDS. The objective of this systematic review is to determine the range of cervical cancer treatments available in 36 of 38 SIDS who are members of the United Nations.
Methods: Databases searched independently by two authors were: MEDLINE, CINAHL and Scopus. Manuscripts published between 2000-2017 were identified using a search strategy that included cervical cancer, all forms of treatment and the name of each of the selected 36 SIDS in the Caribbean, Pacific and AIMS countries. Only articles in the English language were included. Duplicates, non-relevant and those not meeting the inclusion criteria were excluded. Two authors selected and read the included articles independently and rated the methodological quality of each article.
Results: From a total of 175 abstracts, 158 were excluded as duplicates and not relevant. Seventeen papers were read in full, nine were excluded as not meeting the inclusion criteria and eight manuscripts were included in the review. A narrative synthesis was considered appropriate given the heterogenous nature of the manuscripts. Seven of the eight papers were from the Caribbean SIDS underpinning evidence that treatments for cervical cancer were more developed in that region compared to the Pacific and AIMS SIDS. Surgery was available in most SIDS followed by chemotherapy with only seven (19%) SIDS, all in the Caribbean, with radiation centres.
Conclusion: There is a dearth of published evidence on the details of treatments available to women with cervical cancer in 36 SIDS. With cervical cancer increasing in those parts of the world due to weak cancer prevention and control strategies, a large number of women with cervical cancer are not being treated especially in the Pacific and AIMS SIDS. More needs to be done to address treatments in the Pacific and AIMS SIDS and to increase publication of those efforts.


A study was carried out in the Kwaebibrim District of the Eastern Region of Ghana to study the production practices and the profitability of palm oil production among small scale processors using focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews and participant observations. Three categories of processing equipment namely digester screw press combined, digester with separate hand operated hydraulic press and digester with separate hand operated screw press were found in the district with the latter constituting about 80% of the processing equipment used by the processors. The major activities involved in the processing of fruits into oil are removal of the fruit containing spikelets from the fresh fruit bunches, fruit loosening and storage, boiling and digestion of fruits and pressing and clarifying of the oil produced. Fruits are usually stored for a period ranging from one to four weeks before processing leading often to high levels of free fatty acids in the oil produced. Due to scarcity of firewood in the district, waste lorry tyres and mesocarp fibres are used in place of firewood generating a lot of smoke with serious health risk to processors and other mill workers and the environment. Constraints in the small scale processing industry include inaccessibility to remunerative market especially during the peak fruit production period of February to May, lack of credit and skills and knowledge in good processing practices. The financial appraisal of palm oil production shows that in the peak fruit production period of April-May, processors make a loss of 38% of every cedi in sale in their operations and that the production of palm oil can be a profitable venture only during the lean fruit production season (from September – December) when oil is relatively scarce. The study suggests that to improve the income of small scale processors, there is the need to help the processors change their practices through research but at the same time it also requires work to create entry into the existing value chains through policy (e.g. bye-laws).


Sorghum is the fifth most important cereal worldwide and is a major source of agricultural residues in tropical regions. Bioconversion of whole sorghum crop residues comprising stalks, leaves, peduncles and panicles to ethanol has great potential for improving ethanol yield per sorghum crop cultivated, and for sustainable biofuel production. Effective pretreatment of sorghum lignocellulosic biomass is central to the efficiency of subsequent fermentation to ethanol. Previous studies have focused on the bioconversion of sorghum stalks and/or leaves only to bioethanol, but the current study is the first report dealing with whole crop residues. We specifically focused on the impact of Nigerian sorghum cultivation location and cultivar type on the potential ethanol yield from whole sorghum crop residues. Efficient bioconversion of whole sorghum residues to ethanol provides a sustainable route for utilization of crop residues thereby providing a non-food feedstock for industrial-scale bioethanol production. Copyright © 2016 The Institute of Brewing & Distilling


Microbial biosynthesis of commodity compounds offers a cheaper, greener and more reliable method of production than does chemical synthesis. However, engineering metabolic pathways within a microbe for biosynthesis of a target compound is a complicated process: levels of gene expression, protein stability, enzyme activity, and metabolic flux must be balanced for high productivity without compromising host cell viability. A major rate-limiting step in engineering microbes for optimum biosynthesis of a target compound is DNA assembly, as current methods can be cumbersome and costly.
This study aimed to develop a new, synthetic biology tool for rapid DNA assembly that can be applied to engineering and optimizing metabolic pathways for the microbial biosynthesis of commodity compounds. The potential of using serine site-specific recombinases as synthetic biology tools to assemble DNA was investigated and a new DNA assembly method, Serine Integrase Recombinational Assembly (SIRA), using PhiC31 integrase was established. It was demonstrated that SIRA can clone DNA parts ranging in size from 71 bp to 12.7 kb, assemble as many as five DNA parts in a one-pot reaction, facilitate targeted post-assembly modification of an assembled construct and generate variation between DNA constructs in a single assembly reaction.
SIRA was used to generate variation between constructs containing genes of the violacein biosynthesis pathway, the lycopene biosynthesis pathway, or the DXP pathway for isoprenoid biosynthesis in E. coli. By studying the phenotypes and genotypes of the constructs generated, it was possible to identify rate-limiting steps within these pathways.
Finally, a lycopene-producing in vivo biosensor screen was developed in E. coli to screen DNA assemblies, made with SIRA, encoding genes from the DXP pathway, for enhanced isoprenoid production. By optimizing the expression conditions for assemblies of DXP pathway genes that enhanced isoprenoid production and genes for lycopene biosynthesis in E. coli, 35.78 mg lycopene per gram dry cell weight was obtained - the highest recorded level of lycopene produced from engineering of the DXP pathway alone in E. coli.


The needs of entertainment industry in the field of personal computers always require more realistic impressions of games. For this purpose manufacturers produce more powerful graphical devices, of which the compute capabilities have long overtaken central processing units (CPU). Such compute capabilities are achived through the capacity of many simple units, which do not contain good branching predictions, but better deal with the consequences through a huge number of active threads.
 In this diploma thesis I use the advantage of graphical devices for general-purpose programming for the needs of machine learning. The most important steps are the right choice of compute architecture and algorithm. I have chosen CUDA architecture, where I implemented backpropagation algorithm as a sampling method in an artificial neural networks area. In graphical device implementation I used several different optimization approaches to achieve more rapid execution.
 The purpose of thesis is to achieve as effective and fast concrete learning algorithm implementation on graphical device and thus to maximize speed up compared to the CPU implementation. At present-day fastest graphical devices I achieved more than 50-times speed up compared to the CPU implementation.


Trauma is a major cause of hospitalisation and mortality in working aged adults. In Victoria, a coordinated state trauma system was established in 1999 and resulted in a reduction in the risk of in-hospital mortality. This system was predominantly focused on the pre-hospital and hospital care of the injured patient, whereas the post discharge patient management was not specifically addressed in the design of the system. Rehabilitation is an accepted part of the continuum of care of the trauma patient and inpatient rehabilitation has been shown to benefit the spinal cord injured and the traumatic brain injured population. However, an equivalent level of evidence for the benefit of inpatient rehabilitation following orthopaedic trauma is lacking. Further, the decision-making regarding discharge destination following orthopaedic trauma is complex and strongly linked to socio-economic and financial factors. The aim of this thesis was to identify the predictors of discharge to inpatient rehabilitation, the role of inpatient rehabilitation following orthopaedic trauma in working aged adults, and its impact on patient outcomes. Data for this thesis were collected between 2007 and 2014. The Victorian Orthopaedic Trauma Outcomes Registry (VOTOR) was used and the clinicians involved in the qualitative study worked in one of the four VOTOR hospitals or the rehabilitation centres that receive patients cared for acutely in these hospitals. The research findings show that it is possible to successfully predict those patients who are discharged to inpatient rehabilitation following isolated lower limb fracture using a simple bedside tool. This tool will assist the acute hospital clinicians plan early for discharge, with the aim of reducing confusion, limiting unnecessary inpatient rehabilitation referrals, and facilitating early and appropriate discharge. The importance of assisted discharge planning is underscored by the results of two qualitative studies, which showed marked variability between clinicians (both within the acute hospital and rehabilitation) in decision-making processes, and poor engagement of patients in their discharge planning. Patients also reported inadequate information about their injuries and their follow-up care. Outcomes for those discharged to inpatient rehabilitation were compared to home discharge. Using a propensity score analysis, patients discharged to inpatient rehabilitation were found to have worse return to work and functional outcomes at 12-months post-injury. However, the groups remain mismatched for some of the potential confounders and a randomised controlled trial is needed to definitively determine which discharge option results in superior long term outcomes. Based on the new knowledge presented in this thesis, a range of recommendations have been made to facilitate improved management of the orthopaedic trauma patient following their acute hospital stay. Involvement of the key stakeholders at all stages of the acute care, discharge planning and post-discharge stages of recovery, including patients, medical and allied health staff, administrators, funding bodies and policy makers will be vital to ensure best practice and care of the trauma patient throughout the continuum of care from time of injury to the ultimate aim of a return to community living.


Glycyl-tRNA synthetase released from macrophages promotes tumor cell death. Full-length tRNA synthetases or fragments of them have been reported to function as extracellular ligands for various receptors, including cadherins. Noting that patients with autoimmune diseases have a high frequency of autoreactive antibodies against tRNA synthetases, Park et al. examined the abundance of tRNA synthetases in human and mouse serum and found that glycyl-tRNA synthetase (GRS) was abundant. Examination of cultured cells showed that, in response to serum starvation, GRS was specifically released from murine and human macrophage cell lines (mouse RAW264.7 and human U937) and not other cell lines, such as Jurkat T cells, HeLa cells, HCT116 cells, or HEK293 cells. Various apoptotic stresses—including DNA damage, glucose deprivation, or tumor necrosis factor—combined with inhibition of protein synthesis, also induced the release of GRS from the macrophage cell lines, but not the colon cancer cell line HCT116 or the cervical cancer cell line HeLa. This release occurred before the loss of membrane integrity or cell viability, suggesting that the release was not due to leakage from cells undergoing apoptosis. Coculture of either U937 cells or murine primary bone marrow–derived macrophages with specific cancer cells, such as the human large-cell lung cancer cell line H460, showed that the cancer cells released a factor that promoted GRS release from the macrophages. GRS bound to a subset of cancer cell lines (HCT116 and HeLa, but not MCF7), as well as the RAW 264.7 macrophages. Recombinant GRS or coculture of the cells with U937 cells reduced the viability of HCT116 cells, and this was associated with markers of apoptosis. Recombinant GRS failed to reduce the viability of RAW 264.7 cells or the breast cancer cell line MCF7. In vitro binding assays identified cadherin (CDH) 6 and 18 as specific binding partners for GRS. The abundance of CDH6 correlated with the ability of GRS to promote tumor cell death, and knockdown of CDH6 or addition of a competing CDH6 peptide prevented GRS from reducing HCT116 cell viability. Tumor cells that were responsive to the effects of GRS on cell viability also exhibited a greater amount of extracellular signal–regulated protein kinase (ERK) phosphorylation than did GRS-insensitive tumor cells, and GRS decreased the abundance of phosphorylated ERK in the responsive tumor cell lines. Pharmacological inhibition of protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) blocked GRS-induced reduction in ERK phosphorylation, and immunoprecipitation assays showed that GRS reduced the interaction between CDH6 and PP2A. Thus, GRS may promote the release of PP2A, which dephosphorylates ERK and reduces ERK-dependent cell survival. Xenograft experiments showed that injecting GRS into GRS-responsive tumors or including GRS with the grafted GRS-sensitive cells either reduced the size of the tumors or prevented them from forming, respectively. Thus, some tumor cells appear to promote their own death by releasing a factor that triggers the release of GRS from macrophages, and this pathway could be manipulated for the treatment of certain cancers. M. C. Park, T. Kang, D. Jin, J. M. Han, S. B. Kim, Y. J. Park, K. Cho, Y. W. Park, M. Guo, W. He, X.-L. Yang, P. Schimmel, S. Kim, Secreted human glycyl-tRNA synthetase implicated in defense against ERK-activated tumorigenesis. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 109, E640–E647 (2012). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Abstract Administration of opioids to alleviate moderate to severe acute pain and chronic cancer pain is an established management process. However, advancements in clinical pharmacologic research have shown that opioids are also effective in chronic noncancerous pain. Many patients properly treated for prolonged periods with opioids develop tolerance and subsequently, physical dependence. This process is not necessarily harmful to the patient and will not cause the patient to develop an addiction (properly defined as psychologic dependence). For many patients who have been on opioid therapy for months or years, analgesic effectiveness tragically becomes less. In addition, opioid-induced constipation can be severe and cause pain; patients do not develop tolerance to this adverse reaction. Therefore, such issues become a management problem and require additional intervention. Currently, many different classes of drugs can serve as effective adjuncts to opioids for treatment of pain. Adding adjunctive medication to opioid therapy improves pain management primarily by nonopioid mechanisms of action. Clinical outcomes of such combinations include greater analgesia and attenuation of opioid-induced adverse reactions such as nausea and vomiting, constipation, sedation, and respiratory depression. Adjuncts include acetaminophen, antiarrhythmics, anticonvulsants, antidepressants, antipsychotics, baclofen, benzodiazepines, capsaicin, calcium channel blockers, clonidine hydrochloride, central nervous system stimulants, corticosteroids, local anesthetics, N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonists, nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs, pentoxifylline, and scopolamine. Some adjuncts (eg, acetaminophen) are routinely used today, whereas others (eg, nifedipine [calcium channel blocker]) are used on a limited basis but have great potential for more widespread application. All professionals (eg, nurses, pharmacists, physicians, physicians' assistants, social workers, members of the clergy) involved in treating patients with unresolved pain recognize this to be an extraordinary and delicate time. It is when patients are likely to request physicians to provide some method to accelerate their death. Thus, inadequate analgesia can become a suicidogen, ie, any factor that causes a patient to want to commit suicide. Incorporation of adjuncts to opioid therapy can serve to lessen pain and improve quality of life for a suffering patient.


Yes, hmmm, indeed! One of the great false distinctions in likely every field of practice lies between doing and learning, resulting in a rather limited social construction of what 'education' entails. The reality is that we learn every day all the time, even if that learning is simply a reinforcement of what we already know. Every interaction with the external world, and subsequent internal processing of that information, strengthens our current conceptualization or builds anew. So too does the process unfold in the development of a field of study.


Systematic relationships among members of the Trillium erectum complex (T. cernuum L., T. flexipes Rafinesque, T. simile Gleason, T. rugelii Rendle, T. erectum L., T. sulcatum T. Patrick, and T. vaseyi Harbison) are not well described. For the purposes of conservation and cataloguing biodiversity it is important to know the phylogenetic relationships among taxa and quantify gene flow among these hybridizing taxa. A study of pollinator fidelity and geographic isolation was conducted used in combination with cladistic relationships inferred from chloroplast DNA sequencing and genetic distance inferred from allozyme electrophoresis data. The level of genetic divergence typically seen among species within the family Trilliaceae was considerably higher than that observed among members of the Erectum complex. Allozyme data suggest a high degree of gene flow among sympatric taxa, and local habitat selection pressures. However, these data also support the hypothesis of assortative mating between different floral colors as a factor maintaining species distinctiveness. The Erectum complex taxa appear to be sets of hybridizing groups in states of incomplete speciation.


Purpose of the Fraunhofer Direct Digital Manufacturing Conference is an intellectual exchange between researchers, enterprises and users of Additive Manufacturing technologies in order to gather the latest information about trends, progress, importance and the future potential of these technologies for industrial applications. The range of topics covers Product Development (incl. simulation, co-design, mass customization), Technologies (incl. bio-printing, hybrid processes, novel developments/visionary concepts, process chains for industrial production), Materials (incl. ceramics, bio-materials, multi-material approaches), Quality (incl. process/ part quality management) as well as further innovative and visionary approaches not fitting the range of topics above. Renowned international keynote speakers give insight into the latest trends and challenges in additive manufacturing in a variety of industry sectors, including biomedical, aerospace and automotive.


This article analyses the impact of a value-added performance indicator (PI) on the rankings of secondary schools in the English league tables. School rankings are seen to be very sensitive to the type of PI employed, and the new value-added PI is likely to result in significant movements up and down the rankings. There is still scope for schools to try and game the system in order to improve their league table position. Value-added PIs reduce the incentives for schools to select their pupils, but the version currently employed in England may create an incentive for schools to distort effort away from those pupils at the top end of the distribution. The value-added PI is shown to provide a more accurate measure of school performance. However, in order for parents to be effective drivers for improvement in the education market, it may also be necessary for the government to measure the impact of differential value-added across different student types.


Organizations orientation and commitment in environmental issues have become a real variable in all the scenarios of the present competitive context (Gonzalez-Benito and Gonzalez-Benito, 2005). Thus, the organizational implementation of an Environmental management system represents an important "strategic move" which can bring many benefits and could become that "advantage lever" in front of competitors. Therefore the Environmental management system (EMS) implementation and its real integration at the organizational general management level bring along the "routinization" (application in day-to-day organizational activities) of certain environmental practices, which will be the main topic of this work. Having in view the idea mentioned above, the literature presents the fact that organisations mainly adopt two types of attitudes towards the environmental issues ("marginal attitudes types"), as follows: (a) a reactive attitude towards the environment as an effect of the necessity to comply with it, and (b) a proactive attitude towards the environment that can be characterised as a volunteer action of the organisations that wish to reduce the negative impact upon the environmental factors. Consequently scholars approach the organisations orientation dynamics between these two marginal attitudes types towards the environmental protection issues; they presents the diversity of environmental practices implemented having in view the environmental strategies elaborated and integrated at the organisations' level. Concluding, this paper develops an e-learning training program framework associated to the current organizational environmental practices ([1] environmental planning and organisation, [2] environmental operational practices, [3] communicational practices specific to environmental management) because e-Learning is the most efficient and effective method to institutionalize/ integrate inside organizations different training programs.


The work presented herein presents an expanded methodology for imprinting the condition of an urban water distribution network (WDN). Even though the majority of past research efforts related to WDNs deal with water mains (WMs), only a small part of the research studies have considered house connections (HCs) in the analysis and very few researchers have examined how the failure of pipe fittings affect the network performance. Rehabilitation actions in a WDN related to any part of it, whether it is a pipe or a fitting, have a direct effect on the condition of the whole system. Moreover, in the overall cost of repairing a leakage, the cost of the failed unit is very small compared to the cost of the work to detect, localize and restore the problem. Thus, the effect of the fittings in the network9s rehabilitation cost is equally as important as that of the pipelines. Therefore, a mathematical model simulating the overall WDN condition and targeting asset management of WDNs, which includes not only data on WMs but also data on fittings and HCs, is closer to reflecting the actual condition of the network.


The Kailas basin developed during late Oligocene–early Miocene time along the Indus-Yarlung suture zone in southwestern Tibet. The >2.5-km-thick basin-filling Kailas Formation consists of a lower coarse-grained proximal conglomerate and more distal fluvial sandstone member, a lacustrine shale and sandstone member, and an upper red-bed clastic member. Felsic tuffs and trachyandesite layers are locally present. Detrital and igneous zircon U-Pb ages indicate deposition of most of the Kailas Formation between ca. 26 and 24 Ma. The Kailas Formation was deposited by alluvial-fan, low-sinuosity fluvial, and deep lacustrine depositional systems in buttress unconformity upon andesitic volcanic (ca. 67 Ma) and granitoid (ca. 55 Ma) rocks of the Gangdese magmatic arc. Abundant organic material, fish and amphibian fossils, and sparse palynomorphs suggest that Kailas lakes developed in a warm tropical climate, quite different from coeval basins in central Tibet, which formed at high elevation in a dry climate. Provenance and paleocurrent data indicate that the bulk of the Kailas Formation was derived from the northerly Gangdese magmatic arc (Kailas magmatic complex). Only during the latest stages of basin filling was abundant sediment derived from the southerly Tethyan Himalayan thrust belt in the hanging wall of the Great Counter thrust. Kailas basin stratigraphy resembles a classic lacustrine sandwich and is most consistent with deposition in an extensional or transtensional rift that developed along the suture zone some 30 m.y. after the onset of Indo-Eurasian intercontinental collision. Correlative coarse-grained syntectonic strata similar to the Kailas Formation crop out along a >1300 km length of the Indus-Yarlung suture zone, suggesting that the basin-forming mechanism recorded by the Kailas Formation was of regional significance and not exclusively related to local kinematics near the southeastern end of the Karakoram fault. We propose that extension of the southern edge of the Eurasian plate was caused by southward rollback of underthrusting Indian continental lithosphere, followed by slab break-off. Alternating episodes of hard and soft collision, associated with regional contraction and extension, respectively, in the Tibetan-Himalayan orogenic system may have been related to changing dynamics of the subducting/underthrusting Indian plate.


The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ("SJC") recently declared that the Commonwealth's statutory ban on stun guns violates the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The SJC had previously upheld the statute against constitutional challenge in Commonwealth v. Caetano, but the reasoning behind this holding was rejected in a brief per curium opinion by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016. However, the guidance given by the Supreme Court in the Caetano litigation was far from unambiguous: it faulted the SJC's reasoning without opining on the ultimate question of the ban's constitutionality, thus leaving open the possibility that the statute could pass constitutional muster under an alternative analytic approach. This essay discusses what such an alternative approach might have looked like. Specifically, I suggest that the SJC could have upheld the statutory ban by emphasizing the relative rarity of stun guns as a preferred means of self-defense not only as a matter of founding era history, but also as a matter of contemporary reality. This sort of analysis would have allowed the SJC to distinguish stun guns from other weapons that have received constitutional protection in other cases, and would have been fully consistent with both the scope and limitations of the right to bear arms under the Supreme Court's Second Amendment jurisprudence. * Assistant Professor, Suffolk University Law School. J.D. Harvard Law School, A.B. Harvard College. SECOND THOUGHTS ABOUT STUN GUNS 451


When older written records are relatively scarce and rarely date back more than a few centuries, as is the case for regions south of the Sahara and to a lesser extent for northern Africa, one may try and take recourse to alternative methods, e.g. the study of oral traditions, in order to reconstruct history. Historical-comparative linguistics has also been used to this end. Some authors (e.g. Fox 1995: 2) draw a distinction between language history and prehistory. "In the former case we are concerned with changes in languages as reflected in texts, inscriptions, and other documentary evidence; in the latter with changes occurring before the appearance of such evidence". From this point of view, most studies in an African context of course involve "language prehistory". If comparative linguistics as a tool is so important for the study of African cultures in their historical context, why is it introduced relatively late in a monograph like the present one? The reason is quite simple. For a proper use of comparative linguistic data for the recon-struction of history in its different domains, it is important to first understand the comparative method as well as its intricacies and limitations. There appear to be a number of mainstays along which the historical and com-parative study of African languages could enhance our understanding of the history of the continent: Reconstruction (as discussed in Chapters 2 and 4), genetic classification (Chapter 3) as well as borrowing and other contact phenomena (Chapters 8–11). But these also have their limitations when it comes to drawing historical conclusions, as should become clear next.


This chapter discusses how podcasts that were not originally made specifically for second language (L2) learners can be used in L2 classes to promote listening comprehension and intercultural competence. The chapter first defines and describes podcasts and offers strategies for locating useful ones. Next, listening comprehension is examined in order to identify practices that may improve bottom-up and top-down skills and the automaticity by which these are executed. The topic of authenticity is reviewed in terms of how authentic podcasts are a rich source of cultural and pragmatic information, and when students learn how to find podcasts of interest to them, they are likely to become more motivated and autonomous learners. The issue of how to avoid potentially offensive materials is also touched upon. Finally, this chapter outlines activities that can be done in class and out, keeping in mind potential curricular- and time-related restrictions and giving suggestions for how the above-mentioned skills can be targeted, as well as vocabulary building, collaboration, and pronunciation practice.


According a to a certain position formulated within the philosophical school of post-structuralism, attempts to reconstruct forms of consciousness are themselves textual fabrications, and should be relinquished in favour of other, more 'textual' forms of analysis. This paper argues that phenomenologists should not reject this critique outright, for it compels them to think more carefully about the appropriateness of particular terminologies for the representation and comprehension of particular life-worlds. To this end, the vocabulary of Maurice Merleau-Ponty is delineated and considered as to its appropriateness for the study of sportive lifeworlds in particular, and that of soccer play more particularly. A Merleau-Pontian analysis of the latter is offered, and it is contended that whilst certain problems are attendant upon its use, it nonetheless stands as a vital resource for understanding such a form of activity.


On average, women have a menstrual period every 28 days with bleeding (menstruation) lasting approximately four to seven days. During this time, the muscles of the uterus contract in response to hormone-like substances called prostaglandins, produced by the lining of the uterus. The levels of the prostaglandins increase prior to menstruation, and peak at the start of the menses. The levels decline again as a woman menstruates, resulting in less uterine discomfort or cramps after the first few days of the menstrual period.


Abstract. A regional air quality simulation framework including the Weather Research and Forecasting modeling system (WRF), the Community Multi-scale Air Quality modeling system (CMAQ), and precursor emissions to simulate tropospheric ozone over South and East Asia is introduced. Concentrations of tropospheric ozone and related species simulated by the framework are validated by comparing with observation data of surface monitoring, ozonesondes, and satellites obtained in 2010. The simulation demonstrates acceptable performance on tropospheric ozone over South and East Asia at regional scale. Future energy consumption, carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions in 2030 under three future scenarios are estimated. One of the scenarios assumes a business-as-usual (BAU) pathway, and other two scenarios consider implementation of additional energy and environmental strategies to reduce energy consumption, CO2, NOx, and VOC emissions in China and India. Future surface ozone under these three scenarios is predicted by the simulation. The simulation indicates future surface ozone significantly increases around India for a whole year and around northeastern China in summer. NOx is a main driver on significant seasonal increase of surface ozone, whereas VOC as well as increasing background ozone and methane is also an important factor on annual average of surface ozone in East Asia. Warmer weather around India is also preferable for significant increase of surface ozone. Additional energy and environmental strategies assumed in future scenarios are expected to be effective to reduce future surface ozone over South and East Asia.


Synaptic change is a costly resource, particularly for brain structures that have a high demand of synaptic plasticity. For example, building memories of object positions requires efficient use of plasticity resources since objects can easily change their location in space and yet we can memorize object locations. But how should a neural circuit ideally be set up to integrate two input streams (object location and identity) in case the overall synaptic changes should be minimized during ongoing learning? This letter provides a theoretical framework on how the two input pathways should ideally be specified. Generally the model predicts that the information-rich pathway should be plastic and encoded sparsely, whereas the pathway conveying less information should be encoded densely and undergo learning only if a neuronal representation of a novel object has to be established. As an example, we consider hippocampal area CA1, which combines place and object information. The model thereby provides a normative account of hippocampal rate remapping, that is, modulations of place field activity by changes of local cues. It may as well be applicable to other brain areas (such as neocortical layer V) that learn combinatorial codes from multiple input streams.


Though international criminal justice has developed into a flourishing judicial system over the last two decades, scholars have neglected institutional design and procedure questions. International criminal-procedure scholarship has developed in isolation from its domestic counterpart but could learn much realism from it. Given its current focus on atrocities like genocide, international criminal law's main purpose should be not only to inflict retribution, but also to restore wounded communities by bringing the truth to light. The international justice system needs more ideological balance, more stable career paths, and civil-service expertise. It also needs to draw on the domestic experience of federalism to cultivate cooperation with national authorities and to select fewer cases for international prosecution. Revised plea bargaining and sentencing rules could learn from domestic lessons and pitfalls, husbanding scarce resources and minimizing haggling while still buying needed cooperation. Finally, in blending adversarial and inquisitorial systems, international criminal justice has jettisoned too many safeguards of either one. It needs to reform discovery, speedy-trial rules, witness preparation, cross-examination, and victims' rights in light of domestic experience. Just as international criminal law can benefit from domestic realism, domestic law could incorporate more international idealism and accountability, creating healthy political pressures to discipline and publicize enforcement decisions.


This study extends the view that formal contracts and relational governance function as complements rather than as substitutes. We investigate how specific characteristics of service level agreements (SLAs) impact relational governance in information technology outsourcing relationships. Eleven contractual elements (categorized into three SLA characteristics: foundation, change, and governance characteristics) are hypothesized to act as complements of three relational governance attributes: relational norms, harmonious conflict resolution, and mutual dependence. Data for the study were collected through a survey of South Korean IT executives. Results of the study support the fundamental proposition of complementarity between formal contracts and relational governance, and indicate that well-structured SLAs have significant positive influence on the various aspects of relational governance in IT outsourcing relationships. However, the study also reveals that change characteristics of SLAs may act as a substitute for relational governance as these characteristics were found to dampen the level of trust and commitment through moderation effects. Overall, the findings support the proposition that well-developed SLAs not only provide a way to measure the service provider's performance, but also enable effective management of outsourcing engagements through the development of partnership-style relationships with high levels of trust and commitment.


The term 'translation' has come under increased pressure in recent times from a number of different disciplinary directions (e.g. Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Comparative and World Literature) including from within Translation Studies itself (Gentzler, 2011, Bassnett, 2012). Its default meaning of linguistic and cultural transfer from language A to language B or from 'source' to 'target' text has been interrogated in the light of a nexus of arguably related phenomena: the apparent deterritorialization (James, 2008) or relocation of English (Saraceni, 2010) and the rise of English as a lingua franca; an increasingly translingual orientation to language practices (Canagarajah, 2013) and the construction of social and literary identities (Kellman, 2000; Steinitz 2013).

 Against the backdrop of shifting conceptions of translation,this chapter will focus on the various uses to which translation is put in the work of Chinese-born writer and film-maker, Xiaolu Guo. While reference will be made to her 2007 novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers in which she playfully represents the sometimes painful process of language acquisition, the chapter will concentrate on her 2014 work, I Am China, a novel in which translation plays a key role in driving the plot, serving as a vehicle of both critique and invention.


Language is recognized as an instrument of communication and thought. Under the shadow of prevailing investigation of language as a communicative means, its function as a tool for thinking has long been neglected in empirical research, vis-a-vis philosophical discussions. Language manifests itself differently when there is no interlocutor to communicate and interact. How is it similar and how does it differ in these two situations—communication and thought? Soliloquy in Japanese and English analyzes experimentally-obtained soliloquy data in Japanese and in English and explores the potential utility of such data for delving into this uncharted territory. It deals with five topics in which elimination from discourse of an addressee is particularly relevant and significant. Four are derived from Japanese: the sentence-final particles ne and yo , deixis and anaphora, gendered speech, linguistic politeness; the fifth topic is the use of the second person pronoun you in soliloquy in English.


In this paper, we synthesized mixed-cation [HC(NH2)2]x[CH3NH3]1−xPbI3 (FAxMA1−xPbI3) (x = 0.8, 0.6, 0.4, 0.2) perovskite nanostructures through a simple solution method. The morphology and crystal structure of the FAxMA1−xPbI3 nanostructures are measured by field emission scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and powder X-ray diffraction (XRD). The temperature-dependent photoluminescence (PL) of FAxMA1−xPbI3 nanostructures is investigated; the integrated PL intensity exhibits an exponential decrease with the increase of temperature. An abnormal redshift of the center PL emission wavelength due to orthorhombic–tetragonal phase transition in the transitional temperature region around 150 K is observed from the temperature-dependent PL; the center PL emission wavelength shows continuous blue-shift in the pure orthorhombic phase and tetragonal phase. In addition, the exciton binding energy of FAxMA1−xPbI3 nanostructures was obtained by analysing the PL intensity decay. The exciton binding energy decreases when the FA/MA ratio approaches 1 : 1. The low Urbach energy of ∼25 meV was fitted from the absorption spectra. These results on optical properties indicate the advantage of FAxMA1−xPbI3 in solar cell devices.


This is a pocket-sized key to a guide which classifies the three major felonies - murder, arson and sexual assault, based upon the motivation of the offender. The guide attempts to standardize the language and terminology used throughout the criminal justice system. It should provide police officers, detectives, homicide investigators, and other law enforcement personnel, in any size community, access to the same information as used by the FBI to coordinate their investigations. The guide forms the basis of contemporary investigative "profiling", the acclaimed strategy enebling law enforcement personnel to solve a crime by generating a profile of the suspect. Drawing from such disciplines as nursing, psychiatry, and psychology, each of the three crime classification groups reflect current relevant research on actual criminal cases. Each classification includes an in-depth case study, which analyses an actual crime, giving users examples of specific crime scene characteristics to look for. The CCM will facilitate communication within criminal justice and mental health professionals. Furthermore, it develops a database for investigative research.


The concerns of the people, whose experiences are explored in this book, rarely make it through to the academic discourse and political praxis in Central and Eastern Europe. In the public discourse and in many sociological accounts, manual workers tend to be represented as disoriented victims of post-socialist transformation. But how can such an approach explain the diversity of the actual ways of coping with social change adopted by workers in the new capitalist reality? To address this question the author turns to workers themselves, to their life strategies and personal experiences. He reconstructs the processes of adapting to and resisting structural changes in working-class milieus in one of the industrial regions of Poland (Silesia). Through this in-depth analysis of 166 personal interviews with blue-collar workers, Mrozowicki reaches general conclusions


This thesis involves the computation of aerodynamically generated sound using a source-extraction based coupling approach.

In the present coupling method, the unsteady aerodynamic calculation and the calculation of sound propagation are separated artificially. A set of acoustic perturbation equations is derived by decomposing all flow variables into their dominant part and their fluctuating part, and neglecting some small-magnitude terms, and further simplified into a set of isentropic perturbation equations. Accompanying the derivation of the acoustic perturbation equations, a new extracting formulation for the acoustic source terms contained in the unsteady flow field is proposed. The acoustic source terms required in solving the acoustic perturbation equations are computed numerically from the time-dependent solutions of the unsteady flow field.

In the simulation of the unsteady flow, the unsteady Reynolds-Averaged-Navier-Stokes equations (RANS) based cell-centred finite volume method is mainly used. A large eddy simulation (LES) technique is also employed in the investigation of one application case. A powerful and efficient high order dispersion-relation-preserving (DRP) finite difference scheme with fully staggered-grid variable arrangements is implemented in the solution of the acoustic perturbation equations. The performance of a set of radiation boundary conditions is examined for various background flows. A suitable and efficient coupling procedure, in conjunction with the source-extraction formulation, is designed between the cell-centred finite volume based CFD solver and the fully-staggered finite difference based acoustic solver.

A range of acoustic model problems are investigated with the purpose of assessing the feasibility and accuracy of the source-extraction formulation associated with the coupling procedure. These model problems include wave propagation, reflection, interaction, and scattering, of acoustic pulse with/without background mean flow. The accuracy of computational results from these model problems is very encouraging when reasonable computational mesh sizes and time steps are used in both the CFD solver and the acoustic solver.

Several applications of the source-extraction based coupling method to some more complex cases have also been examined. These cases are: 1) generation and propagation of sound by a series of vortices impinging on a finite thin flat plate; 2) generation and propagation of sound from a subsonic flow past a finite thin flat plate with a small angle of attack; 3) generation and near field radiation of aerodynamic sound from an low speed, laminar flow over a two-dimensional automobile door cavity; 4) flow-induced noise from an open cavity turbulent flow. These application calculations have demonstrated preliminarily the capability and potential of the new source extraction formulation for solving more realistic aeroacoustic problems.


Surprisingly, whole genome analyses of complex human neurological and psychiatric disorders have revealed that many genetic risk factors are likely to influence gene expression rather than alter protein sequences. Previous analyses of neurological diseases have shown that genetic variability in gene expression levels of deposited proteins influence disease risk. With this background, we have embarked on a comprehensive project to determine the effects of common genetic variability on whole genome gene expression.


Fidel Castro's government actively suppressed religion in Cuba for decades. Yet in recent years Cuba has experienced a dramatic flourishing of religious life. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Cuban government has increased religious liberty by opening political space for religious belief and practice. In 1991, the Cuban Communist Party removed atheism as a prerequisite for membership. One year later, Cuba amended its constitution to deem itself a secular state rather than an atheist state. Since that time, religious life in Cuba has grown exponentially. All religious denominations, from the Catholic Church to the Afro-Cuban religious societies to the Jewish and Muslim communities, report increased participation in religious rites. Religious social service organizations like Caritas have opened in Cuba, providing crucial social services to Cubans of all religious faiths. These religious institutions are assisted by groups from the United States traveling legally to Cuba on religious visas and carrying vital medicine, aid, and religious paraphernalia. What explains the Cuban government's sudden accommodation of religion? Drawing on original field research in Havana, I argue that the Cuban government has strategically increased religious liberty for political gain. Loopholes in U.S. sanctions policies have allowed aid to flow into Cuba from the United States via religious groups, tying Cuba's religious marketplace to its emerging economic markets. The Cuban government has learned from the experience of similar religious awakenings in post-Communist states in Eastern Europe and has shrewdly managed the workings of religious organizations while permitting individual spiritual revival. By allowing greater public expression of religious faith, the Cuban government has opened the door to religious pluralism on the island while closely monitoring religious groups to prevent political opposition. As the Obama Administration has already begun to ease U.S. sanctions on Cuba, these recent changes in Cuban law may allow the U.S. to promote political change in Cuba through religious civil society institutions.


The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is a market mechanism that was created by an international regime, but its successful implementation relies on effective CDM governance within its host countries. What kinds of carbon governance patterns are appropriate for reaching the goals of the Kyoto Protocol? Taking China—the leading CDM host country worldwide—as a case study, this article examines the patterns of Chinese carbon governance. The hypothesis brought forward is that the Chinese government is apt in utilizing the international market mechanism CDM for its own priorities by adding own national requirements. The dominating carbon governance pattern is state regulation, while private actors from the business community and from civil society play only a minor role. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the Chinese variety of carbon governance for the post-2012 climate regime.


Intercomparison of nets commonly used for mesozooplankton sampling in the Black and Mediterranean seas was attempted within SESAME (Southern European Seas: Assessing and Modelling Ecosystem Changes) project. Five nets were compared: three Juday nets equipped with 150 μm, 180 μm and 200 μm mesh size, Nansen net (100 μm mesh size) and WP2 (200 μm mesh size). Replicated samples were collected at one station in the western Black Sea offshore waters in April 2009. Collected samples were analyzed at species level (except for meroplankton), stages (for copepods) and size length. A decrease of total abundance values was observed with increasing mesh size, due to the significantly higher numbers of animals smaller than 1 mm in the samples obtained by fine mesh size than with coarser nets. Few comparisons were revealed significant for the abundance of animals with 1-2 mm length, while no significance was detected for specimens larger than 2 mm. The above differences resulted in discripancies between nets regarding species and stages composition. Biomass values did not differ significantly between nets, due to the strong contribution to total biomass of the large animals fraction ( Calanus euxinus) . The smallest and the largest animals revealed high variability between replicates collected by Nansen, Juday- 200 μm and WP2 nets. Correction factors were calculated for the conversion of abundance values between each couple of nets. The detected differences between nets regarding the abundance and biomass, the community taxonomic composition and size structure, as well as the estimated correction factors, provide useful information for the harmonization of data obtained by the above nets in the Black Sea.


Within the framework of the new environmental history, this article
focuses on the interaction between historical human societies and a given
natural environment. Specifically, we study the spatial relationships between
wetlands, Roman roads, and contemporary livestock trails, with the aim of
verifying the role of wetlands as a support of territory planning since antiquity
to the present. The documentation used includes geographical and ecological
manuscripts together with ancient sources (texts, archaeology). Our
results demonstrate an overlapping that remarks the importance of wetlands
in the study area's territorial ordering during various historical moments. This
result also opens the possibility of applying this reality to others parts of the
Mediterranean region with the same climatological conditions and a similar
history. The clear heritage value of the wetlands are compelling enough to
take the necessary protection measures for their conservation in the face of
the growing threat of their deterioration and disappearance.


Anthropological Perspectives on their Social and Medical Treatment

The question of the social treatment of the body and its transformations emerges in relation to issues of varying types (economic, therapeutic, ideological, cultural, aesthetic,commercial, technical). This book examines the various ways of managing bodily symptoms or transformations and the social stakes and systems of knowledge which relate to them, both on the medical and social level. The contributions provide analyses that concern a broad range of countries. Through the themes it tackles and the subjects it examines, this book reveals both the universal nature of the questions it asks, and the evolution of the objects and approaches of anthropology itself.


The deposition behavior of fine sediment is an important phenomenon, which remains unclear to engineers concerned about reservoir sedimentation. In the present case bed level changes, suspended sediment concentrations, and flow velocities were measured in a quasi continuous way. The goal of the study was to investigate the interaction between turbulent flow structures in rectangular shallow basin, suspended particles, bed forms and other instabilities by using several measurement techniques. The results help to understand the flow mechanism and the sediment exchange process. The prediction of sediment behavior lies in the prediction of flow behavior and the results are very sensitive to the geometry and the boundary conditions. The deposition pattern is obviously strongly influenced by the inlet jet deviation and, in turn, material deposits are able to change later the pattern of the flow structure. The volume of the deposited sediments reached 50% of the total reservoir volume after 18.0 hours. The reservoir reaches to the equilibrium after 16.0 hours at which the suspended sediment release efficiency reaches 100%.


Point clouds are an important type of geometric data and have widespread use in computer graphics and vision. However, learning representations for point clouds is particularly challenging due to their nature as being an unordered collection of points irregularly distributed in 3D space. Graph convolution, a generalization of the convolution operation for data defined over graphs, has been recently shown to be very successful at extracting localized features from point clouds in supervised or semi-supervised tasks such as classification or segmentation. This paper studies the unsupervised problem of a generative model exploiting graph convolution. We focus on the generator of a GAN and define methods for graph convolution when the graph is not known in advance as it is the very output of the generator. The proposed architecture learns to generate localized features that approximate graph embeddings of the output geometry. We also study the problem of defining an upsampling layer in the graph-convolutional generator, such that it learns to exploit a self-similarity prior on the data distribution to sample more effectively.


Characterization of patterns of animal movement is a major challenge in ecology with applications to conservation, biological invasions and pest monitoring. Brownian random walks, and diffusive flux as their mean field counterpart, provide one framework in which to consider this problem. However, it remains subject to debate and controversy. This study presents a test of the diffusion framework using movement data obtained from controlled experiments. Walking beetles (Tenebrio molitor) were released in an open circular arena with a central hole and the number of individuals falling from the arena edges was monitored over time. These boundary counts were compared, using curve fitting, to the predictions of a diffusion model. The diffusion model is solved precisely, without using numerical simulations. We find that the shape of the curves derived from the diffusion model is a close match to those found experimentally. Furthermore, in general, estimates of the total population obtained from the relevant solution of the diffusion equation are in excellent agreement with the experimental population. Estimates of the dispersal rate of individuals depend on how accurately the initial release distribution is incorporated into the model. We therefore show that diffusive flux is a very good approximation to the movement of a population of Tenebrio molitor beetles. As such, we suggest that it is an adequate theoretical/modelling framework for ecological studies that account for insect movement, although it can be context specific. An immediate practical application of this can be found in the interpretation of trap counts, in particular for the purpose of pest monitoring.


Despite its importance for policy purposes (including climate policy and the energy transition), evidence about the price elasticity of natural gas demand in the residential sector is very limited and based on inference from situations with modest variation in prices. We focus on a locale and time when price changes were extreme and presumably salient to consumers, namely Ukraine between 2013 and 2017. We exploit the tariff reforms and detailed micro-level household consumption records to estimate the price elasticity of the demand for natural gas. To isolate behavior, attention is restricted to those households that made no structural energy-efficiency upgrades to their homes, and thus kept the stock of gas-using capital fixed. We further examine the short-run elasticity by restricting the sample to a few months before and after the tariff changes. Our results suggest that under extreme price changes, households are capable of reducing consumption, even without installing insulation or making any other structural modifications to their homes. The price elasticity is about -0.16. Wealthier households, people living in multifamily buildings, and heavy users have more inelastic demands. Households reduced consumption even when they received "subsidies,†namely lump-sum government assistance, suggesting that when the price signal is sufficiently strong, lump-sum transfers have only a minimal effect on consumption. We also find some evidence that the stronger the salience, the stronger the responsiveness to price, although this effect is modest and may partly overlap with that of income or baseline consumption. Our data also suggest that the consumers with the lowest uptake of energy efficiency improvements might be those who—by necessity or through skills—are the most productive at reducing energy use through behaviors.


Recent research examining race-based sentencing has reported anomalous results. It has been argued by Heck (1981) and Peterson and Hagan (1984) that these anomalies would not be perceived as such given a greater sensitivity to the "changing conceptions of race" in American society. This study performs a limited test of the sexual stratification hypothesis which asserts that various degrees of opprobrium are attached to sexual assaults depending on the racial composition of the offender/victim dyad. This hypothesis is tested with an additive and a race-specific model. The additive model fails to reveal any significant differences in severity of penalties based on either offender or victim race. The race-specific model reveals that significantly harsher penalties were imposed on blacks who sexually assaulted whites than were imposed on blacks who sexually assaulted blacks. The additive model suppresses this differential sentencing severity because blacks who assaulted blacks received the most lenient penalties, thus moving the black grand mean to one which was not significantly different from the white grand mean. Thus, both differential leniency and harshness are possible for blacks depending on the race of the victim.


After the ICO frenzy in 2017 and the turmoil of cryptocurrencies in 2018, will 2019/20 be the year of wisdom where regulators finally accept that it is neither desirable to leave this sphere unregulated nor is it recommended to artificially push it into legal categories that have been conceived for a centralized world and are not necessarily adapted to a distributed environment? Facebook's release of its white paper on its native currency Libra on 18 June 2019, which has already provoked a lot of reaction from regulators, is likely to be a wake-up call for regulating this evolving environment.

But regulating such an evolving and borderless environment is not easy. Fintech and particularly blockchain have a tendency to challenge the scale, scope and the speed of traditional financial system. Through blockchain it is now possible to tokenize almost any asset or right and to transfer and trade it easily. The scope of finance broadens and its borders become blurred. This poses particular challenges for regulators. On the one hand, they need to grasp this evolving environment and its implications for investor protection and financial stability. Regulating this continuously-developing and still quite recent ecosystem too quickly risks hampering its evolution and potential. Regulating it in a disparate way at a national level might favor regulatory arbitrage. On the other hand, regulators cannot let this environment evolve without scrutiny and wake up someday to a private currency like the one considered by Facebook. Furthermore, there are already existing risks favored by the anonymity or at least pseudonimity of crypto-assets, like anti-money laundering (AML) issues, combatting the financing of terrorism (CFT) or general crime, that need to be addressed. However, the ubiquitous nature of blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) poses some challenges for regulators. Thus, the regulatory approach is to target the gatekeepers who allow physical and legal persons to access this environment. Most of the time these service providers are easy to identify.

This is precisely what France has tried to do. For better or for worse, France for once did not wait for a wake up call. It enacted a new genre of regulation through a law voted on 22 May 2019 (the 'PACTE' law). Putting to one side the preferences of the European regulator, France decided to provide for an optional visa for Initial Coin Offerings ("ICO") and a mix of mandatory registration for some intermediaries coupled with a voluntary license for all intermediaries. This optional regime (or so it seems) is a new type of regulation: neither totally soft law, nor a default rule, nor totally hard law. Most provisions require an opt-in but once the option is exercised, there are constraining rules that will apply. This carrot and stick method smartly combines a seemingly optional setup with some very persuasive incentives, which in practice makes it anything but voluntary. But the devil is very often in the detail: a smart mix of voluntary and mandatory requirements can only be successful if the advantages outweigh the constraints. The success or failure of the French initiative will also depend on enforcement and in this regard some obstacles still seem to pave the way.


This chapter seeks to distinguish between intellectual property rights the existing legal mechanisms for intellectual property protection – and the right to intellectual property. The right to intellectual property is a human right. Intellectual property rights, instrumental in nature and codified in legal frameworks around the world, are not. Rather, intellectual property rights as they exist are both over- and under-inclusive in their protection of the right to intellectual property. However, the right to intellectual property exists for everyone, and a human rights perspective on IP should change the framework by which we evaluate and construct the legal system, expose the flaws of a system designed to primarily protect corporate interests, and present possibilities for a more inclusive approach.The analysis begins in Part l with a discussion of the human right to the moral and material interests of creators, as that right has been embodied in an international human rights framework over time. In Part 2, I discuss intellectual property rights - their importance and relevance to the human rights detailed in Article l5(1)(c) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Creations of the mind are not only fundamental to personhood and community, but they serve as a primary economic vehicle on the global stage and have the potential to facilitate the ability of creators to access an adequate standard of living in remote areas and disadvantaged communities. In Part 3, I discuss General Comment 17 of the CESCR, which gives guidance and effect to the human rights provisions found in Article 15(1)(c). I conclude that for the rights in Article 15(l)(c) to be realized, they must be perceived as a fundamental aspect of intellectual property law and policy. Protection and respect for the moral and material interests of creators, the right to intellectual property, is a human right; and as such, human rights discourse must inform intellectual property policy. This conclusion has implications both for the intellectual property law community and the human rights community: to forget that human creators are at the centre of scientific and artistic innovation works to the detriment of effective IP policy; to avoid the legal mechanism by which the rights of creators are protected works to the detriment of human rights.


This paper highlights the prejudicial effect of the rule within the rules of the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF), which allows this fund to create a "divorce debt" for its member when the court has ordered that part of such a member's pension interest be paid over to his or her spouse. I argue that this debt is in fact a loan which is provided to the member, which he or she would be expected to pay when he or she exits the fund, with interest. This is despite the fact that the rules of the GEPF do not permit the granting of loans to its members. I argue that the creation of such a loan has the effect of diminishing the GEPF's member's benefits, and thus threaten his or her social security, and can lead to the member becoming unable to provide for himself or herself when he or she reaches retirement age.


Dispersal distance in mammals is a fundamental information for several ecological and conservation applications. Although dispersal can depend on many intrinsic and extrinsic factors, in recent years many studies have shown that it scales with body size and home range area. However, the role of further ecological correlates to distance travelled is still unclear and the predictive models proposed so far have suffered from small sample size and lack of error estimates. This reduces the practical relevance of the models for ecological and conservation applications. We conducted a comprehensive meta-analysis on 327 studies on the dispersal of 164 mammal species, and performed linear and non-linear regression analyses to explore the relationships of body size and home range area with dispersal distance. We tested the effect of various life history traits and ecological factors on the relationships and performed a sensitivity analysis to evaluate the robustness of the models to sample size. The linear relationships of both home range and body size with dispersal distance were influenced by various life history traits and ecological factors. We developed allometric functions to estimate species dispersal distance based on different predictors and life history traits. Linear models representing the relationship between dispersal distance and body size or home range area received good support; however logistic models better approximates both relationships. Despite receiving less support than a logistic curve, a linear model between dispersal and home range is a good approximation for applicative purposes. Sensitivity analysis showed that our results are robust to subsampling of the original dataset until a sample of 40 species. Our empirical models have the potential to improve theoretical and applied population biology studies by extending the applicability and improving the accuracy of dispersal distance estimation to a large number of mammals.


Economics and ethics are both valuable tools for analyzing the behavior and actions of human beings and institutions. Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, considered them two sides of the same coin, but since economics was formalized and mathematicised in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the fields have largely followed separate paths.

The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics provides a timely and thorough survey of the various ways ethics can, does, and should inform economic theory and practice. The first part of the book, Foundations, explores how the most prominent schools of moral philosophy relate to economics; asks how morals relevant to economic behavior may have evolved; and explains how various approaches to economics incorporate ethics into their work. The second part, Applications, looks at the ethics of commerce, finance, and markets; uncovers the moral dilemmas involved with making decisions regarding social welfare, risk, and harm to others; and explores how ethics is relevant to major topics within economics, such as health care and the environment.

With esteemed contributors from economics and philosophy, The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics is a resource for scholars in both disciplines and those in related fields. It highlights the close relationship between ethics and economics in the past while and lays a foundation for further integration going forward.


This paper assesses the impact of the SADA-Northern Ghana Millennium Village Project (MVP) on multidimensional poverty using dashboard and index approaches. Using a unique, large dataset that spans five years and contains data on multiple welfare indicators, we estimate the impact of MVP on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and on the global multidimensional poverty index (global MPI). We find that the project had a limited impact on the MDGs and yet a positive impact on the global MPI. We assess the robustness of the impact of MVP on the global MPI, and we conclude that it was largely driven by the sensitivity of the index to changes in a few MDG indicators. We conclude that the MVP had a limited impact on welfare and that the global MPI should be used with caution in the evaluation of development programmes.


Long sequences of rainfall at fine spatial and temporal detail are increasingly required, not only for hydrological studies, but also to provide inputs for models of crop growth, landfills, tailings dams, liquid waste disposal on land and other environmentally sensitive projects. Rainfall information derived from rain gauges, radar or satellites may not individually be adequate to meet the detail required by hydrological models or other water resource studies. Therefore, a suitable technique is required to estimate rainfall at finer spatial and temporal resolutions. Different techniques have been developed to merge rainfall information from rain gauges, radar and satellites in order to obtain the 'best' estimate of the 'true' rainfall field. However, the length of the radar and satellite estimated rainfall records is currently limited. In this study, the mean areal merged rainfall, derived from rain gauges and radar, was estimated for 26 subcatchments in the Liebenbergsvlei catchment, which is a research catchment, in South Africa for the period when radar data were available. By using the relationships derived between the merged rainfall and rain-gauge data, improved subcatchment rainfall may be estimated using the historical data from rain gauges located in and around the subcatchments. In most of the subcatchments the relationship between the daily mean areal merged rainfall of the subcatchment and the daily rainfall data from rain gauges is strong (R2 > = 0.5). The relationship between the daily rain gauges and mean areal merged rainfall of the subcatchments is used to adjust the historical rainfall data from the daily rain gauges in order to estimate long sequences of subcatchment rainfall for input to continuous simulation models (CSMs).


We propose a method for fast, deterministic resonator reset based on tunable dissipative modes. The dissipator is based on a Josephson junction with relatively low quality factor. When the dissipator is tuned into resonance with a high quality microwave resonator, resonator photons are absorbed by the dissipator at a rate orders of magnitude faster than the resonator relaxation rate. We determine the optimal parameters for realization of the tunable dissipator, and examine application of the dissipator to removing spurious photon population in the qubit readout resonator in circuit quantum electrodynamics. We show that even in the nonlinear large photon occupation regime, this enhanced resonator decay rate can be attained by appropriate modulation of the dissipator frequency.


This creative project provides a vital interplay between literary and visual art in order to challenge oppressive patriarchal ideologies and offers an empowering image of African women's sexuality. First, the literary component presents a short story about the life of Nneka, a knowledgeable African female sexual subject. Nneka uses her knowledge to challenge two major patriarchal ideologies—the silencing of female sexual desires in public spaces and the normative female sexual submissiveness status. Overall, she is an empowering figure who is self-assured and makes rational choices about her own sexuality. Second, through the use of photography, this project further incorporates the notion of challenging oppressive patriarchal principles. This visual component embraces the transformative strategy of "stripping away." The act of stripping oneself clothes-less functions as an aggressive opposition—especially if it is done in public by a woman subject. For instance, a naked female in public—who is radically celebrating her sexuality—directly challenges patriarchal principles that restricts the female sexuality to the private space of the bedroom. In this sense, the act of "stripping away" is confrontational, but also liberating and empowering. In short, the act of "stripping away" calls for the removal of dominant thought, which leads to a state of nakedness that draws out new ways of thinking. Together, these two mediums show how African women negotiate and challenge patriarchal spaces that restrict their sexuality, and in turn, express sexual agency.


This article critically examines the concept of 'engagement' as it has emerged within two distinct bodies of literature in the fields of art education and the psychology of education. In order to grapple with the heterogeneous nature of this literature, a meta-narrative review was conducted whereby recurring narratives from various sub-fields including special educational needs, gallery education and human development, were systematically identified and analysed in order to clarify the diversity of ways in which the concept of engagement is used within different research traditions. Areas of overlap between the ways in which the concept is understood and treated within these various texts were examined, as well as a consideration of the potential for any tensions to arise between them. It will be argued that the gap between the manner in which learner engagement is conceived and employed within these disciplines is not as wide as one might presume and that rather than these being incongruous with one another, in many respects, the approaches adopted within each discipline are complementary. It will be suggested that with further disciplinary exchange, especially with respect to the role of educational artefacts and social signals arising during the learning process, wider scope arises for advancing our understanding of learner engagement.


Just Say No to Microsoft begins by tracing Microsoft's rise from tiny software startup to monopolistic juggernaut and explains how the company's practices over the years have discouraged innovation, stunted competition, and helped foster an environment ripe for viruses, bugs, and hackers. Readers learn how they can dump Microsoft products--even the Windows operating system--and continue to be productive. The book also shows how to work successfully and seamlessly with computers and people who are still hooked on Microsoft software. Includes full explanations of alternate operating systems, such as Linux and Mac, and outlines various software applications that can replace the familiar Microsoft products.


ABSTRACT MAP2K4 encodes a dual-specificity kinase (mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase 4, or MKK4) that is mutated in a variety of human malignancies, but the biochemical properties of the mutant kinases and their roles in tumorigenesis have not been fully elucidated. Here we showed that 8 out of 11 cancer-associated MAP2K4 mutations reduce MKK4 protein stability or impair its kinase activity. On the basis of findings from bioinformatic studies on human cancer cell lines with homozygous MAP2K4 loss, we posited that MKK4 functions as a tumor suppressor in lung adenocarcinomas that develop in mice owing to expression of mutant Kras and Tp53. Conditional Map2k4 inactivation in the bronchial epithelium of mice had no discernible effect alone but increased the multiplicity and accelerated the growth of incipient lung neoplasias induced by oncogenic Kras. MKK4 suppressed the invasion and metastasis of Kras-Tp53-mutant lung adenocarcinoma cells. MKK4 deficiency increased peroxisomal proliferator-activated receptor γ2 (PPARγ2) expression through noncanonical MKK4 substrates, and PPARγ2 enhanced tumor cell invasion. We conclude that Map2k4 functions as a tumor suppressor in lung adenocarcinoma and inhibits tumor cell invasion by decreasing PPARγ2 levels.


The significant increase in the world population age, 47 years in 1950 to 73 years in 2020, resulted in an increase in aging related diseases as well as in degenerative diseases. In consequence, researchers have been focusing in the development of new therapies, with a particular emphasis on the use of compounds with antioxidant properties, namely phytochemicals, such as polyphenols and carotenoids. Several in vitro and in vivo studies have demonstrated the phytochemicals antioxidant capacity. Their use is broad, as they can be part of food supplements, medicine and cosmetics. The health benefit of antioxidant phytochemicals is an indisputable question. Phytochemical properties are highly influenced by the natural matrix as well as by extraction process, which have a key role. There are several extraction methods that can be applied depending on the chemical properties of the bioactive compounds. There is a wide range of solvents with different polarities, which allows a selective extraction of the desired target family of compounds. Greener technologies have the advantage to reduce extraction time and solvent quantity in comparison to the most traditional methods. This chapter will focus on the different green extraction strategies related to the recovery of antioxidant bioactive compounds from natural sources, their nutritional and health potential.


UNLABELLED
: Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology has revealed that microRNAs (miRNAs) are capable of exhibiting frequent differences from their corresponding mature reference sequences, generating multiple variants: the isoforms of miRNAs (isomiRs). These isomiRs mainly originate via the imprecise and alternative cleavage during the pre-miRNA processing and post-transcriptional modifications that influence miRNA stability, their sub-cellular localization and target selection. Although several tools for the identification of isomiR have been reported, no bioinformatics resource dedicated to gather isomiRs from public NGS data and to provide functional analysis of these isomiRs is available to date. Thus, a free online database, IsomiR Bank has been created to integrate isomiRs detected by our previously published algorithm CPSS. In total, 2727 samples (Small RNA NGS data downloaded from ArrayExpress) from eight species (Arabidopsis thaliana, Drosophila melanogaster, Danio rerio, Homo sapiens, Mus musculus, Oryza sativa, Solanum lycopersicum and Zea mays) are analyzed. At present, 308 919 isomiRs from 4706 mature miRNAs are collected into IsomiR Bank. In addition, IsomiR Bank provides target prediction and enrichment analysis to evaluate the effects of isomiRs on target selection.

AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION
IsomiR Bank is implemented in PHP/PERL + MySQL + R format and can be freely accessed at http://mcg.ustc.edu.cn/bsc/isomir/

CONTACTS
: email@example.com or email@example.com

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION
Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


IZA DP No. 14299 APRIL 2021 More Than a Ban on Smoking? Behavioural Spillovers of Smoking Bans in the Workplace* Are workplace smoking bans (WSBs) more than a ban on smoking? We study whether WSBs influence smoking cessation and exert behavioural spillover effects on (i) a number of health behaviours, and (ii) on individuals not directly affected by the bans. Drawing upon quasi-experimental evidence from Russia (a country where about half of the population smokes), which introduced a WBS (in addition to a smoking ban on public places), and adopting a difference-in-differences (DiD) strategy, which compares employed individuals (exposed to the work and public place ban) to those unemployed (exposed only to the ban in public places), we document three sets of findings. First, unlike previous studies (focusing on smoking bans in public places), we find robust evidence that WSBs increase smoking cessation in 2.9 percentage points (pp) among men. Second, we find that upon the WSB, quitters are less likely to use alcohol (6.7pp reduction among men and 3.5 pp among women), reduce their alcohol consumption (10 percent among men) and increase their physical activity (in 4.3 percentage points among men). WSBs are found to influence health behaviours of those not directly affected by the reform, such as never smokers. Our findings are consistent with a model of joint formation of health behaviours, and suggest of the needs to account for a wider set of spillover effects when estimating the welfare effect of WSBs. JEL Classification: I18, H75, L51


Wetlands are fragile, unique and important ecosystems that harbour great biodiversity. However, mammalian diversity in wetlands along the Peruvian coast is poorly known. We present data on the diversity and abundance of small mammals from four wetlands located on the central Peruvian coast: Albufera de Medio Mundo, Pantanos de Villa Wildlife Refuge, Ensenada San Antonio, and Caucato. We used conventional traps to survey rodents and mist nets combined with acoustic recording methods to survey bats. Our sampling effort totalled 4651 traps/night, 145 nets/night, and 48 hours/detector. We recorded 5 native species of rodents, 3 non-native rodents, 12 species of bats, and one marsupial. The rodent Akodon mollis and the bats Nyctinomops laticaudatus and N. macrotis are the first records for the department of Lima. The wild guinea pig is distributed along the central and southern Peruvian coast, and the presence of the Andean White-eared Opossum, Didelphis pernigra, at sea level is confirmed. The majority of wetlands we surveyed are highly impacted by non-native species, notably Mus musculus and Rattus rattus which have a high relative abundance in Pantanos de Villa and Caucato. β diversity among the four wetlands is moderate despite the relatively short distance between them. We highlight the high diversity of small native mammals in coastal wetlands and warn about the harmful impact the high relative abundance of introduced rodents can produce on the survival of native species. Furthermore, we hypothesized that native fauna reported here was present in Lima region at least throughout the Republican period. These wetlands require continuous protection, monitoring and implementation of restoration measures to ensure the conservation of their biota.


In the present work, studies were carried out on preparation and evaluation of ternary inclusion complexes of Simvastatin with a view to improve its Aqueous solubility, Dissolution rate and Oral Bioavailability. The inclusion complexes of Simvastatin were prepared by kneading method using beta-cyclodextrin and hydrophilic polymers (Polyvinylpyrrolidone, Polyethylene glycol, Hydroxypropyl methylcellulose). The phase solubility studies of Simvastatin with beta-cyclodextrin and hydrophilic polymers were studied per Higuchi and Connor's method. The prepared inclusion complexes were characterized by FTIR (Fourier transform infra-red) and DSC (Differential scanning calorimetry) studies. The prepared inclusion complexes were also evaluated for uniformity of drug content and in vitro drug release.


SOMMARIO: 1. Premessa - 2. La dimensione "teorica" - 3. La dimensione "pratica" - 4. La dimensione "personale" - 5. Conclusione. T he "heretic" Piero Gobetti and the three "dimensions" of the history of the Risorgimento ABSTRACT: Piero Gobetti's "the heresy of the Risorgimento" allows to distinguish three "points of view" of the political and cultural experience of the "heretical" Gobetti, the "theoretical" one, the "practical" one and "personal" one. Three "profiles" that realized a systematic dimension, in the relationship of the Risorgimento with the "Liberal Revolution", according to a research perspective that has never been fully analyzed. A reflection that highlights the "drama of the Risorgimento", the "programmatic formulas" of "The Liberal Revolution" and Piero Gobetti's "clarity of authentic feelings" which moves on the "ground of heresy" with his "choice" of life.


It is very rare, even in degraded listening environments, that we might confuse
speech with a dog bark or vice versa, despite the fact that both are complex acoustic
signals. Despite the solid assumption of left lateralisation in speech processing from
clinical and anatomical observations, the results from brain imaging studies have been
inconsistent. One possible cause for this controversy may come from the use of
different imaging system. Using inadequate baselines, however, may bring more
critical problem. In brain imaging studies, especially when cognitive subtraction is
used, images of cognitive processes are generally derived by subtracting a control
stimulus/task from an experimental counterpart. The two stimuli/tasks to be compared
are expected to differ only in one factor/process and the difference in brain activations
is thus considered to come from the particular difference between the two. This thus
makes it difficult to find baseline stimuli/tasks that activate all but the process of
interest. By far, spectrally rotated speech stands as a most satisfying control against
intelligible speech as it is equally complex as speech but totally unintelligible.
However, the spectral rotation so far has been a total rotation regardless of the source
and the filter of sound, which are independent and heterogeneous by nature. A series of
behavioural studies performed in this thesis showed that the source rotation did not
significantly affect speech intelligibility whilst filter drastically decreased the
intelligibility. Another possibility can be different brain imaging paradigms used. With
carefully designed parametres using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI),
we confirmed that intelligible speech recruited predominantly the left superior
temporal area, replicating the results from previous positron emission tomography (PET) and fMRI studies. Since the intervention of scanner noise has been an issue in
auditory research using an MRI system, four imaging paradigms were compared and it
is concluded that a sparse sampling with 8 seconds of repetition time had a clear
advantage over longer repetition time with 16 seconds and a continuous sampling. This
paradigm was used in the study investigating the effects of channel number and
presence/absence of tonal variation on speech intelligibility. Intelligibility increased
together with increasing number of band channels and showed drastic improvement
especially in the range of 2 – 6 numbers of frequency channel bands. A brain imaging
study followed with mixed subtraction and parametric designs and revealed that the
right superior temporal gyrus responded most when pitch variation was provided in the
speech, regardless of intelligibility, unlike the pitch variation in non-speech (spectrally
rotated speech here). Increasing intelligibility with increased spectral detail showed
linear increase in percent signal change in hemodynamic response in the left superior
temporal gyrus. The current result supports a streamed hierarchical model, in which
speech comprehension occurs predominantly in the left hemisphere.


The authors consider the recent operation of the International Criminal Court (ICC), its system of funding and the jurisdictional challenges facing the Court's Prosecutor. These challenges require an in-depth analysis of the Rome Statute's funding scheme and its provisions on complementarity. A close reading of the Statute indicates that both of these areas operate in an entirely different manner when a case is referred to the Court by the Security Council, and even suggests the startling possibility that these referrals relieve the Court of the usual constraints of complementary jurisdiction. The authors therefore conclude that the ICC is best viewed as two separate courts: an independent criminal court enacted by the parties of the Rome Statute but, in the case of referrals by the Security Council under Article 13(b) of the Statute, an organ for restoring collective peace and security that transcends the classic goals of criminal law to adjudicate individual guilt.