Spring protection in karst aquifers is particularly challenging since their high complexity thwarts their characterization by traditional field investigated methods. Especially the properties of the highly conductive conduit system are often poorly known. Therefore, most studies in karst aquifers are limited to spring responses and do not give any information on spatial distributions. Spatial information is required for the implementation of spring protection methods, however. Above all, the delineation of spring catchment areas and the distributions of groundwater residence times are essential for defining protection areas and estimating the effects of contamination events.
The aim of this thesis is developing a modelling approach for the spatially distributed characterization of karst aquifers and the simulation of their groundwater residence time distributions. The main objectives during model development are determining the necessary model complexity, the kind and amount of required field data and the new information on aquifer structure and hydraulic parameters provided by the model, i.e. the contribution of the model to aquifer characterization. The simulations are divided into three modelling steps each of which focusing on a concrete simulation aim. The first aim is the delineation of spring catchment areas, the second the simulation of the velocity distribution within the conduit system and the third the spatial residence time distribution within the aquifer. The simulations are applied to the area of the Gallusquelle spring, a well-investigated field site in south-western Germany, where the results can be checked with field data. The models increase step-by-step in their complexity and parameter requirements so that the required minimum complexity for each simulation aim can be deduced.
For spring catchment delineation, the average annual spring discharge of the Gallusquelle and the hydraulic head distribution derived from 20 observation wells are successfully employed for calibration. The spring discharge of five other springs within the model area is used for checking the plausibility of the results. Regarding the modelling approach, a hybrid model is recommended explicitly representing the karst conduits. The approximate location of the conduits is required as input data, while the large-scale lateral changes in conduit cross-section can be deduced from the model.
The flow velocities in the conduit system are calibrated adding the breakthrough curves of two artificial tracer tests as objective functions. This greatly reduces the ambiguity of the model, so that not only the lateral change in conduit cross-section but also the total conduit volume can be deduced. Further, the roughness of the conduit system can be estimated with this approach. The simulation shows that the conduit roughness varies systematically throughout the conduit system of the Gallusquelle, which is necessary to take into account for reproducing the velocity distribution.
For simulating the residence time distribution, a new modelling approach is developed combining a hybrid and a double-continuum approach. This new approach is successfully applied for two process studies. It is able to simulate the groundwater ages, life expectancies and residence times in the conduit network, the fissured system and the porous matrix of karst aquifers. The approach is applied for the Gallusquelle area and shows reasonable results. However, a lack of spatially distributed field data for calibration prohibits the verification of the residence time simulation at this stage. For this, groundwater age measurements at the surrounding springs would be required. However, sensitivity studies show that groundwater residence times have the potential to assist with the derivation of aquifer thicknesses, if such measurements are available.


Abstract. Alpine ecosystems of the southern Iberian Peninsula are among the most vulnerable and the first to respond to modern climate change in southwestern Europe. While major environmental shifts have occurred over the last ∼1500 years in these alpine ecosystems, only changes in the recent centuries have led to abrupt environmental responses, but factors imposing the strongest stress have been unclear until now. To understand these environmental responses, this study, for the first time, has calibrated an algal lipid-derived temperature proxy (based on long-chain alkyl diols) to instrumental historical data extending alpine temperature reconstructions to 1500 years before present. These novel results highlight the enhanced effect of greenhouse gases on alpine temperatures during the last ∼200 years and the long-term modulating role of solar forcing. This study also shows that the warming rate during the 20th century (∼0.18 ∘C per decade) was double that of the last stages of the Little Ice Age (∼0.09 ∘C per decade), even exceeding temperature trends of the high-altitude Alps during the 20th century. As a consequence, temperature exceeded the preindustrial record in the 1950s, and it has been one of the major forcing processes of the recent enhanced change in these alpine ecosystems from southern Iberia since then. Nevertheless, other factors reducing the snow and ice albedo (e.g., atmospheric deposition) may have influenced local glacier loss, since almost steady climate conditions predominated from the middle 19th century to the first decades of the 20th century.


PURPOSE
To illustrate normal maturation of the fetal brain, including the migrational layer, gray matter, early myelination of internal capsules, optic radiations, and corona radiata.

METHODS
Seventy-seven fetal brains, ranging from 21 to 38 weeks of gestational age, were examined with MR in vivo; 33 were considered normal. MR examinations were performed as T1-weighted sequences in the axial, sagittal, and coronal planes. The neuropathologic examination (four cases) and clinical and/or neuroradiologic examinations confirmed the antenatal data.

RESULTS
From 21 to 25 weeks, the cerebral ventricles are large, corresponding to the relative fetal hydrocephalus. A slight high signal intensity can be observed in the basal ganglia as early as 21 weeks. In the cerebral hemispheres, a multilayered pattern that can be observed from 23 to 28 weeks includes the cortical ribbon, the germinal matrix, and an intermediate layer corresponding to the migrating glial cells. These findings are probably related to areas of increased cellularity. A high signal intensity can be seen within the dorsal part of the brain stem as early as 23 weeks, within the posterior limb of the internal capsules at 31 weeks, and within the central area of the cerebral hemispheres at 35 weeks. Those patterns are probably caused by the evolving process of myelination.

CONCLUSIONS
MR allows depiction of signal changes corresponding either to an increase in cellularity or to the evolving processes of myelination, depending on the stage of the pregnancy.


Strategy is a political act, and yet that has received very little attention in IS strategy research. The purpose of this paper is to explore the mixes between politics, power and strategy using a case study of implementation of a Student Administration System. This takes Strategic Information Systems out of the realm of the purely socia-technical view of information systems and moves it into a dimension which deals with the real social interactions that occur within organisations as a result of the implementation of a strategy in the form of a Student Administration System. This case study shows the power struggles, primarily by two Senior Executives and the users of the information system. The discourse behind this project was initially to create uniformity across a system therefore enabling more than 30 universities around Australia to move from a diversified system to a centralized system. It was through this resistance and through their positions that the two Senior Executives were able to create the discourse that framed many of the decisions and implementation of the system. There eventually became an acceptance that it was for the social good of the University that the Student Administration System was adopted across the University of Australia.


Supply chain management in the petroleum industry contains various challenges, specifically in the logistics area, that are not present in most other industries. These logistical challenges are a major influence on the cost of oil and its derivatives. However, opportunities for cost savings in logistics still do exist. Giant oil and petrochemical companies are undertaking a "swap" practice that saves companies millions of dollars. The objective of this paper is to shed some light on the supply chain challenges and opportunities in the petroleum industry and on swap practices that have long been employed by petroleum industry's giants around the world, such as BP, BASF, Honeywell, Nova, and much more, yet have long been ignored in the operations management literature.


Professional and academic education increasingly use realistic, rich, safe and interactive tools such as serious gaming. In our case we have used a serious game to teach students how socio-economic and technological opportunities and challenges could shape sustainable businesses in a circular economy. In this paper, we specifically show how local symbiotic networks in a city can be created through a serious game called ReOrganise. Symbiotic networks consist of a heterogeneous set of socio-economic and technological elements. Both types of elements bring forth and undergo multiple complex and dynamic interactions. These involve social interactions among actors and physical exchanges regarding materials and energy products. Economic motivations for actors engaging in symbiosis can be selling waste as by-product or avoiding waste disposal costs. In addition, symbiotic networks often create broader environmental and social benefits, such as resource recycling, or job creation. Every specific case, however, leads to subtle differences in behaviour and outcomes. It is therefore difficult to teach students about the intricacies of network emergence in a strictly theoretical fashion. Serious gaming can be a powerful method to comprehend such intricate dynamics of forming and operating symbiotic networks. Re-Organise, a serious game that we have developed for this purpose, is based on practice-oriented action research, and developed with symbiotic network participants. By adding a case description, Re-Organise can now be used for educational purposes. Re-Organise players represent the actors in an urban agriculture area, such as farmers, restaurants, gardeners, allotment garden communities, etc. The goal of the players is to find as much local use for their waste as possible, while maximizing the fulfilment of their own needs and motivations. We have played Re-Organise multiple times in different education activities at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and at the Delft University of Technology. The learning goals of the game play were comprehension of specific technological solutions and boundary conditions, comprehension of different perspectives and goals of the various actors, and application of the aforementioned sociotechnical insights to develop network concepts. In order to examine whether the gameplay would indeed meet our learning goals, we have set up a pretest-posttest experiment. In the experiment, a group of students that played Re-Organise, and a control group that did not play the game, but only learned about theoretical notions of symbiosis, were exposed to questions regarding the learning goals. We found that, by playing the game, the student's comprehension about the relevant technologies had increased. They learned hands-on about different motivations of stakeholders to engage in symbiosis. In addition, students applied technological knowledge, and behavioural and motivational aspects to co-create new local supply networks. The experience accelerated the learning process, and gave more intricate knowledge and insight into shaping and sustaining symbiotic networks. This paper provides evidence about the positive effect of interactive learning through serious gaming on learning goals in sustainable education. Re-Organise provides a safe and rich learning experience for students, and enables students, and practitioners alike, to display creativity around the shaping of circular networks.


The neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2) tumor suppressor protein, known as schwannomin or merlin, is involved in linking membrane proteins to the cytoskeleton. Like the related ERM proteins, schwannomin has long been suspected of exhibiting a complex 3D organization caused by the association of different regions within the protein. Intramolecular interactions characterized to date are linking N-terminal sequences of the protein to C-terminal sequences. Here, we demonstrate, by a biochemical approach, the existence of a structured domain entirely contained within the N-terminal half of schwannomin. This structure, which is resistant to chymotryptic digestion, encompasses the FERM domain (residues 19-314), but excludes the 18 extreme N-terminal residues specific to schwannomin. The structure is disrupted by some, but not all, naturally occurring NF2 mutations. We investigated the significance of this structured domain in schwannomin cellular functions and found that normal schwannomin localization beneath the plasma membrane is directly dependent on proper folding of the N-terminal domain. In addition, folding of the N-terminal domain influences schwannomin interaction with actin through two novel actin-binding sites located in this region. These results suggest that loss of activity of several naturally occurring schwannomin mutants is due to disruption of the fold of the N-terminal domain, leading to loss of both membrane localization and actin association.


Conditionals in English can traditionally be viewed according to two different perspectives. One is a simplistic approach based on certain 'cases'; the other is centered on the truth value of the protasis and apodosis. This argument is based on the semantics of the conditional structures, regardless of the syntax involved. In a similar vein, the complexity of conditionals in Arabic stems from the fact that the syntax of the conditional structure does not necessarily point to the semantics involved. This affinity between the two language systems in terms of conditionality is examined within the context of two English translations of the Arabic religious text Sahih Muslim. The present study adopts an approach that focuses on both syntax and semantics to underline the interplay and/or dissociation of the two in practice. The study reveals that Siddiqui's versions of translating 'law' (and its variant 'law-la') and 'inn' structures into English are mostly inaccurate, where the syntax-semantics interplay and/or dissociation is not duly observed in practice. Khattab's versions, however, point to a tendency to start from the entrenched premise of literalism, which is stimulated by adopting the simplistic approach to English conditional structures, being akin to documentary translation where awkwardness is common practice.


A company that transforms its IT infrastructure no longer has to rely on rigid, manual, siloed, legacy technologies. It sees a boost in IT operational speed, efficiency, scale, and cost effectiveness—tasks are automated, processes streamlined, and resources are freed up. Those IT-level improvements fuel a larger-scale digital transformation, allowing the company to thrive in today's digital economy. It is able to out-innovate, out-think, and out-pace its competitors—ultimately becoming the disruptor, not the disrupted.


Based on a newly developed general quantum theory of nonlinear optical pulse propagation, the influences of the self-Raman effect and third-order dispersion on the achievable squeezing ratio in squeezing experiments with optical fibers at both the 1.3- and 1.55-μm wavelengths are studied. In the presence of these effects, squeezing still survives, but the achievable squeezing will reach a limit as the propagation distance increases. Temperature dependence of the squeezing ratio is also examined.


A review of:

Kalyani, Ankem. "Factors Influencing Information Needs Among Cancer Patients: A Meta-Analysis." Library & Information Science Research; 28.1 (2006) 7-23.
Objective – The author aims to study the aggregate influence of demographic and situational variables on the information needs of cancer patients, in order to inform the provision of information to those patients.

Design – Meta-analysis.

Setting – Research articles published in the MEDLINE and CINAHL databases.

Subjects – English language studies published between 1993 and 2003. An initial search set of 196 studies from MEDLINE and 283 studies from CINAHL were identified. Following rigorous assessment, 12 studies met the inclusion criteria.

Methods – A comprehensive search of the databases was conducted, initially combining "neoplasm" with "cancer patients" using the Boolean "or". These results were then combined with five separate searches using the following terms; information need(s), information seeking, information seeking behaviour, information source(s) and information resource(s). This identified in total 479 English language articles. Based on a review of titles and abstracts, 110 articles were found covering information resources or the information needs of cancer patients. These articles were then subjected to the further inclusion criteria and limited to studies which included: analysis of information needs and/or information sources of cancer patients; adults as subjects of the research; and application of quantitative research methods and relevant statistics.
This eliminated a further 35 papers. Twelve of the remaining 75 studies were selected for meta-analysis based on their use of the same variables measured consistently in comparable units. The final 12 studies included various forms of cancer, and no distinction was made among them. All 12 studies appeared in peer-reviewed journals.

Main results – The meta-analysis found there was consistently no difference between the information needs of men and women. Five subsets were identified within the meta-analysis, and findings for each can be stated as follows:
 The younger the age of the patient, the greater their overall need for information was likely to be.

 During treatment, the time elapsed from the diagnosis to the information need was not significant. Once identified, the information need remained constant.

 During treatment and post-treatment phases, the time elapsed from the diagnosis to the information need made no significant difference, with the information need remaining constant and continuing into the post-treatment phase.

 The stage of cancer made no difference to the need for information. Those patients in the advanced stages of cancer required an equal amount of information to those in the early stages of cancer.

 The individual patient's preferred role in treatment-related decisions made a difference to the information need. Patients who took an active role in treatment-related decisions had a greater need for information than those who did not take an active role.

Conclusion – Findings from this meta-analysis can be used to guide information provision to cancer patients, specifically taking patient age and preferred role in treatment decision-making into consideration. Further research into the reasons behind the lower information needs among older patients is called for by the author.


PART ONE: POETRY IN ENGLISH The fact that it is possible to publish a bibliography of women's poetry and fiction in English from Malaysia and Singapore signifies two major shifts in literary production there which have developed over the last quarter of a century: 1) the acknowledgment and inclusion of women poets and authors; and 2) the quite widespread use for creative writing of English along with native languages. Both of these changes are due to educational reforms which took place after Malaysian independence when Singapore was still a part of the Federation of Malaysia. When they became two separate countries, both continued to emphasise the importance of education and both opened their classroom doors to girls. Because of this commitment to educating all their citizens, the literacy rate for females in both countries jumped dramatically. The schools also included instructional training in English, and today more and more writers in both countries are at ease using that language. However, there has been a growing concern that by writing in English, many of the countries' authors and poets are losing the nuances that their own native tongues provide. English was brought to Singapore and Malaysia by the British, and it is seen more as the oppressor language. Therefore, it is argued, it cannot adequately describe the genuine experiences of the people. On the other hand, some argue that the use of English makes work accessible to people outside Southeast Asia who might never otherwise have been exposed to such writings. This bibliography is, therefore, an attempt to identify the current pieces of literature available to an English reading audience. The first section covers poetry, and the next issue of Hecate will include women's works of fiction. The majority of these poems and short stories were originally written in English, but some have been translated from Chinese, Tamil, and Malay. DAN YING Born in 1943, her real name is Madame Lew Poo Chan. She is known as one of the best women poets writing in Chinese. -----. "The Fragments of a Cliff." Wong Meng Voon. 34-36. The poet identifies herself as a cliff, dependent on another to appeciate its worth. -----. "Poems of Taiji," Wong Meng Voon. 31-33. She searches for the true meaning of Tai-ji or the Supreme Ultimate by examining Buddhist symbols and their meaning in her life. HENG, GERALDINE -----. "For Anais Nin." Thumboo. 34. She is so much a "wispy, tiny" woman that she disappears if not treated gently enough. -----. "Images of Love." Thumboo. 50-51. Her lover is like a clear pool untouched by those around him, and it is too easy for her to see him this way, forgetting the stones that lurk beneath the surface. -----. "Little Things." Thumboo. 76. Written during the Chinese Moon-cake and Lantern Festival, the poet speaks as a child lit up by the colors, sounds and lanterns of the festival, as a child whose glow remains as long as she is young. -----. White Dreams. Singapore: Woodrose Publications, 1976. LAM, AGNES -----. "Comsie." Commentary. 7.4 (1987): 47-48. -----. "Concert." Singa. 17 (1988): 78. -----. "The Echo of Your Footsteps." Singa. 17 (1988): 48. -----. "Holiday at Home." Singa. 17 (1988): 61-67. -----. "Smiling Eyes." Singa. 17 (1988): 49. -----. "Woman to Woman." Commentary. 7.2 and 3 (1987): 121. -----. "Yuppy Water." Commentary. 7.4 (1987): 47-48. LEE GEOK LAN This poet was born in 1939 and educated at the University of Malaya. -----. "Batu Road." Wignesan. 46. A marketplace for envy and complaints and the selling of bodies. -----. "Credo (To-)." Wignesan. 44. An attempt at understand the use of prayers and songs and the "pulse-beat" of her faith. -----. "Cross-Roads. Wignesan. 45. The poet does not find comforting worship in the preacher's words, but in her own awaiting of fate. …


The structure of the pectoral fins spine of 4 catfish species Heterobranchus longifilis, Clarias gariepinus, Chrysichthys auratus, Synodontis schall and Synodontis serratus were described. The fish specimens were collected from Asyut City and Lake Nasser about 319 and 900 Km south of the capital Cairo, Egypt respectively on 10 November 2017 are described. The species examined showed variation in the shape of the spine-shaft tip varies from finely to broadly and rounded pointed; the curvature of the spine-shaft is either straight or curved partially or complete; the anterior serrae varies between is either broad or irregular; the anterior ridge groove is well developed, deep, and curved, with some pores in some species; the anterior dentations varies between short and sometimes are merged together or curved and their number decreased towards the tip; the posterior dentations can vary between absent or long and numerous and sometimes increased in their number towards the tip of the spine; the dorsal, anterior and ventral processes are well developed structures, with rounded, flange-like, and the shape of the basal fossa varies in having narrow, elongated, boat-shape, with high walls at sides; and very wide fossa and lunate in shape. It is usually deep with high walls.


Announcing the new revised edition of the classic industry reference! "Landscape Graphics" is the architect's ultimate guide to all the basic graphics techniques used in landscape design and landscape architecture. Progressing from the basics into more sophisticated techniques, this guide offers clear instruction on graphic language and the design process, the basics of drafting, lettering, freehand drawing and conceptual diagramming, perspective drawing, section elevations and more. It also features carefully sequenced exercises, a complete file of graphic symbols for sections and perspectives, and a handy appendix of conversions and equivalents.


To find prey and avoid being preyed upon, fish rely on a row of specialized sensory organs along the sides of their bodies, called the lateral line. Now, a research team led by Chang Liu at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has built an artificial lateral line that can provide the same functions in underwater vehicles. "Our development of an artificial lateral line is aimed at enhancing human ability to detect, navigate and survive in the underwater environment," said Liu, a Willett Scholar and a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Illinois. "Our goal is to develop an artificial device that mimics the functions and capabilities of the biological system." In fish, the lateral line provides guidance for synchronized swimming, predator and obstacle avoidance, and prey detection and tracking. Equipped with an artificial lateral line, a submarine or underwater robot could similarly detect and track moving underwater targets, and avoid collisions with moving or stationary objects. The artificial lateral line consists of an integrated linear array of micro fabricated flow sensors, with the sizes of individual sensors and spacings between them matching those of their biological counterpart. "By detecting changes in water pressure and movement, the device can supplement sonar and vision systems in submarines and underwater robots," said Liu, who also is affiliated with the university's Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, the Institute for Genomic Biology, and the Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory. Liu and colleagues at Illinois and at Bowling Green State University described their work in the Dec. 12, 2006, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. To fabricate the tiny, three-dimensional structures, individual components are first cast in place on sacrificial layers using photolithography and planar deposition. A small amount of magnetic material is electroplated onto each of the parts, which are then freed from the substrate by an etchant. When a magnetic field is applied, the induced torque causes the pieces to rotate out of the plane on tiny hinges and lock into place. Each sensor is integrated with metal-oxidesuperconductor circuitry for on-chip signal processing, noise reduction and data acquisition. The largest array the researchers have built consists of 16 flow sensors with 1 millimeter spacing. Each sensor is 400 microns wide and 600 microns tall. In tests, the researchers' artificial lateral line was able to localize a nearby underwater vibrating source, and could detect the hydrodynamic wake (such as the wake formed behind a propeller-driven submarine) for longdistance tracking. With further advances in engineering, man-made underwater vehicles should be able to autonomously image hydrodynamic events from their surroundings, Liu said. "Although biology remains far superior to human engineering, having a man-made parallel of the biological system allows us to learn much about both basic science and engineering," Liu said.


This paper analyses the cultural and biosemiotic bases of human attitudes towards other species. A critical stance is taken towards species neutrality and it is shown that human attitudes towards different animal species differ depending on the psychological dispositions of the people, biosemiotic conditions (e.g. umwelt stuctures), cultural connotations and symbolic meanings. In real-life environments, such as zoological gardens, both biosemiotic and cultural aspects influence which animals are chosen for display, as well as the various ways in which they are displayed and interpreted. These semiotic dispositions are further used as motifs in staging, personifying or de-personifying animals in order to modify visitors' perceptions and attitudes. As a case study, the contrasting interpretations of culling a giraffe at the Copenhagen zoo are discussed. The communicative encounters and shifting per ceptions are mapped on the scales of welfaristic, conservational, dominionistic, and utilitarian approaches. The methodological approach described in this article integrates static and dynamical views by proposing to analyse the semiotic potential of animals and the dynamics of communicative interactions in combination.


Throughout the post-war period, U.S. and Canadian unemployent rates moved in tandem, but this historical link apparently ended in 1982. During the past three years, Canadian unemployment rates have been some three percentage points higher than their U.S. analogues, and this gap shows no sign of diminishing. This paper is an empirical evaluation of a variety of explanations for this new unemployment gap. We first show that the demographic and industrial composition of the two countries is remarkably similar, so that no simple mechanical hypothesis explain the basic puzzle. It is also evident that the increase in Canadian unemployment relative to U.S. unemployment can not be fully attributed to output movements. We find that the gap between actual and predicted Canadian output, based on U.S. output, has fallen dramatically since 1982 while the unemployment gap has widened. We also find that unemployment in Canada was 2 to 3 percentage points higher in 1983 and 1984 than predicted by Canadian output. We have investigated a variety of hypotheses to explain the slow growth of employment in Canada after 1982. These hypotheses attribute the slow growth of employment to rigidities in the labor market that raise employers' costs and restrict the flow of workers between sectors. The evidence does not support the notion that the growth in relative unemployment in Canada is due to differences in the regulation of the labor market in the two countries. Minimum wage laws and unemployment benefits are fairly similar in Canada and the U.S., and neither has changed relative to the other in the last decade. Unionization rates have increased in Canada relative to US. since 1970. Most of this divergence occured before 1980, however, and does not seem to have created an unemployment gap prior to 1980. Finally,the hypothesis that differential real wage rates are a major determinant of relative employment in the U.S. and Canada is soundly rejected by the data. Real wage rates have been essentially uncorrelated with employment movements within each country and between the two countries.


The present study was conducted to investigate the effects of GAA addition to corn-soybean meal based diets on productive performance, blood biochemical parameters and reproductive hormones of laying hens. Two hundred laying hens were used in a completely randomized design with 5 treatments and 4 replicates (n=10 birds). Birds received basal diets containing 0 (negative control), 0.057, 0.114 and 0.171% GAA/kg of diet. A diet containing 2% meat meal was also considered as positive control. The data for productive performance was recorded during 84 d and blood samples were collected to evaluate the blood biochemical parameters including triglycerides, high and low density lipoproteins, aspartate aminotransferase and alanine aminotransferase and nitric oxide and reproductive hormones (LH and FSH) at 42 and 84 d. Results showed that GAA addition to diet had not significant effects on productive performance but 0.171% GAA addition reduced egg weight (P<0.05) compared with control groups. Also, 0.114% GAA addition to diet increased levels of LH and FSH compared with control groups at 42 and 84 days. It can be concluded that GAA addition to diet is not appropriate strategy for improving performance of laying hens.


This working paper suggests to analyse agencification as a double process of institutional and policy centralisation. To that end, it develops a categorisation of agencies that incorporates these two dimensions. More specifically, it is argued that mixed outcomes where the levels of institutional and policy centralisation diverge can be expected to be the rule rather than the exception, in line with the hybrid nature of EU agencies as inbetweeners. Moreover, the fiduciary setting hits important legal constraints given the limits to delegation in the EU context. Against this backdrop a process whereby institutional centralisation develops incrementally and remains limited, yet is accompanied by a process of substantial policy centralisation, appears as the most promising path for EU agencification. A fiduciary setting, where a strong agency enjoys a high degree of independence and operates in a centralised policy space, by contrast, should be the exception. The comparative study of the process of agencification in the energy and banking sector is insightful in the light of these expectations. The incremental nature of institutional change in energy exemplifies the usual path of agencification, which is conducive to a weak agency operating in a relatively centralised policy space. Agencification in banking, by contrast, has led to a rather unusual outcome where the strong agency model combines with a fragmented policy context.


Sentiment Analysis (SA) and summarization has recently become the focus of many researchers, because analysis of online text is beneficial and demanded in many different applications. One such application is productbased sentiment summarization of multi-documents with the purpose of informing users about pros and cons of various products. This paper introduces a novel solution to target-oriented sentiment summarization and SA of short informal texts with a main focus on Twitter posts known as "tweets". We compare different algorithms and methods for SA polarity detection and sentiment summarization. We show that our hybrid polarity detection system not only outperforms the unigram state-of-the-art baseline, but also could be an advantage over other methods when used as a part of a sentiment summarization system. Additionally, we illustrate that our SA and summarization system exhibits a high performance with various useful functionalities and features. Sentiment classification aims to automatically predict sentiment polarity (e.g., positive or negative) of users publishing sentiment data (e.g., reviews, blogs). Although traditional classification algorithms can be used to train sentiment classifiers from manually labeled text data, the labeling work can be time-consuming and ex-pensive. Meanwhile, users often use some different words when they express sentiment in different domains. If we directly apply a classifier trained in one domain to other domains, the performance will be very low due to the differences between these domains. In this work, we develop a general solution to sentiment classification when we do not have any labels in a target domain but have some labeled data in a different domain, regarded as source domain.


While books and periodicals dominate the collections of most libraries, they do have a poor second cousin. Pamphlets and vertical file material have worth and value to a library (no matter what that library's size, function, or type); but this value may not always be recognized. A primary source of information on many pamphlets and vertical file‐like material is the Vertical File Index (hereafter sometimes referred to as the VFI or the index), a selection and collection‐building tool in existence for over fifty years. While the index does include references to items like Baby Shower Fun, Turn to Sandwiches, and Versatile Vinegar, it is not replete with such items.


Remaking the Labour Party examines the development of revisionist thought in the Labour Party from the 1950s up to Tony Blair's successful attempt to rewrite Clause Four in April 1995. The main focus is upon the most distinctive and controversial aspect of Labour revisionism - its attitude toward public ownership and socialism, private ownership and the mixed economy. Remaking the Labour Party comprises a detailed study of a process of ideological conflict which began with the Labour Party's debate in the 1950s over the link between public ownership and socialism. The deepening confrontation that arose from the revisionist thinking of Crosland and Gaitskell is explored in the Clause Four controversy of 1959-60 and in the uneasy compromise forged in its aftermath. The period of ideological truce under Harold Wilson's leadership is examined, together with the bitter conflict that later resurfaced in the party during the 1970s and early 80s. Finally, the study focuses on the second stage of Labour's policy and ideological rethinking which developed after 1983 under the leadership first of Neil Kinnock and then of Tony Blair. Drwing on the author's own interviews with some of the leading protagonists of the debate, as well as upon a wide range of primary and secondary sources, Remaking the Labour Party will be of value to students of modern British politics and political thought, it will also be of interest to observers and members of the Labour Party.


During the turbulent decades that encompassed the transition of the North American colonies into a Republic, America became the setting for a transformation in the context of political friendship. Traditionally the alliances established between elite, white, Protestant males have been most studied. These former studies provide the foundation for this work to examine the inclusion of dDothersi€ -- political relationships formed with and by women, persons of diverse ethnicities and races, and numerous religious persuasions -- in political activity. From the outset this analysis demonstrates the establishment of an uniquely American concept of political friendship theory which embraced ideologies and rationalism. Perhaps most importantly, the work presents criteria for determining early American political friendship apart from other relationships. The central key in producing this manuscript was creating and applying the criteria for identifying political alliances. This study incorporates a cross-discipline approach, including philosophy, psychology, literature, religion, and political science with history to hone a conception of political friendship as understood by the Founding Generation. The arguments are supported by case studies drawn from a wide variety of primary documents. The result is a fresh perspective and a new approach for the study of eighteenth century American history.


Introduction: Hypertension and diabetes mellitus are chronic non-communicable diseases of increasing importance. Estimating risk factors of hypertension and diabetes is very crucial as this forms the basis for planning of prevention of these disorders. Objective: conducted to identify socio-demographic and lifestyle risk factors associated with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and Hypertension. Material and method: An OPD based case-control study was conducted in RNT Medical College & attached hospitals, Udaipur from July 2014 to December 2014. Cases and controls were selected, exam-ined and interviewed using semi- structured, pre-tested questionnaire containing questions regarding the socio demographic data and lifestyle risk factors. Results: Maximum hypertensive cases (43.3%) were in age group 50-59 years. The prevalence of hypertension and diabetes were observed more in SES class I, individuals with positive family history and sedentary life style. Observed proportion of smokers was 34.3% in HTN cases and 38.8% in type 2 diabetes cases. Observed proportion of HTN cases was 62.5% among high salt users. Conclusion: Continuous efforts need to be made for identifying and developing simple tools to forecast the risk of developing HTN and DM II among different age group, gender and ethnic groups.


Despite the tremendous importance and availability of large video collections, support for video retrieval is still rather limited and is mostly tailored to very concrete use cases and collections. In image retrieval, for instance, standard keyword search on the basis of manual annotations and content-based image retrieval, based on the similarity to query image (s), are well established search paradigms, both in academic prototypes and in commercial search engines. Recently, with the proliferation of sketch-enabled devices, also sketch-based retrieval has received considerable attention. The latter two approaches are based on intrinsic image features and rely on the representation of the objects of a collection in the feature space. In this paper, we present Cineast, a multi-feature sketch-based video retrieval engine. The main objective of Cineast is to enable a smooth transition from content-based image retrieval to content-based video retrieval and to support powerful search paradigms in large video collections on the basis of user-provided sketches as query input. Cineast is capable of retrieving video sequences based on edge or color sketches as query input and even supports one or multiple exemplary video sequences as query input. Moreover, Cineast also supports a novel approach to sketch-based motion queries by allowing a user to specify the motion of objects within a video sequence by means of (partial) flow fields, also specified via sketches. Using an emergent combination of multiple different features, Cineast is able to universally retrieve video (sequences) without the need for prior knowledge or semantic understanding. The evaluation with a general purpose video collection has shown the effectiveness and the efficiency of the Cineast approach.


Using the framework of multidisciplinary best practice recommendations promoted by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, this study used a mixed-methods approach to investigate Division I student-athletes' perceived access to and satisfaction with mental health service availability. Participants were asked about their satisfaction with direct (e.g., counseling, psychiatry, assessment) and indirect (e.g., mental health outreach, educational workshops) service availability, both on campus and within athletics. Results from a researcher-generated survey indicated that participants were moderately satisfied with service availability in each of the four contexts. Hierarchical multiple regressions revealed that student-athletes' satisfaction was predicted by different factors for each service type-location combination. Qualitative data contained requests for more athlete-centered mental health services as well as more preventative outreach in general. These data provide a foundation for understanding factors that influence student-athletes' satisfaction with mental health service availability and offer practical implications for current best practice recommendations.


This book is written to guide readers on every aspect of customer satisfaction based on a contextualised approach and to assist in improving the service quality.It is intended as a reference in measuring customer satisfaction in a more holistic way, not only in healthcare sector but also in banking, tourism and hospitality sectors. This book provides readers with a guide on how to develop an instrument to measure customer satisfaction in different service sectors.
Readers will understand how important customer-oriented is to increase customer satisfaction which subsequently helps to minimise the operation costs for organisation to sustain. This book is also suitable as a reference to private hospitals' policy makers, managers, decision makers and strategic planners on how best to utilise the proposed model in enhancing their customer satisfaction and loyalty.


Tomato spotted wilt (TSW) has become a limiting factor to peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) production in the southeast United States over the past 6 yr. Cultivars are now selected based on their resistance to TSW and planted during time periods to reduce the incidence of TSW. Three peanut cultivars with different resistance to TSW were used ('Georgia Green', 'MDR98' and 'SuuOleic 97R'). Conventional- or strip-tilled plots were established after winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) in 2000 and 2001 in Marianna, FL. Stand count, severity of TSW, and yield were recorded. Plots were irrigated as needed. Stand count was 10% less in the strip-tilled plots in both 2000 and 2001. Stand count was affected by cultivar used, with Georgia Green and SunOleic 97R having 20% higher populations than MDR98. Phorate [O,O-diethyl,S-(ethylthio)methyl phosphorodithioate] treatment had 7% less stand count in 2001 but not in 2000. Tomato spotted wilt severity was 50% less in strip-tilled plots in 2000, but there was no difference in 2001. Cultivar affected severity of TSW every year but not consistently. Application of phorate did not affect TSW. In 2000 (a droughty year), the strip-tilled plots had greater yield (2510 vs. 1900 kg ha -1 ) averaged across cultivars. MDR98 had the highest yield across treatments in 2000, but yield was not different among cultivars in 2001. Application of phorate did not affect yield in either year. In the strip-tilled plots, soil moisture was 30% greater and plant canopy 3 to 5°C cooler during 2000 when plants were visibly drought stressed. Use of phorate had no effect on TSW or yield and its use for TSW control is not recommended. Cultivar selection did influence TSW severity and should be considered as part of a TSW control program. Strip tillage resulted in greater yields than conventional tillage in an abnormally dry year.


Abstract We studied the temperature relations of wild and zoo Aldabra giant tortoises (Aldabrachelys gigantea) focusing on (1) the relationship between environmental temperature and tortoise activity patterns (n = 8 wild individuals) and (2) on tortoise body temperature fluctuations, including how their core and external body temperatures vary in relation to different environmental temperature ranges (seasons; n = 4 wild and n = 5 zoo individuals). In addition, we surveyed the literature to review the effect of body mass on core body temperature range in relation to environmental temperature in the Testudinidae. Diurnal activity of tortoises was bimodally distributed and influenced by environmental temperature and season. The mean air temperature at which activity is maximized was 27.9°C, with a range of 25.8–31.7°C. Furthermore, air temperature explained changes in the core body temperature better than did mass, and only during the coldest trial, did tortoises with higher mass show more stable temperatures. Our results, together with the overall Testudinidae overview, suggest that, once variation in environmental temperature has been taken into account, there is little effect of mass on the temperature stability of tortoises. Moreover, the presence of thermal inertia in an individual tortoise depends on the environmental temperatures, and we found no evidence for inertial homeothermy. Finally, patterns of core and external body temperatures in comparison with environmental temperatures suggest that Aldabra giant tortoises act as mixed conformer–regulators. Our study provides a baseline to manage the thermal environment of wild and rewilded populations of an important island ecosystem engineer species in an era of climate change.


Understanding the causes and consequences of recombination rate evolution is a fundamental goal in genetics that requires recombination maps from across the tree of life. Since statistical inference of recombination maps typically depends on large samples, reaching out studies to non-model organisms requires alternative tools. Here we extend the sequentially Markovian coalescent model to jointly infer demography and the variation in recombination along a pair of genomes. Using extensive simulations and sequence data from humans, fruit-flies and a fungal pathogen, we demonstrate that iSMC accurately infers recombination maps under a wide range of scenarios – remarkably, even from a single pair of unphased genomes. We exploit this possibility and reconstruct the recombination maps of archaic hominids. We report that the evolution of the recombination landscape follows the established phylogeny of Neandertals, Denisovans and modern human populations, as expected if the genomic distribution of crossovers in hominids is largely neutral.


Observations show that subdaily precipitation extremes increase with dew point temperature at a rate exceeding the Clausius‐Clapeyron (CC) relation. The understanding of this so‐called super CC scaling is still incomplete, and observations of convective cell properties could provide important information. Here the size and intensity of rain cells are investigated by using a tracking of rainfall events in high‐resolution radar data. Higher intensities are accompanied by larger rainfall areas. However, whereas small rain cells mainly follow CC scaling, larger cells display super CC behavior. Even more, for dew point exceeding 15°C, the rain cell size has to increase in order to sustain super CC scaling and a remarked increase in rain cell area is found. Our results imply that the source area of moisture, the cloud size, and the degree of mesoscale organization play key roles in the context of a warming climate.


In Giorgio Agamben's call to profane the sacred in the most desacralized forms, the specific mechanics through which the sacred and the profane connect and become indistinctive remains undertheorized. This article, then, aims at adding a further layer of practical articulation to Agamben's notion of profanation as it was elaborated in his book Profanations. The article does so by discussing the ways Zionist subjectivities and divides are interconnected and expressed in Israeli society. To be practiced as a process of becoming, profanation, I argue, needs to be understood as a process of cultural transformation by which new forms of subjectivity are offered.


Although the literature contains reports of very high accuracy figures for the recognition of named entities in text, there are still some named entity phenomena that remain problematic for existing text processing systems. One of these is the ambiguity of conjunctions in candidate named entity strings, an all-too-prevalent problem in corporate and legal documents. In this paper, we distinguish four uses of the conjunction in these strings, and explore the use of a supervised machine learning approach to conjunction disambiguation trained on a very limited set of 'name internal' features that avoids the need for expensive lexical or semantic resources. We achieve 84% correctly classified examples using k-fold evaluation on a data set of 600 instances. We argue that further improvements are likely to require the use of wider domain knowledge and name external features.


Lying at the core of human intelligence, relational thinking is characterized by initially relying on innumerable unconscious percepts pertaining to relations between new sensory signals and prior knowledge, consequently becoming a recognizable concept or object through coupling and transformation of these percepts. Such mental processes are difficult to model in real-world problems such as in conversational automatic speech recognition (ASR), as the percepts (if they are modelled as graphs indicating relationships among utterances) are supposed to be innumerable and not directly observable. In this paper, we present a Bayesian nonparametric deep learning method called deep graph random process (DGP) that can generate an infinite number of probabilistic graphs representing percepts. We further provide a closed-form solution for coupling and transformation of these percept graphs for acoustic modeling. Our approach is able to successfully infer relations among utterances without using any relational data during training. Experimental evaluations on ASR tasks including CHiME-2 and CHiME-5 demonstrate the effectiveness and benefits of our method.


Iran's simple and environmentally extended commodity by commodity input-output (IO) model was used to determine the impacts of dietary changes on the Iranian economy and on the environmental load. The original model is based on the status-quo diet and was modified to include the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) and Mediterranean alternative dietary scenarios. A range of impacts occurred depending upon the relative changes in food items. The direction of changes was similar in the three alternative scenarios. The greatest and smallest impact occurred in the WHO and the Mediterranean scenarios respectively. Total changes in output in WHO, WCRF and Mediterranean dietary scenarios were calculated to be 7010.1, 4802.8 and 3330.8 billion Rials respectively. The outputs of rice, vegetables, fruit, bread and macaroni decreased, but those of live and other animal products increased. The output of non-food commodities and services increased as well. The environmental load increased for three dietary scenarios in comparison with the status-quo diet. The greatest and smallest environmental load occurred in WHO and Mediterranean dietary scenarios respectively. Thus, although dietary changes can have positive effects on economic output, in order to avoid negative environmental effects, it is necessary to consider strategies such as applying capabilities, particularly natural resources in an optimal healthy and environmentally diet, planning for improving forest covering and green space simultaneously with increasing economic activities and using indirect incentives, such as taxes and insurance, for promoting sustainable and healthy foods and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.


Abstract. The satellite-derived HOAPS (Hamburg Ocean Atmosphere Parameters and Fluxes from Satellite Data) and ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) ERA-Interim reanalysis data sets have been validated against in situ precipitation measurements from ship rain gauges and optical disdrometers over the open ocean by applying a statistical analysis for binary estimates. For this purpose collocated pairs of data were merged within a certain temporal and spatial threshold into single events, according to the satellites' overpass, the observation and the ERA-Interim times. HOAPS detects the frequency of precipitation well, while ERA-Interim strongly overestimates it, especially in the tropics and subtropics. Although precipitation rates are difficult to compare because along-track point measurements are collocated with areal estimates and the number of available data are limited, we find that HOAPS underestimates precipitation rates, while ERA-Interim's Atlantic-wide average precipitation rate is close to measurements. However, when regionally averaged over latitudinal belts, deviations between the observed mean precipitation rates and ERA-Interim exist. The most obvious ERA-Interim feature is an overestimation of precipitation in the area of the intertropical convergence zone and the southern subtropics over the Atlantic Ocean. For a limited number of snow measurements by optical disdrometers, it can be concluded that both HOAPS and ERA-Interim are suitable for detecting the occurrence of solid precipitation.


Quantitative dc arc techniques are described for estimating thallium in two distinctly different types of geological material, granitic rocks and manganese nodules. Thallium is not normally detectable in granite with average concentration of about one ppm. A highly sensitive special procedure of direct excitation has been developed so that this element may now be estimated in granites and related rocks routinely. The thallium concentration in manganese nodules is relatively high (about 50 ppm), but interference from nickel must be drastically suppressed and sample extrusion prevented before a quantitative estimation can be carried out. Details are given of the solution to these problems using K2SO4 as the diluent.


A novel method that utilizes a combination of statistical and clustering techniques is presented in order to classify statistically independent heavy rainstorm events and create a limited number of temporal distribution curves. These curves represent the centers of many unitless cumulative rainstorm events and express the temporal distribution patterns in a probabilistic way. The whole process includes the necessary steps from importing raw precipitation time series data to producing the initially unknown optimal number of representative curves. These hyetographs can be used for stochastic simulation, water resources planning, water quality assessment and global change studying. The present type of analysis is fully unsupervised, as no empirical knowledge of local rainfalls is implicated or any arbitrary introduction of quartiles for grouping as is the case in the pertinent literature. An example using data from a Greek Water Division illustrates that the proposed method produces clusters with superior internal structure and temporal distribution curves that are not coming from the same distribution, in contrast to the results using Huff's curves classification.


The rate of growth of Social Networking Services (SNS) has significant implications for computer and cyber-crime management. In exploring the human side of security, studies have shown that any security response requires more than technical solutions. This is even more so as users are often seen as the key point of vulnerabilities for computer systems including SNS. This study seeks to explore what are the important values in understanding measures to maximize end-user security and privacy concerns in SNS settings. The study applies the Value-focused Thinking (VFT) methodology to determine the users' values and objectives, with an initial focus on a developing context. With online users in developing countries surpassing more developed regions, it is imperative that focused attention to this domain is granted. The study found that privacy, confidentiality, integrity of SNS, security controls, awareness campaigns, corporate social responsibility and personal responsibility are fundamental values in maximizing user security and privacy conditions. Corporate social responsibility was one of the findings from this research which underlined the important role of businesses including the service providers in maintaining the integrity of SNS environment.


Sato is a traditional Thai alcohol beverage produced by the fermentation of steamed rice with a microbial starter. The industrial production of sato faces problems with inconsistent quality due to the variability in the microbial community of the starter. Previously, an NP1 starter was selected from 114 starter samples for its abilities to liquefy rice, to ferment and produce ethanol, and to give a good flavour and taste to the resultant sato. Here, we developed a defined starter culture mixture for sato fermentation, according to the composition of the microorganisms identified in the NP1 starter. The oenological parameters during the fermentation with the original NP1 starter and the defined starter culture mixture were compared. The NP1 starter and the alternative starter exhibited similar microbial population dynamics, as determined by conventional cultivation-dependent methods and by cultivation-independent denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) analysis. The profiles of the organic acids, glycerol, and the volatile compounds produced during fermentation were similar. The sato fermented with the two different starters gained similarly high scores of sensory evaluation. Based on these data, we concluded that the defined starter culture mixture has a great potential to become an alternative starter to produce high quality sato with consistency and may facilitate industrial production of sato. The advantages of using the DGGE analysis in combination with the conventional culture method to study the microbial population dynamics during the fermentation process of sato are discussed.


The population size structure, length at age and condition of 140 largemouth bass, Micropterus salmoides, were studied for Lake Ashbaugh, Arkansas. Scales and otoliths were used for age and length at age determination of individual bass. Length at age was determined by back-calculation and relative weight was used to measure condition. The Lake Ashbaugh population is dominated by young, slow growing bass inpoor condition. Ninety-one percent of the largemouth bass in Lake Ashbaugh were less than four years of age, with age 3+ bass serving as the dominant year class. Proportional and relative stock density values were 25 and 3 %, respectively, significantly less than those of other surveyed Arkansas reservoirs. The mean relative weight for this population was 84, significantly less than that projected for healthy populations. Mean back-calculated lengths for largemouth bass ages Ithrough age IIIwere 141 mm, 190 mm, and 257 mm, respectively. Mean lengths at each age were significantly less than those obtained from a 1987 study of Lake Ashbaugh bass and for bass in other Arkansas reservoirs. Several factors may have contributed to the steady decline in the bass population of Lake Ashbaugh. Winterkills occurred in 1989-1991, which seemed to affect mostly mature largemouth bass. A 380 mm length limit imposed in 1987 may have resulted ina stockpiling ofbass less than 380 mm, increasing the competition for available prey for those size classes. These hypotheses are supported by consistent yearly declines over the past five years in the available prey/predator ratios and relative weights, particularly for the size classes between 226 mm-350 mm.


The research, which is discussed in this dissertation, consists of the development and testing of a suite of ten Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and reliable Real Time Protocol (RTP) MIDI over IP (MOIP) protocols, and the subsequent implementations of musical duet collaboration systems based on the MOIP protocols. These MOIP protocols were subjected to a quantitative and statistically significant set of experiments using two experimental metrics or performance measurements. The statistical protocol winner of these experiments was used in the duet systems. We implemented the musical duet systems on two different hardware platforms with different and competing operating systems. The general hardware and software architectures of the musical duet collaboration systems were essentially platform independent. The procedural programming language C and the object-oriented programming language Java were utilized. Before a path leading to a modicum of success was found a number of roads to unsuitable protocols were explored and these lanes to nowhere are also discussed extensively in this dissertation.


The terms terror, terrorism, and terrorist do not identify causally coherent and distinct social phenomena but strategies that recur across a wide variety of actors and political situations. Social scientists who reify the terms confuse themselves and render a disservice to public discussion. The U.S. government's own catalogs of terrorist events actually support both claims


The Asian citrus psyllid (ACP), Diaphorina citri Kuwayama, is the key pest of citrus wherever it occurs due to its role as vector of huanglongbing (HLB) also known as citrus greening disease. Insecticidal vector control is considered to be the primary strategy for HLB management and is typically intense owing to the severity of this disease. While this approach slows spread and also decreases severity of HLB once the disease is established, economic viability of increasingly frequent sprays is uncertain. Lacking until now were studies evaluating the optimum frequency of insecticide applications to mature trees during the growing season under conditions of high HLB incidence. We related different degrees of insecticide control with ACP abundance and ultimately, with HLB-associated yield losses in two four-year replicated experiments conducted in commercial groves of mature orange trees under high HLB incidence. Decisions on insecticide applications directed at ACP were made by project managers and confined to designated plots according to experimental design. All operational costs as well as production benefits were taken into account for economic analysis. The relationship between management costs, ACP abundance and HLB-associated economic losses based on current prices for process oranges was used to determine the optimum frequency and timing for insecticide applications during the growing season. Trees under the most intensive insecticidal control harbored fewest ACP resulting in greatest yields. The relationship between vector densities and yield loss was significant but differed between the two test orchards, possibly due to varying initial HLB infection levels, ACP populations or cultivar response. Based on these relationships, treatment thresholds during the growing season were obtained as a function of application costs, juice market prices and ACP densities. A conservative threshold for mature trees with high incidence of HLB would help maintain economic viability by reducing excessive insecticide sprays, thereby leaving more room for non-aggressive management tools such as biological control.


Immigrants are often easy prey for bogus or incompetent attorneys, "notarios," scam artists, and other bad actors who take advantage of immigrants' limited knowledge of U.S. law, lack of English fluency, and lack of cultural knowledge to charge exorbitant fees for wild promises of green cards and citizenship that the bad actors cannot - or in some cases never intended to - deliver. Such exploitation is merely a symptom, however, of the larger problem of inadequate access to competent legal counsel by foreign nationals seeking to navigate our labyrinthine scheme of immigration laws, regulations, and policies. Contrary to popular belief, not all of these foreign nationals are "illegal aliens" who slipped over our southern border; many are entitled to obtain lawful immigration status, if only they had adequate guidance from qualified counsel to help them seek it. Unfortunately, there is no constitutionally guaranteed right to counsel in immigration proceedings (even in cases where deportation is at stake), and competent private and nonprofit resources are limited. After illustrating the nature of the problem with some real-life stories of immigrants who have been victimized by fraudulent service providers, and discussing the current state of the law with respect to what constitutes the inadequate practice of immigration law and who is legally permitted to represent immigrants in immigration matters, this report proposes changes to local, state, and federal law and policy that would help to combat fraudulent activities by unscrupulous non-lawyers and inadequately trained lawyers alike. These and other proposals are put forth in an attempt to help lay the groundwork for ensuring that immigrants in need of competent legal counsel can access the help to which they should be entitled.


Jonty, Gary, Naas - these are names that conjure up images on the cricket pitch, the golf course and the rugby field. They are also names that are valuable in merchandising and marketing numerous goods or services. Tiger Woods became an instant millionaire several times over. From the entertainment field Michael Jackson, Elton John, Oasis, just to name a few, sell merchandise. And merchandising is big business with whole industries being built on the marketability of 'the name' .


The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of using several definitions and several measurements of auditor industry specialization in the empirical audit research. Industry specialist auditors are supposed to be able to provide better quality audits therefore, auditor industry specialization measures have been developed and used in the empirical audit research. In a first step, we empirically test whether different definitions of auditor industry specialist result in consistent designations of audit firms as specialists of a given industry and find that inconsistent industry specialist definitions lead to inconsistent designation of audit firms as industry specialists. In a second step, we test and demonstrate that these different auditor industry designations lead to inconsistent results in terms of magnitude and significance regarding the fee premium paid to auditor industry specialists. Such evidence raises an issue of whether the findings in prior studies are subject to measurement errors of audit industry specialists


In Red Work, Rachael records and celebrates the joys and frustrations of everyday family life in new large-scale work inspired by 19th century redwork story quilts – for her, the Instagram of their day.

Red Work : Rachael Howard – Exhibition Funding Award
Waterside Arts Centre has been awarded £13,400 from Arts council England's Grants for the Arts scheme to develop a new exhibition project.
Red Work is a solo exhibition by textile artist Rachael Howard, curated by Jenny Waterson, that will showcase how Rachael innovates, mixing traditional craft techniques with digital printing, combining her signature figurative sketches with spontaneous mark-making and found drawings.

Rachael's artworks will be further enhanced with 'sound labels' developed for the exhibition by sound artist Nigel Piper.

The exhibition explores the shared joys and frustrations of daily life and takes inspiration from traditional story quilts from the 1800s which depict everyday stories of domestic life, including family and local events.

Visitors will engage with the work via sound labels and communal drawing events and social media. The project will create routes for artist development - through an artist's talk and workshop, an exhibition catalogue, development activities for curators - and for the public - through a Big Draw event led by Rachael to create a community artwork to exhibit in the show.

The exhibition will be shown in Waterside's Lauriston Gallery and will run in Autumn 2014, to coincide with the Big Draw project and as part of activities for Waterside's 10th year in operation.

Following its run at Waterside, Digital Domestic will then transfer to the Williamson Museum & Art Gallery on The Wirral, which is also contributing £2000 towards the project's development.


Abstract Effective design innovation policy is increasingly recognized as a driver for competitiveness and prosperity of nations. Policymakers in Europe face a challenge when evaluating the effectiveness of design innovation policies due to a lack of reliable and comparable data. The European Commission has demonstrated its commitment to design through investment in a number of initiatives that seek to place design at the core of national policy agendas. This paper provides an overview of the policy for design agenda in Europe, discusses the challenges of evaluation, offers a proposed approach to macro design innovation policy indicators and presents a scenario based approach that helps to benchmark the relative national performance of design innovation policy. The use of a scenario based approach links available data through a narrative approach to an overall picture of the relative performance of design innovation policy at a national level. While our research has demonstrated that there are no reliable and comprehensive data sets currently available for design across Europe, we conclude with a consideration of the challenges and limitations of a scenario based approach to evaluation design innovation policy at a macro level.


A field study was carried with the following objectives: (i) To investigate the effect of compost, N, and K fertilizers on selected chemical properties of Bekenu series (Tipik Tualemkuts), and (ii) To investigate the effect of compost, N and K fertilizers on N and K uptake and yield of Masmadu variety cultivated on Bekenu series. Treatments evaluated were: (i) No fertilization (T1), (ii) Hundred percent inorganic fertilizer application (T2), (iii) Eighty percent of N fertilizer plus twenty percent of N from compost application (T3), (iv) Sixty percent of N fertilizer plus forty percent of N from compost (T4), and (v) Application of hundred percent compost (T5). The experiment was conducted at the share farm of Universiti Putra Malaysia Bintulu Campus, Sarawak, Malaysia. The experimental design was a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with 4 replications. Nitrogen and K were applied in the forms of urea (46 % N) and muriate of potash (60 % K2O) in split i.e., at 15 days after planting (DAP) and 36 DAP, respectively. At 73 DAP, plants were harvested. The fresh weight of cobs excluding guard rows was recorded. Dry weight (stem and leaves), N, K, Ca, and Mg concentrations were determined by standard procedures. Soil sampling was done before and after fertilization. Soil total N was determined using the Kjeldahl method while exchangeable K, Ca, and Mg were extracted using the double acid method and their concentrations determined using atomic absorption spectrophotometry. Dry ashing method was used for the determination of K, Ca, and Mg concentrations in plant tissues while the Kjeldahl method was used to determine total N in plant tissues. The concentrations multiplied by the oven dried weight of roots and stem provided N, K, Ca and Mg uptake in these plant parts. T2, T3, T4 and T5 affected soil bulk density, CEC, pH, total N, exchangeable K, Ca and Mg. The dry weight of Masmadu leaf was not affected by fertilization and so was N and K uptake in this plant part. T2 was superior to the other treatments in terms of stem dry weight and cob production although the uptake of N and K in Masmadu stem under T2 was statistically not different from T3, and T4. Isotopic studies to quantify the amount of N and K contributed by compost in relation N and K uptake and yield may help to conclusively explain why T2 was superior to T3 and T4 in particular.


Fuel and food are two major global issues. Interestingly, both of them have a close relationship with corn, a staple crop around the world. Bioethanol, which is the most popular gasoline alternative, is mostly produced from corn in the US. Since corn grain is for human food or livestock feed, the production of corn ethanol has caused some controversies. However, ethanol produced from corn stover is less controversial since corn stover is agricultural waste. On the other hand, more food needs to be produced globally to meet the fast-growing world population. Despite that, a stunning portion of food is being wasted every year, among which a lot of corn is being lost due to storage insect maize weevil (Sitophilus zeamais) in sub-Saharan Africa and around the world. One of the objectives of this project was to find an energy-efficient operation for corn stover size reduction processing, which is an unavoidable and energy-intensive process for lignocellulosic ethanol production. The other objective was to test the effectiveness of a new method to separate maize weevil, the most common corn storage insect, from corn kernels, to reduce the storage loss of corn grain. Chapter 1 of this thesis is the general introduction and literature review. Chapter 2, 3, 4 are three individual chapters for the three studies in this project. Chapter 5 is the summary, conclusions, and suggestions for future work. Chapter 2 and chapter 3 of this thesis are focused on corn stover size reduction process. Specifically, chapter 2 talks about a bench-scale experiment of grinding corn stover of different initial sizes and different moisture contents with a knife mill using different screens, looking for the most energy-efficient settings. The results showed that initial size of corn stover had no effect on grinding energy consumption. However, both moisture content


This article draws from a multiyear study of the impact of Being Caribou to propose a model of how social movements build participation and leadership through community film screenings. From 2004 to 2005, hundreds of thousands of people saw Being Caribou at volunteer organized community and house party screenings that served as activist training grounds for the Alaska Coalition's Arctic Refuge campaign. Drawing on media history and civic engagement research methods, I establish how these screenings built on previous movement storytelling efforts and infrastructures to knit communities and organizations together; deepen investment in Arctic Refuge protection; and strengthen the skills, organizing capacity, and "leadership-in-practice" of a broad swathe of individual activists.


ECOLOGYAn unusual experiment is getting under way this month off the Florida Keys. Federal officials have banned all fishing in a 30-kilometer-square patch of coral reefs, sea grass meadows, and mangrove swamps. The hope is that fish, larvae, and eggs from inside the reserve will spill over into neighboring waters, helping to restock fish populations. But scientists still don't know whether such reserves do, in fact, replenish fisheries.


An integral-equation approach is developed to compute the propagation coefficients and field distributions of the modes of an open cylindrical waveguide surrounded by a vacuum. The general theory applies to arbitrary graded-index profiles and arbitrarily shaped cross sections. Lossy and uniaxially anisotropic media, with longitudinal extraordinary axis, are included. To investigate the accuracy of the method, we have implemented the integral-equation method for a lossless symmetrical slab waveguide with step- and graded-index profile. Results are given for isotropic and anisotropic waveguides of the indicated kind. The permittivity profiles considered are step-index and two different quadratic profiles.


Mobile bullying, which is one form of cyberbullying, is escalating in schools in South Africa. Research can contribute to better understanding of the nature of this aggression, and provide guidance in determining appropriate interventions and administration of justice. However, studies into cyberbullying tend to focus mainly on the urban environment. Rural South Africa involves a large percentage of mobile phone users and experiences in relatively different cultural and social-economic conditions. Lack of research on rural mobile bullying calls into question the applicability of existing theories of crime and cyberbullying to the rural context and their effectiveness in guiding legal and policy interventions. The present study investigated mobile bullying among high school rural students, the influencing factors, the applicability of earlier theories, and legal and policy implications. A survey of 3500 students found that mobile bullies are intensive users of chat rooms, Facebook and Twitter. Certain forms of bullying increase with age, which is not consistent with earlier claims. Bullying by teasing increased up to 14 years, dropped at 15 but rose again from 16 to 18 years for a different group of students. Bullies mainly came from unstable residential areas and lack of self-control predicts mobile bullying the most. We found support for the applicability of the Life-course, Self-control, and Social disorganization theories. Legal and policy implications are discussed.


This brief examines an issue of current importance to the conduct of U.S. economic policy: how has the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) plan to purchase up to $600 billion of Treasury securities by June 30, 2011 affected the movement of inflation, GDP, and employment to more desirable medium-term and long-term levels? Following the FOMC's announcement of the plan on November 3, 2010, other events that potentially influence Treasury yields have been at play. To estimate the effects that the FOMC Treasury purchases may have on the goal of achieving more desirable levels of inflation and employment, the authors make use of different models to gauge the likely effect upon interest rates, the interest rate effects on real spending (GDP), and how changes in GDP may be affecting the employment rate.


MATH1 is a neural-specific basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor. Members of this family of transcription factors are involved in the development of specific subsets of neurons in the developing vertebrate nervous system. Here we examine the cells expressing MATH1 with respect to their proliferative state and co-expression of cell-type-specific differentiation markers. We localize the MATH1 protein to the nucleus of cells in the dorsal neural tube and the external germinal layer (EGL) of the developing cerebellum. Using double-label immunofluorescence, we demonstrate that MATH1-expressing cells span both the proliferating and the differentiating zones within the dorsal neural tube, but within the EGL of the cerebellum are restricted to the proliferating zone. The early differentiating MATH1-expressing cells in the dorsal neural tube co-express TAG-1, DCC-1 and LH2, markers of dorsal commissural interneurons. In addition, transgenic mice with lacZ under the transcriptional control of MATH1-flanking DNA sequences express beta-galactosidase specifically in the developing nervous system, in a manner that mimics subsets of the MATH1-expression pattern, including the dorsal spinal neural tube. Expression of the MATH1/lacZ transgene persists in differentiated dorsal commissural interneurons. Taken together, we demonstrate MATH1 expression in a differentiating population of neuronal precursors in the dorsal neural tube that appear to give rise specifically to dorsal commissural interneurons.


With the prosperity of cloud computing, an increasing number of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) move their business to public clouds such as Amazon EC2. To help tenants deploy services in the cloud, researchers either conduct performance evaluations or design mechanisms and software on seeking virtual machines of better performance. However, few studies have investigated the impact of instance seeking strategies on resource allocation in clouds if every tenant starts to apply the same method to find the better performing virtual machine. In this paper, we propose a cloud and a tenant model in order to simulate the process of tenants' seeking better-performing instances in the cloud. We discuss, implement and evaluate six cloud resource allocation strategies and five instance seeking strategies. We perform the evaluation via simulation based on real data traces. Our results show that instance seeking strategies can cause the exhaustion of better-performing instances and significant request growth in the cloud. Furthermore, we find that tenants could save time and budget through collaborative seeking strategies. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings from perspectives of both tenants and providers.


Background: The seasonal variation of influenza and influenza-like illness (ILI) is well known. However, studies assessing the factual direct costs of ILI for an entire population are rare. Methods: In this register study, we analyzed the seasonal variation of ILI-related healthcare visits and hospital admissions for children aged 2 to 17 years, and the resultant parental absence from work, for the period 2005 to 2012. The study population comprised an open cohort of about 78,000 children per year from a defined region. ILI was defined as ICD-10 codes: J00-J06; J09-J15, J20; H65-H67. Results: Overall, the odds of visiting a primary care center for an ILI was 1.64-times higher during the peak influenza season, compared to the preinfluenza season. The corresponding OR among children aged 2 to 4 years was 1.96. On average, an estimated 20% of all healthcare visits for children aged 2 to 17 years, and 10% of the total healthcare costs, were attributable to seasonal ILI. In primary care, the costs per week and 10,000 person years for ILI varied – by season – from &OV0556;3500 to &OV0556;7400. The total ILI cost per year, including all physical healthcare forms, was &OV0556;400,400 per 10,000 children aged 2 to 17 years. The costs for prescribed and purchased drugs related to ILI symptoms constituted 52% of all medicine costs, and added 5.8% to the direct healthcare costs. The use of temporary parental employment benefits for caring of ill child followed the seasonal pattern of ILI (r = 0.91, P < 0.001). Parental absence from work was estimated to generate indirect costs, through loss of productivity of 5.2 to 6.2 times the direct costs. Conclusions: Direct healthcare costs increased significantly during the influenza season for children aged 2 to 17 years, both in primary and hospital outpatient care, but not in hospital inpatient care. Primary care manages the majority of visits for influenza and ILI. Children 2 to 4 years have a larger portion of their total healthcare encounters related to ILI compared with older children. There is a clear correlation between ILI visits across the years and parental absence from work.


During the last twenty – thirty years there has been unprecedented demand for new legal regulation in the field of environmental protection, which influenced the immense growth in both the body of environmental legislation and in re-thinking the idea and principles of the environmental protection itself. The provisions of environmental law are passed, accepted and obeyed with a great resistance in the society. On the one hand, environmental law may be defined as a value system that seeks to induce humans to act as stewards of nature rather than only its exploiters, and therefore the environmental provisions are construed in a manner that the main instruments are limitations of different activities in order to prevent the disruption of natural systems. On the other hand, by doing so the environmental law places nature and future generations (those categories commonly do not have any legal personality) and not the human (the sole addressee and the beneficiary of the traditional legal system) in the centre of environmental regulation. This concept radically transforms the relationship between nature and mankind by subordinating the initiative to benefit from legal regulation. By doing so, the environmental provisions make the opposite and evolve tension in respect of such rights as the right to property, the right to personal life, or individual welfare. In the present research the aim is to disclose the origins and the most important principles of international and regional legal regulation of environmental protection, and to analyse the essence of environmental law in the context of public interest. The environmental law is analysed in the context of such human rights as the right to property and the right to personal life.


The pioneering work of sparse local embeddings for extreme classification (SLEEC) (Bhatia et al., 2015) has shown great promise in multi-label learning. Unfortunately, the statistical rate of convergence and oracle property of SLEEC are still not well understood. To fill this gap, we present a unified framework for SLEEC with nonconvex penalty. Theoretically, we rigorously prove that our proposed estimator enjoys oracle property (i.e., performs as well as if the underlying model were known beforehand), and obtains a desirable statistical convergence rate. Moreover, we show that under a mild condition on the magnitude of the entries in the underlying model, we are able to obtain an improved convergence rate. Extensive numerical experiments verify our theoretical findings and the superiority of our proposed estimator.


This research programme is concerned with the design of road traffic noise barriers, in particular, the use of multiple-walls on the ground and on top of earth mound type barriers. As part of this research, a comprehensive up-to-date review of the research carried out on noise barriers was undertaken. A number of areas requiring further research were identified. The discussion of these resulted in the proposal of a simplified noise barrier selection method which would be of use particularly to non-acousticians. This method indicated that acoustic information available for the design of earth mounds was limited, although this barrier type is commonly used in practice and is known to have a number of non-acoustic benefits. Initial investigations showed that the performance of an earth mound could be enhanced by the use of multiple-walls on its top. A detailed investigation was undertaken into the acoustic performance of multiple-walls both on the ground and on top of earth mounds. Both physical and numerical modelling techniques were used for this purpose. The physical scale modelling experiments were carried out both under uniform field conditions and in two different semi-anechoic chambers in the presence of a continuous noise source, using a model scale of 1: 10. The numerical modelling was applied using indirect boundary element method formulation. The commercial software named SYSNOISE was employed for the computations. It was found that numerical modelling results and the semi-anechoic chamber experiments generally agreed very well. The level of accuracy of the uniform field experiments depended on the choice of source and receiver locations as well as the size of the model geometry. This investigation resulted in acoustic advice on the use of multiple walls both on their own and on top of earth mounds. Under favourable conditions, the multiple-wall configurations were shown to provide substantial attenuations of up to 26dB. The physical parameters involved in their design and their noise attenuation mechanisms were identified. In addition to long-wave scattering and diffraction effects, it was identified that surface wave generation mechanisms and interference effects played a role in attenuating noise. The acoustic advice for the design of earth mounds was extended to the applications of single, double and multiple-walls on their top. This work also showed that uniform field conditions in conjunction with a continuous noise source could be used for physical modelling. It was found that for small-sized geometries good agreements were observed between physical modelling (both types) and numerical simulations. There were lesser agreements between the sets of data for larger geometries. The multiple-wall configurations investigated as part of this research programme could be used as noise mitigating measures in central reservations of dual carriageways. However, further research would be required into their acoustic performance and engineering design. The results obtained from this investigation have led to the identification of a number of research areas which could be undertaken in the future.


We describe a new species of Enyalioides from lowland cloud forests in southwestern Ecuador. This represents the third species in the genus known to occur west of the Andes in South America; the other two species are E. heterolepis and E. oshaughnessyi. Among other characters, the new species can be distinguished from other members in the genus by having small, keeled, paravertebrals; a series of skin folds on the lateral aspects of body and neck; size-homogeneous scales on body and limbs; distinct caudal segments; and an extensive dark patch on the gular region of adult males. Morphological similarity suggests that the new species, which we call E. touzeti, is closely related to E. oshaughnessyi.


Gibberella zeae incites Fusarium head blight (FHB), a devastating disease that causes extensive yield and quality losses to wheat and barley. Of over 700 microbial strains obtained from wheat anthers, 54 were able to utilize tartaric acid as a carbon source when the compound was supplied as choline bitartrate in liquid culture. Four tartaric acid-utilizing and three nonutilizing strains reduced FHB in initial tests and were selected for further assays. Antagonists were effective against three different isolates of G. zeae when single wheat florets were inoculated with pathogen and antagonist inoculum. All seven antagonists increased 100-kernel weight when applied simultaneously with G. zeae isolate Z3639 (P ≤ 0.05). Bacillus strains AS 43.3 and AS 43.4 and Cryptococcus strain OH 182.9 reduced disease severity by >77, 93, and 56%, respectively. Five antagonists increased 100-kernel weight of plants inoculated with G. zeae isolate DAOM 180378. All antagonists except one increased 100-kernel weight, and four of seven antagonists reduced disease severity (P ≤ 0.05) when tested against G. zeae isolate Fg-9-96. In spray-inoculation experiments, Bacillus strains AS 43.3 and AS 43.4 and Cryptococcus strains OH 71.4 and OH 182.9 reduced disease severity, regardless of the sequence, timing, and concentration of inoculum application (P ≤ 0.05), though 100-kernel weight did not always increase when antagonists were applied 4 h after inoculum of G. zeae. Overall, 4 of 54 isolates that utilized tartaric acid in vitro were effective against G. zeae versus only 3 of 170 isolates tested that did not utilize tartaric acid (P ≤ 0.05, χ-square test of goodness of fit), demonstrating the potential benefit of prescreening candidate antagonists of FHB for their ability to utilize tartaric acid. Biological control shows promise as part of an integrated pest management program for managing FHB.


Inhibition of carbohydrate metabolism or absorption can decrease calorie intake to promote weight loss and combat obesity. It is also a mechanism for reducing hyperglycemia in diabetic subjects. A concentrated northern kidney bean extract was found to be an effective in vitro amylase inhibitor, thus potentially affecting the absorption of starch carbohydrates. This product was tested in two single dose human studies. Eleven fasting subjects were given 4 slices of white bread and 42 g of margarine with or without 1.5 g of bean extract. Absorption as measured by the area under the plasma glucose-time curve was inhibited 66%. A full meal study with 7 subjects and 0.75 g of extract caused a non-significant 28-41% reduction in absorption. There was a dose-response decrease in glucose absorption by the extract. The bean extract has in vivo efficacy for inhibition of starch absorption and may prove beneficial in weight reduction in individuals consuming large amounts of starch. It also may inhibit starch-induced hyperglycemia in normal and diabetic subjects.


. This research career retrospective summarizes the intellectual contributions of the author's academic career, covering 35 years from the early 1980's onwards. It also attends to various incidents and conditions that shaped his research career, as well as his research strategy choices that allowed him to overcome some of the challenges im-posed by these conditions. These strategic choices comprised to do small research rather than big research and to privilege international collaboration over local collaboration. Conducting Information Systems Research the Old-Fashioned Way • 35 Conducting Information Systems Research the Old-Fashioned Way Conducting Information Systems Research the Old-Fashioned Way Conducting Information Systems Research the Old-Fashioned Way • 41


Based upon theory on successful aging at work and the social identity of age, we hypothesized interactive effects of sex, objective chronological age, and subjective psychological/organizational age on age-based stereotype ratings of older workers, psychological well-being including both burnout and self-esteem, and behavioral self-reports of perceived unfair age and sex discrimination. Study hypotheses were tested using a survey-based sample of N = 1,583 workers from 3 countries, including Turkey, the United States, and Malaysia, and who were employed across a variety of occupations. Potential confounds resultant of socioeconomic status (education level), and the macro environment (country) were statistically controlled. Results generally found support for theoretically expected relations between age and work outcomes. Both psychological and organizational age interacted with chronological age such that different patterns of outcomes were found for men and women. Overall, although older subjective age benefited chronologically older workers, these interactive associations were less beneficial for older women as compared to older men. Implications of study findings for theory and practice are discussed.