Although settlers hunted gray wolves to near extinction more than a century ago, the animal remains one of the most enduring symbols of the West. In 1994, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service authorized reintroduction of gray wolves into Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming under recovery provisions of the Endangered Species Act. Fourteen years later, the Service delisted wolves in these states, contending that the reintroduced population met the numeric and distributional criteria established for recovery in 1994. Months after a district judge enjoined the Service's 2008 delisting rule, the Service again delisted gray wolves. This Note asserts that both the 2008 and 2009 delisting rules violate provisions of the Endangered Species Act guaranteeing adequacy of state regulatory mechanisms prior to delisting, and fidelity to the best available scientific data. The Note also contends that the Service unlawfully deployed conservation tools as delisting instruments contrary to congressional intent. Lastly, the Note illuminates administrative defects in the delisting rules, namely the Service's decision to disregard its own requirement of genetic linkage among the entire gray wolf population without providing a reasoned explanation.


An investigation of the fate and transport of trace quantities of commonly detected herbicides and herbicides degradates in groundwater under aquifer conditions was conducted in a shallow sand and gravel aquifer. Herbicides and a conservative tracer (bromide) were injected into the aquifer and the plumes monitored for 2 to 3 mo using an array of downgradient multilevel samplers (MLSs). Breakthrough curves were fitted to the advection-dispersion and exponentially modified Guassian (EMG) equations. Coefficients of determination were high for both models (generally >0.90). Comparison of the breakthrough curves for the conservative tracer and each herbicide provides a measure of retardation in the aquifer. A retardation factor (R) may be calculated from the first central moment of the data or from peak parameters obtained from the fitted curves, such as: (i) the time required to reach half-maximum concentration, (ii) the centroid of the curve, or (iii) model parameters such as the apparent transport velocity. Comparison of the retardation factors shows small differences due to the method of calculation both within and between models. The similarities in the retardation factors and the fitted curves suggest that both the EMG and the advection-dispersion model describe the data well. The detectin of differences in herbicides retardation factors varied with the method of calculating R


The innovative process of open source software is led in greater part by the end-users; therefore this aspect of open source software remains significant beyond the realm of traditional software development.Open Source Software Dynamics, Processes, and Applications is a multidisciplinary collection of research and approaches on the applications and processes of open source software. Highlighting the development processes performed by software programmers, the motivations of its participants, and the legal and economic issues that have been raised; this book is essential for scholars, students, and practitioners in the fields of software engineering and management as well as sociology.


In this paper we argue that any assessment on the intentional stance of fiscal policy should be based upon all the information available to policymakers at the time of fiscal planning. In particular, real-time data on the discretionary fiscal policy "instrument", the structural primary balance, should be used in the estimation of fiscal policy reaction functions. In fact, the ex-post realization of discretionary fiscal measures may end up to be drastically different from what intentionally planned by fiscal authorities in the budget law. If this is the case, and if revision errors in the policy indicator are correlated with the ones in the regressors, it is shown that commonly used estimators become biased possibly inducing a misleading judgement on the policy stance. We derive the functional form of that bias and, based on empirical second-order moments, we are able to accurately predict the potential impact of using revised data in the evaluation of the ex-ante stance of fiscal policy. When fiscal policy rules are estimated on real-time data, our results indicate a counter-cyclical stance in OECD countries, especially during economic expansions. This contrasts with conventional findings based on revised data, which point to fiscal policy acyclicality or pro-cyclicality, and with Forni and Momigliano (2005) who employ real-time data for the output gap and find countercyclicality, but just in recessions. Further, we test whether threshold effects might be at play in the reaction of fiscal policy to the economic cycle and to debt accumulation. It emerges that the intentional cyclical behavior of fiscal policy is characterized by two regimes, and that the switch between them is likely to occur when output is close to its equilibrium level. On the other hand, the use of revised data does not allow to identify any threshold effect.


Translation usually is a solitary activity, but it is often taught in the classroom and not as a skill (or art) leading to a goal, a text in a target language, but as a means of helping language learners to increase their awareness of the subtleties and intricacies of a foreign language. Unfortunately, teachers are rarely sufficiently equipped to anticipate all the variants which students may come up with in a classroom situation. It may difficult to convince students that certain options are wrong, and others acceptable only in a certain context. When the translation training does not take place in the classroom, but rather in a written form, on the basis of a large number of translations sent in by students, the teacher/author can select all variants in the quiet of his study, and argue his choice carefully and with an eye for details. An added advantage is that the teacher/author will be able to distinguish between very common mistakes, between variants which occur very often, and those that are very rare. For more than a century, the Dutch magazine De Talen [the languages] has offered students (in the broadest sense of the word) the opportunity to increase their language proficiency through carefully discussed translations. Five times a year, students are offered texts in French, German, Spanish and English for translation into Dutch, and five times Dutch texts must be translated into these foreign languages. Subscribers to the magazine can send in their attempts at a translation, using a pseudonym. These translations are corrected and used as the basis for a thorough discussion of all possible variants. It does not concern a correspondence course, although the submitted translations are graded, and these grades are published under the pseudonym. It is assumed that the mother tongue of the subscribers is Dutch, although quite a number of people whose native language is not Dutch use the magazine to improve their command of Dutch. This article, by the editor of the English part of the magazine, describes in some detail the history and setup of De Talen.


We study the problem of completely automatically verifying uninterpreted programs—programs that work over arbitrary data models that provide an interpretation for the constants, functions and relations the program uses. The verification problem asks whether a given program satisfies a postcondition written using quantifier-free formulas with equality on the final state, with no loop invariants, contracts, etc. being provided. We show that this problem is undecidable in general. The main contribution of this paper is a subclass of programs, called coherent programs that admits decidable verification, and can be decided in Pspace. We then extend this class of programs to classes of programs that are k-coherent, where k ∈ ℕ, obtained by (automatically) adding k ghost variables and assignments that make them coherent. We also extend the decidability result to programs with recursive function calls and prove several undecidability results that show why our restrictions to obtain decidability seem necessary.


In 1987, Barbara Christian asserted that important African American literature is suffering critical neglect by an academy preoccupied with developing literary theory; her specific examples included the works of Frances Harper, Alice Walker (with the exception of The Color Purple), and Gloria Naylor. Since then, Hazel Carby's excellent The Reconstruction of Womanhood has discussed Harper, but no major work has emerged to engage Naylor's novels. To some degree, the problem may lie in the precursor to extended critical interpretation, reviews. The major reviews of Naylor's 1988 novel, Mama Day, refuse in crucial ways to grant the novel's donnee, even when they are generally positive. To some extent, these judgments stem from the critics's classification of the novel in one or another overly exclusive tradition. Thus, Rosellen Brown situates the novel as part of "a preoccupation of black writers in general, and black women in particular, with the gains and losses that have come with the move from rural to urban, from intuitive to rational, life" (74). But the equation of rural and intuitive greatly oversimplifies the functioning of the novel's Sea Inslander characters, and besides, omits another clear part of the novel's parentage, what Bharati Mukherjee calls "its roots in The Tempest." She, in turn, overemphasizes the Euro-American sources so that she distorts the plot, saying inaccurately, for example, that the book shows the title character's "acquisition, exercise, and relinquishment" of magic. The review commentary repeatedly singles out for criticism the novel's "strident parallels" with earlier texts (Mukherhjee), its "need to elevate by making symbolic, or by fitting everything into a larger scheme" (Brown). Linda Simon's article in Women's Review of Books extends the implications of these arguments and incorporates them in a vitriolic attack on Naylor's artistic choices. In her view, the novel's theme could evidently develop beautifully and unproblematically if Naylor could only adopt the proper mode of development: What interests Naylor is her heroine's identity as a rural Black woman and her confrontation with urban America....Through work, marriage, and eventually motherhood, she could no doubt learn...what from her personal and racial history could help in her urban experience. From a sassy, street-smart, insecure and cynical young woman she might develop into someone more trusting, tolerant and self-assured, if Naylor allowed that.... The changes in her have not unfolded in the course of daily events. Rather, they are magical transformations worked by the extravagant tragedy Naylor has fashioned here. The questions set out in the beginning are never resolved [in]...the tale of terror and suspense that Mama Day becomes.... Tempted to forget her rural southern past, to reject her ancenstors' sustaining superstition and belief in magic, she incurs a wratful punishment -- one that has nothing to do with the changes that could have taken place in her if Naylor had decided to opt for character development in a more realistic setting.(11) Now exactly why Naylor, or any other writer, should be obligated to write a naturalistic novel -- and that is what this review demands -- remains unclear. In many ways, this commentary revoices the narrow contemporary critiques of Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, which angrily condemned it for not depicting the depression and urban experience. Somehow one might have hoped that in the fifty years between the publications of Hurston's novel and Naylor's Mama Day, the African American woman writer would be permitted access to more genres that the sociological or the naturalistic. Further, Simon's assumptions about "reality," no matter what her heritages, bespeak a profoundly Euro-American perspective. …


Has too much tort law been incorporated into the case law under the federal employment discrimination statutes? The debate on this issue has been reinvigorated by the Supreme Court's decision in Staub v. Proctor Hospital, 131 S. Ct. 1186 (2011). In Staub the Court referred to the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, a federal employment discrimination statute, as a "federal tort." The Court then adopted the tort doctrine of proximate cause as the standard for evaluating subordinate bias (or "cat's paw") liability. Staub was not the first case in which the Court has suggested that a federal employment discrimination law is a federal statutory tort, but it was the most express and direct statement. Moreover, the Court's adoption of proximate cause, one of the most complicated, confusing, and criticized concepts in tort law, to analyze a prevalent issue in employment discrimination law is striking and provocative. Staub reinvigorates the debate about whether the Court and courts have imported too much tort law into employment discrimination law — the debate about the "tortification" of employment discrimination law.Most discussions of tortification of discrimination law trace the origin to the Supreme Court's discussion of torts causation standards in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228 (1989). However, it actually began much earlier. The ubiquitous pretext analysis, developed by the Court to analyze individual disparate treatment cases in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973), is a thinly veiled version of the tort doctrine res ipsa loquitur. Although there have been numerous critiques of the McDonnell Douglas analysis that have called for its abrogation, none have exposed it as the much-maligned tort doctrine. Evaluating McDonnell Douglas as res ipsa helps explain its weaknesses and shortcomings. After almost forty years of the pretext analysis, it is time to expel it from discrimination law. Abrogating the McDonnell Douglas analysis should be a significant first step in reconsidering the tortification of employment discrimination law.


It is challenging to reduce resource over-provisioning for enterprise applications while maintaining service level objectives (SLOs) due to their time-varying and stochastic workloads. In this paper, we study the effect of prediction on dynamic resource allocation to virtualized servers running enterprise applications. We present predictive controllers using three different prediction algorithms based on a standard auto-regressive (AR) model, a combined ANOVA-AR model, as well as a multi-pulse (MP) model. We compare the properties of the predictive controllers with an adaptive integral (I) controller designed in our earlier work on controlling relative utilization of resource containers. The controllers are evaluated in a hypothetical virtual server environment where we use the CPU utilization traces collected on 36 servers in an enterprise data center. Since these traces were collected in an open-loop environment, we use a simple queuing algorithm to simulate the closed-loop CPU usage under dynamic control of CPU allocation. We also study the controllers by emulating the utilization traces on a test bed where a Web server was hosted inside a Xen virtual machine. We compare the results of these controllers from all the servers and find that the MP-based predictive controller performed slightly better statistically than the other two predictive controllers. The ANOVA-AR-based approach is highly sensitive to the existence of periodic patterns in the trace, while the other three methods are not. In addition, all the three predictive schemes performed significantly better when the prediction error was accounted for using a feedback mechanism. The MP-based method also demonstrated an interesting self-learning behavior


Various factors, including the phylogenetic distance between laboratory animals and humans, the discrepancy between current in vitro systems and the human body, and the restrictions of in silico modelling, have generated the need for new solutions to the ever-increasing worldwide dilemma of substance testing. This review provides a historical sketch on the accentuation of this dilemma, and highlights fundamental limitations to the countermeasures taken so far. It describes the potential of recently-introduced microsystems to emulate human organs in 'organ-on-a-chip' devices. Finally, it focuses on an in-depth analysis of the first devices that aimed to mimic human systemic organ interactions in 'human-on-a-chip' systems. Their potential to replace acute systemic toxicity testing in animals, and their inability to provide alternatives to repeated dose long-term testing, are discussed. Inspired by the latest discoveries in human biology, tissue engineering and microsystems technology, this review proposes a paradigm shift to overcome the apparent challenges. A roadmap is outlined to create a new homeostatic level of biology in 'human-on-a-chip' systems in order to, in the long run, replace systemic repeated dose safety evaluation and disease modelling in animals.


In Mandarins and Heretics , Wu Junqing explores the denunciation and persecution of lay religious groups in late imperial (14th to 20th century) China.


Beckers & Vennekens recently proposed a definition of actual causation that is based on certain plausible principles, thereby allowing the debate on causation to shift away from its heavy focus on examples towards a more systematic analysis. This paper contributes to that analysis in two ways. First, I show that their definition is in fact a formalization of Wright's famous NESS definition of causation combined with a counterfactual difference-making condition. This means that their definition integrates two highly influential approaches to causation that are claimed to stand in opposition to each other. Second, I modify their definition to offer a substantial improvement: I weaken their difference-making condition in such a way that it avoids their problematic analysis of cases of preemption. The resulting Counterfactual NESS definition of causation forms a natural compromise between counterfactual approaches and the NESS approach.


Fiber nonlinearity is the main factor limiting the transmission distance of coherent optical communications. We overview several modulation formats intrinsically tolerant to fiber nonlinearity. We recently proposed family of 4D modulation formats based on 2-ary amplitude 8-ary phase-shift keying (2A8PSK), covering the spectral efficiency of 5, 6, and 7 bits/4D symbol, which will be explained in detail in this chapter. These coded modulation formats fill the gap of spectral efficiency between DP-QPSK and DP-16QAM, showing superb performance both in linear and nonlinear regimes. Since these modula- tion formats share the same constellation and use different parity bit expressions only, digital signal processing can accommodate those multiple modulation formats with minimum additional complexity. Nonlinear transmission simulations indicate that these modulation formats outperform the conventional formats at each spectral efficiency. We also review DSP algorithms and experimental results. Their application to time-domain hybrid modulation for 4 – 8 bits/4D symbol is also reviewed. Furthermore, an overview of an eight-dimensional 2A8PSK-based modulation format based on a Grassmann code is also given. All these results indicate that the 4D-2A8PSK family show great promise of excellent linear and nonlinear performances in the spectral efficiency between 3.5 and 8 bits/4D symbol.


A cross‐sectional study aims to describe the overall picture of a phenomenon, a situational problem, an attitude or an issue, by asking a cross‐section of a given population at one specified moment in time. This paper describes the key features of the cross‐sectional survey method. It begins by highlighting the main principles of the method, then discusses stages in the research process, drawing on two surveys of primary care pharmacists to illustrate some salient points about planning, sampling frames, definition and conceptual issues, research instrument design and response rates. Four constraints in prescribing studies were noted. First the newness of the subject meant a low basis of existing knowledge to design a questionnaire. Second, there was no public existing database for the sampling frame, so a pragmatic sampling exercise was used. Third, the definition of a Primary Care Pharmacist (PCP) [in full] and respondents recognition of that name and identification with the new role limited the response. Fourth, a growing problem for all surveys, but particularly with pharmacists and general practitioners (GP) [in full] is the growing danger of survey fatigue, which has a negative impact on response levels.


The effect of Moringa oleifera leaf powder supplementation on some physico-chemical and sensory properties of wheat bread was determined. Bread was prepared from varying proportions of 100%, 99%, 98%, 97%, 96% and 95% wheat flour supplemented with 0%, 1%, 2%, 3%, 4% and 5% Moringa oleifera leaf powder respectively. The bread samples were allowed to cool at ambient temperature (30˚C ± 1˚C) and analysed for some physical properties, proximate composition, and sensory attributes. Moringa leaf powder addition significantly (p < 0.05) increased the fibre (2.10% to 3.28%), ash (1.10% to 1.65%), protein (9.07% to 13.97%), and ether extract (1.51% to 2.59%), while decreasing moisture content (35.20% to 27.65%). Moringa leaf powder supplementation also significantly (p < 0.05) decreased the loaf volume, weight loss, loaf height and specific loaf volume from 796.70 to 496.70 cm 3 , 32.32 to 25.65 g, 7.00 to 5.83 cm and 4.70 to 2.65 cm 3 /g respectively, while the loaf weight increased from 169.20 to 185.86 g. There was a significant (p < 0.05) increase in Magnesium (Mg), Calcium (Ca) and Beta-carotene contents from 0.76 to 1.27 mg/100g, 3.67 to 6.07 mg/100g and 0.02 to 3.27 mg/100g respectively, while Iron (Fe) and Cupper (Cu) contents decreased from 2.74 to 1.25 mg/100g and 2.26 to 0.03 mg/100g respectively. Sensory evaluation showed that although there was significant (p < 0.05) improvement in nutritional composition, the acceptability of all bread samples decreased with increasing level of Moringa supplementation. This implies that despite the high nutrient content of Moringa oleifera powder, it is not a good substitute for wheat in bread production due to its physical characteristics and sensory attributes.


In current regulatory frameworks, dam breach and tailings run-out modelling of tailing storage facilities is a requirement and a matter of increasing interest within the regulatory agencies and practitioners. Increased levels of densification of impounded tailing materials by means of alternative tailing deposition technologies, by means of installation of wick drains, or by loading the surface of the impoundment with waste rock, all generate a change in the interstitial pressure of the tailing column that may lead to densification and an increase of the rheology of the settled tailings. In the case of run-out analyses, we present a sensitivity analysis of the effect of the degree of consolidation at the time of a dam breach on the run-out distance potential. The results show a decrease of up to 16% in the maximum area reached by the outflow due to the increase in the degree of consolidation. The incorporation of the relative effect of densification methods and the resulting change in rheology represents a progress in understanding the critical elements that drive the potential for downstream impact of a dam breach event.


Plant hormones are responsible for plant growth and adaptation to the environment. Among them the most important are cytokinins. Plants undergo gene silencing processes called homology-dependent gene silencing processes. In Arabidopsis there are two homology-dependent gene silencing genes that were chosen for further study, namely AtHOG1 and AtHOG2. Transgenic plants were generated previously with ten different constructs containing AtHOG1 or AtHOG2 genes and were used in this study. Some of the constructs had GFP attached so that the protein expressed could be visualised in a confocal microscope. Transgenic plants generated were T1 and T2 generations. Their DNA was extracted from leaves. By means of PCR transgenic plants were identified. There were 147 samples. Among them there were 39 positiveswith BAR primers and 32 positives with construct specific primers. The localisation of the HOG2 protein was observed in a confocal microscope. Seeds used were T3 generation and were obtained from the lab. HOG2 protein was found to be localised in cell membrane, root tip and chloroplasts.


The Optical Spectrograph and InfraRed Imaging System (OSIRIS) instrument on board the Odin spacecraft has been measuring limb-scattered radiance since 2001. The vertical radiance profiles measured as the instrument nods are inverted, with the aid of the SASKTRAN radiative transfer model, to obtain vertical profiles of trace atmospheric constituents. Here we describe two newly developed modes of the SASKTRAN radiative transfer model: a high-spatial-resolution mode and a Monte Carlo mode. The high-spatial-resolution mode is a successive-orders model capable of modelling the multiply scattered radiance when the atmosphere is not spherically symmetric; the Monte Carlo mode is intended for use as a highly accurate reference model. It is shown that the two models agree in a wide variety of solar conditions to within 0.2 %. As an example case for both models, Odin–OSIRIS scans were simulated with the Monte Carlo model and retrieved using the high-resolution model. A systematic bias of up to 4 % in retrieved ozone number density between scans where the instrument is scanning up or scanning down was identified. The bias is largest when the sun is near the horizon and the solar scattering angle is far from 90°. It was found that calculating the multiply scattered diffuse field at five discrete solar zenith angles is sufficient to eliminate the bias for typical Odin–OSIRIS geometries.


This paper presents and articulates for the first time the concept of mediation as theorised by three key scholars of the Ibero-American space, namely Manuel MartínSerrano, Luis Martín-Santos, and Jesús Martín-Barbero. This article shows that their understandings of mediation are valuable for the study of digital communication, particularly for identifying criteria that facilitate the sublation of communicative capitalism into communicative socialism. The three scholars have placed the concept of mediation at the centre of their intellectual production with the aim of breaking with mechanical Marxism, but provide differing conceptualisations and have scarcely engaged in a dialogue of knowledges. This article will articulate the complementarity of Martín-Serrano's Marxist socio-historical analysis of communication, Martín-Barbero's Latin American cultural studies, and Martín-Santos's phenomenological theorisation of mediation as the key concept of Marxist epistemology.


Given a collection of diverging documents about some lost original text, any person interested in the text would try reconstructing it from the diverging documents. Whether it is eclecticism, stemmatics, or copy-text, one is expected to explicitly or indirectly select one of the documents as a starting point or as a base text, which could be emended through comparison with remaining documents, so that a text that could be designated as the original document is generated. Unfortunately the process of giving priority to one of the documents also known as witnesses is a subjective approach. In fact even Cladistics, which could be considered as a computer-based approach of implementing stemmatics, does not present or recommend users to select a certain witness as a starting point for the process of reconstructing the original document. In this study, a computational method using a rule-based Bayesian classifier is used, to assist text scholars in their attempts of reconstructing a non-existing document from some available witnesses. The method developed in this study consists of selecting a base text successively and collating it with remaining documents. Each completed collation cycle stores the selected base text and its closest witness, along with a weighted score of their similarities and differences. At the end of the collation process, a witness selected more often by majority of base texts is considered as the probable base text of the collection. Witnesses' scores are weighted using a weighting system, based on effects of types of textual modifications on the process of reconstructing original documents. Users have the possibility to select between baseless and base text collation. If a base text is selected, the task is reduced to ranking the witnesses with respect to the base text, otherwise a base text as well as ranking of the witnesses with respect to the base text are computed and displayed on a bar diagram. study a recursive reconstructing the original text from the identified


Distributed energy resources (DER), such as rooftop solar and combined heat and power (CHP), create a unique opportunity to reduce transmission and distribution network capacity requirements, decrease electrical losses, and potentially improve reliability, resiliency, and other operating metrics. This dissertation examines how DER benefit different stakeholders in the electric power sector: DER owners, ratepayers, utilities, and society. In Chapter 2, we investigate how increasing commercial CHP system peak penetrations may affect net emissions, the distribution network, and total system energy costs. We find that small commercial CHP, due to low and inconsistent heat loads, can increase emissions relative to the bulk grid. We suggest policy options to encourage CHP operation during times of high heat loads. In Chapter 3, we develop metrics based on existing best utility practices that characterize how much solar can reduce peak demand on distribution network feeders. We conclude that solar can act as a capacity resource, but the size of the resource depends on the geographic region. Energy storage or an allowance for occasional overloading within a transformer's tolerance can increase the capacity resource of solar. Chapter 4 is a value of solar and rate impact study for the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC). The Pennsylvania PUC can use it to decide whether the environmental benefits of solar are worth the relatively small rate impact caused by rooftop solar. In Chapter 5, we assess the ability of rooftop solar and storage to reduce peak loads and defer distribution capacity projects in the PECO service territory. We find that targeted placement of solar can increase the total deferral value up to fourfold, but capacity deferral opportunities are rare and large administrative efforts to manage deferral projects, such as markets, are probably not warranted.


Published by EPM in Japan and distributed outside of Japan by Routledge - The first major reprint collection of African-American music, including negro spirituals, slave songs, and African-American folk songs: crucial cultural artefacts for those seeking to understand the development of African-American culture and its acceptance by mainstream American society. - The collection brings together nine publications published from the Civil War to the early twentieth century when interest in African-American music started rapidly to develop outside its own milieu. - Indispensable source of information to research the development of African-American culture, music, religion, and social movement.


The risk of disorientation by artificial lights and subsequent 'fallout' has become a widely recognised issue for nocturnal procellariiform species. Using data from community-based rescue campaigns and systematic research, we assessed the characteristics of fallout events observed in fledglings of the threatened New Zealand endemic Hutton's shearwater (Puffinus huttoni) or Kaikōura tītī. Despite strong annual variation in observed fallout numbers, the proportion of annually produced fledglings collected as 'fallout birds' remained below 1% each year. Among those, more than 80% survived due to community rescue efforts. Fallout was found to increase significantly during new moon, while weather effects remained inconclusive. Most fallout occurred within brightly lit areas of Kaikōura township, particularly along its coastal roads. High light source densities and high wattage lights appeared to be influential in some areas but could only partly explain the spatial distribution of fallout at this small scale. Deppe, L.; Rowley, O.; Rowe, L.K.; Shi, N.; McArthur, N.; Gooday, O.; Goldstien, S.J. 2017. Investigation of fallout events in Hutton's shearwaters (Puffinus huttoni) associated with artificial lighting. Notornis 64 (4): 181-191.


This explorative study examined practices of competence modelling in the forest sector organisations and how organisations anticipate changes in competence needs in the future. Semi-structured in-depth interviews (n = 10) were conducted amongst forest sector experts in Finland and data was analysed by thematic analysis. The findings showed that the practices of modelling competences were diverse, most frequently used ones being superior-subordinate review discussions and quantitative competence surveys. In addition to these formal systems, informal modelling, especially on the team level and in smaller companies was also frequent. Organisations used competence modelling for several human resources functions, such as appraisal, motivation and promotion of employees. Surprisingly hiring and compensation functions were not mentioned. Perceptions related to competence modelling were generally speaking positive. The most important challenges were the lack of further actions and sometimes the extraordinary burden to the employees. When anticipating the future, the experts interviewed mentioned several commonly recognised trends, e.g., development of information technology, fragmentation of working life and structural changes in labour markets. All these require more generic competences related to information processing and personal self-management, especially respondents highlighted the importance of self-awareness skills. It is concluded that several useful practices for competence modelling already exist and that present study provides a basis for further quantitative further study.


SYNOPSIS: This paper examines the association between accruals quality and the gender of the firm's audit engagement partner. In particular, given the documented gender-based differences in diligence, conservatism, and risk tolerance, we postulate that female auditors may improve accruals quality. Using a sample of Finnish and Swedish NASDAQ OMX-listed firms, we run several alternative panel regressions of abnormal accruals on female auditor variables and firm-specific controls. The results suggest that firms with female audit engagement partners are associated with smaller abnormal accruals, thereby implying that female auditors may have a constraining effect on earnings management. In general, our findings indicate that the behavioral differences between women and men may have important implications for the quality of auditing and financial reporting. Data Availability: The data used in this paper are derived from public sources.


A model for predicting the chip breakability potential of groove and obstruction-type tools is described. The potential for a tool to break chips is evaluated in terms of the chip geometry and the damage sustained by the chip as it is formed in the shear zone. The chip geometry is characterized by its thickness-to-radius ratio, and the material damage is evaluated in terms of a normalized accumulated damage factor that is based on a hole growth and coalescence model. The chip thickness-to-radius ratio and the normalized accumulated damage factor are evaluated using a finite element cutting model. A total of 210 cutting tests were conducted to verify the model. Different tools including flat, obstruction, and groove, were tested for cutting of AISI 1020 steel and SS 304 steel. Each of these tool geometries exhibited significantly different chip thickness-to-radius ratios and normalized accumulated damage. Threshold criteria for breaking chips were determined for AISI 1020 and SS 304. For difficult-to-break materials such as stainless, a lower normalized accumulated damage was needed and a higher chip thickness-to-radius ratio was required to break chips. Although the model presented in the paper was developed for orthogonal cutting, it can be readily extended to three dimensional machining processes. Using this approach, a new tool design can be evaluated for its chip breakability potential with much less reliance on prototype building and testing.


Abstract Numerous efforts are implemented to manage conflicts over wolves with the implicit aim to predict, gain control, and resolve them. Yet conflicts over wolves tend to persist in practice. Based on Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory, we aim to explain this persistence by considering conflicts over wolves as evolving unities of persisting and contradicting communications. Using a case study in Redes Natural Park, Spain, we illustrate how conflicts over wolves evolve semi-independently through internal and external communications. These communications can both fuel and redirect the complex trajectories of conflict, thereby contributing to its persistence over time. Taking lessons from this case, we propose alternative interventions that do not necessarily aim at resolving conflicts, but instead consider an open-mindedness toward the multitude of conflict observations and experiences; the need to follow and monitor the enduring lives of conflict over wolves; and the prudence of overly managing these conflicts at a distance.


SU-8 is a technologically important photoresist used extensively for the fabrication of microfluidics and MEMS, allowing high aspect ratio structures to be produced. In this work we report the use of SU-8 as a Love wave sensor guiding layer which allows the possibility of integrating a guiding layer with flow cell during fabrication. Devices were fabricated on ST-cut quartz substrates with a single-single finger design such that a surface skimming bulk wave (SSBW) at 97.4 MHz was excited. SU-8 polymer layers were successively built up by spin coating and spectra recorded at each stage; showing a frequency decrease with increasing guiding layer thickness. The insertion loss and frequency dependence as a function of guiding layer thickness was investigated over the first Love wave mode. Mass loading sensitivity of the resultant Love wave devices was investigated by deposition of multiple gold layers. Liquid sensing using these devices was also demonstrated; water-glycerol mixtures were used to demonstrate sensing of density-viscosity and the physical adsorption and removal of protein was also assessed using albumin and fibrinogen as model proteins.


This monograph is one of the first theoretical studies of optatives. Optative constructions express desire without an overt lexical item that means 'desire'. The author specifically investigates optatives with the syntax of embedded clauses that contain prototypical particles such as 'only'. He rejects the view that optativity arises compositionally from the standard semantics of embedded clauses and prototypical particles. The following system is proposed: Desirability is due to a generalized scalar exclamation operator EX. Furthermore, clausal properties such as factivity/counterfactuality are encoded in a Mood head, which co-determines morphological mood and complementizer choice. Finally, the prototypical particles that optatives contain are truth-conditionally vacuous presupposition triggers. As a result, these meaning components do not interact directly, but their meanings converge, with the consequence that they prototypically co-occur. This monograph is of interest for formal semanticists, syntacticians, pragmaticists and morphologists, and especially relevant for research on mood and particle semantics.


By most standards, the price of equities in the United States has risen remarkably rapidly during the last 15 years. Since 1994 alone, the Standard & Poor's index of 500 stock prices has doubled. Although the rapid growth of corporations' profits has propelled the price of their stock, shareholders also are willing to pay a greater price per dollar of their companies' profits, and the valuation of corporations' earnings is now nearly as high as it has been since World War II. For the moment, the value of equity may rest on the growth of earnings, but in the longer run the price of stocks depends on the return that corporations earn on their investments, the growth of their opportunities for making new investments without sacrificing their return, and the return that shareholders require of their stocks.> This article compares the recent price of stocks to traditional standards for valuing equities, finding not only that prices are high by almost all measures but also that the appreciation of equity has been exceptionally dependable. The author uses a simple model to compare the recent data for returns and growth with the value of equity, concluding that companies' recent performance does not support fully the current price of stocks. Although the current values of corporations' assets and earnings in financial markets exceed those that prevailed in the 1970s, the rate of return earned by corporations is only three-quarters as great as it was in the 1970s. The author concludes that a lower shareholders' discount rate, perhaps fostered by the consistently high growth of profits during much of the 1990s, could explain the prevailing value of equities.


To adapt SOFC system for marine power, the improvement of electric power generation performance and its quick response to large road change of the cell elementare required. The purpose of this study is to establish new manufacturing method of the cell element for the improvement of cell performances, and to verify its availability. In the experiment, test cells were prepared using electrolyte membrane with various size of roughness on the surface. The electric performances were measured and compared with each other by using hydrogen as fuel. Effect of interfacial structures between electrolyte membrane and electrode layers on the electric performances was investigated. The main results are as follows: the electric performances of the test cell were improved by the new manufacturing method. It was possible to reduce operating temperature of the cell, which contributes to get higher reliability of the SOFC system. The facts mainly caused by 3dimensional extension of real contact area and electrochemical reaction sites between electrolyte and electrodes. To investigate adaptability of natural gas as fuel for the SOFC system, reforming reaction and electric performance were also examined using methane as fuel. It was certified that the steady power generation with methane could be obtained.


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It is anticipated that the occurrence and intensity of disasters will increase globally and in South Africa where typical disasters include droughts, floods, extreme hailstorms, gales, fires and earthquakes, as well as sinkholes arising from mining activity in dolomitic areas. Disasters such as these result in human suffering and damage to the resources and infrastructure on which South Africans rely for their survival and the maintenance of their quality of life. Section 24 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 affords to everyone the right to an environment that is not harmful to his or her health and well-being. It may be argued that a person's sense of environmental security in relation to the potential risks and dangers of disaster falls within the scope of the protection provided by section 24. The responsibility to intervene for the protection of the interests inherent in the constitutional environmental right lies with the government of South Africa. Disaster management specifically is a functional area of competence of national and provincial government, but practice has shown that the actual implementation of and planning for disaster management happens in the local government sphere. Against the backdrop of these introductory discussions and, given the fact that several municipalities in South Africa are under-resourced, this article very specifically aims to critically discuss and describe from a legal perspective the potential and function of public-private partnerships (PPPs) between local government (municipalities) and the private sector (such as industries) in fulfilling the legally entrenched disaster management mandate of municipalities. Through a critical evaluation of some existing PPPs, this article illustrates that the private sector has a key role to play in assisting municipalities to fulfil their legally entrenched disaster management mandate.


For laminated glass, the adherent properties of an interlayer reduce the risk of airborne glass splinters in case of blast loading. In this thesis, experimental and numerical studies were performed to investigate the mechanical properties of laminated glass exposed to blast loading. The experimental part consisted of five different experiments. Bend and tensions experiments were performed to investigate mechanical properties of glass, interlayer, and laminated components under quasi-static loading. While a compressed gas gun and free field explosions were used to study the behavior of pure and laminated glass under dynamic pressure loading. For the numerical study, finite element models were built to predict the response of the experimental tests. Stochastic initial damage distribution and node splitting was defined for the glass material. In the blast model, node splitting was also introduced in the interlayer to enable plastic deformation. Delamination between glass and interlayer was seen in quasi-static experiments, but could not be detected in dynamically loaded panes. For the case of 3-point bend loading of laminated glass, good correlation was found between numerical predictions and experimental observations. Enabling plastic deformation of the interlayer seems to be vital to predict a reasonable response of laminated glass under blast loading. Keywords: Laminated glass, Blast loading, Node splitting, Stochastic initial damage.


Following an introductory chapter, I examine (i) typologies which have differentiated the literature on organisational culture and symbolism (Chapter 2), (ii) the contribution of organisation theory to organisation culture (Chapter 3), and (iii) recent literature on organisational culture and symbolism (Chapter 4). Within these chapters, I adopt Habermas' (1972) notion of knowledge-constitutive interests, assessing the contrubutions to understanding organisational culture made by literature guided by technical, practical and emancipatory cognitive interests. In doing so, I suggest that more critical studies on organisational culture and symbolism have been comparatively neglected. Lamenting this neglect, I suggest that Giddens' theory of structuration can be employed to advance the development of a critical, emancipatory conceptualisation of organisational culture. In particular, I argue that this Giddensian analysis, by penetrating the existential, poltical and material processes of cultural reproduction (Chapter 5), is able to disclose some of the more contradictory features of organisation culture. The remainder of the thesis comprises of a critical ethnography of the work cultures of public relations and personnel specialists located in a state bureaucracy. I begin the ethnography with a dicussion of my research methods (Chapter 6) and an overview of the departments studied (Chapter 7): I then examine (i) the work cultures of the specialists (Chapter 8), (ii) the specialists' management of the relationships with the hosts bureaucracy (Chapter 9); and, (iii) opportunities the specialists had for developing an emancipatory praxis (Chapter 10). Finally, in a concluding section, I offer some critical reflections on the contributions of the thesis and suggest areas for future research.


The paper proposes a two-phase algorithm using 2DPCA and Gram-Schmidt Orthogonalization Procedure for better representation of face images with reduced dimension. While minimizing the within-class scatter, maximization of the total scatter is taken into account. The proposed method obtains the covariance matrix as in 2DPCA, and applies eigenvalue-eigenvector decomposition to this covariance matrix. Feature extraction is achieved using only d eigenvectors corresponding to largest d eigenvalues. The algorithm computes orthonormal bases by applying Gram-Schmidt Orthogonalization Procedure. Using these orthonormal bases, a common feature vector is calculated for each space in a class. A common feature matrix, which is used for image recognition, is then obtained for each class by gathering d common feature vectors of this class in a matrix form. Ar-Face database is used for experimental study. The proposed method produced better recognition rates compared to Eigenface, Fisherface and 2DPCA.


When hollow concrete masonry is used for construction in high seismic regions, structural designs typically require fully grouted walls. For a fully grouted 203x203x406 mm (8x8x16) concrete masonry unit (CMU), 52 percent of total volume is grout. Grouting process is laborintensive, time consuming and has a high energy demand due to requirements of consolidation in each and subsequent grout lifts. Self-consolidating grout with admixtures has been successfully used without segregation in walls of up to 3.86 m (12.67 ft.) in height. Investigation of selfconsolidating grout mixes without admixtures has potential for sustainability improvement. This paper reports on the compression strength and consolidation observations of selfconsolidating characteristics of no vibration/no admixture grout made by substituting various proportions of Portland cement with Type F fly ash and/or ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS). The percentages of Portland cement replacement were 0%, 50%, 60%, and 70% for Type F fly ash replacement. The percentages of Portland cement replacement were 0%, 60%, 70% and 80% for Type F fly ash and GGBFS. Compression test specimens were made from individual 203x203x406 mm (8x8x16) concrete masonry hollow core units, where the cells were filled with no vibration/ no admixture grout. The specimens were dry cured and compression testing performed at 7, 14, 28, 42, 56, and 130 days. Consolidation testing specimen walls were 3.86 m (12.67 ft.) tall by 1.22 m (4.0 ft.) long with 203x203x406 mm (8x8x16) CMU. The relative performance assessed by comparing to traditional grouted masonry and evaluating consolidation characteristics around mortar fins and reinforcement at 130 days as well as compressive strength of the grout at various wall heights.


In this review (third part), several species within the Nassarius pauperus complex from the eastern Indian Ocean and western Pacific are treated, including a revised concept of Nassa paupera Gould, 1850, type species of the genus Reticunassa Iredale, 1936. In the most recent taxonomic revision, several species had been synonymized with Nassarius pauperus (Gould, 1850), despite distinctive differences among these species in shell morphology. We sequenced a fragment of the mitochondrial COI and the nuclear 28S genes of all available Nassarius pauperus complex species. Automatic barcode gap discovery and reciprocal monophyly were applied to propose species delimitation hypotheses and to support a new concept of the genus. Using morphological and molecular characters, Reticunassa is elevated to full genus rank. Six new species are described: Reticunassa visayaensis sp. nov., R. poppeorum sp. nov., R. annabolteae sp. nov., R. goliath sp. nov., R. intrudens sp. nov. and R. thailandensis sp. nov., while R. tringa (Souverbie, 1864) is recognized as a valid species.


Managerial work in its real-life organisational context was examined in the study. Case studies approach, using interviews and structured observations, was adopted. The data collected were analysed in terms of their role expectations, role performance, and the relationship between role expectations and role performance, on the one hand, and forms of organisations, on the other. Based on the expectations of others of the managers' jobs, the study identified 13 areas of work domain of managers performing the work as 'Line Manager' (LM), 'Personnel Manager' (PER), 'Specialist' (SP) and 'Multi-Function Manager' (MLF) in three different forms of organisations (centralised, partially decentralised and decentralised 'Clan'). The findings of the study show that; 1. The structure of an organisation has more impact on the work as constituted than on the work as practised. 2. At the aggregate level, irrespective of job types and organisational structure, managers were expected to place strong emphasis in carrying out activities related to staff administration and, on a moderate scale, general work administration. 3. Managers, in all forms of organisation, were seen to spend more time interacting with members of the same organisations and, in most instances, informal, face-to-face meetings. 4. Managers, in all forms of organisation, perform the more substantial aspects of their role expectations. Nonetheless, managers in centralised organisations appeared to respond more to the expectations of their superiors than subordinates. Meanwhile, managers in partially decentralised and decentralised 'Clan' organisations appeared to give broadly equal weightage to expectations originating from both groups. 5. Managers working in centralised form of organisation, were expected to place strong emphasis on the administration of the different aspects of their jobs, whilst, managers working in decentralised 'Clan' organisation were expected to place more emphasis on the development aspects of their jobs.


This paper presents an overview of picric acid. In this review, we summarize the methods of preparation, spectral data, uses, identifiers, chemical properties, hazards and explosive data of picric acid. The interpretation of FTIR data, biological degradation and analytical importance have reviewed and discussed. The experimental and optimized geometrical parameters of picric acid reported have been reviewed. The various aspects of charge transfer complexes of Picric acid as an acceptor reported earlier on the experimental and computational methods have also been reviewed.


Pedestrian behaviour simulation models are being developed with the intention to simulate human behaviour in various environments in both non-emergency and emergency situations. These models are applied with the objective to understand the underlying causes and dynamics of pedestrian behaviour and how the environment or the environment's intrinsic procedures can be adjusted in order to provide an improvement of human comfort and safety.

In order to realistically model pedestrian behaviour in complex environments, the specific human behaviour patterns which govern their behaviour need to be represented. It is thereby of importance to understand the causal chains between the surrounding conditions and the pedestrians' behaviours: the impact of the environment's purpose and facilities as well as the pedestrians' individual goals on the pedestrians' planning and route choice behaviour; the influence of emergent stimuli on the pedestrians' plans and environment usage; the influence of the pedestrians' environment usage under normal usage conditions on the pedestrians' behaviour in response to a potential alarm event. In this thesis, a framework is developed for modelling advanced individual pedestrian behaviours and especially purpose-driven environment usage. The framework thereby aims to assist building and facility planners in improving a building's layout in terms of pedestrian experience and walking routes.

In this thesis, a comprehensive review on how individual pedestrian behaviour and the pedestrians' environment usage are realised in current pedestrian behaviour simulation models has been undertaken. In addition, current theories on human decision making, goal-driven behaviour and emotion modelling have been surveyed from the research fields of artificial intelligence, virtual reality simulation, human psychology and human behavioural sciences. From this survey, theories suitable for this thesis' cause have been identified and combined for the proposed Cognitive Pedestrian Agent Framework (CPAF). The proposed framework contains a sophisticated human decision making model, a multi-faceted individual knowledge representation, a model to realise situational and contextual awareness, and a novel realisation of a human path planning heuristic. The proposed framework has been demonstrated in the simulation of a building usage-cycle use case. Further, it has been outlined how the proposed framework could be used to model experiential alarm response behaviour.


An important aspect of music perception in humans is the ability to segment streams of musical events into structural units such as motifs and phrases. A promising approach to the computational modeling of music segmentation employs the statistical and information-theoretic properties of musical data, based on the hypothesis that these properties can (at least partly) account for music segmentation in humans. Prior work has shown that in particular the information content of music events, as estimated from a generative probabilistic model of those events, is a good indicator for segment boundaries. In this paper we demonstrate that, remarkably, a substantial increase in segmentation accuracy can be obtained by not using information content estimates directly, but rather in a bootstrapping fashion. More specifically, we use information content estimates computed from a generative model of the data as a target for a feed-forward neural network that is trained to estimate the information content directly from the data. We hypothesize that the improved segmentation accuracy of this bootstrapping approach may be evidence that the generative model provides noisy estimates of the information content, which are smoothed by the feed-forward neural network, yielding more accurate information content estimates.


Background Pleural infection is common, and has a >30% major morbidity and mortality—particularly when infection is caused by Gram-negative, Staphylococcus aureus or mixed aerobic pathogens. Standard pleural fluid culture is negative in ∼40% of cases. Culturing pleural fluid in blood culture bottles may increase microbial yield, and is cheap and easy to perform. Objectives To determine whether inoculating pleural fluid into blood culture bottles increases the culture positivity of pleural infection over standard laboratory culture, and to assess the optimum volume of inoculum to introduce. Methods 62 patients with pleural infection were enrolled. Pairs of aerobic and anaerobic blood culture bottles were inoculated at the bedside with 2, 5 or 10 ml of pleural fluid, and two pleural fluid specimens were sent for standard culture. Pleural fluid from nine control patients was cultured to test for 'false-positive' results. Results The addition of blood culture bottle culture to standard culture increased the proportion of patients with identifiable pathogens by 20.8% (20/53 (37.7%) to 31/53 (58.5%) (difference 20.8%, 95% CI difference 8.9% to 20.8%, p<0.001)). The second standard culture did not similarly improve the culture positivity (19/49 (38.8%) to 22/49 (44.9%) (difference 6.1%, 95% CI difference −2.5% to 6.1%, p=0.08)). The culture inoculum volume did not influence bacterial isolation frequency. The control fluids were culture negative. Conclusions Blood culture bottle culture of infected pleural fluid increases microbial yield when used in addition to standard culture. This technique should be part of routine care.


IMPORTANCE
Patients with chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) have reduced sleep quality linked to their overall well-being and disease-specific quality of life (QOL). Other primary sleep disorders also affect QOL.

OBJECTIVE
To determine the impact of comorbid obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) on CRS disease-specific QOL and sleep dysfunction in patients with CRS following functional endoscopic sinus surgery.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
Prospective multisite cohort study conducted between October 2011 and November 2014 at academic, tertiary referral centers with a population-based sample of 405 adults.

INTERVENTION
Functional endoscopic sinus surgery for medically refractory symptoms of CRS.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
Primary outcome measures consisted of preoperative and postoperative scores operationalized by the Rhinosinusitis Disability Index (RSDI) survey, the 22-item Sinonasal Outcome Test (SNOT-22), and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Obstructive sleep apnea was the primary, independent risk factor.

RESULTS
Of 405 participants, 60 (15%) had comorbid OSA. A total of 285 (70%) participants provided preoperative and postoperative survey responses, with a mean (SD) of 13.7 (5.3) months of follow-up. Significant postoperative improvement (P < .05) was reported across all mean disease-specific QOL measures for both participants with and without comorbid OSA. Participants without OSA reported significant greater improvement in unadjusted mean (SD) RSDI global scores (−25.0 [23.3] vs. −16.5 [22.1]; P = .03), RSDI physical (−10.7 [9.2] vs. −7.3 [9.1]; P = .03) and functional (−8.4 [8.7] vs. −5.1 [7.5]; P = .03) subdomain scores, and SNOT-22 rhinologic symptom domain scores (−9.1 [7.7] vs. −5.7 [6.9]; P = .008). Participants without OSA also reported greater improvements on mean (SD) PSQI global (−1.9 [4.0] vs. −0.5 [3.7]; P = .03), sleep quality (−0.4 [0.8] vs. −0.03 [0.7]; P = .02), and sleep disturbance (−0.4 [0.7] vs. −0.1 [0.7]; P = .03) scores. The majority of these associations were found to be durable after adjustment for alternate independent cofactors using stepwise linear regression modeling.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Patients with CRS and comorbid OSA have poor QOL with substantial disease-specific QOL improvements following surgery. Patients who present with CRS should be assessed for primary sleep disorders and, if identified, should be treated concurrently for both CRS and OSA to improve sleep dysfunction to optimize surgical outcomes.

TRIAL REGISTRATION
clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT01332136.


NZIER has always had a strong interest in understanding the way in which the New Zealand economy interacts with the rest of the world. We have a long history of producing research into trade liberalisation and globalisation. As the global economy becomes ever more complex, we are now turning our attention to issues such as services, investment, technology transfer and the role of people movement in promoting economic growth and productivity. NZIER is delighted to continue this tradition by funding this important and innovative piece of research by David Law, Murat Gen and John Bryant into the links between trade flows and the movement of people across borders. This research was funded by NZIER in celebration of our 50th Anniversary in 2008. During this very challenging period for the global economy, there has been a tendency for policy makers to implement inwards-focused policies aimed to protecting domestic jobs and promoting domestic economic activity. Such policies are politically popular, but can be economically inefficient and often come at the expense of deeper economic integration between countries. One particularly topical area of policy discussion is the role of immigration in promoting economic growth. New Zealand has long been reliant on immigration to boost its population and to fill gaps in the labour market. And many Kiwis love to travel overseas to gain life and work experience. Given these continual inflows and outflows, it is interesting to consider how people movements might affect the New Zealands exports and imports of goods and services, and thus how immigration policy might be used as a policy lever to boost our international linkages. The paper uses empirical techniques to investigate the links between trade, migration and New Zealands diaspora. It clearly shows that inwards and outwards migration has a positive effect on goods and tourism trade. This suggests that policy makers could design immigration policy with these links in mind in order to maximise the economic potential of migrants. If trade follows migration flows, then an important avenue for boosting New Zealands integration with the global economy may be encouraging migrants from important trading partners.


The specification of reference levels in the aspiration-led methodology of multiobjective decision support is usually imprecise. Such imprecision can be included in the mathematical formulation of a decision problem by using membership functions and fuzzy set theory. This approach can also be treated as a further development of fuzzy interactive methods. A method of constructing order-consistent scalarizing function based on membership functions is presented as well as a related, extended fuzzy interactive method.


Gene expression analysis from single cells has become increasingly prominent across biological disciplines; thus, it is important to train students in these approaches. Here, we present an experimental and analysis pipeline that we developed for the Neural Systems & Behavior (NS&B) course at Marine Biological Laboratory. Our approach used the Maxwell® 16 LEV simplyRNA Tissue Kit and GoTaq® 2-Step RT-qPCR System for gene expression analysis from single neurons of the crustacean stomatogastric ganglion, a model system to study the generation of rhythmic motor patterns. We used double-stranded RNA to knockdown expression of a putative neuromodulator-activated sodium channel. We then examined the electrophysiological responses to known neuromodulators and confirmed that the response was reduced. Finally, we measured how mRNA levels of several ion channel genes changed in response. Our results provide new insights into the neural mechanisms underlying the generation and modulation of rhythmic motor patterns.


INTRODUCTION Over the past several years, foreign investors have filed 49 claims with the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) against Argentina. (1) Many of these claims originated from certain restrictive measures undertaken by the Argentine government in response to the nation's economic and financial crisis from 1999 to 2001. (2) Though Argentina claimed the emergency measures were necessary for the maintenance of public order, such measures "resulted in the greatest wave of claims by foreign investors against a single host country in recent history." (3) Of those claims against Argentina that have been adjudicated, three tribunals awarded damages in excess of $100 million to the investor-claimants, which are among the largest awards granted by an ICSID tribunal. (4) Perhaps even more noteworthy than the amount of damages awarded are the conflicting interpretations of the necessity of Argentina's emergency measures as a response to the economic crisis. (5) In many of the claims against it, Argentina consistently raised the defense that it should be excused from liability for damages to foreign investments because of the "state of necessity" during its economic crisis, (6) otherwise known as a necessity defense. Argentina has argued for a necessity defense in claims brought by investors in many different industries, including infrastructure, manufacturing, and natural resources. (7) However, commentators and practitioners have taken a particular interest in a group of ICSID cases collectively known as the Argentine Gas Cases. (8) Each of the four claims was brought by a foreign corporation investing in Argentina's gas transportation and distribution industry; yet, each of the four tribunals issued a significantly divergent interpretation of the necessity defense claimed by Argentina. (9) While three of the four tribunals' awards share certain commonalities, ultimately finding Argentina liable for treaty violations despite its necessity defense, the fourth tribunal found in favor of Argentina. (10) Attempts at reconciling the different interpretations and conclusions of the awards regarding Argentina's necessity defense leave many questions unanswered. Further complicating matters, two of the three awards levied against Argentina were recently annulled with respect to Argentina's necessity defense. (11) Awards by tribunals administered under ICSID may be annulled only in limited situations; (12) namely, where a tribunal is improperly constituted, fails to justify its decision, or displays "manifest excess of powers," corruption, or "serious departure from a fundamental rule or procedure." (13) With limited grounds for annulment, both the annulment decisions and awards in the Argentine Gas Cases differed as to the proper interpretation of the necessity defense under both the bilateral investment treaty between Argentina and the United States (the U.S.-Argentina BIT) (14) and under customary international law. (15) The awards and corresponding annulment decisions issued in the Argentine Gas Cases have significant implications for the security of foreign investments and the legitimacy of international investment law and present policy concerns for states party to bilateral investment treaties. Prior to addressing these concerns, Part I aims to clarify the contextual background for the debate over the necessity defense. It first describes Argentina's political and economic climate and the relevant facts of the Argentine Gas Cases. It then discusses the necessity defense as claimed by Argentina to excuse its failure to comply with certain provisions of the U.S.-Argentina BIT. Part II addresses the different interpretations of the necessity defense provided by the tribunals in the Argentine Gas Cases in addition to those provided by the respective annulment committees that reviewed each case. Having established the context for the debate over the necessity defense, Part HI discusses concerns about the security of investor interests in foreign investment, inconsistencies in the awards and subsequent annulments, and related policy issues for states participating in the bilateral investment treaty system. …


Conservation efforts in Mediterranean‐climate regions are complicated by species' variability in response to multiple threats. Functional type classifications incorporating life history traits with disturbance response strategies provide a framework for predicting groups of species' response to fire, but it is unclear whether these classifications will be useful when species are exposed to multiple threats or differ in spatial context. We evaluate whether species of the same fire‐response functional type exhibit similar responses to disturbance relative to, and in combination with, climate and land‐use change and whether the dominant threat depends on spatial context.


This paper gives an overview of computationally efficient stochastic response surface techniques based on non-intrusive polynomial chaos (NIPC) for uncertainty quantification in numerical models. The results of uncertainty analysis can be used in robust and reliability-based design and optimisation studies as well as the assessment of the accuracy of the simulation results. In particular, the uncertainty quantification with NIPC methods which require no modification to the existing deterministic models are demonstrated on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations in this paper. The NIPC methods have been increasingly used for uncertainty propagation in high-fidelity CFD simulations due to their non-intrusive nature and strong potential for addressing the computational efficiency and accuracy requirements associated with large-scale complex stochastic simulations. The theory and description of various NIPC methods used for non-deterministic CFD simulations are presented, which can be applied to any other computational models used in analysis and optimisation problems. Several stochastic fluid dynamics examples are given to demonstrate the application and effectiveness of NIPC methods for uncertainty quantification in fluid dynamics. These examples include stochastic computational analysis of a laminar boundary layer flow over a flat plate, supersonic expansion wave problem, and inviscid transonic flow over a three-dimensional wing with rigid and aeroelastic assumptions.


I propose a lightweight Coq framework for optimizing tensor kernels written in a pure, functional array language. Optimizations rely on user scheduling using series of verified, semantics-preserving rewrites. Unusually for compilation targeting imperative code with arrays and nested loops, all rewrites are source-to-source within a purely functional language. This language comprises a set of core constructs for expressing high-level computation detail and a set of what we call reshape operators, which can be derived from core constructs but trigger low-level decisions about storage patterns and ordering. We will demonstrate that not only is this system capable of deriving the optimizations of existing state-of-the-art languages like Halide and generating comparably performant code, it is also able to schedule a family of useful program transformations beyond what is reachable in Halide.


The main approach for conserving energy today is to place idle system into one of several low-power system sleep states. However, current transition times between the power states are long, limiting the usefulness of these states. We propose using a context-aware selective resume to wake a system with only the minimal set of devices needed for the waking task. This approach provides access to system resources with the lowest power consumption possible and with the shortest transition latencies. In this paper, we discuss the classes of applications that would benefit from selective resume, discuss the design considerations for implementing selective resume, and profile system sleep cycles to demonstrate that OS modifications can reduce cycle time by as much as 87% and energy use by up to 50%.


The present multiple multipole (MMP) approach exhibits limitations with problems of higher complexity. Its dense and strongly overdetermined system of equations is badly conditioned even for smaller problems such that only expensive, more stable QR decomposition methods can generally be applied. With growing complexity and size of the problem, the matrix often becomes near-rank deficient. Additionally, the performed row and column weighting is unsatisfactory if the averaged power density values vary strongly throughout the boundaries. Some of these limitations can be avoided by using the iterative technique introduced here. It is shown that these systems of equations can easily be built and partitioned according to physical considerations in such a way that diagonally dominant block matrices are obtained. For many problems, a few block Gauss-Seidel or successive block overrelaxation (SBOR) steps produce a sufficiently converged solution. Even more significant than the numerical advantage is the fact that this technique opens new possibilities for the modeling and the validation of solutions and therefore considerably facilitates and extends the applicability of the MMP code to a larger spectrum of problems. Furthermore, the alternating procedure presents new possibilities for directly coupling MMP with other codes, such as finite difference (FD) and method of moments (MoM). >


Natural disasters expose the fact that poverty, race, gender, and other indicators of social disadvantage are linked to the population of citizens who struggle the most to recover after a disaster, yet these factors are not accounted for in public policy that guides decision making related to federal assistance to residents affected by a disaster. This study used neural networks as a research strategy to determine whether the current policies under the Stafford Act related to assistance comply with Congressional intent and law that uses a formula for assistance distribution, and whether human factors such as culture, measured as residing in a non-white zip code according to Census tract data, are considered in decision making regarding assistance. Data from FEMA related to the recovery from Hurricane Irene in 2011 were used as the basis for the model. The neural network analysis of this study indicated that federal assistance decisions after the Hurricane Irene event tended to focus on the adjusted property value and actual dollar value of losses as the determining factor in decisions. Focusing on the actual dollar value of losses is consistent with the formulaic approach codified in public law, but this approach overshadows important human factors such as living in a primarily non-white zip code and the availability of temporary housing. This study underscores the notion that the public policy works the way it is intended, but it fails to accommodate human and social factors. As a consequence, the existing policy is legally equitable, but it is not necessarily morally fair to those impacted by disasters. The positive social change implications of this study include recommendations to federal policy makers to more equitably structure recovery efforts in alignment with the human environment of communities rather than a primary focus on cost and value of real property. Disaster Management and Efforts to Mitigate the Destruction of the Human-Environment by Dorothy Henderson Bell MA, [NC Central University], 2006 BS, [NC A&T State University], 1997 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Public Policy and Administration Walden University June 2015


Abstract. Cesium (http://cesiumjs.org) is an open source, WebGL-based JavaScript library for virtual globes and 3D maps. It is an excellent tool for 3D thematic visualisations, but to use its full functionality it has to be feed with its own file format, CZML. Unfortunately, this format is not yet supported by any major GIS software. This paper intro- duces a plugin for QGIS, developed by the author, which facilitates the creation of CZML file for various types of visualisations. The usability of Cesium is also examined in various hardware/software environments.


BACKGROUND
A practicing clinician will often be confronted with the results of a new clinical trial in their relevant field and will be faced with the dilemma of determining whether these results are clinically relevant to their own work. This chapter aims to describe the concepts of statistical significance in randomized clinical trials from a mainly classical statistical inference perspective. This chapter describes approaches to assess clinical significance and illustrates these approaches with examples from the contemporary neurological literature.

RESULTS
There are several approaches that have been described in the research literature to assess the clinical significance including the minimal important clinical difference, the fragility index, Bayesian approaches, and a graphical approach. Unfortunately none of these methods have been widely used in the neurological research literature. Examples are provided to illustrate how these methods can be applied to the contemporary neurological literature in order to provide the clinician with some guidance on their use.

CONCLUSIONS
How the trial is designed can affect the external validity of the results and subsequently the clinical relevance of a randomized clinical trial. Large-scale streamlined clinical trials with inclusion criteria that are not too restrictive can improve the generalizability of trial results. Even highly statistically significant treatment effects can be unreliable if they are based on a small number of events. The approaches described in this chapter should provide the practicing clinician with a starting point in order to determine whether the reported statistically significant results are indeed clinically relevant.


Soils regulate air and water quality by storing large pools of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N). Land management decisions have an enduring influence on the integrity and size of these pools, particularly in the upper soil layers. An important challenge, therefore, is to identify how soil C and N bear the marks of both past and present land use. Several studies have documented that effects of agriculture on soil properties can persist long after agricultural abandonment, but these studies typically examine sites returning to forest or grassland. Fewer have investigated legacies of agricultural land use when formerly agrarian land becomes urban. Urban soil management may be intensive, characterized by modifications in microtopography, vegetation, and nutrient and water inputs. We thus hypothesized that urban residential land use would negate any agrarian signatures in the pool sizes of labile (readily mineralized) soil organic C and N, but that agrarian legacies would persist in pools of stable (not readily mineralized) C and N. We tested this hypothesis in arid central Arizona (USA), where residential development in the Phoenix metropolis occurred on both agrarian and uncultivated desert lands throughout the 20th Century. We used a year-long incubation to quantify labile and stable organic C and N in soils (to 15.2 cm depth) from desert land, contemporary agrarian land, residential yards that were converted from desert, and yards converted from agrarian land use. Labile N in residential soils may have been independent of historical provenance, consistent with the hypothesis that readily-mineralized pools converge on a single signature of current (residential) land use. Labile C, stable C, and stable N showed the influence of agrarian history decades after conversion to urban residential use. These agrarian legacies in currently residential soil result from the persistence of past agrarian amendments to soil, and are not artifacts of the preferential cultivation of inherently fertile land. Current residential soil management is further amending soil C and N pools on top of the legacy pools left behind by agriculture. We calculate that the persisting influence of agrarian history on soils is similar in magnitude to contemporary urban residential effects.


This paper presents findings on water and sanitation service levels from 16 small and medium towns in four regions of Ethiopia. In these settlements, the proportion of people with access to improved water and sanitation services is found to be high and consistent with other major datasets and reports for urban Ethiopia. However, when service characteristics such as reliability, quality, quantity and accessibility (including travel and queuing time) of water are considered, and for sanitation, quality and use, a different picture emerges. Only a small minority of households, 9% for water and 3% for sanitation, were found to receive services that meet the standards set in the Ethiopian government's first Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP I). Under the second Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP II), standards for urban water services have been set higher and current performance levels are even lower. This paper illustrates the discrepancies between average coverage figures, actual service delivery levels and the increased demands of the GTP II. The paper illustrates the huge scale of the challenge faced in improving WASH service delivery levels in small towns in Ethiopia, which is an issue of wider relevance in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals.


For many vocational students in England, mathematics is now a compulsory part of their programme, yet the inclusion of an academic subject within a vocational course presents challenges. In this paper, an analysis of a series of case studies of vocational student groups in Further Education colleges in England shows how contrasting practices in 'functional mathematics' and vocational classes reinforce perceptions that mathematics is an isolated and irrelevant subject. Some mathematics teachers made contextual connections by embedding mathematical problems in vocationally-related scenarios but distinctive socio-cultural features of vocational learning situations were often absent from mathematics classes. Addressing this disconnection requires a pedagogical approach and classroom culture that links mathematics learning with vocational values. The findings suggest that adopting mathematics classroom practices that reflect the surrounding vocational culture creates greater coherence for students and has positive effects on their engagement with mathematics learning.


Nonferromagnetic Mn2+ ions can be readily formed at the surface of half metallic La0.7 Sr0.3 MnO3 manganite as demonstrated by deoxygenating surface treatments. The 3 d5 contribution of these Mn2+ ions to the valence-band electronic structure has been characterized using Mn(2p) to 3d resonant photoemission measurements. The Mn2+ related 3d electrons were found to be stabilized by about 2 eV with respect to the mixed-valence 3d states, indicating their strong localization. Active participation of Mn2+ states in both spin and charge conductivity processes is therefore excluded. A two-channel picture, including independent Mn3+ Mn4+ and Mn2+ channels, emerges from detailed data analysis. Reversible Mn2+ formation and straightforward oxygen annealing effects point to a direct bonding between Mn2+ and oxygen vacancies that are most probably created at preexisting structural defects. The t2g and eg states of the mixed valence Mn3+ Mn4+ ions remain unaffected as the Mn2+ content increases, indicating a robust Mn3+ Mn4+ channel independent of structural defects. © 2006 The American Physical Society.


In the early 1900's organized predator control was initiated to remove coyotes and wolves from the sheep and goat producing areas of Texas. Operations were begun in the Edwards Plateau, the largest area of sheep concentration. By the 1920's, many of the inner Edwards Plateau counties were considered to be practically free of coyotes (Canis latrans) and wolves (Canis lupus, Canis rufus). The 1950's found coyotes and wolves extirpated from most of the Edwards Plateau. After a coyote population irruption in the late 1950's, coyotes began to re-establish themselves on the periphery of the Plateau. This encroachment process continued throughout the next 2 decades and continues to progress in the 1980's.


BACKGROUND
Understanding the influence of aging on the brain remains a challenge in determining its role as a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease.

OBJECTIVE
To identify patterns of aging in a large neuroimaging cohort.

METHODS
A large psychiatric cohort of 31,227 individuals received brain SPECT at rest and during a concentration task for a total of 62,454 scans. ANOVA was done to identify the mean age trends over the course of the age range in this group, 0-105 years. A regression model in which brain SPECT regions of interest was used to predict chronological age (CA) was then utilized to derive brain estimated age (BEA). The difference between CA and BEA was calculated to determine increased brain aging in common disorders in our sample such as depression, dementia, substance use, and anxiety.

RESULTS
Throughout the lifespan, variations in perfusion were observed in childhood, adolescence, and late life. Increased brain aging was seen in alcohol use, cannabis use, anxiety, bipolar, schizophrenia, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and in men.

CONCLUSION
Brain SPECT can predict chronological age and this feature varies as a function of common psychiatric disorders.


A systematic reevaluation of the traditional justifications for property tax exemptions is presented. The paper explicitly considers the effects of exemptions upon local governments. Most traditional arguments for property tax exemptions are not valid today. Considerations of equity and efficiency strongly suggest the elimination of the exemptions, yet the elimination of property tax exemptions for local governments-and perhaps for certain private institutions-would lead to serious practical problems. The paper concludes by recommending a selective elimination of exemptions the property of local governments should continue to be exempt from property taxation, but federal and state property should be subject to local property taxes. The theoretical arguments also suggest eliminating exemptions for eleemosynary, fraternal, and religious organizations, but popular support for such exemptions probably justifies keeping them.


A limited blood flow to skeletal tissues results in minimal therapeutic effect of drugs being administered to a patient using conventional ways. To obtain sufficient amount of drug at an effected site, implanted drug delivery systems based on biomaterials can be used. In this study, surface modified hydroxyapatites (m-HA) were prepared and evaluated as drug delivery systems. The effect of modifiers on surface properties of HA and their in vitro drug delivery efficiency were investigated. For synthesis of m-HA, a simple in situ co-precipitation method was used. Hydroxyapatite was subjected to surface modification by various carboxylic acids such as adipic acid, malonic acid, succinic acid and stearic acid. This surface modification affected its surface properties such as surface area, pore size, pore volume, particle size and crystallinity. The m-HA were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) technique was used to compute surface properties of m-HA. The highest BET surface area of 143 m2 g−1 has been found for HA modified with malonic acid and the lowest surface area of 37 m2 g−1 was calculated for stearic acid modified HA. The BET adsorption average pore size (17–20 nm) of m-HA confirmed its mesoporous nature. The biocompatible nature of the prepared m-HA was assessed by 3-(4,5)-dimethylthiahiazo(-z-yl)-3,5-di-phenytetrazoliumromide (MTT) assay. To evaluate the influence of functional groups and surface properties of m-HA on drug delivery efficiency, ibuprofen was used as a model drug. In vitro drug delivery experimental results indicated that drug loading and release efficiency relied on functional groups, surface area, and porosity of m-HA. The percentage loading of ibuprofen was good for samples containing free –COOH groups and high surface area. A drug loading of 22 mg g−1 has been found for malonic acid modified HA (ma-HA) having high surface area, pore volume, whereas a poor loading of 2.03 mg g−1 has been observed for stearic acid modified HA (st-HA) sample having low surface area and pore volume. A sustained drug release profile showed that 61% drug had been released from malonic acid modified HA (ma-HA) in 24 hours. A 100% drug release was observed for st-HA in 8 hours. Succinic acid modified HA and adipic acid modified HA exhibited intermediate drug release profiles. The drug release behavior of m-HA followed Fick's laws of diffusion.


Ecosystem-based adaptation (Eba) uses biodiversity and ecosystem services as part of a larger adaptation strategy to climate change. While the conservation and sustainable development community considers EbA to be a strong method of addressing climate change and its associated challenges, there is still a tendency for policy makers to implement traditional engineering solutions for adapation, rather than investing in EbA. The need for solid data on the cost-effectiveness of this nature-based approach was the driver behind an IUCN study identifying the economic costs and benefits associated with EbA. The study reviewed projects and assessed existing data from Costa Rica, India, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines and Tanzania. The results show that there are still extensive knowledge gaps, and that further cost-benefit analysis work and field evidence is required to showcase more clearly the nature-based solutions that EbA offers to climate change.


The direct epitaxial growth of III-V semiconductor lasers on standard, CMOS-compatible, on-axis (001) Si substrates is actively sought for the realization of active photonic integrated circuits. Here we report on the first mid-infrared semiconductor laser epitaxially grown on on-axis Si substrates, i.e., compatible with industry standards. Furthermore, these GaSb-based laser diodes demonstrate low threshold current density, low optical losses, high temperature operation, and high characteristic temperatures. These results represent a breakthrough toward the integration of semiconductor laser sources on Si for smart sensors.


The equity culture has an effective role in developing investment market and represents economic development. In the current study, polling and questionnaire method was used to determine the approach of organizational stockholders and exchange stockbrokers to over the counter market (OTC) role in developing partnerships and equity culture in the investment market of Iran. The results demonstrate that the statistical population deems the transparency of Iran's OTC market favorable and that the OTC market has acceptable trading expenses for investors and company's involvement. Also, in addition to adequate supporting and educational facilities in Iran's OTC market, there is the potential for innovation and diversity in trading opportunities for investors and individuals and reduces investor's risks for investment and involvement in the investment market. Also there is no significant dereference between the approaches of organizational shareholders and exchange stockbrokers with regards to the discussed variables.


The contributors to The Anomie of the Earth explore the convergences and resonances between Autonomist Marxism and decolonial thinking. In discussing and rejecting Carl Schmitt's formulation of the nomos—a conceptualization of world order based on the Western tenets of law and property—the authors question the assumption of universal political subjects and look towards politics of the commons divorced from European notions of sovereignty. They contrast European Autonomism with North and South American decolonial and indigenous conceptions of autonomy, discuss the legacies of each, and examine social movements in the Americas and Europe. Beyond orthodox Marxism, their transatlantic exchanges point to the emerging categories disclosed by the collapse of the colonial and capitalist frameworks of Western modernity.

Contributors. Joost de Bloois, Jodi A. Byrd, Gustavo Esteva, Silvia Federici, Wilson Kaiser, Mara Kaufman, Frans-Willem Korsten, Federico Luisetti, Sandro Mezzadra, Walter D. Mignolo, Benjamin Noys, John Pickles, Alvaro Reyes, Catherine Walsh, Gareth Williams, Zac Zimmer


Tapp, Katherine N. Ph.D., Purdue University, December 2014. Evaluation of Yttrium-90 Positron Emission Dosimetry. Major Professor: Gary Hutchins Purpose: Radioembolization is a novel treatment which utilizes the liver's unique dual system blood supply to trap yttrium-90 (90Y) microspheres in microvasculature near liver tumors. Radioembolization dose planning and dosimetry are based on crude, inaccurate assumptions due to the lack of knowledge of patient specific 90Y microsphere distribution. In recent years, the very small 3.1867e-5 internal pair production decay branch of 90Y has been shown to allow for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging following radioembolization. This work explores the accuracy and limitation of 90Y PET imaging due to the extremely low signal to noise (SNR) ratio associated with 90Y and verifies the accuracy of using these PET images for 3-dimensional (3D) dosimetry. Material and Methods: PET acquisitions of a phantom containing 90Y filled cylindrical inserts were acquired to determine quantitative accuracy of the PET images to measure 90Y activity. Numerous reconstruction algorithms were used to determine the optimal protocol to balance image noise and accuracy. A GATE model of the PET scanner was used to evaluate the origin of prompt signal and random noise coincidence counts in these PET acquisitions. PET images were converted to dose maps using standard S-kernel convolution. Polymer gel dosimetry was used to validate the 3D dose map results. xiv Furthermore, PET, with associated CT images, were used as input data into MC simulations to model dose rates surrounding patients for future patient release studies. A Siemens® Biograph 64 TruePoint PET/CT was used for all acquisitions and reconstructions. Results: The phantom study determined Siemens® OSEM-PSF algorithm, known as TrueX, with 2 iterations and 14 subsets had the optimal balance of noise and accuracy. Using this reconstruction algorithm, the PET images were found to accurately measure activity and calculated dose within 10% when 90Y concentration was above the minimum detectable concentrations (MDC) of 1 MBq/ml. However, this reconstruction algorithm was shown to have a positive bias in areas where concentration was below the MDC due to truncation of negative sinogram bin values caused by statistical noise in the random correction. Polymer gel dosimetry verified the accuracy of PET dose maps but also identified a limitation in cases of highly gradient distributions due to the PET spatial resolution spreading of measured activity. Additionally, external dose rates were found to be accurately predicted through use of 90Y PET/CT images as inputs into a MC simulation. Conclusion: Research in 90Y PET/CT has quickly been expanding over recent years as a feasible method to provide liver distribution of 90Y following radioembolization. This study demonstrates the accuracy and limitations of the use of these 90Y PET/CT images in patient specific qualitative dosimetry.