This thesis investigates the character and role of non-Christian belief in medieval societies, and how we can reconstruct it using written sources. It focuses on Anglo-Saxon culture, contextualising Anglo-Saxon material with analyses of Middle English, Older Scots, Scandinavian and Irish texts. We lack Anglo-Saxon narratives about elves (aelfe, singular aelf), but the word aelf itself is well-attested in Old English texts. By analysing these attestations, it is possible to discover much about the meanings of the word aelf— from which, I argue, it is possible to infer what aelfe were believed to be and to do, and how these beliefs changed over time. Using methodologies inspired by linguistic anthropology (discussed in Chapter 1), I develop these analyses to reconstruct the changing significances of non-Christian beliefs in medieval English-speaking societies, affording new perspectives on Christianisation, health and healing, and group identity, particularly gendering. The body of the thesis, chapters 2–9, is in three parts. Because of its historiographical prominence in discussions of Anglo-Saxon non-Christian beliefs, I begin in Chapter 2 by reassessing Scandinavian comparative evidence for elf-beliefs. I also show that it is possible to correlate the meanings of Old Norse words for supernatural beings with other Scandinavian mythological sources for world-views, providing a case-study supporting similar approaches to Anglo-Saxon evidence. Chapters 3–6 reassess Anglo-Saxon linguistic and textual evidence, tackling in turn prehistoric naming patterns and morphological developments, poetry, glosses, and medical texts. The long-standing assumption that aelfe were incorporeal, small and arrowshooting proves to be both unfounded and implausible. Traditionally, aelfe were conceptually similar both to gods and to human ethnic others, all of whom were opposed to monsters in Anglo-Saxon world-views. They were probably only male. In textual evidence, aelfe are paradigmatic examples of dangerously seductive beauty and they are possible causes of prophetic speech and certain kinds of ailments. They inflicted ailments at least at times by a variety of magic called siden, cognate with the much-discussed medieval Scandinavian magic seiðr. Both of these points associate aelfe with femininegendered traits, and I show that by the eleventh century, aelf could also denote otherworldly, nymph-like females. These otherworldly females seem to have been new arrivals in Anglo-Saxon belief-systems. Demonisation is clearly attested from around 800, but aelfe were not conflated with demons in all or even most discourses, even after the Old English period. Chapters 7–9 develop this core evidence to argue for the cultural significance of the beliefs it reveals. By adducing comparative texts from medieval Ireland and Scandinavia and from the early modern Scottish witchcraft trials, Chapter 7 shows how the characteristics of aelf in Old English could occur together in coherent, ideologically significant narratives. Chapter 8 considers the Old English charm Wið faerstice in a similar comparative context, focusing on the trial of Issobel Gowdie for witchcraft in 1662, and considering the importance of elf-beliefs in Anglo-Saxon healing. These chapters emphasise cultural continuity in North West European beliefs, questioning inherited scholarly constructions of fairy-beliefs as distinctively 'Celtic', and showing striking continuities between Anglo-Saxon and early modern Scottish beliefs. Chapter 9 concludes by combining earlier findings to make new assessments of Anglo-Saxon Christianisation and constructions of group identity, danger and power, and gendering. I examine gender in particular, combining evidence from throughout the thesis with comparative textual and archaeological material to argue that mythological gender transgressions were important to early Anglo-Saxon gendering. Beliefs in effeminate aelfe helped to demarcate gender norms, but also provided a paradigm whereby men could in real life gain supernatural power through gender transgression. I link the subsequent rise of female aelfe to changes in Anglo-Saxon gendering, whereby gender roles were enforced with increasing strictness. By combining detailed linguistic and textual analyses in a suitable comparative context, I reconstruct aspects of non-Christian belief which are marginalized in our early medieval sources, and detect how they changed over time. Such beliefs illuminate various aspects of medieval culture, including social identity, health and healing, the sources and use of supernatural power, and Christianisation. My methods, meanwhile, provide paradigms for taking similar approaches to studying belief and ideology in other areas of medieval Europe.


The antibacterial activities of twenty six extracts from ten selected plants used in traditional Australian Aboriginal medicines have been investigated. The extracts were tested for growth inhibition of broth cultures of four gram-positive bacteria (S. Aureus, MRSA, B. subtilis and M. luteus), two gram-negative bacteria (S. typhimurium and E. coli) and yeast (C. albicans). Twenty three of the extracts displayed antibacterial activities against one or more bacterial strain. The majority of the extracts showed greater activity against gram-positive bacteria. In particular, the extracts of the fruit and bark of Petalostigma pubescens and the extract of the bark of Euodia vitiflora displayed bioactivity against all ofthe tested organisms. Traditional Australian medicinal plant extracts were shown to have antibacterial activity against mutli-drug resistant MRSA bacteria.


Consider the hidden Markov model estimation problem where the realization of a single Markov chain is observed by a number of noisy sensors. The sensor scheduling problem for the resulting hidden Markov model is as follows: design an optimal algorithm for selecting at each time instant, one of the many sensors to provide the next measurement. Each measurement has an associated measurement cost. The problem is to select an optimal measurement scheduling policy, so as to minimize a cost function of estimation errors and measurement costs. The problem of determining the optimal measurement policy is solved via stochastic dynamic programming. An optimal finite dimensional algorithm is presented along with numerical results.


PURPOSE
To examine the effect of captopril, an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor, on the activity of retinal sodium-potassium ATPase (Na,K-ATPase) and the activity of ACE in the serum and retina of streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic rats.

METHODS
Experimental diabetes was induced in male Long-Evans rats by a single intraperitoneal injection of STZ (55 mg/kg body weight). Some groups of normal and diabetic animals were treated with captopril (10 mg/kg per day) added to the drinking water for either a week or a month. After 2 and 4 months of diabetes, the specific activity of retinal total Na,K-ATPase was determined. The components of the activity of Na,K-ATPase caused by the alpha 1 and alpha 3 isoforms were pharmacologically separated by their different sensitivity to ouabain. The activity of ACE in the serum and retina was measured by radioassay using benzoyl-gly-gly-gly as substrate (10(5) cpm, 5 mM).

RESULTS
The total Na,K-ATPase activity was decreased significantly after 2 (16%, P < 0.02) and 4 months (15%, P < 0.02) of diabetes. At both time points examined, the activities of the alpha 1-low-ouabain-affinity isoform and the alpha 3-high-ouabain-affinity isoform of retinal Na,K-ATPase were significantly reduced compared to those of age-matched controls (alpha 1, 9% to 14%, P < 0.05; alpha 3, 14% to 19%, P < 0.05 and P < 0.02 respectively). After 1 month of captopril administration, the activities of both Na,K-ATPase isoforms were at control level in 2-month diabetic rats, whereas they were restored only partially in 4-month diabetic rats. In age-matched normal animals, 1 month of captopril treatment did not alter the specific activities of either Na,K-ATPase isoform. One week or 1 month of captopril administration to diabetic rats did not change the activities of retinal Na,K-ATPase isoforms. Serum ACE activity was elevated significantly in both groups of untreated STZ rats (55% and 40%, respectively). One month of captopril administration further increased the ACE levels in 2- and 4-month diabetic rats (101% and 94%, respectively) and also enhanced significantly the serum ACE activity in normal animals (131%) versus the basal values. In contrast, retinal ACE activity was decreased significantly in both groups of untreated STZ rats (approximately 37%). Captopril exerted a significant inhibitory effect on the retinal ACE activity in 2- and 4-month diabetic rats (37% and 31%, respectively) compared to untreated diabetic animals as well as in normal rats (29%).

CONCLUSIONS
These data suggest that stimulation of retinal Na,K-ATPase activity in diabetes is most likely one of the mechanisms through which captopril can improve retinal complications. The effect of captopril seems to be related to local effects in the retina. Whether the inhibition of retinal ACE is part of the mechanism of action of captopril requires further study.


Background: There are no specific Swiss home parenteral nutrition (HPN) data showing patient characteristics, quality of life (QoL) and complications. The goal of this study was to collect representative nationwide data on current adult HPN patients in Switzerland for international comparability and benchmarking. Methods: This was a multicenter, nationwide, observational study. We conducted interviews for demographics, PN characteristics, QoL and complications. The data were assessed at baseline and after a follow-up of 3 months using a questionnaire. Results: Thirty-three adult patients were included. The most common underlying diseases were cancer, radiation enteritis and state after bariatric surgery, and the most prevalent indication was short bowel syndrome. During the 3-month observation period, significant increase or stabilization of body weight occurred in the patients, physical activity scores improved from 34.0 to 39.4 and mental scores improved from 41.9 to 46.4. HPN dependency and traveling restrictions were of the greatest concern. Diarrhea, xerostomia and/or thirst were frequent complaints. Conclusion: Anthropometric parameters and QoL improved during the observational period in this HPN cohort. These Swiss HPN data are prerequisite for evaluation and comparison of HPN recommendations and best clinical practice, status of professional care instructions related to HPN effectiveness, quality of treatment and patient safety.


This dissertation studies the political economy and cultural politics of Chinese gay dating apps, namely, Blued, Aloha, and ZANK. Unlike their Western counterparts such as Grindr and Jack'd whose functionalities are concentrated on location-based browsing, Chinese gay dating apps frequently integrate new features into their basic dating structures. Examples of which include live streaming, gaming, shopping, and overseas surrogacy consultation. Drawing on internet ethnographic data and interview data with their founders and users, this dissertation addresses two major questions. First, how do businesses based on gay dating apps develop amid close state surveillance? Second, how do users' sexual and intimate desires shape and transform China's digital pink economies and homosexual cultural politics? As China continues to problematize homosexuality in terms of obscenity and pornography in its regulatory documents, the booming economy of gay dating apps provides an entry point for rethinking the role of censorship in shaping Chinese gay lives. Using censorship as an analytical tool, I first show that Chinese gay dating apps can maneuver censorship in their favor to carry out economic activities. In this process, gay dating apps and the government become interdependent in the aspects of economic development, HIV/AIDS prevention, and internet security. I then examine how censorship has been woven into the everyday use of gay dating apps. As censorship increasingly disciplines users' dating and live streaming activities, it has also inspired creative ways to satisfy their same-sex sexual/emotional needs in a regulatory environment. Together, this study shifts the focus in thinking about China's homosexual cultural politics from identity formation, community organization, and media (mis)representation to the everyday sexual and emotional desires and related personal and bodily performances afforded by gay digital platforms.


State-of-the-art posted-price mechanisms for submodular bidders with $m$ items achieve approximation guarantees of $O((\log \log m)^3)$ [Assadi and Singla, 2019]. Their truthfulness, however, requires bidders to compute an NP-hard demand-query. Some computational complexity of this form is unavoidable, as it is NP-hard for truthful mechanisms to guarantee even an $m^{1/2-\varepsilon}$-approximation for any $\varepsilon > 0$ [Dobzinski and Vondr\'ak, 2016]. Together, these establish a stark distinction between computationally-efficient and communication-efficient truthful mechanisms.
We show that this distinction disappears with a mild relaxation of truthfulness, which we term implementation in advised strategies, and that has been previously studied in relation to "Implementation in Undominated Strategies" [Babaioff et al, 2009]. Specifically, advice maps a tentative strategy either to that same strategy itself, or one that dominates it. We say that a player follows advice as long as they never play actions which are dominated by advice. A poly-time mechanism guarantees an $\alpha$-approximation in implementation in advised strategies if there exists poly-time advice for each player such that an $\alpha$-approximation is achieved whenever all players follow advice. Using an appropriate bicriterion notion of approximate demand queries (which can be computed in poly-time), we establish that (a slight modification of) the [Assadi and Singla, 2019] mechanism achieves the same $O((\log \log m)^3)$-approximation in implementation in advised strategies.


We address the problem of optimizing a Brownian motion. We consider a (random) realization $W$ of a Brownian motion with input space in $[0,1]$. Given $W$, our goal is to return an $\epsilon$-approximation of its maximum using the smallest possible number of function evaluations, the sample complexity of the algorithm. We provide an algorithm with sample complexity of order $\log^2(1/\epsilon)$. This improves over previous results of Al-Mharmah and Calvin (1996) and Calvin et al. (2017) which provided only polynomial rates. Our algorithm is adaptive---each query depends on previous values---and is an instance of the optimism-in-the-face-of-uncertainty principle.


Research was undertaken in the field of marketing strategy, its formulation and implementation in Dunlop Belting Division. Emphasis was placed on marketing channel strategy, but other strategies including product strategy were studied. The research has resulted in changes in management practice in the client organisation. The relevance of theories of company organisation, planning and strategy, and marketing channels was examined in the light of the research evidence. The technique of action-research was used to gain admittance to and effect change within the client organisation. Case study material was collected for subsequent analysis. The factors affecting marketing strategy formulation in the client organisation were studied. Both the external and the internal business environments were considered. The operation of the observed marketing channels was compared with channel theory. Market segmentation and penetration, and the selling and technical resources of the channels were analysed. Recommendations were made to (a) enlarge and resite the client's distribution unit to locate it centrally in England (b) use the resited unit to secure local advantage (c) obtain greater integration of field sales activities with and from the centre. A new ex-stock distribution unit was established. Improvements to the client's ex-stock marketing in Scotland were also recommended, including improvements to the Scottish distributor's stock control procedure, as well as to Dunlop-Distributor relationships at all levels. The influence of company organisation structure and formalised procedures and systems on the formulation of strategy were considered with respect to channel and product strategy, and other aspects of marketing. Conclusions were drawn that the action research resulted in successful implementation of .agreed changes in the client organisation; that theories of strategy formulation and planning, of the operation of decentralised companies, and of industrial market segmentation required modification; that the theory of marketing channels was found relevant and useful.


The politics of European collaborative Big Science are inherently uncertain. The European Spallation Source (ESS) for materials science, planned to be built in Sweden with a collaborative European funding solution that was recently finalized is the most recent example. Sweden has so far invested around one billion SEK (&E110 million), taking a significant risk given these uncertainties and given Sweden's complete lack of experience in hosting such big labs. Tracing the Swedish government's investments in the ESS project, this article shows that so far, the Swedish ESS bid seems to be generally well funded, but that a long-term plan for the funding and a contingency plan for increased costs seem to be absent. This adds to the seeming unprepared- ness of Sweden and elevates the already quite high level of risk for Swedish science and science policy of investing in the ESS.


Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) require appropriate protocols that make judicious use of the finite energy resources of the sensor nodes. In this paper, we investigate the potential energy conservation achieved by balancing the traffic throughout the WSN. We show that distributing the traffic generated by each sensor node through multiple paths instead of using a single path allows significant energy savings. In order to quantitatively evaluate the benefits of the proposed load balancing technique, a new analytical model for load-balanced systems is elaborated and approved by simulations.


The morphology and structure of a large submarine slump (Agulhas Slump) on the sheared continental margin off SE Africa are described from bathymetric and continuous seismic reflection records. It is a composite feature consisting of proximal and distal allochthonous sediment masses separated by a large glide plane scar. The locations of the various structural elements of the slump are related to underlying features: in the head region these are controlled by large-scale Cretaceous and Palaeogene depositional features, and in the toe region by older basement ridges. In the western part of the slump, the basement ridges have dammed the slump over continental crust, whereas in the east, allochthonous material has spread into the oceanic Transkei Basin. Characteristics related to a structural setting on a sheared continental margin are emphasized and discussed. The Agulhas Slump is probably the largest slumped mass so far recognized from modem oceans (750 km long, 106 km wide, with a volume of over 20,000 km3) and is post-Pliocene in age. A seismic triggering mechanism is tentatively proposed: the slump lies on two major fault zones whose extensions are known to be seismically active (the Cape Fold Belt and the Agulhas marginal fracture zone).


This article first gives a typological and morphosyntactic profile of Kuikuro, a southern Cariban language. Kuikuro has ergative nominal case marking and alingnments, as well as nearly identical nominal and verbal inflection. The second part focuses on the absolutive and ergative Cases, the former attributed to internal arguments (S and O) and the latter to the external argument (A). The postposition heke may mark either a syntactic adjunct (Perspective) to intransitive verbs or the external (ergative) argument of transitive or transitivized verbs; we present a (semantic) hypothesis on the relation between these distinct syntactic units. We conclude that in Kuikuro, all intransitive verbs behave as inaccusatives. We find evidence that confirms the emergence of a dominant morphosyntactic ergative through reanalysis of nominalization structures. In the last part, we propose to conjoin two hypotheses, theoretically distinct but empirically convergent. The first one is that offered by Alexiadou (2001) in the frame of the generative formal theory: the state of affairs in ergative languages is similar to the case patterns in nominalizations. The second one is that of Gildea (1998): inside the Cariban family, languages with ergative morphosyntax (Full Set II) are innovative, etymologically relatable to nominalizing and adverbializing morphology of Proto-Cariban.


Complications in the traditional definitions of static and kinetic friction are discussed as they pertain to lubricated sliding. First, we discuss rate criteria to observe stick-slip motion and show that stick-slip occurs only when thin liquid films are deformed faster than their intrinsic relaxation time. This conclusion comes from experiments with confined aqueous films in a surface forces apparatus modified to measure interfacial rheology. The observation offers a new strategy to look for methods to avoid stick-slip motion by engineering the relaxation time of a confined fluid. Second, we consider the issue of transients and show, for the case of a polymer melt of PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane), that equilibration of the viscous forces was spectacularly slow to be achieved when the sliding velocity was changed. Overshoots of force were observed when the velocity was raised ; undershoots of force were observed when the velocity was lowered. Third, we consider the question of how forces in the shear and normal directions are coupled. In systems comprised of polymer brushes in solution at near Θ solvent quality, we contrast the shear response for brush-brush sliding (both surfaces coated with end-attached polymer chains) and brush-mica sliding (one sole surface coated with end-attached polymer chains). Both systems gave nearly the same resistance to compression in the normal direction, but the latter system offered less shear resistance. The polymer brush experiments invite further theoretical interpretation.


Background: Endometriosis is a disease which, though it impacts one of ten women, has a lack of knowledge in the society and among healthcare professionals. The lack of knowledge causes delays in diagnosis and a lack of comprehension for the women.Aim: The aim of this study was to describe women's experiences of living with endometriosis.Method: The method used in this study was a method to contribute to evidence-based nursing with ground in analysis of qualitative research. Through the similarities and contradictions in the analyzed studies, themes and under-themes were created.Result: Findings showed that the women's experiences often were negative. Friends, family and healthcare professionals normalized the pain and the women often endured the pain in belief that it was normal. The lack of knowledge in endometriosis caused misdiagnosis and diagnostic delays. The endometriosis limited the women's daily living, work and social life by decreasing their activity because of symptoms as pain, nausea, fatigue, heavy bleeding and diarrhea. The disease also affected the women's relationships and the feeling of being a woman.Conclusion: The lack of knowledge in endometriosis caused an unnecessarily suffering among the women with the disease. If the awareness of endometriosis would increase in the society and among healthcare professionals the time for diagnosis and the encounters with patients suffering from endometriosis could improve.


Abstract—In context of understanding problems faced by undergraduate students while carrying out laboratory experiments dealing with high voltages, it was found that most of the students are hesitant to work directly on machine. The reason is that error in the circuitry might lead to deterioration of machine and laboratory instruments. So, it has become inevitable to include modern pedagogic techniques for undergraduate students, which would help them to first carry out experiment in virtual system and then to work on live circuit. Further advantages include that students can try out their intuitive ideas and perform in virtual environment, hence leading to new research and innovations. In this paper, virtual environment used is of MATLAB/Simulink for three-phase induction machines. The performance analysis of three-phase induction machine is carried out using virtual environment which includes Direct Current (DC) Test, No-Load Test, and Block Rotor Test along with speed torque characteristics for different rotor resistances and input voltage, respectively. Further, this paper carries out computer aided teaching of basic Voltage Source Inverter (VSI) drive circuitry. Hence, this paper gave undergraduates a clearer view of experiments performed on virtual machine (No-Load test, Block Rotor test and DC test, respectively). After successful implementation of basic tests, VSI circuitry is implemented, and related harmonic distortion (THD) and Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) of current and voltage waveform are studied.


There is a growing body of literature that shows internet search volume on a topic, such as fishing, is a viable measure of salience. Herein, internet search volume for 'fishing' and 'angling' is used as a measure of public interest in fishing, in particular, recreational fishing. An online tool, Google Insights for Search, which allows one to study internet search terms and their volume since 2004, is used to examine trends in interest in fishing for 50 countries. Trends in normalised fishing search volume, during 2004 through 2011, varied from a 72.6% decrease (Russian Federation) to a 133.7% increase (Hungary). Normalised fishing search volume declined in 40 (80%) of the countries studied. The decline has been relatively large in English-speaking countries, but also has been large in Central and South American, and European countries. Analyses of search queries provide a low-cost means of gaining insight into angler interests and, possibly, behaviour in countries around the world.


During the 1980's, many states relaxed laws restricting branching, and most states opened up their borders to entry by out-of-state bank holding companies. This article suggests that both banks and consumers would benefit if laws were further modified to permit bank holding companies to consolidate their interstate subsidiaries into branch networks. While such a change is likely to lead to a smaller number of large banks (although those remaining would operate nationwide), there would probably be little change in the number of small banks serving local markets.


In this work we propose several full-color metagrating solutions for single waveguide-based Augmented and Virtual Reality near-eye display systems. The presented solutions are based on a combination of reflective and/or transmissive diffraction gratings inside or outside a waveguide. The proposed in-coupler designs have high diffraction efficiency across a wide angular range. Applying our new grating combination solution, we can provide good gathering of diffracted rays for the different colors. We demonstrate that by using a dual-mode symmetrical in-coupling system and angular pupil tiling, we can extend the overall horizontal FoV for three RGB colors. The new characteristics of the full single waveguide system including Eye Pupil Expander and out-coupling components compatible with the proposed in-coupling solutions are discussed. We show that a new nonsymmetrical design of metagratings can be used to change its diffraction properties improving the diffraction efficiency and diffraction uniformity of the optical components.


Despite the necessity of organic electronic materials to undergo large deformations in flexible, ultra-thin, and stretchable applications, many high-performance organic semiconductors are mechanically fragile. This paper describes an approach to increase the elasticity of low-bandgap conjugated polymers by statistical incorporation of unlike monomers. The material under study is PDPP2FT, an alternating copolymer. Synthesized by the Stille polymerization, it comprises an N-alkylated diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) unit flanked by two furan rings (2F) alternating with thiophene (T). In the modified ("segmented") polymer, PDPP2FT-seg-2T, the DPP is exchanged for a tail-to-tail coupled unit of two 3-hexylthiophene rings (bithiophene, 2T) in an average of one of approximately five repeat units. 1H NMR spectroscopy, ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy, and gel-permeation chromatography confirm the presence and covalent incorporation of the 2T units within the conjugated backbone of the segmented polymer. The tensile modulus of the segmented polymer, 0.93 ± 0.16 GPa, is lower than that of the homopolymer, 2.17 ± 0.35 GPa. When blended with PC61BM, the segmented material produces devices with power conversion efficiencies of 2.82 ± 0.28%, which is similar to that of PDPP2FT, 2.52 ± 0.34%. These results suggest that it is possible to increase the mechanical resiliency of semiconducting polymers for solar cells without having a deleterious effect on the photovoltaic properties.


Abstract The genus Asydates Casey, 1895 is redefined and revised. Scelopristis Mayor, 2004, new synonymy, is treated as a new junior subjective synonym. Asydates grandiceps (LeConte, 1866), new combination, Asydates irwini (Howell, 1979), new combination, and Asydates vandykei (Blaisdell, 1924), new combination, are treated as new combinations from Scelopristis, and Asydates ruficauda (Blaisdell, 1924), new combination, is transferred from Trichochrous Motschulsky. Pristoscelis schlingeri Howell, 1997, new synonymy, and Pristoscelis volki Howell, 1979, new synonymy, are treated as junior subjective synonyms of A. ruficauda. Asydates chumash Mayor and Gimmel, new species, Asydates kumeyaay Mayor and Gimmel, new species, Asydates inexpectatus Mayor and Gimmel, new species, Asydates phantasma Mayor and Gimmel, new species, Asydates shoshone Mayor and Gimmel, new species, Asydates tongva Mayor and Gimmel, new species, and Asydates washoe Mayor and Gimmel, new species, are described. The genus Pseudasydates Blaisdell, 1938, status restored, is redefined as distinct from Asydates. Pseudasydates inyoensis Blaisdell, 1938, combination restored, is removed from Asydates and returned to Pseudasydates. Pseudasydates explanatus (Casey, 1895), new combination, is moved from Asydates, with Asydates puncticeps Blaisdell, 1924 treated as a junior subjective synonym. Members of Asydates occur primarily in California and the Great Basin Region of North America. Adult beetles are visitors to inflorescences of plants primarily of the genera Stephanomeria Nutt., Ericameria Nutt. (both Asteraceae) and Eriogonum Michx. (Polygonaceae), and adults show a pronounced seasonality skew towards mid-summer to fall. Adult males are characteristic for their enlarged heads and mandibles; we provide a hypothesis for the behavioral function of these structures.


A new symmetric quorum generation algorithm has been proposed in this paper to solve the problem that how to generate a symmetric quorum with the shortest length but has a smaller time complexity so that it can generate a symmetric quorum when the distributed system has a larger scale. The concept of permission total repeat expression times proposed firstly in this paper to limit the attempt times when a node inserted in the quorum. Selecting the nodes in the backup vector to insert the quorum can reduce the attempt times again. Comparing the attempt times with other quorum generation algorithms, the algorithm proposed in this paper will reduce the time complexity 10% at least and the quorum length is still the shortest as Maekawa.


Multiple-pillar retirement systems have widely differing roles for private retirement savings, government regulation and insurance of private savings vehicles, and government provision of old-age income support. Despite their diversity, and despite the fact that public and private sector retirement systems command a great deal of wealth and have potentially powerful effects on labor and capital markets, they are often overlooked in structural analyses of country problems and prospects. This paper examines important institutional features of retirement systems in developed and developing countries, and outlines what is known about their economic effects. Also identified are ways in which public and private retirement systems affect the process of economic adjustment, with special attention to the costs and benefits of encouraging early retirement. The review shows that a coherent reform plan for a retirement system must identify how much old-age income security is affordable, how the government and private sector can address private market failures in providing this security, and how these objectives can be attained given available financing mechanisms. There is evidence that many retirement systems will be forced to change a great deal in the next few decades. In some cases, retirement benefits will have to be reduced (perhaps by imposing a means test), the age for early retirement will have to be raised, multiple-pillar plans must be integrated and streamlined so as to rationalize work incentives, and the incentives and opportunities for private saving will be increased. In any case, using high-cost long-term retirement systems to mitigate short- and medium-term unemployment problems will probably prove costly and inefficient as a solution to problems faced by economies in transition.


This paper contributes to the discussion on how to manage knowledge in organizations. Taking a perspective, which acknowledges the importance of but does not privilege IT as the decisive element, it reports the results of a study investigating the process of establishing as opposed to conducting knowledge management. Based on a grounded theory approach to the analysis of the empirical data, a model of establishing knowledge management in organizations is developed that emphasizes the involved actors' actions in the process and how these actions are influenced by and influence their cognition as the process unfolds. This leads to an understanding of knowledge management as an autonomous venturing process. The model is then used to suggest an explanation of why establishing knowledge management was not successful in the investigated case. Conclusions are provided on how the model can be further exploited for studying and improving the practice of knowledge management.


This article analyses the arguments advanced for and against minority rights in the Indian Constituent Assembly. During the course of my analysis, I show first, that arguments advocating and opposing different kinds of minority provisions, advanced from diverse political and ideological positions, employed a shared legitimating vocabulary. The concepts of secularism, democracy, equality and justice, and national unity and development defined this legitimating vocabulary. Second, while it has generally been assumed that the constitution-makers subscribed to a single notion of
secularism or democracy, my analysis shows that different conceptions of these political ideals were at play in arguments about minority rights in the Constituent Assembly.
Third, against dominant understandings of Indian political discourse, this article emphasizes that different kinds of liberal norms were a crucial part of the legitimating vocabulary on minority safeguards. Finally, I argue that our understanding of an important and neglected development in India's constitutional history, the withdrawal of political safeguards for religious minorities during the making of the Indian Constitution, is furthered by an analysis of the legitimating vocabulary on minority rights in the
Constituent Assembly debates.


Depth curves and charted soundings are two structural components of nautical charts, both derived from a more detailed dataset through generalization. Once depth curves are generated, the cartographer makes a selection of soundings that complements the depth curves and other features carrying bathymetric information in the adequate representation of the seabed morphology at the scale of the product. The selection of charted soundings – which is currently either performed fully manually, or partially manually using a computer-assisted solution – must meet the safety constraint, i.e., that no source sounding exists that is shoaler than what the mariner would expect by mentally interpolating the charted bathymetric information. According to International Hydrographic Organization S-4 publication, for well-surveyed areas that is achieved through the "triangular method of selection" and consists of two tests: the Triangle Test and the Edge Test. There are currently no fully automated solutions, so, with the ultimate goal of supporting "cartography at point of use", we consider the problem of automating the validation of shoal-selected soundings. We discuss an implementation of the triangle test with improved performance near linear features, the first automated implementation of the edge test, and that the edge test may identify shoals that the triangle test fails to detect, confirming its significance in the validation process. We demonstrate an "intrinsic" limitation of the two tests that makes infeasible a fully automated solution based solely on the two tests. Finally, to overcome the intrinsic limitation, we propose a new validation test, named Nautical Surface Test, that captures the local morphology at the appropriate charting resolution as the solution for the automated validation of the charted bathymetric information.


In this thesis we study the existence of travelling wave type solutions for a reaction diffusion equation in R2 with a nonlinearity which depends periodically on the spatial variable. Specifically we will consider a particular class of nonlinearities where we treat the coefficient of the linear term as a parameter. For this class of nonlinearities we formulate the problem as a spatial dynamical system and use a centre manifold reduction to find conditions on the parameter and nonlinearity for the existence of travelling wave type solutions with particular wave speeds. We then consider what happens if the parameter and the wave speed vary close to zero; by analysing the bifurcations in this case we are able to find travelling wave solutions with periodic and homoclinic structures. Finally we examine what happens to the travelling wave solutions as the period of the periodic dependence in the nonlinearity tends to zero.


For decades, the password has been the standard means for user authentication on computers. However, as users are required to remember more, longer, and changing passwords, it is evident that a more convenient and secure solution to user authentication is necessary. This paper examines passwords, security tokens, and biometrics-which we collectively call authenticators-and compares these authenticators and their combinations. We examine their effectiveness against several attacks and suitability for particular security specifications such as compromise detection and nonrepudiation. Examples of authenticator combinations and protocols are described to show tradeoffs and solutions that meet chosen, practical requirements. The paper endeavors to offer a comprehensive picture of user authentication solutions for the purposes of evaluating options for use and identifying deficiencies requiring further research.


Abstract A new polymer containing α-aminophosphonate unit (PAP) was synthesized through a simple and solvent-free Kabachnik–Fields reaction, and was characterized by NMR, FTIR, and gel permeation chromatography (GPC). This polymer was used as a novel reactive, halogen-free flame retardant. The curing behavior of bisphenol A type epoxy resin with PAP was investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and the glass transition temperatures (Tg) of the cured sample were determined by dynamic mechanical analysis. Flammability and thermal stability of the cured epoxy resins with different contents of PAP were investigated by UL-94 test and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The results of UL-94 test and TGA show that PAP could improve the flame retardancy and thermal stability of cured epoxy resins. As the content of PAP was more than 20% in weight, the flame retardancy of epoxy resin can pass V-0 rating. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT


A 3-year study to evaluate the effect of thinning on the hydrology of a drained loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) plantation was conducted in eastern North Carolina. The study utilized a paired watershed design with a 40-ha thinned watershed (WS5) and a 16-ha control watershed (WS2). Data from the field experiment conducted from 1999-2002 was used to perform a water balance over pre- and post-thinning monitoring periods to gain a better understanding of the interaction of hydrologic components on drained forested organic soil watersheds. Components included in the water balance were watershed outflow, change in soil water storage in the soil profile (PS), and evapotranspiration (ET) (dry canopy transpiration + soil water evaporation + interception losses). Outflow accounted for 10 percent of the total observed precipitation for WS2 and 15 percent for WS5. The PS based on field measurements was 20 and -3 mm over the entire study period for WS2 and WS5, respectively. Gross ET during the 3-year study period (2000-2002) represented 89 percent of total precipitation for WS2 and 85 percent for WS5 based on the field water balance. The field-based water balance was compared to DRAINMOD predicted water balance components over the entire study period. Predicted water balance components; outflow, PS, and ET, were in close agreement with field-based water balance components over the study period. The differences in water balance components for the watersheds are primarily attributed to the reduced ET on WS5 as a result of the thinning operation.


We propose a novel end-to-end solution for video instance segmentation (VIS) based on transformers. Recently, the per-clip pipeline shows superior performance over per-frame methods leveraging richer information from multiple frames. However, previous per-clip models require heavy computation and memory usage to achieve frame-to-frame communications, limiting practicality. In this work, we propose Inter-frame Communication Transformers (IFC), which significantly reduces the overhead for information-passing between frames by efficiently encoding the context within the input clip. Specifically, we propose to utilize concise memory tokens as a mean of conveying information as well as summarizing each frame scene. The features of each frame are enriched and correlated with other frames through exchange of information between the precisely encoded memory tokens. We validate our method on the latest benchmark sets and achieved the state-of-the-art performance (AP 44.6 on YouTube-VIS 2019 val set using the offline inference) while having a considerably fast runtime (89.4 FPS). Our method can also be applied to near-online inference for processing a video in real-time with only a small delay. The code will be made available.


Causal Inference with Selection and Confounding Variables Linbo Wang Co-Chairs of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Xiao-Hua (Andrew) Zhou Biostatistics Professor Thomas S. Richardson Statistics Most complex observational and randomized studies are motivated by the potential of drawing causal statements. However, a usual statistical analysis may yield estimates that do not have causal interpretations. In fact, unlike most other parameters, identification of causal parameters usually relies on untestable assumptions. Moreover, even under these identification assumptions, estimation of causal parameters often relies on nuisance models. The parameter estimation in the nuisance models is crucial to obtain robust causal effect estimates. My research attempts to address these methodological challenges. In Chapter 2 we study robust estimation of propensity score weights. The propensity score plays a central role in inferring causal effects from observational studies. In particular, weighting and subclassification are two principal approaches to estimate the average causal effect based on estimated propensity scores. Unlike the conventional version of the propensity score subclassification estimator, if the propensity score model is correctly specified, the weighting methods offer consistent and possibly efficient estimation of the average causal effect. However, this theoretical appeal may be diminished in practice by sensitivity to misspecification of the propensity score model. In contrast, subclassification methods are usually more robust to model misspecification. We hence propose to use subclassification for robust estimation of propensity score weights. Our approach is based on the intuition that the inverse probability weighting estimator can be seen as the limit of subclassification estimators as the number of subclasses goes to infinity. By formalizing this intuition, we propose novel propensity score weighting estimators that are both consistent and robust to model misspecification. Empirical studies show that the proposed estimators perform favorably compared to existing methods. In Chapter 3 we study identification and estimation of causal effects with outcomes truncated by death. It is common that in medical studies, the outcome of interest is truncated by death, meaning that a subject had died before the outcome could be measured. In this case, restricted analysis among survivors may be subject to selection bias. It is hence of interest to estimate the survivor average causal effect (SACE), defined as the average causal effect among subjects who would survive under either exposure. In this chapter, we consider the identification and estimation problems of the SACE. We propose to identify a substitution variable for the latent membership of the always-survivor group. The identifiability conditions required for a substitution variable are similar in idea to conditions for an instrumental variable. We show that the SACE is identifiable with use of a substitution variable, and propose novel model parameterizations for estimation of the SACE under our identification assumptions. Our approaches are illustrated via simulation studies and two data analyses. In Chapter 4, we study causal analysis of ordinal treatments and binary outcomes under truncation by death. It is common that in multi-arm randomized trials, the outcome of interest is truncated by death, meaning that it is only observed or well-defined conditioning on an intermediate outcome. In this case, in addition to pairwise contrasts, the joint inference for all treatment arms is also of interest. Under a monotonicity assumption we present methods for both pairwise and joint causal analyses of ordinal treatments and binary outcomes in presence of truncation by death. We illustrate via examples the appropriateness of our assumptions in different scientific contexts.


Insecticides are often used to control insect pests, but resistance to these chemicals arises quickly, leading to agricultural losses and public health concerns. Understanding how insects cope with insecticides is necessary when designing rational pest management strategies, but much still remains unknown regarding the fate of insecticides once inside the body. Furthermore, the genetic variation that governs an insects ability to survive insecticide exposures has not been fully described. Here, a 3 pronged approach is applied to study insecticide biology using the model insect Drosophila melanogaster. First, an acute, sub-lethal insecticide response assay was developed, which provided information complementary to that obtained from more common toxicology assays. In particular, behavioural response observed in a hyper-resistant target site mutant suggests additional target sites for the insecticide spinosad. This bioassay was then applied in a forward genetics approach to describe the genetic basis of resistance to the insecticide imidacloprid. This approach identified a variety of neuronal genes and the previously identified drug metabolizing enzyme Cyp6g1, which was explored through genetic manipulation. Finally, a reverse genetics approach was employed in order to study the effect of an ABC transporter protein Mdr65 on insecticide resistance. Removing the gene made the insects more susceptible to a subset of the insecticides tested, and this was confirmed with genetic and chemical complementation tests. These data provide information both on the genetics and kinetics of insecticide biology. Such information will help to better understand insecticide resistance and design rational resistance management strategies.


Many areas of AI today use benchmarks and competitions with larger and wider sets of tasks. This tries to deter AI systems (and research effort) from specialising to a single task, and encourage them to be prepared to solve previously unseen tasks. It is unclear, however, whether the methods with best performance are actually those that are most general and, in perspective, whether the trend moves towards more general AI systems. This question has a striking similarity with the analysis of the so-called positive manifold and general factors in the area of human intelligence. In this paper, we first show how the existence of a manifold (positive average pairwise task correlation) can also be analysed in AI, and how this relates to the notion of agent generality, from the individual and the populational points of view. From the populational perspective, we analyse the following question: is this manifold correlation higher for the most or for the least able group of agents? We contrast this analysis with one of the most controversial issues in human intelligence research, the so-called Spearman's Law of Diminishing Returns (SLODR), which basically states that the relevance of a general factor diminishes for most able human groups. We perform two empirical studies on these issues in AI. We analyse the results of the 2015 general video game AI (GVGAI) competition, with games as tasks and "controllers" as agents, and the results of a synthetic setting, with modified elementary cellular automata (ECA) rules as tasks and simple interactive programs as agents. In both cases, we see that SLODR doesnot appear. The data, and the use of just two scenarios, does not clearly support the reverse either, a Universal Law of Augmenting Returns (ULOAR), but calls for more experiments on this question.


Mineralization of microbial biomass is a common phenomenon in geothermal habitats, but knowledge of the structure of the minerals formed in these environments is limited. A combination of spectroscopic, microscopic, and stable isotopic methods, as well as the chemical analysis of spring water, were employed in the present study to characterize calcium carbonate minerals deposited in filamentous cyanobacterial mats in different locations of La Duke hot spring, a circumneutral thermal feature near the north entrance of Yellowstone National Park, Montana, USA. Calcite was the primary crystalline mineral phase associated with biofilm-containing deposits closest to the source of the spring and the suspended microbial biomass in a pool further from the source. The carbonate minerals at all sites occurred as aggregated granules, ~2 μm in diameter, in close association with the microbial biomass. Only in the deposits closest to the source were the granules organized as laminated structures interspersed with microbial biomass. The calcium carbonate grains contained two distinct regions: a dense monolithic calcite core and a porous dendritic periphery containing organic matter (OM). Electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) indicated that the voids were infilled with OM and carbonates. The EELS technique was employed to distinguish the source of carbon in the organic matter and carbonate mixture. The studies of carbon isotope compositions of the calcium carbonates and the saturation indices for calcite in the spring waters suggest that processes (abiotic vs. biotic) controlling the carbonate formation may vary among the sampling sites.


A quick reference guide for the PMP Exam, this sturdy, laminated card accompanies The PMP Exam: How To Pass On Your First Try.Presenting all 42 processes along with the key inputs, tools, and outputs, this helpful tool also depictstechniques, tables, and graphs to highlight the most important information at a glance. Common formulas are organized for rapid look-up, bringing relevant information for the PMP Exam together in one resource.


Abstract Neuropathic pain is an integral component of several chronic pain conditions and poses a major health problem worldwide. Despite emerging understanding of mechanisms behind neuropathic pain, the available treatment options are still limited in efficacy or associated with side effects, therefore making it necessary to find viable alternatives. In a genetic screen, we recently identified SerpinA3N, a serine protease inhibitor secreted in response to nerve damage by the dorsal root ganglion neurons and we showed that SerpinA3N acts against induction of neuropathic pain by inhibiting the T-cell- and neutrophil-derived protease, leucocyte elastase (LE). In the current study, via detailed in vivo pharmacology combined with analyses of evoked- and spontaneous pain-related behaviors in mice, we report that on systemic delivery, a single dose of 3 independent LE inhibitors can block established nociceptive hypersensitivity in early and late phases in the spared nerve injury model of traumatic neuropathic pain in mice. We further report the strong efficacy of systemic LE inhibitors in reversing ongoing pain in 2 other clinically relevant mouse models—painful diabetic neuropathy and cancer pain. Detailed immunohistochemical analyses on the peripheral tissue samples revealed that both T-Lymphocytes and neutrophils are the sources of LE on peripheral nerve injury, whereas neutrophils are the primary source of LE in diabetic neuropathic conditions. In summary, our results provide compelling evidence for a strong therapeutic potential of generic LE inhibitors for the treatment of neuropathic pain and other chronic pain conditions harboring a neuropathic pain component.


Public health law has been a quintessentially public law field, centered around a system of administrative agencies. In some respects, the field is moving even closer to the core of governmental functions. Since September 11, the 2001 anthrax attacks and Hurricane Katrina, the conceptual framework of emergency preparedness and response has subsumed ever larger segments of public health policymaking. Emergency planning has become an important discourse of governance, one which reveals a great deal about the operations of state power. In this article, I identify three approaches to governance embedded in today's public health law and policy. The first and most traditional approach to governance is that of dominant state authority. What is notable is how this approach is being strengthened by a trend toward greater centralization and hierarchy in infectious disease control, pushing public health into a tighter command and control structure. I describe how this framing process has the effect of melding population health concerns and the security state, as well as insinuating a discourse of emergency response into non-emergency policy-making. The second governance model in the public health field is the public-private administrative model. Although public-private models for administrative governance are relatively new to public health compared to many other fields, calls for partnerships with the private sector for the purpose of achieving population health goals are growing. Increasingly, private sector entities are implicated in the state's matrix of collaborative public health institutions. The third governance construct is based on the insight from governmentality theory that the state already permeates the private sector even without formal authority; power flows back and forth between public and private entities through a multiplicity of channels and technologies. New federal proposals for "modern quarantine" provide an example. "Modern quarantine" policies would depend on the public's instinct to voluntarily sequester themselves in a pandemic, thus utilizing indirect and less coercive methods to control the spread of infectious disease. However, this proposal fails to engage with the full dimensions of the public sector role that would be necessary to enable people to remain at home for three months or more. It cannot succeed without mandates and incentives emanating from the state, a reality which official policy documents have elided. From this analysis we can learn a great deal about both current directions in public health policy and about the utility and limitations of new governance theory. The three governance trends taken together exemplify a paradox fundamental to contemporary political debates: how the same apparatus can be intensifying as a security state while at the same time deploying new governance and privatization initiatives. The concept of modern quarantine demonstrates that serious complications lurk beneath the surface when policymakers engage in shallow invocations of new regulatory rhetoric.


Large majority of control methodologies used in traffic applications require short-time prediction of the environment. For instance, in widely-used Model Predictive Control [1] employed to reduce fuel and energy consumption of vehicles in a platoon, information about future velocity profiles of leading vehicles is necessary. In such case, the dynamic model should provide information more detailed than prediction of averaged and global quantities. Additionally, if the control input is to be applied at high-frequencies, traffic model must be solved in a short period of time. We propose a novel framework which addresses aforementioned problems by estimating the vehicle velocity at any location in the domain based on the real-time information from induction loops downstream. Additionally, our formulation is linear and low-dimensional (i.e. consists of few degrees of freedom) meaning that the estimation can be executed at high frequencies. First a mapping is constructed from velocities at discrete locations to the smooth continuous field, which is subsequently projected onto its most significant principal components. Next, current state of such system is estimated using Kalman filter by combining the linear, wave-like dynamics of the traffic with the instantaneous information provided by induction loops. Short-term traffic prediction is then achieved by integration of the model forward in time. The proxy methodology is validated using SUMO simulation on the test case of the vehicles approaching a traffic junction. The performance is evaluated based on sampling reconstructed continuous waveform at the locations and timestamps of the vehicles in the reference data and calculating velocity errors. Separate cases are considered where drivers follow Intelligent Driver Model perfectly and with varying levels of uncertainty.


The World Wide Web influences education and our lives in many ways. Nowadays, Web-based homework has been becoming widespread practice in physics courses and some other courses as well. Although are some disputes whether this is an encouraging or risky development for student learning, there is limited research assessing the pedagogical effect of changing the medium from written, handgraded homework to online oriented, computer-graded homework. In this study, web-oriented homework system is developed to assess students' introductory physics course performance. Later on, these results are compared with paper-based (peer) homework performance for mid enrollment physics courses. One of two identical sections of introductory physics course students received paper-based, hand graded group homework while the other received the individual web-based homework. Then two groups' on conceptual and problem-solving performance measures are compared. No significant differences were found in students' Force Concept Inventory (FCI) test scores; however, average homework performance scores were significant that could be attributed to the homework method used in favor of paperbased peer homework group.


This eagerly awaited book is the first to assess the oeuvre of Black Audio Film Collective, (BAFC) one of Britain s most influential artistic groups. It reconsiders the entire corpus of the seven person London-based group from their inception in 1982 to their conclusion in 1998. The Ghosts of Songs aims to do critical justice to the full sweep of the group s innovative practice from films, videos and installations to essays, manifestos and statements. Fully illustrated throughout (with many previously unseen images and stills) The Ghosts of Songs reveals the incredibly stylish and innovative work of the BAFC and its impact on cinema, music, fashion and culture. With contributions from acclaimed artists, film makers and scholars this study conveys the substantive and heroic programme of this group of seven, who sustained their practice for 16 years, in a way that few have done before or since.


Magnesium, as the lightest structural metal, has been widely used in the automotive and aerospace industries. Porosity is the main issue in the welding of magnesium alloys and can be caused by surface coatings, hydrogen gas, pre-existing porosity, the collapse of an unstable keyhole and vaporization of alloying elements. In this study, the effect of the oxide layer on pore generation in the welding of AZ31B-H24 magnesium alloy is investigated. A fiber laser with a power of up to 4 kW is used to weld samples in a lap joint configuration. Two groups of samples are studied: as received (AR) surfaces (where an oxide layer remains on the surface) and treated surfaces. The surface treatment includes two techniques: mechanical removal (MR) and the use of a plasma arc (PA) as a preheating source. Also, a separate set of experiments are designed for preheating samples in a furnace in order to investigate whether the pore mitigation effect of a plasma arc is caused by preheating. Observations include a weld bead profile achieved through optical microscopy, chemical compositions tested by Electron Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS), and mechanical properties measured with a tensile test. The results obtained show that the preheating effect of a plasma arc procedure can effectively mitigate pore generation. The tensileshear results reveal that PA samples have a higher strength than other groups of samples.


Glycerol is one of the most versatile and valuable chemical substances and is utilized in a variety of commercial products with no known adverse pharmacological or environmental effects. Moreover, it exhibits good chemical stability and inertness under biological conditions. We have designed and developed Candida antarctica lipase (CAL B) catalyzed biocatalytic method to synthesize novel polymeric systems using glycerol and poly[ethylene glycol bis(carboxymethyl) ether] dimethylester. Both synthons are biocompatible, non-toxic, and are readily available. The polymerization occurs regioselectively through the primary hydroxyl groups of glycerol leaving the secondary hydroxyls for post-polymerization chemical modifications and also for attaching drugs/bioactive molecules. We have utilized these sites for the synthesis of amphiphilic polymers by attaching alkyl chains at the secondary hydroxyl groups simply by acylation. The drug encapsulation abilities of the resulting polymers have been evaluated for potential biomedical applications.


Thermal fatigue is one of the key damage mechanisms in components suffering high temperature cycles. To shorten the duration of a thermal fatigue test and improve its reliability, apparatus was designed using a laser as the heat source, considering the good controllability and high energy density of a laser in both time and space. The temperature and stress fields induced by a laser under high temperature cycling were investigated by a coupled thermo-mechanical finite element method (FEM) model. Results show that, under the cyclic action of the laser, pulse compressive stresses were produced and were non-uniformly distributed on the cast iron surface, providing essential conditions for cracking. After 1000 thermal cycles. network cracks occurred on the surface area irradiated by the laser. It is believed that the cracks initiated from holes formed by the spalling of graphite, and propagated to connect with each other under the effects of the pulsed compressive stresses.


In the manufacture of wood objects, for binding and strengthening were used nails, cramps and other metallic elements, which in the archaeological site suffered degradation and deterioration processes, specific to metal-wood interface. The chemical and physical-structural characteristics of the products resulted from metal-old wood interactions can set up a database that can be used in authentication. For the study were taken wood samples from the Roman and Byzantine era, from Dobrogea and Moldova areas, resulted from the archaeological excavations, after year 2000, which presented in their structure metallic elements. The samples were analyzed with scanning electron microscope coupled with energy dispersion X-ray (SEM-EDX).


This study tests the effect of relative income – younger people's earning potential relative to their aspirations, as approximated by older families' income – on two measures of fertility: the proportion of women with an own child under one year of age, and the proportion of women with at least one own child under eighteen. The results are highly supportive of the Easterlin relative income hypothesis, finding a dominant negative effect of older family income that extends due to postponement effects even into groups 11-15 years out of school. Increases in older family income are found to account for 42% of the decline in the proportion of women with a newborn, and 37% of the decline in the proportion with at least one own child, among women 0-5 years out of school. In addition, the study finds a strong but changing effect of the female wage: positive among women 0-5 years out of school, although slowly declining over time, but negative among the older women with a dominant positive time trend that has produced a positive effect in the last decade. It is hypothesized that the observed pattern of increases in fertility among women with higher levels of education over the last decade has been a function of this emerging positive effect of the female wage, among older more educated women.


The transition to formal schooling is thought of as a critical educational experience for all children and their families. This transition may be especially critical for those in the largest immigrant group in the United States, Mexican families and their children. Using Critical Race Theory, the aim of the current study was to give Mexican immigrant parents a voice in their experiences and perspectives regarding their children's transition to school. Using two distinct phases, the current study examined Mexican immigrant parents' perspectives on and experiences with their children's transition to kindergarten. In the first phase, information from interviews with 7 Mexican immigrant parents and feedback from an expert panel were used to revise the Family Experiences and Involvement in Transition (FEIT) survey (McIntyre et al, 2007), with the intent of making it more culturally sensitive and relevant, and a better reflection of Mexican families' perspectives and experiences. In the second phase of the study, 44 Mexican immigrant parents completed the newly adapted FEIT (FEIT-A) measure, providing some initial data about its utility, relevance, and psychometric properties. Implications of use of the FEIT-A for schools, communities, and practitioners are discussed.


Cloud computing is an increasingly commonplace term today, used to describe the relocation of hardware resources, programs, and data from individual, local machines to a network accessible from a variety of platforms and devices. In unpicking the complex cultural logic that cloud computing emblematizes, this essay analyzes the connections between the interrelated histories of cybernetics, computing, and distributed networks and the emerging economic models that ubiquitous networked computing facilitates.


Objectives: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the activity and toxicity of carboplatin and paclitaxel combination in advanced or recurrent carcinoma of the cervix. Methods: Fifty-one eligible patients with measurable advanced or recurrent cervical carcinoma were treated with carboplatin (area under the curve, 5) and paclitaxel 175 mg/m2 every 3 weeks for 6 to 9 cycles or until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. Results: Eight complete (16%) and 19 partial responses (37%) occurred, for an overall response rate (RR) of 53% (95% confidence interval [CI], 39%-67%). The median progression-free survival was 6 months (95% CI, 5.4-6.5 months), and the median overall survival was 13 months (95% CI, 11.4-14.5 months). The RR was higher in patients with disease outside a previously irradiated site compared with those with disease in a previously irradiated field (68% vs 30%) (P = 0.011). Patients previously treated with chemoradiation had an RR of 28%, whereas in those previously treated with radiotherapy alone, the RR was 68% (P = 0.023). There was no statistically significant difference between histology and response to therapy. Patients with performance status of 0 or 1 had a higher RR than those with worse performance status. Toxicity was generally mild except for myelotoxicity. Neutropenia grade 3/4 was recorded in 44% of patients, and 6% experienced febrile neutropenia. Twenty-two percent of patients experienced anemia grade 3-4, whereas 14% had thrombocytopenia grade 3-4. Three patients (6%) developed grade 3 sensory neuropathy. Conclusion: The combination of carboplatin and paclitaxel seems to have activity in advanced or recurrent cervical carcinoma with an acceptable toxicity profile.


OBJECTIVE
To assess the roles of the interleukin 4 (IL-4) and interferon-g (IFN-g) gene polymorphisms in a series of patients with biopsy-proven giant cell arteritis (GCA).

METHODS
Eighty-two patients with biopsy-proven GCA and 102 ethnically matched controls from the Lugo region (Northwest Spain) were studied. The following single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) were assessed: IL-4 (SNP1: rs2070874, SNP2: rs2227284, SNP3: rs2227282, SNP4: rs2243266, and SNP5: rs2243267) and IFN-g (SNP1: rs1861494, SNP2: rs1861493, and SNP3: rs2069718).

RESULTS
Significant differences in allele and genotype frequencies were observed for the IL-4 SNP between HLA-DRB1*04 negative patients and controls. Epistatic interaction between SNP2 (rs2227284) with HLA-DRB1 showed a significant interaction (p = 0.001) and carriage of the SNP2*T allele in the absence of HLA-DRB1*04 resulted in a 4-fold risk of developing GCA (OR 4.2, 95% CI 1.1-15.6). Also, a significant increase in the frequency of the T-T-C-A-C IL-4 haplotype was observed in HLA-DRB1*04 negative GCA patients compared to the controls (p = 0.02; OR 2.0, 95% CI 1.0-3.9). Similar distributions of allele and genotype frequencies were observed for the IFN-g polymorphisms in both GCA patients and controls.

CONCLUSION
Our results suggest an association with IL-4 gene polymorphism that is dependent on HLA-DRB1 genotype in GCA susceptible individuals. These data indicate an interaction between HLA-DRB1 and IL-4 that contributes to pronounced disease susceptibility.


Security in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is an omnipresent topic. In many application scenarios, like the surveillance of critical areas or infrastructures, security mechanisms have to be used to build reliable and secure applications. Up to now, most of the used cryptographic algorithms have been implemented in software despite the resource constraints in terms of processing power, memory and energy. In the past few years, the usage of special hardware accelerated security modules has been proposed as a viable alternative to software implementations. However, the energy-efficiency has not yet been evaluated in-depth. In this paper, we analyze the VaultIC420 security module and present an evaluation of its energy-efficiency. We compare the performance and energy-efficiency of the hardware module to common software implementations like TinyECC. For the energy measurements, we use IRIS sensor nodes in the SANDbed testbed at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Our evaluation shows, that the VaultIC420 can save up to 76% of energy using different MAC layer protocols. It also shows, that the current draw of the VaultIC420 requires a duty-cycling mechanisms to achieve any savings compared to the software implementation.


This is the second of two Articles relaying the results of the most extensive survey to date of 137 congressional drafters about the doctrines of statutory interpretation and administrative delegation. The first Article focused on our respondents' knowledge and use of the interpretive principles that courts apply. This second Article moves away from the judicial perspective. Our findings here highlight the overlooked legislative underbelly: the personnel, structural and process-related factors that, our respondents repeatedly volunteered, drive the details of the drafting process more than do judicial rules of interpretation. These factors range from the fragmentation caused by the committee system; to the centrality of nonpartisan professional staff in the drafting of statutory text; to the use of increasingly unorthodox legislative procedures - each of which, our respondents told us, affects statutory consistency and use of legislative history in different and important ways. Our respondents also painted a picture of legislative staffers in a primary interpretive conversation with agencies, not with courts, and as using different kinds of signals for their communications with agencies than courts consider.Most of the structural, personnel and process-related influences that our respondents emphasized have not been recognized by courts or scholars, but understanding them calls into question almost every presumption of statutory interpretation in current deployment. These findings have significance for textualism, purposivism and beyond. They undermine the claims of proponents of each theory that theirs is the most democracy-enhancing, because none makes satisfactory efforts to really reflect congressional expectations. Our findings challenge textualism's operating assumption that text is the best evidence of the legislative bargain and suggest more relevant - but still-formalist - structural features that might do better. They reveal that although purposivists or eclectic theorists may have the right idea with a more contextual approach, many of factors on which they focus are not the same ones that Congress utilizes. With respect to delegation, for both types of theorists, Chevron now seems too text- and court-centric, in the light of our findings, to actually capture congressional intent to delegate, which has been its asserted purpose. In the end, our findings raise the question whether the kind of "faithful agent" approach to interpretation that most judges currently employ - one aimed effectuating legislative deals and often focused on granular textual details - can ever be successful. We thus look to different paradigms less dependent on how Congress works, including rule-of-law and pragmatic approaches to interpretation. These alternatives respond to the problem of the sausage factory, but pose different challenges in light of the modern judicial sensibility's pronounced concern with legislative supremacy.


Purpose

There is little research into small higher education institutions and international students' choice in selecting these institutions. The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors that influence international student choices in selecting a small institution. In particular, this study compares the differences between Chinese students and other international students in selecting an institution, specifically based on sources of information used, usefulness of the information, pull motivations, and reference groups/items.

Design/methodology/approach

This research study examined undergraduate international students at a small-sized Canadian higher education institution. "International students" were surveyed – as the total population included all students who are studying at the institution on a study permit or a temporary resident (visitor) visa. All full-time and part-time international students attending the institution were eligible to participate in the survey regardless of their faculty or major. For the sampling process, international students at the institution were intercepted on campus using convenient sampling and personal interview method to participate in the survey. In addition, students were invited within the classroom to volunteer to complete the survey. They were able to complete either a paper-based survey or an online survey by following a hyperlink.

Findings

Results indicate that international students considered "the university's website" as the most used information source but perceived "direct communication from the institution" as the highest ranked usefulness of the information when selecting a small institution. Further, findings indicate that international student cohorts perceived "environmental cues and educational facilities" as the most important pull motivational factor and the institution itself as the reference that has the most significant influence on student decision making.

Research limitations/implications

This study was conducted on students who were surveyed following their enrolment and attendance at the institution. Students were surveyed at various stages of their undergraduate studies. As a result, some of these responses may be several years from the actual decision of selecting an institution and student recall may not be accurately reflected. In addition, examining student decision making prior to, during, and immediately following their choice of institution would most likely create better information as student attitudes and perceptions would be recorded closer to the actual decision. In addition, given that these students are attending the institution their actual experience on-campus may have impacted their responses either positively or negatively.

Practical implications

This study provides insight into international student choice in choosing smaller institutions. These findings can support recruitment policy and strategy for international students and may assist in enhancing institutional performance.

Social implications

The study reinforces the need for policy makers, institutional leaders and recruiters to understand motivations to pursue overseas studies and to ensure push, pull, and structural factors are aligned for successful student recruitment outcomes. While there is commonality among international student cohorts, there are also significant differences that need to be addressed by institutions and destinations for international students. These findings are presented from one small higher education institution in Canada.

Originality/value

This study created new knowledge regarding international student decision making in choosing to study at a small higher education institution. The study compared the key factors that influenced decision making and identified differences among Chinese students and other international students. There is little research into the international student decision making and small institutions. This study provides unique insight into international student choice and influences on their decision making.


The study provides estimates of overall incidence, as well as, the distribution and burden of General Sales Tax across household welfare levels by applying the latest available household consumption data. The analysis is carried out at national, regional and provincial levels; separately for food, non-durable and durable expenditure items. Effective GST rate across deciles of per capita expenditure and Kakwani Summary Index of tax progressivity are estimated for the year 2010-11. Results in general, indicate proportionality of GST incidence associated with some progressivity at the upper part of income distribution. The relative intensity in terms of magnitudes of Kakwani Index indicates regressivity in GST on food and progressivity on durable expenditure items. A simulation exercise is also carried out to observe the impact of non-uniform GST rates for expenditure commodity groups on distribution of the tax burden.


BACKGROUND Skeletal muscle maladaptation accompanies chronic kidney disease (CKD) and negatively affects physical function. Emphasis in CKD has historically been placed on muscle fiber–intrinsic deficits, such as altered protein metabolism and atrophy. However, targeted treatment of fiber-intrinsic dysfunction has produced limited improvement, whereas alterations within the fiber-extrinsic environment have scarcely been examined. METHODS We investigated alterations to the skeletal muscle interstitial environment with deep cellular phenotyping of biopsies from patients with CKD and age-matched controls and performed transcriptome profiling to define the molecular underpinnings of CKD-associated muscle impairments. We examined changes in muscle maladaptation following initiation of dialysis therapy for kidney failure. RESULTS Patients with CKD exhibited a progressive fibrotic muscle phenotype, which was associated with impaired regenerative capacity and lower vascular density. The severity of these deficits was strongly associated with the degree of kidney dysfunction. Consistent with these profound deficits, CKD was associated with broad alterations to the muscle transcriptome, including altered ECM organization, downregulated angiogenesis, and altered expression of pathways related to stem cell self-renewal. Remarkably, despite the seemingly advanced nature of this fibrotic transformation, dialysis treatment rescued these deficits, restoring a healthier muscle phenotype. Furthermore, after accounting for muscle atrophy, strength and endurance improved after dialysis initiation. CONCLUSION These data identify a dialysis-responsive muscle fibrotic phenotype in CKD and suggest the early dialysis window presents a unique opportunity of improved muscle regenerative capacity during which targeted interventions may achieve maximal impact. TRIAL REGISTRATION NCT01452412 FUNDING NIH, NIH Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA), and Einstein-Mount Sinai Diabetes Research Center


We show that on both the x86 and ARM architectures it is possible to mount return-oriented programming attacks without using return instructions. Our attacks instead make use of certain instruction sequences that behave like a return, which occur with sufficient frequency in large libraries on (x86) Linux and (ARM) Android to allow creation of Turing-complete gadget sets.
 Because they do not make use of return instructions, our new attacks have negative implications for several recently proposed classes of defense against return-oriented programming: those that detect the too-frequent use of returns in the instruction stream; those that detect violations of the last-in, first-out invariant normally maintained for the return-address stack; and those that modify compilers to produce code that avoids the return instruction.


This thesis investigates the possibilities of explaining higher cognition as internal simulations of perception and action at an abstract level. Relatively recent findings in both neuroscience and psychology indicates that both perception and action can be internally simulated by activating sensory and motor areas in the brain in absence of sensory input and without any resulting overt behavior. An investigation was conducted in order to test the hypothesis that perception can be simulated in a mobile robot using abstractions. The result from this investigation showed that this was indeed the case but that the accuracy was limited. The simulations allowed the robot to anticipate long chains of future situations but were not good enough to support any overt behavior. To further improve the results there is a need for better training techniques and/or a more complex architecture.


In 2011, Clyfford Still's painting 1949-A-No.1 sold for $61.7 million at Sotheby's auction house. This painting was one of four up for auction by the artist that night, fetching a total of $114 million to build the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver to house his entire estate. Still was among the most celebrated and notorious of the Abstract Expressionists, receiving the highest praise from Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Clement Greenberg during his lifetime. Still's legacy has faltered since his death in 1980. Until 2011, 95% of his life's work was stored in a barn in Maryland, hidden from view. Limited availability and accessibility of Clyfford Still's artwork make him today's "greatest unknown painter." This thesis begins to explore the previously hidden life and work of Clyfford Still in the 1930s, using the archival and visual material at the Clyfford Still Museum. I have approached the project chronologically to show how his work in the 1930s set the foundation for his success in as an Abstract Expressionist in the 1950s. Still was committed to creating a North American art form free from European influence and, as a result, traveled extensively within the United States and Canada. By largely eschewing the New York art scene, Still found inspiration in North West Coast Native American culture. His interest in man's relationship with the land was a theme that he derived from Native American culture and also related to the popular Regionalist art movement. Many themes from the 1930s evolved into symbolic motifs that he used for the rest of his career.


This Article examines how private governance can bypass government gridlock on climate change and buy time for a national and international carbon price. A carbon price – whether in the form of a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade program – is the optimal government response but is unlikely to be implemented within the next decade. Likely government policies will reduce emissions by far less than needed to reduce the risk of significant climate disruption, but recent corporate carbon disclosure programs, supply chain contracting requirements, investor pressure, and other private initiatives demonstrate the viability of another approach. Private initiatives can reduce carbon emissions without the coercive power or resources of government by correcting market and behavioral failures and by drawing on the support for mitigation that exists in a subset of the population. The Article demonstrates how a private governance wedge of emissions reductions can be achieved by expanding current corporate and household private governance initiatives and by launching new initiatives that address climate beliefs, motivations, and behavior. Private initiatives can bypass ideological barriers and national boundaries, but implementing a private climate governance strategy will require relaxing the assumption that only governments can drive major emissions reductions over the next decade.


This white paper considers that civil engineers were much involved in building the infrastructure of the communities that were destroyed. We question some of the basic tenets of the role of civil engineers: Have they built sufficiently safe communities, and are they adequately and responsibly protecting the public from natural disasters? In observing the scale of the tsunami disaster, it seems obvious that the status quo is not good enough. A better balance needs to be achieved between potential losses, in human and economic terms, from natural disasters and expenditures on infrastructure protection. Civil engineering professionals are most knowledgeable and best positioned to play a leadership role in realizing this goal of optimally balanced risk. Do civil engineers need a new road map that maintains traditional strengths but redefines and amplifies their role? In this paper, we ask some questions intended to provoke discussion about how to protect our communities and, in this context, expand and improve the quality of services that civil engineers provide.


Late Pleistocene sequences around Dundalk Bay, eastern Ireland, record glaciomarine sedimentation near the margin of a grounded ice lobe around 15 ka sp. A coastal exposure at Cooley Point consists of four major facies deposited outside this ice limit. (1) A basal mud facies deposited from sediment plumes accumulated following the initial ice marginal retreat inland. It contains a well-preserved Arctic microfauna dominated by the foram Elphidium clavatum and the ostracod Roundstonia globulifera. (2) A flat to undulating boulder facies (pavement), mostly one clast thick, is found pressed into the mud and is characterized by bevelled and striated upper clast surfaces. Pavement attributes are a result of intertidal activity in a cold climate. The boulder source is due to rafting by ice flees from glacigenic debris deposited during an ice advance. (3) Laminated sand facies drape the pavement and are a result of variable current activity. (4) The overlying gravel facies is separated from the sand facies by a marine erosion surface. The gravel facies is subaqueous, channelized and is overlain by late glacial raised beach ridges. Locally the gravels have been deformed by ice pressure from partially floating ice flees. Facies changes record terrestrial submergence and provide evidence for changes in relative sea level during part of the last deglacial cycle. The boulder pavement and deformed gravel facies suggest that ice flees and sea ice effects may be more common within stratigraphies along emergent coasts than previously thought, though they have a low preservation potential. Extreme conditions during the deglacial favoured opportunistic microfaunas during mud deposition. This event may be related to a major meltwater event within the Irish Sea Basin.


This essay is part of a book in progress about Italy and Africa in the modern and modernist Italian literary imagination and cultural identity, from Gabriele d'Annunzio to Ennio Flaiano's Tempo di uccidere (1947). It argues that racism, colonialism, and imperialism are not an incidental, minor (and thus, understandably largely forgotten) component of Italian identity and Italian history, but that in the final years of "Liberal Italy," they became increasingly a defining trait of the imaginary Italian national identity. As in the Risorgimento, literature and the literary imagination played a crucial role in this unifying process. In a nation whose wealth and growth after unification were effectively based on the exploitation of voiceless women and peasants and where parliamentary politics was soon reduced to cynical maneuvers, bargains, and intrigues, intellectuals, writers, and idealists had sought in vain a principle around which a strong sense of national identity and community could, however belatedly, take form. An imaginary construction of racial difference and the fashioning of an imaginary "Italian" ethnic national identity, contributed more than any other element to unify Italians and give them the sense of being "one nation." The word and concept razza in this period, are not used just as another way of saying patria, but rather to forge the sense of an imaginary yet essential identity. This imaginary sense of identity could entice and include even those who, like women, Catholics, Jews, peasants, and Southerners, were (or felt) excluded or alienated from the humanist discourse and the paternalistic yet secular rhetoric of Italian Risorgimental patriotism. This new imaginary identity was constructed and reinforced increasingly by applying the debasing colonial logic of otherness outside rather than inside the nation's borders. The creation of an imaginary racially different and inferior "other" on the other side of the Mediterranean finally allowed for an Italian identity to come together as never before. The Libyan war was construed largely as a literary fantasy and a utopian wish-fulfillment. It represents the culmination of a racial process of self-definition by Italians, through which the profoundly disintegrating internal differences of race, gender, class, and religious belief that threatened the very notion of a united Italy were at once repressed, forgotten, and surpassed. Through the racialization of literary discourse, poets and prose writers took, for the first time in the history of united Italy, an active political role that in some ways was even more influential than that of professional politicians.


RATIONALE & OBJECTIVE
Clinical practice guidelines for dietary intake in hemodialysis focus on individual nutrients. Little is known about associations of dietary patterns with survival. We evaluated the associations of dietary patterns with cardiovascular and all-cause mortality among adults treated by hemodialysis.

STUDY DESIGN
Prospective cohort study.

SETTING & PARTICIPANTS
8,110 of 9,757 consecutive adults on hemodialysis (January 2014 to June 2017) treated in a multinational private dialysis network and with analyzable dietary data.

EXPOSURES
Data-driven dietary patterns based on the GA2LEN food frequency questionnaire. Participants received a score for each identified pattern, with higher scores indicating closer resemblance of their diet to the identified pattern. Quartiles of standardized pattern scores were used as primary exposures.

OUTCOMES
Cardiovascular and all-cause mortality.

ANALYTICAL APPROACH
Principal components analysis with varimax rotation to identify common dietary patterns. Adjusted proportional hazards regression analyses with country as a random effect to estimate the associations between dietary pattern scores and mortality. Associations were expressed as adjusted HRs with 95% CIs, using the lowest quartile score as reference.

RESULTS
During a median follow-up of 2.7 years (18,666 person-years), there were 2,087 deaths (958 cardiovascular). 2 dietary patterns, "fruit and vegetable" and "Western," were identified. For the fruit and vegetable dietary pattern score, adjusted HRs, in ascending quartiles, were 0.94 (95% CI, 0.76-1.15), 0.83 (95% CI, 0.66-1.06), and 0.91 (95% CI, 0.69-1.21) for cardiovascular mortality and 0.95 (95% CI, 0.83-1.09), 0.84 (95% CI, 0.71-0.99), and 0.87 (95% CI, 0.72-1.05) for all-cause mortality. For the Western dietary pattern score, the corresponding estimates were 1.10 (95% CI, 0.90-1.35), 1.11 (95% CI, 0.87-1.41), and 1.09 (95% CI, 0.80-1.49) for cardiovascular mortality and 1.01 (95% CI, 0.88-1.16), 1.00 (95% CI, 0.85-1.18), and 1.14 (95% CI, 0.93-1.41) for all-cause mortality.

LIMITATIONS
Self-reported food frequency questionnaire, data-driven approach.

CONCLUSIONS
These findings did not confirm an association between mortality among patients receiving long-term hemodialysis and the extent to which dietary patterns were either high in fruit and vegetables or consistent with a Western diet.


Flat user fees in payment for environmental services (PES) schemes promote administrative ease, and are sometimes perceived as egalitarian. However, when environmental service (ES) buyers are heterogeneous in their income and water consumption levels, this may not be optimal, as total payments become too low and services are under-supplied. This paper identifies ES buyer preferences and estimates their willingness to pay (WTP) differentiated fees in an ongoing PES initiative in an Andean watershed in Colombia. Small, flat user payments have recently been introduced to implement incipient watershed protection upstream. Environmental service users fall into two highly heterogeneous categories: smallholder peasants and owners of recreational houses. We performed a contingent valuation analysis in a representative stratified sample of 218 user households. For improved water services, ES buyers on average were willing to pay a monthly US$1 premium over current flat PES rates. Owners of recreational houses were willing to pay about US$1.50 more; smallholders only US$0.5. 85% of ES buyers also agree to pay differentiated fees. Of these, 41% would prefer fees differentiated by water consumption, 23% by household income, 30% criteria combination, and 6% by other criteria. Spatial variables, such as distance to the water distribution point and to the town center, importantly influenced WTP. The results may help designing users-driven PES schemes in accordance with efficiency and equity objectives.