This paper was prepared for the IMF's Electronic Discussion Group on the Treatment of Nonperforming Loans in Macroeconomic Statistics. Due to the linkages between loan recognition and interest accrual, and between loan writeoffs and operating surplus, decisions that are reached regarding the treatment of these loans may have a significant impact on the calculation of major aggregates in the national and international economic accounts. In this paper, recommendations are made on a number of important questions, and these recommendations are briefly justified. In particular, the treatment of loan principal (that is, how should nonperforming loans – or loans more generally -- be valued?), loan interest (that is, should interest be accrued on nonperforming loans?), and operating surplus (how should output and profits be measured?) are separately discussed.


Italian Folk: Vernacular Culture in Italian-American Lives, edited by Joseph Sciorra. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011. 257 pages, black-and-white photographs, index, $28.00 paper. Masterfully arranged by the editor, the articles in this book comprise a sterling collection of Italian American folklore research. The organization of the work provides seamless transitions from essays on foodways to material culture, cultural landscape to explicit art forms, and large-scale ceremonial events to religious belief, all situated in diverse locales from New York to California. By "listening with an accent" (10), the authors provide fresh insights about everyday creativity and ethnic identity formation. In the first section, Simone Cinotto's "'Sunday Dinner? You Had to Be There!': The Social Significance of Food in Italian Harlem, 1920-40" is followed by John Allan Cicala's "Cuscuszu in Detroit, July 18, 1993: Memory, Conflict, and Bella Figura during a Sicilian American Meal." The complexities of collective food consumption are not given short shrift in these two essays, which consider food and food rituals as contested narrative space, where individual and group identities are negotiated, reexamined, and refined. Lara Pascali's "The Italian Immigrant Basement Kitchen in North America," an outstanding analysis of Italian American indoor vernacular space as "dream space," provides a smooth segue from the home to outdoor vernacular environs. In "Creative Responses to Italian Immigrant Experience in California: Baldassare Forestiere's Underground Gardens and Simon Rodie's Watts Towers," literary scholar Kenneth Scambray compares the work of two Italian American "grassroots artists." Using building skills acquired in the United States, the artists create outdoor "architectural narratives" that "express the conflicted and often bifurcating experience of Italian immigration to America" (63). Art historian Joseph J. Inguanti's "Landscapes of Order, Landscapes of Memory: Residential Landscapes of the New York Metropolitan Region" couples formal analysis with interviews with gardeners to compare urban and suburban vernacular spaces. His focus on "landscapes of memory" and "landscapes of order" reveals the crucial role vernacular landscape plays in the construction of Italian American ethnic identity. I found the author's description of vegetable gardens in cemeteries intriguing, especially his conclusion: "Domesticating their graves by tending grave gardens, Italian Americans make clear an ongoing relationship between the living and the dead" (87). At one time, however, the tomato plant was grown for purely decorative purposes. By the eighteenth century, the tomato was used as a food, but it was still listed among poisonous plants. Is the planting of vegetables like tomatoes and squash primarily ornamental? Inguanti never reveals if he asked Italian American gardeners this question and others about practical cemetery logistics, such as who controls the plot, and what happens if more space is needed for burials. In other words, how do practical concerns mesh with practices that yield a "harvest of memories, some less pleasant than others" (97)? The connection of place to memory, both nostalgic and conflicted, is also explored in Joseph Sciorra's essay, "Locating Memory: Longing, Place, and Autobiography in Vincenzo Ancona's Sicilian Poetry. …


The introduction of the Australian Paid Parental Leave scheme in 2011 provides a rare opportunity to estimate the labour supply and employment impacts of publicly-funded paid leave on mothers in the first year post-partum. The almost universal coverage of the scheme coupled with detailed survey data collected specifically for this purpose means that eligibility for paid leave under the scheme can be plausibly taken as exogenous following a standard propensity score matching exercise. In line with much of the existing literature, we find a positive impact on leave taking in the first half year and on the probability of eventually returning to work in the first year. The paper provides new evidence of a positive impact on continuing in the same job and under the same conditions. Further new evidence shows that disadvantaged mothers – low income, less educated, without access to employer-funded leave – respond most to the scheme.


Electromagnetic compression of tubular profiles with high electrical conductivity is an innovative joining process for the manufacturing of lightweight structures. Taking conventional interference fits into account, the contact area's influence on the joint's quality seems to be of significance, as e.g. the contact area and the friction coefficient between the joining partners determine an allowed axial load or torsional momentum proportionally. Therefore, different contact area surfaces were prepared by shot peening and different machining operations and strategies. The mandrel's surfaces were prepared by shot peening with glass beads and Al2O3 particles. Alternatively, preparation was done using simultaneous five axis milling, because potential joining partners in lightweight frame structures within the Transregional Collaborative Research Centre SFB/TR10 would be manufactured similarly. After that, the manufactured surfaces were characterized by measuring the surface roughness and using confocal whitelight microscopy. After joining by electromagnetic compression, the influence of different mandrel's surface conditions on the joint's mechanical properties were analyzed by tensile tests. Finally, conclusions and design rules for the manufacturing of joints by electromagnetic compression are given.


Background As laparoscopic liver resection is becoming a commonly used method for hepatic surgery, postoperative pain management is emerging as one of the trickiest problems after surgery. The ideal method of pain management is controversial and the optimal strategy for postoperative pain management after surgery remains unclear. The present study evaluated the postoperative analgesic efficacy of parecoxib and fentanyl, and the benefit of a new intravenous parecoxib infusion pump with patient-controlled analgesia after laparoscopic liver resection. Material/Methods This controlled, prospective, randomized, double-blind trial compared VAS scores among 3 groups of patients: a fentanyl group (FEN group) using a fentanyl citrate pump, an intravenous parecoxib group (IVPA group) receiving intravenous parecoxib, and a parecoxib pump group (PUPA group) receiving parecoxib sodium by analgesia pump. We enrolled 124 patients planned for laparoscopic liver resection. The primary outcome was VAS score at rest and with movement. Secondary outcomes were adverse effects (including nausea), sedation, pruritus, and quality of life. Result For all time intervals, the VAS scores were significantly lower in the PUPA group. VAS scores at rest and with movement in the PUPA group were the lowest among the 3 groups, while the scores in the FEN group were the highest. More adverse effects were detected in the FEN group, and no significant differences in adverse effects were found between the intravenous group and the parecoxib pump group. Conclusions Use of the intravenous infusion parecoxib pump for patient-controlled analgesia provides superior analgesic efficacy and fewer adverse effects for patients after laparoscopic liver resection.


A new interpretation is offered for Qoh 4:17 that highlights the  Sitz im Leben  of the Ptolemaic regime. Qoh 4:17, though couched in cultic terms and with a Temple setting, contains allusions to the Ptolemaic reality of spies and informers who helped the Ptolemaic administration exact heavy taxes. It is shown that this dual level (cultic and non-cultic) meaning persists in the unit Qoh 4:17-5:6.


Transportation systems such as mail, freight, passenger and even telecommunication systems most often employ a hub and spoke network structure since correctly designed they give a strong balance between high service quality and low costs resulting in an economically competitive operation. In addition, consumers are increasingly demanding fast and reliable transportation services, with services such as next day deliveries and fast business and pleasure trips becoming highly sought after. This makes finding an efficient design of a hub and spoke network of the utmost importance for any competing transportation company. However real life situations are complicated, dynamic and often require responses to many different fixed and random events. Therefore modeling the question of what is an optimal hub and spoke network structure and finding an optimal solution is very difficult. Due to this, many researchers and practitioners alike make several assumptions and simplifications on the behavior of such systems to allow mathematical models to be formulated and solved optimally or near optimally within a practical timeframe. Some assumptions and simplifications can however result in practically poor network design solutions being found. This thesis contributes to the research of hub and spoke networks by introducing new stochastic models and fast solution algorithms to help bridge the gap between theoretical solutions and designs that are useful in practice. Three main contributions are made in the thesis. First, in Chapter 2, a new formulation and solution algorithms are proposed to find exact solutions to a stochastic p-hub center problem. The stochastic p-hub center problem is about finding a network structure, where travel times on links are stochastic, which minimizes the longest path in the network to give fast delivery guarantees which will hold for some given probability. Second, in Chapter 3, the stochastic p-hub center problem is looked at using a new methodological approach which gives more realistic solutions to the network structures when applied to real life situations. In addition a new service model is proposed where volume of flow is also accounted for when considering the stochastic nature of travel times on links. Third, in Chapter 4, stochastic volume is considered to account for capacity constraints at hubs and, de facto, reduce the costs embedded in excessive hub volumes. Numerical experiments and results are conducted and reported for all models in all chapters which demonstrate the efficiency of the new proposed approaches.


In this paper we analyse the academic outcomes of children and we correlate them to the educational level of their parents, including financial literacy as one of the main determinants. Financial literacy might increase the consciousness of the return to education, increasing the willingness to send children to further education. Our empirical results indeed prove that this is the case for Italian households.


This paper examines innovation response of firms with different technology and ownership to domestic and openness-induced competition in emerging transition economies. Using a firmlevel panel dataset from China and linked trade tariff data for the period 1998-2010, we find that an inverted-U relationship between domestic competition and innovation regardless of levels of technology and types of ownership although the high-technology and private firms demonstrate greater resilience in innovation. However, their innovation responses to opennessinduced competition differ. The decrease of sectoral input tariff significantly stimulates innovation in all types of firms. FDI exhibits the same effect except in the high-technology firms. The decrease of sectoral output tariff promotes innovation in privately-owned and hightechnology firms but depresses innovation in the state-owned and low-technology firms. A mixed ownership, ie. increasing state-ownership in privately-owned firms and reducing that in state-owned firms, increases innovation in Chinese firms.


In the case of graphene, hydrogenation removes the conductivity due to the bands forming the Dirac cone by opening up a band gap. This type of chemical functionalization is of the utmost importance for electronic applications. As predicted by theoretical studies, a similar change in the band structure is expected for silicene, the closest analog to graphene. We here report a study of the atomic and electronic structures of hydrogenated silicene with hydrogen on one side, the so-called half-silicane. The ("2 root 3 x 2 root 3") phase of silicene on Ag(111) was used in this Rapid Communication since it can be formed homogeneously across the entire surface of the Ag substrate. Low-energy electron diffraction and scanning tunneling microscopy data clearly show that hydrogenation changes the structure of silicene on Ag(111) resulting in a (1 x 1) periodicity with respect to the silicene lattice. The hydrogenated silicene also exhibits a quasiregular ("2 root 3 x 2 root 3")-like arrangement of vacancies. Angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy revealed two dispersive bands which can be unambiguously assigned to half-silicane. The common top of these bands is located at similar to 0.9 eV below the Fermi level. We find that the experimental bands are closely reproduced by the theoretical band structure of free-standing silicene with H adsorbed on the upper hexagonal sublattice.


The late 1980's and early 1990's saw an explosion of the global dialogue on science and religion. Both within specific religious traditions and across the traditions, scientists and religious believers engaged in a more sustained, more rigorous, and more productive dialogue than at perhaps any earlier point in history. This "internationalizing" of the science-religion dialogue opened in a mood of great optimism. Scientists and religious scholars in many of the world's religions began simultaneously to explore the intersections between modern science and their own religious traditions. In the initial meetings of Muslim, Jewish and Christian scientists one experienced a clear sense of being involved in a common project--a sense of commonality that one does not always feel when involved in inter-religious dialogues. The mutual respect with which participants viewed one another as fellow scientists certainly contributed significantly to these early successes in the international science-religion dialogue. One could tell that those who were geniuses at drawing lines of connection, such as Prof. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, were simultaneously recognized by those in other traditions as pioneers and partners in a common field. As I pen these words, however, we face a much darker time. No man is an island; what occurs between our politicians and our nations will also affect the discussions between our scientists and our scholars of religion. Unnecessary and ill-conceived wars are being fought, and our hearts are wrenched daily by pictures of the deaths of innocent people. Undoubtedly wrongs are being committed on all sides, and a balanced discussion of the political situation would have to present it in all its ambiguities. Still, among the wrongs to be acknowledged are the aggressive policies and cultural insensitivity of the current American administration. Saddest of all, one recognizes that some of the misguided policies stem, at least in part, from a wrongly politicized interpretation of Christianity in its relationship to Islamic cultures and nations. It is not my place to resolve the political questions and to make ultimate assignments of blame or praise. But one does have to be realistic about how the present situation has affected the internationalization of the science-religion dialogue. Clearly, for many Muslims the recent hostilities have done great damage to the partnership in which we were engaged together until only recently. A few years ago leading Muslim scholars happily invited American scholars to international meetings that they were organizing in Pakistan, Indonesia, Morocco, and Iran. Today that is difficult, if not impossible. One needs only to imagine the American professor standing at the podium before a Muslim audience. Sadly, however much the organizers may respect the American speaker as a person and a scholar, they know that in his language and in the culture that he brings the audience will inevitably see the policies of his government. This fact means that the international science-and-religion discussion is in the greatest possible crisis that it could be in, for when we can no longer meet in each other's countries for lectures and collaborations, we are cut off from one another, and the dialogue is at an end. I open on this dark note because it is the situation that we currently face. No one should see naive optimism in the proposal that follows. To the contrary: I fear that it will take years to undo the damage that has been done in recent years. But we must not accept defeat: the more difficult the situation in our field becomes, the harder we must work to attempt to reestablish common ground. First we seek, for the sake of science, to reestablish collaborations between our scientists. Then we seek to build upon that scientific exchange, once again involving our religious scholars in science-religion discussions. We know from the brief successes of the past how powerful these discussions can be in overcoming misunderstanding and animosity within our religious communities. …


In financial framework, various branches are available and these are associated with the principle branch. Thus, a similar bank is situated at various areas for giving similar sort of banking administrations. Internet Banking is an electronic broadcast communications gadget that gives the clients of a monetary organization with admittance to monetary exchanges in a public space without the requirement for a human agent or bank employee The manual strategy for dealing with these banks from one area is troublesome, yet it very well may be effectively finished with an ATM programming application like this. With this ATM Banking System programming, different errands should be possible by a regular Bank Management Application, for example, adding client subtleties, seeing client money withdrawal/store subtleties, oversee banking accounts, creating pin, producing endless supply of money, and some more. The general financial strategy has gotten a lot simpler, agreeable and got also with ATM (Automated Teller Machine). ATM possesses saved clients energy for pulling out balance, checking late exchanges and checking bank balance from any area. With the proposed ATM Banking System, bank the executives is simpler with a more productive stage for overseeing client subtleties, dealing with their record and recording their exchange history. This venture can assist understudies with understanding the activities that are associated with planning ATM programming. The proposed framework is acceptable and it has a base highlights, however further improvements should be possible by adding new modules, highlights and sub-frameworks into this task.


This article is partly concerned with defining the history of history exhibitions in Australia as a field of enquiry. Its specific departure point is the notion that the use of archival documents within exhibitions repays historical examination. I discuss how documents have been selected for and used in exhibitions at the Australian War Memorial between 1922 and 1954. The Memorial's collections began with the acquisition of archival records, and from the beginning, archives were fundamental to of the development of the institution and the exhibitions in it. I argue that documents were used to legitimise the historical interpretation the Memorial offered in its exhibitions. I also contend that words on paper had a power of their own to evoke visitors' imaginings and memories.


Hume's Principle (HP) states that for any two (sortal) concepts, F and G, the number of Fs is identical to the number of Gs iff the Fs are one- one correlated with the Gs. Backed by second-order logic HP is supposed to be the starting point for the neo-logicist program of the foundations of arithmetic. The principle brings a number of formal and philosophical controversies. In this paper I discuss some arguments against it brought out by Trobok, as well as by Potter and Smiley, designed to undermine a claim that HP and its instances (such as "the number of the forks on the table is identical to the number of the knives on the table iff the forks are one-one correlated with the knives") are true. Their criticism starts from distinguishing the objective truth from a weak or stipulative one, and focusing on fictional identities such as "Hamlet = Hamlet" or "Jekyll = Hyde." They argue that numerical identities (as occur in instances of HP) are much the same as fictional identities ; that we can attribute them only a weak or stipulative truth ; and, consequently, that neo-logicists are not entitled to ontological conclusions concerning numbers they derive from HP and its instances. As opposed to that, I argue that such a criticism is ill- conceived. The analogy between the numerical and fictional identities is far-fetched. So, relative to such a criticism, HP has more prospects than some authors are prepared to admit.


[1] Quality of aerosol retrievals and atmospheric correction over land depends strongly on accuracy of the cloud mask (CM) algorithm. The heritage CM algorithms developed for AVHRR and MODIS use the latest sensor measurements of spectral reflectance and brightness temperature and perform processing at the pixel level. The algorithms are threshold-based and empirically tuned. They do not explicitly address the classical problem of cloud search, wherein the baseline clear-skies scene is defined for comparison. Here we report on a new land CM algorithm, which explicitly builds and maintains a reference clear-skies image of the surface (refcm) using a time series of MODIS measurements. The new algorithm, developed as part of the multiangle implementation of atmospheric correction (MAIAC) algorithm for MODIS, relies on the fact that clear-skies images of the same surface area have a common textural pattern, defined by the surface topography, boundaries of rivers and lakes, distribution of soils and vegetation, etc. This pattern changes slowly given the daily rate of global Earth observations, whereas clouds introduce high-frequency random disturbances. Under clear skies, consecutive gridded images of the same surface area have a high covariance, whereas in presence of clouds covariance is usually low. This idea is central to initialization of refcm, which is used to derive cloud mask in combination with spectral and brightness temperature tests. The refcm is continuously updated with the latest clear-skies MODIS measurements, thus adapting to seasonal and rapid surface changes. The algorithm is enhanced by an internal dynamic land-water-snow classification coupled with a surface change mask. An initial comparison shows that the new algorithm offers the potential to perform better than the MODIS MOD35 cloud mask in situations where the land surface is changing rapidly and over Earth regions covered by snow and ice.


2007 This dissertation proposes an inferential-realizational model of inflectional phonological information of inflectional affixes is introduced through realization constraints (RC) which associate abstract morphosyntactic or semantic feature values with phonological forms. I propose that rankings of realization constraints conform to the specificity condition, i.e. a constraint realizing a more specific morphosyntactic feature value set outranks a less specific realization constraint. I also propose that the unmarked situation in which one feature value is realized by one form (Wurzel 1989) is encoded in two universal and violable markedness constraints, *FEATURE SPLIT which bans the realization of a feature value by more than one form and *FEATURE FUSION which bans a form realizing more than one feature value. Based on this model, I examine language phenomena such as OCP-triggered selection of phonologically unrelated (allo)morphs in Greek, Hungarian, Tswana, and Spanish, ordering of inflectional affixes in Lezgian, blocking of inflectional affixes iv and extended morphological exponence in languages like Tamazight Berber, and directional syncretism in languages like Latin. I show that this model has advantages over other morphological models in several ways. (1) It readily captures cases in which a default marker emerges to replace a morphosyntactically more specific marker which is expected to be adjacent to a phonologically similar form (OCP >> RC specific >> RC less specific). By contrast, the relation between a more specific marker and a less specific one needs to be stipulated in the input in a model which introduces phonological information through inputs (e.g. Bonet 2004). (2) It readily captures universal generalizations on affix order (Greenberg 1963, Bybee 1985), e.g. a number exponent cannot be farther away from a nominal stem than a case exponent because case scopes over number. Such generalizations are missed in Paradigm Function Morphology (Stump 2001) without extraordinary machinery. (3) Based on rankings of *FEATURE SPLIT and constraints realizing the same morphosyntactic feature value(s), it provides a unified account of both blocking and extended exponence without recourse to either a distinction between primary and secondary exponents (Noyer 1992) or multiple rule blocks (Stump 2001). (4) Based on output-to-output correspondence constraints (Benua 1995, McCarthy and Prince 1995), it readily captures cases of divergent bidirectional syncretism (Baerman 2004) in which syncretism brings about both marked and unmarked forms, a problem for Noyer 1998, which claims that syncretism always moves from a more marked to a less marked state.


Existing experimental results are studied to determine the factors (including those not previously identified) affecting the strength of grouted connections. The current bond strength formula is evaluated and its limitations noted. Previous analytical work is examined and strengths and weaknesses investigated. A nonlinear finite element analysis is developed using a friction gap element to model the steel/grout bond. This includes a dilation effect when slip occurs and successfully simulates the behaviour of plain pipe connections up to ultimate load. An elastic-plastic, work-hardening, cracking and crushing constitutive model is developed to represent the behaviour of grout material. This is used for a detailed finite element analysis of the load-slip behaviour of individual shear keys of various shapes. The friction-gap element is adapted to give a representation of the shear keys using data derived from the detailed shear key analysis. A confinement factor is used to give higher ultimate shear key loads when the bond opening is small. This accounts for the observed fact that higher key loads are achieved with increased sleeve and pile dimensions due to greater confinement of the grout. Load-slip behaviour and strains up to ultimate load for shear keyed connections are successfully simulated using the friction-gap element. Bond stress distributions show that high normal bond stress concentrations are necessary to balance the bending moments in the grout annulus. Various extreme geometries are analysed and their failure modes determined. The effects of connection length, stiffeners, alternative loading arrangements, scale and shear key geometry are also fully investigated. Results are used to produce a new bond strength formula which takes into account most factors affecting bond strength and is stle to give good results over the full rang of geometries. Experimental tests have been conducted to determine the coefficient of friction between shot-blasted steel and grout for use in the numerical analyses.


In order to investigate the phytic acid degradation in the gut of post juvenile Japanese flounder, indirect method was carried out by measuring the pre-prandial and postprandial plasma mineral and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) level as well as liver phosphorus content. The experiment was designed into a Randomized Block in which experiment units were grouped according to sampling days at 10, 20 and 30 days of feeding time. Experimental diets contained three levels of dietary inorganic phosphorus at 0.0; 0.25 and 0.5% combined with two levels of dietary phytase at 0 and 2,000 FTU/kg diet. Juvenile Japanese flounder (IBW = 36.2 g) were randomly distributed into 6 tanks of a 200 L capacity with density of 15 fish/tank. Blood sampling was carried out at 0 hour (before feeding or pre-prandial) and at 1, 3, 6 and 12 hour post feeding (post-prandial) time in three sampling days, respectively. Plasma was measured for mineral and ALP levels, while liver was analyzed for P content. The observation showed that fish fed without both dietary IP and phytase supplements had the lowest postprandial plasma IP, Mg and ALP levels during 12-h postprandial period. Plasma IP level at 6-h post-feeding in groups fed dietary 0.25 and 0.5% IP were significant higher when diet supplemented with phytase than those without phytase supplement. Peak level of plasma IP in fish fed 0.25% IP was similar to fish fed 0.5% with the presence of dietary phytase. At 1 and 3-h post-feeding, plasma Ca level increased in all groups, but significant difference was only observed between group fed diet without both dietary IP and phytase and other groups. Similar to plasma IP level, peak of plasma Mg and ALP concentration occurred in fish fed 0.25% IP together with phytase, and did not significantly differ from fish fed with 0.5% IP even when phytase was included in diet.


Cheating in computer science classes can damage the reputation of institutions and their students. It is therefore essential to routinely authenticate student submissions with available software plagiarism detection algorithms such as Measure of Software Similarity (MOSS). Scaling this task for large classes where assignments are repeated each semester adds complexity and increases the instructor workload. The MOSS Tool for Addressing Plagiarism at Scale (MOSS-TAPS), organizes the MOSS submission task in courses that repeat coding assignments. In a recent use-case in the Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS) program at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the instructor time spent was reduced from 50 hours to only 10 minutes using the managed submission tool design presented here. MOSS-TAPS provides persistent configuration, supports a mixture of software languages and file organizations, and is implemented in pure Java for cross-platform compatibility.


In every country, heritage plays a significant role in achieving sustainable development. Iran, a high plateau located at latitudes in the range of 25-40 in an arid zone in the northern hemisphere of the East, is a vast country with different climatic zones. In the past, traditional builders have presented several logical climatic solutions in order to enhance human comfort. In fact, this emphasis has been one of the most important and fundamental features of Iranian architecture. To a significant extent, Iranian architecture has been based on climate, geography, available materials, and cultural beliefs. Therefore, traditional Iranian builders had to devise various techniques to enhance architectural sustainability through the use of natural materials, and they had to do so in the absence of modern technologies. Paper describes the principals and methods of vernacular architectural designs in Iran with given examples which is predominately focused on some eclectic ancient cities in Iran as Kashan, Isfahan, and Yazd. Design and technological considerations of past, such as sustainable performance of natural materials, optimum usage of available materials, and the use of wind and solar power, were studied in order to provide effective eco architectural designs to provide the architectural criteria and insights. This study will be beneficial to today architects in the design of architectural structures to provide human comfort and a sustainable life in adverse climatic conditions. Later describes Persian ancestors thought in system frame work, lifestyle and their contribution to the present science and their cultural heritages left to the world for future generations. Finally examines different threats to the Iranian cultural heritage posed by development and globalization in the recent decades and then explains essence of putting an end to the crisis of the protection of cultural heritage in a country with thousands of ancient sites and historic buildings.


The relationship among Pseudo‐nitzschia distributions, particulate toxin levels in seawater, and the energetic and highly variable water masses of an upwelling‐dominated region are explored using data collected during summer cruises off the Washington coast in 1997 and 1998. In the early summer of both years, an area of maximum domoic acid (DA) accumulation was located approximately 50 km off the coast within a counterclockwise, cold feature known as the Juan de Fuca eddy. The stations in the eddy with the highest domoic acid concentrations coincided with high numbers of Pseudo‐nitzschia pseudodelicatissima (Hasle) Hasle (2.7 µg DA equivalents L-1, up to 0.6 X 106 cells L-1 in 1997 and 0.2 µg DA equivalents L-1, up to 0.2 X 106 cells L-1 in 1998), a species known to produce toxin in this region. Other known toxin‐producing species were sometimes present, but at ≪5% of the total Pseudo‐nitzschia population when ≫0.1 µg DA equivalents L-1 were measured. In 1998, large‐scale surveys indicated that high levels of particulate DA in seawater persisted at least until 1 October, covering a maximum area of 100 km2 off the Washington coast in midsummer. The appearance of high levels of DA (up to 2.7 µg DA equivalents L-1), coincident with high numbers of P. pseudodelicatissima (up to 15.4 X 106 cells L-1) at Kalaloch beach on the central coast in late September, was followed by the accumulation of record levels of toxin in razor clams. This toxic episode was preceded by a downwelling‐favorable wind event, with associated onshore transport in near‐surface layers. We suggest that the Juan de Fuca eddy may be one source of DA to the Washington coast. The duration of upwelling and the exact timing of fall storms likely play an influential role in the intensity of the bloom and the movement of toxic cells from the eddy to the coast.


The consistently increasing need of obtaining information and data about the trace element content in geological material as applied to exploration as well as the investigation of the weathering process of ores demands the utilization of the semiquantitative spectrographic procedures. These procedures provide such data both rapidly and at a relatively low cost. The laboratories of the Companhia de Pesquisa de Recursos Minerais (C.P.R.M.), Brazil, use methods of semiquantitative spectrographic analysis to obtain this kind of information. The work is based upon the previous studies described by Oda and others and Grimes and Marranzino.


Deposition morphologies of inkjet-printed colloidal drops are examined under various drying conditions, particle volume fractions, and particle sizes. Concentric multi-rings, radial spokes, spider web, foam, and island-like depositions are observed as a result of the competition between the receding contact line and particle deposition during drop drying. Experimentally measured multi-ring spacing, δR, shows good agreement with the model predicted linear correlation with the local ring radius R. The results also show that the instability near the contact line leads to the radial spoke and saw-toothed structures. The resulting wavelength of the radial structures, λ, satisfies λ ~ (3)√R and λ ~ 1/(3)√[1-RH], where RH is the relative humidity. A dimensionless parameter ξ, defined as the radial deposition growth rate to contact line velocity ratio, has been identified to determine the conditions under which the entire contact line can be pinned to leave a continuous ring deposit. Increasing the particle size while keeping the volume fraction the same is found to suppress the formation of the multi-ring deposition, due to a smaller number of particles available to pin the receding contact line.


This paper examines the question of distance education and its pivotal role in promoting social change and development in Africa. It also discussed within the context of the global digital divide and the ongoing need for collaborative effort at global education, the limitation imposed by the socio-economic and political environment on the continent. The paper in its findings conclude that the crisis within African societies constitutes a serious challenge to the implementation of and the effectiveness of distance education in Africa and therefore contributes to the widening of the digital divide rather than reducing it.


Abstract The United States has reinforced its anti-immigrant reforms frequently. With these changes in the social and political context, they are a great challenge for this population. Although the immigrant tries to face them, they become toxic stressors for them. Therefore, interactions between parents-children and their family dynamics are affected by stressors associated with the migration process. One of the most worrying is immigrant's emotional health and well-being. There are international reports that refer to the high level of anxiety and depression experienced by immigrants and their families. This could increase the likelihood that children will become to intensify maladaptive behaviors. There are some theoretical models that point to the training of the practices of parents, inserted in the Theory of Learning Social Interaction (SIL) and in an ecological model to benefit the results of the child, the adolescent and the adult from different social roles. Therefore, the methodology about literature review could be one option to manage it. The objective was to identify the strategies reported in the literature to guide and strengthen the practices of the families of Latino immigrants (in particular Mexican families), encouraging a process of learning and training to cope them. This propose is one way to learn to parents, insert them into a community of cohesion, which can teach their children more effectively and they learn to manage the stress for acculturation. Unfortunately, this proposition is theoretical too, although it has evidence of the voices of different investigations done in the last 10 years.


BACKGROUND
Trace metal concentrations may affect cardio-metabolic risk, but the role of prenatal exposure is unclear. We examined: 1) the relationship between blood metal concentrations during pregnancy and child cardio-metabolic risk factors; 2) overall effects of metals mixture (essential vs. nonessential); and 3) interactions between metals.

METHODS
We measured 11 metals in maternal 2 trimester whole blood in a prospective birth cohort in Mexico City. In children 4-6 years old, we measured body mass index (BMI), percent body fat, and blood pressure (N=609); and plasma hemoglobin A1C (HbA1c) , non-high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, triglycerides, leptin, and adiponectin (N=411). We constructed cardio-metabolic component scores using age- and sex-adjusted z-scores and averaged five scores to create a global risk score. We estimated linear associations of each metal with individual z-scores and used Bayesian Kernel Machine Regression to assess metal mixtures and interactions.

RESULTS
Higher total metals were associated with lower HbA1c, leptin, and systolic blood pressure, and with higher adiponectin and non-HDL cholesterol. We observed no interactions between metals. Higher selenium was associated with lower triglycerides in linear (β=-1.01 z-score units per 1 unit ln(Se), 95%CI = -1.84; -0.18) and Bayesian Kernel Machine Regression models. Manganese was associated with decreased HbA1c in linear models (β = -0.32 and 95% CI: -0.61, -0.03). Antimony and arsenic were associated with lower leptin in Bayesian Kernel Machine Regression models. Essential metals were more strongly associated with cardio-metabolic risk than were nonessential metals.

CONCLUSIONS
Low essential metals during pregnancy were associated with increased cardio-metabolic risk factors in childhood.


[1] We aimed to investigate the temporal variation of in-stream net dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) areal uptake rates (UDIN, in μg N m−2 min−1) and its implications on regulating catchment N export, under base flow conditions. To do so, we estimated UDINfrom longitudinal profiles of ambient DIN concentration (nitrate + ammonium) in two streams on a monthly basis during two hydrological years (n = 45). We found that in-stream DIN uptake and release did not offset each other (UDIN ≠ 0) in half of the dates, and that UDIN> 0 occurred mostly in autumn. Based on these reach-scale uptake rates, we performed empirical calculations and model simulations to assess the potential of stream network DIN retention to regulate DIN export from catchments on an annual scale. The empirical approach consisted in up-scalingUDIN by means of a dynamic stream network analysis that considered temporal and spatial variation of UDIN. The modeling approach consisted in applying different scenarios with the INCA model based on the natural range of empirical UDIN values. Our results showed that the contribution of stream network DIN retention to catchment DIN export increased when calculations accounted for the temporal variation of UDIN. Both approaches suggested that stream network DIN retention can significantly reduce DIN export from headwater catchments under base flow conditions (from 4% to 38%).


Two methods are described to obtain grain (crystal) size from images of firn and ice samples taken in microscopic resolution. Microstructure mapping provides a digital mosaic image of a firn/ice section assembled from single microphotographs (resolution 3.25 µm/pixel). Alternatively, the large area scan macroscope (LASM; Schafter and Kirchhoff, Hamburg, Germany) scans a section as one single image. The lower resolution (5 µm/pixel) is compensated by the much faster working speed (1 minute versus 1 hour for mapping). The preparation of the samples is identical. Grain size is derived from the network of grain boundary grooves emerging at a carefully microtomed surface.First results of a 110 m long shallow ice core drilled in Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica, are presented. Average grain sizes were determined over 1 m long intervals every 10 m using the faster LASM. For comparison additional grain sizes were derived from the mosaic images. The main result obtained so far is that average grain size depends on resolution, i.e. on the cut-off grain size taken for the averages. This concerns particularly the average grain sizes below about 30 m depth. If the average grain size is determined from the 100 or 500 largest grains in a section (as sometimes done in the past) there is significant grain growth. However, grain size hardly increases with depth or even vanishes if all grain sizes larger than 50 m are included in the averages. A first answer to explain this discrepancy comes from the grain size distributions. They show a clear shift to more smaller grains at depths close and across the firn-ice transition which points to formation of new grains and dynamic recrystallization. The question how to derive average grain size from high resolution images and how to interpret these results is discussed.


The Beat movement nurtured many female dissidents and artists who contributed to Beat culture and connected the Beats with the second wave of the women's movement. Although they have often been eclipsed by the men of the Beat Generation, the women's contributions to Beat literature are considerable. Covering writers from the beginning of the movement in the 1950s and extending to the present, this book features interviews with nine of the best-known women Beat writers, including Diane di Prima, ruth weiss, Joyce Johnson, Hettie Jones, Joanne Kyger, Brenda Frazer (Bonnie Bremser), Janine Pommy Vega, Anne Waldman, and the critic Ann Charters. Each is presented by a biographical essay that details her literary or scholarly accomplishments. In these recent interviews the nine writers recall their lives in Beat bohemia and discuss their artistic practices. Nancy M. Grace outlines the goals and revelations of the interviews, and introduces the community of female Beat writers created in their conversations with the authors. Although they have not received attention equal to the men, women Beat writers rebelled against mainstream roles for young women and were exuberant participants in creating the Beat scene. Mapping their unique identities in the Beat movement, Ronna C. Johnson shows how their poetry, fiction, and memoirs broke the male rule that defined Beat women as silent bohemian "chicks" rather than artistic peers. Breaking the Rule of Cool combines the interviews with literary criticism and biography to illustrate the vivacity and intensity of women Beat writers, and argues that American literature was revitalized as much by the women's work as by that of their male counterparts. Nancy M. Grace, a professor of English at the College of Wooster, is the author of The Feminized Male Character in Twentieth-Century Literature. Her work has appeared in Contemporary Literature, the Beat Scene, and the Artful Dodge. Ronna C. Johnson, a lecturer in English and American Studies at Tufts University, has been published in College Literature, the Review of Contemporary Fiction, and the Poetry Project Newsletter. Johnson and Grace are the editors of and contributors to Girls Who Wore Black: Women Writing the Beat Generation.


Demand Response (DR) is a mechanism in which electricity consumers alter their demand in response to power grid's supply and economic conditions. DR programs have the potential to improve resource efficiency, sustainability, grid reliability and economic viability by providing tighter alignment between demand and supply. However, implementing DR program is a non-trivial task as it requires good knowledge of electricity consumption preferences, economic models and contextual factors. Developing such knowledge through real world studies can be expensive and be time consuming. As a result, utility companies have been finding it complicated to analyze potential viability and return on investments of DR programs for various `what-if' scenarios. To address this problem, we present DRSim - a cyber-physical simulator that allows utility companies to study demand side participation aspects of communities with various practical scenarios. DRSim is based on the principles of agent-oriented modeling of users' behavior and context. It is able to model the emergent behavior of a community based on real data traces that contain partial information about the environment. DRSim is a highly extensible framework to accommodate new data sources, new analytical functionalities and evolve its modeling power. Feasibility experiments show the modeling and analysis potential of DRSim in practical settings.


The respiratory metabolism of the marine bacterium Vibrio natriegens growing in batch cultures with acetate and pyruvate as carbon sources was studied In particular, the relationship of the activity of the enzyme isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) to physiological CO2 production and O2 consumption was examined. Gas measurements were performed by a new type of respirometer that combined O2 detection by a Pb-0 fuel cell and CO2 detection by infrared absorption. Two different respiratory patterns were observed. On pyruvate, CO2 production and O2 consumption rates paralleled each other during the exponential and the stationary phases. On acetate, they did not. Growth based on acetate was characterized by a higher O2 consumption, lower CO, production, lower respiratory quotient and lower IDH activity than on pyruvate. In both culture media, the in vitro IDH activity remained elevated after the in vivo CO2 production had decreased when the carbon source was exhausted. The range of the respiratory quotient obtained in the acetate cultures suggests that the acetate is partitioned between the Krebs cycle and the glyoxylate bypass in the proportions of 1:4 to 1:2. In the pyruvate cultures, the range of the respiratory quotients indicates that, in the course of the different growth phases, the partitioning of the carbon source between the Krebs cycle and the anaplerotic pathways is variable. K E Y WORDS: CO2 production rates . O2 consumption rates Isocitrate dehydrogenase activity . Vibrio natriegens . Micro-Oxymax


In the face of climate change, a number of climate variables such as temperature, precipitation, wind speed, humidity and solar radiation tend to affect water resources. This has led to changes in soil moisture, reduced stream run off, reduced ground water recharge and increased transpiration which ultimately causes deterioration of on-farm water resources. Deteriorating water resources at farm level as a result of climate change has led to decreased crop yields in sub Saharan Africa and threatens food security, livelihoods as wells as water security. Understanding factors affecting farmers' perception of climate change effects on water resources is key in informing policies that can transform smallholder agriculture in Africa to be more resilient to the effects of climate change. This study assesses farmers' climate change perceptions on water resources at farm-level in Kakamega County, Kenya. Using data collected from 159 farm households in Kakamega County, ordered probit was employed to assess factors affecting farmers' perception of climate change based on water resources. The results indicate that gender, farm size, distance to the main water source, extension services, access to climate change information through radio and wealth status significantly explained levels of farmers' perception of climate change based on water resources. The findings inform policies aimed at increasing awareness of climate change effects on on-farm water resources and consequently enhance adaptive water management strategies among smallholder farmers.


Normally, the gastrointestinal epithelium provides a semi-permeable barrier which allows nutrients to be absorbed while preventing larger, potentially toxic, antigenic, or pathogenic molecules or organisms from crossing into the bloodstream. Pathogenicallyincreased intestinal permeability predisposes the individual to diffusion of antigenic food molecules and translocation of bacteria and/or yeast from the gut to extra-intestinal sites, including mesenteric lymph nodes, liver, spleen, and systemic circulation. This can be secondary to drugs, microbial overgrowth, radiation, stress, alcohol intake, enteral/parenteral nutrition, or injury. Increased intestinal permeability occurs commonly with diseases including inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, asthma, eczema, food allergies, alcoholism, trauma, and surgery. Glutamine, phosphatidylcholine, flavonoids, soluble fiber, and fish oil, as well as probiotic organisms, including Lactobacilli and Saccharomyces boulardii can assist in correcting this abnormal permeability.


An increasingly dominant, largely American response to the contemporary environmental crisis understands environmental degradation as the product of individual shortcomings and finds solutions in enlightened, uncoordinated consumer choice. Several forces promote this process of individualization, including the historical baggage of mainstream environmentalism, the core tenets of liberalism, the dynamic ability of capitalism to commodify dissent, and the relatively recent rise of global environmental threats to human prosperity. The result is to narrow our collective ability to imagine and pursue a variety of productive responses to the environmental problems before us. When responsibility for environmental problems is individualized, there is little room to ponder institutions, the nature and exercise of political power, or ways of collectively changing the distribution of power and influence in society. Confronting consumption requires individuals to understand themselves not primarily as consumers but rather as citizens in a participatory democracy, working together to change broader policy and larger social institutions. It also requires linking explorations of consumption to politically charged issues that challenge the political imagination.


Background Rapid herbivore-induced jasmonic acid (JA) accumulation is known to mediate many induced defense responses in vascular plants, but little is known about how JA bursts are metabolized and modified in response to repeated elicitations, are propagated throughout elicited leaves, or how they directly influence herbivores. Methodology/Principal Findings We found the JA burst in a native population of Nicotiana attenuata to be highly robust despite environmental variation and we examined the JA bursts produced by repeated elicitations with Manduca sexta oral secretions (OS) at whole- and within-leaf spatial scales. Surprisingly, a 2nd OS-elicitation suppressed an expected JA burst at both spatial scales, but subsequent elicitations caused more rapid JA accumulation in elicited tissue. The baseline of induced JA/JA-Ile increased with number of elicitations in discrete intervals. Large veins constrained the spatial spread of JA bursts, leading to heterogeneity within elicited leaves. 1st-instar M. sexta larvae were repelled by elicitations and changed feeding sites. JA conjugated with isoleucine (JA-Ile) translates elicitations into defense production (e.g., TPIs), but conjugation efficiency varied among sectors and depended on NaWRKY3/6 transcription factors. Elicited TPI activity correlated strongly with the heterogeneity of JA/JA-Ile accumulations after a single elicitation, but not repeated elicitations. Conclusions/Significance Ecologically informed scaling of leaf elicitation reveals the contribution of repeated herbivory events to the formation of plant memory of herbivory and the causes and importance of heterogeneity in induced defense responses. Leaf vasculature, in addition to transmitting long-distance damage cues, creates heterogeneity in JA bursts within attacked leaves that may be difficult for an attacking herbivore to predict. Such unpredictability is a central tenet of the Moving Target Model of defense, which posits that variability in itself is defensive.


Objective
The aim of this research was to examine the role of native language in the performance of youth athletes on a computerized neuropsychological test battery, the Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Test (ImPACT).

Method
The study compared the baseline test scores of 5545 participants whose native language was English versus 195 whose native language was not English. The mean age of the participants was 15.06 years.

Results
A multivariate analysis of variance revealed no differences in the five ImPACT Composite scores of the two language groups.

Conclusion
Contrary to prior research, one cannot simply expect that non-native English speakers will do more poorly on ImPACT than native English speakers. Further research on the use of ImPACT with other non-native English-speaking youth athletes is recommended.


Background: The progression of oral epithelial dysplastic lesions into oral squamous cell carcinoma is characterized by an 'angiogenic switch' which is characterized by an increase in neo-vascularization in the sub - epithelial lamina propria which can be considered an indicator of malignant transformation. Mast cells are a rich source of various angiogenic factors. Moreover mast cells secrete various proteolytic enzymes which degrade the extracellular matrix and create space for the developing blood vessels. Aims: This study was undertaken to determine the relationship between mast cell density and microvessel density in normal oral mucosa, oral epithelial dysplasia and oral squamous cell carcinoma and to find out whether any correlation exists between these two parameters. Material and Methods: This retrospective study was performed using formalin fixed, paraffin embedded tissues of previously diagnosed cases of oral epithelial dysplasia and oral squamous cell carcinoma. Mast cells were stained using toluidine blue, whereas in the capillaries, immunohistochemical staining technique was performed using mouse monoclonal antibody against CD34. Results: Mast cell density and microvessel density were higher in oral epithelial dysplasia and in oral squamous cell carcinoma comp ared to the normal mucosa. However, statistically significant positive correlation was noted only in oral epithelial dysplasia Conclusion: The above results probably indicate a role of mast cells in 'angiogenic switch'. These angiogenic factors secreted by mast cells promote angiogenesis either directly by stimulating the migration and/or proliferation of mast cells or indirectly through degradation of extracellular matrix. Targeting the mast cells may contribute in preventing the progression of the lesion.


We predict a strong enhancement of the capture rate and the friction force for atoms crossing a driven high-Q cavity field if several near degenerate cavity modes are simultaneously coupled to the atom. In contrast to the case of a single TEM00 mode, circular orbits are not stable and damping of the angular and radial motion occurs. Depending on the chosen atom-field detuning the atoms phase lock the cavity modes to create a localized field minimum or maximum at their current positions. This corresponds to a local potential minimum, which the atom drags along with its motion. The stimulated photon redistribution between the modes then creates a large friction force. The effect is further enhanced if the atom is directly driven by a coherent field from the side. Several atoms in the field interact via the cavity modes, which leads to a strongly correlated motion.


RTL design complexity discouraged adoption of reconfigurable logic in general purpose systems, impeding opportunities for performance and energy improvements. Recent improvements to HLS compilers simplify RTL design and are easing this barrier. A new challenge will emerge: managing reconfigurable resources between multiple applications with custom hardware designs. In this paper, we propose a method to "shrink-fit" accelerators within widely varying fabric budgets. Shrink-fit automatically shrinks existing accelerator designs within small fabric budgets and grows designs to increase performance when larger budgets are available. Our method takes advantage of current accelerator design techniques and introduces a novel architectural approach based on fine-grained virtualization. We evaluate shrink-fit using a synthesized implementation of an IDCT for decoding JPEGs and show the IDCT accelerator can shrink by a factor of 16x with minimal performance and area overheads. Using shrink-fit, application designers can achieve the benefits of hardware acceleration with single RTL designs on FPGAs large and small.


Enfance is Nathalie Sarraute work that depicts how an author can cross the hues of dream and fiction in a story that purports to be autobiographical. The reader is thus encountered with a highly composed game where sarrautian fiction, classical autobiography and the singular use of narrative voices are interwoven harmoniously to a point that leads us to question the nature and identity of even literary genres.


This study looks at social media marketing techniques used by the world's top companies to determine their effectiveness on college age consumers. Social media use is becoming increasingly important with the advent of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. This research first defines the social media marketing strategies done on social media, and then measures the effectiveness of each strategy on college students. This research also attempts to see if there is a relationship between personality and the effectiveness of certain social media marketing strategies.


Using information on the exact location of urban households in Britain for the period 2009-2013 we explore the validity of standard urban land use models by estimating the extent to which distance of residence from the city centre is a function of income. This is the first study of its kind for British cities. After controlling for household characteristics and access to transport, as well as city and time effects, and taking account of both spatial and serial correlation, we find a strong positive association between household's income and distance from the city centre. We also estimate the income elasticity of demand for land and find that this is not large enough to support the view that richer households locate further from the city centre mainly because they prefer larger dwellings. Finally, we find that while poorer households live closer to the city centre, they have experienced increasing real incomes over the period relative to those who live further away. This supports the view that cities in Britain attract poor people rather than generate poverty.


Summary Aims Sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) is a cardioprotective agent. Signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT-3) is a key mediator of many cardioprotective agents. We aimed to explore whether STAT-3 is a key mediator in S1P-induced preconditioning. Methods Langendorff-perfused hearts from Wistar rats and wild-type or cardiomyocyte-specific STAT-3 knockout mice were pre-treated with S1P (10 nmol/l), with or without the STAT-3 pathway inhibitor AG490, before an ischaemia–reperfusion insult. Triphenyltetrazolium chloride and Evans blue staining were used for the determination of infarct size. Western blot analysis was carried out on the S1P pre-treated hearts for detection of cytosolic, nuclear and mitochondrial phosphorylated and total STAT-3 proteins. Results Pre-treatment with S1P decreased the infarct size in isolated rat (5 ± 3% vs control 26 ± 8%, p < 0.01) and wild-type mouse hearts (13 ± 1% vs control 33 ± 3%, p < 0.05). This protective effect was abolished in the rat hearts pre-treated with AG490 (30 ± 10%, p = ns vs control) and in the hearts from STAT-3 knockout mice (35 ± 4% vs control 30 ± 3%, p = ns). Levels of phosphorylated STAT-3 were significantly increased in both the nuclear (p < 0.05 vs control) and mitochondrial (p < 0.05 vs control) fractions in the S1P pre-treated hearts, but remained unchanged in the cytosolic fraction (p = ns vs control). Conclusion These novel results demonstrate that pharmacological preconditioning with S1P in the isolated heart is mediated by activation of mitochondrial and nuclear STAT-3, therefore suggesting that S1P may be a novel therapeutic target to modulate mitochondrial and nuclear function in cardiovascular disease in order to protect the heart against ischaemia–reperfusion.


Description: COVID-19 has prompted widespread school closures and physical distancing measures and made online platforms and communities essential to maintaining a sense of normalcy. Children and their families are turning to digital solutions more than ever to support children's learning, socialization and play. While digital solutions provide huge opportunities for sustaining and promoting children's rights, these same tools may also increase children's exposure to online risks. This technical note sets out some of the key priorities and recommendations on how to mitigate those risks and promote positive online experiences for children.


Generative Adversarial networks (GANs) have obtained remarkable success in many unsupervised learning tasks and unarguably, clustering is an important unsupervised learning problem. While one can potentially exploit the latent-space back-projection in GANs to cluster, we demonstrate that the cluster structure is not retained in the GAN latent space. In this paper, we propose ClusterGAN as a new mechanism for clustering using GANs. By sampling latent variables from a mixture of one-hot encoded variables and continuous latent variables, coupled with an inverse network (which projects the data to the latent space) trained jointly with a clustering specific loss, we are able to achieve clustering in the latent space. Our results show a remarkable phenomenon that GANs can preserve latent space interpolation across categories, even though the discriminator is never exposed to such vectors. We compare our results with various clustering baselines and demonstrate superior performance on both synthetic and real datasets.


Epoxy belongs to a category of high-performance thermosetting polymers which have been used extensively in industrial and consumer applications. Highly cross-linked epoxy polymers offer excellent mechanical properties, adhesion, and chemical resistance. However, unmodified epoxies are prone to brittle fracture and crack propagation due to their highly crosslinked structure. As a result, epoxies are normally toughened to ensure the usability of these materials in practical applications.

This research work focuses on the development of novel modified epoxy matrices, with enhanced mechanical, fracture mechanical and thermal properties, suitable to be processed by filament winding technology, to manufacture composite based calender roller covers with improved performance in comparison to commercially available products.

In the first stage, a neat epoxy resin (EP) was modified using three different high functionality epoxy resins with two type of hardeners i.e. amine-based (H1) and anhydride-based (H2). Series of hybrid epoxy resins were obtained by systematic variation of high functionality epoxy resin contents with reference epoxy system. The resulting matrices were characterized by their tensile properties and the best system was chosen from each hardener system i.e. amine and anhydride. For tailored amine based system (MEP_H1) 14 % improvement was measured for bulk samples similarly, for tailored anhydride system (MEP_H2) 11 % improvement was measured when tested at 23 °C.

Further, tailored epoxy systems (MEP_H1 and MEP_H2) were modified using specially designed block copolymer (BCP), and core-shell rubber nanoparticles (CSR). Series of nanocomposites were obtained by systematic variation of filler contents. The resulting matrices were extensively characterized qualitatively and quantitatively to reveal the effect of each filler on the polymer properties. It was shown that the BCP confer better fracture properties to the epoxy resin at low filler loading without losing the other mechanical properties. These characteristics were accompanied by ductility and temperature stability. All composites were tested at 23 °C and at 80 °C to understand the effect of temperature on the mechanical and fracture properties.

Examinations on fractured specimen surfaces provided information about the mechanisms responsible for reinforcement. Nanoparticles generate several energy dissipating mechanisms in the epoxy, e.g. plastic deformation of the matrix, cavitation, void growth, debonding and crack pinning. These were closely related to the microstructure of the materials. The characteristic of the microstructure was verified by microscopy methods (SEM and AFM). The microstructure of neat epoxy hardener system was strongly influenced by the nanoparticles and the resulting interfacial interactions. The interaction of nanoparticles with a different hardener system will result in different morphology which will ultimately influence the mechanical and fracture mechanical properties of the nanocomposites. Hybrid toughening using a combination of the block-copolymer / core-shell rubber nanoparticles and block copolymer / TiO2 nanoparticles has been investigated in the epoxy systems. It was found out that addition of rigid phase with a soft phase recovers the loss of strength in the nanocomposites caused by a softer phase.

In order to clarify the relevant relationships, the microstructural and mechanical properties were correlated. The Counto's, Halpin-Tsai, and Lewis-Nielsen equations were used to calculate the modulus of the composites and predicted modulus fit well with the measured values. Modeling was done to predict the toughening contribution from block copolymers and core-shell rubber nanoparticles. There was good agreement between the predicted values and the experimental values for the fracture energy.


The aim of research work was to formulate bio-flexy films using a novel biopolymer isolated from Rosa polyanthapetals containing tiagabine as a model drug. The soft palate drug delivery helps bypass first-pass metabolism in the liver and pre-systemic elimination in the gastrointestinal tract gets avoided. Tiagabine, anticonvulsant drug possesses t1/2:7-9 hours (low); protein binding: 96%; water solubility: 22mg/L enhances acts as selective GABA reuptake inhibitor. Side effects include abdominal pain, pharyngitis, suicidal thoughts and sudden unexpected death. Rosa polyantha biopolymer used as bio-excipient due to its biodegradability, biocompatibility, non-toxicity, non-reactiveness on soft palatal surface. Physicochemical characterization of biopolymer displayed inbuilt filmability, mucoadhesivity properties. Bio-flexy films were prepared by solvent casting technique. Formulations containing different ratios of nanosized Tiagabine: Rosa polyantha biopolymer (1:0.5, 1:1; 1:3, 1:5, 1:6, 1:10) (FRT1-FRT6) were prepared and compared with nanosized Tiagabine loaded Sodium CMC standard flexy films (FET1-FET6). The percentage yield of Rosa polyantha biopolymer was found to be 2.24±0.01%. Evaluation parameters for formulations revealed Thickness of nanosized Tiagabine loaded bio-flexy films containing Rosa polyantha biopolymer (FRT1-FRT6): 0.027 mm±0.005 to 0.039±0.004 mm, Folding Endurance: 83-130, Surface pH: 7.00±0.04 to 7.00±0.01, Weight Uniformity: 0.008±0.05 to 0.044±0.03, Drug Content Uniformity: 85.6%±0.48 to 94.8%±0.37, Swelling Percentage: 66%±0.2 to 75%±0.1, Percentage Moisture Uptake (PTU): 2.5%±0.14 to 3.8%±0.10. Mucoadhesivity: 90-1440 mins, Mucoretentivity: 110-240 mins. Drug release pattern for formulations FRT1-FRT6 containing Rosa polyantha biopolymer based on the T50% and T80% was found to be FRT5 (1:6) > FRT4 (1:5) > FRT6 (1:10) > FRT1 (1:0.5)> FRT3 (1:3) > FRT2 (1:1). Based on all above mentioned evaluation parameters, FRT5 (containing Tiagabine: Rosa polyantha biopolymer (1:6)) bio-flexy film having R2= 0.9295, Higuchi Matrix as best fit model, follows Fickian Diffusion (Higuchi Matrix) release mechanism, T50%: 7hrs., T80%: 30 hrs. using BITS Software 1.12 was found to be Best formulation.


Death was hardly a new subject in the visual arts in the late-nineteenth century, having been depicted often in Christian and mythological narratives and symbolically in still lifes, portraits and landscapes.  The Symbolists of the late-nineteenth century were fascinated with death, probably more than any earlier artists, and depicted it often.  Death was part of their interest in the bizarre, frightening, morbid, and mysterious. Prior to Symbolism, depictions of death sustained a measure of emotional, spatial and physical detachment between the grim subject and the viewer.  Death was depicted with the necessary facts and details and was meant to effect the viewer emotionally, but it was still somewhat remote and safely on the other side of the picture plane.  The Symbolists often strove to eliminate this separation between the viewer and the dead, between the living and the dead, as they pondered the mysteries of what death was. They showed death as a profound and mysterious event that was inescapable and always nearby.  Death was regarded as something to be avoided and feared, or accepted, or perhaps occasionally even welcomed, depending on the circumstances of the one who was seen dying.


Background: Although it is generally accepted that the hemoglobin concentration decreases and white cell count increases during normal pregnancy, there is less accord regarding changes in platelet indices. The aim of this study is to find out the relationship between platelet indices and platelet counts with pre-eclampsia and eclampsia.
Material and Methods: 82 cases of preeclampsia and 63 cases of eclampsia diagnosed between the years September 2007 and December 2009 were evaluated prospectively. One hundred healthy pregnant women with similar demographic features and gestational age and without the diagnosis of preeclampsia, gestational or chronic hypertension and proteinuria were included in the study as the control group. Blood samples were analyzed by automated hematology analyzer. The platelet count, mean platelet volume, platelet distribution width and platelet large cell ratio were compared.
Results: The platelet counts were lower while the mean platelet volume, platelet distribution width and platelet large cell ratio were increased in pre-eclampsia and eclampsia as compared to control group.
Conclusion: We found a relationship between platelet indices and severity of pre-eclampsia. The estimation of platelet indices can be considered as an early, simple and rapid procedure in the assessment of severity of pre-eclampsia.


During the period of cold war, NATO alliance was producing defence commodity to protect its members from the common threat of ex-Soviet Union. The paper examines the problem of burden sharing among NATO allies. It is shown that larger countries are benefited more than smaller countries from the production of the public good i.e defence, if the income elasticity of marginal utility of income is greater than one in absolute value. Complete demand systems are employed for estimating the income elasticity of marginal utility of income.


Bringing together seventeen years of work in the fashion world, this eye-catching volume features selections from Sassen's award-winning series and campaigns for Stella McCartney, Adidas, Carven, Bergdorf Goodman, MiuMiu, and M Missoni, along with editorials for magazines such as The New York Times Magazine, i-D, Numero, Purple, AnOther Magazine, Dazed & Confused, Fantastic Man, and POP. Sassen's intuitive and imaginative style can be flamboyant, contemplative, erotic, and surreal, often simultaneously. This volume includes essays that offer a context for Sassen's work in the history of fashion photography as well as a bibliography of nearly all her fashion series. The book will be a delight for Sassen's many fans and those eager for inspiration or just beautiful escape.


The NHS Plan welcomes the use of team rewards but does not specify how team based incentives are to be implemented or make clear what types of teams such incentives are to be given to. This paper looks for insights from economic theory on how to define teams and optimal incentive schemes within them. We give a brief description of the incentive mechanisms suggested in the NHS Plan and discuss the implications of the economic theory of team-incentives to the NHS. One implication is that the optimal compensation scheme depends on the type of team. Hence, the definition of teams in the NHS should precede the identification of the system of team rewards. We therefore examine which types of teams might be suitable for team rewards. We then consider issues in the use of financial incentives for such teams. JEL Classification: D23, J41


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the presence and clinical relevance of anti-Th/To-positivity in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).

METHODS
Antinuclear antibody (ANA) testing was performed in 285 patients with a clinical diagnosis of IPF and surgical lung biopsy-proven usual interstitial pneumonia. Twenty-five subjects (8.8%) were found to have a positive ANA with a nucleolar-staining pattern and were followed for 10 years. Immunoprecipitation analysis indicated that 13 of the 25 subjects had autoantibodies against Th/To antigen.

RESULTS
All subjects presented with worsening dyspnea. Pulmonary physiology and gas exchange did not differ between those with and those without a positive ANA, those with and without a nucleolar-staining ANA, and those with and without anti-Th/To antibody positivity. Retrospective review of the clinical record revealed that none of the 25 subjects with a nucleolar-staining ANA had the characteristic cutaneous features of systemic sclerosis (SSc). Four of the 13 Th/To-positive subjects had 3 of 5 criteria of limited cutaneous SSc (CREST variant), and 9 met proposed criteria for SSc sine scleroderma. None of the 12 Th/To-negative subjects had 3 or more criteria of limited cutaneous SSc (CREST variant), and only one met proposed criteria for SSc sine scleroderma. Of the 25 subjects with nucleolar-staining ANA, cumulative survival was similar between those who were Th/To-positive and those who were Th/To-negative (log-rank test, p = 0.73). Cumulative survival was similar between the 13 Th/To-positive subjects and all other 272 IPF subjects (log-rank test, p = 0.34).

CONCLUSION
Our findings indicate that a nucleolar-staining ANA is a common finding in patients with IPF, and that antibodies against Th/To are responsible for the majority of these. Given the high specificity of Th/To-positivity for SSc, our data suggest that these subjects may have SSc sine scleroderma, and that their prognosis is no different from those with IPF.


After World War II had ended, Italy, not unlike other developed countries, held the ambition to establish an atomic energy program. The Peace Treaty of 1947 forbade its administration from seeking to acquire atomic weaponry, but in 1952 a national research committee was set up to explore the peaceful uses of atomic energy, in particular with regard to building nuclear reactors. One of the committee's goals was to use nuclear power to make the country less reliant on foreign energy provisions. Yet, this paper reveals that the atomic energy project resulted in actually increasing Italy's dependence on overseas assistance. I explain the reasons for this outcome by looking at the unfolding of U.S.–Italy relations and the offers of collaboration in the atomic energy field put forth by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. I argue that these offers undermined plans to shape the nuclear program as its Italian architects had envisioned, caused them to reconsider the goal of self-sufficiency in energy provisioning, and reconfigured the project to be amenable to the security and economic priorities of the U.S. administration. In this way, I conclude, the path for the Italian project to "de-develop" was set.


Defining what constitute archaeological practices is a prerequisite for understanding where and how archaeological and archaeologically relevant information and knowledge are made, what counts as archaeological information, and where the limits are situated. The aim of this position paper, developed as a part of the COST action Archaeological practices and knowledge work in the digital environment (www.arkwork.eu), is to highlight the need for at least a relative consensus on the extents of archaeological practices in order to be able to understand and develop archaeological practices and knowledge work in the contemporary digital context. The text discusses approaches to study archaeological practices and knowledge work including Nicolini's notions of zooming in and zooming out, and proposes that a distinction between archaeological and archaeology-related practices could provide a way to negotiate the 'archaeologicality' of diverse practices.


There has recently been a significant increase in academic interest in the field of type-2 fuzzy sets and systems. Type-2 fuzzy systems offer the ability to model and reason with uncertain concepts. When faced with uncertainties type-2 fuzzy systems should, theoretically, give an increase in performance over type-l fuzzy systems. However, the computational complexity of generalised type-2 fuzzy systems is significantly higher than type-l systems. A direct consequence of this is that, prior to this thesis, generalised type-2 fuzzy logic has not yet been applied in a time critical domain, such as control. Control applications are the main application area of type-l fuzzy systems with the literature reporting many successes in this area. Clearly the computational complexity oftype-2 fuzzy logic is holding the field back. This restriction on the development oftype-2 fuzzy systems is tackled in this research. This thesis presents the novel approach of defining fuzzy sets as geometric objects geometric fuzzy sets. The logical operations for geometric fuzzy sets are defined as geometric manipulations of these sets. This novel geometric approach is applied to type-I, type-2 interval and generalised type-2 fuzzy sets and systems. The major contribution of this research is the reduction in the computational complexity of type-2 fuzzy logic that results from the application of the geometric approach. This reduction in computational complexity is so substantial that generalised type-2 fuzzy logic has, for the first time, been successfully applied to a control problem mobile robot navigation. A detailed comparison between the performance of the generalised type-2 fuzzy controller and the performance of the type-l and type-2 interval controllers is given. The results indicate that the generalised type-2 fuzzy logic controller outperforms the other robot controllers. This outcome suggests that generalised type-2 fuzzy systems can offer an improved performance over type-l and type-2 interval systems.


Additional surface–ground water interaction routines were recently added to the Pitman monthly rainfall–runoff model, widely used in South Africa for quantifying water resources in ungauged catchments. Some evaluations of the model have demonstrated that it can realistically simulate interactions between surface and ground water at catchment scales of approximately 100 to 5,000 km2. The model allows ground water abstractions to be simulated, but no reported evaluations of this component are available. This study uses the model to estimate sustainable abstraction volumes in a semi-arid catchment and includes an assessment of model parameter uncertainties. In recognition of potential spatial scale issues related to the model structure an alternative model configuration, based on splitting the total catchment into recharge and abstraction sub-catchments, was also tested. While the results appear to be conceptually appropriate, there is insufficient available information to quantitatively confirm the model parameters and results. The same would apply regardless of the type of model being applied in such a data-deficient area. Additional geo-hydrological information is required to resolve the model uncertainties and improve the parameter estimation process. This pilot study has highlighted the type of information required, but further work is needed to identify how best to obtain that information.


Energy nutrition of dairy cattle. A review. Energy is a subtle term and is defined as the capacity for doing a work. In dairy cattle nutrition, feeds have that capacity and the work is the maintenance of the cow, milk production and reproduction. About 75% of dry matter consumed by the cow is used by the organism to generate and meet its energy requirements. Tropical grasses are characterized by having low or medium energy levels, so energy supplementation of animals grazing tropical grasses requires special attention in order to get good production levels. Energy contents of grasses are difficult to estimate and it is not possible to do it through regular laboratory analytical methods. However, lineal equations based on the ADF content of forages are frequently used to achieve this goal, as well as mechanistic models using different chemical fractions of forages. Cows experience a negative energy balance during the first trimester of lactation, which is compensated by energy body reserves mobilization. A cow can produce 8 to 10 kg of milk from the energy supplied by a kg of adipose tissue, or an average of 636 kg per each unit of body condition score. Milk production from each unit of body condition score follows an exponential trend, hence the importance of a proper body condition at calving. Adipose tissue mobilization as well as low feed intake during early lactation makes fresh cows more tolerant to heat stress. To have a good production cycle, cows should begin their lactation with a body condition score of 3.5, then this will drop to 2.5 by the time of first insemination. As lactation proceeds, cows should begin to replenish their energy and fat reserves to the point where they have a body score of 3 and remain at this score or near throughout the majority of lactation. In late lactation animals should gain weight to be dried off at 3.5. If a cow calves in a poor body condition (<3), or her energy nutrition is optimal during early lactation, she will suffer a severe negative energy balance, which will limit her to produce as much milk as the dietary energy will allow. Moreover, she will be more susceptible to metabolic diseases such as ketosis and delays in returning to ovarian activity. Likewise, when animals are over conditioned during late lactation and calve with a body condition score of 4 or higher, they are predisposed to suffer metabolic imbalances such as ketosis or displaced abomasum and severe reproductive problems during the peripartum


Efforts have been carried out in order to use microsilica to develop a forsterite bond rather than other types of binders in the basic refractory castables. According to the higher drying rate and sinterability of colloidal silica, it has been proposed in the recent years. In the present work, effects of replacement of microsilica by colloidal silica evolution of forsterite bond have been studied in magnesia based refractory castables. In this way, Physical properties of prepared samples with different amount of colloidal silica versus temperature were investigated. In addition, phase variation and microstructural evolution of sintered specimens at 1000, 1200 and 1400 °C were studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscope (SEM) respectively. Results showed that, due to Reaction of magnesia with microsilica and colloidal silica, magnesium hydrate and magnesium silicate hydrate formed in the dried samples strengthening the texture of the samples while forsterite formed from about 1000 °C and gradually increased with temperature rise. Also, better forsterite formation would be appeared by increasing the colloidal silica content. Further investigation carried out on the type of silica addition on properties of the castable refractory samples. It was found that the presence of micro silica and colloidal silica simultaneously (MS3C3 sample) at 1400 °C, caused modifying mechanical strength in compare with sample with only micro silica (MS sample).


In 1948, John Gillin published the first sustained account of a ritual healing ceremony for soul loss as performed in the highlands of Guatemala. Reprinted in Lessa and Vogt's Reader in Comparative Religion (1958, 1965), this article played a foundational role for later work in ethnomedicine and the anthropology of religion. Gillin's analysis centered on the way relations between Indian and ladino populations were renegotiated within the ritual imaginary. Newly available archival materials show that Gillin underestimated the fear and animosity dividing these groups, misconstrued the political situation of the curandero (traditional healer), and effaced the extent to which gender and domestic violence were at issue in both illness and healing. These materials also afford glimpses into the system of power and knowledge in which Gillin participated and that helped shape his research agenda. An epilogue extends this discussion into the Cold War context, [ritual, susto, curanderismo, Mesoamerica, John Gillin, history of anthropology, Cold War]


Most fruits and vegetables are available in large quantities during peak season which are oftentimes marketed at low price and left to rot or fed to farm animals. The lack of efficient storage facilities, and the additional cost and unavailability of small machinery for food processing, results to low price and wastage. Incidentally, processed fresh fruits and vegetables are gaining importance nowadays and health conscious people are also into "juicing". One way to reduce wastage and ensure an all-season availability of crop juices at reasonable costs is to develop equipment for effective extraction of juice. The study was conducted to design, fabricate and evaluate a multi-juice extractor using locally available materials, making it relatively cheaper and affordable for medium-scale enterprises. The study was also conducted to formulate juice blends using extracted juices and calamansi juice at different blending percentage, and evaluate its chemical properties and sensory attributes. Furthermore, the chemical properties of extracted meals were evaluated for future applications. The multi-juice extractor has an overall dimension of 963mm x 300mm x 995mm, a gross weight of 82kg and 5 major components namely; feeding hopper, extracting chamber, juice and meal outlet, transmission assembly, and frame. The machine performance was evaluated based on juice recovery, extraction efficiency, extraction rate, extraction recovery, and extraction loss considering type of crop as apple and carrot with three replications each and was analyzed using T-test. The formulated juice blends were subjected to sensory evaluation and data gathered were analyzed using Analysis of Variance appropriate for Complete Randomized Design. Results showed that the machine's juice recovery (73.39%), extraction rate (16.40li/hr), and extraction efficiency (88.11%) for apple were significantly higher than for carrot while extraction recovery (99.88%) was higher for apple than for carrot. Extraction loss (0.12%) was lower for apple than for carrot, but was not significantly affected by crop. Based on adding percentage mark-up on extraction cost (Php 2.75/kg), the breakeven weight and payback period for a 35% mark-up is 4,710.69kg and 1.22 years, respectively and for a 50% mark-up, the breakeven weight is 3,492.41kg and the payback period is 0.86 year (10.32 months). Results on the sensory evaluation of juice blends showed that the type of juice significantly influenced all the sensory parameters while the blending percentage including their respective interaction, had no significant effect on all sensory parameters, making the apple-calamansi juice blend more preferred than the carrot-calamansi juice blend in terms of all the sensory parameter. The machine's performance is higher for apple than for carrot and the cost analysis on the use of the machine revealed that it is financially viable with a payback period of 1.22 years (35% mark-up) and 0.86 year (50% mark-up) for machine cost, generating an income of Php 23,961.60 and Php 34,444.80 per year using 35% and 50% mark-up, respectively. The juice blends were of good qualities based on the values obtained in the chemical analysis and the extracted meal could also be used to produce a new product based on the values obtained from proximate analysis.


ABSTRACT Seven centuries before the discovery of the African zebras by the Europeans, the names zebro and zebra were given to an enigmatic equid widely reported in the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages. Roughly 150 toponyms deriving from the words zebro/a have been recorded in Iberia starting from the IXth century A.D. together with 65 Portuguese Forais and 16 Spanish Fueros (i.e. town laws) referred to these animals as onagri or zebros — Latin and Romance etimology respectively — during the XIIth and XIIIth centuries. However, the precise biological nature of the animal remains unclear to this day. Four hypotheses have been put forward to explain the taxonomic status of the zebro: 1) Equus hydruntinus, an extinct onager; 2) the antecessor of the Sorraia horse breed; 3) a modern onager species introduced by the Muslims; and 4) a feral domestic equid, either an ass or a horse. This paper addresses the issue by reviewing the historical and nomenclatural data on the subject, while briefly covering the genetic and archaeozoological evidence that may eventually shed light on the issue.


This method for determining carbamates is based on the inhibiting action of these substances on acetylcholinesterase activity. The use of radioactively labelled acetylcholine as a substrate, the ensuing extractive separation of the radioactive acetic acid (formed by hydrolysis) and its radiometric determination permit to detect very small amounts of carbamates. The limit of detection for aldicarb, baygon, benomyl, bux, carbaryl, CIPC, matacil, phenmedipham and promecarb lies in the picogram range; that for barban and methomyl, in the nanogram range. The lower, linear parts of the curves for the different carbamates fall within the range 0.001-10 ng. The sensitivity (expressed as delta% inhibition/delta lg ng carbamate) ranges from 1.0 to 9.7.


This book addresses the body of statutory and case law covering both the military and military conduct. Four chapters discuss the relationship between the Supreme Court and military justice, covering the Civil War era, World War II, the post-war period from 1956 to 1987, and developments since the September 11, 2001, attacks. Each chapter also includes a set of documents that shed light on these periods of U.S. history. Excerpts from key Supreme Court briefs and rulings are complemented by articles from the Army Times, the Armed Forces Journal, and mass media including the New York Times and The Nation. Incisive introductions to these documents explain the evolution of constitutional law and the ways in which federal and state statutes have lessened the effectiveness of both civilian control over the military and civilian judicial oversight.


While the humanizing legal education community has been recognized as an official section of the American Association of Law Schools; has an active listserv with student, scholar and attorney members; and has hosted international conferences such as this one; there is no clear definition of "humanizing legal education." In this essay, I suggest three principles that underlie the scholarship of those who seek to humanize legal education and then ask some hard questions about the economics of legal education that challenge our ability to meet any of these principles.First - Do No Harm. Scholars devoted to humanizing legal education might consider the language we choose: what is it to "humanize" something?Second - Teach Students Not Just Subjects. Certainly doing no harm - creating positive, supportive learning environments - is the starting point in valuing our students. We must do more, however, than merely remove negatives if we are to place the highest priority on the humans we are educating. Third - Peace and Justice. A third value found threaded throughout all of the humanizing literature is more about explicit values education. The call to humanize legal education is part of a much larger call to humanize the profession by recapturing the essence of professional values - peacemaking, problem solving, and justice work. Both the public and attorneys themselves are increasingly disillusioned about lawyers and the law. The answer to humanizing legal education and legal practice lies in rekindling professional values of peacemaking and service. To truly humanize legal education we must step out of the classroom and hallways and advocate on behalf of our students. We must step into the admissions and financial aid offices and take into account the values of investing in our students. We must step into the state houses to advocate on behalf of law, lawyers, and legal education. Lastly and at a minimum, we must be sure our students understand the finances of law school and the profession and have the courage to tell that truth without fear of its impact on our own economic circumstances.


The main question in this research is to what extent agriculture on fragile slopes would become more sustainable if the farmers were given more possibilities for selling their products and acquiring production resources. An empirical study conducted in northern Benin demonstrates that a more accessible market does not lead to substantial increase in soil erosion control measures. The results indicated clearly that a closer market has positive effects on the yields of grain, and provides farmers with more opportunities to grow other, more commercial, crops or to undertake other profitable activities. Investments in an improved infrastructure can therefore contribute to improved agricultural returns, and these higher returns increase the attractiveness of soil conservation.


The globally used herbicide glyphosate [N‐(phosphonomethyl)glycine] and its most frequently detected metabolite, aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA), were studied in a unique 12‐yr field‐scale monitoring program. The leaching of glyphosate, AMPA, and soil particles was studied in a shallow drainage system beneath a 1.26‐ ha field. Five annual glyphosate applications were applied with different autumn application dates. Solute mass flux from the drain system following the five glyphosate applications were compared to determine how different factors affect the leaching of glyphosate, AMPA, and particles. Glyphosate and AMPA leaching were highly event driven, controlled by the time and intensity of the first rainfall event after glyphosate application. A high similarity in cumulative drainage and leached pesticide masses with time suggests near‐constant drainage and leaching rates. There was no clear relationship between particle‐facilitated transport and the transport of glyphosate or AMPA. However, soil particles, glyphosate, and AMPA all showed distinct, simultaneous concentration curves, indicating common dominant transport mechanisms. Also, soil‐water content at the time of application and the level of the groundwater table relative to the drain depth exerted clear controls on detection of solutes in the drainage water. To summarize our findings, we present a leaching risk chart to illustrate the dependence of glyphosate, AMPA, and soil particle leaching based on rainfall intensity and the timing of rainfall events after glyphosate application.