Remote sensing systems have firmly established a role in providing immense value to commercial industry, scientific exploration, and national security. Continued maturation of sensing technology has reduced the cost of deploying highly-capable sensors while at the same time increased reliance on the information these sensors can provide. The demand for time on these sensors is unlikely to diminish. Coordination of next-generation sensor systems, larger constellations of satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles, ground telescopes, etc. is prohibitively complex for existing heuristicsbased scheduling techniques. The project was a two-year collaboration spanning multiple Sandia centers and included a partnership with Texas A&M University. We have developed algorithms and software for collection scheduling, remote sensor field-of-view pointing models, and bandwidthconstrained prioritization of sensor data. Our approach followed best practices from the operations research and computational geometry communities. These models provide several advantages over state of the art techniques. In particular, our approach is more flexible compared to heuristics that tightly couple models and solution techniques. First, our mixed-integer linear models afford a rigorous analysis so that sensor planners can quantitatively describe a schedule relative to the best possible. Optimal or near-optimal schedules can be produced with commercial solvers in operational run-times. These models can be modified and extended to incorporate different scheduling and resource constraints and objective function definitions. Further, we have extended these models to proactively schedule sensors under weather and ad hoc collection uncertainty. This approach stands in contrast to existing deterministic schedulers which assume a single future weather or ad hoc collection scenario. The field-of-view pointing algorithm produces a mosaic with the fewest number of images required to fully cover a region of interest. The bandwidth-constrained algorithms find the highest priority information that can be transmitted. All of these are based on mixed-integer linear programs so that, in the future, collection scheduling, field-of-view, and bandwidth prioritization can be combined into a single problem. Experiments conducted using the developed models, commercial solvers, and benchmark datasets have demonstrated that proactively scheduling against uncertainty regularly and significantly outperforms deterministic schedulers.


Malaria is a worldwide life-threatening disease. The gold standard for malaria diagnosis is microscopy examination, which includes thick blood smears to detect the presence of parasites and thin blood smears to differentiate the development stages of parasites. Microscopy examination is of low cost but is time consuming and error-prone. Therefore, the development of an automated parasite detection system for malaria diagnosis in thick blood smears is an important research goal, especially in resource-limited areas. In this paper, based on a customized Faster-RCNN model, we develop a machine-learning system that can automatically detect parasites in thick blood smear images on smartphones. To make Faster-RCNN more efficient for small object detection, we split an input image of $4032 \times 3024 \times3$ pixels into small blocks of $252 \times 189 \times3$ pixels, and then train the FasterRCNN model with the small blocks and corresponding parasite annotations. Moreover, we customize the convolutional layers of Faster-RCNN with four convolutional layers and two maxpooling layers to extract features according to the input image size and characteristics. We perform experiments on 2967 thick blood smear images from 200 patients, including 1819 images from 150 patients who are infected with parasites. The customized FasterRCNN model is first trained on small image blocks from 120 patients, including 90 infected patients and 30 normal patients, and then tested on the remaining 80 patients. For testing, we also split each input image into small blocks of $252 \times 189 \times3$ pixels that are screened by our trained Faster-RCNN model to detect parasite coordinates, which are then re-projected into the original image space. Detection rates of our system on image level and patient level are 96.84% and 96.81%, respectively.


Studies of heavy minerals in kaolin deposits from the Ipixuna Formation in the Rio Capim area (Northern Brazil) showed a mature to super mature assemblage dominated by zircon and tourmaline, and subordinately rutile, kyanite and staurolite. These minerals do not change much throughout the whole section; however, each kaolin unit displays a particular signature, defined by differences in the proportions of the whole assemblage of heavy minerals, as well as of their textural characteristics. This work revealed that the lower and upper kaolin units can be definitely considered as distinct depositional sequences. A higher proportion of opaque minerals and higher zircon values characterize the lower unit. The higher volumes of anhedric, rounded to sub-rounded grains of zircon and tourmaline in the upper unit suggests that this includes grains that were undergone to a higher degree of reworking. The increased volume of unaltered staurolite and kyanite in the upper unit leads to conclude that, even considering sediment reworking, a distinct source must be invoked. The results also show that the characteristics of the heavy mineral assemblage from the intermediate unit are comparable with those from the upper unit, which suggests they might record a same stratigraphic sequence.


This study compared 10 economic, demographic, and job factors between happier and less happy OECD countries based upon scores of subjective well-being (SWB), a concept commonly meaning happiness or life satisfaction. In 2009, the scores of residents in the happier OECD countries were significantly higher on three factors-health, income, and the self-reported physical difficulty of their jobsthan the scores of residents in the les happy OECD countries. Although interest continues for improving SWB scores, analyzing correlations between SWB and selected factors yields only correlates of happiness. The authors discusses the results in the light of other studies and identifies initiatives that may lead to the development of new measures of subjective-well being.


Through census employment data we analyze the evolving structure of the Italian cultural economy and highlights diverging spatial and organizational patterns of cultural production systems in urban and regional areas. Whilst large metropolitan areas remain the more important loci of cultural content production and consumption, craft-based sectors and creative systems of design have a tendency to locate in non-metropolitan centers. Based on the historical formation of manufacturing districts and on the emergence of Rome and Milan as "world cities", the Italian cultural economy provides an interesting case study to analyze the geographical patterns of different cultural product industries. We extend previous literature on the geography of the cultural economy by offering new insights as to conditions in which metropolitan and rural areas emerge as leading centers of cultural production and creativity.


Convex games are a natural generalization of matrix (normal-form) games that can compactly model many strategic interactions with interesting structure. We present a new anytime algorithm for such games that leverages fast best-response oracles for both players to build a model of the overall game. This model is used to identify search directions; the algorithm then does an exact minimization in this direction via a specialized line search. We test the algorithm on a simplified version of Texas Hold'em poker represented as an extensive-form game. Our algorithm approximated the exact value of this game within $0.20 (the maximum pot size is $310.00) in a little over 2 hours, using less than 1.5GB of memory; finding a solution with comparable bounds using a state-of-theart interior-point linear programming algorithm took over 4 days and 25GB of memory.


Programmers design, write, and understand programs with a high-level structure in mind. Existing programming languages are not very good at capturing this structure because they must include low-level implementation details. To address this problem we introduce Twig, a programming language that allows for domain-specific logic to be encoded alongside low-level functionality. Twig's language is based on a simple, formal calculus that is amenable to both human and machine reasoning. Users may introduce rules that rewrite expressions, allowing for user-defined optimizations. Twig can also incorporate procedures written in a variety of low-level languages. Our implementation supports C and Python, but our abstract model can accommodate other languages as well. We present Twig's design and formal semantics and discuss our implementation. We demonstrate Twig's use in two different domains, multi-language programming and GPU programming, and compare Twig against a well-known typemapping system, SWIG.


Watershed development programmes mainly aim to generate such activities, which would have in-situ conservation of as much precipitation as possible in soil profile and collection, storage and reuse of harvested water. The positive impact of the watershed programme in the Elanad watershed in Thrissur district of Kerala is reflected in increase in the number of beneficiaries adopting the soil conservation measures like contour bunding, construction of earthen bunds, terracing, and mulching. The water-harvesting techniques like rain pitting, digging and renovation of wells have been instrumental in raising the depth of water table in the watershed area. There has been a significant rise in the levels of water resources of the beneficiaries, indicating a positive impact on the moisture regime and groundwater recharge. The increase in crop productivity as a result of various factors like increased human labour-use, rise in manure application and increased moisture availability have been translated into higher farm income in nominal as well as real terms. The non-availability of irrigation water, untimely availability of inputs and subsidy on time, inadequacy of sanctioned amount, lack of awareness about the beneficial programme, lack of supervision and follow-up, and lack of technical guidance have been identified as the major constraints. To sum-up, the watershed-based development programme has resulted in increased crop production, productivity, employment generation, farm income and groundwater status, leading to overall rural prosperity in the area.


Inventories, Employment and Hours The purpose of this paper is to develop a model that integrates inventory and labor decisions. We extend a model of inventory behavior to include a detailed specification of the role of labor input in the production process and of the costs associated with it. In particular, we distinguish between employment, hours and effort per worker, and allow for adjustment costs associated with employment changes. We assume that the requirement function for effective hours has a general trans-logarithmic form, and derive an estimable system of Euler equations for inventories and employment with implied cross-equation restrictions. The econometric results shed light on several important topics, including the shape of the marginal cost of output and the role of labor hoarding as an explanation of procyclical productivity and the persistence of inventory stocks. Moreover, they raise questions about the adequacy of commonly used specifications such as Cobb-Douglas approximations to the production process and the definition of labor input as the product of employment and effective hours worked per worker. JEL Classification: D24, E23, E24, J23, J24, J32


Price instability is a major concern for commodity producers in developing countries. Commodity derivative markets have become the central pricing mechanism for international commodity trade. This is problematic given the high volatility and increased short-termism of these markets in the context of financialisation. The effects on producers depend on the market structure in producer countries. Burkina Faso and Mozambique have different types of national cotton price stabilization schemes in place while global coffee price fluctuations are transmitted directly to producers in Ethiopia. Policy reforms are required at two fronts - on commodity derivative markets to reduce excessive speculation and stabilize commodity prices and in producer countries to ensure fair and stable prices for producers.


The volume of metadata needed by a flash translation layer (FTL) is proportional to the storage capacity of a flash device. Ideally, this metadata should reside in the device's integrated RAM to enable fast access. However, as flash devices scale to terabytes, the necessary volume of metadata is exceeding the available integrated RAM. Moreover, recovery time after power failure, which is proportional to the size of the metadata, is becoming impractical. The simplest solution is to persist more metadata in flash. The problem is that updating metadata in flash increases the amount of internal IOs thereby harming performance and device lifetime. In this paper, we identify a key component of the metadata called the Page Validity Bitmap (PVB) as the bottleneck. PVB is used by the garbage-collectors of state-of-the-art FTLs to keep track of which physical pages in the device are invalid. PVB constitutes 95% of the FTL's RAM-resident metadata, and recovering PVB after power fails takes a significant proportion of the overall recovery time. To solve this problem, we propose a page-associative FTL called GeckoFTL, whose central innovation is replacing PVB with a new data structure called Logarithmic Gecko. Logarithmic Gecko is similar to an LSM-tree in that it first logs updates and later reorganizes them to ensure fast and scalable access time. Relative to the baseline of storing PVB in flash, Logarithmic Gecko enables cheaper updates at the cost of slightly more expensive garbage-collection queries. We show that this is a good trade-off because (1) updates are intrinsically more frequent than garbage-collection queries to page validity metadata, and (2) flash writes are more expensive than flash reads. We demonstrate analytically and empirically through simulation that GeckoFTL achieves a 95% reduction in space requirements and at least a 51% reduction in recovery time by storing page validity metadata in flash while keeping the contribution to internal IO overheads 98% lower than the baseline.


The most common approach used internationally for forecasting international trade containers is models based on the correlation between container trade and economic growth. While the strong historical correlation is indisputable, this paper argues that there will be saturation in the propensity to containerise as all the suitable volumes of the underlying commodities shift to containers over time. In addition, the link between freight transport and GDP will decouple as more sustainable approaches to economic development, and therefore freight transport, are necessitated by economic and environmental realities. A commodity-based model, taking into account the underlying drivers of containerisation, is proposed here as a more realistic forecast of container demand. This could have a material impact on how large-scale investment decisions are directed.


This paper presents a scientific pathway for compassion. The framework presented is for individual, organizational, national, and global transformation and peace. With the framework, an individual may progress to any extent possible for a human being all the way to enlightenment. However, there may be an upper limit to how much progress is possible for specific nations or on a global scale but diligent pursuit of the ideas and concepts should lead to more compassionate nations and a more peaceful world.


The performance of variational quantum algorithms relies on the success of using quantum and classical computing resources in tandem. Here, we study how these quantum and classical components interrelate. In particular, we focus on algorithms for solving the combinatorial optimization problem MaxCut, and study how the structure of the classical optimization landscape relates to the quantum circuit used to evaluate the MaxCut objective function. In order to analytically characterize the impact of quantum features on the landscape critical point structure, we consider a family of quantum circuit ansätze composed of mutually commuting elements. We identify multiqubit operations as a key resource, and show that overparameterization allows for obtaining favorable landscapes. Namely, we prove that an ansatz from this family containing exponentially many variational parameters yields a landscape free of local optima for generic graphs. However, we further prove that these ansätze do not offer superpolynomial advantages over purely classical MaxCut algorithms. We then present a series of numerical experiments illustrating that non-commutativity and entanglement are important features for improving algorithm performance.


ABSTRACT Cordycepin was separated successfully from Cordyceps militaris using extraction with a mixture of ethanol and water. Optimum temperature, composition of ethanol in water, solvent/solid ratio and pH of solvent were determined by a central composite design (CCD) with respect to extraction yield. The highest yield for cordycepin (96%) was predicted by the regression model and validated by comparison with the experimental results, showing good agreement. The RP-HPLC method was applied to analyse cordycepin from Cordyceps militaris extracts, and 100% purity of cordycepin was achieved. The extraction characteristics were investigated in terms of equilibrium and kinetics. The second-order kinetics correlates well with the experimental data.


Ice loss from the marine-based, potentially unstable West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) contributes to current sea-level rise and may raise sea level by ≤3.3 m or even ≤5 m in the future. Over the past few decades, glaciers draining the WAIS into the Amundsen Sea Embayment (ASE) have shown accelerated ice flow, rapid thinning, and fast retreat of the grounding line (GL). However, the long-term context of this ice loss is poorly constrained, limiting our ability to accurately predict future WAIS behavior. Here we present a new chronology for WAIS retreat from the inner continental shelf of the eastern ASE, based on radiocarbon dates from three marine sediment cores. The ages document a retreat of the GL to within ∼100 km of its modern position before ca. 10,000 calibrated (cal.) yr B.P. This early deglaciation is consistent with ages for GL retreat from the western ASE. Our new data demonstrate that, in contrast to the Ross Sea, WAIS retreat from the ASE shelf was largely complete by the start of the Holocene. Our results further suggest either slow GL retreat from the inner ASE shelf throughout the Holocene, or that any episodes of fast GL retreat must have been short-lived. Thus, today's rapid retreat may be exceptional during the Holocene and may originate in recent changes in regional climate, ocean circulation, or ice-sheet dynamics.


The research objective was to identify, through the theoretical and methodological approaches, the epistemological profile and trends of research dissertations and theses in the graduate programs in Brazil who studied the care for people with high ability / giftedness. For this study we adapt a paradigmatic scheme proposed by Sánchez Gamboa (2007). Thus, we investigated the following indicators in dissertations analyzed: tier: empirical-analytic, phenomenological-hermeneutic, critical-dialectical; technical level: type of research, technical collection and treatment technique; theoretical level: design education, design service and design of giftedness; epistemological level: design science, design and conception of causality of scientific validation. The predominant research approach in our study corresponded to the hermeneutic-phenomenological approach, which research techniques are used to collect information, in most cases, they referred specifically to interviews, questionnaires, interviews and document analysis. As to theoretical predictions, the analyzed studies are based on theories that purport to criticize, expose and explain the ideologies silenced by a discourse, text or any other type of communication seeking to promote an intersubjective consensus. As for the epistemological level, the research analyzed consider the interpretation of the researcher on the study object as a scientific criterion, since the researcher is able to articulate in a logical and rational reflection on their research. Key-words: research, high abilities, epistemology


Recent developments - such as a wave of FEC enforcement actions, the FEC's publication of its case by case approach to determining political committee status, and the Supreme Court's decision in FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life - have made it necessary to reconsider the kinds of campaign finance reforms desirable and constitutionally permissible. This Article examines the proposition that, if section 527 groups and groups exempt under section 501 of the Internal Revenue Code are part of a network of commonly managed organizations, then the FEC should decide whether they need to register as political committees under the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) by looking at their relationships with other members of the network in addition to evaluating the character of these groups viewed in isolation. In 2006 the Campaign Finance Institute issued a report looking twelve nationally important nonprofits that had been active in the 2004 election. It found that in ten of the twelve cases, a section 527 group that had not registered with the FEC had an affiliated group that was expressly involved in promoting the candidacy of one or more individuals who were running for a federal office. Sometimes the affiliated group was a PAC registered with the FEC and sometimes it was a 501(c) organization engaged in political campaign activity. Based largely upon the study's findings, I develop my recommendation for a network approach to determining political committee status.I then examine two potential First Amendment barriers to implementing the approach I recommend. According to the first, which is based upon a line of cases starting with Regan v. Taxation with Representation of Washington, the government cannot condition tax and other financial benefit for a potential recipient on its surrendering free speech rights that it otherwise would have unless there is an alternate channel available for the recipient to exercise those rights. The second depends upon the reasoning of the Supreme Court in, which limits the ability of the FEC to examine the context surrounding campaign messages in deciding whether electioneering communications have occurred. I argue that both of these constitutional obstacles can be overcome and, thus, that a network approach to political committee status is desirable from a public policy point of view and constitutionally valid.


This Article argues that the constitutional right to sexual liberty should include the right to engage in public sex under certain circumstances. In doing so, the Article contends that the right to sexual liberty should not, as the Supreme Court has held, be site-dependent, that is, its scope should not be limited to sexual conduct that takes place in the home and other private places. The Article reviews the sociological literature on public sex to explain how sexual actors frequently and effectively privatize public sex sites. By analogizing to the privacy protection afforded by the Fourth Amendment, the Article argues that what should ultimately matter in determining the scope of the right to sexual liberty under the Due Process Clause is not where the sex takes place but whether the sexual actors' expectations of privacy are reasonable. In the end, the Article seeks to problematize the seemingly intuitive notion that, in matters of sex and sexuality, the concept of privacy is inextricably linked to geographic sites that are private.


A short experimental film (5mins 30 sec) scripted and directed by Bringas that explores the notion of the hotel room as a virtual space where identities fluctuate. Commissioned as part of Animate! (a competitive scheme supported by the Arts Council of England and Channel Four), Room Service was produced on a £25K budget to both broadcast and theatrical specifications, over a period of 6 months. It is distributed by Lux, was screened on Channel Four (2001) and Television Espanola (2004 and 2006), and has been touring experimental film festivals since 2002 – Germany (Stuttgart, 2003), France (Amiens, Brest, Creteil), Brazil (Anima Mundi). It features in 'The Animate! Book: Rethinking Animation' edited by Benjamin Cook and Gary Thomas, 2006 . 'Room Service' won the Best Experimental Film award at Imaginaria International Film Festival, Italy, 2005. The film is structured as a narrative metamorphosis where a chambermaid 'transforms' into a guest (who is a prostitute), and the prostitute 'transforms' into a chambermaid. Through these parallel transformations, the film questions cliched definitions of female identity. The film makes use of CGI to create ambivalence of representation rather than illusionism, moving away from surface realism. Extensive research went into technical experimentation with 3D motion tracking software that was then under development. The technology was tested and operated by Bringas, who led a team of 6 digital artists to assist in the various digital processes. The surface of each polygon of the virtual environment was given a moving texture that made the virtual object feel like animated paint. The potential of the technology for detail and emulating photographic accuracy was consciously discarded, apart from incidental mirror surfaces, which render the painterly environment appropriately ambivalent. This mix of 2D and 3D elements helped create a world that could foreground its own artificiality, which was integral to the concept of the film.


This study explores the boundary between online volunteer translation and translation education to gain insights into how pedagogy might respond to: a) changes in practice in the field of translation resulting from the increasing availability and use of digital tools and content; and b) the learning opportunities afforded to those who want to become professional translators by the growth of online, open volunteer translation initiatives. It considers the possibility of expanding the concept of practice-based learning within an authentic, situated learning model, to encompass online volunteer translation as a way of developing translation competence and being socialised into the practice of translation.

The study focuses on participants in TED Translators (TEDT) from across the world who plan to work as professional translators. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) of interview data and a qualitative online survey, it explores their experiences and perceptions of how their engagement with TEDT fits into their learning and career journeys.

The findings identify the characteristics of the activity that make it attractive to aspiring translators as well as the difficulties they encounter; the professional and learning benefits that participants derive from engaging in TEDT; and the different paths and trajectories that link volunteering, education and profession. It concludes that online volunteer translation can offer a motivating, meaningful and situated learning opportunity through which learners can develop their translation competence and their identity as translators; and that informal learning using open tools, resources and communities can support learners' access to and engagement with formal education. However, educators and participants must consider the challenges of learning within an online community and develop the relevant digital and participatory skills, as well as a good awareness of local cultures and customs, to successfully engage with this opportunity.


A mathematical formulation is presented to compute the dispersion characteristics of tubular thin walled waveguides with arbitrary shape that are in contact with perfect fluids. The wave propagation problem is described in the frequency-wavenumber domain by using a Semi-Analytical Finite Element (SAFE) formulation for the thin walled waveguide and a regularized 2.5D Boundary Element Method (BEM) for the fluid. The wave dispersive equation is obtained by imposing continuity and equilibrium conditions on the fluid-structure interface, where the generalized Snell-Descartes law is also enforced, resulting into a nonlinear eigenvalue problem in the complex axial wavenumber. Leaky and non-leaky poles are then found by means of a contour integral algorithm. Two numerical examples are finally presented in order to show the accuracy of the method, consisting in a fluid-filled pipe and an immersed tubular section of rectangular shape. doi: 10.12783/SHM2015/113


Agricultural production exploits about 70% of all water withdrawals around the globe, but to date, it is not clear if and how this water consumption is taken into consideration in the price of the agricultural primary goods. To shed light on this point, we analyze the farm gate prices of twelve representative crops in the period 1991-2016, considering data from 162 countries in total. The crop price dependence on the water footprint is investigated, also accounting for the country's water scarcity as a possible additional determinant of the price, and of the land footprint as a possible confounding factor. We find that prices of staple crops (e.g. wheat, maize, soybeans, and potatoes) typically embed the amount of water used for their production. Differently, food products that do not contribute in an essential way to the human diet and whose production is more export-oriented (e.g. coffee, cocoa beans, tea, vanilla) exhibit weaker or negligible water-price links. These variations may be ascribable to specific market dynamics related to the two product groups. Staple crops are often produced in markets where many producers have more space for price setting and may have an incentive to include also the value of water in the final crop price. In contrast,


Implementation of the database concept has organisational implications, the most widely recognised being the emergence of the specialist function of data or database administration (DBA) 'usually in data processing departments. This research study is an investigation of U.K. database projects, undertaken to obtain a view of the managerial issues and organisational consequences which arise in practice. The findings are based on the completion of a simple postal Questionnaire by 212 organisations with database projects and in-depth interviews in 21 of these organisations with the staff member bearing overall responsibility for the development. The surveys were conducted in 1976-1981. The study employs qualitative methods to explore the inter-dependencies between organisations' objectives for embarking on a database project, features of the project environment, approaches to staffing including characteristics of the DBA function and the nature of the problems faced. The major finding is that organisations experience more serious 'political ~ problems than technical ones. The predominant type of political problem is not resistance to data sharing, but rather related to the emergence of a DBA function-dissatisfaction over organisational placemen.t and the working relationship with data processing functions such as systems development. Moreover these organisational problems occur from the earliest phase of database projects - the feasibility stage. The study concludes that with management backing, analysis and design skills and control over database usage, the DBA function has been able to acquire technical and political weight in organisations in a relatively short period of time. The current data processing environment however contains unique opportunities for the function - in the areas of systems planning, systems development and the administration of shared data - which suggests that the notion of the DBA as the organisation's overall data resource manager is still a viable one.


Zirconia is considered a proper material for posterior teeth restoration, because of the excellent aesthetic quality, biocompatibility, and mechanical properties, in order to replace existing ceramic systems. Even computer-controlled techniques are used in producing dental crowns in order to improve the accuracy during the manufacturing process, not enough studies have been conducted on stresses in aesthetic monolithic crowns regarding the load values. Therefore, the goal of this study was to compare the stresses in anatomic contour zirconia crown to that of glass ceramic crown regarding the load values, from biomechanical point of view. A static structural analysis was performed to calculate the stress distribution using the computer-aided finite element analysis software. The maximal principal stresses in the crowns don't exceed the strength of the materials in case of 200 N load for both studied materials. For glass ceramic at a load of 400 N maximal principal stresses exceed the tensile strength value of the material. Stress values and distribution results can provide design guidelines for new and varied aesthetic crowns, in order to withstand functional loads in the posterior areas. Key-Words: monolithic ceramic crown, posterior teeth, zirconia, glass ceramic, load, finite element analysis, maximal principal stresses.


OBJECTIVE To assess the effect of empagliflozin on bone fractures and bone mineral density in patients with type 2 diabetes in pooled placebo-controlled trial data and a head-to-head study versus glimepiride. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Pooled data were analyzed from patients who were randomized 1:1:1 to empagliflozin 10 mg, empagliflozin 25 mg, or placebo in phase I–III clinical trials. Data were also analyzed from the EMPA-REG H2H-SU trial in which patients received empagliflozin 25 mg or glimepiride as an add-on to metformin for 104 weeks with a 104-week extension. Bone fracture adverse events (AEs) were evaluated through a search of investigator-reported (nonadjudicated) events. RESULTS In the pooled analysis, bone fracture AEs were reported in 119 of 4,221 (2.8%), 105 of 4,196 (2.5%), and 123 of 4,203 (2.9%) patients in the empagliflozin 10 mg, empagliflozin 25 mg, and placebo groups, respectively (rates of 1.55, 1.36, and 1.69/100 patient-years, respectively). In the EMPA-REG H2H-SU trial, bone fracture AEs were reported in 31 of 765 (4.1%) patients receiving empagliflozin 25 mg and in 33 of 780 (4.2%) patients receiving glimepiride (rates of 1.28 and 1.40/100 patient-years, respectively). CONCLUSIONS Empagliflozin did not increase the risk of bone fracture compared with placebo in a pooled analysis of >12,000 patients or compared with glimepiride in a 4-year head-to-head study.


Graph reordering is a powerful technique to increase the locality of the representations of graphs, which can be helpful in several applications. We study how the technique can be used to improve compression of graphs and inverted indexes. We extend the recent theoretical model of Chierichetti et al. (KDD 2009) for graph compression, and show how it can be employed for compression-friendly reordering of social networks and web graphs and for assigning document identifiers in inverted indexes. We design and implement a novel theoretically sound reordering algorithm that is based on recursive graph bisection. Our experiments show a significant improvement of the compression rate of graph and indexes over existing heuristics. The new method is relatively simple and allows efficient parallel and distributed implementations, which is demonstrated on graphs with billions of vertices and hundreds of billions of edges.


This unique book presents various ways in which evolutionary theory can contribute to the analysis of key legal-philosophical problems. Wojciech Zaluski explores three central questions; the ontological question – what is the nature of law?; the teleological-axiological question – what are the main values to be realized by law?; the normativity question, which has two aspects; normative: what explains the fact that legal norms provide reasons for action?, and motivational: what explains the fact that humans can be motivated by legal norms? It is argued that evolutionary theory suggests non-trivial answers to these questions, and that these answers can become the building blocks of a new – evolutionary – paradigm in legal philosophy.


In this work, we investigate the use of RASTA filter in the TANDEM feature extraction method when trained with a task independent data. RASTA filter removes the linear distortion introduced by the communication channel which is demonstrated in a 18% relative improvement on the Numbers 95 task. Also, studies yielded a relative improvement of 35% over the basic PLP features by combining TANDEM features and conventional PLP features.


Spinal deformity has classically and historically been studied by those in the discipline of orthopedic surgery. This may be attributable to the orthopedic interventionalists' experience with osseous fixation for long-bone and other skeletal fractures. Neurosurgeons have maintained a long-standing interest in complex cervical spinal disorders, and their interest in the larger field of complex spinal deformity has been expanding. An understanding of spinal deformity disorders, biomechanics, bone biology, and metallurgy is necessary before clinical, teaching, and research activities can be undertaken within neurosurgery. The authors describe basic and advanced concepts of spinal deformity management with cases to illustrate teaching points.


-2-Abstract Aims: Non-adherence to medication is a major problem for patients with diabetes leading to poor response to therapy. Many factors associated with poor adherence have been identified, but their combined predictive ability has not been assessed. We investigated whether combinations of routinely available clinical features can predict which patients are likely to be non-adherent. Materials and methods: 67882 patients with prescription records for their first and second oral glucose lowering therapies were identified from electronic healthcare records (Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD)). Non-adherence was defined as a medical possession ratio (MPR) ≤80%. Potential predictors were examined including age at diagnosis, sex, BMI, duration of diabetes, HbA1c, Charlson Index and other recent prescriptions. Results: Routine clinical features were poor at predicting non-adherence to the first diabetes therapy (c-statistic=0.601 for all in combined model). Non-adherence to the second drug was better predicted for all combined factors (c=0.715) but this improvement was predominantly a result of including adherence to the first drug (c=0.695 for this alone). Patients with MPR≤80% on their first drug were 3.6 (95% CI 3.3,3.8) times more likely to be non-adherent on their second drug (32% v 9%). Conclusions: Although certain clinical features are associated with poor adherence, their performance for predicting who is likely to be non-adherent, even when combined, is weak. The strongest predictor of adherence to second-line therapy is adherence to the first therapy. Examining previous prescription records could offer a practical way for clinicians to identify potentially non-adherent patients and is an area warranting further research.


This paper reports our findings on the impacts of information privacy, financial reward, and buyers' protection excess on consumers' utility using E-payment Gateways. We invited users of the G2C E-government Portal of Hong Kong to participate in an online experiment and collected data from 1,795 subjects. From our conjoint analysis, we find that monetary reward has the most significant impact on consumers' utility among the six design attributes of E-payment Gateways investigated in this study, i.e. monetary reward, online transfer of information, acceptability, buyers' protection excess, anonymity, and physical control. We also observe that there is a gender impact on the relative importance of these attributes.


To demonstrate the phylogenetic changes that have led to the current form of the human skull, dried skulls of various representative vertebrates were examined using plain radiography and high-resolution computed tomography. The latter was chosen rather than pluridirectional tomography in anticipation of its future role as the major method for imaging the skull base. The phylogenetic history of the human skull is reviewed by considering separately the evolution of the calvarium, zygomatic arch, palate, jaw, and skull base.


In an e cient market all identical goods must have only one price So states the aptly named law of one price. In the real world, however, one may easily verify that identical products are oŒen sold for di erent prices. This thesis develops an extension of the Bertrand model in economics to include spatially localised competition to explain this price variation, which is then studied through simulation methods and theoretical analysis. Our model studies the e ect that local heterogeneities in the environment experienced by sellers have on successful pricing strategies. Taking inspiration from models of evolutionary dynamics, we de ne the tness of a seller and evolve seller prices through selection and mutation. We nd three distinct steady states in our model related to the probability that a seller experiences competition for a buyer, mediated by the number of bankrupt sites in the system. When competition-free sales are unlikely, the system collapses on to a single price. If temporary monopoly situations do exist sellers can accumulate capital and variation in prices is stable. In this scenario, sellers spontaneously separate into two classes: cheap sellers – requiring sales to every potential buyer; and expensive sellers – requiring only occasional sales. Finally, we nd an intermediate regime in which there is a single highly favoured price in the system which oscillates between high and low extrema. We study the properties of these steady states in detail, building a picture of how globally uncompetitive sellers can nonetheless survive if competition is strictly local. We show how the system builds up correlations, leading to niches for expensive sellers. These niches change the nature of the competition and allow for long-term survival of uncompetitive sellers. Not all expensive prices are equally likely in the steady state and we analyse why (and where) peaks in the price distribution appear. We can do this exactly for the early time dynamics of the model and extend the argument more qualitatively to the steady state. This latter analysis allows us to predict, for an observed steady distribution, the minimum price an expensive seller should charge to guarantee pro t. The oscillatory 'steady state' is qualitatively reminiscent of boom and bust cycles in the global market. We study methods to suppress the oscillations and suggest ways of avoiding catastrophic crashes in the global economy – without negatively a ecting the ability of outliers to make large pro ts.


Abstract: We describe a pentaploid froglet (LLLRR; three Pelophylax lessonae and two Pelophylax ridibundus genomes) that has never been reported before within the Water Frog (Pelophylax esculentus) hybrid complexes. The pentaploid specimen was found among almost all triploid siblings obtained from a diploid female P. esculentus (LR) crossed with a diploid male P. lessonae (LL). We confirmed ploidy levels of the parents and the offspring by karyotyping, microsatellite analysis (18 loci), and measurements of DNA content and erythrocyte size. Microsatellite analysis indicated that the pentaploid originated from a tetraploid ovum (LLRR) fertilized by a haploid sperm (L). Surprisingly, the erythrocytes of the pentaploid were not proportionally larger than in triploids, despite a higher DNA content. Only 6.7% of the erythrocytes were distinctly large, whereas the others varied strongly in shape and size; besides typical ovoid mature erythrocytes there were small, tear-shaped, or enucleated ones. We discuss the possibility of loss of some cytoplasm by large erythrocytes as a result of mechanical damages during circulation through the narrow vessels; when the erythrocytes achieve a relatively higher surface-to-volume ratio, they may function more effectively in a proper gas exchange.


Throughout the contest for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, politicians and voters alike worried that the outcome might depend on the preferences of unelected superdelegates. This concern threw into relief the prevailing notion that - such unusually competitive cases notwithstanding - people, rather than parties, should and do control presidential nominations. But for the past several decades, "The Party Decides" shows, unelected insiders in both major parties have effectively selected candidates long before citizens reached the ballot box.Tracing the evolution of presidential nominations since the 1790s, this volume demonstrates how party insiders have sought since America's founding to control nominations as a means of getting what they want from government. Contrary to the common view that the party reforms of the 1970s gave voters more power, the authors contend that the most consequential contests remain the candidates' fights for prominent endorsements and the support of various interest groups and state party leaders. These invisible primaries produce front-runners long before most voters start paying attention, profoundly influencing final election outcomes and investing parties with far more nominating power than is generally recognized.


Because of the interdependent, reciprocal dynamics of families and patients, responses of one affect the other. Hope is an important state of being and has been noted to be an example of such a response. Developing and maintaining family members' hope has a contagious effect on the patient. A model of nursing strategies to inspire hope in families of the critically ill with possible outcomes is presented.


The standard account holds that trademark law, at its core, aims to protect consumers from deceptive and confusing uses of source-identifying marks. However, there is a problem with the standard account. It cannot explain a number of important trademark doctrines, many of which, like the protection accorded trade dress, have expanded the scope of trademark rights in recent years. Some critics argue that these puzzling doctrines reflect a radical shift away from the standard account and toward a new property theory of trademark law that focuses not so much on the quality of information available to consumers as on the seller's ability to appropriate the full commercial value of its mark. This Article offers a different, and less alarming, explanation for many of the puzzling doctrines, one that does not require a radical departure from the standard account. This alternative explanation focuses on the enforcement costs of implementing law based on the standard account. Enforcement costs include the administrative costs of adjudicating trademark lawsuits and the error costs of over- and under-enforcing trademark rights. For a number of reasons, trademark law generates high enforcement costs, and many of the puzzling features of trademark doctrine can be understood as legal tools to manage these high costs. In particular, courts adopt general rules or standards that protect trademarks more broadly than the standard account's substantive policies support, but those rules and standards can be justified by the administrative and error costs they save. In the end, the Article uses the enforcement cost approach to suggest two reforms to trademark law - the broader acceptance of disclaimers especially in merchandising rights cases, and the abolition of trade dress protection.


PURPOSE
The aim of this retrospective cohort study was to gather the outcomes of zirconia single crowns made by 16 members of the Italian Academy of Prosthetic Dentistry (AIOP) over a time period of up to 5 years.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
A total of 398 patients treated in private practices with 1,132 zirconia-based single-crown restorations made on natural teeth from January 2005 to July 2010 were included. Three hundred forty-three anterior restorations (30.3%) and 789 posterior crowns (69.7%) were made with 16 types of zirconia, using primarily chamfer or knife-edge tooth preparation, and examined according to the esthetic, functional, and biologic criteria. To evaluate the relationship of parafunction with mechanical failure, patients with clenching or bruxism were not excluded from the study group.

RESULTS
The cumulative survival rate of all restorations was 98.1%, while the cumulative success rate was 94.3%. Functional criteria had the highest number of failures. The odds ratio (OR) for all restorations was calculated to clarify the relationship between patients who were subject/not subject to parafunctions and technical complications; the OR was 2.60. An association between parafunction and mechanical failure was found in patients with severe parafunction.

CONCLUSIONS
Porcelain-veneered zirconia single crowns with chamfer and knife-edge preparations showed good clinical results over a period of up to 5 years. Technical complications were few and were limited primarily to patients with parafunction.


Increased longevity and the need to fund living and care expenses across late old age, greater proportions of blended and culturally diverse families and concerns about the increasing possibility of contestation of wills highlight the importance of understanding current will making practices and intentions. Yet, there is no current national data on the prevalence of wills, intended beneficiaries, the principles and practices surrounding will making and the patterns and outcomes of contestation. This project sought to address this gap. This report summarises the results of a four year program of research examining will making and will contestation in Australia. The project was funded by the Australian Research Council (LP10200891) in conjunction with seven Public Trustee Organisations across Australia. The interdisciplinary research team with expertise in social science, social work, law and social policy are from The University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology and Victoria University. The project comprised five research studies: a national prevalence survey, a judicial case review, a review of Public Trustee files, an online survey of will drafters and in-depth interviews with key groups of interest. The report outlines key findings. On the basis of the evidence provided recommendations are presented to support the achievement of these policy goals: increasing will making in the Australian population, ensuring that the wills of those Australians who have taken this step reflect their current situation and intentions, and reducing will contestation.


o f a Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Studies Office o f The University o f Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment o f the Requirements for the Degree o f Doctor o f Philosophy


Bitcoin is an application that runs on blockchain technology. Blockchain is a foundational technology that is bringing in the second era of the Internet – the era where value can be transferred, rather than just information.
Blockchain is developing along a four-stage path similar to that which TCP/IP took. Both are foundational technologies. TCP/IP brought the Internet, and eventually brought significant (transformational) technological changes in business like Amazon.com and Skype. These are changes that could not have been forecast at the beginning of the Internet age.
Blockchain is an immutable distributed ledger. It replaces the inefficient use of multiple centralized ledgers. It will support smart contracts that automatically make payments, adjust accounts, and coordinate records among multiple organizations.
A payroll application on blockchain's distributed ledger will allow employees to be paid, and all related deductions and deposits to be made in real-time. It will allow multiple government agencies to immediately have audit-level access to all employee records, and all employer matching-payments. With a fiat crypto-currency a payroll application on the blockchain will allow immediate global payroll compliance at a fraction of the cost of current payroll compliance.
Based on the trajectory of ITP/IP's development it is reasonable to assume that a payroll application will be seen on a blockchain (most likely Quorum, a private/permissioned blockchain based on the Ethereum platform) by 2018-2021. The first one will be constructed either by a government (Finland or Estonia) or by a private company (in the USA). Costs will be so low that the industry will consolidate (picture the arrival of Amazon.com among the group of brick and mortar books stores that preceded it in the late 1990's).
A traditional payroll service provider today needs to prepare for this change by developing a pilot program internally that will educate its workforce to the advantages and operational intricacies of a service based in the blockchain.


The dimethylamino (Me2N) group is arguably the most versatile functional group capable of highly efficient and site-selective directed aromatic functionalizations at the ortho-, meta-, and para-positions depending on reaction conditions. While the repertoire of Me2N-directed reactions is growing at a rapid pace, the lack of a general method to transform this group to other functionalities hampers its wider application in organic synthesis. Here we report nickel-catalyzed C-N borylations of aryl- and benzyl-dimethylamines that permit the conversion of a huge library of largely underutilized Me2N-containing organic molecules into various functional molecules by taking advantage of the wealth of existing C-B functionalization methods.


Since the adoption of the Environmental Management Act of 1996, Malawi has been using environmental impact assessment (EIA) as a tool for predicting and assessing the impact of development projects on the environment. This study assessed the extent of public participation in Malawi's EIA process. Desktop study of relevant documents such as EIA and environmental audit reports, policies and laws, books, journals and internet articles was done. Further information was obtained from relevant stakeholders through interviews and questionnaires. This involved fifteen respondents divided into three categories: five NCE members, five TCE members and five EIA practitioners. This study reveals that public participation is not adequate at most of the key stages of the EIA process in Malawi which puts the human and ecosystem health at risk. There is an urgent need to enforce the EIA provision as stipulated Malawi's Environmental Management Act. Effort should focus on public awareness and human resource capacity development so that the EIA process is diligently executed and that enforcement and follow-ups are properly done by the Department of Environmental Affairs which is a lead agency on environmental issues in Malawi. Key words : Public participation, environmental impact assessment, Malawi, enforcement.


The Nordic economies have in recent years seen increased economic contributions been made by the creative industries (CI); the media, entertainment and artistic sectors. The shift to a creativity-based economy has not successfully managed to bring with it the investors, the financial institutions of banking and the venture capital funds. Three educational tools aimed at bridging the communication gap between investors and the creative industries has been created by this project.


Research has shown that distances on a hill appear further than they do on the flat ground (Stefanucci, et al., 2005). It is theorized that this perceptual distortion is a function of energetic demands associated with traversing the hill, compared to the flat ground. A big question concerns the nature of information about action and how it is then integrated with visual information. One theory is that information about action is detected on-line from proprioceptive and interoceptive receptors (Witt & Riley, 2014). If perceivers depend on interoception to provide cues about our internal states as they relate to the environment, those who show greater sensitivity to interoceptive information might also show a greater effect of the hill on perceived distances. Here, we tested that idea by assessing individuals' ability to detect their own heart rate, which is a standard measure of interceptive awareness. Participants verbally estimated the distance to cones placed on the hill and on the flat ground, followed by a heart rate estimation task. The effect of hill versus flat on perceived distance was significantly modulated by heart rate detection ability, F(1,49) = 4.45, p = .04. The best heart-rate estimators (top two-thirds) revealed a significant effect of terrain (hill vs flat) on perceived distance, F(1, 34) = 17.52, p < .001. The bottom third, however, did not, F(1, 15) = 0.52, p > .48. These results indicate that for individuals with greater interoceptive awareness, perceived distance is affected by the hill, while for those with worse interoceptive awareness, perceived distance is not. Stated another way, those who are more in tune with their internal states appear be more affected by anticipated energetic expenditures. This suggests that the perceptual distortions related to energetics are likely due to the ability to sense internal responses to the anticipation of action. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


In this article, we explain how we engaged teachers in creating their own representations of HIV and AIDS in Tanzania as a starting point for re-curriculation of the undergraduate teacher education programme. We employed a qualitative design, using visual methodologies, to encourage 29 in-service teachers to draw their perceptions about HIV and AIDS in Tanzania, and to explain their drawing in a short narrative. Thematic analysis of the drawings revealed that, while teachers are aware of the social injustices that fuel the pandemic, they do not envision themselves as having much influence for social change of learner attitudes and behaviour. The discussion of the findings, compared to and recontexualised by relevant literature, leads us to argue for the need to engage teachers in participatory research to find contextually appropriate ways to conceptualise and practise HIV and AIDS education. The recommendations we offer have relevance not only for Tanzania, but for the entire sub-Saharan African region.


We live in an age that is dependent on a strong sense of global community. Despite this fact, many of our current problems trace back to how weak that unifying sense truly is. This theme is most tragic when it appears in the form of genocide, ethnic cleansings, and other manifestations of the deadly politics of identity. For all the vows that there would "never again" be another genocide, reality has too many times proven otherwise. Yet again, millions of people have been killed, maimed, raped, displaced, and otherwise victimized, while the international community--including the United States, the United Nations, and the European Union--continues to do too little, too late. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] If we cannot turn the "never again" pledge from rhetoric to reality, how can we genuinely claim to be a global community? Time and again we have witnessed man's inhumanity at its basest, most venal, and most outrageous. But where is the outrage? It has not been coming from recent US administrations--not from George H.W. Bush over Bosnia, not from Bill Clinton over Rwanda, and not from George W. Bush over Darfur. It has not been coming from the United Nations, in which countless resolutions about being "seized with the matter" are approved and then become "seized up" when it comes to meaningful action. And outrage has certainly not been coming from the many countries that buy into invocations of state sovereignty with little regard for supposedly shared values and commitments, which are codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention. There is no doubt that breaking the vicious political cycle of identity is difficult. But it is possible. Bosnia and Rwanda were rife with missed opportunities--so, too, was Darfur. Breaking the cycle is necessary for tangible reasons, since these conflicts feed other conflicts, including terrorism. It is also necessary for less tangible, but deeply penetrating reasons. We must understand that our actions determine whether the legacy we leave to future generations is one of despair or one of hope. Key Questions in the Policy Debate Looking across key cases, we can identify five core questions that frame policy debates on genocide prevention and related humanitarian intervention. First, what are the driving forces behind ethnic conflict and genocide? Then, given existing tensions, when should military force be used? Why is such intervention justified, if ever, and who should decide when intervention should happen? Finally, what constitutes effective intervention? Driving Forces? Many policymakers take the "primordialist" view of these conflicts and view them as the inevitable outcomes of fixed, inherited, and deeply antagonistic group identities. In this understanding, the end of the Cold War stripped away the constraining effects of the overlay of bipolar geopolitics. The implication is that historical hatreds, including those that Robert Kaplan has called the "Balkan ghosts," are restored to their "natural" states of conflict. But while history shapes these conflicts, it does not determine them nearly to the extent that such theories suggest. A number of studies have shown that ethnic identities are much less fixed over time; as a result, the frequency and intensity of ethnic conflict vary more than primordialist theory claims. This point is made, albeit with some amount of hyperbole, in a statement by a Bosnian Muslim schoolteacher: "We never, until the war, thought of ourselves as Muslims. We were Yugoslavs. But when we began to be murdered because we are Muslims, things changed. The definition of who we are today has been determined by our killing." Such killing was not a predetermined playing out of history. Instead, it was an intentional manipulation of history by Slobodan Milosevic to turn grievances and prejudices into hatred and murder. This was also the case in Rwanda and elsewhere. …


Digital government is rapidly gathering momentum as an effective way for nations and regions to increase their administrative efficiency, develop resilience, and deliver simpler, clearer, and better services for their citizens and businesses. This report summarizes the conditions and context needed for government digital teams to succeed and be sustained across different administrations. The report explores the conditions needed to establish a digital team, examines the ideal environment to make that team successful, and concludes with the conditions required to help that team sustain as an institution across different political administrations.


The pork industry in South Africa is faced with many challenges some of which have been exacerbated with the trend toward globalisation. The success of the individual farmer is dependent upon co-operative agreements, achieving economies of scale, adding value to the commodity product pork and producing the end product efficiently enough to be competitive in the long-term whilst adjusting to the highly volatile market. The objective of this study was to determine whether the use of a marketing consortium was in principle an appropriate means of increasing profitability of individual farming operations. A secondary objective was to determine what the processing companies thought of the proposed selling consortium and how they would react to the concentration of supply that would result from the formation of a marketing consortium. The secondary research was based on a literature survey of current pork journals, articles from South African pork magazines, statistics from industry reports, textbooks on international trade and marketing, the Internet and newspapers. To evaluate the findings of the literature survey, a questionnaire using Likert type scales was devised and empirically tested among selected samples within the pork industry in KwaZulu-Natal. The literature review and the results from the questionnaire established that the formation of a selling consortium or collaborative relationships would have the potential to be mutually beneficial to both pork producers and pork processors. As a result of this it is felt that marketing consortiums have a place in the pork industry. The scope of this research is limited to the requirements of a dissertation that fulfils the partial requirements of a Masters in Business Administration. The sample sizes were small as the research was confined to the KwaZulu-Natal pork industry. In order to facilitate the reading of the dissertation and to simplify referencing of sources from the Internet the term "online" has been used to replace lengthy Internet addresses. The full address, however, is included in the list of references at the end of the


A framework was developed for the construction of an objectives hierarchy for multicriteria decisions in land use planning. The process began through identification of fundamental objectives; these were iteratively decomposed into a hierarchy of subobjectives until a level was reached at which subobjectives had measurable attributes. Values were derived for attributes through a variety of methods and weights assigned to objectives through preference elicitation. The framework assumed that the objectives could be incorporated into a linear value function; this required attributes to satisfy preference and difference independence conditions. Strategies were developed to address typical features that distinguish land use decisions from many other multicriteria decisions. The methodology was illustrated with a case study of land use planning in a forestry concession in the Merauke region of Papua Province, Indonesia. The problem involved severe hard constraints; the analysis showed how these can be accommodated within the framework. Results integrated interests and preferences of a diverse set of stakeholders (resident peoples, developers, and conservation professionals) and were intended for implementation. This methodology is extendible to other land use problems.


Recent scholarship has focused on the response of Jews in the free world to the plight of European Jewry in Nazi-occupied Europe. The work of Anglo- Jewish refugee organisations in facilitating the arrival of over 50,000 refugees in Britain between 1933-1939 has been variously chronicled as a model of charitable endeavour and a half-hearted effort cramped by insecurity and self- interest. More consistently, scholars argue that Anglo-Jewry failed to respond to the catastrophe of the war years with the resolution and vigour that might have saved more lives. This thesis takes issue with the current consensus on both the pre-war and war periods. Anglo-Jewry was a confident, well-integrated community which tackled the escalating problems of refugee immigration in the 1930s with common sense and administrative expertise born of a long tradition of communal charity. Its achievement is all the more remarkable measured against the scale of the disaster, the constraints of government immigration policy regulations and the organisations' own chronic lack of funds. By contrast, the Anglo-Jewish organisations were hamstrung during the war years by their political naivete and inexperience in dealing with government officials. Although their administrative skills remained valuable in areas of relief work such as internment and parcel schemes, their preoccupation with the Jewish humanitarian issue prevented them from grasping the military and logistical implications of their proposals. Misreading the language of diplomacy, they doggedly pursued aims which were in practice, if not in theory, unrealistic. Unlike most previous literature on the record of Anglo-Jewry during this period, this thesis eschews both the didactic and speculative approaches to historical interpretation. Instead of attempting to apportion blame, or to answer hypothetical questions of responsibility, it offers an evaluation based on the evidence available. The thesis examines the quality and scope of rescue and relief work, both of organisations and individuals. What was done, rather than what should have been done, is the focus of attention.


We demonstrate that chaos can be controlled and converted into periodic behaviour in photorefractive ring oscillator via nonlinear feedback and find that the period number differs on the account of the feedback strength. By increasing the feedback strength the photorefractive ring oscillator is converted into period 8 and subsequently into period 4, 2, and 1. Nonlinear feedback is suitable for both the photorefractive ring oscillator system and spatiotemporal system. Spatiotemporal chaos can be controlled into stable periodic states and stable spatial patterns if we choose suitable feedback strength. Furthermore we present the synchronization of spatiotemporal chaos in two photorefractive ring oscillator systems via nonlinear feedback technology. The synchronization of spatiotemporal chaos can be achieved by adjusting the feedback strength without any pre-knowledge of the dynamic system. Numerical calculation results show that weak noise has a slight impact on synchronization, so nonlinear feedback technology is suitable in practical photorefractive ring oscillator systems.


Background and Aim: the reduction in coronary heart disease (CHd) mortality in europe has been associated with a reduction in coronary risk factors, including dyslipidaemia. statins reduce blood cholesterol levels and the risk of coronary events. their utilization has substantially increased over the years. Although statins should be prescribed according to clinical guidelines, doctors' decisions about treatment are usually made subjectively and are influenced by the population risk level. the aim of this study was to investigate the relation between the time trend of population risk level and statin utilization in two areas with different levels of coronary risk in the population. Methods: CHd mortality, as a proxy of population coronary risk level, and statin utilization trends in the period 2001-2011, were compared between a relatively high-risk CHd area, stockholm county, and a low-risk area, sicily. Results: there was a reduction in CHd mortality and an increase in statin utilization in both areas. the mean annual reduction in CHd mortality rate/100,000 was greater in stockholm than in sicily (-4.6, 95% CI -5.3 -4.0, and -1.9 95% CI -2.6 - 1.2, respectively). the mean annual increase in statin ddd/tId utilization was larger in sicily than in stockholm (5.1, 95% CI 4.8 - 5.3, and 3.7, 95% CI 3.2 - 4.1, respectively). In stockholm the increase in statin use was mainly due to increased utilization of simvastatin, whereas it included a greater variety of statins in sicily. Conclusion: the relations between time trends of CHd mortality and statin utilization in stockholm and in sicily were different. A larger increase in statins was observed in the low-risk area, associated with a slower reduction in CHd mortality, whereas a smaller increase in statins was observed in the high-risk area, associated with a greater reduction in CHd mortality. other factors apart from the actual risk of the patients may explain these observations, such as differences in socioeconomic factors, adherence to treatment, policies of drug cost-containment, and population CHd risk profiles.


Abstract. Current estimates of global marine primary production range over a factor of two. Improving these estimates requires an accurate knowledge of the chlorophyll vertical profiles, since they are the basis for most primary production models. At high latitudes, the uncertainty in primary production estimates is larger than globally, because here phytoplankton absorption shows specific characteristics due to the low-light adaptation, and in situ data and ocean colour observations are scarce. To date, studies describing the typical chlorophyll profile based on the chlorophyll in the surface layer have not included the Arctic region, or, if it was included, the dependence of the profile shape on surface concentration was neglected. The goal of our study was to derive and describe the typical Greenland Sea chlorophyll profiles, categorized according to the chlorophyll concentration in the surface layer and further monthly resolved profiles. The Greenland Sea was chosen because it is known to be one of the most productive regions of the Arctic and is among the regions in the Arctic where most chlorophyll field data are available. Our database contained 1199 chlorophyll profiles from R/Vs Polarstern and Maria S. Merian cruises combined with data from the ARCSS-PP database (Arctic primary production in situ database) for the years 1957–2010. The profiles were categorized according to their mean concentration in the surface layer, and then monthly median profiles within each category were calculated. The category with the surface layer chlorophyll (CHL) exceeding 0.7 mg C m−3 showed values gradually decreasing from April to August. A similar seasonal pattern was observed when monthly profiles were averaged over all the surface CHL concentrations. The maxima of all chlorophyll profiles moved from the greater depths to the surface from spring to late summer respectively. The profiles with the smallest surface values always showed a subsurface chlorophyll maximum with its median magnitude reaching up to three times the surface concentration. While the variability of the Greenland Sea season in April, May and June followed the global non-monthly resolved relationship of the chlorophyll profile to surface chlorophyll concentrations described by the model of Morel and Berthon (1989), it deviated significantly from the model in the other months (July–September), when the maxima of the chlorophyll are at quite different depths. The Greenland Sea dimensionless monthly median profiles intersected roughly at one common depth within each category. By applying a Gaussian fit with 0.1 mg C m−3 surface chlorophyll steps to the median monthly resolved chlorophyll profiles of the defined categories, mathematical approximations were determined. They generally reproduce the magnitude and position of the CHL maximum, resulting in an average 4% underestimation in Ctot (and 2% in rough primary production estimates) when compared to in situ estimates. These mathematical approximations can be used as the input to the satellite-based primary production models that estimate primary production in the Arctic regions.


What is the significance of the fact that several recent or upcoming sport mega-events are hosted by emerging powers such as China (the 2008 Beijing Games), India (2010 Commonwealth Games), South Africa (2010 FIFA World Cup), Russia (2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi) or Brazil (2014 FIFA World Cup)? This paper analyses events hosted by three states of the emerging power (or so-called BRICSA) axis. These are the 2008 Olympics, the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the 2010 New Delhi Commonwealth Games. It suggests that the hosting of such events by today's emerging powers occurs through a common agenda: to showcase economic achievements, to signal diplomatic stature or to project, in the absence of other forms of international influence, soft power. Furthermore, emerging powers can reshape the way in which events are viewed, planned for and commercialized, and by which they impact upon stakeholders. In all, sport mega-events constitute a key part of the political imagineering of emerging powers, serving as a focal point both for the type of society and state these authorities try to create, as well as for the position in the international order these rulers attempt to craft. While this strategy has some success, it also tends to come at some material and symbolic costs for these states.


Mediterranean trawl fisheries are characterized by a critical combination of high fishing effort and low size at first capture for most commercial species. In this study we tested the use of sorting grids installed on bottom trawl nets to minimize the catch of undersized deep-water rose shrimp (Parapenaeus longirostris, DPS) and European hake (Merluccius merluccius, HKE). The catch of a traditional trawl net was compared with that obtained with the same net equipped with ad hoc designed juveniles and trash excluder devices (JTEDs) during an experimental survey. Three different JTEDs were tested: the first (G1-SM40) was built with a net of 40-mm square mesh; the second (G2-ST20) and third (G3-ST25) with vertical steel bars spaced 20 and 25 mm, respectively. The probability of retaining DPS and HKE by length class in trawl nets with and without JTED was analysed using generalized additive mixed models. With G1-SM40, the reduction of undersized individuals in the cod-end was about 60% and 44% for DPS and HKE, respectively. With G2-ST20, a 34% catch decrease of HKE individuals smaller than 20 cm total length was observed. A loss of marketable fractions of DPS was recorded with G1-SM40 (–25%) and G2-ST20 (30%). Finally, JTD G3-ST25 was efficient at reducing the catch of undersized specimens of DPS and HKE, but showed a higher loss of marketable fractions than the other JTEDs. Although further fishing trials would be required to maximize the sorting efficiency of the grids, the results obtained clearly indicated that grids can substantially reduce unwanted catches of undersized DPS and HKE in Mediterranean bottom trawl fisheries.


The ethnic diversity of modern states raises the question of where successful countries are in terms of immigrant inclusion. The number of immigrants in Iceland has increased significantly since 2004, and by the end of 2016, immigrants made up around 10% of the population of Iceland. Research reveals a gap between immigrants and natives in terms of social and political inclusion. This paper examines the social and political integration of male and female immigrants in Iceland via comparisons with the native population. We ask how native Icelanders and people with a non-Icelandic background experience their social position and political participation within Icelandic society. We focus on political efficacy, ideas about what makes a good citizen, and subjective status position as indicators of the degree of social and political integration. We use data from the 2014 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) on Citizenship, which is based on a random sample of 2,000 individuals and random samples of 600 individuals each targeting two of the largest immigrant groups in Iceland—Lithuanians and Poles—as well as the largest Asian immigrant group: Filipinos. Although the findings show integration of immigrants up to a certain extent, the differences between Icelandic and non-Icelandic participants are apparent and include certain disadvantages for participants with a foreign background. Although other variables—such as income, education, paid employment status, and age—play a larger role in social and political status than foreign nationality, the findings of this study suggest that there is room to improve the integration of immigrants in Iceland.


In this age of social media, people often look at what others are wearing. In particular, Instagram and Twitter influencers often provide images of themselves wearing different outfits and their followers are often inspired to buy similar clothes.We propose a system to automatically find the closest visually similar clothes in the online Catalog (street-to-shop searching). The problem is challenging since the original images are taken under different pose and lighting conditions. The system initially localizes high-level descriptive regions (top, bottom, wristwear. . . ) using multiple CNN detectors such as YOLO and SSD that are trained specifically for apparel domain. It then classifies these regions into more specific regions such as t-shirts, tunic or dresses. Finally, a feature embedding learned using a multi-task function is recovered for every item and then compared with corresponding items in the online Catalog database and ranked according to distance. We validate our approach component-wise using benchmark datasets and end-to-end using human evaluation.


CONTEXT
Relatively little is known about the factors shaping public attitudes toward obesity as a policy concern. This study examines whether individuals' beliefs about the causes of obesity affect their support for policies aimed at stemming obesity rates. This article identifies a unique role of metaphor-based beliefs, as distinct from conventional political attitudes, in explaining support for obesity policies.

METHODS
This article used the Yale Rudd Center Public Opinion on Obesity Survey, a nationally representative web sample surveyed from the Knowledge Networks panel in 2006/07 (N = 1,009). The study examines how respondents' demographic and health characteristics, political attitudes, and agreement with seven obesity metaphors affect support for sixteen policies to reduce obesity rates.

FINDINGS
Including obesity metaphors in regression models helps explain public support for policies to curb obesity beyond levels attributable solely to demographic, health, and political characteristics. The metaphors that people use to understand rising obesity rates are strong predictors of support for public policy, and their influence varies across different types of policy interventions.

CONCLUSIONS
Over the last five years, the United States has begun to grapple with the implications of dramatically escalating rates of obesity. Individuals use metaphors to better understand increasing rates of obesity, and obesity metaphors are independent and powerful predictors of support for public policies to curb obesity. Metaphorical reasoning also offers a potential framework for using strategic issue framing to shift support for obesity policies.


Study Design. Randomized clinical trial. Objective. To assess the effectiveness of manual physical therapy and exercise (MTE) for mechanical neck pain with or without unilateral upper extremity (UE) symptoms, as compared to a minimal intervention (MIN) approach. Summary of Background Data. Mounting evidence supports the use of manual therapy and exercise for mechanical neck pain, but no studies have directly assessed its effectiveness for UE symptoms. Methods. A total of 94 patients referred to 3 physical therapy clinics with a primary complaint of mechanical neck pain, with or without unilateral UE symptoms, were randomized to receive MTE or a MIN approach of advice, motion exercise, and subtherapeutic ultrasound. Primary outcomes were the neck disability index, cervical and UE pain visual analog scales (VAS), and patient-perceived global rating of change assessed at 3-, 6-, and 52-weeks. Secondary measures included treatment success rates and post-treatment healthcare utilization. Results. The MTE group demonstrated significantly larger reductions in short- and long-term neck disability index scores (mean 1-year difference −5.1, 95% confidence intervals (CI) −8.1 to −2.1; P = 0.001) and short-term cervical VAS scores (mean 6-week difference −14.2, 95% CI −22.7 to −5.6; P = 0.001) as compared to the MIN group. The MTE group also demonstrated significant within group reductions in short- and long-term UE VAS scores at all time periods (mean 1-year difference −16.3, 95% CI −23.1 to −9.5; P = 0.000). At 1-year, patient perceived treatment success was reported by 62% (29 of 47) of the MTE group and 32% (15 of 47) of the MIN group (P = 0.004). Conclusion. An impairment-based MTE program resulted in clinically and statistically significant short- and long-term improvements in pain, disability, and patient-perceived recovery in patients with mechanical neck pain when compared to a program comprising advice, a mobility exercise, and subtherapeutic ultrasound.


This paper presents a new workflow to optimize a fixed shading device to reduce thermal loads so that performance and aesthetic can be balanced while exploring various shading forms and typologies during any stage of design. The south wall of a prototypical midrise office building zone per ASHRAE 189.1 criteria in Albuquerque, New Mexico is studied by extracting annual hourly heating and cooling data generated by Energy Plus. This new workflow is tested against other existing methods of shading device design in terms of performance and aesthetics. The workflow presented in this paper demonstrates the optimization of fixed shading devices for cooling and heating loads without limiting aesthetic options or the shading device typology at the beginning of the process. This workflow produces iterations that perform similarly in terms of energy savings so that a designer can select a shading device based on other criteria such as aesthetic concerns or constructability issues. The user can move between different shading typologies and add their own creative, artistic interpretations, while not being required to run many simulations after each design change. This paper demonstrates a process that is more in-line with the building design process. Foundational works in the field of other shading device design methods are included to provide a point of comparison between existing practice and the proposed workflow.


What happens when wars end and the fighting men and women return? Anzac Legacies explores the difficulties that returning soldiers have faced - from the 'broken' Anzacs of 1914-18 to service personnel recently deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. It traces the physical and mental cost of war and considers how veterans, governments and families have responded to the significant emotional, social and financial demands on them. Featuring the work of leading historians and Australian Defence Force psychologists, this book offers new perspectives on how Australians have lived with, and continue to live with, the legacies of war. Importantly, it demonstrates how the wars of the last century have had an enduring impact on generations of Australians well beyond the end of battlefield conflict


This paper extends an earlier review of five studies that have been used by a number of large companies and private advocacy groups to promote major copyright policy changes in Asia Pacific. The earlier paper identified how some of the key arguments used by the proponents of these changes were based on faulty or misleading interpretations of data.
This paper reviews a new report that has been recently released, written for Google, and authored by Deloitte: Access Economics (2018). This review again isolates a number of false claims being made, this time about the economic effects of fair use in Australia, including four key flawed assertions in the paper.
Assertion 1: that substantial downstream value is lost as a result of current copyright law in Australia. The downstream uses of copyright works involved include: text and data mining, digital analytics, cloud computing, transformative, educational and informational uses involving existing copyright works.
Assertion 2: that this downstream value is lost due to current copyright law in Australia reducing cumulative innovation, and that Fair Use can remedy that.
Assertion 3: that creativity is booming in the digital world and that introducing Fair Use in Australia will benefit creative output.
Assertion 4: that transaction costs would be lower under a Fair Use system.
As we shall discuss this presents an unbalanced picture of the likely impacts of adopting Fair Use in Australia, the nature and extent of the real current market problems, the scope for market solutions to the alleged problems, the nature and role of copyright and of transaction costs.
The paper is indeed based on a fundamental misinterpretation of copyright. It fails to adequately acknowledge that copyright merely requires the creator's consent, and provides the basis for a market in creative works and does not prevent use. The paper then does not adequately explain why any copyright market might be expected to fail in the manner alleged, nor why the proposed legal intervention (fair use) might be expected to improve outcomes.
The paper also doesn't present any real new evidence, particularly drawing on the so-called "big data" that must now be available on digital copyright market transactions. A more useful contribution would further have examined the practical limitations of licensing markets, and the extent to which these might be addressed by new digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence and distributed ledger technology in order to enhance creative market growth, investment and innovation.


This article investigates the capital structure of Real Estate companies (REITS) and how it is connected with key financial ratios. Financial analysis provides significant insight of the company capital structure. Existing financial models accumulate the dynamics of different key factors that enhance or diminish the capabilities of a company to extend the debt finance. Previous literature review in trade-off theory, pecking order theory, agency costs and market timing hypothesis postulate the relation of capital structure with several financial measurements. The contribution of this research is to link debt to capital ratio with independent variables, which are important within the real estate business context. Panel data analysis of an adequate sample, from 2005 to 2010, of 371 international listed real estate companies', materialize our assumptions of this linkage of debt ratio. The unmeasured effect of each countries regime is inherited into the equation with the incorporation of dummy variables. This valuation methodology is an easy accessible tool for professionals and practitioners engaged in real estate business.


This thesis integrates the epistemology of testimony with work on the epistemology, psychology, and metaphysics of language. Epistemologists of testimony typically ask what conditions must be met for an agent to gain testimonial justification or knowledge that p given that p has been asserted, and this assertion has been understood. Questions regarding the audience's ability to grasp communicated contents are largely ignored. This is a mistake. Work in the philosophy of language (and related areas) suggests that the determination and recovery of communicated contents is far from straightforward, and can go wrong in many ways. This thesis investigates the epistemology of testimony in light of this work, with a special focus on miscommunication. The introduction provides a brief overview of some relevant work on testimony, the philosophy of language, and psychology, and argues that there is good reason to investigate the three. One obvious problem in this area is that if testimonial knowledge requires knowledge of what is said then the risk of miscommunication will block testimonial knowledge. Chapter two argues that testimonial knowledge does not require knowledge of what is said. The remaining four chapters discuss problems which do arise from miscommunication. Chapters three and four focus on the epistemic uncertainty of communication with context sensitive terms. Chapter three argues that many beliefs formed on the basis of context sensitive testimony are unsafe and insensitive. Chapter four argues that speakers often have plausible deniability about the contents of their assertions. Chapters five and six explore types of miscommunication which arise as a result of background mental states affecting our linguistic understanding. Chapter five explores the social/ethical consequences of this, arguing that certain groups are disproportionately subject to harmful misinterpretation. Chapter six argues that testimonial anti-reductionists make the wrong predictions about a range of cases of cognitive penetration.


Why do people use online social networking sites (e.g., Facebook) and what are the implications of this behavior for well-being? While emotionally unstable individuals experience emotions more intensely, they are less adept at regulation. Consequently, we suggest they may rely on others more to help them deal with their emotions. Further, given they tend to be socially apprehensive they may be particularly likely to rely on online expression because it is less threatening. Consistent with this perspective, we find that emotional unstable individuals are more likely to post self-relevant information online and write about their emotions when doing so – a tendency not observed offline. Further, such emotional writing, paired with the potential to receive social support helps them repair well-being after negative experiences. These results shed light on a motivator for, and benefit of, online social networking, while also demonstrating how the social sharing of emotion can boost well-being.


SUMMARY Certification standard bodies in climate governance are assumed to function as independent third parties agencies in transactions, providing trust and transparency to ensure that the calculation of carbon credits is reliable. This article investigates the validity of this assumption for the voluntary forest carbon market by analysing the environmental credibility of baseline scenarios of two certified REDD+ projects, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (the Maï Ndombe REDD+ Project) and in Madagascar (The CAZ REDD+ Project). Authors show that these two certified REDD+ projects resemble 'virtual emission reduction machines' designed to inflate the production of carbon credits and that they do not structurally change the local economy characteristics which drive deforestation. The design of both REDD+ and certification standards business models leads almost inevitably to the decision to use a baseline scenario with high deforestation rates and to limited interventions in the field. The need to deal with the carbon market's price volatility and to cover the fixed costs of certification exacerbates this trend towards inflated baselines, which also assists in the reduction of land use conflicts with local populations.


The contribution to the magnetic uniaxial perpendicular anisotropy which arises from substrate constraint through magnetostrictive effects has been measured in Ni-Fe and Ni-Co thin films evaporated on substrates at room temperature. This was accomplished by measuring the perpendicular anisotropy before and after removal of the film from the substrate. Data are given for the fcc crystal structure regions of both alloy systems, but data for Ni-Co include compositions with less than 60% Ni which have a small percentage of the hcp phase mixed with the fcc phase. The constraint contribution to the perpendicular anisotropy correlates well with the value of the bulk magnetostriction constant using the equation ∆K˔=3/2λsσ. Measured values of isotropic stress for films thicker than 600 A were 1.6 x 1010 dyn/cm2. In films less than 600 A thick the isotropic stress decreased with decreasing thickness. After removal of the films from the substrates, the measured perpendicular anisotropy deviated from the expected geometrical shape anisotropy near pure Ni in both alloys. This indicates that additional significant sources of anisotropy exist at these compositions. The effect of substrate constraint on the crystalline anisotropy K1 of Ni-Fe epitaxial films has been studied by use of a film removal technique, which involves the evaporation of an epitaxial layer of LiF on MgO, the epitaxial growth of the metallic film on the LiF, and the stripping of the film with water soluble tape. Films ranging in composition from 50% to 100% Ni have been studied. For compositions below 90% Ni the experimental values agree reasonably well with the first order theoretical prediction, ∆K1=[-9/4(C11-C12)λ2 100+9/2C44λ2111]. In order to compare the magnetic properties of epitaxial thin films more completely with the properties of bulk single crystals, Ni-Fe films ranging in composition from 60% to 90% Ni, which were evaporated epitaxially on (100) MgO substrates, have been subsequently annealed at 400°C in a vacuum of less than 10-7 Torr to form the ordered Ni3Fe structure near the 75% composition. This ordered structure has been confirmed by electron diffraction. The saturation magnetization at Ni3Fe increased about 6% with ordering which is in good agreement with previous bulk data. Measurements of the magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy K1 for the epitaxial films show the same large changes with ordering as observed in bulk single crystal samples. In the (001) plane the magnetostriction constants λ100, λ111 are directly related to the induced anisotropy due to a uniform uniaxial strain in the [100] and [110] directions respectively. Assuming that the elastic constants of a film are the same as in bulk material and are unchanged by ordering, the changes in strain sensitivity with ordering for the epitaxial films are found to be in good agreement with values predicted from bulk data. The exchange constant A as measured by ferromagnetic resonance has been measured at the Ni3Fe composition and found to increase 25% with ordering. This seems to indicate a significant increase in the Curie temperature which has only been inferred indirectly for bulk material.