Training on issues concerning the administration of enterprises is very wide spread in educational systems and is requested from most people who want to work for enterprises or to become entrepreneurs themselves. Many Greek universities, institutions and organisations that support life-long learning offer education on this subject field. Greek entrepreneurs nowadays need to face issues that they have not faced before and were not able to predict, due to the current Greek financial crisis. Many of them have studied to the above programs to get the background knowledge for their job, however the great difficulties that they seem to face and the continuous closing of the enterprises demonstrate that the knowledge they got is not applicable and effective to solve the current issues. In an attempt to solve this problem the creation of a blended learning course is proposed to train Greek entrepreneurs on how to practically face their issues. The program will consider the characteristics of human nature that resists to changing of thinking. It will focus on persuading entrepreneurs about the importance of applying the presented new effective strategies and on how to practice them. The proposed educational framework will combine the asynchronous and synchronous communication, so that entrepreneurs can access from their mobile devices. This will make it easier for them to study, considering the daily stressed program of the entrepreneurs. The synchronous meetings will assist interaction where current real problems of entrepreneurs will be presented and solutions based on the practices will be discussed so that the entrepreneurs will practice systematically the theory. On campus support will also be offered partially with the aim to assist entrepreneurs and future students all over the country.


Jack Lemon quipped: ''If you think it's hard to meet new people, try picking up the wrong golf ball.'' Indeed, and no doubt why marketing minds utilise the game of golf for great ways to leverage their shoulder rubbing activities, nurturing business relationships and fundraising ventures. However, now that we have had to keep our heads above water throughout the recession, we have to wonder if these events remained top of list and, if they were put on the back burner through 2009, will they be revived now? So we asked a few specialists in the field just how successful golf day events are and whether they should be considered marketing mountains, or simply marketing molehills?


This research project investigated visual strategies for photographically representing natural phenomena. It sought to re-sensitise the viewer to the significance of natural phenomena through focusing attention on the detail and nuance displayed by local natural events. The project was pursued through the adoption of a static position at selected sites, to make photographic and video recordings of meteorological events unfolding over sustained periods of occupation. My efforts were eventually confined to a single site to enable more detailed observation of the fluctuating impact of wind on water. This is an aesthetic modified by variables such as wind speed and direction, tidal variation, time of day, cloud density, variation in swell pattern and the constant of local topography. My research explored the way in which choice of camera, lenses, focal length, exposure time and computer software all affected representational outcomes.
Writing referenced in the exegesis includes Carl Jung , Maurice Merlau-Ponty, David Abram and Paul Shepard's explorations of the roots of our attitude towards nature; Gaston Bachelard's concept of the sea as mother figure and the art/nature considerations of Arnold Berleant and Alan Carlson. Contextually the project was stimulated by a study of the works of artists including Caspar David Friedrich, much of whose work conveys a subjective emotional response to the natural world; Hiroshi Sugimoto, whose photographic seascapes express his attention to nuance and detail; Bill Viola, whose use of innovative contemporary video explores thresholds of experience; James Turrell, who draws attention to natural phenomena with the frame and Mark Rothko, whose painted surfaces reveal a minimal number of elements contained within a limited space. I also reflected on the work of Jem Southam who constantly revisits local sites to photograph change occurring over time, and the works of photographers Murray Fredericks and David Stephenson that reveal reductive strategies.
The outcome of the research is a body of still photographs and video works, depicting the impact of wind on water. The video work illustrates change occurring over time, while the still images freeze the activity and allow for close inspection of nuance and detail. Ronald Hepburn describes how the modern artist has moved away from original concerns with the imitation and representation of the natural environment, to the creation of new objects that may be contemplated in their own right, and are more expressive of the inner landscape of the human psyche. The works in the exhibition return to those original concerns with imitation of nature, and at the same time, amplify my subjective response through aesthetic choices involving framing, scale, and detail.


Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Annual Meeting of the Berkeley
Linguistics Society: Special Session on Syntax and Semantics in Africa
(1997)


In the mid to late 1890s, J. J. Thomson and colleagues at Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory conducted experiments on "cathode rays" (a form of radiation produced within evacuated glass vessels subjected to electric fields) -- the results of which some historians later viewed as the "discovery" of the electron. This book is both a biography of the electron and a history of the microphysical world that it opened up.The book is organized in four parts. The first part, Corpuscles and Electrons, considers the varying accounts of Thomson's role in the experimental production of the electron. The second part, What Was the Newborn Electron Good For?, examines how scientists used the new entity in physical and chemical investigations. The third part, Electrons Applied and Appropriated, explores the accommodation, or lack thereof, of the electron in nuclear physics, chemistry, and electrical science. It follows the electron's gradual progress from cathode ray to ubiquitous subatomic particle and eponymous entity in one of the world's most successful industries -- electronics. The fourth part, Philosophical Electrons, considers the role of the electron in issues of instrumentalism, epistemology, and realism. The electron, it turns out, can tell us a great deal about how science works.


The Black Sea ecosystem is shown to experience abrupt shifts in its all trophic levels from primary producers to apex predators in 1995–1996. It arises as a manifestation of concurrent changes in its physical climate introduced by intensive warming of its surface waters as well as abrupt increases in the mean sea level and the net annual mean fresh water flux. The warming is evident in the annual‐mean sea surface temperature (SST) data by a continuous rise at a rate of ∼0.25°C per year, following a strong cooling phase in 1991–1993. The most intense warming event with ∼2°C increase in the SST took place during winters of the 1994–1996 period. It also coincides with 4 cm yr−1 net sea level rise in the basin, and substantial change in the annual mean net fresh water flux from 150 km3 yr−1 in 1993 to 420 km3 yr−1 in 1997. The subsurface signature of warming is marked by a gradual depletion of the Cold Intermediate Layer (characterized by T < 8°C) throughout the basin during the same period. Winters of the warming phase are characterized by weaker vertical turbulent mixing and upwelling velocity, stronger stratification and, subsequently, reduced upward nutrient supply from the nutricline. From 1996 onward, the major late winter‐early spring peak of the classical annual phytoplankton biomass structure observed prior to mid‐90s was, therefore, either weakened or disappeared altogether depending on local meteorological and oceanographic conditions during each of these years. The effect of bottom‐up limited unfavorable phytoplankton growth is reflected at higher trophic levels (e.g., mesozooplankton, gelatinous macrozooplankton, and pelagic fishes) in the form of their reduced stocks after 1995.


Economic and environmental concerns over fossil fuels are placing the Southeast United States in a position to expand its use of wood biomass for energy. The region's productive forestland, growing population, and wood products industry can help provide a sustainable, diverse and abundant supply of woody biomass much of which is currently unutilized. While federal and state policies are steering the use of wood toward large‐scale production of cellulosic ethanol and electricity in the Southeast, the generation of thermal energy, the most efficient use of wood, appears to be undervalued. Three market segments that can benefit economically from biomass thermal energy are highlighted: institutions, agriculture, and industry. These segments are selected based on sustainability criteria that include a rapid payback period, high demand for thermal energy, efficient use of woody biomass, proximity to fuel source, and potential for repeatability across the region. Sensitivity analyses and case studies are used to support these findings. Critical factors for implementation of biomass thermal energy in the Southeast are also identified, revealing key economic, political and social barriers and drivers. Central barriers include the lack of a formal biomass market, competition with conventional fossil fuels, and poor public perception of wood energy. Drivers that favor the expansion of wood energy systems are renewable energy tax credits, an established forestry infrastructure, and the mutual relationship between biomass removal for energy and forest management practices. The findings can be used to support government, business, and agricultural clients that are looking to invest in affordable and renewable energy projects. 3


The pine forest of British Columbia is undergoing its largest recorded pest epidemic. The damage caused by native mountain pine beetle creates difficulties for the public owner of the resource, which is interested in protecting future timber supply while salvaging dead and dying pine. This paper addresses two problems that have often been over-looked: the variability and timing of beetle attack, and the variability of pine inventory in each stand. Management controls are limited to the annual rate of harvest and timber product outputs are based on shelf life – the length of time infested timber can still be used to produce lumber. Using mathematical programming to schedule harvest, we introduce a novel objective function based on the maximization of the net returns of the timber portfolio at the end of the 20 year time horizon under harvest and product flow constraints implemented by the public landowner to insure stability in the forest sector, and especially a stable supply of feedstock (bushchips) for bio-energy production, while recovering value from stands that would otherwise become uneconomical to harvest. The optimal short-run response is to increase harvests over the baseline harvest without beetle. The use of future net returns as the optimization objective ensures that harvest during the 20 year time horizon occurs in stands that would otherwise be economically unharvestable and also the harvest is generally above 70% pine in aggregate. Net returns do not exceed those of the baseline harvest without beetle, regardless of the scenario, as the harvest of low value bushchips must be subsidized by the harvest of timber that can be converted into lumber. Shelflife provides significant changes in NPV as more timber can be converted to lumber if shelflife is longer. The government has a difficult fiscal management problem. Employing an evenflow of total harvest can yield higher net gains but at the risk of relying more heavily on the harvest of damaged timber and reduced future harvests of quality timber for dimensional lumber. This strategy would produce a "feast" of short term revenue followed by a "famine" when bushchip harvest is subsidized by the harvest of better quality timber. Alternatively, managing the individual forest products could yield some minimum government revenues but this strategy could also lead to the need to deplete reserves that could be reserved for future timber supply. Regardless of the strategy, to optimize for future timber supply potential means that a large percentage (25% in this study) of the damaged pine should only be harvested in the future and will not be of a quality to produce lumber.


This Article considers a puzzle about how different kinds of law came to be distributed around the world. The legal systems of some European colonies largely reflected the laws of the colonizer. Other colonies exhibited a greater degree of legal pluralism, in which the state administered a mix of different legal systems. Conventional explanations for this variation look to the extent of European settlement: where colonizers settled in large numbers, they chose to bring their own laws; otherwise, they preferred to retain preexisting ones. This Article challenges that assumption by offering a new account of how and why the British Empire selectively transplanted English law to the colonies it acquired during the eighteenth century. The extent to which each colony received English law depended on a political decision about what kind of colony policymakers wanted to create. Eighteenth-century observers agreed that English law could turn any territory into an anglicized, commercial colony on the model of Britain's North American settlements. Preserving preexisting laws, in contrast, would produce colonial economies that enriched the empire as a whole but kept local subjects poor and politically disadvantaged. By controlling how much English law each colony received, British officials hoped to shape its economic, political, and cultural trajectory. This historical account revises not only our understanding of how the common law spread but also prevailing ideas about law's place in development policy today.


A photonic lab-on-a-chip (PhLoC) was developed for rapid determination of interleukin-2 (IL-2) levels secreted by lymphocytes using measurement of optical absorbance. Optical and microfluidic components, including lenses, mirrors, and flow channels, were monolithically created using poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS). Sample and reagent solutions were processed in the form of liquid columns separated by air. A flow channel structure with an air bypass was used to release air between solution columns and to exchange solutions in the measuring chamber, avoiding the intrusion of air into the measuring chamber and the denaturation of the capture antibodies. The concentration of IL-2 was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in the PhLoC. The total time required for the ELISA was less than 30 min. Clear concentration dependence was confirmed for IL-2 concentrations ranging from 50 to 1000 pg/mL. Thus, the concentration of IL-2 secreted by lymphocytes following activation by concanavalin A (Con A) co...


PETROVA, D., 2008. Major bloom producing phytoplankton species in the lakes along the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci.; 14: 201-208 Archive data analysis shows that during the different periods of anthropogenic impact phytoplankton production reaches pathologically high levels. Thus, phytoplankton is assumed as an indicator of marine water quality and ecological health. Its long-term excess in the Black Sea suggests the steps forward for better understanding and management of the existing process. Phytoplankton surplus production exhausts the ecosystem and leads to blooms with respective consequences: changes in water color (red, brown), bad smell, sliming of the body, indigestion after consumption of sea foods. Blooms may last from 10 to 20 days which is disastrous for the bottom coenoses and tourist business. The article presents the main phytoplankton species dynamics during the period 1991–2003 which has led to the above mentioned conditions.


Octopus potassium channels function efficiently at different temperatures due to RNA editing and not genetic differences. The gating of potassium channels is temperature sensitive, suggesting that these channels must adapt to function efficiently in the extreme cold. Garrett and Rosenthal (see the Perspective by Öhman) show that the coding sequences for delayed rectifier potassium channels from an Antarctic and a tropical octopus differed at only four positions and gave functionally identical channels when expressed in Xenopus oocytes. A variation in temperature responses instead came from extensive mRNA editing. In particular, an edit that recoded an isoleucine to a valine in the pore of the Antarctic octopus channel greatly accelerated gating kinetics. S. Garrett, J. J. C. Rosenthal, RNA editing underlies temperature adaptation in K+ channels from polar octopuses. Science 335, 848–851 (2012). [Abstract] [Full Text] M. Öhman, A cold editor makes the adaptation. Science 335, 805–806 (2012). [Abstract] [Full Text]


SINCE BECOMING a side-line observer of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1939, my approach to alcoholism has undergone an almost total reorientation. For the first time I saw what peace of mind means in the achievement of sobriety and I began to consider the emotional factors involved from a very different viewpoint. In A.A. meetings, the role of resentments was a recurrent theme. This seemed significant. Continuing this line of observation, I found that another enemy of sobriety was defiance, which Sillman (1) had already described as "defiant individuality," a major hallmark of the personality of alcoholics.


An interval of stratigraphic condensation extending for 300 km from the fluvially dom- inated Hudson River estuary to the adjacent continental shelf reveals stratal relationships within an unconformity-related depositional sequence that are commonly difficult to re- solve in seismic reflection profiles and outcrop. High-resolution side-scan sonar and ba- thymetry, more than 100 sediment cores ;2 m long, and radioisotope ( 14 C, 137 Cs) age control show that much of the valley was filled by ca. 3 to 1 ka. The present rate of sediment accumulation averages 1 mm/yr, corresponding with a sea-level rise of ;1.2 mm/ yr relative to local bedrock. Condensation is manifested today by sedimentary bypass in most parts of the estuary and by the trapping of available sediment (1.2-5.6 3 10 5 t/yr (metric tons)) along narrow reaches and primarily in the vicinity of the estuarine turbidity maximum, a part of the estuary located upstream of the salinity intrusion ;25 km from the mouth (3.0 3 10 5 t/yr). Shelf condensation is due to sediment starvation. The con- densed interval merges updip with a nascent sequence boundary as the estuary reaches its final filling phase and downdip with the sequence boundary that developed at the Last Glacial Maximum. Delta progradation may take place as available shelf accommodation is filled, but such sediments are expected to be removed once sea level begins to fall. This sedimentation pattern, in which a condensed interval merges with different sequence boundaries, is consistent with the stratigraphic record of the Atlantic margin back to the Paleogene and may be typical of sediment-starved margins.


The thesis investigates how two contemporary novels address the relationship between memory and identity in the process of constructing narratives of the self. This question is approached through an analysis of narrative structure in conjunction with close attention to the novels' contents. Narratology and psychoanalytical literary criticism form the theoretical framework for this analysis. It is shown how the narrators consistently structure their memories into narratives according to what meaning they would like the narrative to create, and how this strategy ultimately fails. The discussions of the novels' treatment of the topic suggest that both novels treat memories as malleable and identity as a self-interested structuring force. Nevertheless, it is concluded that they both question the individual's influence over the narratives of the self, and emphasise the role of external reality in the shaping our stories about ourselves. A desire for meaning is the primary structuring force of narrative.


Paradigm adherence has been developed as a meta-theoretical approach to organize and to classify the multitude of different theories of counseling and psychotherapy. Four paradigms have been identified in the literature: The Organic-Medical, The Psychological, The Systemic-Relational, and the Social Constructivist paradigms. Only one other study to date has examined paradigm adherence of a group (Marriage and Family Therapists) and how it can be of value to the mental health professionals. This study examined the relationship between paradigm adherence and different characteristics of mental health professionals in the state of Missouri. In this study, Licensed Psychologists, Licensed Clinical Social Workers, and Licensed Professional Counselors were surveyed to investigate if there was paradigm alignment across professions. Demographic variables, supervisory experiences, and personality variables were also assessed to explore any correlates with paradigm adherence. Chi square analyses revealed that there was no significant relationship between paradigm adherence and the profession of the respondents. Chi square analyses also indicated that no relationship existed between paradigm adherence and one's supervisory experiences. Results of a discriminant analysis revealed that demographic variables did not contribute to discriminating among the paradigm adherence groups. Results on the personality assessment indicated that individuals that adhered to the Social Constructivist paradigm scored significantly higher on the Honesty-Humility scale than adherents to the Psychological paradigm, but there were no significant group differences on all six personality scales combined. Implications and suggestions for future research are provided.


This Research leave from existence of public relations phenomenon in subprovince of Banyuwangi, namely meliahat of[is existence of public relations activity at part of public relations local government of subprovince of Banyuwangi in informing workplan to society.
Basically relation activity of masyatakat governmental in local government is to give service to society and improve positive image of local government. But practically imej expanding in society that obsolence service of public specially at activity of liaison not merely simply story
which from mouth to mouth without truth. How is difficult of him process bureaucracy in service of society. This phenomenon indicate that management of service of public a long way off from what expected and oppose against what have been contained in orders mentioning that society is
entitled to get service which with quality as according to target and principalitys service of public and also according to standard service of public which have been determined. Do not seldom also society assume that liaison activity only representing activity having the character of
rutinitas This research have a purpose to know public relations activity in informing workplan to society,
where this research of descriptive type mengunakan qualitative which is portrayed in the form of narrative with dig of data use tehknik interview and documentation. Data analysis the used is analysis of domain utilize to obtain;get picture in general and relative totally whereof which come within at problems fundamental by tracing existing semantical [relation/link] that is seen
from. (1). Coresponding Domain of type dengn. (2). Domain related to cause or reason. (3). Domain related to function. (4). Domain related to way of.
Result of research indicate that becoming public relations activity in informing workplan to society cover (1). Executor of public relations activity, in government of subprovince of Banyuwangi executor of public relations activity by superintendent of public relations and
assisted by Sub Units Service Of Information, Sub Units Processing Of Information, Sub Units of RTF ( Radio, Television and Film) pursuant to specification and duty of is each sub units. ( 2).submitted message, message written and unwritten in the form of realise pres and mass media of
containing conference of decree ( SK), by law ( PERDA) and activity  activity and also event-event executed by government of subprovince of Banyuwangi. Message having the character of submitted direct by face face to, while message having the character of is indirectly submitted to
pass invitation card and mass media. (3). used as by media is medium of is forwarding of and dissemination of information cover news suarat, radio, and banner of baliho. (4). Target activity of public relations, target of public internal is to conduct relation with employees and officer
[pass/through] communications pattern of interpersonal and use supporter media like pasteboard.
At eksternal public braid relation with society, elite figure and selfsupporting institute of society. ( 5). Resistance execution of public relations, resistor in liaison activity in subprovince of Banyuwangi is limitation of circumlocutary bureaucracy system and fund  twist so that result delay of fund in financing of public relations activity causing less maximal it him duty executed
by public relations.
Activity public relations in informing workplan to society represent an communications activity form. Communications activity represent an implementation form of planning of
communications management and communications to reach target which have been specified.
Hence public relations activity in informing workplan to society is aim to create harmonious relation at external and internal of institute. Internal to in this case represent governmental scope of subprovince of Banyuwangi namely form socialization and interaction [among/between]
governmental officer of subprovince of Banyuwangi. While is external of him is its form of good is same activity with society which is application in the form of liaison communications activity. Become governmental public relations activity at part of public relations local
government of subprovince of Banyuwangi only representing a eye rutinitas and there no difference with governmental public relations activity in area  other area. given suggestion from result of this research is expected can become consideration and input in taking decision to local
government of subprovince of Banyuwangi specially in developing and improving roles of public relations so that policy socialization and or workplan to in informing to society can reach maximally.


Abstract This study investigates how Indian TV serials are affecting Bangladeshi culture through changes in lifestyle, family and intimate relationship, and forms of art and literature. The qualitative research was conducted on 60 respondents from Khulna and Dhaka city of Bangladesh who were selected through purposive sampling method. Findings suggest that Indian TV serials have a significant impact on the day-to-day life of people living in Bangladesh. It influences the lifestyle of people as they spend a considerable time watching these TV serials. Alongside, the indigenous art, literature, language, customs and rituals are being shaped due to heavy dependency on Indian TV serials. Such inclination raises concern for some potential risks including family conflicts, crime, psychological disorder and even suicide.


Turning critical feedback into a constructive message can be a difficult skill to conquer. This book will guide you through the process of learning how to receive critical feedback, developing skills for self-talk, understanding how to give constructive feedback effectively, and handling atypical problems. Feedback is a very powerful communication tool that delivered properly can benefit everyone with a clear and helpful exchange of information about what's working and what's not. The techniques outlined in this book for coping with fair or unjustified critical feedback are essential for effective communication. Coverage includes- To learn how to receive critical feedback To present useful coping mechanisms for handling critical feedback To show how to give constructive feedback fairly and effectively To discuss handling special problems


It has been proposed recently that a deficit in keeping track of spatial locations may contribute to the severity of unilateral neglect in some right hemisphere stroke patients. However, performance on traditional spatial working memory (SWM) tasks (e.g. Corsi blocks) might be confounded by failure to encode leftward locations, rather than a true deficit of maintaining locations in SWM. Here we introduced new procedures for circumventing this to measure SWM capacity in neglect. In a first experiment, 20 right hemisphere stroke patients (10 with and 10 without neglect) were tested on a computerized vertical variant of the Corsi task. Sequences of spatial locations in a vertical column were displayed and participants had to tap out the remembered sequence on a touchscreen. Patients with left neglect were impaired on this vertical SWM task compared with all control groups. However, poor performance on this task (as for Corsi blocks) might involve impaired memory for stimulus sequence, or poor visuomotor control of manual responding, rather than reduced SWM capacity per se. A second experiment therefore employed a purer measure of vertical SWM. After the displayed sequence, a single location was now probed visually, with observers judging verbally (yes/no) if it had been in the preceding sequence. Hence order no longer mattered, and no spatial motor response was required. Again, the neglect group was impaired relative to all others, now with very little overlap between the performances of individual neglect patients versus individuals in control groups. Poor performance on the second task, which provides a purer measure of SWM capacity, correlated with severity of left neglect on cancellation tasks (but not on line bisection), consistent with recent proposals that SWM deficits can exacerbate left neglect on visual search tasks when present conjointly. Lesion anatomy indicated that neglect patients with a SWM deficit were most likely to have damage to parietal white matter, plus, in the second experiment, to the insula also. These findings demonstrate that an impairment in SWM capacity can contribute to the neglect syndrome in patients with stroke involving regions within the right parietal lobe and insula.


Analytical equations for the diffused scattered light correction factor of Sun photometers are derived and analyzed. It is shown that corrections are weakly dependent on the atmospheric optical thickness. They are influenced mostly by the size of aerosol particles encountered by sunlight on its way to a Sun photometer. In addition, the accuracy of the small-angle approximation used in the work is studied with numerical calculations based on the exact radiative transfer equation.


This piece of research explored young children's (3-8 years) interpretation and understanding of well-being. The majority of research on well-being has been with adults and older children, with a distinct gap in younger children's perspective being included. Where subjective well-being has been part of research, it has tended to be an add-on to the more weighty and identifiable data from government statistics and pre-determined objective measures. Subjective well-being is prominent in this piece of research, thus securing young children's perspectives.

The research was undertaken with forty children across four year-groups in one large urban community Infant school in the East of England. Drawings, paintings or photographs together with their narrative explanations, were collected from the children. Eight children then categorised the data, ordering it by frequency and importance. The final categorisation resulted in six key themes from the children: 1.Family, 2.Doing things with Family, 3.Being outside, 4.Pets and animals, 5, Activities, games and toys, 6. Friends.

The researcher analysed the data using Barthes (1973, 1977) visual semiotic approach alongside a developmental perspective (Einarsdottir et al 2009), then thematic analysis. The researcher's key themes were 1.Key relationships, 2.Sense of self, and 3.Outdoor world, which encapsulated the children's themes and ideas.

The importance of key relationships to young children has implications for time spent with family having greater status. It was also evident that young children are developing a sense of self, and need support, validation, and time from key people for this to be successful. The outdoor world was also significant, which needs recognition, provision and value attributed to it.

The elements that make young children feel well and happy, need recognition and promotion by adults and professionals. Children's perspectives need greater prominence in the policy domain. This piece of research demonstrated that young children are able to interpret and understand well-being, with the findings showing differences, or differences in degree of emphasis, to those put forward by older children and adults.


Stimuli-responsive drug delivery systems (DDSs) offering spatial-temporal and dosage controlled transport of drugs in vivo have attracted much attention for anticancer drug delivery. In the present work, a kind of phenylboronic ester-linked PEG-lipid conjugate was designed and synthesized for H2O2-responsive drug delivery. Firstly, a chain-end alkynyl functionalized methoxy poly(ethylene glycol) with a phenylboronic pinacol ester linker was synthesized via a classical Passerini reaction of carboxyl functionalized methoxy poly(ethylene glycol)2000 (mPEG2k-COOH), 4-formylphenylboronic pinacol ester and propargyl isocyanoacetamide. The obtained polymer was denoted as mPEG2k-PBPE-alkynyl. Then, the oxidation-responsive cleavage of the phenylboronic pinacol ester linker between the mPEG2k-COOH and alkynyl chain-end was verified by in situ1H NMR and mass spectra characterization. Furthermore, the amphiphilic PEG-lipid conjugate was synthesized by the Cu(I)-catalyzed click reaction of mPEG2k-PBPE-alkynyl and 3-azido-1,2-propanediol distearate (N3-DSA). The resultant mPEG2k-PBPE-DSA could self-assemble into stable micelles in aqueous media. Nile red was used as the model drug and was loaded into the micelles. The obtained drug loaded micelles exhibited a typical H2O2-responsive drug release behavior and could be effectively internalized by MCF-7 cells. In addition, the synthesized mPEG2k-PBPE-DSA was tested to be nontoxic towards RAW264.7 cells. Therefore, this biocompatible mPEG2k-PBPE-DSA conjugate would be promising for applications in ROS-responsive drug delivery.


Using data from the longitudinal retirement history survey (RHS), we examine the economic status of the cohort of the elderly who were 68 -73 years old by 1979 to see who fell through the safety net in the 1970s. Our most important finding is that a non-trivial fraction of the elderly in the age/vintage group we study either remained poor, became poor, or had very low replacement rates in terms of their total income. This occurred despite the enormous general improvement of the economic status of the elderly, part of which was made possible by very large increases in real Social Security benefits. Examination of the characteristics of those who fell through the safety net reveal that females, especially widows, were the most likely candidates for economic difficulty in this cohort in this stage of their life. We also note a sharp difference in realizations of retirement income expectations among those who were poor and/or had low replacement rates relative to those who were well off and/or had high replacement rates. Both groups received substantially more Social Security benefits than expected, whereas those with (ex post) low replacement rates received less in pensions and continued earnings than they had expected while those with high replacement rates received more than expected.


Book synopsis: How do objects 'speak' to us? What happens to authorship when voice is projected into inanimate objects? How can one articulate an object into speech? Is the inarticulate body necessarily silent? These are just some of the questions brought up by this unique and unusual collection of essays, which presents subjects and categories often overlooked by the disciplines of art history, visual culture, theatre history and comparative literature.
Drawing from and expanding upon the 'Performing Objects, Animating Images' academic session run by the Henry Moore Institute at the Association of Art Historians conference, held in London in 2003, this book presents thirteen essays that bring together a multidisciplinary approach to the animated object. Contributions range from literal accounts of magic lanterns, tableaux vivants, puppets and ventriloquist dummies, to the more abstract notions of voice displacement in audio art and authorship projection in writing machines. The contributors come from diverse backgrounds in art history, cultural history, comparative literature, and artistic, theatrical and curatorial practice, and all tackle the issue of 'articulate objects' from a range of lively and unexpected perspectives.


The protein sequence is coded with the help of the triplets of nucleotides, each corresponding to one amino acid in a protein se- quence. The triplet code of the coding sequences possesses some informative redundancy. Some triplets are more probable than others. The analogous redundancies appear in all natural languages. The non-equal frequency of the characters in plain text makes possible that entire words can be predicted given the context of the plain text. This is typical problem in cryptanalysis that a plain text is compressed before en- crypting it in order to reduce the language redundancies. The nucleotides represent the natural units to discuss the redundancies in the coding sequences of natural genomes. The mutation pressure and selection pressure are the main factors responsible for the observed redundancies. Then, the nucleotide frequency in DNA seems to be the natural information weight. We show, that the probability of a nucleotide to stay non- mutated becomes another, the more efficient information weight. It has smaller redundancy although it is correlated with the nucleotide fre- quency. We have found the values of probability for nucleotide to stay non-mutated in the particular case of the Borrellia burgdorferi ge- nome. In order to examine the usefulness of the new frequencies we used them in a problem of bit-string packing in a channel with a given capacity. We performed a computer experiment, in which we have generated all possible oligomers consisting of k nucleotides and we have shown, that if the number of bits of the information carried out by the oligomers does not exceed a given threshold value, the same as calcu- lated for genes of the Borrelia burgdorferi genome, then the distribution of the generated oligomers resembles the one used by these genes.


In this paper we propose a monthly measure for the euro area Gross Domestic Product (GDP) based on a small scale factor model for mixed frequency data, featuring two factors: the first is driven by hard data, whereas the second captures the contribution of survey variables as coincident indicators. Within this framework we evaluate both the in-sample contribution of the second survey-based factor, and the short term forecasting performance of the model in a pseudo-real time experiment. We find that the survey-based factor plays a significant role for two components of GDP: Industrial Value Added and Exports. Moreover, the two factor model outperforms in terms of out of sample forecasting accuracy the traditional autoregressive distributed lags (ADL) specifications and the single factor model, with few exceptions for Exports and in growth rates.


Abstract Low heart rate variability (HRV) predicts sudden cardiac death. Long-chain (LC) n-3 PUFA (C20–C22) status is positively associated with HRV. This cross-sectional study investigated whether vegans aged 40–70 years (n 23), whose diets are naturally free from EPA (20 : 5n-3) and DHA (22 : 6n-3), have lower HRV compared with omnivores (n 24). Proportions of LC n-3 PUFA in erythrocyte membranes, plasma fatty acids and concentrations of plasma LC n-3 PUFA-derived lipid mediators were significantly lower in vegans. Day-time interbeat intervals (IBI), adjusted for physical activity, age, BMI and sex, were significantly shorter in vegans compared with omnivores (mean difference −67 ms; 95 % CI −130, −3·4, P<0·05), but there were no significant differences over 24 h or during sleep. Vegans had higher overall HRV, measured as 24 h standard deviation of normal-to-normal intervals (SDNN) (mean adjusted difference 27 ms; 95 % CI 1, 52, P=0·039). Conversely, vegans presented with decreased 8 h day-time HRV: mean adjusted difference in SDNN −20 ms; 95 % CI −37, −3, P=0·021, with no differences during nocturnal sleep. Day-time parameters of beat-to-beat HRV (root of the mean of the sum of the squares of differences between adjacent normal-to-normal intervals, percentage of adjacent normal-to-normal intervals that differ by >50 % and high-frequency power) were similarly lower in vegans, with no differences during sleep. In conclusion, vegans have higher 24 h SDNN, but lower day-time HRV and shorter day-time IBI relative to comparable omnivores. Vegans may have reduced availability of precursor markers for pro-resolving lipid mediators; it remains to be determined whether there is a direct link with impaired cardiac function in populations with low-n-3 status.


Intuition suggests that random testing should exhibit a considerable difference in the number of faults detected by two different runs of equal duration. As a consequence, random testing would be rather unpredictable. This article first evaluates the variance over time of the number of faults detected by randomly testing object‐oriented software that is equipped with contracts. It presents the results of an empirical study based on 1215 h of randomly testing 27 Eiffel classes, each with 30 seeds of the random number generator. The analysis of over 6 million failures triggered during the experiments shows that the relative number of faults detected by random testing over time is predictable, but that different runs of the random test case generator detect different faults. The experiment also suggests that the random testing quickly finds faults: the first failure is likely to be triggered within 30 s. The second part of this article evaluates the nature of the faults found by random testing. To this end, it first explains a fault classification scheme, which is also used to compare the faults found through random testing with those found through manual testing and with those found in field use of the software and recorded in user incident reports. The results of the comparisons show that each technique is good at uncovering different kinds of faults. None of the techniques subsumes any of the others; each brings distinct contributions. This supports a more general conclusion on comparisons between testing strategies: the number of detected faults is too coarse a criterion for such comparisons—the nature of faults must also be considered. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Lucio Fulci and Ruggero Deodato have created some of the most violent and disturbing images in Italian horror cinema, and both directors have achieved a certain level of notoriety due to this focus on gruesome excess. A good deal has been written about Fulci's work generally, and Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust has been the subject of scholarly analysis as well as being vilified by the majority of the international press. However, one aspect of their films which is rarely mentioned is the way that music is used quite specifically to heighten the impact of their savage set-pieces, as well as to provide continuity and coherent underscoring of the films' themes and imagery as a whole. Music score often has a significant role to play in Italian horror (for example, the work of Ennio Morricone, Fabio Frizzi, and Goblin) but its importance seems to have been unfairly neglected. This paper, therefore, will focus on Riz Ortolani's scoring of Fulci's Don't Torture a Duckling and Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust. It will explain how Ortolani utilises a range of musical devices, orchestration, and instrumentation, to complement fully the psychological and physiological impact created by the imagery. For example, in Fulci's film, the juxtaposition of a beautiful melody being sung by Ornella Vanoni as the village "witch" is brutally beaten to death on screen, or the haunting and melancholic main theme used in Deodato's film contrasted with violent actions and horrific images. Ortolani has composed scores for numerous Italian genre pictures (including Deodato's inspiration - Mondo Cane, 1962), but these scores are particularly notable in terms of the crucial role they play in enhancing the unsettling effects generated by these two films.


Over the past decade, wireless multihop ad hoc networks have received a tremendous amount of research focus, at the core of which lies the design problem for efficient routing algorithms to meet various scenarios and applications. The axiom, "one size doesn't fit all," continues to stand firmly to this day. In light of this, we introduce a new routing design concept - the component approach. We examine existing routing protocols and break them down into smaller building blocks, namely, routing components. The component analysis and classification results show that most routing protocols can be functionally decomposed into several basic routing components. This fact indicates that it is feasible to design a component-based routing (CBR) protocol. With a different realization for each basic routing component, it is expected that the routing behavior of CBR can be tailored to different application profiles and time-varying environment parameters at a reasonable cost


Appreciation of the role that families play in young children's meaning-making about the causes of illness could assist educators and healthcare practitioners to provide more effective support for young children and their families. To date, researchers have largely sought to determine children's understanding at various stages of cognitive development rather than exploring how children might acquire, process, and share their knowledge within particular social contexts. Adopting a socio-constructivist perspective and a narrative methodology, I sought to identify ways in which young children's illness causality concepts are embedded within the familial context. Fieldwork included in-depth interviews with five four-year-old children, their parents/guardians; sibling/s aged five to nine years, and two other family members. Participants from Manukau City, New Zealand, reflected a diversity of cultural communities, spiritual orientations, and family structure. To aid the elicitation of young children's narratives of illness causality, child participants were invited to construct a storybook about 'getting sick' utilizing art materials and photographs of children experiencing illness. A social interactional approach was employed to interpret participants' narratives and suggests that young children's illness causality constructions are significantly influenced by the particular illness experiences, illness prevention messages and behavioural rules within families. Findings indicate that children's existing understandings and associated family practices need to be utilized as the context for children's learning about health and well-being.


Continuous-wave time-of-flight (ToF) cameras show great promise as low-cost depth image sensors in mobile applications. However, they also suffer from several challenges, including limited illumination intensity, which mandates the use of large numerical aperture lenses, and thus results in a shallow depth of field, making it difficult to capture scenes with large variations in depth. Another shortcoming is the limited spatial resolution of currently available ToF sensors. In this paper we analyze the image formation model for blurred ToF images. By directly working with raw sensor measurements but regularizing the recovered depth and amplitude images, we are able to simultaneously deblur and super-resolve the output of ToF cameras. Our method outperforms existing methods on both synthetic and real datasets. In the future our algorithm should extend easily to cameras that do not follow the cosine model of continuous-wave sensors, as well as to multi-frequency or multi-phase imaging employed in more recent ToF cameras.


In the upcoming age of semantic web there is a large number of relational databases being widely used. When time comes for a legacy relational database to migrate to semantic web or to be integrated with it, an important issue of determining similarity (compatibility) between two data models expressed in different ways arises. The goal of this paper is to describe the methodology for similarity assessment of relational database models and semantic data models and to present an ontology matching tool research prototype. The methodology consists of a set of steps, including transformation rules for data models, whose compatibility must be assessed, to the same ontology representation and applying ontology matching techniques. The methodology enables domain experts to perform a matching task semi-automatically between a relational data model and data model expressed as an ontology. The results of the semi-automatic matching are manually verified by the domain experts. The methodology was approbated using a use case from land administration domain. In the use case compatibility of data model provided by an international standard and a relational database had to be assessed.


In this penetrating book, Jean Stefancic and Richard Delgado use historical investigation and critical analysis to diagnose the cause of the pervasive unhappiness among practicing lawyers. Most previous writers have blamed the high rate of burnout, depression, divorce, and drug and alcohol dependency among these highly paid professionals on the narrow specialization, long hours, and intense pressures of modern legal practice. Stefancic and Delgado argue that these professional demands are only symptoms of a deeper problem: the way lawyers are taught to think and reason. They show how legal education and practice have been rendered arid and dull by formalism, a way of thinking that values precedent and doctrine above all, exalting consistency over ambiguity, rationality over emotion, and rules over social context and narrative.

Stefancic and Delgado dramatize the plight of modern lawyers by exploring the unlikely friendship between Archibald MacLeish, who gave up a successful but unsatisfying law career to pursue his literary yearnings, and Ezra Pound. Reading the forty-year correspondence between MacLeish and Pound, Stefancic and Delgado draw lessons about the difficulties of attorneys trapped in worlds that give them power, prestige, and affluence but not personal satisfaction, much less creative fulfillment. Long after Pound had embraced fascism, descended into lunacy, and been institutionalized, MacLeish took up his old mentor's cause, turning his own lack of fulfillment with the law into a meaningful crusade and ultimately securing Pound's release from St. Elizabeths Hospital. Drawing on MacLeish's story, Stefancic and Delgado contend that literature, public interest work, and critical legal theory offer tools to contemporary attorneys for finding meaning and overcoming professional dissatisfaction.


Microalgae have been so far identified as the major producers of organic matter through their photosynthetic activities. In the present work, Nannochloris sp. and Amphora sp., two marine microalgae, have been investigated for proteins and lipids production. Protein fraction was quantified using Bicinchoninic acid (BCA) assay. Protein content in Nannochloris sp. was 16.69 ±4.07 % of dry mass and in Amphora sp. it was 39.89 ±2.09 % of dry mass. Enzyme assays were conducted spectrophotometrically. Nannochloris sp. had malate dehydrogenase, peroxidase and catalase activities. Amphora sp. exhibited malate dehydrogenase, catalase and cytochrome C oxidase activities. These enzymes have several valuable applications in some metabolic pathways and as antioxidant nutrition additives. Besides, lipid extraction was conducted using methanol/ chloroform solvent extraction. Crude lipid extract was analyzed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Lipid contents were 8.14 ±3.67 % in Nannochloris sp. and 10.48 ±1.26% on dry basis in Amphora sp., respectively. Nannochloris sp. fatty acids were composed of C16:0 and C18:0 that are valuable for biodiesel production, and ω-3 C18:3, ω-6 C18:2, ω-6 C16:2 having great nutritional values. In Amphora sp., the fatty acids consisted of C14:0, C16:0 and C16:1 shown to be valuable for biodiesel production and ω-3 C22:6 having high nutritional values. Furthermore, a single step conversion of microalgal oil to fatty acid methyl esters was carried out starting directly from lyophilized microalgae. This promising process, in situ transesterification, led to better yields of methyl esters as compared to conventional lipid extraction followed by separate transesterification.


This article presents arguments and evidence suggesting that the bankruptcy abuse reform (BAR) of 2005 may have been one contributor to the destabilizing surge in subprime foreclosures. Before BAR took effect, overly indebted borrowers could file bankruptcy to free up income to pay their mortgage by having their credit card and other unsecured debts discharged. BAR eliminated that option for better-off filers through a means test and other requirements, thus making it harder to save one's home by filing bankruptcy. By way of evidence, the authors show that the impact of BAR was greater in U.S. states where one would expect it to have a larger impact — namely, in states with high bankruptcy exemptions. Filers in low-exemption states were not very protected before BAR, so they were less likely to be affected by the reform. The authors estimate that for a state with an average home equity exemption, the subprime foreclosure rate after BAR rose 11 percent relative to average before the reform; given the number of subprime mortgages in the United States, that figure translates into 29,000 additional subprime foreclosures per quarter nationwide attributable to BAR.


A companion paper presents an algorithm for estimating the actions of orbits in axisymmetric potentials. This algorithm is fast enough for it to be feasible to fit automatically a parametrized distribution function to observational data for the solar neighbourhood. We explore the predictive power of these models and the extent to which global models are constrained by data confined to the solar cylinder. We adopt a gravitational potential that is generated by three discs (gas and both thin and thick stellar discs), a bulge and a dark halo, and fit the thin-disc component of the distribution function to the solar-neighbourhood velocity distribution from the Geneva–Copenhagen survey. We find that the disc's vertical density profile is in good agreement with data at z ≲ 500 pc. The thick-disc component of the distribution function is then used to extend the fit to data from Gilmore & Reid for z ≲ 2.5 kpc. The resulting model predicts excellent fits to the profile of the vertical velocity dispersion σz(z) from the RAVE survey and to the distribution of vφ velocity components at |z| ∼ 1 kpc from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The ability of this model to predict successfully data that were not used in the fitting process suggests that the adopted gravitational potential (which is close to a maximum-disc potential) is close to the true one. We show that if another plausible potential is used, the predicted values of σz are too large. The models imply that in contrast to the thin disc, the thick disc has to be hotter vertically than radially, a prediction that it will be possible to test in the near future. When the model parameters are adjusted in an unconstrained manner, there is a tendency to produce models that predict unexpected radial variations in quantities such as scale height. This finding suggests that to constrain these models adequately one needs data that extends significantly beyond the solar cylinder. The models presented in this paper might prove useful to the interpretation of data for external galaxies that have been taken with an integral field unit.


Abstract This paper describes the meaning of a father's presence with a full-term healthy child delivered by caesarean section, as observed during the routine post-operative separation of mother and child. Videotaped observations recorded at a maternity clinic located in the metropolitan area of Stockholm, Sweden formed the basis for the study, in which fifteen fathers with their infants participated within two hours of elective caesarean delivery in the 37th - 40th week of pregnancy. A phenomenological analysis based on Giorgi's method was conducted on the data. The description of the new father's experiences that emerged pointed to a process of being and becoming in taking the child to himself. Fatherhood developed gradually as a result of recurrent experiences of the child's expressions. There was an ebb and flow between taking on the role of being a father and physical withdrawal from the role. The findings of this study not only confirm previous accounts of new fathers' experiences, but go further in revealing an ebb and flow variation in the fathers' involvement. What this indicates is that the process of transition to fatherhood requires not only presence but time. The period required for this process thus must not be disturbed, but supported, trusting in the father's ability to assume his role as a father. It is suggested that, in addition to their relevance in guiding the attitudes and expectations of those professionally involved in postnatal care and community health, these findings could be useful in antenatal courses for parents, and especially in instances when caesarean birth is planned, to highlight the meaning of the role of fathers as caregivers.


An examination is made of the stability of a cylindrical air-supported membrane supporting a central line load and subject to ponding by a fluid in the hollow so caused. A critical value of the central load is shown to exist and its value is obtained by a numerical analysis. Results from the analysis indicate that low profile air-supported structures should be less liable to failure by this mode of collapse than inflatables with a semi-circular profile. However, under normal operating pressures even the latter require loads of the order of 400 N/m (27 lb/ft) in the presence of water to cause collapse of structures with a span of 50 m. Nevertheless designs should be examined carefully in view of possiblee pressure reductions coinciding with internal or external roof loadings.


This paper describes a new adaptive algorithm that smoothly and dynamically adjusts the system resources of link rates and transmitter powers to maximize the performance of the system. Performance is explicitly measured from the point of view of traffic carried by the network. Transmitter powers are subsumed in the feasible rate region for the wireless network, and are not directly involved in evaluating the network. A new adaptive algorithm, DSM, is presented. DSM seeks optimal system performance by greedily searching the rate region surface seeking link rates that best meet QoS and user demand needs and then calculates transmitter powers to support these rates. If system requirements such as the number of users or their QoS change, the DSM adapts by again exploring the now changed rate region. Changes in the wireless environment are addressed by the algorithm in a similar fashion.


The dominant narrative in Kenya, spanning the realms of political rhetoric, museum exhibition practice and everyday encounters, is that ethnicity is the defining characteristic of an individual. This reduced, and fundamentally politicised, notion of ethnicity disregards the extent to which identities are mutable, context-dependent and in a state of constant negotiation. To suggest that identity is a simple function of ethnicity not only erodes the agency of Kenyans who are developing plural practices of belonging, but supports a status quo of manipulative political manoeuvring, which pits ethnic groups against one another at the cost of the country as a whole.

This research proposes that ethnicity is galvanized in certain contexts yet barely invisible in others; it is one identity in an ongoing performance of an ensemble of fluctuating identities. My practice explores and interrogates this proposition by coproducing narratives of belonging with specific constituencies in Nairobi. This PhD submission focusses on two of these projects, A Life in the Day (2011-13) and The Bike Gang (2015-17) and investigates co-produced moving image as both a document of, and a catalyst for, counter-narratives of a Kenyan identity.

Integral to the production and distribution of these counter narratives are Sheng, the slang of Nairobi, and bazes, the public spaces of the city which bring young people of similar affiliations together. Sheng, as a language, and bazes, as spaces of assembly, can be seen as distributed, emergent networks; which counter the dominant narrative of the singular importance of ethnicity, and as practices of representation; which I try and extend in the process of co-producing narratives. Anecdotes, performed in Sheng at the bazes, emerge as a focal point of this research and a strategy for exploring belonging. This practice of co-produced moving image, developed through an intuitive and iterative process, suggests an inextricable intertwining of the epistemological aspiration and the ethical terrain of the research.


Abstract. Nitrous acid (HONO) acts as a major precursor of the hydroxyl radical (OH) in the urban atmospheric boundary layer in the morning and throughout the day. Despite its importance, HONO formation mechanisms are not yet completely understood. It is generally accepted that conversion of NO 2 on surfaces in the presence of water is responsible for the formation of HONO in the nocturnal boundary layer, although the type of surface on which the mechanism occurs is still under debate. Recent observations of higher than expected daytime HONO concentrations in both urban and rural areas indicate the presence of unknown daytime HONO source(s). Various formation pathways in the gas phase, and on aerosol and ground surfaces have been proposed to explain the presence of daytime HONO. However, it is unclear which mechanism dominates and, in the cases of heterogeneous mechanisms, on which surfaces they occur. Vertical concentration profiles of HONO and its precursors can help in identifying the dominant HONO formation pathways. In this study, daytime HONO and NO 2 vertical profiles, measured in three different height intervals (20–70, 70–130, and 130–300 m) in Houston, TX, during the 2009 Study of Houston Atmospheric Radical Precursors (SHARP) are analyzed using a one-dimensional (1-D) chemistry and transport model. Model results with various HONO formation pathways suggested in the literature are compared to the the daytime HONO and HONO/NO 2 ratios observed during SHARP. The best agreement of HONO and HONO/NO 2 ratios between model and observations is achieved by including both a photolytic source of HONO at the ground and on the aerosol. Model sensitivity studies show that the observed diurnal variations of the HONO/NO 2 ratio are not reproduced by the model if there is only a photolytic HONO source on aerosol or in the gas phase from NO 2 * + H 2 O. Further analysis of the formation and loss pathways of HONO shows a vertical dependence of HONO chemistry during the day. Photolytic HONO formation at the ground is the major formation pathway in the lowest 20 m, while a combination of gas-phase, photolytic formation on aerosol, and vertical transport is responsible for daytime HONO between 200–300 m a.g.l. HONO removal is dominated by vertical transport below 20 m and photolysis between 200–300 m a.g.l.


In the context of fossil-fuel shortage and climate change, the production, conversion, storage and distribution of energy have become the focus of today's world. Supercapacitors, with their unique energy and power density specifications, cover the application gap between batteries and conventional capacitors and hence making valuable contributions in energy storage and distribution.

Caron nanotubes (CNTs), with their unique aspect ratio and other distinctive physical, electrochemical and electronic properties have been chosen to enhance traditional electrode materials for supercapacitors, i.e. conducting polymer and transition metal oxides. Polypyrrole/CNTs (PPy/CNTs), polyaniline/CNTs (PAni/CNTS) and manganese oxides/CNTs (MnOx/CNTs) nanocomposites have been synthesised through chemical redox reaction in aqueous solutions. The nanocomposites have been characterised with scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transition electron microscopy (TEM), BET nitrogen surface adsorption, X-Ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), infrared and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) to examine and to select the appropriate candidates as electrode materials.

Electrochemical characterisations, i.e. cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), have been conducted with the selected nano-composites in a classic three-electrode compartment cell. Desirable capacitive behaviour, with long-term cycling stability, has been identified within appropriate potential windows for each of the nanocomposites.

Asymmetric and symmetric supercapacitor prototypes have been constructed with the nanocomposites synthesised and characterised in this work. Carbon materials, due to their higher hydrogen overpotential in aqueous systems, have been proved to be good negative electrode materials in this study. Excellent specific capacitances of 1.2 F cm-2, 0.83 F cm-2 and 0.96 F cm-2 have been achieved with PAni/CNTs, PPy/CNTS and MnOx/CNTs electrodes respectively. Supercapacitor-stacks with multiplied cell voltage have been constructed with both symmetric and asymmetric prototype cells. Therefore, it has been confirmed that desirable cell voltage and capacitance can be achieved by connecting appropriate individual cells in parallel and in series to cater the requirements of the end-users.

Last but not least, the prototype cells have been fitted with equivalent circuits to gain an insight into the resistive and capacitive contributions from each component. Suggestion for improvement has been given based on the simulation results of the prototype cells.


This study is concerned about foreign direct investment (FDI) and economic growth in India for the period of 1991-2009. This article produces fresh empirical evidence on the relation between FDI and economic growth obtained from Pearson's Coefficient of Correlation and Simple Linear Regression for India using variables like GDP, Exports and Imports. The results indicate that a positive and statistically significant estimate of correlation coefficient of FDI and GDP; FDI and Exports; and FDI and Imports. It is also supported by regression analysis. Introduction Over the last two decades, the determinants of economic growth have attracted increasing attention in theoretical and applied research. Despite the lack of a unifying theory, there are several partial theories that discuss the role of various factors in determining economic growth. Investment and human capital are the main source of growth in several endogenous growth models as well as one of the key extensions of the neo-classical growth model. Innovation and R and D activities can play a major role in economic progress increasing productivity and growth. This is due to the increasing use of technology that enables introduction of new and superior products and processes. Other determinants of economic growth are economic policies and macro-economic conditions. Economic policies can influence several aspects of an economy through investment in human capital and infrastructure, improvement of political and legal institutions and so on. A stable macro-economic environment may favour growth, especially, through reduction of uncertainty, whereas macroeconomic instability may have a negative impact on growth through its effects on productivity and investment. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has recently played a crucial role of internationalising economic activity and it is a primary source of technology transfer and economic growth (Sahoo, Mathiyazhagan and Parida, 2002). FDI plays an extraordinary and growing role in global business. It can provide a firm with new markets and marketing channels, cheaper production facilities, access to new technology, products, skills and financing for a host country or the foreign firms which received the investment, it can provide a source of new technologies, capital, processes, products, organisational technologies and managerial skills and as such can provide a strong impetus to economic development (Shiralashetti and Hugar, 2009). Bashir (1999) examined the relationship between FDI and growth empirically in some Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) countries. The study found that FDI leads to economic growth; the effect however varies across regions and over time. Anita Ghatak and Ferda Halicioglu (2006) also agree that FDI has a positive spill over effects on economic growth and development. So, there are several determinants of economic growth and this paper has analysed the impact of FDI on economic growth in India. After independence, the Government of India recognised FDI as an important supplement to domestic savings for the development of country and in 1972, government of India decided to permit wholly owned subsidiaries but due to restrictiveness of government policies, FDI remained remarkably low till the 1990s. A real trust is yet to begun with the announcement of the economic reforms measures taken since July 1991. The series of economic reforms have strengthened the economy and expected to assume a much larger role in catalysing Indian economic development (Lakhwinder Singh, 2007). Reaching to changes in technologies, growing liberalisation of the national regulatory framework governing investment in enterprises and changes in capital markets, profound changes have accrued in the size, scope and methods of FDI. New information technology systems decline in global communication costs have made management of foreign investments and far easier than in the past. The sea changes in trade and investment policies and the trade policy and tariff liberalisation, easing of restrictions on foreign investment and acquisition in India and the deregulation and privatisation of many industries has probably been the most significant catalyst for FDI's expanded role. …


The effect of hydrolysis reaction time on the reducing sugar yield of Acha (Digitaria exilis) and Finger millet (Eleusine coracana) starch for bioethanol production was studied. The starches were extracted from the feedstocks by wet and dry milling methods. They were gelatinized at slurry concentrations of 2.0, 2.5, 3.0 and 3.5 mL/g for Acha and slurry concentrations of 2.5, 3.0, 3.5 and 4.0 mL/g for finger millet. They were then hydrolyzed using malted barley as enzyme at enzyme concentrations of 0.1g/g to 0.3g/g at durations ranging from 1½ - 3½ h. The results showed that for the two starches studied, none achieved highest reducing sugar yield at 1½ - 2½ h. The optimum fell largely between 3 to 3½ h. Overall results indicate that reducing sugar quantity is largely dependent on slurry concentration (mL/g) of starch, hydrolysis reaction time and even temperature.


A RESEARCH REPORT
SUBMITTED TO
THE FACULTY OF COMMERCE, LAW AND MANAGEMENT,
UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND,
IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE
OF MASTER OF MANAGEMENT
SPECIALISING IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND NEW VENTURE CREATION
Johannesburg, 2016


Corner-truncated octahedral Cu2O microcrystal was synthesized by a typical solution phase reduction method with CuSO4, glucose, and a small amount of NaOH. Researching into the reaction process, we found that the Cu2O microcrystal grew following the sol–gel growth model, instead of Lamer nucleation–diffusion model. The roles that OH− and SO42− played in the formation of the octahedral morphology were revealed by separating them and investigating the corresponding products, respectively. We used PVP (polyvinylpyrrolidone) in another experiment to show that the influence of the organic surfactant on the crystal habit may also be demonstrated more clearly using this method.


SuperSearch is a tool allowing you to search all library resources in a single search box. This guide explains how you can use SuperSearch effectively.


One of the enduring lessons of cities is the essential relationship between grey infrastructure (e.g., streets and buildings) and green infrastructure (e.g., parks and open spaces). The design and management of natural resources to enhance human health and well-being may be traced back thousands of years to the earliest urban civilizations. From the irrigation projects of the Indus Valley and the aqueducts of the Roman Empire to integrated systems of landscaped urban parks and street trees in contemporary times, humans have sought to harness the capacity of nature to advance city life. This article presents a systems science framework that delineates critical relationships between grey and green elements of cities and human health and well-being by modeling the complex, dynamic problem of asthma in socioeconomically disadvantaged city neighborhoods. By understanding the underlying structure of urban spaces and the importance of social interactions, urban planners, public health officials, and community members may capitalize on opportunities to leverage resources to improve the health and well-being of urban populations and promote social justice and health equity.


Pyogenic granuloma is a benign localized lesion of the skin and mucosa closely related to trauma, chronic irritation and hormonal changes. The method of treatment is surgical excision. But relapses can occur. For this reason, treatment with alternative methods such as cryotherapy, electrocautery and laser has been investigated in recent years. In this case, the cause of PG was a feeder vessel. The lesion was excised before and recurred within two weeks. An intraosseous feeder vessel was identified by a magnetic resonance imaging. This vessel was exposed and cauterized with electrocautery.


We consider the problem of designing and analyzing differentially private algorithms that can be implemented on discrete models of computation in strict polynomial time, motivated by known attacks on floating point implementations of real-arithmetic differentially private algorithms (Mironov, CCS 2012) and the potential for timing attacks on expected polynomial-time algorithms.
As a case study, we examine the basic problem of approximating the histogram of a categorical dataset over a possibly large data universe X.
The classic Laplace Mechanism (Dwork, McSherry, Nissim, Smith, TCC 2006 and J. Privacy \& Confidentiality 2017) does not satisfy our requirements, as it is based on real arithmetic, and natural discrete analogues, such as the Geometric Mechanism (Ghosh, Roughgarden, Sundarajan, STOC 2009 and SICOMP 2012), take time at least linear in |X|, which can be exponential in the bit length of the input.

In this paper, we provide strict polynomial-time discrete algorithms for approximate histograms whose simultaneous accuracy (the maximum error over all bins) matches that of the Laplace Mechanism up to constant factors, while retaining the same (pure) differential privacy guarantee.
One of our algorithms produces a sparse histogram as output.
Its ``"per-bin accuracy" (the error on individual bins) is worse than that of the Laplace Mechanism by a factor of log|X|, but we prove a lower bound showing that this is necessary for any algorithm that produces a sparse histogram.
A second algorithm avoids this lower bound, and matches the per-bin accuracy of the Laplace Mechanism, by producing a compact and efficiently computable representation of a dense histogram; it is based on an (n+1)-wise independent implementation of an appropriately clamped version of the Discrete Geometric Mechanism.


Subclones of the human osteosarcoma cell line SaOS-2 were established by transfecting with an expression vector containing the human PTH/PTH-related protein (PTHrP) receptor, and their abilities to support osteoclast-like multinucleated cell (OCL) formation were examined in coculture with mouse or human hemopoietic cells. Of four subclones examined, SaOS-2/4 and SaOS-4/3 bound high levels of [125I]-PTH and produced a significant amount of cAMP in response to PTH. OCLs were formed in response to PTH in the cocultures of mouse bone marrow cells with either SaOS-2/4 cells or SaOS-4/3 cells. Human OCLs were also formed in response to PTH in the coculture of SaOS-4/3 cells and human peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Adding dexamethasone together with PTH greatly enhanced PTH-induced human OCL formation. Like mouse OCLs, human OCLs formed in response to PTH were tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase positive, expressed abundant calcitonin receptors and vitronectin receptors, and formed resorption pits on dentine slices. Other osteotropic factors such as 1alpha,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3, prostaglandin E2, and interleukin 6 plus soluble interleukin 6 receptors failed to induce mouse and human OCLs in cocultures with SaOS-4/3 cells. Both mouse and human OCL formation supported by SaOS-4/3 cells were inhibited by either adding an antibody against macrophage-colony stimulating factor or adding granulocyte/macrophage-colony stimulating factor. Thus, it is likely that human and mouse OCL formation supported by SaOS-4/3 cells are similarly regulated. These results indicate that the target cells of PTH for inducing osteoclast formation are osteoblast/stromal cells but not osteoclast progenitor cells in the coculture. This coculture model will be useful for investigating the abnormalities ofosteoclast differentiation and function in human metabolic bone diseases.


This study examines perceived accentedness as a predictor of perceived match between faces and voices. 85 pictures were rated for the likely education, masculinity and accentedness of the person depicted. Independently, 300 recordings of disyllabic English words from native speakers of English, Hindi, Korean, Mandarin and Spanish were rated for degree of perceived foreign accent. The highest and lowest rated tokens from each of three male speakers from each language background (30 total tokens) were selected, as were 15 pictures, maximizing the variability in perceived accentedness while avoiding extremes of education or masculinity. All pairwise combinations of these 15 faces and 30 voices were rated for perceived match. The results show that listeners have clear and structured perceptions of "fit" between faces and voices which are based in part, but not entirely, on the congruence of key social attributes such as perceived accentedness and local understandings of ethnolinguistic groupings.


Four hydrophytes namely. Eichorrnia crassipes, Lemna minor, Azolla pinnata. and Pistia stratiotes were evaluated for their tolerance towards different levels of contamination and their potential for phytoremediation. Lemna minor was found relatively more tolerant among the four selected plant species and flourished well in tannery effluent concentrations upto 25% strength. Rest of the three species could not tolerate even 25% level of contamination and decay after few days of effluent treatment. The experiment was repeated for Eichorrnia crassipes and Lemna minor with lower concentrations of tannery effluents. Lemna minor was found to be the best tolerant in the low concentration of effluents(less than 20%). Eichorrnia could survive only for a few days and gradually decayed even in lower concentrations.
This study has demonstrated promising potential for Cr and Na phytoextraction by Lemna minor. Plant removed approximately upto 100% Cr and 80% Na respectively when grown in diluted tannery effluents. However, Eichorrnia could not survive in the effluents well but did reduce the metal content from tannery effluents. It was concluded that using these plants tannery effluents can be considerably cleaned when their concentrations are less than 20%.Seven crop plants species of different agronomic importance, size and dry matter production namely, Brassica campestris var. Toria A, Brassica juncea var. Khanpur rays, Triticum aestivum var. V93BT022. Sorghum bicolor var. 1S.2002, Trifolium alexandrianum var. Pushed Bcrseem, Helianthus annuus var. FH 298 and Spinacea oleracea var. Desi Palak were tested for their tolerance towards tannery effluent contamination of soil and potential for Na and Cr uptake from contaminated soil in the presence and absence of EDTA as a chelating agent. All the selected species of plants could tolerate the level of applied contamination. Spinacea oleracea was found to be the best tolerant followed by Brassica spp.Twelve naturally growing wild plant species namely Panicum antidotale. Cynodon dactylon, Heliotropium echwaldii. Alternanthera sessilis. Trianthema portulacastrum Chenopodium morale, Rumex dentate, Echinochloa colonum, Suaeda fruticosa, Kochia indica, Calatropis procera. and Dichanthium annulatum were collected from the contaminated sites and were analyzed to estimate their metal uptake ability and biomass production. Suaeda fruticosa was found to be the best among the tested wild plants for greater biomass production and metal uptake as well. Suaeda
fruticosa was further tested in experiments with industrially contaminated soil along with EDTA applications.All of the tested plants extracted Na and Cr from contaminated soil. The order of First four plants according to their co-efficient of extraction was Spinacea oleracea > Brassica juncea >Brassica campestris> Suaeda fruticosa. These plants are recommended to be grown at the tested contaminated sites with a hope to reduce the contamination upto a considerable extent but after a long time effort.The EDTA treatment greatly increased the solubility of heavy metals in both industrially contaminated and artificially contaminated agricultural soil with tannery effluents, but this did not result in a large increase in metal concentrations in the plants. High concentrations of available metals in soil pore water after EDTA treatment could pose an environmental risk in the form of ground water contamination.


The objective of the research was to identify RAPD markers linked to QTL related to agronomic traits of soybean under low-light intensity condition. The genetic material used in the QTL analysis based on RAPD Markers were Ceneng, Godek, and F6 RILs derived from hybridization between Ceneng (tolerant parent) and Godek (sensitve parent). The results of molecular analysis showed that 9 primers were polymorphic and linked to the tolerant parent. Primers produce 14 RAPD markers which were polymorphic and linked to the tolerant parent. The markers were distributed into a linkage group that containing seven markers. RAPD Markers (OPE15-800, OPM20-800) were linked to two QTL controlling number of productive node and seed weight, respectively. The marker linked to the tolerant parent could be used as a marker assisted selection for high-yielding soybean lines under low-light intensity


Turbulence, which may exist along an optical path inside a telescope or laboratory setup such as the Dunn Solar Telescope observing room, can negatively impact the imaging performance at the final detector plane. In order to derive requirements and error budget terms for the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) we performed interferometric measurements with the goal to determine the amount of aberrations introduced by the air mass through which the beam propagates and characterize temporal and spatial frequencies of these aberrations. We used a He-Ne laser interferometer to measure aberrations along a 50m and 33m, collimated 150mm diameter laser beam. The experiments were performed with both vertical and horizontal beam propagation. We investigated the impact on the amount of self-induced turbulence of the difference in temperature between the top and the bottom of the optical laboratory, the impact of heat sources, such as electronics racks, and the effect of a laminar air flow applied to parts of the beam path. The analysis of the interferograms yields values of the rms wave front aberrations excluding tip/tilt in the range of 1.45nm/m - 2nm/m (@632nm) for the vertical beam propagation and between 0.8nm/m - 1.6nm/m for the horizontal beam. The spatial spectrum of the turbulence tends to decay faster than Kolmogorov turbulence. This is true, in particular, for the horizontal beam path. The temporal frequencies are on the order of a few Hz (<10Hz).


This month in The Leading Edge, we present a selection of papers on microseismic technology that captures recent trends in microseismic data processing, acquisition, and interpretation. In soliciting papers, we sought case studies that demonstrated new methods and examples emphasizing the extraction of greater value from microseismic data. Emerging from these diverse papers is a common theme of new tools for microseismic interpretation in which interpretation is enhanced by new processing methods, new acquisition techniques, new quality control methods, and new methods of data integration for evaluating unconventional resources. From its growth as a new technology in the late 1990s, microseismic monitoring of hydraulic fracturing has reached acceptance as a key technology by both geophysicists and engineers in hydraulic fracture mapping. Innovations continue to expand this technology past merely plotting event locations along a horizontal wellbore to map out the fracture growth and rock volumes accessed b...


The paper puts forward a new approach to two corporate subjects that have been intensively debated in the last three decades, the regulation of takeovers and state competition in the production of corporate law. During this period, U.S. state takeover law has produced considerable and quite possibly excessive protection for incumbent managers from hostile takeovers. Although the shortcomings of state takeover law have been widely recognized, there has been little support for federal intervention because of the concern that such intervention might produce even worse takeover arrangements. This paper, however, identifies a form of federal intervention in the regulation of takeovers "choice-enhancing" intervention that would address these shortcomings without raising such a concern. "Choice-enhancing" federal intervention would consist of two elements: (i) an optional body of substantive federal takeover law which shareholders would be able to opt into (or out of) and (ii) a mandatory process rule that would provide shareholders the right to initiate and adopt, regardless of managers' wishes, proposals for opting into (or out of) the federal takeover law. An alternative version of choice-enhancing intervention would provide a federal law requiring states to allow shareholders to initiate and approve opting out of anti-takeover arrangements provided by the state's law. We argue that such a federal role in takeover law cannot harm and would likely improve the regulation of takeovers. Moreover, by showing how federal law can be used to improve regulatory competition in the provision of takeover law rather than preempt it, our analysis lays the groundwork for a more general reconsideration of regulatory competition in the corporate law.


The objective of this paper is to extend and redesign the
block matrix reduction applied for the family of two-sided factorizations,
introduced by Dongarra et al. [9], to the context of multicore architec-
tures using algorithms-by-tiles. In particular, the Block Hessenberg Re-
duction is very often used as a pre-processing step in solving dense linear
algebra problems, such as the standard eigenvalue problem. Although
expensive, orthogonal transformations are commonly used for this re-
duction because they guarantee stability, as opposed to Gaussian Elimi-
nation. Two versions of the Block Hessenberg Reduction are presented in
this paper, the rst one with Householder re
ectors and the second one
with Givens rotations. A short investigation on variants of Fast Givens
Rotations is also mentioned. Furthermore, in the last Top500 list from
June 2008, 98% of the fastest parallel systems in the world are based
on multicores. The emerging petascale systems consisting of hundreds
of thousands of cores have exacerbated the problem even more and it
becomes judicious to eciently integrate existing or new numerical lin-
ear algebra algorithms suitable for such hardwares. By exploiting the
concepts of algorithms-by-tiles in the multicore environment (i.e., high
level of parallelism with ne granularity and high performance data rep-
resentation combined with a dynamic data driven execution), the Block
Hessenberg Reduction presented here achieves 72% of the DGEMM peak
on a 12000 12000 matrix with 16 Intel Tigerton 2:4 GHz processors.


The need for integration of health information systems as realised in the 90s by the developing countries resulted into deliberate standardisation initiatives. Software systems, human resources, procedures, and data collection tools were all subjected to standardisation. This standardisation, however, has been so absolute that the local and permanent variations were not taken into consideration. This study sought to find out how the local variations within the health care provision units can be taken into consideration in the design of health care data collection processes and tools. It employed qualitative, case study design and had 3 data collection techniques: observations, semi‐structured interviews, and documents review. The study found out that success in standardising data collection tools and processes in health care settings can be achieved if standards are put into clusters as it is unrealistic to subject the different health facility types into the same standards. The study proposes 3 clusters of standards. The dispensary cluster which accounts for the majority of all health facilities and the hospital cluster which accounts for all advanced diagnosis and treatment facilities and the third, specialised hospital cluster which accounts for specialised services.


Postsecondary education is the key to exiting from poverty permanently. Yet, the PRWORA allows women only up to 12 months of vocational training while on welfare. This paper focuses on bringing back the importance of investing in the education of poor women, particularly the postsecondary education of poor women with children, to the forefront of the welfare debate. In this paper we review federal and state level welfare policies toward postsecondary education of poor women with children. Some states are interpreting federal welfare policy strictly and allowing only up to 12 months of vocational training while on welfare. Other states allow poor women attending postsecondary education to count class hours and homework hours toward the work participation requirement. Support services-childcare and transportation-to women attending college vary from state to state. Services for welfare mothers who wish to go on to college are severely inadequate. We argue that federal and state policies should be designed to encourage poor women to complete two- and four-year college degrees because education of women is associated with better economic and social returns for women, children, families and society at large. We propose that welfare policies should encourage women's college education by providing support services and by stopping the five-years clock for those attending college. In addition, programs such as Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) and AmeriCorps should be expanded to increase postsecondary education opportunities for poor women


In this paper, we provide a new framework for analyzing corruption in public bureaucracies. The standard way to model corruption is as an example of moral hazard, which then leads to a focus on better monitoring and stricter penalties with the eradication of corruption as the final goal. We propose an alternative approach which emphasizes why corruption arises in the first place. Corruption is modeled as a consequence of the interaction between the underlying task being performed by bureaucrat, the bureaucrat's private incentives and what the principal can observe and control. This allows us to study not just corruption but also other distortions that arise simultaneously with corruption, such as red-tape and ultimately, the quality and efficiency of the public services provided, and how these outcomes vary depending on the specific features of this task. We then review the growing empirical literature on corruption through this perspective and provide guidance for future empirical research.


To examine thermal comfort and the corresponding physiological responses in non-uniform and dynamic indoor thermal environments, this article presents the investigation of thermal sensations and skin temperatures during step changes between the ambient environment and the workstation where local ventilation devices supplied air motion around the subjects' heads. Twenty-three lab tests with human subjects were conducted to provide summer cooling in a controlled-environment chamber. Overall thermal sensations and skin temperatures were collected and analyzed. Data collected as subjects stepped between the ambient environment and the controlled-environment workstation displayed hysteresis and overshooting. That facial skin temperature correlates with thermal sensation provides a causal explanation of the overshooting and hysteresis. Further, the minimum change on facial skin temperature required to register a just-noticeable difference on thermal sensation was calculated to explore the correlation between facial skin temperature and overall thermal senation. In conclusion, thermal sensation data provide a sound quantifiable foundation for comfort-positive non-uniform indoor thermal environments. Facial skin temperature explains thermal sensation's changing characteristics during step changes in non-uniform thermal environments under varying local cooling methods.


This series of six cases (labeled A through F, UVA-E-0233 through UVA-E-0238) presents the various dilemmas that arose in the spring of 2001 when engineers at the Seattle-based Boeing Company, unhappy with management decisions, contemplated and undertook a strike, the first "white-collar" work stoppage in the history of American business.


The occurrence of residues in the Fourier map of OD structures (polytypes in which pairs of building modules are geometrically equivalent) in the positions of the 'virtual atoms9 of the corresponding family structure derives from the presence of stacking faults inside an otherwise ordered (periodic) matrix. These residues are commonly spurious peaks deriving from the refinement of the structure with a single scale factor for both the family and the non-family reflections, which may be instead on a different scale because of the different peak shape and background characterizing the two types of reflections, resulting in broadening and streaking of the non-family reflections. The 'virtual atoms9 occur in the same positions of the atoms corresponding to the stacking faults, but the spurious peaks are in a quantitative relation with them only if the stacking faults diffract coherently. The case of mica polytypes is illustrated also with the aid of examples taken from the literature.


Identification and reconstruction of microbial species from metagenomics wide genome sequencing data is an important and challenging task. Current existing approaches rely on gene or contig co-abundance information across multiple samples and k-mer composition information in the sequences. Here we use recent advances in deep learning to develop an algorithm that uses variational autoencoders to encode co-abundance and compositional information prior to clustering. We show that the deep network is able to integrate these two heterogeneous datasets without any prior knowledge and that our method outperforms existing state-of-the-art by reconstructing 1.8 - 8 times more highly precise and complete genome bins from three different benchmark datasets. Additionally, we apply our method to a gene catalogue of almost 10 million genes and 1,270 samples from the human gut microbiome. Here we are able to cluster 1.3 - 1.8 million extra genes and reconstruct 117 - 246 more highly precise and complete bins of which 70 bins were completely new compared to previous methods. Our method Variational Autoencoders for Metagenomic Binning (VAMB) is freely available at: https://github.com/jakobnissen/vamb