This article empirically explores the relations between alternative organizational designs and a firm's ability to explore as well as exploit. We operationalize exploitation and exploration in terms of innovation streams; incremental innovation in existing products as well as architectural and/or discontinuous innovation. Based on in-depth, longitudinal data on 13 business units and 22 innovations, we describe the consequences of organization design choices on innovation outcomes as well as the ongoing performance of existing products. We find that ambidextrous organization designs are relatively more effective in executing innovation streams than functional, cross-functional, and spinout designs. Further, transitions to ambidextrous designs are associated with increased innovation outcomes, while shifts away from ambidextrous designs are associated with decreased innovation outcomes. We describe the nature of ambidextrous organizational designs--their characteristics, underlying processes, and boundary conditions. More broadly, we suggest that the locus of integration and degree of structural differentiation together affect a firm's ability to explore and exploit. We suggest that the senior team's ability to attend to and deal with contradictory internal architectures is a crucial determinant of a firm's ability to exploit in the short term and explore over time. Copyright 2010 The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Associazione ICC. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.


Diglycose derivatives, consisting of two monosaccharides linked at non-anomeric positions by a bridging nitrogen atom, have been synthesised. Conversion of one of the precursor monosaccharide coupling components into an unsaturated derivative enhances its electrophilicity at the allylic position, facilitating coupling reactions. Mitsunobu coupling between nosylamides and 2,3-unsaturated-4-alcohols gave the 4-amino-pseudodisaccharides with inversion of configuration as single regio- and diastereoisomers. A palladium-catalysed coupling between an amine and a 2,3-unsaturated 4-trichloroacetimidate gave a 2-amino-pseudodisaccharide as the major product, along with other minor products. Derivatisation of the C=C double bond in pseudodisaccharides allowed the formation of Man(N4–6)Glc and Man(N4–6)Man diglycosides. The amine-linked diglycosides were found to show weak glycosidase inhibitory activity.


Children with congenital heart disease (CHD) are at increased risk for psychosocial issues (PSI), decreased quality of life (QOL), and decreased resilience. The purpose of this project was to implement a screening protocol for PSI, QOL, and resilience, with appropriate psychosocial referral for children with CHD. A pilot protocol was implemented to screen children with CHD, aged 8-17 years, and parents, for resilience, QOL, and PSI. Referrals for psychosocial services were made for 84.2% of children screened (n = 16) based on scoring outcomes. Statistically significant differences in the parents and children's resilience mean scores were noted. Higher parental scores may indicate that parents believe their children are more resilient than the children perceive themselves to be. Early identification of concerns regarding QOL, resilience, and PSI in children with CHD can provide ongoing surveillance, while affording opportunities for improved communication between providers, parents, and children. Routine screening and longitudinal follow-up is recommended.


Supervised drug consumption facilities, where illicit drugs can be used under the supervision of trained staff, have been operating in Europe for the last three decades. These facilities primarily aim to reduce the acute risks of disease transmission through unhygienic injecting, prevent drug-related overdose deaths and connect high-risk drug users with addiction treatment and other health and social services. Part of the Perspectives on Drugs (PODs) series, launched as part of the European Drug Report package, these designed-for-the-web interactive analyses provide deeper insights into a selection of important issues. Note that the online version contains additional interactive or audiovisual material not available in the PDF version. Download as PDF English (en) [1] German (de) [2] Spanish (es) [3] French (fr) [4] Portuguese (pt) [5] Online version >> [6]


Data from the Jicamarca digisonde and the ROCSAT-1 satellite are employed to study the equatorial ionosphere on the west side of South America during April 1999-March 2000 for the concurrent bottomside spread F (BSSF) and plasma bubble events. This study, using digisonde and ROCSAT-1 concurrently, is the first attempt to investigate the equatorial spread F. Results show that BSSF and plasma bubble observations appear frequently respectively in the summer (January, February, November, and December) and in the equinoctial (March, April, September, and October) months, respectively, but are both rarely observed in the winter (May-August) months. The upward drift velocity during the concurrent BSSF and bubble observations has been determined to study the driving mechanism. This analysis shows that large vertical drift velocities favor BSSF and bubble formations in the equinoctial and summer months. Conversely, the smaller upward velocities during the winter months cause fewer BSSF and bubble occurrences. For the geomagnetic effect, the BSSF/bubble occurrence decreases with an increasing K p value in the equinoctial months, but no such correlation is found for the summer and winter months. Moreover, the anti-correlations between K p and d h'F /dt are apparent in the equinoctial months, but not in the summer and winter months. These results indicate that in the equinoctial months the BSSF/bubble generations and the pre-reversal drift velocity can be suppressed by geomagnetic activity, because the disturbance dynamo effects could have decreased the eastward electric field near sunset. However, BSSF and bubble occurrences may not be suppressed by the geomagnetic activity in the summer and winter months.


Punitive damages are traditionally understood, at least in part, as damages designed to punish. It should therefore come as no surprise that, in the majority of states that have decided the issue, courts have chosen not to allow punitive damage awards against the estates of deceased tortfeasors. After all, the tortfeasor can no longer be punished (at least by tort awards). Nonetheless, punitive damages can also serve other purposes, such as deterrence. This Note argues that Michigan, a state which has not yet taken a stance, should adopt the minority position that allows punitive damages to be awarded against estates. Because of Michigan's historically liberal stance on the survival of actions and its unique understanding of punitive damage awards, this Note contends that the minority position is the only position consistent with state law. However, this Note also advocates for legislative action in order to make Michigan's adoption of the minority position absolutely clear. Such clarity would promote stability and predictability for plaintiffs and defendants alike and would ensure results consistent with Michigan's broader history and policies.


Now that a window of opportunity seems to exist to move from defence cooperation to defence integration in Europe, Belgium especially should push hard in order not to waste the moment, argues Sven Biscop. Only available in Dutch in De Standaard, 3 November 2016.


Where the role of software-intensive systems has shifted from the traditional one of fulfilling isolated computational tasks, larger collaborative societies with interaction as primary resource, is gradually taking its place. This can be observed in anything from logistics to rescue operations and resource management, numerous services with key-roles in the modern infrastructure. In the light of this new collaborative order, it is imperative that the tools (compilers, debuggers, profilers) and methods (requirements, design, implementation, testing) that supported traditional software engineering values also adjust and extend towards those nurtured by the online instrumentation of software intensive systems. That is, to adjust and to help to avoid situations where limitations in technology and methodology would prevent us from ascertaining the well-being and security of systems that assists our very lives. Coupled with most perspectives on software development and maintenance is one well established member of, and complement to, the development process. Debugging; or the art of discovering, localising, and correcting undesirable behaviours in software-intensive systems, the need for which tend to far outlive development in itself. Debugging is currently performed based on a premise of the developer operating from a god-like perspective. A perspective that implies access and knowledge regarding source code, along with minute control over execution properties. However, the quality as well as accessibility of such information steadily decline with time as requirements, implementation, hardware components and their associated developers, all alike fall behind their continuously evolving surroundings. In this thesis, it is argued that the current practice of software debugging is insufficient, and as precursory action, introduce a technical platform suitable for experimenting with future methods regarding online debugging, maintenance and analysis. An initial implementation of this platform will then be used for experimenting with a simple method that is targeting online observation of software behaviour.


Drawing inspiration from classical music, the author introduces in this article a musical metaphor, the fugue, to capture a flow of strategic activities, highlighting the motion aspect. This particular metaphor connotes dynamism, constituted in themes that are repeated, expanded, and varied through human voices and their communication. By giving voice to people who share and participate in globalization, internationalization, and customization related to the efforts of a company to grow continuously, elevating movements inherent in these activities, a fugue is composed. As argued in the article, there is potential in "musicking" interpretation of human activity. The fugue metaphor could assist our efforts to methodologize strategy process as dynamic multidirection and multivoice construct. While directing more attention to a musical, arts-based form of communicating research, we could be able to listen more carefully to the moves inherent in a flow of human activity.


Many-core chips with more than 1000 cores are expected by the end of the decade. To overcome scalability issues related to cache coherence at such a scale, one of the main research directions is to leverage the message-passing programming model. The Intel Single-Chip Cloud Computer (SCC) is a prototype of a message-passing many-core chip. It offers the ability to move data between on-chip Message Passing Buffers (MPB) using Remote Memory Access (RMA). Performance of message-passing applications is directly affected by efficiency of collective operations, such as broadcast. In this paper, we study how to make use of the MPBs to implement an efficient broadcast algorithm for the SCC. We propose OC-Bcast (On-Chip Broadcast), a pipelined k-ary tree algorithm tailored to exploit the parallelism provided by on-chip RMA. Using a LogP-based model, we present an analytical evaluation that compares our algorithm to the state-of-the-art broadcast algorithms implemented for the SCC. As predicted by the model, experimental results show that OC-Bcast attains almost three times better throughput, and improves latency by at least 27\%. Furthermore, the analytical evaluation highlights the benefits of our approach: OC-Bcast takes direct advantage of RMA, unlike the other considered broadcast algorithms, which are based on a higher-level send/receive interface. This leads us to the conclusion that RMA-based collective operations are needed to take full advantage of hardware features of future message-passing many-core architectures.


Introduction The decision-making process for malaria control and elimination strategies has become more challenging. Interventions need to be targeted at council level to allow for changing malaria epidemiology and an increase in the number of possible interventions. Models of malaria dynamics can support this process by simulating potential impacts of multiple interventions in different settings and determining appropriate packages of interventions for meeting specific expected targets. Methods The OpenMalaria model of malaria dynamics was calibrated for all 184 councils in mainland Tanzania using data from malaria indicator surveys, school parasitaemia surveys, entomological surveillance, and vector control deployment data. The simulations were run for different transmission intensities per region and five interventions, currently or potentially included in the National Malaria Strategic Plan, individually and in combination. The simulated prevalences were fitted to council specific prevalences derived from geostatistical models to obtain council specific predictions of the prevalence and number of cases between 2017 and 2020. The predictions were used to evaluate in silico the feasibility of the national target of reaching a prevalence of below 1% by 2020, and to suggest alternative intervention stratifications for the country. Results The historical prevalence trend was fitted for each council with an agreement of 87% in 2016 (95%CI: 0.84–0.90) and an agreement of 90% for the historical trend (2003–2016) (95%CI: 0.87–0.93) The current national malaria strategy was expected to reduce the malaria prevalence between 2016 and 2020 on average by 23.8% (95% CI: 19.7%-27.9%) if current case management levels were maintained, and by 52.1% (95% CI: 48.8%-55.3%) if the case management were improved. Insecticide treated nets and case management were the most cost-effective interventions, expected to reduce the prevalence by 25.0% (95% CI: 19.7%-30.2) and to avert 37 million cases between 2017 and 2020. Mass drug administration was included in most councils in the stratification selected for meeting the national target at minimal costs, expected to reduce the prevalence by 77.5% (95%CI: 70.5%-84.5%) and to avert 102 million cases, with almost twice higher costs than those of the current national strategy. In summary, the model suggested that current interventions are not sufficient to reach the national aim of a prevalence of less than 1% by 2020 and a revised strategic plan needs to consider additional, more effective interventions, especially in high transmission areas and that the targets need to be revisited. Conclusion The methodology reported here is based on intensive interactions with the NMCP and provides a helpful tool for assessing the feasibility of country specific targets and for determining which intervention stratifications at sub-national level will have most impact. This country-led application could support strategic planning of malaria control in many other malaria endemic countries.


Summary This study was carried out to determine the effect of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (SC) addition to dry matter intake, milk yield, milk composition and somatic cell count in Anatolian water buffalo diets (AWB). The SC-treated groups (n = 5 buffalo cow/group) received 30.0 g of SC per buffalo cow per day. Compared to the control group, the SC-treated group consumed more total dry matter (P<0.05; 14.27 vs. 13.50 kg/day) and produced more milk/day (P<0.01; 7.13 vs. 6.22 kg/day). Dietary yeast inclusion significantly increased alfalfa dry matter intake during a 28-day lactation period (P<0.01; 10.41 vs. 9.81 kg/day) compared with the control diet. Yeast application significantly reduced the somatic cell count (SCC) in milk (P<0.05; 3.33 and 1.08 SCC (log 10 /mL) for control and SC-treated groups, respectively). The fat (58.40 and 59.00 g/kg), non-fat solids (120.00 and 122.80 g/kg), protein (46.40 and 46.26. g/kg) and lactose components of milk (37.72 and 38.90 g/kg) were similar for both groups. The response of the AWB to supplemental yeast addition improved forage intake and daily milk production but did not affect milk composition. In conclusion; it has been thought that farmers with AWB can benefit from the use of yeast cultures in early lactation diets.


Equal educational opportunity for all students has long been a goal of public education in the United States. Realizing equality of educational opportunity for English language learners (ELLs), however, has proven to be a difficult task. This article examines 1 high school community's perception of educational opportunity and its approach to equalizing it. The findings reveal a community-wide endorsement of a policy of equal treatment for equalizing educational opportunity. This policy of difference blindness, however, was found to produce inequities for ELLs in at least 2 ways: restricted access to course content and inaccurate assessment and grading. Although teacher participants recognized inequities, they considered them temporary and tolerable. As educational opportunity was accessible only through English, equal treatment, which was perceived to speed English acquisition, was viewed to be the most effective approach for equalizing opportunity. Equality of educational opportunity at the school site, therefore, required ELLs to be normalized through linguistic assimilation, and an ideology of difference blindness through difference erasure was evident. Implications include the need for educational institutions to rethink approaches to equalizing opportunity and a call for reenvisioning educational opportunity as a participatory concept.


The Protestant Reformation began in Germany in 1517, and the adoption of Lutheranism was the decisive impetus for literary development in Finland. As the Reformation required the use of the vernacular in services and ecclesiastical ceremonies, new manuals and biblical translations were needed urgently. The first Finnish books were produced by Mikael Agricola. He was born an ordinary son of a farmer, but his dedication to his studies opened up the road to leading roles in the Finnish Church. He was able to bring a total of nine works in Finnish to print, which became the foundation of literary Finnish. The first chapter outlines the historical background necessary to understand the life's work of Mikael Agricola. The second chapter describes Agricola's life. Chapter three presents the Finnish works published by Agricola. The fourth chapter is a depiction of Agricola's Finnish. Agricola carried out his life's work as part of a network of influential connections, which is described in chapter five. The sixth chapter examines the importance of Agricola's work, research on Agricola and Agricola's role in contemporary Finnish culture. The book mainly focuses on language and cultural history, but in terms of Church history, it also provides a review on the progression and arrival of the Reformation to Finland. Finnish is a Uralic language but the source languages of Agricola's translations – Latin, German, Swedish and Greek – were all Indo-European languages. Thus, the oldest Finnish texts were strongly influenced by foreign elements and structures. Some of those features were later eliminated whereas others became essential constituents of standard Finnish. To illustrate this development, the Finnish in Agricola's works has systematically been compared with the standard contemporary language.


To determine the effects of gas-solid nonequilibrium on forced filtration combustion (FC) waves, a two-temperature model is employed, with separate temperature fields for the solid and gas particles. We consider heterogeneous (solid/gas) combustion in a porous sample with a prescribed gas flux at the inlet. If the reaction is initiated at the inlet (outlet) of the sample and the combustion wave travels in the direction of (opposite to ) gas filtration it is referred to as coflow (counterflow) FC. We determine the effects of gas-solid nonequilibrium on various aspects of forced FC waves. First, we consider coflow FC waves, in which case the gas infiltrating through the hot product region significantly enhances the propagation of the combustion wave. For a relatively small gas flux, the infiltrating gas delivers heat from hot product to the combustion layer, thus increasing the combustion temperature and, hence, the combustion rate. Propagation of such waves is controlled by conduction of the heat released in the reaction to the preheat zone. Conductively driven coflow FC waves have been studied extensively using one-temperature models, which assume a very large rate of interphase heat exchange between the solid and the gas, so that thermal equilibrium is attained almost immediately. However, if the gas flux is sufficiently large, the phases do not have sufficient time to equilibrate and, hence, the underlying assumption of one-temperature models is no longer valid. One-temperature models are only appropriate for describing slowly propagating coflow FC waves in which the time of contact between the solid particles and the gas is sufficiently large for rapid thermal equilibrium to occur. However, not all coflow FC waves are slowly propagating. There can also be rapidly propagating coflow FC waves, in which case a two-temperature model, with the solid and the gas attaining distinct temperatures, is more appropriate. For a relatively large gas flux, an alternative mechanism of enhancement occurs in the combustion temperature is increased as a result of increasing the effective initial temperature of the unurned solid ahead of the reaction zone. Propagation of such waves is controlled by convection of heat stored in the product to the preheat zone. Convectively driven coflow FC waves depend on a pronounced temperature difference between the phases and, therefore, cannot be described by a one-temperature model. We employ a two-temperature model to study coflow FC waves. The two-temperature model must also account for the fact that the oxidizer concentration at the surface of the solid particles, where the reaction occurs, may be significantly less than the average oxidizer concentration in the gas stream. Effects of gas-solid nonequilibrium are determined by the interphase heat transfer rate, as well as the rate of oxidizer diffusion to the solid particle surface. In the appropriate limits, the model can describe both conductive and convective coflow FC waves. We determine steady solutions in each of the limits and compare and contrast the structures, the combustion characteristics, and the parameter dependences of the two modes of propagation. Transition between conductive and convective steady-traveling coflow FC waves is discussed. We determine how gas-solid nonequilibrium affects such features as the wave velocity, the extinction limit, net gas production or consumption in the reaction, and the ability of the wave to accumulate energy near the reaction site. The results of our analyses are verified by numerical computations of the time-dependent problem. Next, we consider the effects of gas-solid nonequilibrium on counterflow FC waves, in which case the solid near the reaction site loses heat to the cool infiltrating gas. Counterflow FC waves are necessarly driven by conduction because the convective mechanism relies on the gas to deliver heat to, rather than carry heat away from, the unburned solid fuel. It is known from one-temperature-model analyses that extinction of steady-traveling waves will occur if the gas influx is sufficiently large. However, when the gas flux is sufficiently large to cause extinction, the two phases may not have sufficient time to attain thermal equilibrium, in which case a two-temperature model is required. Though only conductively driven counterflow FC waves are possible, we find that thermal nonequilibrium has a significant effect on the intrinsic extinction limit and the combustion characteristics.


As of December 1970 the population of the Central American Isthmus was 16,436,723; 6,225,447 (37.9%) urban and 10,210,946 (62.1%) rural. Of the urban population, 63.3%, or 3,964,611 had water in the home, while 2,283,836 (36.7% had no adequate water supply. The problem is even worse in the rural population where only 732,150 inhabitants (7.17%) had water in the home; the rest, 9,500,000 were using water from contaminated rivers, streams, wells, etc. These low percentages do not meet the standards proposed at Punta del Este, Uruguay in 1961 of providing drinking water to 70% of the urban population and to 50% of those of rural areas. Nor do the very low figures for sanitary disposal of wastes meet these standards (31.4% in urban areas and 19.5% in rural areas). As a logical consequence, water-bourne morbility in the Central American Isthmus is very high. The rates per 100,000 inhabitants are 0.4 to 18.8 for typhoid fever; 0.7 to 13.0 for paratyphoid fever; 0.5 to 786.2 for bacillary dysentery; and 17.9 to 555.6 for amebiasis. Although it would be hard to evaluate the benefits of sanitary water and waste disposal systems, the damage caused by water-bourne illnesses is well known, especially their effect on the individual human being since they sap his energy, lower his life expectancy and productivity, and thus indirectly affect the national economy. It is a well known fact that the cost of optimum water supply and waste disposal systems will more than amply be paid for by the savings in medication and lost time through illness.


Several semantic based user profile approaches have been introduced in the literature to learn the users' interests for personalized search. However, many of them are ill-suited to cope with a domain of information that evolves and user interests that may change over time. In this paper, we propose a novel dual representation of a user's semantic profile to deal with this problem: (1) a lower-level semantic representation, consisting of an accumulated gathering of user activities over a long period of time, that uses a standard machine learning algorithm to detect user convergence, (2) a higher-level semantic representation that detects shifts in the user activitiesonce this shift is detected, the higher-level semantic representation automatically updates the user profiles and reinitialize the system. Our experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of this approach.


Predator-prey relationships between post-larval and juvenile teleosts are greatly influenced by the manner in which feeding behavior of fish interacts with the behavior of meiofaunal prey. Juvenile starry flounder (Platichthys stellatus Pallas) in a southeastern Alaskan bay fed disproportionately on the harpacticoid copepod Microarthridion littorale (Poppe), particularly on males. This apparent selectivity was not due to differing vertical distribution of harpacticoid species or to feeding in other locations. Comparison of ingested prey to harpacticoid assemblages collected by various techniques (including near-bottom collections) suggested that the prey selection shown by starry flounder may be the result of emergent behavior of its harpacticoid prey. Species-level prey identifications indicated that harpacticoid density at the site was not limited by flounder predation. Post-larval and juvenile spot (Leiostomus xanthurus Lacepede) from the northern Gulf of Mexico showed ontogenetic changes in prey selection. Post-larval spot preyed on a copepod assemblage most closely resembling that collected in settlement/bedform traps, suggesting that they also utilized prey in the near-bottom waters. At larger sizes, the diet of juvenile spot was more similar to sedimentdwelling assemblages. This switch coincided with a dramatic increase in the number of nematodes in the diet. In laboratory experiments, juvenile spot demonstrated an ability to recognize and selectively feed in meiofaunal aggregations similar to those formed by meiofauna in the field. This utilization was manifested in a greater proportion of feeding strikes allocated to high density treatments and an increased processing time of feeding strikes taken.in such areas. Stomach contents of spot contained a significantly higher proportion of harpacticoid copepods than did the sediments on which they fed. The ability of juvenile spot to recognize and selectively utilize aggregations may be a means of increasing feeding efficiency, perhaps prolonging the period when juveniles subsist on a diet of meiofaunal-sized prey. A greater understanding of meiofaunal behavior, particularly that of hyperbenthic meiofauna, is necessary to more clearly understand the nature of predator-prey interactions between fish and meiofauna.


Organisational motivations for adopting Enterprise Systems (ES) include the achievement of a competitive advantage in production and provision of better control on operations. In spite of its contributions to business successes, an estimated 5075% of ES projects failed to justify the enormous financial investment into the projects. Research has attributed ES failure to training-related factors. Suggesting the criticalness of training and education in Enterprise System success; nonetheless enterprise systems researchers have constantly ignored training potential on post adoption behaviours. Regardless of the importance of ES training, it is noted that users resist and hesitate to apply gained skills on the systems. The disproportionate use of learned skills results in low utilisation of the systems and partly ES failures. Post training behaviours are critical in the ES success; however knowledge on the determinants of transfer of skills and knowledge gained from enterprise systems training environment is scarce. This study proposes a model of motivational mechanism of effective use of skills and knowledge in Enterprise Systems.


Natural respiration rates of suspension feeders in temperate ecosystems are still poorly known. This lack of information constrains our understanding of the functioning and dynamics of benthic marine ecosystems in temperate areas.We examined the in situ seasonal variation in respiration rate of three benthic suspension feeders (a sponge, an ascidian, and a gorgonian) in northwestern Mediterranean sublittoral communities using a recirculating flow respirometry system. The in situ technique is shown to be highly applicable to seasonal studies of the physiological energetics of benthic suspension feeders. Respiration rates of the three species varied two‐ to threefold through the annual cycle, exhibiting a marked seasonal pattern but showing no daily cycle or significant day‐today variability within months. The respiration rate of the sponge and ascidian, active suspension feeders, increased with temperature. The respiration rate of the gorgonian, a passive suspension feeder, did not correlate with temperature. We estimated a Q10 of 1.1, which indicates that respiration rate in this species is not highly dependent on temperature. Synthesis of new tissue of some Mediterranean benthic suspension feeders, such as gorgonians, does not correlate with temperature, which allowed us to isolate the effects of temperature and synthesis of new tissue on respiration rate. Synthesis of new tissue increased respiration rate of the gorgonian by ~40%. The low rate of synthesis of new tissue during summer, together with the contraction of polyps and the low Q10, explains the low respiration rates of the gorgonian observed during the period of highest temperature. These low respiration rates support the hypothesis that energy limitations may underlie summer dormancy in some benthic suspension‐feeding taxa in the Mediterranean.


In line with the experimental design for near-term climate prediction toward the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we perform ensembles of initialized decadal hindcast and near-future projection using three versions of the coupled atmosphereocean model MIROC. In the present study, we explore interannual and multiyear predictability of tropical cyclone (TC) activity in the western North Pacific (WNP) using the initialized hindcasts and examine global warming impacts on TC activity in the near-future on the basis of near-future projections up to 2035. The hindcasts of year-to-year variation in TC number capture the observed values reasonably well. Moreover, interannual variability of TC genesis and occurrence frequency associated with the El Nino Southern Oscillation are found to be predictable, mainly through better prediction of sea surface temperature (SST) and large-scale vorticity anomalies in the lower troposphere. These results indicate that the models can reproduce the major basic mechanisms that link TC genesis with large-scale circulation. Skillful prediction of TC number is likely difficult on multiyear timescales, at least based on our hindcasts, but through initializations, the three-year-mean hindcasts from 1998 onward reasonably capture observed major characteristics of TC activity associated with Pacific climate shift during the late 1990s. Near-future projections (20162035) suggest significant reductions (approximately 14%) in TC number, particularly over the western part of the WNP, even under scenarios in which projected global warming is less prominent than that at the end of this century. This reduction is likely due to the suppression of large-scale lower tropospheric vorticity and relative humidity and the enhancement of vertical wind shear. The projected SST exhibits a more pronounced warming over the eastern tropical Pacific than over the western region and accompanies the weakening ofWalker circulation via redistribution of tropical convection activity, which appears to be responsible for the change in the large-scale fields in the WNP.


Martin Osborne, the managing editor of the Open Access Journal Theoretical Economics, points out that the publication fee ($75) for his journal is an order of magnitude lower than what I called the "going rate" for Gold OA journal publishing fees. He also points out that if institutional subscriptions were all cancelled and publishing costs were of the order of those charged by his journal, then there would be considerable net savings. I reply that he is quite right to point out that there are Gold OA journals that charge less than the going rate (indeed there are many that do not charge at all). I also agree that the fee his journal charges, though a bit on the low side, is much closer to what will prove to be the true per-article cost of OA publishing, once journals all convert to OA publishing. But the reality is that only about 10% of journals are OA today, and the publishing charges are what they are, today. And with most of the potential funds for paying them still tied up in institutional subscriptions, those publishing charges are an unaffordable burden for most authors, today. They are also an unnecessary burden, if the goal is to provide OA to every published article, to maximize its accessibility, usage and impact, for that can be done through Green OA self-archiving, by the research community, for itself. In contrast, converting journals to Gold OA, and at an affordable price, is not something the research community can do for itself. The research community can, however, mandate Green OA self-archiving, and thereby provide 100% OA, today. That Green OA itself might in turn eventually generate cost-cutting, downsizing, and conversion to Gold OA by journals, at a fair price, paid for out of the institutional subscription cancellation savings. Meanwhile, it is folly for the research community to just keep waiting for Gold OA, when providing 100% Green OA is already fully within its reach.


This Article analyzes the potential antitrust liability of the Bowl Championship Series ("BCS"), college football's current system for selecting the participants of both the national championship game as well as other highly desirable post-season bowl games. The BCS has recently been attacked by various politicians and law enforcement officials, who allege that the system constitutes an illegal restraint of trade due to its preferential treatment of universities from certain traditionally stronger conferences, at the expense of teams from historically less competitive conferences. Meanwhile, the academic literature considering the antitrust status of the BCS is mixed, with most recent commentaries concluding that the BCS alleviated any antitrust concerns by revising its selection procedures in 2004. Contrary to these recent scholarly analyses, this Article argues that the BCS remains vulnerable to antitrust attack on two primary grounds. First, the BCS continues to be susceptible to an illicit group boycott claim, insofar as it distributes revenue unequally and without justification to the detriment of universities from the disfavored conferences. Second, the BCS can be attacked as an illegal price fixing scheme, both by enabling formerly independent, competing conferences and bowl games to collectively determine the amount of revenue to be distributed to BCS participants, as well as by eliminating any competition between certain BCS bowls for the sale of their broadcast rights to television networks. However, the BCS appears less susceptible to a claim of illegal tying, despite its collective marketing of the television broadcast rights for the BCS bowl games, because television networks are not actually coerced into purchasing the broadcast rights to an unwanted bowl game. Therefore, although the outcome of any antitrust trial is notoriously difficult to predict, this Article concludes that the BCS remains quite vulnerable to antitrust attack.


Personal data is a valuable commodity in the digital economy, and companies compete to acquire and process this data. This rivalry is subject to the application of competition law. However, personal data also has a dignitary dimension which is protected through data protection law and EU Charter rights to data protection and privacy. This paper maps the relationship between these legal frameworks. It identifies the commonalities that facilitate their intersection, whilst acknowledging their distinct methods and aims. It argues that when the material scope of these legal frameworks overlap, competition law can incorporate data protection law as a normative yardstick when assessing non-price competition; data protection can thus act as an internal constraint on competition law. In addition, it advocates that following the Lisbon Treaty, data protection and other fundamental rights also exercise an external constraint on competition law and, in certain circumstances, can prevent or shape its application. As national and supranational regulators grapple with the challenge of facilitating a dynamic information economy that respects fundamental rights, recognition of these constraints would pave the way for a more coherent EU law approach to the digital society.


We present a novel approach for estimating body part appearance models for pictorial structures. We learn latent relationships between the appearance of different body parts from annotated images, which then help in estimating better appearance models on novel images. The learned appearance models are general, in that they can be plugged into any pictorial structure engine. In a comprehensive evaluation we demonstrate the benefits brought by the new appearance models to an existing articulated human pose estimation algorithm, on hundreds of highly challenging images from the TV series Buffy the vampire slayer and the PASCAL VOC 2008 challenge.


Acoustic surveys for assessing the biomass and distribution of the jumbo squid ( Dosidicus gigas ) and the lightfish ( Vinciguerria lucetia ) were carried out in the Humboldt Current System of Peru in 2007 and 2008. At the same time, 937 jumbo squid were caught and their stomach contents analyzed. The diet of the jumbo squid was dominated by mesopelagic fish. The first component of their fish diet was V. lucetia and the second component was the myctophid fish Diogenichthys laternatus . Acoustic biomass estimates of these species show that V. lucetia is an important component in aggregative structures in the Humboldt Current System of Peru and its distribution and movements are closely related to the migratory movements of the jumbo squid. The trophic relationship observed between D. gigas and V. lucetia promotes an increase in jumbo squid biomass and, has a positive trophic effect on the ocean ecosystem.


At the development of a mathematical basis of cartographic products the problems of selection of a reference-surface system, system of coordinates, and also selection and elaboration of cartographic projections are decided. The selection of a reference-surface, as a rule, is connected to use of some idealized (model) surface. At large-scale mapping of the very small areas for these purposes the plane approaches. However at increase of territories and application of middle, and especially of small scales, in which the celestial body is mapped as a whole, until recently it was considered sufficient to use a sphere of a given radius. Thus supposed, that the center of a reference-surface coincides center of mass of a planet or satellite, and polar axis coincides with rotation axis. For a long time during pre-space and transient periods of celestial bodies mapping the sphere remained practically unique model surface. With appearance of the new data updating the form and the sizes of the Solar system bodies other regular reference-surfaces came to use. First of all, a rotation ellipsoid having small polar compression (parameters of this ellipsoid were R polar = 3 376.3 km, R equatorial = 3 393.4 km) have applied to Mars. Then for the first time a triaxial ellipsoid was tested for Phobos. Last time some elements of mathematical base for irregular surfaces maximum approximated to an actual physical surface of the celestial bodies are developed.


You'll study a range of contemporary art and illustration styles, and learn practical skills such as painting techniques and plastic, metal and wood fabrication for sculpture. You'll also be setting up installations and learning the professional practice


Proprioception provides feedback that is vitally important for motor control. A deficiency in joint proprioception is thought to be associated with various upper limb rheumatological disorders. Currently, there is a lack of a portable device that could be used for measuring functional proprioception at the fingertips in the field. Therefore, a novel portable device for measuring pinch movement discrimination between index finger and thumb of either hand was constructed. This device is manually operated and requires the subject to make an absolute judgment of a joint position, choosing which one of five pre-experienced positions is being presented to them, with trials given in a random order. The 5 physical differences used were between 1.22 and 2.42cms. Reliability analysis was performed over a 7-day interval, with 8 healthy young adult volunteers. The discrimination scores, measured as the Area Under the Curve (AUC), for the group showed a mean (SD) of 0.794 (0.544) and 0.794 (0.549) on days 1 and 8, respectively. The day 1 and 8 reliability assessed with the interclass correlation coefficient ICC(3,1) was 0.85. Nondominant hands showed better pinch discrimination on the two days, with AUC values of 0.800 and 0.810 compared with 0.788 and 0.778, but these differences were not statistically significant (p>0.05). No difference in pinch movement discrimination was found between sexes. The ease of use and portability of the novel device for measuring functional proprioception at the fingertips described in this note make it ideal for measuring hand functional proprioception as part of clinical and epidemiological studies. The mid-range AUC discrimination scores found with healthy young adults mean that factors thought to diminish (eg. hand injury) or improve (eg. having expert finger skills) discrimination could be detected with the device.


Road safety analyses aim to describe and explain road safety outcomes (road accidents and casualties), either in time or in space, as well as to forecast future developments on the basis of existing experience. The availability of reliable data is one of the most important conditions for useful road safety analyses. Within the development of the European Road Safety Observatory (ERSO), a wealth of road safety related data at European level was gathered, harmonized and made available, including road accidents data (through the CARE database), risk exposure data, road safety performance indicators and in-depth road accident investigation data. The objective of this paper is to present a comprehensive overview of analyses carried out by using data and knowledge from the European Road Safety Observatory. These analyses were carried out within the framework of the EC co-funded integrated research project SafetyNet and can be broadly distinguished into time series analyses, geographical analyses, and accident analyses. It is shown that different types of dependencies are present among observations (e.g. serial or hierarchical dependencies), calling for particular statistical treatment by means of dedicated techniques, such as multilevel analysis and time series analysis. Moreover, additional methodological questions are tackled, such as the use of exposure data; the interest of disaggregate analyses; and the potential of combining ERSO data with other data sources. A brief overview of some interesting findings from related case studies in different countries or at European level is finally provided, including combined analyses of road accidents, fatalities and exposure, structural and explanatory analyses of road safety trends, disaggregate time series analyses and forecasts, spatial modeling, joint analysis of CARE and road safety attitude data, statistical analysis of injury underreporting rates and modeling of in-depth fatal accident investigation data. Key-words : road safety; time series analysis; geographical analysis; accident analysis; European Road Safety Observatory.


GJONOV, I. and M. SHISHINIOVA, 2014. Alien Auchenorryncha (Insecta, Hemiptera: Fulgoromorpha and Cicadomorpha) to Bulgaria. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., Supplement 1: 151–156 Based on feeding characteristic as well as existing and possible impacts on the plant crops, non-native Auchenorrhyncha are insects of special interest. In this study, we update the previously available knowledge about 6 Auchenorrhyncha species alien to Bulgaria with recent fi eld data and distribution throughout the country. We provide summarized information about feeding preferences and possible impacts, origins and general distribution in Europe. Three of the species belong to the family Cicadellidae, as the richest one within Auchenorrhyncha. The other three species are representatives of families: Membracidae, Flatidae and Ricaniidae.


Haemato-biochemical studies in rainbow trout infected with Saprolegnia were carried out under temperate climatic conditions of Kashmir valley to find out the variation in blood parameters. The trial was carried out on 405 cultured rainbow trout fish ranging in length from 47.8 to 69.8 cm and in weight from 1300 to 1920 g. The same experiment was carried out on 2,70000.00 trout fish eggs from November 2010 to April 2011 at a trout fish farm, in Kokernag, India, on account of the susceptibility of eggs to fungal infestation. The infected fish showed signs of lethargy, irritation, loss of appetite, haemorrhages at the base of fins and deep wounds at the sites of severe infection associated with cottony wool like tufts on both the dorsal and ventral sides of the body. The fungi were isolated at high percentages from skin followed by fins and mouth. The haemato-biochemical profile was studied in forty (40) normal and forty (40) infected fish. The haemoglobin content, total erythrocyte count, packed cell volume, lymphocyte percentage, total serum protein, albumin and globulin levels decreased significantly (p<0.05) in the Saprolegnia infected fish as compared to that in the control. The white blood cells, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, mean corpuscular haemoglobin, mean cell volume, heterophill percentage and total serum glucose showed significant increase in the infected fish irrespective of sex. The infection was more pronounced during the winter season (Temp.<10°C) as compared to that in summer (temp.<17°C). Fungi induced stress leads to haemostatic imbalances in fish reflected in the haematobiochemical profile and can thus be used as an indicator for Saprolegnia induced infection.


This paper presents a new taste interface for multisensory communication called "Thermal Sweet Taste Machine". We developed this interface in order to create sweet sensations, by manipulating the temperature on the tongue, without using chemicals. This device device changes the temperature on the surface of the tongue (from 20°C to 40°C) within a short period of time using a computer controlled circuit. Our preliminary user studies suggested that this device would be effective in two ways; producing the sweet sensations without the aid of chemicals, and enhancing the sweetness of the food and drinks. Here we discuss our concept, development of the interface, and some preliminary studies that has been carried out. We believe our technology would enhance the experiences and capabilities in future multisensory communication in different disciplines such as Human-Computer Interaction, human robot interactions, gaming and interacting with artificial agents.


The antioxidant activities of methanol (ME), ethanol (EE), water (WE) and ethyl acetate (EAE) extracts of four Inula helenium L. taxa (I. helenium ssp. orygalis (Boiss.) Grierson, I. helenium ssp. pseudohelenium Grierson, I. helenium ssp. turcarasemosa Grierson and I. helenium ssp. vanensis Grierson) were investigated. The phosphomolybdenum assay, β-carotene–linoleate bleaching and DPPH radical scavenging activity were used to evaluate the antioxidant capacity. The total phenolic contents determined by Folin-Ciocalteu assay of the extracts ranged from 4.18 to 102.91 mg gallic acid equivalents (GAE)/g dry extract. The extracts showed considerable effect on reducing the oxidation of β-carotene. The highest radical scavenging activity was obtained for ME of I. helenium ssp. orygalis in DPPH assay. ME, EE and EAE of four Inula helenium taxa showed significant antibacterial activity against 13 bacteria tested. WEs had no inhibitory effect against bacteria tested except for I. helenium ssp. orygalis. EE of I. helenium ssp. orygalis was only effective against C. albicans.


BIOENGINEERINGThe controversy in Britain over genetically modified food reached a new high on 12 February, when preliminary, unpublished data made headlines for the second time in 6 months. The latest media frenzy was touched off when 21 European and American scientists released a memorandum in support of Arpad Pusztai, a protein biochemist who was suspended last year by the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, after he sounded an alarm in a TV interview about potatoes altered to resist pests. The scientists said Pusztai's statements were correct and demanded that the Rowett Institute exonerate him. Several Members of Parliament immediately called for a moratorium on genetically modified food.


The use of artwork created by schizophrenic individuals is unique in its contextual elements, including bizarre imagery, strong border lines, and desexualized features. The uniqueness of schizophrenic art lends itself to the possibility of being identified as such, therefore, opening the possibility for it to be used as a diagnostic tool in the clinical setting. Presently, schizophrenic art is used in art therapy, but is not widely employed in diagnostic practices. The current study aimed to test the possible identification of schizophrenic art in contrast to normal art and no art. Three questionnaires were created and randomly distributed to participants. The questionnaires included verbal descriptions of dissociative identity disorder, schizophrenia, and anti-social personality disorder. The participants were asked to identify schizophrenia when being told that the picture may or may not be helpful in their selection. After sampling 126 undergraduate students in an Introduction to Psychology course, the data was analyzed through a 2x3 and a 2x2 chi-square analysis. It was found that the presence of schizophrenic art significantly enhanced a verbal description of the disorder, thus, supporting the main hypothesis. Prior knowledge was also considered in the results; while the result was still significant, prior knowledge could not be ruled out as a predictor of correct identification. This research is a preliminary step into determining the diagnostic validity of schizophrenic art when identifying the disorder in


Background: Pityriasis rosea is an inflammatory skin disorder with a known response to erythromycin. Considering similarities between erythromycin and azithromycin and lesser adverse effects of the latter, in a pilot study, we gave azithromycin to seven patients with pityriasis rosea and observed a noticeable improvement. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of azithromycin in patients with pityriasis rosea. Methods: A double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial was performed in our clinic. Sixty patients over a period of 20 months were alternatively assigned to the treatment group or the placebo group. Patients in the treatment group received azithromycin, 250 mg/day, for 14 days. The response was categorized as complete response, partial response, or no response. All patients were followed up for 2 months. Results: Age at presentation, sex, and average duration of the disease were comparable in both groups. Complete response was observed in 19 patients (63.3 %) in the treatment group and two in the placebo group (p<0.0001). Conclusion: Oral azithromycin is effective in treating patients with pityriasis rosea. (Iran J Dermatol 2008;11: 143-146)


The last twenty-five years have witnessed an explosion of knowledge about the influence of brain biochemistry on mood and behavior and about pharmacological approaches to treating mental and emotional disorders. A substantial portion of patients seen in clinical practice are taking some medication or might usefully be advised to do so. But many clinical psychologists, social workers, and counselors need additional information in order to better treat patients already on medication, know when and to whom to refer new patients for psychiatric consultation, and work collaboratively with psychiatrists when appropriate. Michael J. Gitlin's indispensable first edition of "The Psychotherapists Guide to Psychopharmacology" has now been updated and revised -- this new second edition now reflects major changes that have influenced the clinical arena in the last five years such as the recent release of DSM-IV and the domination of the psychopharmacological field by the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, such as fluoxetine (Prozac). "The Psychotherapists Guide to Psychopharmacology, Second Edition" also now includes coverage of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and contains updated sections on the new antipsychotics for schizophrenia and the increased use of anticonvulsant mood stabilizers for bipolar disorder. The book also includes other significant changes that have influenced the field over the last few years, such as brain imaging studies, research in obsessive compulsive disorder and social phobia, and such prominent topics in women's health as pregnancy, PMS, postpartum disorders, and breast feeding. This revision of an already established guide will again be an essential reference for all nonmedical professionals involved in treating mental and emotional disorders.


The subject of this study was to research whether or not different forms of employment contracts had any effect on self reported health. Whether or not any difference between these forms could be explained through the use of employee health care was also a given point of interest. To achieve this, data from the national Swedish institute of health (FHI) was used, with 6465 of the 12 166 that participated in the study. Logistic regression was the primary statistical method.Initial Chi2-analyzation found no significant difference between the two main employment forms present in Sweden. However, when the variables age, sex and level of education were held constant through logistic regression, a difference of odds at 22% between the two employment forms could be identified. Also, the use of employment healthcare as well as stress and anxiety for the loss of ones job showed to make the significant difference between employment forms disappear.


In this paper we present a formal model of vote trading within a legislature. The model captures the conventional wisdom that if projects with concentrated benefits are financed by universal taxation, then majority rule leads to excessive spending. This occurs because the proponent of a particular bill only needs to acquire the votes of half the legislature and hence internalizes the costs to only half the representatives. We show that Pareto superior allocations are difficult to sustain because of a free rider problem among the representatives. We show that alternative voting rules, such as unanimity, eliminate excessive spending on concentrated benefit projects but lead to underfunding of global public goods.


To determine the relative suitability for development of self-sustaining European flat oyster (Ostrea edulis) beds, potential areas for offshore wind farms in the Dutch Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) were analysed following Smaal et al (2017). The studied locations are the new wind farm zones "Hollandse Kust ("noordwest", "west" and "zuidwest")", "IJmuiden Ver" and the remaining lot of the North of the Frysian Islands Wind Farm Zone, but also 13 additional potential locations on the EEZ (i.e. CP4-CP6 and CP9-17) and, in addition, the nature area location Borkum Reef Ground (Borkumse Stenen). This research is performed within EZ-program Beleidsondersteunend Onderzoek (BO). Biotic and abiotic factors of importance for flat oyster survival, growth, reproduction and recruitment, were compared for the 8 wind farm locations of Smaal et al. (2017) and the 18 new locations. For the locations on the Dutch EEZ the following habitat factors are important for flat oyster beds: shear stress, suspended sediment, larval retention, temperature, sediment composition and food availability. Presence in historic distribution area was used as a verification. Average shear stress, suspended sediment and temperature are within the range considered suitable for the development of an oyster bed at all locations. Thus, these factors do not discriminate between locations. Maximum shear stress is too high at one location and the sediment is too silty at 7 locations. However, habitat restoration efforts may make the environment more suitable, e.g. by placing shell material or 3D structures which elevate the oysters from the bottom. Based on the analysis described in this report we recommend to select the following locations that are suitable for flat oyster restoration. 1. Best: Borssele Wind Farm Zone, Buitengaats (part of the Gemini wind park) and CP9 (within historic distribution and high larval retention); 2. Very good: Hollandse Kust (zuidwest) Wind Farm Zone (high larval retention); 3. Good: Offshore Windpark Egmond aan Zee, Prinses Amalia Windpark, Windpark Eneco Luchterduinen, Hollandse Kust (zuid) Wind Farm Zone, Hollandse Kust (noord) Wind Farm Zone (medium larval retention); 4. Suitable: the remaining lot of the North of the Frysian Islands Wind Farm Zone, Zee-energie (part of the Gemini wind park), Borkum Reef Ground (Borkumse Stenen) (within historic distribution, medium or high larval retention, but locally too high maximum shear stress or too silty); 5. Suitable with introduction of substrate: CP5, CP6 (medium or high larval retention, but too silty without introduction of substrate).


A growing body of research suggests that a firm's governance system can significantly impact the long-term value creative potential of an enterprise by disciplining and encouraging organizational efforts to pursue risky entrepreneurial projects. Following this stream of research, we present a study of the impact of ownership and board governance on entrepreneurship in small technology-based firms. Entrepreneurship was measured by the firms' emphasis to take an entrepreneurial strategic posture (EP), encompassing a risk-taking, innovative and proactive competitive orientation. Statistical analysis on a sample of 135 small technology-based firms shows that the level of executive ownership has no significant effect on the emphasis on EP. However, controlling for the level of ownership held by the founder of the firm reveals a significant and negative influence on firms' commitment to EP. With respect to board governance, we find support for that a higher board involvement in networking activities by board members encourage EP efforts, while there was no significant effects of higher board monitoring. In all, the findings give ample support for the argument that variations in ownership and board governance have a significant influence on the entrepreneurial strategic posture of small technology-based firms. (Less)


The work presented herein represents a research endeavour undertaken by Aaron Sudholz at Monash University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The research program investigated the technological challenges of Mg alloys in regards to the inherent susceptibility of Mg metal to corrosion, examined in context of the improvement of the corrosion resistance of Mg. A broad range of atypical alloying additions were initially considered in conjunction with the commercial AZ91 alloy. Additions were found to influence the formation of the incumbent β-phase intermetallic when added in small concentrations and lead to the introduction of an additional intermetallic phase when added in excess of the respective solubility limit. This work aided the identification of elements which could be beneficial to the reduction of corrosion kinetics in AZ91 alloys. The investigation proceeded to model Mg alloys to identify individual effects of elements commonly applied in commercial Mg alloys such as; Al, Zn, Ce, La, Nd and Y. It was found that each of these elements enters the solid solution matrix below their respective solubility limit and each element forms an intermetallic phase rich in the alloying element when in excess of the solubility limit for that element. The respective intermetallic phases were found to be more noble than the parent Mg alloy, in all cases support enhanced levels of cathodic kinetics and supported reduced rates of dissolution than α-Mg when anodically polarised. This work concluded with the integration of the AZ91 Mg-based alloy with small amounts of rare earth elements in order to exploit the beneficial properties of RE elements in the solid solution of the α-matrix and its subsequent influence on the formation of the Mg17Al12 β-phase. As a result, this work prompts discussion of strategies in regards to improving the corrosion resistance of Mg alloys and these strategies are demonstrated in a number of new cast Mg alloys designed by the author. This work also presents and tests hypotheses which are generally applicable to Mg alloys with respect to corrosion. The information contained in this thesis is intended to fill the current knowledge gap of the corrosion behaviour of Mg alloys with previously unreported findings and introduce, through the analysis of these findings, strategies for improving the corrosion resistance of Mg alloys for future applications.


In the absence of a full analytical treatment of nonlinear structure formation in the universe, numerical simulations provide the critical link between the properties of the underlying model and the features of the observed structures. Currently N-body simulations are the main tool to study structure growth. We explore an alternative framework for numerical simulations of structure formation. The underlying idea is to replace the long-range gravitational force in the Vlasov-Poisson system by a purely local interaction. To this end we trade the classical phase space distribution for its quantum mechanical counterpart, the Wigner distribution function. Its dynamical equation is equivalent to the Schrodinger equation and reduces to the Vlasov equation in the formal semi-classical limit. The proposed framework allows in principle to simulate systems with arbitrary phase space distributions and could for instance be beneficial for simulations of warm dark matter, where the velocity dispersion is important. We discuss several methods to obtain a set of wavefunctions whose Wigner distribution is close to a given initial phase space distribution function. An auxiliary gauge field is introduced to mediate the gravitational interaction, thereby obtaining a local Schrodinger-Maxwell system. We also use the ideas of lattice gauge theories to obtain a fully gauge-invariant discretization of the equations of motion. Their iterative solution was implemented in a three-dimensional simulation code. We discuss its computational complexity and memory requirements. Several testbed simulations were performed with this method. We compared the gravitational collapse of a Gaussian wavefunction with an independent numerical solution of the spherically symmetric Schrodinger-Newton system. The results were found to be in good agreement. Finally, a simple example of the growth of cosmic perturbations is investigated within our framework. We conclude by outlining various possible directions to optimize and develop our method.


We estimate the employment effects of training, intervention works (subsidised employment), and public works programmes in Poland. The analysis is based on retrospective monthly calendar information on the labour force state and active labour market programme (ALMP) participation between January 1992 and August 1996. The data are obtained from the Polish Labour Force Survey of August 1996 and its Supplement on Labour Market Policies. Because there is no general agreement on the appropriate evaluation methodology when working with non-experimental data, we use two widely applied approaches to identify causal effects. First, non-parametric estimates of the programme effects are obtained on the basis of matched samples. Second, we use traditional econometric modelling in the form of duration models with unobserved individual heterogeneity. We find that training improves the employment opportunities of both men and women, whereas intervention and public works do not: intervention works prolong unemployment for both genders as do public works for men. The number of observations on women in public works is too small to make a statistically safe statement. In general, all ALMP effects are larger in absolute size for men than for women.


New emerging applications in the areas of portable power generation, small turbocompressors and spindles require the development of ultrahigh-speed, low power electrical drives. A 500 000 r/min, 100 W electrical drive system is presented. Because of the ultrahigh-speed requirements, standard machine design and power electronic topology choices no longer apply and the complete drive system has to be considered. A permanent magnet machine with a slotless litz-wire winding is used, which results in a low motor inductance and a high fundamental machine frequency. Three different combinations of power electronic topologies and commutation strategies have been experimentally investigated. A voltage source inverter with block commutation and an additional dc–dc converter is selected as the most optimal choice for the power electronics interface as it results in the lowest volume of the entire drive system due to lower switching losses, no heat sink cooling required, a small number of semiconductor devices, and relatively simple control implementation in a low cost digital signal processor. Index Terms—Electrical drive, high-speed, permanent magnet (PM) machine.


The design of existing soil landfill final covers, e.g., a single clay layer cover or a cover with capillary barrier effect (CCBE), aims at limiting water infiltration rather than minimizing landfill gas emissions. We propose an alternative three‐layer capillary barrier landfill cover with an added clay layer underneath a CCBE to improve the effectiveness of limiting gas emission. Finite element analyses of coupled water and gas flow were performed to investigate and compare the performance of these three types of soil covers regarding gas emission under a continuous duration of 34 dry d. Due to evaporation, suction in the single clay layer cover increased larger than its air‐entry value, causing a significant increase in the air coefficient of permeability. For the CCBE, evaporation also led to water loss in the silt layer, which cannot serve as a gas barrier. On the contrary, the bottom clay in the alternative three‐layer capillary barrier cover system was protected by a relatively dry sand layer, which acts as a barrier, minimizing water loss from the clay layer. This is because the dry sand layer has a very low water permeability. As a result, the gas emission rate through the alternative three‐layer capillary barrier cover was the lowest among the three types of covers. This rate was lower than the criterion set by the Carbon Farming Initiative, indicating that the alternative three‐layer capillary barrier cover is a possible barrier to minimize gas emission even under dry weather conditions.


OBJECTIVE—Congenital hyperinsulinism, usually associated with severe neonatal hypoglycemia, may progress to diabetes, typically during the 4th decade of life in nonpancreatectomized patients. We aimed to genotype the ATP-sensitive K+ channel in a 10.5-year-old girl presenting with overt diabetes following hyperinsulinism in infancy. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—A female aged 10.5 years presented with new-onset, antibody-negative diabetes (A1C 10.6%). She was born large for gestational age (5 kg) to a nondiabetic mother and developed frequent hypoglycemic episodes, which persisted until age 3 years and responded initially to intravenous glucose and later to oral sweets. Currently, she is fully pubertal and obese (BMI 30.2 kg/m2), with a partially controlled convulsive disorder (since age 1 year) and poor school performance. Glucose levels were >11.1 mmol/l throughout 72 h of continuous glucose monitoring, with low insulin secretion during intravenous glucose tolerance testing. KCNJ11 and ABCC8 mutation analysis was performed, and the mutation identified was characterized in COSm6 cells. RESULTS—A novel, de novo heterozygous ABCC8 sulfonylurea receptor (SUR)1 mutation (R370S) was identified in the patient's DNA but not in that of either parent. Cotransfection of Kir6.2 and mutant SUR1 demonstrate that the mutated protein is expressed efficiently at the cell surface but fails to respond to MgADP, resulting in minimal channel activity. Interestingly, the heterozygous channel (WT:R370S) responded well to glibenclamide, a finding that lead to the successful initiation of sulfonylurea therapy. CONCLUSIONS—This new ABCC8 mutation is associated with neonatal hyperinsulinism progressing within 10 years to insulinopenic diabetes. Consistent with in vitro findings, the patient responded to sulfonylurea treatment. The mechanism causing the relatively rapid loss in β-cell function is not clear, but it may involve mutation-induced increased β-cell apoptosis related to increased metabolic demand.


Similarity concept, finding the resemblance or classifying some groups of objects and study their common properties has been the interest of many researchers. Basically, in the studies the similarity be- tween two objects or phenomena, 2-similarity in our words, has been discussed. In this paper, we consider the case when the resemblance or similarity among three objects or phenomena of a set, 3-similarity in our terminology, is desired. After defining 3-equivalence relation and 3-similarity, some common and different points between them are in- vestigated. We will see that in some special cases we can reach from 3-similarity to 2-similarity.


In this paper we address the issue of privacy preserving data mining. Specifically, we consider a scenario in which two parties owning confidential databases wish to run a data mining algorithm on the union of their databases, without revealing any unnecessary information. Our work is motivated by the need to both protect privileged information and enable its use for research or other purposes. The above problem is a specific example of secure multi-party computation and as such, can be solved using known generic protocols. However, data mining algorithms are typically complex and, furthermore, the input usually consists of massive data sets. The generic protocols in such a case are of no practical use and therefore more efficient protocols are required. We focus on the problem of decision tree learning with the popular ID3 algorithm. Our protocol is considerably more efficient than generic solutions and demands both very few rounds of communication and reasonable bandwidth.


Constructing accurate earth models from seismic data is a challenging task. Traditional methods rely on ray based approximations of the wave equation and reach their limit in geologically complex areas. Full waveform inversion (FWI) on the other side seeks to minimize the misfit between modeled and observed data without such approximation.

While superior in accuracy, FWI uses a gradient based iterative scheme that makes it also very computationally expensive. In this thesis we analyse and test an Alternating Direction Implicit (ADI) scheme in order to reduce the costs of the two dimensional time domain algorithm for solving the acoustic wave equation. The ADI scheme can be seen as an intermediate between explicit and implicit finite difference modeling schemes. Compared to full implicit schemes the ADI scheme only requires the solution of much smaller matrices and is thus less computationally demanding. Using ADI we can handle coarser discretization compared to an explicit method. Although order of convergence and CFL conditions for the examined explicit method and ADI scheme are comparable, we observe that the ADI scheme is less prone to dispersion. Furhter, our algorithm is efficiently parallelized with vectorization and threading techniques. In a numerical comparison, we can demonstrate a runtime advantage of the ADI scheme over an explicit method of the same accuracy.

With the modeling in place, we test and compare several inverse schemes in the second part of the thesis. With the goal of avoiding local minima and improving speed of convergence, we use different minimization functions and hierarchical approaches. In several tests, we demonstrate superior results of the L1 norm compared to the L2 norm – especially in the presence of noise. Furthermore we show positive effects for applying three different multiscale approaches to the inverse problem. These methods focus on low frequency, early recording, or far offset during early iterations of the minimization and then proceed iteratively towards the full problem. We achieve best results with the frequency based multiscale scheme, for which we also provide a heuristical method of choosing iteratively increasing frequency bands.

Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the different methods first on the Marmousi model and then on an extract of the 2004 BP model, where we are able to recover both high contrast top salt structures and lower contrast inclusions accurately.


This thesis develops three chapters which extend our understanding of asset performance within the London office market by analysing the determinants and measurement of capital returns. The first chapter examines whether enlisting the services of a star-architect allows developers to persuade city planners to build bigger within the tightly regulated London property market, and therefore to engage in rent-seeking behaviour. We find that outside
protected conservation areas famous architects can not only build taller, but that their designs have no effect on building sale prices holding the amount of space constant. For a given land plot however, the ability to build taller increases total floorspace and developer profits even when accounting for the increased costs of hiring a famous architect and building to their higher standards. The second chapter investigates potential sources of bias
in commercial repeat-sales price indices by constructing such an index for the central London office market and examining the sources of index change relative to the underlying market. We find evidence that employment density changes and the restrictiveness of new development in the relevant local authority are key external drivers of bias on estimated price levels. This discrepancy arises because repeat-sales occur disproportionately in areas where changes in these attributes differ relative to the stock as a whole. The third chapter presents a comparison of seven competing real estate price index construction methodologies in the London office market. This exercise sheds light on the history of London office market returns from 1998-2010, and the relative pros and cons of the major
index construction methods utilized by research and industry. This comparison also reveals substantial differences between indices in the timing of market turning points and various descriptive statistics, and demonstrates that the hedonic model outperforms the repeat-sales index due to the greater inclusivity of sale observations.


Garnet peridotites provide insight into geochemical processes within the upper mantle, which can be recorded in the mineral zircon. We separated zircon from a garnet peridotite of the Erzgebirge (Zoblitz), Bohemian Massif, and dated it by means of U-Pb with SHRIMP, determined its trace and REE geochemistry and investigated its inclusions. Two types of zircon were distinguished: (a) Inclusion-free zircon with weak cathodoluminescence (CL) emission. For some of these zircons oscillatory zoning or, partly, sector zoning could be observed indicating precipitation from a melt or fluid. These zircons are characterised by high HREE contents and a strong negative Eu anomaly. The latter feature indicates that they formed within the stability field of plagioclase. SHRIMP results reveal a 206 Pb/ 238 U age of 332.1 ± 4.8 Ma (error at 95 % c.l.). This age is younger than the one ascribed to the metamorphic peak by previous studies ( ca. 341 Ma) and similar to ages suggested for exhumation stages ( ca. 332–330 Ma). (b) Inclusion-bearing, very U-rich zircons with no, or very weak, CL emission. The inclusions (a few μm large) are quartz, albite, K-feldspar and felsic melt. These zircons have high trace- and REE contents and are especially rich in LREE. Their chondrite-normalized REE pattern is flat. They formed later in the exhumation path than the inclusion-free zircons. Zircons of this type did not yield a reliable SHRIMP age because of their very high U contents. Garnet shows a REE pattern typical for this mineral. MREE-HREE partitioning between zircon and garnet reveals that the two minerals were far from equilibrium. This applies for both zircon types. The whole-rock chemistry displays absolute REE abundances slightly higher than the chondritic values (except for La and Ce) and enrichment in LREE. Our results show that zircon in the garnet peridotite formed during exhumation, within the stability field of plagioclase (presence of albite inclusions or negative Eu anomaly) during two distinct stages by infiltration of two types of fluid/melt with different chemistry (very different trace and REE composition of the two zircon types), far from equilibrium with the (U)H P mineral garnet ( D MREE-HREE zrc/grt ≫ 1). These fluids/melts probably originated from the immediately adjacent felsic gneisses. It is likely that two pulses of influx of a highly differentiated melt (very U-rich zircons, presence of albite) occurred and led to precipitation of zircon: the first at higher- T (no mineral inclusions in zircon) and the second at lower T , closer to the solidus (felsic inclusions in zircon).


Apical Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a rare variant of HCM and has a prevalence of around ~ 15 % among HCM patients. As compared to other variants, it has a relatively benign prognosis. Predominantly prevalent in the Japanese population; it is characterized by localized hypertrophy of the LV apex as compared to other segments. It is usually silent in early stages and is manifested at an adult stage with typical ECG changes of giant T wave inversions in the precordial leads. Transthoracic echocardiography remains the mainstay of non – invasive diagnosis. We report a case of an asymptomatic elderly male who presented with the classical deep T wave inversion in ECG for which echocardiography revealed the apical variant of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.


Adiponectin signaling through AdipoR1 plays a crucial role in regulating muscle mitochondrial function. Adiponectin, a hormone released from adipose tissue that has antidiabetic activity, signals through seven-transmembrane receptors (AdipoR1 and AdipoR2) that are structurally and functionally distinct from the more familiar seven-transmembrane G protein–coupled receptors. Noting that adiponectin deficiency promotes insulin resistance and that insulin resistance is associated with mitochondrial dysfunction, Iwabu et al. looked for a link between adiponectin-AdipoR1 signaling and mitochondria. Phenotypic analyses of mice that lacked muscle Adipor1 (muscle-R1KO mice) revealed decreased phosphorylation of muscle adenosine monophosphate–activated protein kinase (AMPK) compared with control littermates; moreover, unlike their littermates, muscle-R1KO mice failed to show increased muscle AMPK phosphorylation in response to adiponectin. Their skeletal muscle showed decreased abundance of mRNAs encoding proteins involved in various aspects of mitochondrial function, notably peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ coactivator-1α (PGC-1α, which was itself decreased in abundance), decreased mitochondrial DNA (a marker for mitochondrial content), and decreased mitochondrial function (as assessed by enzymatic activity). Muscle-R1KO mice had decreased muscle endurance and a phenotype consistent with a decrease in type I fibers, and, after glucose administration, their plasma glucose and insulin concentrations were higher than those of control mice, in association with insulin resistance. Having explored the phenotypic effects of a loss of adiponectin signaling through AdipoR1, the authors investigated the underlying pathway. Consistent with the decrease in muscle mitochondria in the muscle-R1KO mice, adiponectin caused an increase in mitochondrial DNA in C2C12 myocytes. Analyses of the effects of short-interfering RNA (siRNA) implicated AdipoR1, the AMPK kinase CaMKKβ (Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase kinase β), AMPK, SIRT1, and PGC-1α in this response. Adiponectin signaling through AdipoR1 appeared to increase the abundance of the mRNA encoding PGC-1α through a CaMKKβ-dependent pathway that did not require AMPK and to stimulate PGC-1α deacetylation by SIRT1, and thereby its activation, through an AMPK-dependent pathway. Adiponectin also elicited an AdipoR1-dependent increase in Ca2+ influx, which played a critical role in the pathway leading to increased PGC-1α expression and also contributed to adiponectin-mediated AMPK phosphorylation. Thus, the authors conclude that adiponectin signaling through AdipoR1 plays a crucial role in the regulation of mitochondrial function and glucose metabolism. M. Iwabu, T. Yamauchi, M. Okada-Iwabu, K. Sato, T. Nakagawa, M. Funata, M. Yamaguchi, S. Namiki, R. Nakayama, M. Tabata, H. Ogata, N. Kubota, I. Takamoto, Y. K. Hayashi, N. Yamauchi, H. Waki, M. Fukayama, I. Nishino, K. Tokuyama, K. Ueki, Y. Oike, S. Ishii, K. Hirose, T. Shimizu, K. Touhara, T. Kadowaki, Adiponectin and AdipoR1 regulate PGC-1α and mitochondria by Ca2+ and AMPK/SIRT1. Nature 464, 1313–1319 (2010). [PubMed]


We demonstrate the power of the Ensemble Kalman Filter in specifying ecosystem models ideal for bioeconomic analysis. Bioeconomic analysis requires models to be relatively simple, but models must still capture the nature and dynamics of the system. With the Ensemble Kalman Filter, we are able to capture complex dynamics in multispecies models with models simple enough to allow further bioeconomic analysis. While bioeconomic analysis has had limited influence on management decisions, the advent of new methods and the need for high dimensional ecosystem based management models may make bioeconomic research more relevant in the future. The filter is applied to a ecosystem model of the commercially most important species in the Barents Sea. The simpler, aggregated stochastic biomass models capture the complex dynamics of the pelagic stocks on the level needed for making decisions on for example allowable catches.


Background: Although the use of micronutrient powders (MNPs) is considered the preferred approach for childhood anemia control, concerns about iron-related morbidity from clinical trials have chal-lenged programmatic scale-up. Objective: We aimed to measure the effects of community-based sales of MNPs on diarrhea-, fever-, cough-, and malaria-morbidity episodes in children 6–35 mo of age. Design: We conducted a cluster-randomized trial in rural Western Kenya where 60 villages were randomly assigned to either intervention or control groups. MNPs (containing iron, vitamin A, zinc, and 11 other micronutrients) and other health products (e.g., insecticide-treated bednets, soap, and water disinfectant) were marketed in 30 intervention villages from June 2007 to March 2008. Household visits every 2 wk were used to monitor self-reported MNP use and morbidity (illness episodes in the previous 24 h and hospitalizations in the previous 2 wk) in both groups. Iron, vitamin A, anemia, malaria, and anthropometric measures were assessed at baseline and at 12 mo of follow-up. Data were analyzed by intent-to-treat analyses. Results: Of 1062 children enrolled in the study, 1038 children (97.7%) were followed (a total of 14,204 surveillance visits). Mean MNP intake in intervention villages was 0.9 sachets/wk. Children in intervention villages, compared with children in control villages, had w 60% fewer hospitalizations for diarrhea (0.9% compared with 2.4%, respectively; P = 0.03) and 70% fewer hospitalizations for fever (1.8% compared with 5.3%, respectively; P = 0.003) but no significant differences in hospitalizations for respiratory illness (1.1% compared with 2.2%, respectively; P = 0.11) or malaria (3.1% compared with 2.9%, respectively; P = 0.82). There were no differences between groups in the numbers of episodes of diarrhea, cough, or fever. Conclusions: MNP use in Western Kenya through market-based community sales was not associated with increased infectious morbidity in young children and was associated with decreased hospitalizations for diarrhea and fever. An integrated distribution of MNPs with other health interventions should be explored further in settings with a high child malnutrition and infection burden. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT01088958. 2016;103:934–41.


The difference between S ‐wave and S ‐to‐ P ‐wave conversion ( S P phase) arrival times is enhanced with rectilinear motion detector filtering to describe alluvial‐sediment thickness in the Kaohsiung–Pingtung (Kaoping) plains area. A more complete understanding of the underground structures of the Kaoping area is provided in this paper and explains why the surrounding regions in Taiwan experience more earthquakes than the Kaoping area. Data are based on seismic activity recorded by the portable array for numerical data acquisition (PANDA) for the period from 1995 to 1997. The difference between S ‐wave and S P ‐phase arrival times shows that the sedimentary layer is thicker along the west and southwest coasts. P ‐wave travel‐time residuals, high‐frequency attenuation parameters Kappa, and quality factor Q P , Q S , and coda waves confirm this result. We also determined the orientation of the Chaochou fault using the first motion of P ‐wave arrivals. To the east of the Chaochou fault, stress trends southeast–northwest, while to the west, it trends northeast–southwest. The change in stress trends east and west of Chaochou fault suggests the presence of a highly fluid accretionary wedge in the Kaoping area. The Chaochou fault forms a seismically active tectonic boundary with the uplift of the hanging wall leading to westward tilting of the basement of the Kaoping plains. We demonstrate that these features are the reason there are relatively few earthquakes in the Kaoping area. The presence of a highly fluid accretionary wedge is indicated by a thick alluvial layer in the west and southwest Kaoping coasts; the Peikung High acts as the indenter that may allow seismic energy to escape and reduce the number of earthquakes in the region.

Online Material: Figures illustrating calculations of Kappa, Q c , P ‐ and S ‐wave spectra, Q P , and Q S from ground‐motion data.


Most of today's state-of-the-art processors for mobile and embedded systems feature on-chip scratchpad memories. To efficiently exploit the advantages of low-latency high-bandwidth memory modules in the hierarchy, there is the need for programming models and/or language features that expose such architectural details. On the other hand, effectively exploiting the limited on-chip memory space requires the programmer to devise an efficient partitioning and distributed placement of shared data at the application level. In this paper, we propose a programming framework that combines the ease of use of OpenMP with simple, yet powerful, language extensions to trigger array data partitioning. Our compiler exploits profiled information on array access count to automatically generate data allocation schemes optimized for locality of references.


Context is acknowledged as a significant feature of a negotiation. Background information about the relationship between the parties, available resources and organisational data are readily identifiable as key components of the contextual make-up of negotiations. However, information deriving from the broader setting of the negotiation may be less well-utilised or simply taken-for-granted in a negotiation. This paper suggests that this broader setting, discussed under the rubric of governance, is a critical facet of the context of negotiations. The paper explores the notion of governance and traces its relationship with negotiation. It then offers a framework that sets out the different governance approaches and allows for identifying and assessing potential negotiation strategies according to the dominant governance mode. It concludes that while a mix of governance approaches may be present in negotiations, identifying 'ideal types' or dominant governance modes assists in choosing appropriate strategies for successfully undertaking negotiations.


On 26 December 2006, two ML = 7.0 events occurred offshore south of Pingtung; one is associated with a normal-faulting and the other with a strike-slip faulting. The area where these earthquakes were located is not usually expected to have large earthquakes. We deployed 11 short period OBSs over the source zone for one week and recorded a series of aftershocks which were also recorded on land at the CWB network stations. The joint dataset made it possible for us to perform a 3-D velocity tomography and earthquake relocation in this region, where the velocity structures were not well known and location of earthquakes with only land data was uncertain. The tomographic results show a prominent high Vp perturbation zone (HVPZ) that we consider as the uppermost mantle of the subducted plate dipping from SW to NE beneath southern Taiwan. Most of the relocated earthquakes are distributed just above the HVPZ or near and along the bottom of a relatively low velocity subducted crust. Our results show that the subducted and bent Eurasian plate off SW Taiwan could have been unbent and become an upwards concave geometry for the upper 30 km. The main shock is near the bottom of the inflected surface. The distribution of the earthquake sequence generally displays in a NW-SE direction, coinciding with the plate convergence orientation between the Philippine Sea Plate and Eurasian Plate. This orientation also follows a relatively low Bouguer gravity anomaly stripe that is due to a heavy loading of the Taiwan orogen on the east-dipping Eurasian Plate. Considering that the hypocenter of the first main-shock is near the bottom of the aftershocks, we suggest that the first normal faulting earthquake was caused by an unbending effect in the subducting crust and this event triggered the release of accumulated energy between the Philippine Sea Plate and Eurasian Plate. Thus, we suggest that the rupture surface of the Pingtung earthquake sequence had propagated upwards and northwestward in the direction of plate convergence.


A major problem for many organisational forecasters is to choose the appropriate forecasting method for a large number of data series. Model selection aims to identify the best method of forecasting for an individual series within the data set. Various selection rules have been proposed in order to enhance forecasting accuracy. In theory, model selection is appealing, as no single extrapolation method is better than all others for all series in an organizational data set. However, empirical results have demonstrated limited effectiveness of these often complex rules. The current study explores the circumstances under which model selection is beneficial. Three measures are examined for characterising the data series, namely predictability (in terms of the relative performance of the random walk but also a method, theta, that performs well), trend and seasonality in the series. In addition, the attributes of the data set and the methods also affect selection performance, including the size of the pools of methods under consideration, the stability of methods' performance and the correlation between methods. In order to assess the efficacy of model selection in the cases considered, simple selection rules are proposed, based on within-sample best fit or best forecasting performance for different forecast horizons. Individual (per series) selection is contrasted against the simpler approach (aggregate selection), where one method is applied to all data series. Moreover, simple combination of methods also provides an operational benchmark. The analysis shows that individual selection works best when specific sub-populations of data are considered (trended or seasonal series), but also when methods' relative performance is stable over time or no method is dominant across the data series.


In software engineering, program analysis is usually classified according to static analysis and dynamic analysis. While static analysis provides inaccurate and imprecise results due to programming language's features, dynamic analysis produces more accurate and precise results at runtime at the expense of longer executions to collect traces.
One prime mechanism to observe executions in dynamic analysis is to instrument either the code or the binary/byte code. Instrumentation overhead potentially poses a serious threat to the accuracy of the dynamic analysis, especially for time dependent software systems (e.g., real-time software), since it can cause those software systems to go out of synchronization.
There are two ways to increase accuracy of a dynamic analysis: devising more efficient instrumentation and using a hybrid (static plus dynamic) analysis. A hybrid analysis is a favourable approach to cope with the overhead problem over a purely dynamic analysis. Yet, in the context of reverse engineering source code to produce method calls dynamic and hybrid instrumentations typically lead to large execution traces and consequently large execution overhead.
This thesis is a step towards efficient and accurate information collection through a hybrid analysis procedure to reverse engineer source code to produce method calls, with the prime objective to reduce instrumentation overhead. To that aim, the first contribution of this thesis is to systematically analyze the contribution to instrumentation overhead of different elements of an existing and promising hybrid solution. Then, a second contribution of the thesis is to suggest an instrumentation optimization process with a range of different designs for those elements to reduce the overhead and select the best one for each element to optimize that solution. The resulting optimized hybrid technique, our third contribution, which potentially produces more accurate instrumentation compared to that hybrid solution for multi-thread software by reducing execution overhead by three quarters, has a reasonable efficiency to reverse engineer programs to produce method calls for multi-threaded software. A final contribution of this thesis is to suggest a set of recommendations for efficient instrumentation.