The United Nations-based system of universal human rights is one of the major achievements of this century Codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it provides a normative framework as well as a source of inspiration for achieving justice and protecting the weak and vulnerable. In this article, I define justice as treating people and populations fairly and allowing individuals to participate in society according to their abilities. Globalization increases the sources of injustice that are beyond the scope of national systems of justice. Today, forces that are geographically and institutionally distant from the scene of the action may influence individuals and communities. Multinational corporations and the Bretton Woods institutions--the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund--have a major impact on the lives of millions, but there are few local or decentralized institutional opportunities for recourse against their actions. The political space for governments is equally affected by international forces, which may have an impact on how governments behave domestically. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have begun to fill some of these widening institutional and geographical gaps for people or communities who want to exercise their guaranteed rights. Particularly during the last 25 years, NGOs have contributed to international and national discourse on issues of global scope, such as the eradication of poverty and the promotion of gender equality, peace, sustainable development and human rights. Most NGOs no longer work alone, but rather in networks that transfer information and other resources across borders. In this article, I explore the extent to which the gradually increasing density of NGO networks and intensifying degree of NGO advocacy can be seen as a nascent organizational articulation of a global human rights enforcement mechanism. Such a response would answer the traditional critique that the U.N. human rights principles lack sufficient organized enforcement mechanisms. The question is whether this anticipates a more institutionalized role for NGOs in emerging systems of global governance. The study of NGOs and how their networks might be organized to enforce human rights leads to a qualitative discussion of the relationships among these organizations. This article explores the distinctive relationships among NGOs--as well as the relationship between NGOs and nation-states. It examines how effective they are in promoting human rights and to what level of accountability they are subject. I argue that if they wish to aspire to a more institutionalized position within the human rights system, NGOs need to further develop the quality of their networks to become innovative sources of democracy as well as legitimate and effective sources of universal human rights and international justice. NGOs AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE GLOBAL REALM Nongovernmental organizations have grown remarkably in variety and number in the past 25 years. Though estimations differ, the NGOs listed in such resources as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Directory of NGOs, the United Nation Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Report and research based on the Yearbook of International Associations all indicate a significant expansion of the NGO sector. The UNDP report of 1993 cites 50,000 NGOs worldwide. Between 1980 and 1990, the OECD reported an increase from 1,600 to 2,500 organizations in its 24 member countries.(1) It is safe to assume that tens of thousands of NGOs worldwide are currently covering a multitude of concerns and working either at or across the local, national or international levels. However, the distribution of these groups throughout the world is not equal. When writing about NGOs and human rights in the global realm, one should recognize that conceptual or analytical shortcuts are sometimes needed. Conceptual difficulties emerge when one accounts for the academic and political debate surrounding terms like "NGOs" and "NGO advocacy" "civil society," "globalization" and "global governance. …


Confinement is a process by which particles with fractional quantum numbers bind together to form quasiparticles with integer quantum numbers. The constituent particles are confined by an attractive interaction whose strength increases with increasing particle separation and, as a consequence, individual particles are not found in isolation. This phenomenon is well known in particle physics where quarks are confined in baryons and mesons. An analogous phenomenon occurs in certain spatially anisotropic magnetic insulators. These can be thought of in terms of weakly coupled chains of spins S = 1/2, and a spin flip thus carries integer spin S = 1. The collective excitations in these systems, called spinons, turn out to carry fractional spin quantum number S = 1/2. Interestingly, at sufficiently low temperatures the weak coupling between chains can induce an attractive interaction between pairs of spinons that increases with their separation and thus leads to confinement. In this paper, we employ inelastic neutron scattering to investigate the spinon-confinement process in the quasi-one-dimensional, spin-1/2 antiferromagnet with Heisenberg-Ising (XXZ) anisotropy SrCo2V2O8. A wide temperature range both above and below the long-range ordering temperature T-N = 5.2 K is explored. Spinon excitations are observed above TN in quantitative agreement with established theory. Below T-N pairs of spinons are confined and two sequences of meson-like bound states with longitudinal and transverse polarizations are observed. Several theoretical approaches are used to explain the data. These are based on a description in terms of a one-dimensional, S = 1/2 XXZ antiferromagnetic spin chain, where the interchain couplings are modeled by an effective staggered magnetic mean field. A wide range of exchange anisotropies are investigated and the parameters specific to SrCo2V2O8 are identified. Recently developed theoretical technique based on tangent-space matrix product states gives a very complete description of the data and provides good agreement not only with the energies of the bound modes but also with their intensities. We also successfully explain the effect of temperature on the excitations including the experimentally observed thermally induced resonance between longitudinal modes below T-N and the transitions between thermally excited spinon states above T-N. In summary, our work establishes SrCo2V2O8 as a beautiful paradigm for spinon confinement in a quasi-one-dimensional quantum magnet and provides a comprehensive picture of this process.


What was it like to attend the Olympics in 388 B.C.? Would the experience resemble Olympic festivals as we celebrate them today? This remarkable book transports us back to the heyday of the city-state and classical Greek civilization. It invites us to enter this distant, alien, but still familiar culture and discover what the Greeks did and didn't do during five thrilling days in August 2,400 years ago. In the Olympic Stadium there were no stands, no shade-and no women allowed. Visitors sat on a grassy bank in the searing heat of midsummer to watch naked athletes compete in footraces, the pentathlon, horse and chariot races, and three combat sports-wrestling, boxing, and pankration, everyone's favorite competition, with virtually no rules and considerable blood and pain. This colorfully illustrated volume offers a complete tour of the Olympic site exactly as athletes and spectators found it. The book evokes the sights, sounds, and smells of the crowded encampment; introduces the various attendees (from champions and charlatans to aristocrats and prostitutes); and explains the numerous exotic religious rituals. Uniquely detailed and precise, this guide offers readers an unparalleled opportunity to travel in time, back to the excitement of ancient Olympia.


A solid-phase method for the introduction of a variety of different side chains into oligoribonucleotides is presented. It is based on a beta-D-allofuranosyl phosphoramidite with a bromopentyl-substituent tethered to the 6'-O position. After its incorporation into fully protected, immobilized RNA sequences, the bromine was substituted with a variety of soft nucleophiles which, in some cases, allowed further transformations. After deprotection and detachment, the corresponding functionalized oligoribonucleotides were purified and characterized. Incorporation of such side chains led to a slight lowering of transition temperatures, but some of them led to a significant enthalpic stabilization of an A-type RNA duplex.


Abstract
 Ulota drummondii (Hook. & Grev.) Brid. is a Suboceanic Boreal-montane epiphytic moss whose disjunct distribution includes both coasts of North America, East Asia, as well as northern and central Europe, being an extraordinarily rare moss in its southernmost known localities in Europe. It was reported some years ago from northern Spain, but the revision of the specimens on which the record was based demonstrate to be misidentified. Therefore, this species was not included in the treatment of the genus Ulota in the Flora Briofítica Ibérica. Recently, the species was collected 140 km away of the previous erroneous record, and this led to a search for other specimens from the main Iberian herbaria. Here, we present a description of this moss based on the Spanish material in order to complete certain shortcomings or inaccuracies found in previous descriptions. Additionally, the species is illustrated with pictures from both stereo and light microscopes. A key for the discrimination of the Ulota s.l. species (including genus Plenogemma Plášek, Sawicki & Ochyra) recognised in Europe and surrounding territories is presented.


An inflammatory component has been established in coronary artery disease (CAD). We analysed allele frequencies for IL-1 and TNFα gene variants in a Sheffield population with angiographically characterised single vessel disease (SVD) n= 103, multivessel disease (MVD) n=324 and normal coronary arteries (controls) n=129. Genotyping was performed for interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1RN), IL-1β, IL-1α and TNFα variants using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). There were no significant differences in genotypic distributions at the IL-1A (-889), IL-1B (+3953) and TNFA (-308) loci. Allele 2 (2*) of the IL-1RN gene was increased in patients with SVD : 34% vs 23% in controls. Genotype distribution analysis indicated a significant bias towards the IL-1RN (*2/*2) genotype (χ2 carriage = 7.579, p=0.0059, Orhom=3.67, 95%CI 1.42-9.47). This effect was less marked in the London population (SVD 57, MVD 191, NCA, 102)(χ2carriage = 3.53, p=0.06). No significant bias towards IL-1RN *2/*2 was observed in the MVD populations. Carriage of allele 2 (*2) at IL-1β (-511) was significantly raised in SVD and MVD populations (χ2carriage = 4.92, p=0.027) mostly due to heterozygotes. In London SVD, a trend with *2 at IL-1B (-511) was also observed (χ2trend = 2.02, p =0.15). Allele 2 of IL-1B (-511) is a weak genetic risk factor for CAD. Possession of allele 2 at IL-1RN (especially homozygosity (*2/*2) may confer susceptibility to SVD. These data support a role for the IL-1 family of cytokines in the pathogenesis of CAD.


Title of Dissertation: GIVING UP THEIR PLACE IN THE WALLS: THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF COMMUNITY COLLEGE NURSING FACULTY WHO LEAVE THE PROFESSION OF TEACHING Cherry Ann Caldwell Karl, Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Dissertation directed by: Professor Francine H. Hultgren Department of Education Policy Studies Community college nursing faculty members are essential to the continuation and growth of the profession of nursing. Every loss of a nursing faculty member represents an even greater loss to the practice of nursing within the health care system. Previous research has documented the serious and inter-related shortage of both nursing professionals and nursing faculty. This phenomenological study explores the underlying themes leading to the decisions made by nursing educators to leave the practice of teaching, and presents strategies for preserving and strengthening the position of nursing faculty within the community college. The guiding question for this inquiry is: "What is the lived experience of community college nursing faculty who leave the profession of teaching?" Text for this study comes from narrative sources such as reflective writings and one-on-one conversations with six former full-time community college nursing faculty members. In chapters two and three, I turn to the literature and am guided by the phenomenological philosophers such as Heidegger, Gadamer, and Casey. Nursing leaders and their work provide me with grounding for the study and to help me to draw out the phenomenon for investigation. The six research activities of van Manen provide the methodological framework for the research. Chapter four is a meeting place for those who tell their stories. The nursing faculty members who offer up their stories journey with me as I explore the meanings of their experiences. These conversations help to unravel the experiences of being a teacher of nurses and offer a place for their voices to be heard. Several themes that were uncovered showed a lack of a welcoming into teaching, unrealistic workload expectations and work-family conflict. Using the metaphor of sheltering walls, the study explores the needs of nursing faculty members to find, claim and maintain an appropriate dwelling place in order to sustain professional growth and well-bring. Pedagogical insights serve as a challenge to nurse educators to fortify the bonds of community within nursing education programs. Program administrators and faculty alike must accept the responsibility to look beyond what is most apparent, communicating awareness of individual and common needs and strengths in order to continue to enrich the lives of their students and of each other. GIVING UP THEIR PLACE IN THE WALLS: THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF COMMUNITY COLLEGE NURSING FACULTY WHO LEAVE THE PROFESSION OF TEACHING


As consumers in Western consumer culture have increasingly turned from high cultural to low cultural consumption categories to cultivate themselves, the meanings of the traditional and socio-cultural concepts used to represent different forms of consumer expertise have been blurred or altered. Drawing upon sociocultural literature on taste and distinction we attempt to provide theoretical clarity to the concepts of connoisseurship, snobbery, and nerdery; concepts that are often used interchangeably and without rigor in both (contemporary) popular and academic discourse. The outcome of our conceptual analysis is concretised using a semiotic square to illustrate how the concepts differ from each other. Our analysis suggests that the democratisation of consumption through the imprinting of status meanings upon traditionally illegitimate cultural objects may lead to the "bastardisation" of taste regarding those same illegitimate cultural categories – a performance formerly restricted to high culture. (Less)


We extend conformal inference to general settings that allow for time series data. Our proposal is developed as a randomization method and accounts for potential serial dependence by including block structures in the permutation scheme. As a result, the proposed method retains the exact, model-free validity when the data are i.i.d. or more generally exchangeable, similar to usual conformal inference methods. When exchangeability fails, as is the case for common time series data, the proposed approach is approximately valid under weak assumptions on the conformity score.


i»?Half of the world's population—3 billion people—lives below the poverty line, and Asia has the largest share. In pursuit of sustainable economic development and poverty alleviation, there is great potential among low-income households for green consumption, production, innovation, and entrepreneurial activity. This paper shows how an inclusive green growth model can uplift the poor through entrepreneurship and fiscal policy reforms. To make the case, this paper cites examples of institutions and policies in Asia that have successfully generated and tapped into the potentials of low-income households. Low-income households are recognized as resilient, value-conscious consumers and creative entrepreneurs in the inclusive and green growth paradigm. Low-income households can be the engine of a new development strategy; they can be a source of innovation for providing basic services in a green way. Evidence suggests that, without effective financial systems, not all market actors can sustain their businesses. Therefore, policy interventions are necessary to encourage and financially support enterprises to adopt best available technologies and incorporate innovative practices that are environmentally beneficial. The paper recommends fflexible redistributive and transformative public expenditure schemes and finance sector development to surmount the bottlenecks towards achieving inclusive and green growth.


The preparation and crystal structure analyses of 1,2,3-triazole fused p-benzoquinone derivatives were performed conventionally from electronically active tetraamino-p-benzoquinone (1). The redox behaviour and crystal structure of 1 were compared with those of chemically stable strong electron donor tetrakis(dimethylamino)-p-benzoquinone (3). The reaction of 1 with NaNO2 generated a diazonium salt, which reacted further to give residual amino groups of 1, forming bis(1,2,3-triazole)-p-benzoquinone (2) in high yield. Along with intramolecularly cyclized compound 2, novel π-extended dimeric product bis(1,2,3-triazole)-phenazinetetraone (4) was also generated in this reaction and isolated in charge-transfer complexes with perylene and coronene. The molecular structures of neutral 2, monoanionic 2−, and dianionic 22− were confirmed by single crystal X-ray structural analyses, where the acidic protons in 2 existed in the 2-position of the 1,2,3-triazole unit, whereas one proton in 2− was localized at the 1-position of the 1,2,3-triazole unit. The electron accepting ability of bis(1,2,3-triazole)-p-benzoquinone derivatives decreased in the order 2 > 2− > 22− due to electrostatic repulsive interactions in the anion radical and dianion state. Hydrogen-bonded new electron acceptor 4 was surrounded by four H2O molecules in the crystalline state, which formed an alternating donor–acceptor π-stacking interaction.


Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Leckey has curated an exhibition that explores the magical world of new technology, as well as tracing its connections to the beliefs of our distant past.

Historical and contemporary works of art, videos, machines, archaeological artefacts and iconic objects, like the giant inflatable cartoon figure of Felix the Cat – the first image ever transmitted on TV – inhabit an "enchanted landscape" created in Nottingham Contemporary's galleries, where objects seem to be communicating with each other and with us.

In Leckey's exhibition "magic is literally in the air." It reflects on a world where technology can bring inanimate "things" to life. Where websites predict what we want, we can ask our mobile phones for directions and smart fridges suggest recipes, count calories and even switch on the oven. By digitising objects, it can also make them "disappear" from the material world, re-emerging in any place or era.


Research-driven and clearly written, bestselling economist Richard Florida addresses the growing alarm about the exodus of high-value jobs from the USA. Today's most valued workers are what economist Richard Florida calls the Creative Class. In his bestselling The Rise of the Creative Class, Florida identified these variously skilled individuals as the source of economic revitalisation in US cities. In that book, he shows that investment in technology and a civic culture of tolerance (most often marked by the presence of a large gay community) are the key ingredients to attracting and maintaining a local creative class. In The Flight of the Creative Class, Florida expands his research to cover the global competition to attract the Creative Class. The USA once led the world in terms of creative capital. Since 2002, factors like the Bush administration's emphasis on smokestack industries, heightened security concerns after 9/11 and the growing cultural divide between conservatives and liberals have put the US at a large disadvantage. With numerous small countries, such as Ireland, New Zealand and Finland, now tapping into the enormous economic value of this class - and doing all in their power to attract these workers and build a robust economy driven by creative capital - how much further behind will USA fall?


This thesis examines published convict life-narratives of Van Diemen's Land. I
analyse eighteen self-referential accounts of convictism, written by male
transportees and published in Britain, Ireland, America or Australia during the
nineteenth century. I scrutinise how convict authors gained access to public
autobiographical space and how they negotiated an authoritative speaking position
within that space. My approach follows the precedent of autobiography theorists
like Gillian Whitlock, Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, who encourage readers of
life-narrative to understand self-referential writing as an historically situated
conversation between the personal and the public. I understand autobiographical
narrative not as the story of a life as lived, but as a site where, as Smith and
Watson suggest in Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life
Narratives, "the personal story of a remembered past is always in dialogue with
emergent cultural formations" (83). My thesis is underpinned by the assumption
that publication attests to that dialogue. I conduct an historicist reading of the
narratives and use the retrievable history of each text to situate it within the
historical context of its first publication.
Chapter One interrogates the narrative and material forms of each text to
locate evidence of how a personal recollection of crime and convictism was
shaped and packaged for commercial readership. I borrow from Whitlock's The
v
Intimate Empire the notion of the "unlikely autobiographer." I suggest that, like
former slave Mary Prince, convict life-writers were disenfranchised and
disempowered within the operative and discursive frameworks of convictism,
which rendered their access to publication unlikely and the eighteen published
accounts consequently exceptional. I identify five kinds of extra-textual conditions
that facilitated the original publication of each extant narrative. I locate each text
within the promotional, propagandist, political, pragmatic or historical conditions
of its initial publication.
Chapter Two considers how the dictates of publication impacted upon
convict writers' autobiographical authority. Again, I borrow from readings of
Mary Prince's narrative, by both Whitlock and Moira Ferguson, which recover
Prince's agency within a highly scripted collaborative production. I argue that
authorial employment of autobiographical space as a site for self-determination
and self-reconstruction demonstrates some degree of protagonist and authorial
agency in these texts. I then return to the notion of dialogue and consider several
features of some accounts which complicate their status as autobiography. In this
final discussion, I posit that convict life-narrative is a polyvocal site and that
attending to this polyvocalism furnishes a fuller portrayal of the experiences,
meanings and ramifications of convictism for individuals than does a reading that
presumes life-narrative is a unitary utterance of a life as lived.


For more than two decades, five years of adjuvant Tamoxifen remained a standard of care in women with estrogen-receptor-positive (ER+) early breast cancer (EBC). According to the most recent Oxford's group metaanalysis of 20 trials (n=21,457), five years of Tamoxifen substantially reduced recurrence by 39% and breast cancer mortality by 30% in the treated patients (1). Nevertheless, over 50% of all recurrences in these patients will still occur after completion of five years of adjuvant Tamoxifen, denoting that late relapses are a considerable problem in luminal subtypes of breast cancer (2). Earlier studies extending Tamoxifen course beyond five years have yielded inconclusive results, with two trials reporting a detrimental effect of the longer Tamoxifen treatment [the Scottish Adjuvant Tamoxifen trial (3) and NSABP B-14 (4)] and a 3rd smaller study showing a trend for improved DFS in patients receiving extended Tamoxifen (ECOG study) (5).


Optical differentiation and integration are not only interesting from the standpoint of optical computation, but are also important in picture processing. Based on optical correlation, or convolution, and the applications of difference equations, a technique for synthesizing the differentiation and integration filters is presented. This technique compares favorably with other methods which now exist.


Trends in ozone columns and vertical distributions were calculated for the period 1979–2004 based on the ozone data set CATO (Candidoz Assimilated Three-dimensional Ozone) using a multiple linear regression model. CATO has been reconstructed from TOMS, GOME and SBUV total column ozone observations in an equivalent latitude and potential temperature framework and offers a pole to pole coverage of the stratosphere on 15 potential temperature levels. The regression model includes explanatory variables describing the influence of the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO), volcanic eruptions, the solar cycle, the Brewer-Dobson circulation, Arctic ozone depletion, and the increase in stratospheric chlorine. The effects of displacements of the polar vortex and jet streams due to planetary waves, which may significantly affect trends at a given geographical latitude, are eliminated in the equivalent latitude framework. The QBO shows a strong signal throughout most of the lower stratosphere with peak amplitudes in the tropics of the order of 10–20% (peak to valley). The eruption of Pinatubo led to annual mean ozone reductions of 15–25% between the tropopause and 23 km in northern mid-latitudes and to similar percentage changes in the southern hemisphere but concentrated at altitudes below 17 km. Stratospheric ozone is elevated over a broad latitude range by up to 5% during solar maximum compared to solar minimum, the largest increase being observed around 30 km. This is at a lower altitude than reported previously, and no negative signal is found in the tropical lower stratosphere. The Brewer-Dobson circulation shows a dominant contribution to interannual variability at both high and low latitudes and accounts for some of the ozone increase seen in the northern hemisphere since the mid-1990s. Arctic ozone depletion significantly affects the high northern latitudes between January and March and extends its influence to the mid-latitudes during later months. The vertical distribution of the ozone trend shows distinct negative trends at about 18 km in the lower stratosphere with largest declines over the poles, and above 35 km in the upper stratosphere. A narrow band of large negative trends extends into the tropical lower stratosphere. Assuming that the observed negative trend before 1995 continued to 2004 cannot explain the ozone changes since 1996. A model accounting for recent changes in equivalent effective stratospheric chlorine, aerosols and Eliassen-Palm flux, on the other hand, closely tracks ozone changes since 1995.


Lope de Vega's posthumous fame in Italy differs according to the ages: if in the 17th century he was really appreciated and his dramas and comedies were often translated, adapted and represented, nowadays he's practically absent in the dramatic production and there are just a few titles available in Italian translation. This also happens for his masterpieces. The case of El perro del hortelano is quite interesting, since there are three versions, by Ameyden, Gasparetti and Fiorellino, belonging to different periods and different conceptions of translation and literary taste. This article tries to analyse them in a comparative perspective.


Obnoxious labels are derogatory terms which speak extensively on the ignorant dispositions of scholars who either rush into faulty conclusions, or have prior decisions to promote class distinction through the uncomplimentary colours they paint of what others hold as divine, spiritual, and transcendental. For such derogatory terms to gain wide audience in a globalized age explain the frame of mind of discordant voices which have been based on arm-chair scholarship. The thrust of this article therefore, is to use Igbo experience to explore the problems of atheism and humanism in a globalized world. The exploratory research will help adopt cultural centred approach in analyzing the dichotomy between the various philosophical view points on God, spirits and man's religious belief system in Igbo land in particular and Africa in general. It is hoped that the analyses of the challenges posed by atheism and humanism in a globalized world will balance ideas, views, attitudes and behaviour that will reposition Igbo religious beliefs, values and practices in line with the proposed theistic humanism associated with Igbo culture in particular and African culture in general. This will breach the persisted conflict between the sacred and the secular pointing to a dynamic and progressive Igbo culture.


It has become fairly standard in the programming-languages research world to verify functional programs in proof assistants using induction, algebraic simplification, and rewriting. In this paper, we introduce Kami, a Coq library that enables similar expressive and modular reasoning for hardware designs expressed in the style of the Bluespec language. We can specify, implement, and verify realistic designs entirely within Coq, ending with automatic extraction into a pipeline that bottoms out in FPGAs. Our methodology, using labeled transition systems, has been evaluated in a case study verifying an infinite family of multicore systems, with cache-coherent shared memory and pipelined cores implementing (the base integer subset of) the RISC-V instruction set.


For more than 100 years, scientists have been searching for a temporal relation between earthquakes and the Earth's tides (Schuster, 1897; Emter, 1997). Such a relation is plausible because the tides wax and wane with predominantly diurnal (12-hour) and fortnightly (14-day) periods. This plausibility is strengthened by the fact that the stressing rates in the Earth's crust resulting from the tides are far greater than from other known loads, such as tectonic plate motions (Vidale et al. , 1998).

Studies from the last 10 years have focused on diurnal tides. The highest-resolution studies find at best a few percent variation in the rate of earthquake occurrence due to diurnal tide stressing (Tsuruoka et al. , 1995; Vidale et al. , 1998; Ohtake et al. , 2001), except at the places with the largest tides (Cochran et al. , 2004). Some studies suggest the tidal triggering of earthquakes varies with tectonic region; the highest correlations have been found in ocean ridge environments (Tolstoy and Vernon, 2002). The lack of a strong correlation of earthquakes with the diurnal tides suggests a delay may occur between achievement of high tidal stresses and the triggering of an earthquake. If the delay is of the order of a few days, than we should be able to capture the correlation within a window spanning several days about the times of highest tidal stress. This method has been pioneered by James Berkland (http://www.syzygyjob.com/) and termed "syzygy." Syzygy refers to the new and full moon, and primarily depends on the Sun-Earth-Moon angle (Figure 1). The syzygy hypothesis was tested by analyzing more than 2,000 earthquakes in the San Francisco Bay area (McNutt and Heaton, 1981). This showed that predictions based on the Sun-Earth-Moon angle are not sufficiently powerful to make societally useful earthquake risk …


Using 300-fs 1039-nm Yb-doped fiber laser, we experimentally demonstrate blue light generation in a high-\Delta and high nonlinear photonic crystal fiber (PCF). The zero dispersion wavelength of PCF is 793 nm, detuning 245.8 nm from the pump wavelength. PCF allows a frequency conversion exceeding the octave of pump wavelength. The visible component of the measured output spectrum occurs in the fundamental mode and spans from 391.3 to 492.3 nm. The peak wavelength of 441.8 nm has a frequency detuning of 390 THz from the pump wavelength of 1039 nm.


Recently, the large T panel literature has emphasized unobserved, time-varying heterogeneity that may stem from omitted common variables or global shocks that affect each individual unit differently. These latent common factors induce cross-section dependence and may lead to inconsistent regression coefficient estimates if they are correlated with the explanatory variables. Moreover, if the process underlying these factors is nonstationary, the individual regressions will be spurious but pooling or averaging across individual estimates still permits consistent estimation of a long-run coefficient. The need to tackle both error cross-section dependence and persistent autocorrelation is motivated by the evidence of their pervasiveness found in three well-known, international finance and macroeconomic examples. A range of estimators is surveyed and their finite-sample properties are examined by means of Monte Carlo experiments. These reveal that a mean group version of the common-correlated-effects estimator stands out as the most robust since it is the preferred choice in rather general (non) stationary settings where regressors and errors share common factors and their factor loadings are possibly dependent. Other approaches which perform reasonably well include the two-way fixed effects, demeaned mean group and between estimators but they are less efficient than the common-correlated-effects estimator.


Aerosol detection and monitoring by satellite observations has been substantially developed over the past decades. While several state-of-the-art aerosol retrieval techniques provide aerosol properties at global scale, high spatial detail that is suitable for urbanized regions is unavailable because most of the satellite-based products are at coarse resolution. A refined aerosol retrieval algorithm using the MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) to retrieve aerosol properties at 500-m resolution over land is described here. The rationale of our technique is to first estimate the aerosol reflectances by decomposing the top-of-atmosphere reflectance from surface reflectance and Rayleigh path reflectance. For the determination of surface reflectances, a modified minimum reflectance technique (MRT) is used, and MRT images are computed for different seasons. A good agreement is obtained between the surface reflectances of MRT images and MODIS land surface reflectance products (MOD09), with a correlation of 0.9. For conversion of aerosol reflectance to aerosol optical thickness (AOT), comprehensive lookup tables are constructed which consider aerosol properties and sun-viewing geometry in the radiative transfer calculations. The resulting 500-m AOT images are highly correlated (r = 0.937) with AErosol RObotic NETwork sunphotometer observations in Hong Kong for most of the year corresponding to the long dry season. This study demonstrates a method for aerosol retrieval at fine resolution over urbanized regions, which can assist the study of aerosol spatial distribution. In addition, the MODIS 500-m AOT images can also be used to pinpoint source areas of cross-boundary aerosols from the Pearl River Delta region.


Medical professionals, of all people, should know how harmful smoking is. In Britain, almost no doctors smoke. Yet in many countries, such as Italy, smoking is commonplace among medical students and doctors. The question arises as to why this is so, and what can be done about it. It is important to analyse this issue not only for the health of medical professionals but also because if they smoke themselves, they are in no position to advise or help their patients to stop.

Tobacco products would not be sold legally if they were invented today—there is no other product on the market with such high levels of known toxins and carcinogens!

The World Health Organization estimates that each year, more than 5 million deaths worldwide are attributable to smoking.

According to the 2012 Eurobarometer Report 'Attitudes of Europeans towards Tobacco', the prevalence of smoking in the European population aged ≥15 years is 28%, with a maximum observed in Greece (40%) and a minimum in Sweden (13%). Italy (as the Netherlands) is classified fourth from the last with a prevalence of 24%. The 2012 Italian DOXA survey, requested each year by the Istituto Superiore di Sanita, reported a lower estimate of 21%.

Nevertheless, according to a study published in 2010, the prevalence of smoking among health professionals in Italy is 44%, more than double that of the general population, and this is not only due to the high prevalence in nurses (48.2%), but it is also observed in medical doctors (33.9%), medical students (35%) and postgraduate students (52.9%).1

This …


This paper reports on a specific food and agribusiness industry project, employing new technological capabilities to better transfer expert knowledge. Knowledge transfer and technical support are key components of this project. VisIT, which stands for visualization of information tool, is a powerful organizational tool, which provides an Internet-based graphical learning environment. As a means to more effectively disseminate knowledge, the project support group desired to employ the VisIT technology to create "expert search maps". Before devoting extensive resources to the use of the VisIT technology, an evaluation of this approach was conducted relative to more traditional methods used on the Internet. The hypothesis of the study is that the students with access to the graphical expert search map will have a better understanding of the complex issues as compared to students given the now traditional linear list of search results. The study results in counterintuitive findings. These findings have significant implications for managers as well as for researchers developing knowledge management tools.


Women in developed economies have made major inroads in labor markets throughout the past century, but remaining gender differences in pay and employment seem remarkably persistent. This paper documents long-run trends in female employment, working hours and relative wages for a wide cross-section of developed economies. It reviews existing work on the factors driving gender convergence, and novel perspectives on remaining gender gaps. The paper finally emphasizes the interplay between gender trends and the evolution of the industry structure. Based on a shift-share decomposition, it shows that the growth in the service share can explain at least half of the overall variation in female hours, both over time and across countries.


This article concerns two themes in Bart Schultz's recent biography of Henry Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe. The first is the importance of Sidgwick's conflict over his religious beliefs to the development of his thinking in The Methods of Ethics. I suggest that, in addition to the characteristics of Methods that Schulz highlights, the work's epistemology, specifically, Sidgwick's program of presenting ethics as an axiomatic system on the traditional understanding of such systems, is due to the conflict. The second is the relative neglect into which Methods fell in the first part of the twentieth century, neglect Schultz attributes to changes in philosophical fashions and to the undue influence of the Bloomsbury literati on British intellectual culture. I suggest that there is a deeper explanation, which lies in Sidgwick's program of presenting ethics as an axiomatic system on the traditional understanding of such systems. Such programs, I argue, became obsolete in analytic philosophy owing to changes in how axiomatization in mathematics was understood that resulted initially from the rise of non-Euclidean geometries and ultimately from the collapse of Frege's and Russell's logicism.


This work focuses on aspects of combustion in a spark ignition engine. A pent-roof research engine was used to generate an experimental data set which was combined with a preexisting data set from a disc-chamber research engine.
The combined dataset was used to refine a thermodynamic spark ignition engine combustion code which could operate in either a three-zone entrainment and bum up, or a two-zone direct combustion, configuration.

The pent-roof engine was skip-fired to ensure residual gases were purged and care was taken to ensure that the thermodynamic state and chemical composition of the intake mixture were well defined. The combustion chamber, which featured near complete optical access, was illuminated using a sheet of laser light. Mie scattered laser light from fine seed particles was recorded allowing the position
of the flame front to be tracked. These images were then ensemble averaged and combined to give a three-dimensional reconstruction of the mean combustion progress variable field for three different engine speeds.

As the flame approached the combustion chamber walls it was found to decelerate. A relationship between the burning velocity of an unconstrained flame and a flame approaching a wall was derived which agreed well with the experimental
results. This relationship was incorporated into the engine simulation code and found to improve greatly the predictions of the two-zone combustion model.

New flame acceleration and laminar burning velocity submodels reported in the literature were added to the engine simulation code. The suitability of these models for simulating spark ignition engine combustion was evaluated using the disc and pent roof experimental data sets and model constants adjusted to optimise the performance of each submodel. Although there were substantial differences
between the individual submodels, over the range of operating conditions for which experimental data was available changes to the submodel used had a
negligible effect on the combustion model predictions.

The work concludes with an evaluation of the performance of the three-zone combustion model for simulating a pent-roof engine. The model was modified for the pent-roof engine to include suitable assumptions for turbulence and the
position of the centre of the flame. Using constants which were chosen to fit data recorded in the disc chamber engine, the model predictions for the pentroof engine were comparable in accuracy to predictions for the disc roof engine. The model was incorporated in a commercially available manifold gas dynamics simulation software to allow the predictive simulation of complete engine cycles.


Different techniques (weight loss, electrochemical, and spray
corrosion measurements) have been used to evaluate four sarcosine derivatives to inhibit corrosion and one commercial compound as synergist. The basic metal was low carbon steel CR4 tested at different conditions. As working media mainly neutral water and 0.1 M NaCl was applied. The protective film was formed on the steel surface via direct absorption of the tested substances during the immersion process. A highly improved corrosion protection with direct correlation to the molecular weight and carbon chain length of the tested compounds was detected. The protection of steel CR4 against corrosion in 0.1 M NaCl enhanced with increasing concentration of selected sarcosine compounds. The best inhibitor throughout all tested concentrations and all evaluation systems was Oleoylsarcosine (O) with efficiencies up to 97 % in potentiodynamic polarization (PP), 83 % electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and 85 % weight loss (WL) at 100 mmol/L as highest concentration tested here. The second best inhibitor was Myristoylsarcosine (M) with efficiencies up to 82 % in PP, 69 % in EIS, and 75 % in WL at highest concentration. The inhibitor with the shortest hydrocarbon chain in this series is Lauroylsarcosine (L). It showed lowest effects to inhibit corrosion compared to O and M. The efficiencies of L were a bit more than 50 % at 75 and 100 mmol/L and less than 50 % at 25 and 50 mmol/L in all used evaluation systems. Furthermore, the overall efficiency is promoted with longer dip coating times during the steel CR4 immersion as shown for 50 mmol/L for all present derivatives. This survey indicated 10 min as best time in respect of cost and protection efficiency. The commercial inhibitor Oley-Imidazole (OI) improved significantly the effectiveness of compound Cocoylsarcosine (C), which contains the naturally mixture of carbon chain lengths from coconut oil (C8 - C18), and enhanced protection when used in combination (C+OI, 1:1 molar ration). In this system the efficiency increased from 47 % to 91 % in PP, from 40 % to 84 % in EIS, and from 45 % to 82 % in WL at highest concentration. Spray corrosion tests were used to evaluate all present sarcosine substances on steel CR4 in a more realistic system. The best inhibitor after a 24 h test was O followed by the combination C+OI and M with efficiencies up to 99 %, 80 %, and 79 %, respectively. The obtained results indicate a good stability of the protective film formed by the present inhibitors even after 24 h. All evaluation systems used in the current investigation were in good agreement and resulted in the same inhibitor sequence. Furthermore, the adsorption process of the tested compounds is assumed to follow the Langmuir type isotherm. Response surface methodology (RSM) is an optimization method depending on Box- Behnken Design (BBD). It was used in the current system to find the optimum efficiency for inhibitor O to protect steel CR4 against corrosion in salt water. Four independent variables were used here: inhibitor concentration (A), dip coating time (B), temperature (C), and NaCl concentration (D); each with three respective levels: lower (-1), mid (0), and upper (+1). According to the present result, temperature has the greatest effect on the protection process as individual parameter followed by the inhibitor concentration itself. In this investigation an optimum efficiency of 99 % is calculated by the following parameter and level combination: upper level (+1) for inhibitor concentration, dip coating time, and NaCl concentration while lower level (-1) for temperature.


In this Essay, I review a modest selection of important evidence from the early Republic, the debate over the constitutionality of the First Bank of the United States in the First Congress, to evaluate whether, to what extent, and how Americans utilized constitutional construction in the early Republic. This Essay derives a number of tentative conclusions from this evidence. First, the participants in this early debate appeared to believe that a necessary precondition for constitutional construction — underdeterminacy — existed. Second, the participants also argued as if, after the application of a number of interpretative rules, the Constitution provided a determinate answer to the constitutional question. Third, the participants seemed ultimately to conclude that the Constitution's meaning provided a determinate answer to the question under debate (though they continued to disagree about what that answer was).


This article proposes a simple framework for understanding an emergent diversity of linkage between corporate governance (CG) and organizational architecture (OA). It distinguishes discreet modes of their linkage by different combinatorial patterns between three basic assets: managers' human assets (MHA), workers' human assets (WHA), and non-human assets (NHA). Using the concept of essentiality of human assets proposed by Hart (1995) and distinguished from that of complementarities, we first propose a new characterization of four known modes of CG-OA linkage: three traditional (Anglo-American, German, and Japanese) and one relatively new (Silicon Valley) models. Then we present empirical evidences of emergent diversity of Japanese CG-OA which is somewhat at odds with the old Japanese model. We interpret its emergent dominant mode as the path-dependent evolution of a new pattern of human assets essentiality, made viable by lessening of institutional-complementarity-constraints which surrounded the traditional Japanese model. We argue that this new mode interpreted in terms of reciprocal essentiality may have broader applicability beyond Japanese context.


Abdominal segmentation on clinically acquired computed tomography (CT) has been a challenging problem given the inter-subject variance of human abdomens and complex 3-D relationships among organs. Multi-atlas segmentation (MAS) provides a potentially robust solution by leveraging label atlases via image registration and statistical fusion. We posit that the efficiency of atlas selection requires further exploration in the context of substantial registration errors. The selective and iterative method for performance level estimation (SIMPLE) method is a MAS technique integrating atlas selection and label fusion that has proven effective for prostate radiotherapy planning. Herein, we revisit atlas selection and fusion techniques for segmenting 12 abdominal structures using clinically acquired CT. Using a re-derived SIMPLE algorithm, we show that performance on multi-organ classification can be improved by accounting for exogenous information through Bayesian priors (so called context learning). These innovations are integrated with the joint label fusion (JLF) approach to reduce the impact of correlated errors among selected atlases for each organ, and a graph cut technique is used to regularize the combined segmentation. In a study of 100 subjects, the proposed method outperformed other comparable MAS approaches, including majority vote, SIMPLE, JLF, and the Wolz locally weighted vote technique. The proposed technique provides consistent improvement over state-of-the-art approaches (median improvement of 7.0% and 16.2% in DSC over JLF and Wolz, respectively) and moves toward efficient segmentation of large-scale clinically acquired CT data for biomarker screening, surgical navigation, and data mining.


A 37-year-old female with a history of complex trauma, anxiety and depression was treated with Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) supplemented with guided imagery within the first 24 hours of having a stroke that affected the right side. CT scans indicated a haemorrhage and brain clot. Surgery was delayed as another seizure was expected. Interventions occurred during COVID-19 restrictions. The patient then engaged in 90 minutes of EFT every day over the course of a week while in hospital. After seven days she was discharged, and there were significant reductions in depression, anxiety and pain, and mobility returned. Upon discharge the patient had evident improvement in balance and coordination and successfully completed a driving test within the weeks that followed. Subsequent CT scans reveal very little scaring or evidence of the stroke, blood pressure remained stable, and no medication was warranted. This case study presents the practitioner's perspective of the sessions provided.


The post-Cold War era has witnessed a dramatic transformation in the German political consensus about the legitimacy of the use of force. However, in comparison with its EU and NATO partners, Germany has been reticent to transform its military to meet the challenges of the contemporary security environment. Until 2003 territorial defence rather than crisis-management remained the armed forces' core role and the Bundeswehr continues to retain conscription. The book argues that 'strategic culture' provides only a partial explanation of German military reform. It demonstrates how domestic material factors were of crucial importance in shaping the pace and outcome of reform, despite the impact of 'international structure' and adaptational pressures from the EU and NATO. The domestic politics of base closures, ramifications for social policy, financial restrictions consequent upon German unification and commitment to EMU's Stability and Growth Pact were critical in determining the outcome of reform. The study also draws out the important role of policy leaders in the political management of reform as entrepreneurs, brokers or veto players, shifting the focus in German leadership studies away from a preoccupation with the Chancellor to the role of ministerial and administrative leadership within the core executive. Finally, the book contributes to our understanding of the Europeanization of the German political system, arguing that policy leaders played a key role in 'uploading' and 'downloading' processes to and from the EU and that Defence Ministers used 'Atlanticization' and 'Europeanization' in the interests of their domestic political agendas.


Abilities of aquatic plant species, Echinodosus cordifolius (L.) Griseb., Bacopa caroliniana (Walt.) Rob., and Hydrocotyle umbellata L., for phytoremediation of lead (Pb) from synthetic wastewater were conducted in hydroponic system at 20-80 mg/L of Pb (II) and 7-28 days of exposure periods. Additional experimental set up for aquatic plant species under 60 and 80 mg/L of Pb (II) were added with 5 mM EDTA in order to enhance Pb accumulation in the plants. Results revealed that the capacity of Pb (II) accumulation at 80 mg/L of Pb (II), 28 days in roots of all aquatic plants was higher than that of shoots. E. cordifolius (L.) Griseb. had the highest capacity of Pb (II) accumulation about 12,566 (roots) and 8,686 (shoots) mg/kg dry wt, respectively giving 95% of Pb (II) removal, followed by H. umbellata L. and B. caroliniana (Walt.) Rob., respectively. Regarding EDTA addition, lead accumulation (80 mg/L of Pb (II), 7 days) was increased in the roots of H. umbellata L. about 19,883 mg/kg dry wt and it was increased in the shoots of E. cordifolius (L.) Griseb. about 14,516 mg/kg dry wt (80 mg/L of Pb (II), 21 days), respectively. The highest relative growth (13.85) and percentage of biomass productivity (98%) were in H. umbellata L. (60 mg/L of Pb (II), 7 days), whereas the highest bioconcentration factor (9,341.68) was in E. cordifolius (L.) Griseb.(80 mg/L of Pb (II), 21 days). According to the results, E. cordifolius (L.) Griseb. was recommended to remove the lead from synthetic wastewater with EDTA addition. Further studies in contaminated wastewater under various characteristics and flows should be investigated.


The thermal conductivity of liquid mercury has been measured in a range of temperature from 300 to 520 K at atmospheric pressure. The measurements were carried out with a new experimental technique based on the transient hot-wire technique. Special efforts have been made to ensure the elimination of the phenomenon of convection, which is one of the main problems found in the measurement of the thermal conductivity of molten metals. The results obtained demonstrate the validity of the theoretical model of the experimental technique and they support the claimed accuracy of ±2%. The present results are compared with the disparate values reported in the literature by other authors and are thought to be of a superior accuracy.


There is almost universal agreement that the most effective solution to open-access natural resource problems lies in some form of ownership. Authors disagree on the secondary question of which ownership form, i.e., private, community, or government, will produce the most efficient or equitable results under particular conditions. There has been little attention paid to the fact that government ownership, that is, regulation, is certain to produce results that all interested subsets of the public will view as inefficient and inequitable. Dissatisfaction flows inevitably from the requirements and realities of democratic decisionmaking structures and constraints. In other words, a democracy puts more emphasis on fair process and the incorporation of competing values than on achieving any particular objective. Thus, although government ownership might solve open-access natural resource problems such as those that occur in fisheries insofar as it creates a peaceable forum for dispute resolution, it does not lead to what anyone might consider well-managed fisheries. For government ownership and well-managed fisheries to coexist, the most logical solution is to create a subset of government structures, the goals of which are aligned with the preferences of various interest groups such as commercial fishers, recreational fishers, and marine conservationists. This approach, which is used on U.S. public lands, ensures that, within at least some parts of the public domain, groups will view management as having succeeded. Greater interest-group satisfaction should lead to welfare gains because those groups will, for example, feel less need to expend resources participating in costly agency processes.


Context: The Resources for Effective Sleep Treatment (REST) project was conducted in Lincolnshire, UK from 2007-2010. Its aim was to develop and evaluate new approaches to implementing sleep assessment methods and non-pharmacological treatments for insomnia into routine general practice.
Problem: Sleep problems are common affecting 30% of the population in the previous year. Many insomnia sufferers present to general practice but patients and clinicians feel that primary care management should be improved. For example, there is considerable evidence of underuse of sleep assessment tools and psychological treatments such as cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBTi), continuing evidence of inappropriate long term prescribing of hypnotics and a perception of poor practice among patients and practitioners.
Assessment of problem and analysis of its causes: Multiple mixed methods including surveys, qualitative analysis (of focus groups, interviews, practice visits and collaborative meetings) and analysis of prescribing data were used to understand the problem of sleep management and how to improve it.
Intervention: We used a series of collaboratives to develop and spread the intervention. The initial modelling collaborative was used to develop a multidisciplinary model for management of sleep problems in primary care: 'problem focused therapy'. This uses careful assessment using sleep diaries and sleep assessment tools and treatment using modified CBTi for insomnia. A subsequent collaborative was used to spread the intervention more widely.
Study design: We used a multiple case study approach to develop an explanatory model of why and how GPs engaged to improve sleep management in the 'modelling' and 'spread' collaboratives. Using practices as the units of analysis we describe how clinicians (re)framed the problem, developed solutions and saw the impact of these on changing practice.
Strategy for change: We used a range of multidisciplinary team approaches to understand the need for and receptiveness to change, how change could be introduced and how these changes in management of sleep problems could be spread more widely during the project and beyond.
Measurement of improvement: We used qualitative and time series methods to show changes in care over time. We gathered evidence on what care patients currently received and what they needed, how practitioners responded and how they could change practice and how practice teams redesigned processes of care and the impact of these changes on quality of care and prescribing for sleep problems.
Effects of changes: within two years, over one third of practices (36/102) in the county had participated in the quality improvement project with evidence of change in clinical routines, benefits to patients' experiences of care and significant reductions in prescribing in some practices.
Lessons learnt: Quality improvement projects which require introduction of new health technologies require different collaborative approaches to developing new models of care, compared to projects which are trying to improve the reliability of care or to spread knowledge.
Message for others: Case study methods provided an invaluable way to understand the complex 'black box' of quality improvement to show how patients and practitioners adopted and benefited from improved systems of care for insomnia.


This study deals with variation between possessive/genitive and objective/plain forms of the subject of the verbal gerund clause (VGC) in Present-day and Late Modern British English, as in Would you object to my [me] paying her a visit? and Poor timing of spoonfuls can lead to the child's [the child] feeling frustrated. According to the traditional prescriptivist view, the possessive/genitive form is the preferred variant. The aim of the present study is to explore to what extent possessive/genitive and objective/plain forms are used as subjects of VGCs, and to see what factors influence the variation.The study consists of synchronic and diachronic analyses. The synchronic data, drawn from the British National Corpus (BNC), represents four genres: Academic Prose, Fiction, News and Conversation. The diachronic data comprises collections of novels from the periods 1751–1800, 1851–1900 and 1960–1993 (the BNC Fiction genre). In addition to univariate analyses, multivariate analyses are performed in order to discover what factors carry more importance than others.When the VGC subject is a personal pronoun, e.g. my or me, genre plays a crucial role, with the proportion of possessives being conspicuously high in Academic Prose and significantly lower in the other genres. Regarding NPs other than personal pronouns, genre is not as important a factor; instead, the function of the VGC in the superordinate clause and linguistic factors such as animacy and the singular/plural distinction are also salient in determining variation.Moreover, results reveal that in the periods 1751–1800 and 1851–1900, the possessive form of a personal pronoun is the unchallenged norm, whereas the use of the possessive decreases considerably between the second and third periods. Genitive and plain-case forms of other NPs are evenly distributed in the first period; after that, the genitive is only used in certain contexts.


Session of Thursday, December 29 The Society was called to order by the President, John C. Branner, at 9.30 o'clock a m, in room 116, the Geological Museum and Lecture room, of College Hall, University of Pennsylvania, where all of the sessions of the meeting were held except the evening session of this day. The report of the Council was called for and was presented by the Secretary, in print, as follows : REPORT OF THE COUNCIL To the Geological Society of America, in Seventeenth Annual Meeting Assembled: The Council has held only one meeting during the year, in conjunction with the meeting of the Society at Saint Louis. Some business has been transacted by correspondence. The rules relating to publications have been modified, the most important change being reduction of the price of Bulletin brochures. The reduction amounts to 20 per cent of the former prices to Fellows and . . .


Dan Graham's Rock My Religion (1982--1984) is a video essay populated by punk and rock performers (Patti Smith, Jim Morrison, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Eddie Cochran) and historical figures (including Ann Lee, founder of the Shakers). It represented a coming together of narrative voice-overs, singing and shouting voices, and jarring sounds and overlaid texts that proposed a historical genealogy of rock music and an ambitious thesis about the origins of North America's popular culture. Because of its passionate embrace of underground music, its low-fi aesthetics, interest in politics, and liberal approach to historiography, the video has become a landmark work in the history of contemporary moving image and art; but it has remained, possibly for the same reasons, one of Graham's least written about works--underappreciated and possibly misunderstood by the critics who otherwise celebrate him. This illustrated study of Graham's groundbreaking work fills that critical gap. Kodwo Eshun examines Rock My Religion not only in terms of contemporary art and Graham's wider body of work but also as part of the broader culture of the time. He explores the relationship between Graham and New York's underground music scene of the 1980s, connecting the artistic methods of the No Wave bands--especially their group dynamics and relationship to the audience--and Rock My Religion's treatment of working class identity and culture.


Casual and thoughtful speakers alike frequently use "library" as though it were the collective noun for "book": A herd of cows, a murder of crows, a library of books. In practice it matters little whether "book" is understood as a specific physical artifact of ink and paper, or whether it refers more generically to any information-containing entity. The consistent point appears to be that in the presence of a sufficient number of those items, a library necessarily rises into existence.This implied relationship proves critical to debates over the implications of digital formats for libraries. If libraries are reducible to their books (however understood), then a fundamental change in books requires a similarly radical reaction from libraries. In that view, to the extent traditional books themselves are an endangered medium, then so too must be libraries, given that they are mere "warehouses" of books. To resist such inevitable changes not only betokens an unhealthy conservatism, but worse, an irrational denial of the fundamental relationship between books and libraries.This article, however, offers three independent demonstrations that libraries cannot be reduced to their books. The library is not an additive category, but rather an emergent concept greater than the sum of its parts. Books may typically and traditionally serve as building blocks for libraries, but the presence of books of any definition is not sufficient for something to be recognized as a "library." Breaking this link raises serious consequences for the format debates. If physical books do not make the library, then less so can digital books. The challenge will then shift to identify what must be present to create a library other than information-containing entities, and then to inquire whether these additional qualities can be achieved in the digital environment. The "digital library," in other words, remains to be proved as an intelligible idea, whatever its technological possibility. The conclusion offered here is that such alchemy is not impossible, but highly unlikely.


The purpose of this study was to investigate: the effect of reciprocal teaching strategies on the critical thinking skills of learners. This research is a quasi experimental type research. The population is all students in SD Nanggalo Tarusan Pesisir Selatan and the samples are students of VA and VB class as many as 50 people. This sampling technique is porpusive sampling. Data from the research results obtained from critical thinking skills tests. The results showed that the critical thinking skills of learners who were given a reciprocal teaching strategy were higher than conventional learning.


In selecting an appropriate groundwater treatment system, three steps are normally followed. 1. A groundwater investigation is performed to determine the types and concentrations of contaminants that are present and the waste matrices in which they occur; 2. Cleanup goals are established and translated into effluent standards; 3. Appropriate treatment technologies are selected, based on waste composition, cleanup goals, and knowledge of performance characteristics from prior experience with similar waste. This paper elaborates on the process of how these steps have led to the selection of physical and chemical treatment processes for groundwater remediation at hazardous waste sites. Three case studies are presented that illustrate actual applications of these technologies.


Food security issue is getting more attention in middle-income countries such as Tunisia after the revolution 2011, where many factors affecting its food security are multiplied. An econometric analysis of food security was done through the Vector Error Correction Model approach (VECM). The result of this approach shows that there is a significant long-term causality between the dependent variables and the explanatory variables. Some signs of variables like land under cereals assert the hypothesis of Ricardo's land rent theory and also attract attention for the preservation of land fertility in climate change context. However, there is a short-term causal relationship between food security and independents variables like: land under cereals, inflation and food imports. These results confirm that the issue of food security in Tunisia is a question of threat in the short and long-term instability. So, it is important today to readjust some factors to ensure food security in Tunisia like controlling inflation and lowering the food importation as short-term measures and preserving and improving the fertility of land under cereals and adopting climate change as long-term measures.


The increasing life expectancy phenomenon forces the people to have enough money to meet their needs in old age. Therefore the finance matter is vital for the elderly. This study aims to investigate the financial status of Malaysian elderly and its associations with social demographic characteristics, financial behavior and financial problems. This study employed a secondary data from an Intensification of Rresearch on Priority Areas (IRPA) study on Quality of Life of Older Malaysians (2003). The data was analyzed using Statistical Package of Social Science (SPSS) version 13. The procedures were descriptive statistics, t-test, chi-square test, ANOVA and multiple regression analysis. The study found that majority of the respondents had limited income and assets. About sixty percent of Malaysian elderly had negative net worth. Analysis of financial ratios showed that most of the respondents had not enough saving and liquidity assets. A significant positive correlation was found between net worth and good financial behaviour. The Multiple linear Regression (MLR) showed the elderly financial status was explained by (1) higher income, (2) house ownership, (3) higher education attainment, (4) ethnicity (Chinese), (5) good financial behaviours (6) less financial problems, (7) living arrangement, (8) employment status, and (9) household size. Since most of the elderly has lower income and moderate financial behaviour, financial education should be addressed to this population in managing their money in old age, which leads to a better quality of life among the Malaysian elderly.


A transition toward a sustainable way of living is more pressing than ever. One link to achieving this transition is to increase the currently low level of sustainable consumption, and sustainability labeling has been shown to directly influence sustainable purchasing decisions. E-commerce retailers have recently picked up on a means to inform online shoppers about sustainable alternatives by introducing on their websites third-party and private sustainability labels as nudging instruments. However, despite its increasing relevance in practice, research lacks evidence about the availability and credibility of sustainability labeling in online retail. Our study is guided by the question of how online retailers use sustainability labels to communicate information on the sustainability of products to consumers. Our empirical research is based on a large-scale dataset containing sustainability information of nearly 17,000 fashion products of the leading online retailers in Germany Zalando and Otto. The results show that a large number of fashion products are tagged as sustainable, with two-thirds carrying a private label and one-third a third-party verified label. Only 14% of the tagged products, however, present credible third-party verified sustainability labels. This low percentage makes it challenging for consumers to comprehend to what degree a product is sustainable. The wide distribution of private labels indicates that most of the available sustainability information in the selected online shops addresses only single sustainability issues, preventing comparability. Furthermore, label heterogeneity can add to the confusion and uncertainty among consumers. Our practical recommendations support political initiatives that tackle the risk of greenwashing resulting from uncertified and weak sustainability information.


This thesis presents a regionalised mobility management approach to Mobile IP to solve several inherent problems in the Mobile IP base protocol. The Mobile IP protocol as specified in RFC2002[Perkins, 1996b] provides a scalable mechanism for node mobility within the Internet. However, there still exist several outstanding issues related to efficient mobility management, handoff, key management, support for private address spaces and the inefficient routing of data to a mobile node. Firstly , Mobile IP does not perform well when dealing with large numbers of mobile nodes moving frequently across small wireless subnets. Mobile nodes that move in this way suffer periods of service disruption due to the delay incurred in determining the movement across the boundary of a subnet and later updating their new location information with their possibly distant home agents. Secondly, key management between the mobile node and the foreign agent, and between both the foreign and the home agents raises scalability issue. Thirdly, Mobile IP assumes that the foreign agent an dthe home agent can interact directly during the registration process. This assumption leads to operational problems when either or both the agents are located on private networks, using private IP addresses. Finally , in Mobile IP, any datagrams from a correspondent node to the mobile node must pass through the home agent, creating an inefficient triangular routing of the datagrams. In this thesis, a study is made on an approach known as DREMIP [Chuah & Li, 1997] which intriduces some extensions to the Mobile Ip base protocol to provide a more scalable solution to the mobility management problem. This approach employs a hierarchical system, with a home domain at the top, a foreign domain below it, and the foreign networks in foreign domain at the bottom of the hierarchy. DREMIP also separates the registration and forwarding services provided by the mobility agents in RFC2002. The registration service can be provided by a new network entity called registration server while the forwarding service can be provided by another new network entitycalled care-of agents. DREMIP operates on the assumption that user mobility is more common between adjacent cells or network in the same routing domain. Thus, local mobility is handled without involving the home domain. Control traffic generated by local handoffs is confined to within the local routing domain, which will improve handoff performance by reducing the registration latency and the frequency of distant registrations with the home agent. In this thesis, DREMIP is implemented in the Linux OS and several handoff experiments are conducted on a wireless testbed. The handoff experiment results show that the DREMIP approach produces a handoff performance that is significantly better compared to the Mobile IP base protocol approach. In addition, enhancements are also made to the mobile node to provide it with the capability to measure and compare the signal strengths of multiple foreign agents in an overlapped region of coverage. With this capability , a better-informed mobile node will be able to make the right decision about when to handoff to a new agent. This enhancement results in a vastly improved handoff performance compared to the handoff performance of the standard DREMIP and Mobile IP approaches. DREMIP's introduction of a registration server in each administrative routing domain enables the home domain to maintain just one security association with the entire foreign domain, instead of maintaining individual security associations with each specific foreign agent in the foreign domain. Thus, this eases the key management problem as well as enhances the scalability of the DREMIP model. Furthermore, by locating the registration servers and care-of agents on the border of their domain, DREMIP is able to provide support for private address spaces. In this thesis, route optimisation [ Perkins & Johnson, 1997b ] extensions are also applied to DREMIP so that the triangular routing of datagrams is eliminated. With route optimisation, correspondent nodes can send datagrams diretly to a mobile node's current location, bypassing the route through the mobile node's home network. Experiments are also conducted to measure the TCPP throughput performance of a DREMIP model enhanced with the route optimisation feature, and the results show significant improvement compared to the TCP throughput performance of a standard DREMIP model without the route optimisation feature. Finally, this thesis also discusses other capabilities of DREMIP that can be utilised to provide support for multicasting, QoS ( quality of service), AAA( authentication, authorisation and accounting) and load balancing features. The interoperability feature of DREMIP is also described. This feature allows the mobile nodes and mobility agents in a DREMIP model to interoperate with mobile nodes and mobility agents supporting the Mobile IP base protocol specified in RFC2002. Several handoff and interoperability tests are conducted on a wireless testbed set up in the Faculty and the results verify the interoperability feature as well as the proper operation of the DREMIP implementation.


PURPOSE
To assess quantitatively elongation of mobile targets in cone-beam CT (CBCT) imaging by measurement and modeling. A mathematical model was derived that predicts the measured lengths of mobile targets and its dependence on target size and motion patterns in CBCT imaging.

METHOD AND MATERIALS
Three tissue-equivalent targets of differing sizes were inserted in an artificial thorax phantom to simulate lung lesions. Respiratory motion was mimicked with a mobile phantom that moves in one-dimension along the superior-inferior direction at a respiration frequency of 15 cycles per minute for eight different ranges of motion (0-40 mm). The phantom was imaged with CBCT using a kV on-board imager mounted on a TrueBeam Varian linear accelerator. The target lengths were measured on CBCT images with different motion patterns. A mathematical model was derived to quantify the variations in target lengths and its dependence on phantom motion parameters in CBCT. Predictions of the model were verified by comparison with measurement of the lengths of mobile targets in CBCT images.

RESULTS
The model predicts that target lengths increased linearly with increase in speed and amplitude of phantom motion in CBCT. The measured lengths of mobile targets imaged with CBCT agreed with the calculated lengths within half-slice thickness spatial resolution. The maximal length of a mobile target was independent of the frequency and phase of motion. Elongation of mobile targets was similar in half-fan and full-fan CBCT for similar motion patterns as long as the targets remained within the imaging view.

CONCLUSION
Mobile targets elongated linearly with phantom speed and motion amplitude in CBCT imaging. The model introduced in this work assessed quantitatively the variation in target lengths induced by motion which may be a useful tool to consider elongations of mobile targets in CBCT applications in diagnostic imaging and radiotherapy.


Question answering (QA) is the act of retrieving answers to questions posed in natural language. It is regarded as requiring more complex natural language processing (NLP) techniques than other types of information retrieval such as document retrieval. QA is sometimes regarded as the next step beyond search engines that ranks the retrieved candidates. Given a set of candidate sentences which contain keywords in common with the question, deciding which one actually answers the question is a challenge in question answering. In this thesis we propose a linguistic method for measuring the syntactic similarity of each candidate sentence to the question. This candidate scoring method uses the question head as an anchor to narrow down the search to a subtree in the parse tree of a candidate sentence (the target subtree). Semantic similarity of the action in the target subtree to the action asked in the question is then measured using WordNet::Similarity on their main verbs. In order to verify the syntactic similarity of this subtree to the question parse tree, syntactic restrictions as well as lexical measures compute the unifiability of critical syntactic participants in them. Finally, the noun phrase that is of the expected answer type in the target subtree is extracted and returned from the best candidate sentence when answering a factoid open domain question.
In this thesis, we address both closed and open domain question answering problems. Initially, we propose our syntactic scoring method as a solution for questions in the Telecommunications domain. For our experiments in a closed domain, we build a set of customer service question/answer pairs from Bell Canada's Web pages. We show that the performance of this ranking method depends on the syntactic and lexical similarities in a question/answer pair. We observed that these closed domain questions ask for specific properties, procedures, or conditions about a technical topic. They are sometimes open-ended as well. As a result, detailed understanding of the question and the corpus text is required for answering them.
As opposed to closed domain question, however, open domain questions have no restriction on the topic they can ask. The standard test bed for open domain question answering is the question/answer sets provided each year by the NIST organization through the TREC QA conferences. These are factoid questions that ask about a person, date, time, location, etc.
Since our method relies on the semantic similarity of the main verbs as well as the syntactic overlap of counterpart subtrees from the question and the target subtrees, it performs well on questions with a main content verb and conventional subject-verb-object syntactic structure. The distribution of this type of questions versus questions having a 'to be' main verb is significantly different in closed versus open domain: around 70% of closed domain questions have a main content verb while more than 67% of open domain questions have a 'to be' main verb. This verb is very flexibility in connecting sentence entities. Therefore, recognizing equivallent syntactic structures between two copula parse trees is very hard. As a result, to better analyze the accuracy of this method, we create a new question categorization based on the question's main verb type: copulative questions ask about a state using a 'to be' verb, while non-copulative questions contain a main non-copula verb indicating an action or event.
Our candidate answer ranking method achieves a precision of 47.0% in our closed domain, and 48% in answering the TREC 2003 to 2006 non-copulative questions. For answering open domain factoid questions, we feed the output of Aranea, a competitive question answering system in TREC 2002, to our linguistic method in order to provide it with Web redundancy statistics. This level of performance confirms our hypothesis of the potential usefulness of syntactic mapping for answering questions with a main content verb.


ABSTRACT This research focuses on the influence of the principles of microeconomics class size on students' achievement in the managerial economics course. The logistic regression results suggest that the class size effect is negative and highly significant. Caution should be used in interpreting the negative introductory class size effect found in this study which might be underestimated due to the potential grade inflation problem resulting from the traditional letter grading system. For future studies, a better measure of student performance in the managerial economics course is necessary. INTRODUCTION The impact of class size at the college level on students' performance has long been of interest. It is generally believed that the student-instructor interaction in a small class is more effective than in a large class. Yet, state-owned universities and colleges are generally under substantial financial pressure and increasing class size naturally becomes one of the instruments that administrators use to deal with the pressure. This research examines the effect of class size in the introductory microeconomics course on students' performance in the managerial economics course. The setting for the research is the BeIk College of Business, University of North Carolina-Charlotte, an AACSB International accredited, public university. All business majors, except accounting majors are required to take Managerial Economics (ECON 3125). This course builds on the principles of microeconomics course and emphasizes their applications to business decision problems. The prerequisites of this course are Principles of Microeconomics, Calculus, Elements of Statistics, and Introduction to Business Computing. Thus, to take this course, students must have acquired the basics of economic theory and be equipped with elementary mathematical, statistical and computing tools. However, in response to increased enrollment but limited resources, the Department of Economics has in recent years begun to offer primarily large-section classes for the principles of microeconomics course. To accommodate students' diverse schedule demands, the department also offered small lecture sections for the same course. Regardless of the section size, all instructors were required to use the same text book and cover the same core-course outline. This raises the question of "has the student performance in Managerial Economics been affected by the class size of the Principles of Microeconomics course?" The research poses the hypothesis that the large-sized introductory class has a negative impact on students' performance, in large part, because the student-instructor interaction in a large section tends to be less effective than in a small section. With less effective interaction, a large section may hinder students from understanding the course materials, developing problem-solving skills and cultivating independent thinking. These are essential achievement elements for a managerial economics course. LITERATURE REVIEW Does a large class size adversely influence student achievement in higher education? Many studies have looked at this issue but the empirical results have been mixed. Toth and Montagna (2002) summarize eight studies published between 1990 to 2000 - two studies show no relationship between class size and achievement, two indicate a negative relationship, one shows a positive relationship, while three report mixed findings.1 The most recent research by Kokkelenber et al. (2008) finds a negative relationship between class size and average grade point for various specifications and subsets of the data. In a class size study specific to the economics discipline, Bellante (1972) found students in a "mass lecture" introductory economics class scored 2 points less than students in the small classes. Using a national economic education data base (TUCE III), Kennedy and Siegfried (1997) found class size does not affect student achievement in introductory economics. …


This thesis aimed to understand the relationship between the Apple brand and Apple
consumers. It presents an historical semiotic analysis of a selection of the Apple brand
from 1978 to 2009 and in-depth interviews with Apple consumers. The interviews
were then analysed thematically, looking at the ways participants employed Apple in
the construction of identity. The thesis extends theoretical critical approaches to
branding with the inclusion of participant interviews. Approaches to branding
consider the role of consumers in brand production and ownership, but this thesis
moves focus beyond abstraction to interrogate how much of consumer participation is
predetermined by the brand. This was achieved by actually examining the ways in
which brand consumers articulate the brand. In doing so findings showed that Apple
consumers distinguish themselves from non-Apple consumers, but significantly they
made a second distinction. For the first distinction, Apple consumers articulated
emotional investment, superior aesthetic taste, and feelings of being part of an
exclusive community. The second distinction is an articulation of uniqueness within
the Apple community. This is achieved through creating a sense of critical distance
from consumption via individual lifestyle and taste.


Large datasets can originate from various sources and are being stored in heterogeneous formats, schemas, and locations. Typical data science tasks need to combine those datasets in order to increase their value and extract knowledge. This is done in various data processing systems with diverse execution engines. In order to take advantage of each execution engine's characteristics and APIs data scientists need to migrate and transform their datasets at a very high computational cost and manual labor. Data migration is challenging for two main reasons: i) execution engines expect specific types/shapes of the data as input; ii) there are various physical representations of the data (e.g., partitions). Therefore, migrating data efficiently requires knowledge of systems internals and assumptions. In this paper we present Muses, a distributed, high-performance data migration engine that is able to forward, transform, repartition, and broadcast data between distributed engines' instances efficiently. Muses does not require any changes in the underlying execution engines. In an experimental evaluation, we show that migrating data from one execution engine to another (in order to take advantage of faster, native operations) can increase a pipeline's performance by 30%.


»Über die Notwendigkeit von Standards: Datenmodellierung und Datenaustausch«. When discussing standardization and secondary analysis in computer driven historical research, we should clearly distinguish between different approaches towards the usage of computers. The properties of four of them – statistical analysis, structured data bases, full text systems and annotation systems – are discussed and compared in some detail. Standards which want to convince users, that they should follow just one of these approaches will not succeed. What we need is a discussion of the communalities between the underlying information models and the identification of properties, for which clear conceptual models can be devised. Such clear conceptual models are a prerequisite for technical solutions, which ultimately can enable the exchange of data across the different approaches. Such conceptual models, therefore, are what we need as


Abstract Professionals who provide psychosocial services to refugees and asylum seekers in Italy are a population at high-risk of job stress and burnout. Located within competing demands from society, clients, changing work circumstances, and professional identities, they struggle to elaborate clear constructions of responsibility, power, and care. To gain a multilayered understanding of job experiences and stress, we ran two focus groups, which became moments of peer reflection and support for the participants. They discussed how their professional figure, allegiances to personal expectations, and professional demands were often at odds with each other, resulting in feelings of guilt, impotence, and mistrust in their jobs. The participants underscored the need to develop a sense of control at work and the challenge of dealing with evolving definitions of their profession and with scarce institutional support, resources, and recognition. The need for an (im)possible, shaky, and yet crucial balance between power and responsibility was further complicated by constructions of the Italian society as hostile or, at best, indifferent about their important social and human role.


We investigated the surface deformation of the northern Taiwan area, including the Taipei basin and its surrounding mountainous areas of the last fifteen years using the ERS-1, ERS-2 and ENVISAT SAR images. Although the Taipei basin now is well developed and amenable to research gathering using the Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (DInSAR) technique, the mountainous areas surrounding the basin are densely covered with various vegetation throughout different seasons inducing high noise ratio in interferograms. Therefore the DInSAR technique is ineffective for observation of surface deformations of these areas. As a result, we developed the Persistent Scatterer (PS) InSAR technique to extract the phase signal of the chosen PS points for this study. Our analysis result shows that the atmospheric disturbance and DEM residual can be successfully reduced and the precise information of surface deformation can be effectively obtained by the PSInSAR technique not only in the basin but also in the mountainous areas. Integrating the DInSAR and PSInSAR results, we observed conspicuous deformation events in northern Taiwan including: (1) the slight uplift in the Western Foothills, the Tatun volcanoes, the Linkou Tableland and the Taoyuan area; (2) the subsidence at the border of the Taipei basin; and (3) relative slight uplift rebound in the center of Taipei basin. The displacements along the Shanchiao, Chinshan, and Kanchiao Faults are large enough to be observed; the Taipei, Hsinchuang, and Nankang Faults are too small and cannot be discerned. Further comparison between the DInSAR, PSInSAR, and their corresponding leveling data shows a very coincidental pattern and measurably improves the authenticity of radar interferometry.


This paper is devoted to the laser irradiated joints between glass and polyimide. To facilitate bonding between them, a thin titanium film with a thickness of approximately 0.2 μm was deposited on glass wafers using the physical vapor deposition (PVD) process. Two sets of samples were fabricated where the bonds were created using diode and fiber lasers. The samples were subjected to tension using a microtester for bond strength measurements. The failure strengths of the bonds generated using fiber laser are quite consistent, while a wide variation of failure strengths are observed for the bonds generated with diode laser. Few untested samples were sectioned and the microstructures near the bond areas were studied using an optical microscope. The images revealed the presence of a sharp crack in the glass substrate near the bond generated with the diode laser. However, no such crack was observed in the samples made using fiber laser. To investigate further the reasons behind such discrepancy in bond quality, three-dimensional uncoupled finite element analysis (FEA) was conducted for both types of samples. The transient heat diffusion-based FEA model utilizes the laser power intensity distribution as a time dependent heat source to calculate the temperature distribution within the substrates as a function of time.


The potential for the development and the application of magnetic particle technology to environmental and wildlife remediation has been explored. Initial studies have been carried out on the ability of iron particles with polyethylene (PE) or polyvinylchloride (PVC) to magnetically
harvest various contaminants. In this context, methods have been developed for the production of research quantities of particles of different sizes and with various textures. The pick up characteristics for a variety of contaminants have been experimentally and theoretically investigated. In particular, a mathematical model for the characteristic adsorption isotherm has been developed and several efficiency parameters have been defined. The effects of the nature of the substrate from which the contaminant is removed and the contaminant hydrophobicity and viscosity have also been investigated. The ability of PE and PVC coated particles in the remediation of soil contaminated with various pesticides has been explored. Uncoated iron
particles have also been found to be effective in the remediation of various contaminants. In particular, iron powder was found to be almost 100% effective in the magnetic harvesting of various contaminants from a glass substrate.