The search for habitable exoplanets and life beyond the solar system is one of the most compelling scientific opportunities of our time. Nevertheless, the high cost of building facilities that can address this topic and the keen public interest in the results of such research requires rigorous development of experiments that can deliver a definitive advancement in our understanding. Most work to date in this area has focused on a "systems science" approach of obtaining and interpreting comprehensive data for individual planets to make statements about their habitability and the possibility that they harbor life. This strategy is challenging because of the diversity of exoplanets, both observed and expected, and the limited information that can be obtained with astronomical instruments. Here, we propose a complementary approach that is based on performing surveys of key planetary characteristics and using statistical marginalization to answer broader questions than can be addressed with a small sample of objects. The fundamental principle of this comparative planetology approach is maximizing what can be learned from each type of measurement by applying it widely rather than requiring that multiple kinds of observations be brought to bear on a single object. As a proof of concept, we outline a survey of terrestrial exoplanet atmospheric water and carbon dioxide abundances that would test the habitable zone hypothesis and lead to a deeper understanding of the frequency of habitable planets. We also discuss ideas for additional surveys that could be developed to test other foundational hypotheses in this area.


Last December 2017, Prof. Marisa del Pozo Lite (Complutense University of Madrid) was invited to give a session as member of the International Advisory Board of CEIBS-Africa to a group of 40 African Business Women in the Agribusiness Market – as part of the Alumni Reunion Agenda of CEIBS-Africa Program held at Harvard University in 2017.

 Getting a venture underway in the agribusiness market is often easier than keeping it going and growing. At each major stage from start-up to sustainable success, entrepreneurs face tough questions about shifting gears, making major changes, and letting go of people, partners, and products. For new businesses, inability or unwillingness to change can land them in the statistics about high failure rates at the five-year mark. For non-profits, clinging to the past can lead to marginality and stagnation. To keep an enterprise on track in the agribusiness market while facing the often-pleasant challenge of growth requires making sometimes-painful adjustments in these five areas:


The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule is currently an important and popular management rule applied to marketing and customer relationship management (CRM). The rule indicates that the vital few causes inputs or efforts bringing the most results, outputs, or rewards. Analyzing circulation data to understand the usage status of library collections can help libraries comprehend their patrons' behaviour. However, little research has been done to analyse circulation data of public libraries to reveal patrons' usage behaviours. This paper aimed to analyse the circulation data generated by a municipality public library in Taiwan to gauge if the Pareto Principle manifested in this context. Subsequently, using bibliomining analysis, this research further identified vital patrons and their characteristics, as well as book-borrowed distributions to help analyse patrons' book borrowing behaviour to improve the efficiency of library management and library marketing as well as CRM. The circulation data of the public library follows the Pareto Principle, approximating to the 80/20 rule. Findings showed that when the accumulative percentage of patron is 24.7 percent, the accumulative percentage of borrowed books is 75.3 percent. The vital few patrons borrow the majority of the collections. This paper is the first study to reveal that the Pareto Principle could be found in circulation data of a public library in Taiwan. It could help libraries identify vital patrons and major collections, and improve the efficiency of their management and marketing activities in future. For other types of libraries, it would be interesting for us to explore the existence of the Pareto Principle further.


Wheat straw (an agricultural by-product) was pulped by an alkaline anthraquinone (AQ) process. Then the straw pulp was treated by high-power ultrasound under different noble-gas (argon, krypton, xenon) combinations. The pulps' degree of beating and acid-insoluble lignin content were measured. Handsheets were made from sonicated and control pulps and tested for paper tensile strength. In this study we explore which noble-gas combination with ultrasound may be more useable to reduce the lignin content and enhance fibrillation. We also describe the most effective ultrasound-assisted, modified alkaline pulping process. Overall, we found that in two steps ultrasonification decreased the residual lignin contents more then 75 %, the pulp fibrillation increased from 12 to 70 °SR within 20 min. of ultrasound irradiation, and the tensile index of the handsheets increased by 65%. For sustainable paper production, it is required to develop alternative paper resources. Paper made from alternate fiber resources with efficient technology will improve our living standards without sacrificing the environment, our habitat. High frequency ultrasound-based pulp processing offers significant improvements, and it reduces energy and chemical consumptions for pulp and paper production.


IT IS EVIDENT," remarked secretary of War Elihu Root at the end of the Philippine War, "that the insurrection has been brought to an end both by making a war distressing and hopeless on the one hand and by making peace attractive."1 Root's appraisal holds true for much of the U.S. Army's experience in waging irregular wars. Nevertheless, there remains much confusion over the roles that persuasion and coercion play in rebellions and other internal conflicts. Having recently concluded the second in a two-volume study on the U.S. Army's experience in waging counterinsurgency warfare, I'd like to explore the relationship between force and politics by examining three conflicts that the United States Army was involved in during the 19th and 20th centuries: the War of the Rebellion (the U.S. Civil War, 1861-1865), the Philippine War (1899-1902), and the Vietnam War (1954-1975). The War of the Rebellion President Abraham Lincoln understood the importance of political factors when he set out to defeat the Southern rebellion against the U.S. government. During the early stages of the conflict, he charted a moderate course, both to pave the way for reconciliation and to mollify opinion in the Border States. He avoided attacking the South's "peculiar institution" (slavery), offered amnesty, commuted sentences, released civilian prisoners, and tried to restore normal civil life to occupied areas as soon as possible. Most of his commanders embraced these policies, and when they did not, he rebuked or removed them. Lincoln's moderation failed to persuade Southerners to lay down their arms, however, and over time the president accepted sterner measures to control and, if necessary, to punish rebellious civilians. He suspended habeas corpus and imposed loyalty oaths, while his commanders relocated people, levied fines, and confiscated property. Major General William T. Sherman epitomized this less tolerant approach. Believing that the government was "not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people," Sherman decided that it "must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war."2 He therefore directed that "in districts and neighborhoods where the army is unmolested, no destruction of property should be permitted; but should guerrillas or bush whackers molest our march, or should the inhabitants . . . otherwise manifest local hostility, then army commanders should order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless, according to the measure of hostility."3 Devastation, not indiscriminate but directed at the disloyal, was meant to weaken the rebels' ability to fight as well as their will to do so. The growing use of collective punitive measures did not mean that Lincoln had abandoned moderation. In 1863, for example, he unveiled a generous process through which rebellious states could rejoin the Union. He likewise signed General Orders 100, Instructions for the Government of the Armies of the United States in the Field, which reminded Soldiers that "the ultimate object of all modern war is a renewed state of peace," and that "men who take up arms against one another in public war do not cease on this account to be moral beings, responsible to one another and to God."4 The document admonished Soldiers to respect the personal and property rights of civilians as well as their social customs and religious beliefs. It likewise forbade wanton destruction, looting, cruelty, and torture. Nevertheless, benevolence was not a one-way street, and should the citizenry spurn the hand of reconciliation, General Orders 100 permitted commanders to take stern measures. Among the punishments it prescribed for civilians who aided the enemy were fines, expulsion, relocation, imprisonment, and death. The orders also authorized commanders to use calculated and proportional retaliation; to deny quarter for those who gave none; and to dispense summary punishments to guerrillas, spies, and traitors. Throughout the remainder of the rebellion, Lincoln continued to wield inducements in one hand and punishments in the other. …


The sight of intimacy. Space and motion of speech in Seneca's Oedipus A study concerning the use of the spatial agreements as well as the internal stage directions in Oedipus shows that Seneca knows and respects the dramatical antique conventions (the ones of his model as well as those of the roman theatre). The comparison of the number, the place and the function of the stage directions in Sophocles'Oedipus tyrannus and Seneca's Oedipus shows that Seneca makes the choice of stage directions with an emotional value that points out, like " indications ", the scenes of exteriorization of Oedipus's inside monsters, when the stage directions which structu- red the scenes of questioning and of the progressive discovery of his culpability by the hero are neglected. Moreover Seneca stylizes the ritual exchanges prior to the dialogues, cancelling the connections of speech in the beginning of the scene : a stage direction at the end of the chorus transmits the speech to the hero and allows him to exteriorize his culpability, theatricalizing it.


Due to the construction of a new North-South subway in Cologne, Roman time harbour sediments were exposed and were sampled for luminescence dating. A very good independent age control was given by the precise knowledge of the chronology of Roman activity and by radiocarbon ages of charcoal samples. Hence, different methodological approaches within luminescence dating were applied for Holocene heterogeneously bleached fluvial samples and were compared to the known ages. For one sample, optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating was applied to coarse-grained quartz using a single aliquot regenerative-dose (SAR) protocol. After De-measurements, different statistical approaches were tested (i.e. arithmetic mean, median, minimum age model, finite mixture model, leading edge method and the Fuchs and Lang approach). It is demonstrated that the Fuchs and Lang approach along with the leading edge method yielded the best matching OSL ages with respect to the known ages.For the other sample which showed feldspar contamination within the quartz signal, the post-IR blue stimulated luminescence (double SAR protocol) was measured in three different ways to calculate the Devalue: with continuous wave (CW) stimulation with an IR-bleach at 50°C and at 225°C for 100 s prior to the OSL, and pulsed OSL (POSL). It was demonstrated that the IR-stimulation at 225°C has very good potential to remove the feldspar signal contribution as well as pulsed OSL, but the former might deplete parts of the quartz OSL signal.


Prior studies have noted that gas nitriding has a considerable effect for wear resistance. The aim of this paper is to study the influence of gas nitriding time (12, 24, 36 and 48 h) in the wear behaviour of 42CrMo4 steel. It has been assessed by micro hardness, pin-on-disc tribosystem, and SEM through the nitrided layer for each nitriding time. The study relates to the performance of the compound layer and the diffusion layer with respect to adhesive wear. The results were analyzed in terms of the weight lost during wear, for nitrided steel with and without the compound layer, and for untreated steel. It has been observed that wear rate varies as a function of the tests conditions due to the presence of different wear mechanisms. Thus, for short tests conditions wear rate depends on two mechanisms: plastic deformation and adhesive wear, whereas for large tests conditions the mechanisms controlling wear rate are abrasive and oxidative wear. Furthermore, this study contains an analysis of the wear mechanisms of a nitrided part, founded on scanning electron microscopy (SEM) observations of the wear traces at various stages of the evolution of wear. The SEM examination of worn surfaces revealed signatures for the adhesion, abrasion, delamination and tribochemical (oxidative) modes of wear. This is an important issue for future research.


Accounting for environmental damage is relevant to how one measures
the extent and severity of inequality and poverty, and the question
of ecological distribution - how the costs associated with environmental
damage are distributed across the population - is critical. Following
Khan's (1997) study on Bangladesh, I use environmental damage
estimates to adjust inequality and poverty measures for Brazil and
Costa Rica. Unlike Khan, I test for different assumptions regarding
the ecological distribution. Provisional results indicate that inequality
and poverty are understated, and that, under certain assumptions, both
worsened in Costa Rica during the 1980s, contrary to what conventional
statistics suggest. Want of reliable ecological distribution data,
however, suggests that sensitivity analysis around competing assumptions
may be preferable to conventional indicators.


Cross-Border shipping of goods among different distributors is an essential part of transportation across Canada and U.S. These two countries are heavily dependent on border crossing locations to facilitate international trade between each other. This research considers the identification of the international tours accomplishing the shipping of goods. A truck tour is a round trip where a truck starts its journey from its firm or an industry, performing stops for different purposes that include taking a rest, fuel refilling, and transferring goods to multiple locations, and returns back to its initial firm location. In this thesis, we present a three step method on mining GPS truck data to identify all possible truck tours belonging to different carriers. In the first step, a clustering technique is applied on the stop locations to discover the firm for each carrier. A modified DBSCAN algorithm is proposed to achieve this task by automatically determining the two input parameters based on the data points provided. Various statistical measures like count of unique trucks and count of truck visits are applied on the resulting clusters to identify the firms of the respective carriers. In the second step, we tackle the problem of classifying the stop locations into two types: primary stops, where goods are transferred, and secondary stops like rest stations, where vehicle and driver needs are met. This problem is solved using one of the trade indicator called Specialization Index. Moreover, several set of features are explored to build the classification model to classify the type of stop locations. In the third step, having identified the firm, primary and secondary locations, an automated path finder is developed to identify the truck tours starting from each firm. The results of the specialization index and the feature-based classification in identifying stop events are compared with the entropy index from previous work. Experimental results show that the proposed set of cluster features significantly add classification power to our model giving 98.79% accuracy which in turn helps in discovering accurate tours.


Given their increasing importance in the formation and implementation of planning policies in the UK, this paper focuses on the use of development viability tests to determine how land value uplifts actuated by planning consent could be distributed between developers, landowners and the community. Following a discussion of way in which planning obligations act as a quasi-betterment tax that can both capture and create land values, alternative approaches to operationalising Benchmark Land Value (BLV) are evaluated. The effects of different approaches to BLV on potential land value capture are simulated for a number of hypothetical development sites in order to identify and compare implied betterment tax rates and to estimate viable affordable housing proportions. It is concluded that large geographical variations in property prices produce large variations in the potential for land value capture. Different approaches to BLV have a range of strengths and weaknesses. In addition, given that viability models are susceptible to significant levels of error and potential bias, using such models to make and implement planning policies renders such processes vulnerable to opportunistic behaviour and prone to miscalculation.


The extravasation of leukocytes from the blood into tissues occurs as a multistep process: an initial transient interaction ("rolling"), generally thought to be mediated by the selectin family of adhesion molecules, followed by firm adhesion, usually mediated by integrins. Using a parallel plate flow chamber designed to approximate physiologic flow in postcapillary venules, we have characterized a rolling interaction between lymphoid cells and adherent primary and cultured endothelial cells that is not selectin mediated. Studies using blocking monoclonal antibodies indicate that this novel interaction is mediated by CD44. Abrogation of the rolling interaction could be specifically achieved using both soluble hyaluronate (HA) and treatment of the adherent cells with HA-reactive substances, indicating that HA is the ligand supporting this rolling interaction. Some B and T cell lines, as well as normal lymphocytes, either constitutively exhibit rolling or can be induced to do so by phorbol ester or in vivo antigen activation. These studies indicate that CD44 and its principal ligand hyaluronate represent another receptor/carbohydrate ligand pair mediating a novel activation-dependent pathway of lymphocyte/endothelial cell adhesion.


The characteristics of snow pack surfaces are spatially and temporally highly variable. Today, in situ field observations provide mostly isolated information on characteristics such as grain size, grain shape, free water content or surface roughness. Remote sensing instruments are promis- ing tools for systematic and wide-area mapping of several snow surface parameters. This study pre- sents a methodology for an automated, systematic and wide-area detection and mapping of rough snow surfaces including avalanche deposits using optical remote sensing data of high spatial and radiometric resolution. A processing chain integrating directional, textural and spectral information was developed using ADS40 airborne scanner data acquired in spring 2008 and 2009 over a test site near Davos, Switzerland. Though certain limitations exist, encouraging detection and mapping accuracies can be reported. The presented approach is a promising addition to existing field observation methods for remote regions, and can be applied in inaccessible areas.


GeMS, the Gemini South MCAO System, has now been in regular operation since mid-2013 with the imager instrument GSAOI. We review the performance obtained during this past year as well as some of its current limitations. While in operation, GeMS is still evolving to push them back and is currently in the path of receiving two major upgrades which will allow new exciting science cases: a new natural guide star wavefront sensor called NGS2 and a replacement of the current 50W laser. We are also actively moving along the path of further deeper integration with the future AO-fed instruments, we present our first preliminary results of astrometric and spectrometric calibrations with diverse Gemini instruments using an internal calibration source. We finally report our efforts to make GeMS a more robust instrument with the integration of a vibration rejection feature and a more user-friendly AO system as well with advanced gain optimization automatization.


As thymocytes mature, their cell-surface proteins change both in terms of which proteins are present and in the structure of the proteins present. Moody et al. investigated how changes in glycosylation of the CD8 cell-surface glycoprotein of thymocytes influence its interaction with major histocompatibility complex class I (MHCI) molecules. Peptide MHCI tetramers (pMHCIs) were used in combination with fluorescent cell sorting (FACS) analysis to show that immature thymocytes that are positive for both CD8 and CD4 (another cell-surface receptor), so-called "DP" thymocytes, interact with the pMHCIs. Mature thymocytes that only express CD8 or CD4 (so-called "SP" thymocytes) did not interact with the pMHCIs, despite the fact that the DP and CD8 SP thymocytes express the same amount of CD8α and β subunits. Biochemical analysis of CD8α and β from DP and SP thymocytes showed that the transition to SP led to a decrease in molecular heterogeneity of the β subunit and marked reduction in the ability of the β subunit to be affinity-purified by the lectin peanut agglutinin (PNA). Treatment of SP thymocytes with neuraminidase to remove sialic acid from O-glycans restored PNA and pMHCI binding, suggesting that sialylation of the β subunit is responsible for the change in MHCI binding capacity of the SP thymocytes. Analysis of pMHCI binding to thymocytes from a mouse lacking the sialyltransferase ST3Gal-1 gene showed that the SP thymoctyes bound pMHCIs and maintained a high PNA-binding character throughout maturation. The change in glycosylation and the resulting effect on MHC binding appear to influence CD8 thymic selection in that in 4 of 14 animals tested, the lack of the ST3 Gal-1 gene resulted in a decrease in the number of CD8-positive SP thymocytes. A. M. Moody, D. Chui, P. A. Reche, J. J. Priatel, J. D. Marth, E. L. Reinherz, Developmentally regulated glycosylation of the CD8αβ coreceptor stalk modulates ligand binding. Cell 107, 501-512 (2001). [Online Journal]


Automata and Dictionaries is aimed at students and specialists in natural language processing and related disciplines where efficient text analysis plays a role. Large linguistic resources, in particular lexica, are now recognized as a fundamental pre-requisite for all natural language processing tasks. Specialists in this domain cannot afford to be ignorant of the state-of-the-art lexicon-management algorithms. This monograph, which is also intended be used as an advanced text book in computational linguistics, fills a gap in natural language processing monographs and is complementary to other publications in this area. This book is also a source of examples, exercises and problems for software engineering in general. The algorithms that are presented are excellent examples of non-trivial problems of graph construction, graph handling and graph traversal. Even though published in scientific journals, they have not been presented in an easily accessible form so far to teachers and students. These algorithms will also be of interest for the training of software engineers. Chapter 1 of Automata and Dictionaries provides the application-oriented motivation for solving the problems studied in the rest of the book. It introduces and exemplifies several key notions of lexicon-based natural language processing in a way accessible to any computer science student. Chapter 2 surveys the main solutions of the problem, using as an example a very small toy lexicon. Chapter 3 defines the underlying mathematical notions, immediately illustrating theory with practical examples, which makes this part quite readable. Chapters 4 and 5 are dedicated to the two central notions of lexicon construction: the algorithms of determinization and minimization. The standard form of both algorithms is presented, but also their variants and some special cases that occur frequently in practice. The operation of the algorithms is described step by step in examples, introducing the beginner into the world of epsilon-transitions, state heights and reverse automata. Chapter 6 goes a step further into complexity. It is based on algorithms published by scholars from 1998 to now. They are presented here with the same clarity as the preceding, more classical, algorithms. This remarkable achievement owes much to the rigorous structuration of this chapter. These algorithms have variants for transducers, which are presented in Chapter 7 with the same pedagogical skill. The last chapter studies time and space complexity of the algorithms and explains several tricks useful to speed up their operation.


The published work submitted herewith involves the application of Relevance theory (as a theory of verbal communication) to the description of Galician and Spanish, and to translation. The phenomena studied within these areas are examined from the point of view of language use. This allows us to see them together as instantiations of language and thus as being theoretically and fundamentally of a kind. As a result, they are also subject to the same principles of communication. The theoretical approach used and applied throughout is that of Relevance theory. This approach allows for an explanatory theory of verbal communication, which encompasses the two areas under study and thus provides a unitary theoretical framework to account for the phenomena examined. The various aspects of language description and translation explored here are therefore seen as instances of verbal communication to be studied precisely under a single general theory (and not as instances of different fields that should be examined by different theories).

This submission is structured in three parts. The first part involves an introduction to the publications submitted, which includes a brief literature review. This review provides an overview of the most important approaches to communication, including the code mode, the Gricean approach and the approach adopted here, namely, Relevance theory. This introductory part also includes a discussion of the overall coherence of the publications submitted, together with their impact and contributions in the wider context of the field of study.

The second part of this submission deals with applications of Relevance theory to the description of Galician and Spanish in a range of areas, including prepositional direct objects, presuppositional effects, interpretive use of language, and non-declarative sentences. In all these cases, current approaches are reviewed and critiqued, and alternative accounts are provided as applications of the theoretical framework provided by Relevance theory.

The third and final part of this submission deals with applications of Relevance theory to translation in a number of areas, including interlingual interpretive use of language, interlingual enrichment, interlingual impoverishment, and degrees of acceptability in translation. One of the main themes in common between all these areas is the notion of discrepancy between original and target texts in translation. It is shown that many of these translation discrepancies arise from the gap found in verbal communication between what is encoded and what is communicated. Some of the most important types of gap that exist in verbal communication are examined in detail and their impact on translation explored throughout.


Alongside Moctezuma and Benito Juarez, Pancho Villa is probably the best-known figure in Mexican history. Villa legends pervade not only Mexico but the United States and beyond, existing not only in the popular mind and tradition but in ballads and movies. There are legends of Villa the Robin Hood, Villa the womanizer, and Villa as the only foreigner who has attacked the mainland of the United States since the War of 1812 and gotten away with it. Whether exaggerated or true to life, these legends have resulted in Pancho Villa the leader obscuring his revolutionary movement, and the myth in turn obscuring the leader. Based on decades of research in the archives of seven countries, this definitive study of Villa aims to separate myth from history. So much attention has focused on Villa himself that the characteristics of his movement, which is unique in Latin American history and in some ways unique among twentieth-century revolutions, have been forgotten or neglected. Villa's Division del Norte was probably the largest revolutionary army that Latin America ever produced. Moreover, this was one of the few revolutionary movements with which a U.S. administration attempted, not only to come to terms, but even to forge an alliance. In contrast to Lenin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel Castro, Villa came from the lower classes of society, had little education, and organized no political party. The first part of the book deals with Villa's early life as an outlaw and his emergence as a secondary leader of the Mexican Revolution, and also discusses the special conditions that transformed the state of Chihuahua into a leading center of revolution. In the second part, beginning in 1913, Villa emerges as a national leader. The author analyzes the nature of his revolutionary movement and the impact of Villismo as an ideology and as a social movement. The third part of the book deals with the years 1915 to 1920: Villa's guerrilla warfare, his attack on Columbus, New Mexico, and his subsequent decline. The last part describes Villa's surrender, his brief life as a hacendado, his assassination and its aftermath, and the evolution of the Villa legend. The book concludes with an assessment of Villa's personality and the character and impact of his movement.


Asynchronous Butterfly Fat Tree (BFT) architecture is proposed to achieve low power Network on Chip (NoC). Asynchronous design could reduce the power dissipation of the network if the activity factor of the data transfer between two switches (αdata) satisfies a certain condition. The area of Asynchronous BFT switch is increased by 25% as compared to Synchronous switch. However, the power dissipation of the Asynchronous architecture could be decreased by up to 33% as compared to the power dissipation of the conventional Synchronous architecture when the αdata equals 0.2 and the activity factor of the control signals is equal to l/64 of the αdata. The total metal resources required to implement Asynchronous design is decreased by 12%


Momentum strategies based on continuation patterns in equity prices have attracted a wide following among money managers and financial investors attempting to exploit anomalies present in the stock market. In this thesis, we first perform out-of-sample tests of four long-only momentum strategies, one contrarian strategy and one low-volatility investment strategy on US and Norwegian equity samples. We find the momentum and contrarian strategies to yield statistically significant abnormal returns on the Norwegian market only, indicating the US market to be more efficient. The highest average monthly returns are found for the individual stock price momentum strategy, and the highest riskreward performance is yielded by a volatility-scaled momentum strategy. The returns to the strategies are found time-varying and not always positive, suggesting that a momentum investor could benefit from periodically changing strategy or investing in a risk-free instrument. The second part of this thesis studies the problem facing an investor with funds to allocate between investment strategies in the Norwegian market. We build a stochastic portfolio optimization framework with moment-matching scenario generation, and apply it outof-sample on portfolios with momentum and contrarian strategies. We find a significant performance increase in adding a contrarian strategy to a portfolio of momentum strategies. By allowing the investor to allocate wealth portion-wise between these algorithms, we generate higher risk-reward performance than both an equally weighted market index and a buy-and-hold benchmark of the constituent strategies. Finally, by forcing the investor to each month choose between a contrarian and a single momentum strategy, we create investment strategies with superior return performance. In particular, we find a contrarian strategy in combination with an individual stock price momentum strategy, to yield the highest cumulative and average returns among the strategies tested. These findings from stochastic programming suggest that an investor could benefit from periodically changing between contrarian and momentum investing, exploiting both return reversal effects and continuation patterns in equity prices.


One of today's challenge to realize computing based on quantum mechanics is to reliably and scalably encode information in quantum systems. Here, we present a photon source to on-demand deliver photonic quantum bits of information based on a strongly coupled atom-cavity system. It operates intermittently for periods of up to 100μs, with a single-photon repetition rate of 1MHz, and an intra-cavity production e!ciency of up to 85%. Due to the photons inherent coherence time of 500ns and our ability to arbitrarily shape their amplitude and phase profile we time-bin encode information within one photon. To do so, the spatio-temporal envelope of a single photon is sub-divided in d time bins which allows for the delivery of arbitrary qu-d-its. The latter is done with a fidelity of > 95% for qubits, and 94% for qutrits verified using a newly developed time-resolved quantum-homodyne technique.


This paper proposes a novel Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for enabling multiple simultaneous communications in 802.11 networks where the nodes can use adaptive antenna arrays. The presented scheme is backward compatible with the 802.11 standard and is designed for heterogeneous scenarios, where legacy and non-legacy nodes equipped with different antenna systems can coexist. The access rules are based on a local but accurate Signal-to-Interference Ratio (SIR) estimation and on the adoption of Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes, which enable each node to reliably estimate the result of the transmission attempt of all active nodes. The proposed scheme is compared to a previously developed one in noisy and multipath-fading environments.


Abstract Impaired semantic knowledge is a characteristic feature of some forms of frontotemporal dementia (FTD), particularly the sporadic disorder semantic dementia. Less is known about semantic cognition in the genetic forms of FTD caused by mutations in the genes MAPT, C9orf72, and GRN. We developed a modified version of the Camel and Cactus Test (mCCT) to investigate the presence of semantic difficulties in a large genetic FTD cohort from the Genetic FTD Initiative (GENFI) study. Six-hundred-forty-four participants were tested with the mCCT including 67 MAPT mutation carriers (15 symptomatic, and 52 in the presymptomatic period), 165 GRN mutation carriers (33 symptomatic, 132 presymptomatic), and 164 C9orf72 mutation carriers (56 symptomatic, 108 presymptomatic) and 248 mutation-negative members of FTD families who acted as a control group. The presymptomatic mutation carriers were further split into those early and late in the presymptomatic period (more than vs. within 10 years of expected symptom onset). Groups were compared using a linear regression model, adjusting for age and education, with bootstrapping. Performance on the mCCT had a weak negative correlation with age (rho = −0.20) and a weak positive correlation with education (rho = 0.13), with an overall abnormal score (below the 5th percentile of the control population) being below 27 out of a total of 32. All three of the symptomatic mutation groups scored significantly lower than controls: MAPT mean 22.3 (standard deviation 8.0), GRN 24.4 (7.2), C9orf72 23.6 (6.5) and controls 30.2 (1.6). However, in the presymptomatic groups, only the late MAPT and late C9orf72 mutation groups scored lower than controls (28.8 (2.2) and 28.9 (2.5) respectively). Performance on the mCCT correlated strongly with temporal lobe volume in the symptomatic MAPT mutation group (rho > 0.80). In the C9orf72 group, mCCT score correlated with both bilateral temporal lobe volume (rho > 0.31) and bilateral frontal lobe volume (rho > 0.29), whilst in the GRN group mCCT score correlated only with left frontal lobe volume (rho = 0.48). This study provides evidence for presymptomatic impaired semantic knowledge in genetic FTD. The different neuroanatomical associations of the mCCT score may represent distinct cognitive processes causing deficits in different groups: loss of core semantic knowledge associated with temporal lobe atrophy (particularly in the MAPT group), and impaired executive control of semantic information associated with frontal lobe atrophy. Further studies will be helpful to address the longitudinal change in mCCT performance and the exact time at which presymptomatic impairment occurs.


This book is primarily designed for clinicians and researchers interested in learning how to conduct an empirically supported culturally informed therapy for schizophrenia (CIT-S) that integrates core components of evidenced-based family therapy. It is estimated that approximately 1% of adults in the United States will be diagnosed with schizophrenia or a related schizophrenia spectrum disorder. Without treatment, prognosis is generally poor. Fortunately, traditional family therapies have shown increasing promise in reducing relapse rates and improving mental health for this population. As more and more societies become multicultural, however, there is an increasing expectation that mental health providers will also be prepared to meet the needs of unique and culturally diverse clients in an efficient, skillful, and culturally relevant manner. CIT-S is a 15-week, family-focused, cognitive behavioral approach for managing schizophrenia spectrum disorders. The intervention draws upon clients' cultural beliefs, practices, and traditions to help them conceptualize and manage mental illness. It aims to improve the quality of clients' lives in a manner that is in line with their values and takes into account their cultural norms when discussing important issues and addressing challenges (such as mental illness) within the family. CIT-S contains five distinct modules: (a) family collectivism, (b) psychoeducation, (c) spirituality, (d) communication training, and (e) problem-solving. For each module, a detailed rationale, background information, therapy instructions, suggested homework assignments, and a sample case vignette are provided in an accessible, easy-to-use manner.


Studies suggest that both mobile phones and micro-enterprises contribute significantly to social and economic development in developing countries. More recently, the discourse of development has changed. Development is no longer conceived of and measured by only in economic terms, but is also linked to social well-being, political structures, the physical environment, and human development (which is about giving people choices and enhancing individual ability to pursue preferred values). Research into use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in developing countries needs to be re-adjusted to keep in step with the current approach where well-being (such as social relations within a community, gender, and the psychological and religious spheres) need to be considered. Current research on ICT for Development (ICTD) and particularly on mobile phones and micro-enterprises is lacking consideration of these spheres. This study focuses on understanding the impact of mobile technologies for human development in Indonesia. The central question that is addressed is whether, under what conditions, and how mobile phones can enhance the ability of individuals and communities to create and use opportunities to achieve the lifestyle which they value for themselves. Drawing on qualitative research design, this study investigates the use of mobile phones and their implications for micro-entrepreneurs' well-being in Indonesia. Fieldwork was done in two cities in Indonesia, which are Makassar and Bandung. A grounded analysis is used to guide collection of data and to construct theory from the data. The findings from the interviews and observations led to an extensive exploration of business and personal usage of mobile phones, well-being perceptions of micro-entrepreneurs, defining elements of well-being, the dynamic proportion and inter-connections between elements, and the inter-relationships between mobile use and well-being perceptions. The findings are presented as models depicting the impact of mobile phones on micro-entrepreneurs' well-being. The research explores the usefulness of the Capability Approach (CA) as a human development perspective.


Monitoring changes in the vegetation cover during the intercrop season is of special interest in intensive agricultural region, such as the Brittany region in France, to locate bare soils and control their influence to the environment. The presence of bare soils leads to detrimental environmental effects such as soil erosion or water quality degradation. Therefore, identification and monitoring of bare soils at a regional scale in the winter season are required for any agricultural management program. Data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer have been selected for this paper due to their low spatial resolution, which decreases the cost of processing and storage, and the high revisit frequency, which increases the probability to acquire scenes free of clouds and shadows during the winter season. Unfortunately, few images per season only are free of cloud contamination and associated shadows. Therefore, the specific objective of this paper is to develop and implement a preprocessing method to recover spectral values of contaminated data by weather conditions for subsequent bare-soil mapping. In the context of this paper, Kohonen's self-organizing map (SOM) is used for recovering data contaminated by weather conditions that have been considered as erroneous data. This nonparametric regression procedure has proved its success to deal with missing-values problem. Hence, the erroneous-values problem, reflectance values contaminated by clouds or shadows, has been converted to the missing-values problem by using a cloud and shadow (outlier) detector. The SOM algorithm was tested also on the erroneous data directly, but better results were found with the ldquomissing valuesrdquo formulation. The idea is to, first, train SOM onto clear temporal profiles free of clouds and shadows during the winter season. Second, erroneous values are converted to missing values by an outlier detector which operates on each temporal profile (set of colocated pixels acquired at different dates). Finally, the SOM algorithm for missing values is used to estimate contaminated reflectance values.


The Offer in Compromise (OIC) is a procedure by which the IRS may agree to forgive a portion of the tax liabilities of certain taxpayers. This Article suggests a framework for evaluating the effectiveness of any proposed reforms to this procedure. It presents three arguments that support forgiving tax debts through devices such as the OIC. These arguments are rooted in revenue-raising, fairness, rehabilitative, and socioeconomic considerations. Unfortunately, an analysis of the OIC's recent history shows that its current structure tends to undermine its effectiveness. The power to effectuate the procedure is dispersed among four stakeholders with divergent interests: Congress, the IRS, the taxpayer, and financial and other supporters of the taxpayer. Each of these players has conflicting and contradictory interests in OIC-procedure outcomes. Over time, the actions and decisions of each of these players can lead to conflicting and counterproductive behaviors and responses by other players, and this undermines the program's overall effectiveness. Given this dynamic among stakeholders, reforms that


The nature of a phenomenon often called cybersex addiction (CA) and its mechanisms of development are discussed. Previous work suggests that some individuals might be vulnerable to CA, while positive reinforcement and cue-reactivity are considered to be core mechanisms of CA development. In this study, 155 heterosexual males rated 100 pornographic pictures and indicated their increase of sexual arousal. Moreover, tendencies towards CA, sensitivity to sexual excitation, and dysfunctional use of sex in general were assessed. In a latent structural equation model, dysfunctional use of sex mediated the relationship of sexual excitability with CA. The results of the study show that there are factors of vulnerability to CA and provide evidence for the role of sexual gratification and dysfunctional coping in the development of CA. According to the results and theoretical considerations, we present a cognitive-behavioral model of CA addressing factors of vulnerability, the role of cognitions, and the role of positive and negative reinforcement.


Guanosine triphosphatases (GTPases) in the Rho family are involved in regulating such cellular processes as cytoskeletal organization, gene transcription, cell cycle progression, and malignant transformation. These small GTPases can be activated by multiple guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs) and have numerous targets. Jaffe et al., who previously determined that the Rho target CNK1 interacts with a second Rho target protein, investigated the possibility that it acts as a scaffolding protein to direct Rho signaling into a particular pathway. When FLAG-tagged Rho was coexpressed in HeLa cells with myc-tagged Rho-GEFs, it could be coimmunoprecipitated with either of two Rho-GEFs, Net1 or p115RhoGEF (but not with a third). CNK1 inhibited the ability of p155RhoGEF or an activated form of Net1 (Net1ΔN) to activate SRF (serum response factor) and induce stress fiber formation, whereas it enhanced p155RhoGEF- or Net1ΔN-dependent phosphorylation of c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) and of c-Jun. When coexpressed in HeLa cells, CNK1 coimmunoprecipitated with several members of the JNK mitogen-associated protein kinase (JNK MAPK) cascade, including MLK2 and MLK3 (both MAPK kinase kinases), and MKK7 (a MAPK kinase), but not with MKK4 (another JNK pathway MAPK kinase). CNK also enabled p115RhoGEF to coimmunoprecipitate with MKK7. A HeLa cell line in which endogenous CNK1 was depleted showed attenuated c-Jun phosphorylation when transfected with constitutively active Rho or p115RhoGEF, with no reduction in stress fiber formation. Moreover, activation of the JNK MAPK pathway through stimulation of Gα12/13 (which activates p115RhoGEF) depended on endogenous CNK1. Thus, CNK1 appears to play a role in determining Rho signaling specificity by promoting Rho activation of the JNK MAPK pathway. A. B. Jaffe, A. Hall, A. Schmidt, Association of CNK1 with Rho guanine nucleotide exchange factors controls signaling specificity downstream of Rho. Curr. Biol. 15, 405-412 (2005). [PubMed]


The catalytic conversion of biomass and biogenic platform chemicals typically requires the use of solvents. Water is present already in the raw materials and in most cases a suitable solvent for the typically highly polar substrates. Hence, the development of novel catalytic routes for further processing would profit from the optimization of the reaction conditions in the aqueous phase mainly for energetic reasons by avoiding the initial water separation. Herein, we report the amination of biogenic alcohols in aqueous solutions using solid Ru-based catalysts and ammonia as a reactant. The influence of different support materials and bimetallic catalysts is investigated for the amination of isomannide as a biogenic diol. Most importantly, the transferability of the reaction conditions to various other primary and secondary alcohols is successfully proved. Hence, water appears to be a suitable solvent for the sustainable production of biogenic amines and offers great potential for further process development.


Mammalian nephrogenesis is modulated by a number of extracellular matrix (ECM) glycoproteins, integrins and cell adhesion molecules. We demonstrated the existence of integrins alphavbeta1, alphavbeta3, alphavbeta5 and alphavbeta6 in epithelial elements of developing nephrons. Fibrillin-1 is a putative ligand for integrin alphavbeta3, and tubulointerstitial nephritis antigen (TIN-ag) is a ligand for integrins alphavbeta3 and alpha3beta1. Fibrillin-1 and TIN-ag are also differentially expressed in the developing kidney. The inclusion of antisense oligonucleotide in a mouse kidney organ culture system indicated that the alphav-related integrins and their ligands play an important role in mammalian nephrogenesis. Recently identified modulators of cell-matrix interactions, i.e. beta-galactoside-binding mammalian lectins (galectins), are involved in cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions by cross-linking glycoconjugates located on the ECM and membrane-bound glycoproteins. We identified and cloned a new member of the galectins from embryonic kidneys, and designated it galectin-9. Since high glucose alters the expression of ECM proteins and integrins, we also investigated the influence of glucose on metanephric development. The presence of 30 mM D-glucose in metanephric organ culture induced dysmorphogenesis of the kidney accompanied by decreased expression of perlecan. Furthermore, we screened the genes differentially expressed under high glucose conditions in streptozotocin-induced newborn mouse kidneys by representational difference analysis of cDNA. We identified translocase of inner mitochondrial membrane (Tim44) and renal-specific oxido-reductase (RSOR). The roles of these molecules in glucose-induced dysmorphogenesis and the relationship with ECM-related molecules need to be addressed.


The Mount Simon Sandstone (Cambrian) has significant potential for use as a reservoir for geologic carbon sequestration in the Midwest region, but lithologic variations within the unit remain poorly understood. Petrophysical heterogeneities controlled by the changes in lithologic and diagenetic character challenge the process of estimating the storage capacity of this reservoir. Geophysical logs from wells across the Midwest region were interpreted to define three lithostratigraphic subunits within the Mount Simon Sandstone: an upper unit that has relatively high gamma-ray (GR) values caused by the admixture of argillaceous material; a middle unit defined by relatively lower GR values that result from a cleaner quartzose sandstone and potentially constitutes the main reservoir and flow unit within the formation (the GR values of this unit also display the lowest amount of vertical variability through the section); and a lowermost unit defined by GR values that, in general, progressively increase with depth toward the base of the formation. This downward increase is caused by the increased nonquartz fraction in the formation as the top of the Precambrian basement is approached. In all three units, but especially in the lowermost one, the admixture of feldspars and the presence of dissolution porosity complicate storage capacity calculation. In addition to quartz overgrowths and compaction phenomena that reduce pore volume, the presence of other diagenetic products further complicates the distribution of porosity and permeability within the unit. Storage capacity was calculated only for the middle unit within the Mount Simon Sandstone using values derived from GR and porosity geophysical logs (sonic, neutron, and density). The range of storage capacity found in this study is primarily controlled by reservoir thickness because the variation in porosity within this middle unit is less than that in the other units. However, an assessment of the vertical distribution of porosity and permeability at each site will be required to determine the best intervals with the best flow and storage properties.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to integrate stakeholder and international business (IB) theories to explore the relationship between the international diversification of emerging-market multinational corporations (EMNCs) and corporate social performance (CSP) in their home markets. While the IB literature generally assumes a positive effect from international diversification on CSP as a result of global learning, the study aims at investigating the complicated effects in the link to the stakeholder theory.

Design/methodology/approach
This paper used combined sources of public survey data (corporate social responsibility (CSR) of the Korean firms) and archival data (foreign direct investment and corporate data). A truncated regression is used for statistical model.

Findings
International diversification helps MNCs to enhance CSP in their home countries. Thus, EMNCs can develop CSR capabilities at the global level, thereby benefiting domestic stakeholders. Also, significant investment in domestic research and development (R&D) and advertising negatively moderates the relationship between international diversification and domestic CSP. In this regard, expanding R&D and advertising facilitates global competitiveness. Moreover, as international diversification increases, EMNCs may redirect resources and re-orient CSR policies toward foreign stakeholders. Consequently, the relationship between international diversification and domestic CSP weaken.

Practical implications
Acceleration in international diversification may weaken domestic CSP, which arises from transformation into the global enterprises.

Originality/value
The study highlights the difficulties of EMNCs in serving domestic stakeholders effectively when their businesses are increasingly internationalized.


Evaluation in the field of youth development continues to evolve.  Youth development programs vary significantly in their focus, setting and outcomes.  Community-based programs seeking to create or strengthen their evaluation methods and tools may have difficulty identifying what to measure and how to capture anticipated outcomes.  This article focuses on a youth development program combining service learning and peer education, serving urban adolescents ages 14 to 19.  The purposes of this study are: 1) to illustrate a strategy used to clarify and align core activities, anticipated outcomes and evaluation tools, and 2) to provide an overview of the updated data collection instruments created by the program.


Multi-State Video Coding (MSVC) is a multiple description scheme based on frame-wise splitting of the video sequence into two or more subsequences. Each subsequence is encoded separately to generate descriptions which can be decoded independently. Due to subsequence splitting the prediction gain decreases. but since reconstruction capabilities improves, error resilience of the system increases. Our focus is on Multi-State Video Coding with unbalanced quantized descriptions, which is particularly interesting for video streaming applications over heterogeneous networks where path diversity is used and transmission channels have varying transmission characteristics. The total bitrate is kept constant while the subsequences are quantized with different step sizes depending on the sequence as well as on the transmission conditions. Our goal is to figure out under which transmission conditions unbalanced bitstreams lead to good system performance in terms of the average reconstructed PSNR. Besides, we investigate the effects of intra-coding on the error resilience of the system and show that the sequence characteristics, and in particular the degree of motion in the sequence, have an important impact on the decoding performance. Finally, we propose a distortion model that is the core of an optimized rate allocation strategy, which is dependent on the network characteristics and status as well as on the video sequence characteristics. keywords: multiple description coding, robust coding, bitstream adaptation, optimal rate allocation, unbalanced quantization, path diversity


Purpose: The Green Human Resource Management concept is relatively new to Polish managers. There is a research gap with respect to investigating the reasons behind limited practical implementation of GHRM. The objective of the study is the identification of major barriers to the implementation of the GHRM concept in Polish companies. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study was conducted in 2018 on a random sample of 300 Polish enterprises. The respondents were managers responsible for HR policy development. The method used in the study was CATI. In the first stage of the analysis, an assessment of the level of implementation of the GHRM concept in 7 functional areas was carried out with the use of a 5-point Likert scale. The second stage involved identification of the main barriers impeding the implementation of green HR practices. Findings: Green Human Resource Management viewed as the latest research tendency plays a crucial role in the strategies of corporate sustainable development. However, studies demonstrate that the level of GHRM implementation in Polish companies is low. In the course of the analysis, it appeared that the primary barriers limiting GHRM implementation are: limited financial means, lack of incentives to engage in environmentally friendly activities, low competencies of the management with respect to sustainable HRM, no or low effectiveness of GHRM tools and a culture based on economic values. Practical Implications: If the major barriers to GHRM implementation are identified and Polish managers become aware of them, barrier removal may prove easier and, consequently, the scope of implementation of green practices within the HR function may be broadened. Originality/Value: This article is a pioneer attempt to identify the barriers to Green HRM implementation in Poland. The research enriches the still limited set of literature concerning environmental practice performance in the area of HR. The author believes that the results of the presented research may stimulate interest in GHRM concept's implementation in Polish companies as a tool of corporate sustainable development.


The present investigation was focused on the variations in rainwater infiltration experienced by soils of Gamboa zone (Panama Canal Watershed) during various seasons of the year, employing a time-lapse analysis of electrical resistivity tomography (ERT). In 2009, a total of 3 geoelectrical tests were undertaken during the dry, transition and rainy seasons across a profile 47 m in length, strategically distributed on site. The results obtained in this study showed strong variations in calculated resistivity between these seasons, taking the dry season as a reference with decreases and increases of percent difference of resistivity between -20% and -100%, and between 50% and 100%, respectively. These decreases, when displayed through a sequence of time-lapse images, reveal a superficial extension of the water content variations along the entire profile, as well as strong inversion artifacts showing false increases of calculated electrical resistivity. Decreases are the product of the rainfall increase obtained in this type of tropical environment; permanent conductive anomalies in 3 tests are associated with the streams close to the study site. The results of this work were compared with a simulation resulting from a series of bidimensional models applied to the 3 studies evaluated: dry, transition and rainy seasons.


In the light of the huge capital inflows into Private Equity in the late nineties and until 2001, this article examines how and why it got out of sync. An analysis using these tools shows that the overhang in this sector is really concentrated in the hands of a few funds, who can support their operations for many years to come. With the objective of studying investment decisions using economic theory, It discusses whether Private Equity is really an investment asset class. It goes on to suggest that the asymmetrical information that characterises Private Equity requires the use of well known concepts of Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard to help understand the risk of the sector. The sector will recover, but this may be led by players who are much less known than the brand-name funds.


An outbreak of measles occurred in Olorunda district, Nigeria, between January and June 2013. Outbreak response immunisation (ORI) was conducted as a control measure. We will describe the epidemiology of the outbreak and assess the impact of ORI. We visited all of the health facilities (73) in July 2013 to ascertain the cases through a review of the patient registers and case notes, using the World Health Organization case definition of measles. Data on children vaccinated during ORI were retrieved. To assess the impact of ORI, cumulative measles incidence for the targeted age group (6-59 months) and non-target age group (< 6 months and ≥ 5 years) was calculated before and after ORI. A total of 94 cases were identified, of which 89% were confirmed by laboratory and epidemiological linkage. More than three quarters (80%) of the confirmed cases were children < 5 years, with a 2% case fatality rate. The outbreak spanned 26 weeks, reaching its peak in week 12. Cases were clustered in the Sabo and Ota Efun wards, with over 88% of the confirmed cases having a zero-dose measles vaccination history. A total of 2 861 children were vaccinated during ORI, with administrative coverage of 10%. The cumulative incidence in the target age prior to ORI was 153.8 per 100 000, which decreased to 27.9 per 100 000 after ORI. The incidence in the non-target age group also decreased from 11.1 per 100 000 before ORI to 2.2 per 100 000 after ORI. Our investigation shows that ORI was effective in the control of the measles outbreak in Olorunda district. Hence, there is need to strengthen the conduct of ORI exercises during a measles outbreak to achieve higher coverage.


Recent observations suggest that permafrost thaw may create two completely different soil environments: aerobic in relatively well‐drained uplands and anaerobic in poorly drained wetlands. The soil oxygen availability will dictate the rate of permafrost carbon release as carbon dioxide (CO2) and as methane (CH4), and the overall effects of these emitted greenhouse gases on climate. The objective of this study was to quantify CO2 and CH4 release over a 500‐day period from permafrost soil under aerobic and anaerobic conditions in the laboratory and to compare the potential effects of these emissions on future climate by estimating their relative climate forcing. We used permafrost soils collected from Alaska and Siberia with varying organic matter characteristics and simultaneously incubated them under aerobic and anaerobic conditions to determine rates of CO2 and CH4 production. Over 500 days of soil incubation at 15 °C, we observed that carbon released under aerobic conditions was 3.9–10.0 times greater than anaerobic conditions. When scaled by greenhouse warming potential to account for differences between CO2 and CH4, relative climate forcing ranged between 1.5 and 7.1. Carbon release in organic soils was nearly 20 times greater than mineral soils on a per gram soil basis, but when compared on a per gram carbon basis, deep permafrost mineral soils showed carbon release rates similar to organic soils for some soil types. This suggests that permafrost carbon may be very labile, but that there are significant differences across soil types depending on the processes that controlled initial permafrost carbon accumulation within a particular landscape. Overall, our study showed that, independent of soil type, permafrost carbon in a relatively aerobic upland ecosystems may have a greater effect on climate when compared with a similar amount of permafrost carbon thawing in an anaerobic environment, despite the release of CH4 that occurs in anaerobic conditions.


Nakassis et al., in their contribution to this Forum, argue that the term "redistribution" has been used with a range of meanings in the context of the Aegean Bronze Age and so obscures rather than illuminates the emergence and functioning of political economies. They call for detailed empirical investigation rather than reliance on ambiguous idealized types. Lupack and Schon concur, arguing respectively that the palace shared control of the Mycenaean economy with sanctuaries and local communities and that centralized production of craft goods (and thus elite strategies of wealth finance) developed late at the palace of Pylos. Pullen finds little archaeological support for Renfrew's extrapolation of centralized redistribution to the Early Bronze Age, while Christakis uses evidence of storage to argue the same for Prepalatial Crete and to play down the scale and importance of elite redistribution in the Minoan palaces. The calls for circumspect use of the term "redistribution" and for detailed empirical investigation are applauded, although these five papers arguably do not all attack the same form of redistribution. This response argues that redistribution sensu Polanyi, Finley, and Killen (i.e., centrally administered movements of goods and services without equivalence of value) retains considerable heuristic value in investigation of both textual and archaeological evidence for Bronze Age political economies. Join the discussion on AJA Online.


Centrally acting appetite suppressant drugs used in the treatment of obesity fall into 2 broad pharmacological categories; those which act via brain catecholamine pathways and those which act via serotonin pathways. Of the former group, amphetamine and phenmetrazine are no longer recommended because of their stimulant properties and addictive potential. The remaining drugs in this class include amfepramone (diethylpropion), phentermine, mazindol and phenylpropanolamine. All have been shown to reduce appetite and lower food intake, thereby helping obese patients more easily keep to a low-calorie diet and lose weight. They all have some sympathomimetic and stimulant properties. Anorectic drugs which promote serotonin neurotransmission have no such stimulant or sympathomimetic properties. They are fenfluramine, together with its recently introduced dextrorotatory stereoisomer dexfenfluramine, and fluoxetine. They reduce appetite and food intake and are effective in the treatment of obesity. Anorectic drugs should be reserved for those who are clinically at risk from being overweight, and then only as part of a comprehensive weight-reducing programme including regular dietary counselling. Although current licensing regulations only allow their use over a relatively short period (12 to 16 weeks), clinical trials have shown them to be effective over longer periods, particularly in preventing weight regain. Of the compounds currently indicated for use in obesity, dexfenfluramine appears to have the most suitable pharmacological profile, although it should not be given to patients with a history of depression. When used appropriately, appetite suppressants can be of real therapeutic benefit, and pose little risk.


The South African Police Service is often a target of criticism, more often than not stemming from heightened public emotions regarding the high levels of crime in South Africa. Using the concept of democratic policing as its basis, a recent assessment attempts to evaluate the SAPS against a set of 39 measures. Providing an organisation-wide view of the SAPS, the assessment highlights both positive and negative aspects of the  SAPS, and provides a detailed set of recommendations. The assessment is intended to support democratic oversight of the police by directing attention towards the main issues that should be addressed by oversight bodies.


In recent literature, attempts have been made to apply Independent Component Analysis (ICA) techniques to the modal identification problem. Paramount to this task is establishing a relationship between the source components realized using the suggested ICA technique and modal responses. In this paper, the relationship between independent components and free-vibration modal responses is discussed. Theoretical arguments are presented for responses of undamped systems and arguments are extended to damped responses.


In many practical situations when analyzing a dependence of one or more explanatory variables on a response variable it is essential to assume that the relationship of interest obeys certain shape constraints, such as monotonicity or monotonicity and convexity/concavity. In this thesis a new approach to shape preserving smoothing within generalized additive models has been developed. In contrast with previous quadratic programming based methods, the project develops intermediate rank penalized smoothers with shape constrained restrictions based on re-parameterized B-splines and penalties based on the P-spline ideas of Eilers and Marx (1996). Smoothing under monotonicity constraints and monotonicity together with convexity/concavity for univariate smooths; and smoothing of bivariate functions with monotonicity restrictions on both covariates and on only one of them are considered. The proposed shape constrained smoothing has been incorporated into generalized additive models with a mixture of unconstrained and shape restricted smooth terms (mono-GAM). A fitting procedure for mono-GAM is developed. Since a major challenge of any flexible regression method is its implementation in a computationally efficient and stable manner, issues such as convergence, rank deficiency of the working model matrix, initialization, and others have been thoroughly dealt with. A question about the limiting posterior distribution of the model parameters is solved, which allows us to construct Bayesian confidence intervals of the mono-GAM smooth terms by means of the delta method. The performance of these confidence intervals is examined by assessing realized coverage probabilities using simulation studies. The proposed modelling approach has been implemented in an R package monogam. The model setup is the same as in mgcv(gam) with the addition of shape constrained smooths. In order to be consistent with the unconstrained GAM, the package provides key functions similar to those associated with mgcv(gam). Performance and timing comparisons of mono-GAM with other alternative methods has been undertaken. The simulation studies show that the new method has practical advantages over the alternatives considered. Applications of mono-GAM to various data sets are presented which demonstrate its ability to model many practical situations.


Long-term depression (LTD) of synaptic transmission can be induced by several mechanisms, one thought to involve Ca2+-dependent activation of postsynaptic nitric oxide (NO) synthase and subsequent diffusion of NO to the presynaptic terminal. We used the stable NO donor S-nitroso-N-acetylpenicillamine (SNAP) to study the NO-dependent form of LTD at Schaffer collateral-CA1 synapses in vitro. SNAP (100 microM) enhanced the induction of LTD via a cascade that was blocked by the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist D-2-amino-5-phosphonopentanoic acid (50 microM), NO guanylyl cyclase inhibitor 1H-[1,2,4] oxadiazolo [4,3-a] quinoxalin-1-one (10 microM), and the PKG inhibitor KT5823 (1 microM). We further show that LTD induced by low-frequency stimulation in the absence of SNAP also is blocked by KT5823 or Rp-8-(4-chlorophenylthio)-guanosine 3',5'-cyclic monophosphorothioate (10 microM), cyclic guanosine 3',5' monophosphate-dependent protein kinase (PKG) inhibitors with different mechanisms of action. Furthermore SNAP-facilitated LTD was blocked when release from intracellular calcium stores was inhibited by ryanodine (10 microM). Finally, two cell-permeant antagonists of the cyclic ADP-ribose binding site on ryanodine receptors also were able to block the induction of LTD. These results support a cascade for induction of homosynaptic, NO-dependent LTD involving activation of guanylyl cyclase, production of guanosine 3',5' cyclic monophosphate and subsequent PKG activation. This process has an additional requirement for release of Ca2+ from ryanodine-sensitive stores, perhaps dependent on the second-messenger cyclic ADP ribose.


[1] We evaluate the sensitivity of tropospheric OH, O3, and O3 precursors to photochemical effects of aerosols not usually included in global models: (1) aerosol scattering and absorption of ultraviolet radiation and (2) reactive uptake of HO2, NO2, and NO3. Our approach is to couple a global 3-D model of tropospheric chemistry (GEOS-CHEM) with aerosol fields from a global 3-D aerosol model (GOCART). Reactive uptake by aerosols is computed using reaction probabilities from a recent review (γHO2 = 0.2, γNO2 = 10−4, γNO3 = 10−3). Aerosols decrease the O3 → O(1D) photolysis frequency by 5–20% at the surface throughout the Northern Hemisphere (largely due to mineral dust) and by a factor of 2 in biomass burning regions (largely due to black carbon). Aerosol uptake of HO2 accounts for 10–40% of total HOx radical (≡ OH + peroxy) loss in the boundary layer over polluted continental regions (largely due to sulfate and organic carbon) and for more than 70% over tropical biomass burning regions (largely due to organic carbon). Uptake of NO2 and NO3 accounts for 10–20% of total HNO3 production over biomass burning regions and less elsewhere. Annual mean OH concentrations decrease by 9% globally and by 5–35% in the boundary layer over the Northern Hemisphere. Simulated CO increases by 5–15 ppbv in the remote Northern Hemisphere, improving agreement with observations. Simulated boundary layer O3 decreases by 15–45 ppbv over India during the biomass burning season in March and by 5–9 ppbv over northern Europe in August, again improving comparison with observations. We find that particulate matter controls would increase surface O3 over Europe and other industrial regions.


Although supported in principle by two-thirds of the public and even more of the States, capital punishment in the United States is a minority practice when the actual death-sentencing practices of the nation's 3000-plus counties and their populations are considered. This feature of American capital punishment has been present for decades, has become more pronounced recently, and is especially clear when death sentences, which are merely infrequent, are distinguished from executions, which are exceedingly rare. The first question this Article asks is what forces account for the death-proneness of a minority of American communities? The answer to that question - that a combination of parochialism and libertarianism characterizes the communities most disposed to impose death sentences - helps to answer the next question addressed here: Why so few death sentences end in executions? It turns out that the imposition of death sentences, particularly for felony murder (a proxy for the out-of-the-blue stranger killings that generate the greatest fear among parochial communities), provides parochial and libertarian communities with a quick and cheap alternative to effective law enforcement. And that alternative is largely realized whether or not death sentences are ultimately carried out. This explanation sheds light on two other criminal law conundrums - the survival of the most idiosyncratic manifestation of the felony murder doctrine (which mysteriously transmogrifies involuntary manslaughter into capitally aggravated murder) and the failure of the death penalty to have a demonstrable deterrent effect (which is not surprising if the death penalty operates as a weak substitute for, rather than a powerful addition to, otherwise effective law enforcement strategies). The explanation also reveals a number of costs the capitally prone minority imposes on the majority of citizens and locales that can do without the death penalty, including more crime, a cumbersome process for reviewing systematically flawed death sentences whose execution is of less interest to the death sentences' originators than their imposition, and a heightened risk - to the judicial system as well as individual defendants - of miscarriages of justice.These explanations, in turn, beg the most important and difficult question considered here. Why do the majority of communities and citizens who can live without the death penalty tolerate a minority practice with serious costs that the majority mainly bears? With a bow towards Douglas Hay's famous explanation for the survival over many decades of eighteenth century England's no less universally vilified death-sentencing system - which likewise condemned many but executed few - we offer some reasons for the minority's success in wagging the majority. In response to recent evidence of a (thus far largely counterproductive) majority backlash, we conclude by offering some suggestions about how the majority might require the minority of death-prone communities to bear more of the costs of their death-proneness without increasing the risk of miscarriage of justice.


This essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses.


Abstract. Changes in margins derived from satellite imagery are quantitative indicators of the environmental processes and drivers acting on the Earth's surface, for example retreating ice margins or coastal changes with rising sea level. However, the large-scale rapid visualisation and analysis of the satellite record is often impractical due to factors such as computer processing power, software availability, internet connection speed and/or user expertise in remote sensing. Here are presented three new, freely accessible tools that together can be used to process, visualise and review data from the full Landsat 4–8 and Sentinel 1–2 satellite records in seconds, enabling efficient mapping (through manual digitisation) and automated quantification of margin changes. These tools are highly accessible for users from a range of remote-sensing expertise (from academics to high school students), with minimal computational, licensing and knowledge-based barriers to access. The Google Earth Engine Digitisation Tool (GEEDiT) allows users to define a point anywhere on the planet and filter data from each satellite for user-defined time frames, maximum acceptable cloud cover extent, and options of predefined or custom image band combinations via a simple graphical user interface (GUI). GEEDiT allows georeferenced vectors to be easily and rapidly mapped from each image, with image metadata and user notes automatically appended to each vector, which can then be exported for subsequent analysis. The GEEDiT Reviewer tool allows users to quality control their own/others' data and also filter existing datasets based on the spatial/temporal requirements for their particular research question. The Margin change Quantification Tool (MaQiT) is complementary to GEEDiT and GEEDiT Reviewer, allowing the rapid quantification of these margin changes by utilising two well-established methods that have previously been used to measure glacier margin change and two new methods via a similarly simple GUI. A case study of the lake-terminating glacier Breiðamerkurjökull, Iceland, is used to demonstrate the complementary functionality of GEEDiT, GEEDiT Reviewer and MaQiT, though it should be noted that MaQiT is also suitable for the (re-)analysis of existing datasets not generated by GEEDiT. MaQiT has been developed with the original aim of quantifying tidewater glacier terminus change, though the methods included within the tool have potential for wide applications in multiple areas of Earth surface science (e.g. coastal and vegetation extent change). It is hoped that these tools will allow a wide range of researchers and students across the geosciences to efficiently map, analyse and access volumes of data that would have previously proven prohibitive.


The article attempts to analyze the mechanisms of political control used by the Kremlin vis-à-vis its rivals. Russian authorities had opted the politics of fear, which include overt intimidation and public discrediting of the regime's critics, and selective persecution and open harassment of opposition activists and/or supporters. This approach to political control to some degree reproduced similar mechanisms that had enabled regime survival in the late-Soviet period, and fit general trends of repressive policies in a number of contemporary authoritarian regimes. The article discusses causes and mechanisms of the politics of fear in contemporary Russia, its roots in comparative and historical contexts, and strengths and weaknesses of repressive policy in Russia from the viewpoints of the regime, the opposition, and Russian society.


The first offshore wind farm 'alpha ventus' in the German North Sea was constructed north east of Borkum Reef Ground approximately 45 km north off the German coast in 2008 and 2009 using percussive piling for the foundations of 12 wind turbines. Visual monitoring of harbour porpoises was conducted prior to as well as during construction and operation by means of 15 aerial line transect distance sampling surveys, from 2008 to 2010. Static acoustic monitoring (SAM) with echolocation click loggers at 12 positions was performed additionally from 2008 to 2011. SAM devices were deployed between 1 and 50 km from the centre of the wind farm. During aerial surveys, 18 600 km of transect lines were covered in two survey areas (10 934 and 11 824 km2) and 1392 harbour porpoise sightings were recorded. Lowest densities were documented during the construction period in 2009. The spatial distribution pattern recorded on two aerial surveys three weeks before and exactly during pile-driving points towards a strong avoidance response within 20 km distance of the noise source. Generalized additive modelling of SAM data showed a negative impact of pile-driving on relative porpoise detection rates at eight positions at distances less than 10.8 km. Increased detection rates were found at two positions at 25 and 50 km distance suggesting that porpoises were displaced towards these positions. A pile-driving related behavioural reaction could thus be detected using SAM at a much larger distance than a pure avoidance radius would suggest. The first waiting time (interval between porpoise detections of at least 10 min), after piling started, increased with longer piling durations. A gradient in avoidance, a gradual fading of the avoidance reaction with increasing distance from the piling site, is hence most probably a product of an incomplete displacement during shorter piling events.


Background and Objectives: Traditionally, there are two treatment modalities for vital primary teeth with deep carious lesion, which include indirect pulp therapy (IPT) and pulpotomy. Enormous research and review in vital pulp therapy gave rise to a question, if primary tooth pulpotomy is obsolete, and should IPT replace pulpotomy? IPT has shown higher long-term success rates than any pulpotomy procedures other than mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA). Hence, the objectives of this study were to evaluate the success rates of IPT using calcium hydroxide and MTA pulpotomy clinically and radiographically. Materials and Methods: Eighty primary second molars were selected and randomly divided into two therapeutic groups of 40 each. Group 1 were treated with IPT using calcium hydroxide paste and Group 2 were treated with conventional pulpotomy using MTA paste followed by stainless steel crown. Follow-up evaluation was done at an interval of 6 weeks, 3 months, and 6 months. Results: The follow-up evaluation revealed 100% clinical success in teeth treated with MTA pulpotomy and one radiographic failure of internal resorption detected at 3 months. There was 100% clinical and radiographic success with teeth treated with IPT. Though there was one radiographic failure with MTA pulpotomy, it was not statistically significant (P > 0.05). Conclusion: Indications being the same for both the procedures why not opt for IPT which offers several advantages over pulpotomy like fewer potential side effects, non-invasive, decreased chair time, child cooperation, and cost-effectiveness.


*� Correspondingauthor Clinopyroxene-garnet scheelite skarn containing accessory niobian titanite, native bismuth and Bi-tellurides of the Bi 2 X and Bi 5 X 3 series, together with Fe- and Fe-As sulphides, is associated with the contact of chondrodite marble with melanocratic granite-quartz syenite (durbachite). Hedenbergite-rich vein in this marble can be considered as an additional type of skarn. The presence of accessory niobian titanite is typical, in particular, of the veins. In addition to increased Nb contents (≤ 10.6 wt. % Nb 2 O 5 ; ≤ 0.164 apfu Nb) and locally Ta (≤ 4.07 Ta 2 O 5 ; ≤ 0.038 apfu Ta), it is relatively rich in Al (≤ 0.253 apfu). Locally it contains elevated Fe, Sn, Zr and F contents. Negative correlations of Al + F with R 4+ and Al + (Nb 5+ , Ta 5+ ) with R 4+ accompanied by low contents of Na in titanite correspond to the substi- tutions Al(OH,F)(TiO) -1 and Al(Nb,Ta)Ti -2 . Niobian titanite has anomalous composition if compared to skarn mineral assemblages worldwide. The Bi-(sulpho-) telluride with empiric formula Bi 1.98 (Te 0.66 S 0.34 Se 0.02 ) Σ1.02 is a member of the Bi 2 X series, whose members were described from numerous localities as unnamed minerals. In contrast to the publis- hed data this phase contains increased sulphur contents up to 0.33 apfu. The second Bi-(sulpho-) telluride with empiric formula (Bi 4.51 Fe 0.40 Cd 0.03 Pb 0.02 Sb 0.01 As 0.01 ) Σ4.98 (Te 1.58 S 1.36 Se 0.08 ) Σ3.02 is probably a S-rich member of the Bi 5 X 3 series. In the evolution of the skarn it is possible to distinguish stage I responsible for the formation of the older Mg- and younger Ca-skarns, and stage II, characterised by increased Fe contents. The scheelite-sulphide mineralization was formed during a third (retrogression) stage followed by brittle deformation. Emplacement of siderite ± quartz veins represents the fourth (terminal) stage of mineralization.


Instincts may evolve from learning and share the same cellular and molecular mechanisms An animal mind is not born as an empty canvas: Bottlenose dolphins know how to swim and honey bees know how to dance without ever having learned these skills. Little is known about how animals acquire the instincts that enable such innate behavior. Instincts are widely held to be ancestral to learned behavior. Some have been elegantly analyzed at the cellular and molecular levels, but general principles do not exist. Based on recent research, we argue instead that instincts evolve from learning and are therefore served by the same general principles that explain learning.


Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have recently been widely used to model some of the human activities in many areas of science and engineering. One of the distinct characteristics of the ANNs is its ability to learn from experience and examples and then to adapt with changing situations. ANNs does not need a specific equation form that differs from traditional prediction models. Instead of that, it needs enough input-output data. Also, it can continuously re-train the new data, so that it can conveniently adapt to new data. This research work focuses on development and application of artificial neural networks in some specific civil engineering problems such as prediction of ultimate bearing capacity of soil and compressive strength of concrete after 28 days.

One of the main objectives of this study was the development and application of an ANN for predicting of the ultimate bearing capacity of soil. Hence, a large training set of actual ultimate bearing capacity of soil cases was used to train the network.
A neural network model was developed using 1660 data set of nine inputs including the width of foundation, friction angle in three layer, cohesion of three layers and depth of first and second layer are selected as inputs for predicting of ultimate bearing capacity in soil. The model contained a training data set of 1180 cases, a verification data set of 240 cases and a testing data set of 240 cases. The training was terminated when the average training error reached 0.002.

Many combinations of layers, number of neurons, activation functions, different values for learning rate and momentum were considered and the results were validated using an independent validation data set. Finally 9-15-1 is chosen as the architecture of neural network in this study. That means 9 inputs with a set of 15 neurons in hidden layer has the most reasonable agreement architecture. This architecture gave high accuracy and reasonable Mean Square Error (MSE).

The network computes the mean squared error between the actual and predicted values for output over all patterns. Calculation of mean percentage relative error for training set data, show that artificial neural network predicted ultimate bearing capacity with error of 14.83%. The results prove that the artificial neural network can work sufficiently for predicting of ultimate bearing capacity as an expert system. It was observed that overall construction-related parameters played a role in affecting ultimate bearing capacity, but especially the parameter "friction angle" play a most important role. An important observation is that influencing of the parameter "cohesion" is too less than another parameters for calculating of ultimate bearing capacity of soil.
Also in this thesis is aimed at demonstrating the possibilities of adapting artificial neural Also in this thesis is aimed at demonstrating the possibilities of adapting artificial neural networks (ANN) to predict the compressive strength of concrete. To predict the compressive strength of concrete the six input parameters, such as, cement, water, silica fume, superplasticizer, fine aggregate and coarse aggregate identified. Total of 639 different data sets of concrete were collected from the technical literature. Training data sets comprises 400 data entries, and the remaining data entries (239) are divided between the validation and testing sets. The training was stopped when the average training error reached 0.007. A detailed study was carried out, considering two hidden layers for the architecture of neural network. The performance of the 6-12-6-1 architecture was the best possible architecture.

The MSE for the training set was 5.33% for the 400 training data points, 6.13% for the 100 verification data points and 6.02 % for the 139 testing data points. It can recognize the concrete in term of 'strength' with a confidence level of about 95%, which is considered as satisfactory from an engineering point of view. It was found from sensitivity analyses performed on a neural network model that the cement has the maximum impact on the compressive strength of concrete.
Finally, the results of the present investigation were very encouraging and indicate that ANNs have strong potential as a feasible tool for predicting the ultimate bearing capacity of soil and compressive strength of concrete.


All 15 subscales of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Pintrich, Smith, Garcia, & McKeachie, 1993) were administered to 352 undergraduate students taking Introductory Psychology. Their scores were evaluated with respect to incremental validity (in addition to ACT scores) they provided for predicting course grades. Results indicated that only two of the subscales, Self-efficacy, and Time and Study Environment, contributed incremental validity. When the students were disaggregated by ACT composite, and the low, medium, and high ACT groups were evaluated separately, Self-Efficacy dropped out of the model for the low ACT group, and only time and study environment provided incremental validity. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for increasing the structure of college courses to improve performance among students. KEYWORDS: Academic motivation, intelligence, scholastic ability, MSLQ, self-efficacy ********** As America attempts to adjust to the burgeoning global economy and the migration of jobs to other countries, one of the major themes is the need to produce more knowledge workers, especially in the STEM disciplines (i.e., science, technology, engineering, and math). Closely related to this challenge is the ongoing problem of how to increase learning, retention, and graduation rates among the nation's college students. In spite of the fact that this issue has attracted a plethora of literature, solutions have been difficult to implement. In recent years the 6-year graduation rate from America's colleges and universities has been only 57% (Horn, 2006). With respect to accounting for individual differences in academic performance, it is generally accepted that valid measures of academic aptitude (e.g., Scholastic Aptitude Test [SAT], American College Testing [ACT]) are among our most fruitful predictors. In terms of student departure rates, the national average of 43% drops to around 8% in highly selective colleges and universities, which attract the most academically gifted students (Tinto, 1993). Because of its potential mutability, however, the other requirement for scholarly performance, motivation to learn in an academic setting, has attracted a host of research attention, in part because of the hope that interventions with various strategies could increase it where it is lacking, with the result that student performance would improve. Much has been written on the importance of integrating the social and academic aspects of college students' experience to increase motivation and maximize retention and scholarly achievement (for a discussion, see Braxton, 2000). Research in this arena is replete with explanatory constructs such as self-efficacy, intrinsic and extrinsic goal orientation, task value, learning style, control orientation, self-regulated learning, and expectancy for success. Interestingly, few studies addressing academic performance have focused on the incremental validity of motivational/personality variables, after the predictive ability of cognitive and academic aptitude measures (e.g., ACT, SAT, intelligence tests) has been taken into account (see Brown, 1994; Lounsbury, et. al., 2003; and Wolfe & Johnson, 1995). MSLQ development. In an attempt to determine the impact of these motivational variables on academic performance, one line of research has been to develop surveys to measure student motivation and self-efficacy in academic situations (e.g., Holtzman & Brown, 1968; Midgley, Kaplan, Middleton, Maehr, Urdan Anderman, Anderman, & Roeser, 1998; Pintrich, Smith, Garcia, & McKeachie, 1993; VandeWalle, 1997). One of the better known surveys in the research literature is the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), developed by Pintrich et al. (1993) to measure two constructs thought to be integral to academic performance: (a) students' motivation to achieve for academic success and (b) their use of various learning strategies. …


We analyse the link between the presence of female managers and the size of the firm-level gender pay gap. We look separately at the private and public sector, basing on a large linked employer-employee dataset for Poland. Using a non-parametric and parametric decompositions, we find that higher presence of female managers is associated with more pay advantage towards women in selected types of public sector units: the ones in which remunerations of women and men are already equal, and a large share of the workforce is tertiary-educated. The effects are, however, relatively small in size. In private establishments, lower gender wage inequality is associated with higher shares of female workers, but not female managers.


Research in ICT has contributed significantly to the needs of the country in terms of policy formulation, programme implementation and hence the volume of investments in the sector. When Malaysia embarked on ICT as a tool for development of the country with the introduction of the Internet in 1987 by the Malaysian Institute of Microelectronic Systems (MIMOS) through its Rangkaian Komputer Malaysia (RangKom) project, research on the impact of ICT was encouraged and done aggressively. Studies on the impact of ICT have helped in identifying factors that may influence the adoption of ICT and the resulting benefits to the society. This paper discusses the factors that affect the acceptance of ICT among users. The discussion is based on the findings from a quantitative study conducted on 300 internet users. This study gauges the users' opinion on what motivates them to use ICT and the perceived usefulness of ICT usage. From the findings, 'perceived usefulness' and 'personal factors' are the main motivating factors in accepting and using ICT. Thus, it encouraged them to use ICT positively in their daily lives as the findings revealed. The findings are crucial for the country in shaping future ICT policies, strategising steps in improving ICT implementation, and in revealing the challenges that need to be addressed. It also enriches the literature on technology acceptance by way of extending the Technology Acceptance Model to include other factors responsible for technology acceptance.