Human impacts alter landscapes with consequences for the distribution and availability of high‐quality food resources to populations inhabiting those landscapes, which may impact on the reproductive output of individuals in those populations. The sensitivity of wild populations to changes in food resources may vary among stages of the annual cycle. For example, in birds, effects are likely to be greater during costly stages such as egg production. Here we compare assimilated diet (from stable isotope analysis of chick feathers) and egg traits (egg size, shape, eggshell colour and maculation, using pattern‐analysis software) in Herring Gulls Larus argentatus, across seven colonies in southwest Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Herring Gull is an opportunistic, generalist forager on both marine and terrestrial resources which frequently exploits anthropogenic food sources such as fishery discards and human refuse. We found that larger eggs were laid in colonies where females consumed either a higher proportion of marine resources or terrestrial resources; smaller eggs were laid in colonies where females had an intermediate diet. In colonies where females consumed more marine items, they also laid eggs with higher maculation (intensity and size of spots) compared with colonies where females mainly consumed terrestrial food. We also found smaller and more pointed eggs, suggestive of resource shortages, in larger colonies. Generalist foragers are often thought to have the capacity to buffer themselves against changes in the food web, provided that enough alternative food is available. However, this study highlights that specializing on the most profitable or available resources has consequences for egg traits even in an opportunistic generalist forager exploiting a large range of habitats. If variation in egg traits is related to reproductive output, then understanding the impact of assimilated diet on reproduction early in the breeding season can provide important insights into how populations will respond to landscapes altered by human impact.


The presented work falls within one of Qatar's Research Grand Challenges, namely the area of Cyber Security. We have designed a new public-key cryptosystem that can improve the security of communication networks. This new cryptosystem combines two important ideas. The first idea is the difficulty of finding an invariant of infinite diagonalizable group. More specifically, for the coding purposes, we build an infinite diagonalizable group that has a given polynomial invariant of high degree. One possible attack on this cryptosystem is to find an invariant of this group. However, during the design of the system we guarantee that the minimal degree of invariants of this group is very high which makes the direct attempt to find any invariant using linear algebra techniques computationally expensive. The second idea is based on our discovery that when working over the ring Z of integers, another attack to break the cryptosystem is possible. This attack is based on replacing the prime factorization of integers by finding a factorization of "atoms" and can be implemented using the Euclidean algorithm. Similar algorithm works for rings that are unique factorization domains. To prevent this type of attack, we work over number fields that are not unique factorization domains (there are many such suitable number fields of small degrees). By doing so we invoke the well-known problem of prime factorization (used in commercial cryptosystems like RSA) which becomes principally more complicated over number fields that are not unique factorization domains. We have also showed that similar system based on finite diagonalizable groups are not secure against attack because such a system can be broken in polynomial time using an algorithm that finds a root of every polynomial p(x) with complex coefficients such that all of its roots are roots of unity. All invariants considered for diagonalizable groups are linear combinations of monomial invariants. The situation is more complicated for diagonalizable supergroups. Since it could improve the safety of the cryptosystem, we also investigated the case of supergroups and derived theoretical results about the minimal degrees of invariants. Since the diagonalizable supergroups enjoy more complicated structural properties, a cryptosystem based on them would be even more secured. In order to move to the supergroups, a better understanding of general linear supergroups was desired. We have established theoretical results describing and proving the linkage principle for these supergroups and we gained an understanding how are the composition factors of highest weight modules related. For the future work, we plan to implement the algorithm for the public-key cryptosystem that we have designed and test the speed of coding and test the security of the system by determining the time and space complexities of known attacks of the system.


In 1952, Bamford and Stevens observed that tosylhydrazones of aliphatic ketones yielded alkenes when treated with the sodium salt of ethylene glycol in boiling ethylene glycol. In addition to the alkene, molecular nitrogen, and p-toluenesulfinate anion were produced. This chapter reviews such syntheses of alkenes from tosylhydrazones and the formation of cyclopropanes and acetylenes from tosylhydrazones because the several reactions involved are so closely interrelated. The four major reaction types are reviewed here: (1) base-induced decomposition of tosylhydrazones in protic solvents and (2) in aprotic solvents (3) reactions of tosylhydrazones with alkyllithium reagents and (4) fragmentation reactions of alpha, beta-epoxytosylhydrazones and analogous systems. Reactions 1 and 2 are called the protic and aprotic Bamford-Stevens reaction.

Keywords:

Bramford-Stevens reaction;
tosylhydazones;
alkyllithium reagents;
protic reaction;
aprotic reaction;
fragmentation reactions;
allenes;
alkynes;
cyclopropenes;
alkanes;
experimental procedures


After a decade of global diffusion, and the realisation of some economic benefits, the environmental impact of Genetically Modified (GM) crop technologies remains inconclusive and a source of considerable threat to biodiversity-rich Africa. Drawing on evidence from Ethiopia and South Africa, this paper characterises debates, considers policy and discusses the rationale for proactive GM technology policy (as in South Africa) and precautionary ones (such as in Ethiopia). It shows that GM crop adoption, or rejection, crucially depends on the scientific, technological and institutional capabilities for the development and use of the technology and perceptions about risk and socio-economic impacts. Overly protective policies (inadvertently) suppress the development of biotechnological capacities that have the potential to add more value to biodiversity-derived products, and reduce loss of biodiversity. It argues that Africa's progress in science and biotechnological innovation is central to conservation and sustainable use of its biodiversity for the improvement of the livelihoods of its people.


Xylia xylocarpa and Khaya ivorensis are two fast-growing trees that are currently
planted on trial basis in Sabah. The wood quality of trees grown in Sabah may differ from
those grown in other places due to the environmental factors. Five 9-year-old trees of each
species were extracted from their respective plots at Luasong, Tawau. Wood specimens were
prepared from three height levels; bottom, middle and top, at the inner and outer radial
positions. The within-tree and between-tree variations of anatomical, physical and mechanical
properties of these species were analysed.
The characteristics of X xylocarpa are comparable to a number of local popular
hardwood species, indicating its suitability for heavy construction uses.


In North America, it has been shown that cattle in warmer, drier grasslands have lower quality diets than those cattle grazing cooler, wetter grasslands, which suggests warming will increase nutritional stress and reduce weight gain. Yet, little is known about how the plant species that comprise cattle diets change across these gradients and whether these shifts in dietary quality coincide with shifts in dietary composition, i.e. the relative abundance of different plant species consumed by cattle. To quantify geographic patterns in dietary composition, we analyzed the dietary composition and dietary quality of unsupplemented cattle from 289 sites across the central US by sequence-based analyses of plant DNA isolated from cattle fecal samples. Overall, assuming that the percentage of reads for a species in a sample corresponds to the percentage of protein derived from the species, only 45% of the protein intake for cattle was derived from grasses. Within the Great Plains, northern cattle relied more on grasses than southern cattle, which derived a greater proportion of their protein from herbaceous and woody eudicots. Eastern cattle were also more likely to consume a unique assemblage of plant species than western cattle. High dietary protein was not strongly tied to consumption of any specific plant species, which suggests that efforts to promote individual plant species may not easily remedy protein deficiencies. A few plant species were consistently associated with lower quality diets. For example, the diets of cattle with high amounts of Elymus or Hesperostipa were more likely to have lower crude protein concentrations than diets with less of these grasses. Overall, our analyses suggest that climatic warming will increase the reliance of cattle on eudicots as protein concentrations of grasses decline. Monitoring cattle diet with this DNA-based sequencing approach can be an effective tool for quantifying cattle diet to better increase animal performance and guide mitigation strategies to changing climates.


The Pennsylvanian Tensleep Sandstone in the Lost Soldier field of Sweetwater County, Wyoming, is composed of texturally homogeneous, fine-grained sandstones and interbedded dolomite beds. Geologic setting and sedimentary features indicate that the Tensleep was deposited in supratidal-eolian environments. Detailed petrographic, cathodoluminescence, and SEM analyses of core samples from a well in the Lost Soldier field show authigenic features which resulted from nine diagenetic events in the Tensleep: 1) pervasive anhydrite cementation; 2) precipitation of feldspar overgrowths; 3) poikilotopic nodular calcite cementation; 4) nodular anhydrite cementation; 5) fabric-selective anhydrite cementation; 6) precipitation of silica overgrowths and silicification of carbonates; 7) alteration of feldspar; 8) dolomite cementation; and 9) hydrocarbon accumulation. Four diagenetic facies with their own specific patterns of alterations were identified: 1) early-carbonate-precipitation facies; 2) early-anhydrite-cementation facies: 3) primary-carbonate-grain facies; and 4) nodular-cementation facies. The carbonate-rich diagenetic facies are closely associated with the supratidal sebkha depositional environment. The anhydrite-rich facies is related to the interdune sebkha depositional environment, and the nodular-cementation facies is found within rocks deposited in the eolian dune environment. Reservoir qualities (i.e., porosity and permeability) of the Tensleep Sandstone in the Lost Soldier field vary considerably, both vertically and laterally. Porosity and permeability are primarily controlled by compaction and cementation. Good correlation exists between reservoir quality and volume of cements for samples from nodular-cementation and primary-carbonate-grain diagenetic facies. Samples from other diagenetic facies can also be grouped into distinct areas on a cross-plot of porosity versus volume of cements. Therefore, the cross-plot can be used as a tool to differentiate different diagenetic facies at least for the evaporitic-eolian rock system.


The substitution of trivalent aluminium in Sr-Y type hexaferrite is considered to be an important for the enhancement of its magnetic and electrical properties. A series of single phase polycrystalline samples with chemical composition Sr2Zn2AlxFe12-xO22 (x = 2-10) were prepared by high temperature solid state reaction technique. The formed samples were analyzed with the help of X-ray diffractometer for single phase without the traces of ambiguous reflections. It is found to have hexagonal Y type structure with space group R3m. the helium Picnometric real density nearly agrees with X ray density. The electrical conductivity and magnetic susceptibility measurement was carried out over the temperature range 400-800K. It shows semiconducting behavior with dual conduction mechanism for higher iron concentration. Magnetic study of the compounds was performed by Gouy's method. The Curie temperature TC and Curie molar constant CM of the compounds was found to be decreasing with increase in aluminium concentration.


The establishment of the arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis results in a modification of the gene expression pattern in both plant and fungus to accomplish the morphological and physiological changes necessary for the bidirectional transfer of nutrients between symbionts. H+-ATPase enzymes play a key role establishing the electrochemical gradient required for the transfer of nutrients across the plasma membrane in both fungi and plants. Molecular analysis of the genetic changes in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi during symbiosis allowed us to isolate a fungal cDNA clone encoding a H+-ATPase, GmPMA1, from Glomus mosseae (BEG12). Despite the high conservation of the catalytic domain from H+-ATPases, detailed analyses showed that GmPMA1 was strongly related only to a previously identified G. mosseae ATPase gene, GmHA5, and not to the other four ATPase genes known from this fungus. A developmentally regulated expression pattern could be shown for both genes, GmPMA1 and GmHA5. GmPMA1 was highly expressed during asymbiotic development, and its expression did not change when entering into symbiosis, whereas the GmHA5 transcript was induced upon plant recognition at the appressorium stage. Both genes maintained high levels of expression during intraradical development, but their expression was reduced in the extraradical mycelium. Phosphate, a key nutrient to the symbiosis, also induced the expression of GmHA5 during asymbiotic growth, whereas sucrose had a negative effect. Our results indicate that different fungal H+-ATPases isoforms might be recruited at different developmental stages possibly responding to the different requirements of the life in symbiosis.


Field investigations of the Devonian carbonate stratigraphy and deformation pattern in the Interior Plains of northern Alberta, corroborated with existing data on MVT deposits and prospects in the Rocky Mountains fold-and-thrust belt and on the Pine Point MVT district, indicate that the MVT mineralization in carbonate sequences of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin is epigenetic. All MVT occurrences are confined to a halo of late hydrothermal dolomitization invariably related to fractures or fault zones. Hydrothermal ore fluids were hotter than what could be reasonably obtained from burial or advecting basin fluids. Consequently, huge volumes of highly saline fluids invoked by basinal fluid flow genetic models are not critical factors for the MVT mineralization. Tectonically induced, secondary porosity of carbonate rocks appears to be the main trap for ore-bearing fluids. The occurrence of highly porous reefs is a favourable geologic feature for the development of MVT, but is not a critical factor. Cambrian and Devonian platformal carbonate sequences of the WCSB that developed on the ancestral passive margin of North America are the primary hosts of MVT deposits and prospects. For the portion of the WCSB carbonate stratigraphy involved in Mesozoic orogenies, routinely invoked basinal fluid flow models for MVT deposits are irrelevant. MVT deposits and prospects in the Rocky Mountains foldand-thrust belt appear to be related to the Laramide orogeny and/or to post-orogenic collapse. The MVT mineralization in Paleozoic carbonate sequences involved in the Mesozoic foreland basin is related to zones of recurrent strain in the Precambrian basement. Pine Point district is structurally controlled from continental to deposit scale. It is located along the transcrustal Great Slave Lake Shear Zone with the individual deposits within the district distributed in linear trends above basement fault scarps. Saline water from successive basins may have repeatedly infiltrated a recurrent fault zone, extracted and transported metals in an open system, lowto medium-grade metamorphic environment; focussed within linear zones of strained/permeable basement; finally, the metal-bearing waters were released and reacted with the carbonate caps at the site of ore deposition, from prospect or mine to district scale. The likely driving forces for fluid flow may have been a combination of topography, thermal convection and hydraulic pumping. Based on the inferred genetic relationships between zones of recurrent strain in the basement and overlying carbonate stratigraphy, several exploration target areas for MVT are identified in northeastern Alberta. EUB/AGS Geo-Note 2002-15 (August 2003) • vi


In many command and control situations the understanding of dynamic events is crucial. With today's development of hard- and software architecture, we have the possibility to visualize data in two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) images. The aim of this thesis is therefore to investigate different approaches to visualizing dynamic events. The visualization techniques investigated include 2D animation and time representations as markings on a 2D map. In 3D the visualization technique investigated is the "space time-cube" A further aim is to study whether the Cue Probability Learning (CPL) paradigm can be used to evaluate visualizations. By mapping time onto a spatial dimension, in the 2D visualization as lines with different densities and in 3D as height over the map, a simultaneous visualization of space and time is possible. The findings are that this mapping of time onto space is beneficial to users as compared with animations, but the two mapping techniques are not interchangeable. If a task requires judgments of metric spatial properties, a 2D visualization is more beneficial; however, if the task only requires judgments of more qualitative aspects, a 3D visualization is more beneficial. When we look at a 3D visualization, we utilize different sources of depth information. These sources are always present and each defines either a 3D scene or a projection surface. By using these different sources of depth information wisely, a visualization can be created that efficiently shows relevant information to a user while requiring a minimal amount of specialized hardware. Finally, the CPL paradigm seems to be a worthwhile option as an experimental paradigm in visualization experiments. One of the advantages of CPL is that novice users can be trained to be task experts in a controlled and time-efficient way.


Children have the right to a caring, protective environment and to nutritious food and basic health care to protect them from illness and promote growth and development. Despite numerous health interventions in developing countries, the health status of children under five years has continued to deteriorate. In Kenya, children in slum areas have lower survival rates compared to their counterparts in other parts of the country. The high prevalence of common childhood illnesses is a critical issue for slum children. The purpose of the study was to determine risk factors associated with morbidity status of the pre school children in Mukuru slums, Nairobi. The study employed a descriptive cross sectional survey research design. The study population included the caregivers with pre school children aged between two to five years. Simple random sampling was used to obtain four villages of study and to choose the households with children aged two to five years. For each selected household, a pre school child and the caregiver was purposively sampled. Pre-tested questionnaires were used to collect data. Food frequency questionnaire and 24-hour food recall was used for dietary assessment. Anthropometric measurements were taken to determine the nutritional status of the pre-school children. Data was coded, entered and analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences programme. Nutri Survey computer program was used to calculate anthropometric indices and for 24-hour recall analysis. The results of the study indicated a high morbidity burden of 69.2% among pre school children. The findings further revealed a poor nutritional status of pre school children with 21%, 9% and 29.6% being underweight, wasted and stunted respectively. Dietary assessments disclosed that most of the children did not meet Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for kilocalories, iron, calcium, vitamin A and vitamin C. However, RDA for proteins was fairly met. Some of the risk factors that were found to be associated with the morbidity status of pre school children included high prevalence of under nutrition, inadequate intake of vitamin C and A, discontinuation of growth monitoring once the children attained age of nine months, partial immunization, lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate water for domestic use, inadequate sanitary facilities and lack of basic health care during illness. Ministry of Health should sensitize the caregivers of pre school children on health benefits of having the children fully immunized, seeking health care during illness, routine growth \ monitoring and treating drinking water. Awareness on affordable local foods rich in essential nutrients for pre school children should be done by health and nutritional professionals. Health care services should be made accessible by the government to the pre school children in the urban slums. The City Council of Nairobi should ensure provision of adequate water, healthy sanitation, drainage and proper waste disposal systems in the slums. The findings of this study provide useful information to the policy makers involved in child health programmes to formulate strategies that seek to address the problem of high child morbidity in the slums.


The availability of whole genome sequence (WGS) data has made it possible to discover protein variants in silico. However, existing bovine WGS databases do not show data in a form conducive to protein variant analysis, and tend to under represent the breadth of genetic diversity in global beef cattle. Thus, our first aim was to use 96 beef sires, sharing minimal pedigree relationships, to create a searchable and publicly viewable set of mapped genomes relevant for 19 popular breeds of U.S. cattle. Our second aim was to identify protein variants encoded by the bovine endothelial PAS domain-containing protein 1 gene ( EPAS1), a gene associated with pulmonary hypertension in Angus cattle. The identity and quality of genomic sequences were verified by comparing WGS genotypes to those derived from other methods. The average read depth, genotype scoring rate, and genotype accuracy exceeded 14, 99%, and 99%, respectively. The 96 genomes were used to discover four amino acid variants encoded by EPAS1 (E270Q, P362L, A671G, and L701F) and confirm two variants previously associated with disease (A606T and G610S). The six EPAS1 missense mutations were verified with matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry assays, and their frequencies were estimated in a separate collection of 1154 U.S. cattle representing 46 breeds. A rooted phylogenetic tree of eight polypeptide sequences provided a framework for evaluating the likely order of mutations and potential impact of EPAS1 alleles on the adaptive response to chronic hypoxia in U.S. cattle. This public, whole genome resource facilitates in silico identification of protein variants in diverse types of U.S. beef cattle, and provides a means of translating WGS data into a practical biological and evolutionary context for generating and testing hypotheses.


Random walks are at the heart of many existing network embedding methods. However, such algorithms have many limitations that arise from the use of random walks, e.g., the features resulting from these methods are unable to transfer to new nodes and graphs as they are tied to vertex identity. In this work, we introduce the Role2Vec framework which uses the flexible notion of attributed random walks, and serves as a basis for generalizing existing methods such as DeepWalk, node2vec, and many others that leverage random walks. Our proposed framework enables these methods to be more widely applicable for both transductive and inductive learning as well as for use on graphs with attributes (if available). This is achieved by learning functions that generalize to new nodes and graphs. We show that our proposed framework is effective with an average AUC improvement of 16:55% while requiring on average 853x less space than existing methods on a variety of graphs.


Requirement of human being service of health will represent indispensablelity. Initially, doctor relation with patient have the character of paternalisticly, where patient have to fully at one's feet of power of doctor. this Relation pattern place doctor on course more know about everything which is suffered by patient from at patient. Patient which is on generally laymen of problem of medication entrust x'self at doctor which expert in the problem of medication is so that created by uneven relation between patient with doctor. Doctor is obliged to conduct consent informed in each; every transaction of terapeutik done, because have been arranged in Code number 29 Year 2004 about doctor practice. This research use method approach of normatif yuridis or of doctrinal research, that is conducted approach by analyzing a problems which is correlation with materials punish or law and regulation having the character of doktrinal. Pursuant to analysis concluded that dimiciling consent informed in relation practice doctor related to transaction of terapeutik is from facet obligation of doctor, besides as patient rights to get information from existence of consent informed where doctor have to get approval beforehand from patient before bringing an action against neglecting and sis of consent informed bring effect of civil facet and crime facet. Doctor responsibility from the aspect of civil law to extension of conducted action resulting loss at patient have responsibility facet which is obliged to diemban by doctor either from civil facet, administration and crime. Of contractual terms facet between patient and doctor arranged in the form of agreement which have been agreed on in the form of transaction contract of terapeutik arrange also effect of to one of the parties which is wanprestasi either from doctor facet or patient.

Keyword : Informed Consent, Transaction of Terapeutik, Wanprestasi and Extension of Action.


Competition and consumer policies have developed in many jurisdictions along separate lines. The potential complementarities and tensions between these two areas have often been overlooked. However, the way markets evolve today and the kind of market failures consumers and companies face call for new regulatory approaches that have a firm basis in both competition and consumer policies. When markets fail to work effectively we turn to competition and consumer protection. However, the specific form and the tools of intervention depend on the nature of the market failures. Different market failures trigger different remedies and the remedies exhibit different "spill-over effects". The regulatory choices need to account for the specific functions competition and consumer policies have. This paper addresses the interface between competition and consumer policies by discussing a number of specific issues that are situated at the crossroads of these two fields. These issues include the interpretation of the consumer welfare standard in both policy areas, the role of consumers in the pro-competitive reforms as well as an overview of the close parallels in the new enforcement methods that are presently discussed and proposed in both fields. Better convergence of competition and consumer policies is vital, but the discussion on how to achieve closer cooperation on national and international platforms is underdeveloped. Moreover, policy calls for better coordination and integration between these two policies need to take account of the costs and not only the benefits of such integration in both substantive law and in the law enforcement. The convergence and divergence between competition and consumer policies and law enforcement is worth exploring - and this paper intends to provide starting points for further research.


This article compares responses to travel writing and imaginative fiction about the settler colonies, in particular Australia and New Zealand, between 1870 and 1945—a time when distinctions between travel, mobility, and emigration were hard to pin down. Very little scholarship has shown an interest in what the subject society's inhabitants thought of its portrayal, and what this can tell us about colonial and national identities. Australasian responses to works about Australasia, in the form of published reviews, were influenced by the knowledge and particular concerns of the reviewer and their own negotiations with identity. What mattered to readers and critics was the authenticity of the portrayal of the place, but this was not only related to whether the work claimed to be fiction or non-fiction. The perceived level of familiarity that the writer had with the area was the most important factor in determining whether the reception of a work was positive or negative.


Of fundamental importance to the study of subnormal subgroups is the following result of Wielandt: Let A and B be subnormal subgroups of a group G such that A is normal in A u B. Then A u B is subnormal in G. The usual proof of Wielandt's result depends on the construction by conjugation of a special subnormal series from A to G. It would be of interest to obtain a proof which uses only the given subnormal series, without explicit dependence on conjugation, and valid in algebraic systems other than groups. This note presents, in the more general context of a lattice with the normality relation introduced by R. A. Dean, a proof of the analogous result in case either A or B has defect three or less.


Contained on fifteen of the cuneiform tables uncovered at the ancient Canaanite city of Ugarit are the four major oral Ugartic myths of Aqhat, The Healers, Kirta and Baal. Stories from Ancient Canaan is the first to offer a one-volume translation of all four. This accessible book teaches the principal Canaanite religious literature, and will be useful to students of the history of religion, of the Bible, and of comparative literature.


The attempt to develop international cap and trade markets for anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, ultimately aiming to determine a global price for carbon, is the most extensive attempt ever made to use market-mimicking mechanisms to deal with an environmental externality. Addressed to the problem of climate change, it is an exercise in the adjustment of the social welfare function on a global scale, and it envisages expenditures which will run into trillions of dollars. Focusing on the operation of the Clean Development Mechanism, the most important of the three flexible mechanisms for carbon trade established under the Kyoto Protocol, it will be argued that carbon trading which will reduce emissions in line with any of the targets set for avoiding dangerous anthropological interference is impossible. Climate change negotiations have completely failed to place a cap on global emissions; indeed, they have given a legal permission to increase them. Reflecting the fatal shortcomings of the Kyoto Protocol, the operation of the CDM so far has not merely failed to secure reductions, but in all likelihood has actually increased the absolute level of emissions.


Meta-reinforcement learning (meta-RL) has proven to be a successful framework for leveraging experience from prior tasks to rapidly learn new related tasks, however, current meta-RL approaches struggle to learn in sparse reward environments. Although existing meta-RL algorithms can learn strategies for adapting to new sparse reward tasks, the actual adaptation strategies are learned using hand-shaped reward functions, or require simple environments where random exploration is sufficient to encounter sparse reward. In this paper, we present a formulation of hindsight relabeling for meta-RL, which relabels experience during meta-training to enable learning to learn entirely using sparse reward. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on a suite of challenging sparse reward goal-reaching environments that previously required dense reward during meta-training to solve. Our approach solves these environments using the true sparse reward function, with performance comparable to training with a proxy dense reward function.


Frontier method is used to estimate the 'best-performing frontier' to compute for the relative efficiencies of different bank groups (e.g., universal, commercial, thrift, rural and cooperative) in the Philippines over the period 1999-2009.  As bank groups are used as decision-making units (DMUs), window analysis is utilized considering the few number of DMUs per period.  Results from Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a non-parametric technique, indicate a generally declining trend in technical efficiency.  Results also do not seem to fully support the hypothesis that bigger banks on the average are more efficient than smaller banks.  Decomposing total factor productivity using the DEA-Malmquist TFP Index allows identification of sources of productivity and direction of its changes.  Results indicate that Philippine banks have undergone technological progress but this did not necessarily increase total factor productivity because of the decline in technical efficiencies (TEs).  These findings, however, cannot be conclusive because differences in efficiencies and changes in total factor productivity are not supported statistically.  The researcher suggests the use of individual banks' data for each of the bank groups to possibly validate these results.


This thesis addresses a non-destructive diagnostic method for intermittent arc fault detection and location. Intermittent arc faults appear in aircraft power systems in unpredictable manners when the degraded wires are wet, vibrating against metal structures, or under mechanical stresses, etc. They could evolve into serious faults that may cause on-board fires, power interruptions, system damage and catastrophic incidents, and thus have raised much concern in recent years.

Recent trends in solid state power controllers (SSPCs) motivated the development of non-destructive diagnostic methods for health monitoring of aircraft wiring. In this thesis, the ABCD matrix (or transmission matrix) modeling method is introduced to derive normal and faulty load circuit models with better accuracy and reduced complexity compared to the conventional differential equation approach, and an intermittent arc fault detection method is proposed based on temporary deviations of load circuit model coefficients and wiring parameters. Furthermore, based on the faulty wiring model, a genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed to estimate the fault-related wiring parameters, such as intermittent arc location and average intermittent arc resistance. The proposed method can be applied to both the alternating current (AC) power distribution system (PDS) and direct current (DC) PDS. Simulations and experiments using a DC power source have been conducted, and the results have demonstrated effectiveness of the proposed method by estimating the fault location with an accuracy of +/- 0.5 meters on 24.6 meters wire. Unlike the existing techniques which generally requires special devices, the proposed method only needs circuit voltage and current measurement at the source end as inputs, and is thus suitable for SSPC-based aircraft PDS.


This paper describes the use of Osterberg cells (O-cells) to perform bi-directional load testing on full size production drilled shafts for a major bridge foundation near Owensboro, Kentucky. Two fully instrumented, 1.83 m (72in.) diameter drilled shafts were constructed with rock sockets in soft sandy shale, with the top of shaft 17 m (57 ft) below the surface of the Ohio River. Even though a surface reaction system was not used, the O-cell loading at the base of the shaft permitted application of a combined shear and end bearing load of 53 MN (6000 tons) without failure occurring in either component. This method enabled the testing of full size production shafts beyond their required design ultimate load capacity at a site where full scale conventional static testing would have been impractical. Results from one of the load tests are compared with recently developed design methods for estimating unit shear resistance in intermediate geomaterials. To determine if the correlations based on the laboratory testing results provided appropriate design criteria for the large diameter shafts.


This paper describes Web services for extracting parsing functionality from a compiler and its application to the development of language sensitive tools by two-step parsing. The specifications of modern popular programming languages are very complex. It is a time-consuming task to develop a parser of commercial product quality from a language specification. Web services for parsing were developed in order to prevent reinvention of the parsers. A server receives source code using the Web services API. After the server analyzes the source code, it sends back an XML document as a result. So far it has been tested that the Web services is applicable to three programming languages, Java, C# and Ruby. To check the performance, an experiment was conducted. The result of the experiment shows that the XML document offsets the cost of the large storage space. However, the productivity improvement is far superior to the penalty.


The flow behaviour of granular materials is relevant for many industrial applications including
the pharmaceutical, chemical, consumer goods and food industries. A key issue is the accurate characterisation of these powders under different loading conditions and flow regimes, for example in mixers, pneumatic conveyors and silo filling and discharge. This paper explores the experimental aspects of cohesive powder handling at different compaction levels and flow regimes, namely inertial and quasi-static regimes. So far, laboratory element test set-ups capable of defining the full stress states at very low compaction levels have not been fully explored in literature. In contrast the
mechanical behaviour of cohesive powders under relatively high consolidation stress (several kPa upward) can be carefully measured using element tests such as biaxial test, true triaxial and hollow cylinder tests. However in practice these tests are expensive and slow to conduct and are almost never performed for many industrial applications requiring material characterisation. Here we investigate simpler techniques that could be used for filling this important gap with the focus of providing test data for model calibration and simulation validation in line with the spirit of the European Commission funded PARDEM Marie Curie ITN Project. We perform particle and bulk characterisation on limestone powder with 4.7μm and 31.3 μm mean particle size, detergent powder with differences in formulation, cocoa powder with low and high fat content - relevant for
different industrial applications. Of particular significance is the 4.7μm limestone powder which is the
PARDEM reference powder that have been created and extensively used in a collaborative European PARDEM Project (www.pardem.eu). In the inertial, low consolidation stress regimes - more relevant for powder transport and conveying applications - we present experimental findings on the flowability and avalanching behaviour of the reference material in a rotating drum. On the other hand, in the quasi-static, higher consolidation regime, we perform shear tests with the Edinburgh Powder Tester (EPT), an extended uniaxial tester and the commercially available Freeman FT4 Powder Rheometer. For macroscopic quantities, we report the unconfined yield strength as a function of applied stress. These material characteristics provide important scientific insights for developing
innovative solutions for cohesive powder handling problems. From these experiments and for best practice guideline, we highlight subtle issues associated with the experimental setup and measurements. The experiments lead to a rich quantitative description of the flow behaviour and failure properties of the materials which provide the material data for DEM model calibration and validation.


Abstract Bone healing of the ulna after osteotomy and fixation with a maxillofacial miniplate (Compact 1.0) was studied in feral pigeons (Columba livia). The ulna and radius were transected with an oscillating bone saw to produce a diaphyseal fracture. Two different procedures for fixation were compared. In procedure 1 (n = 6), the ulna was stabilized with a 6-hole maxillofacial miniplate. In procedure 2 (n = 4), the ulna was stabilized with the plate, and the radius was stabilized with an intramedullary 1.0 Kirschner wire. Plate distortion and bending occurred in all 6 birds with fractures that were immobilized with the plate only, and 1 plate failure was noted with subsequent synostosis. When both bones were immobilized, 2 cases of minimal plate deformation and 1 case of cortical fragment displacement occurred. Callus formation was significantly less pronounced after procedure 2 as compared with procedure 1; however, primary bone healing was not achieved with either procedure. From these results we conclude that dorsal single plating of the ulna with a 6-hole maxillofacial miniplate in experimentally induced ulnar and radial fractures in pigeons does not result in adequate stabilization.


This paper describes the present position in the development of a CAD package for coupled-cavity travelling wave tubes (TWTs). The objective of the work is to produce a model which has sufficient accuracy to make possible a significant reduction in the very high development costs of these tubes. If this goal is attained it will also be possible to optimise tube designs to a much greater extend than at present. The work is concentrated on a linear (small-signal) model but it is intended that there will ultimately be a nonlinear (large-signal) model also based on assumptions whose validity has been tested in the linear model. The modelling of the device is therefore concerned with the description of the electron beam, of the slow wave structure and of the interaction between them.


Enthusiasm, the individualistic energy derived from radical Protestantism, has become a central critical category for reconsidering what Robert Ryan has termed "romantic religious politics," or the way that Romantic theological diction enacted a "creative and effective engagement in the contemporary religious crisis" with "far-reaching consequences in the political order" (5). Jon Mee reads Wordsworth as harnessing the power of enthusiasm to vitalize his prophetic and poetic vision while also regulating against what he viewed as its religious and political excesses (214-56). Yet enthusiasm only represented part of British post-reformation religious identity, which organized itself around the Anglican ideal of the via media, or middle way between the dangerous extremes of radical enthusiasm and Roman Catholic superstition. For instance, David Hume's 1741 essay "On Superstition and Enthusiasm" denounces the way a superstitious imagination engenders threats from lifeless things and then seeks relief in "ceremonies, observances, mortifications, sacrifices" (4). While Hume saw little redeeming in this primitive and papal power, superstition often remained seductive, especially amid "enthusiastic" revolutionary upheavals. In the American context, architectural historian John Davis has traced the development of what he labels "Catholic envy," a Protestant guilty facination with a Catholic Other's mysterious, embodied, communal aesthetic. A similar ambivalence over superstition structures Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Sketches (1822), which expresses both Wordsworth's anxiety over the social threat of Catholic Emancipation and his attraction to the remains of Britain's Catholic past. Begun in 1820 and published in 1822, the Ecclesiastical Sketches addresses the Catholic Question through a historical narrative about church property and the national landscape. During these years, Wordsworth worried about rumors in the newspapers about "the Ministers giving up the Catholic Question--to conciliate new Friends" (MY 2: 566), saw "Roman Catholic concession" as one of "three great domestic questions" along with "liberty of the press" and "Parliamentary reform" (LY 1: 97), and feared that British Catholics were striving "in co-operation with other Dissenters and Infidels" to "overthrow" the "Protestant Establishment" (LY 1: 58). In the prefatory "advertisement," Wordsworth claims that the sonnet series derived from a December 1820 walk to view the site for a new church being built by Wordsworth's patron Lord Lowther, a vehement parliamentary opponent of Catholic Emancipation. The sonnets were to be a "private memorial" of their "feelings" that were "in harmony with the cherishing influences of the scene" that led them to "look back upon past events with wonder and gratitude, and on the future with hope" (137). Wordsworth contrasts this image of equipoise with the unsettling influence of the "Catholic Question, which was agitated in Parliament about that time" (137). Regina Hewitt notes that this connection is not straightforward, that sonnets praising Catholicism outnumber the attacks. This ambiguity, however, should lead one to ask how, rather than if, the Ecclesiastical Sketches, is engaged with the Catholic Question. Wordsworth's ostensibly positive approach to Catholicism attempted to bring the British imagined community back to the political, aesthetic, and spiritual middle way of the 1688 Glorious Revolution. By rearticulating a threatened sense of national identity while signaling the dangers of allowing Catholics back into British civil society, the Ecclesiastical Sketches intervenes in the very issues of national and religious history that Wordsworth saw as the political and social stakes of the Catholic Question. A focus on the events treated in individual sonnets gives the impression that the Ecclesiastical Sketches is a mere chronology, a history textbook. Yet, this interpretation obscures the strong presence of what Hayden White called the "deep structure" of "emplotment" in the historiographies of nineteenth-century Europe (2, 7). …


We study superfluorescence !SF" from spherical and cigar-shaped clouds of laser-cooled Rubidium atoms from the 5D5/2 level through the 6P3/2 level to the 5S1/2 ground level. The atomic system is initially excited to the 5D5/2 level from the ground state via two-photon excitation through the intermediate 5P3/2 level. The fluorescence on the 6P-5S transition at 420 nm is recorded using time-resolved measurements. The time delays of the observed SF emission peaks typically scale as #N−1, where N is the atom number, and are much smaller than the time delay expected for uncorrelated cascade fluorescence. Since N is significantly smaller than the threshold number for SF on the 420 nm transition, and larger than the threshold number for the 5D-6P transition at 5.2 !m, our observations suggest that the 420 nm SF emission is triggered by rapid deexcitation of the 5D to the 6P level via SF at 5.2 !m. The observed SF time delays for 420 nm emission agree with SF time-delay estimates for the 5.2 !m transition. For spherical clouds, the SF is isotropic. For cigar-shaped clouds, the SF is highly anisotropic. Along the long axis of cigar-shaped atom clouds, SF and incoherent cascade fluorescence produce temporally well-resolved peaks in the detected signal. In this case, the SF component of the signal is highly concentrated along a direction in between the directions of the two almost parallel excitation beams. The observed SF intensities scale as N, suggesting that the 5D level is regeneratively pumped during the SF decay.


A program is underway at the University of Tasmania investigating ways to control
biological growths in hydraulic conduits. The broad aim of this research is to minimise the
effects of biological growths to optimize conduit performance and maintenance procedures,
and increase the economic return from existing hydraulic infrastructure. This paper presents
results from experiments carried out on a newly constructed re-circulating water tunnel
purpose built to investigate the effect of freshwater biofilms in hydraulic conduits. A baseline
study of boundary layer velocity profiles and total drag measurements of a specially prepared
rough test plate has been conducted to determine the plate's roughness characteristics.
Experimental measurements from the water tunnel are complemented with three-dimensional
physical roughness data obtained from innovative photogrammetric methods. The roughness
data from the water tunnel and photogrammetry are compared and are shown to agree by
within 20%.


Aims This study investigates the prevalence of use of doping agents and symptoms of eating disorders among patients in drug addiction treatment. The aim is also to look for characteristics of the groups reporting the use of doping agents or symptoms of eating disorders. Design A survey including questions on exercise, the use of doping agents and Eating Disorder Inventory-2 was administered in a Norwegian drug addiction facility. The study included 109 patients in residential drug treatment, 30 females and 79 males (ranging from 17 to 50 years old). Results –Symptoms of eating disorders were reported by 33 percent of the females and 7.6 percent of the males. Previous use of doping agents (anabolic-androgenic steroids in particular) was reported by 40.5 percent of the men and 20 percent of the women. The results are discussed in light of the theory on emotion regulation, gender and cultural expectations, drug treatment as a liminal phase and similarities to drug addiction. Conclusions The symptoms of eating disorders and the use of doping agents are prevalent in this sample of male and female drug addicts in treatment. Drug treatment facilities should be aware of this and take the appropriate actions regarding attention, screening and treatment.


In many health domains, we are concerned that observed links - for example, between "healthy" behaviors and good outcomes - are driven by selection into behavior. This paper considers the additional factor that these selection patterns may vary over time. When a particular health behavior becomes more recommended, the take-up of the behavior may be larger among people with other positive health behaviors. Such changes in selection would make it even more difficult to learn about causal effects. I formalize this change in selection in a simple model. I test for evidence of these patterns in the context of diet and vitamin supplementation. Using both microdata and evidence from published results I show that selection varies over time with recommendations about behavior and that estimates of the relationship between health outcomes and health behaviors vary over time in the same way. I show that adjustment for selection on observables is insufficient to address the bias. I suggest a possible robustness approach relying on assumptions about proportional selection of observed and unobserved variables.


Prototype logic gates made of n-channel junction field-effect transistors (JFETs) and epitaxial resistors have been demonstrated, with a view toward eventual implementation of digital logic devices and systems in silicon carbide (SiC) integrated circuits (ICs). This development is intended to exploit the inherent ability of SiC electronic devices to function at temperatures from 300 to somewhat above 500 C and withstand large doses of ionizing radiation. SiC-based digital logic devices and systems could enable operation of sensors and robots in nuclear reactors, in jet engines, near hydrothermal vents, and in other environments that are so hot or radioactive as to cause conventional silicon electronic devices to fail. At present, current needs for digital processing at high temperatures exceed SiC integrated circuit production capabilities, which do not allow for highly integrated circuits. Only single to small number component production of depletion mode n-channel JFETs and epitaxial resistors on a single substrate is possible. As a consequence, the fine matching of components is impossible, resulting in rather large direct-current parameter distributions within a group of transistors typically spanning multiples of 5 to 10. Add to this the lack of p-channel devices to complement the n-channel FETs, the lack of precise dropping diodes, and the lack of enhancement mode devices at these elevated temperatures and the use of conventional direct coupled and buffered direct coupled logic gate design techniques is impossible. The presented logic gate design is tolerant of device parameter distributions and is not hampered by the lack of complementary devices or dropping diodes. In addition to n-channel JFETs, these gates include level-shifting and load resistors (see figure). Instead of relying on precise matching of parameters among individual JFETS, these designs rely on choosing the values of these resistors and of supply potentials so as to make the circuits perform the desired functions throughout the ranges over which the parameters of the JFETs are distributed. The supply rails V(sub dd) and V(sub ss) and the resistors R are chosen as functions of the distribution of direct-current operating parameters of the group of transistors used.


Tripoli is the western capital of Libya and, is the largest urban centre in the whole country. The old city has evolved since Phoenician times, but grew gradually during the Roman and the Arab rules. It reached its ultimate stage of urban development at the end of the Ottoman rule, when the walled town of Tripoli was a fully built-up area. The urban development, of new Tripoli was initiated during the Italian rule when the central business district and part of the middle zone were developed for commercial and residential uses After the Independence of the country (1951) and recent oil development. The city began to experience a vast and rapid growth owing to various economic and social forces. Between 1954 and 1964 it nearly doubled in population partly through in-migration and partly through natural increase. Tripoli has important political and economic functions. The first is derived from the fact that the city is the western capital and the administrative centre of the Mugataa of Tripoli. The economic function is stronger than the political one, the growth of the shopping centre and central business district, together with the emergence of various industries within the city, are its most striking features. As a result of its growth, the city has begun to experience serious problems of transportation and traffic flow, shortage of housing, rise of rents, the emergence of the Shanty Town and other serious urban problems. Thus city planning and municipal programmes are of crucial importance to the city, in order to cope with the rapid growth of the population and expansion of housing development as well as to create better urban facilities and amenities "Mugataa" to indicate the province. Elsewhere he has avoided many Libyan expressions in certain places in order to make the thesis clearer in English. In conclusion, I wish to record my grateful acknowledgment to Professor W B Fisher who accepted me in his Department as a post-graduate research student. I am greatly indebted to Professor J I Clarke for his generous supervision, encouragement and useful criticism. I wish also to thank all high officials and civil servants in Libya who supplied me with reports, statistics and valuable information during ray field work in Tripoli. I would like to record my gratitude to the Libyan University and the Ministry of Education for offering me the scholarship. My thanks are also extended to other research students who gave me every kind of help.


This paper considers the design of bit-parallel dedicated finite field multipliers using standard basis. An explicit algorithm is proposed for efficient construction of Mastrovito product matrix, based on which we present a systematic design of Mastrovito multiplier applicable to GF(2/sup m/) generated by an arbitrary irreducible polynomial. This design effectively exploits the spatial correlation of elements in Mastrovito product matrix to reduce the complexity. Using a similar methodology, we propose a systematic design of modified Mastrovito multiplier, which is suitable for GF(2/sup m/) generated by high-Hamming weight irreducible polynomials. For both original and modified Mastrovito multipliers, the developed multiplier architectures are highly modular, which is desirable for VLSI hardware implementation. Applying the proposed algorithm and design approach, we study the Mastrovito multipliers for several special irreducible polynomials, such as trinomial and equally-spaced-polynomial, and the obtained complexity results match the best known results. Moreover, we have discovered several new special irreducible polynomials which also lead to low-complexity Mastrovito multipliers.


In this paper, the authors report trends in hospitalized stroke rates among Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota (population 2.6 million) metropolitan area residents aged 30–74 years from 1980 to 2000. Cases were identified from lists of discharge diagnoses provided by hospitals serving the target population. Age-adjusted, sex-specific stroke attack rates were computed for each survey year by using 5 different diagnostic definitions: 2 based purely on International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision (ICD-9) codes and 3 including clinical and neuroimaging criteria. Stroke rates, as measured by a highly specific clinical definition, remained stable from 1980 to 2000 for women. For men, these rates declined modestly from 1980 to 1990 and leveled off during 1990–2000. In contrast, use of stroke-related ICD-9 discharge codes declined significantly from 1980 to 2000: 35% among men and 16% among women. Neuroimaging use increased significantly from 75% of cases in 1980 to 98% in 2000. Short-term (28-day) stroke survival improved significantly, by 16% for women and 12% for men, from 1980 to 2000. The decline in stroke ICD-9 code usage reflects the influence of increased neuroimaging on discharge coding. The improved short-term survival in the face of stable, clinically defined stroke rates may imply treatment advances or ascertainment of less severe strokes, possibly masking a true decline in stroke rates.


Mycoplasmas conform most closely with the theoretical concept of 'minimum cells', existing as the smallest, free-living organisms capable of self-replication. They survive as parasites of plants, insects, animals or humans, with the most common human colonising species being Mycoplasma hominis. M. hominis has been characterised as a human pathogen responsible for a variety of infections, which pose a significant threat particularly to immunocompromised patients and neonates. However little has been elucidated about the cell physiology and molecular structure of this organism. Of interest to this study were the investigation of the heat shock response of M. hominis and the diagnostic assays used for its detection. The heat shock response is a ubiquitous physiological feature of all organisms and displays unprecedented conservation. This phenomenon is particularly evident in the 70 kDa family of heat shock proteins (hsp70) which exhibits a high degree of homology between different species. The hsp70 gene from M. hominis was cloned and preliminary partial sequencing indicated the similarity with other hsp70 homologs. The regulation of hsp70 expression at the transcriptional and translational levels was investigated. The level of hsp70 mRNA was found to increase correspondingly in response to heat shock, more visibly than the level of hsp70 protein. However imrnunochemical studies of the M. hominis hsp70 translation product demonstrated further the homology with other species. To facilitate rapid diagnosis of M. hominis infections, a PCR ELISA diagnostic assay was developed and optimised. The amplification of a conserved region of the M. hominis 16S rRNA gene was linked to subsequent hybridisation to an appropriate capture probe in a microtiter plate format. The sensitivity of the assay was comparable to other molecular assays although the PCR ELISA produces more rapid results and is less labour intensive.


This is regards my opinion report on cheese making technologies, Cheese is also pronounced as Cheddar. Cheese is a sustenance got from drain that is delivered in an extensive variety of flavours, surfaces, and structures by coagulation of the drain protein casein. It involves proteins and fat from drain, for the most part the drain of dairy animals, wild ox, goats, or sheep. Amid generation, the drain is typically fermented, and including the protein rennet causes coagulation. The solids are isolated and squeezed into last form. Some cheeses have shape on the skin or all through. Most cheeses liquefy at cooking temperature. Many sorts of cheese from different nations are created


The Internet's Domain Name System (DNS) is a frequent target of Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, but such attacks have had very different outcomes—some attacks have disabled major public websites, while the external effects of other attacks have been minimal. While on one hand the DNS protocol is relatively simple, the system has many moving parts, with multiple levels of caching and retries and replicated servers. This paper uses controlled experiments to examine how these mechanisms affect DNS resilience and latency, exploring both the client side's DNS user experience, and server-side traffic. We find that, for about 30% of clients, caching is not effective. However, when caches are full they allow about half of clients to ride out server outages that last less than cache lifetimes, caching and retries together allow up to half of the clients to tolerate DDoS attacks longer than cache lifetimes, with 90% query loss, and almost all clients to tolerate attacks resulting in 50% packet loss. While clients may get service during an attack, tail-latency increases for clients. For servers, retries during DDoS attacks increase normal traffic up to 8×. Our findings about caching and retries help explain why users see service outages from some real-world DDoS events, but minimal visible effects from others.


BACKGROUND
Local recurrences after breast-conserving surgery occur mostly at the site of the primary carcinoma. The main objective of postoperative radiotherapy is sterilization of residual cancer cells. Whole-breast radiotherapy is the standard of care, but its utility has recently been challenged in favor of radiotherapy limited to the area at highest risk of recurrence. Intraoperative electron radiotherapy (IOeRT) is an innovative technique for accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI) that is applied to selected patients affected by early breast cancer.

OBJECTIVES
To describe our experience with IOeRT at the Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa since we began utilizing this modality in 2006.

METHODS
From April 2006 to September 2010, 31 patients affected by unifocal invasive duct breast carcinoma < or = 2 cm diameter received wide local resection followed by intraoperative radiotherapy with electrons. Patients were evaluated for early and late complications, and other events, 1 month after surgery and every 3 months thereafter for the duration of the first 2 years.

RESULTS
After a mean follow-up of 36 months, seven patients developed mild breast fibrosis and three suffered from mild postoperative infection. Rib fractures were observed in four patients before routine lead shielding was initiated. Additional whole-breast irradiation was given to four patients. None of the patients developed local recurrences or other ipsilateral cancers. Similarly, no contralateral cancers or distant metastases were observed.

CONCLUSIONS
Intraoperative electron radiotherapy may be an alternative to external beam radiation therapy in an appropriate selected group of early-stage breast cancer patients. However, long-term results of clinical trials are required to better evaluate the indications and utility of this technique in the management of breast cancer.


Abstract Much debate has taken place on Joseph Needham's question regarding 'the failure of China and India to give rise to distinctively modern science while being ahead of Europe for fourteen previous centuries'. It is argued in this paper that while there is probably some truth in many of the sociocultural explanations that have been offered for the failure in India, they are in the final analysis not entirely convincing. The proposal in this paper is in two parts. The first is that the scientific revolution, which was part of a European miracle, was triggered in part by the advent of a variety of technologies from China and the new numeral system and other mathematical inventions from India - both via creative West Asian intermediaries. India had experienced a mathematical (more specifically algoristic or computational) revolution heralded by Ārya-bhata in the fifth century CE. The new computational power unleashed by this revolution combined with the classical Greek penchant for axiomatised modelmaking and a technology empowered experimental philosophy, in what appears to have been a very creative and uniquely European cultural fusion that led to the scientific (and later the industrial) revolution. The second part of the proposal is that there was an epistemological reason why the Indian mathematical revolution did not lead to a corresponding 'distinctively modern' scientific one. The Indic approach was basically not that of modelmakers but of ingenious algorisers, and showed a deep and studied distrust of axioms and physical models. This led to an attitude described here as 'computational positivism', which considers observation and computation as the only things that matter. In retrospect, that distrust appears not unjustified, especially in the light of twentieth century developments in quantum and classical mechanics and in logic; but it was historically expensive for India, as Europe achieved unreasonably and unexpectedly spectacular successes in science. To the Indians, it was Newton who was the extraordinary epistemological revolutionary, not Heisenberg or Gödel. In summary, Indian science could not move forward without the modelmaking and technology enabled experimental abilities that grew in the West, just as European modelmaking had earlier been unable to progress without the advent of powerful technologies and computational tools whose roots can be traced to China and India.


Social Security retirement benefits have been noted for their capacity to redistribute benefits from higher to lower lifetime earners. However, two-thirds of older women receive spouse and widow benefits and the distributional impact of those benefits has not been well studied. Spouse and widow benefits are distributed on the basis of marital rather than employment status and generally require recipients to be either currently married or to have had a ten-year marriage. The unprecedented retreat from marriage, particularly among black women, means the distributional impact of these benefits changes dramatically for each cohort that enters old age. This paper uses June 1985, 1990 and 1995 CPS supplement data to trace the decline in marital rates for women for five cohorts. The main question is what proportion of women in each cohort will reach age 62 without a ten-year marriage and thus be ineligible for spouse and widow benefits. We find that the proportion who will not be eligible as spouses or widows is increasing modestly for whites and Hispanics but dramatically for African Americans. The growing race gap in marital rates means that older black women will be particularly unlikely to qualify for these benefits.


Introduction to Christian Worship, Third Edition traces the development of the major forms of Christian worship, and includes discussion of the newest service books of the principal churches of North America and the British Isles. This staple of liturgical history is used widely in Protestant seminaries and is read by clergy and laity alike as an accurate, informative, and accessible introduction to all aspects of Christian worship. This revision keeps pace with the latest scholarship and includes more maps, tables, woodcuts, and photographs.


This paper explores the potential universality of neural vocoders. We train a WaveRNN-based vocoder on 74 speakers coming from 17 languages. This vocoder is shown to be capable of generating speech of consistently good quality (98% relative mean MUSHRA when compared to natural speech) regardless of whether the input spectrogram comes from a speaker or style seen during training or from an out-of-domain scenario when the recording conditions are studio-quality. When the recordings show significant changes in quality, or when moving towards non-speech vocalizations or singing, the vocoder still significantly outperforms speaker-dependent vocoders, but operates at a lower average relative MUSHRA of 75%. These results are shown to be consistent across languages, regardless of them being seen during training (e.g. English or Japanese) or unseen (e.g. Wolof, Swahili, Ahmaric).


This paper proposes a novel energy-efficient coverage-time optimized dynamic clustering scheme for two- tiered wireless sensor networks (WSNs) used in an outdoor monitoring application of home networking systems. The coverage-time is defined as the time until one of cluster heads (CHs) runs out of energy in clustering-based WSNs, thereby resulting in an incomplete coverage. DC-CTO scheme regulates cluster radii for balanced energy consumption among CHs to maximize coverage-time. There are several advantages of using the DC-CTO scheme. The first advantage is balanced energy consumption among CHs under NLP- based computations. The second advantage is minimized energy consumption in each CH to extend coverage-time. The last one is the guarantee of perfect coverage. If there is no area which is uncontrolled by a CH in a networked sensing field, we call it a perfect coverage. If there is an incomplete coverage, the event in the area cannot be identified. Therefore perfect coverage is important to robust monitoring systems. The novelty of DC-CTO scheme is demonstrated by various simulation-based performance evaluations.


This paper presents DENN, a dynamic neural network or neural substrate having a number of abilities that might allow it to play a useful role as a constituent of an artificial cognitive system, handling the task of low-level perceptual processing. DENN can adapt without supervision to new objects, is able to respond to patterns of activation from several objects presented simultaneously to it, and is able to automatically switch its perception between multiple objects. It is based on an ideal neural substrate as conjectured by Dimond (1980), having the twin capabilities of autonomous learning and memory, capabilities emerging due to the use of autonomous neurons. DENN has a pyramidal architecture and its neurons have topologically organized receptive fields. Through training, the neurons become feature detectors, with the higher level neurons responding to more complex features. The neurons respond to a retinal input with an oscillatory output whose frequency depends only on their own input. Due to developing phase differences, the higher level neurons can move out of phase relative to each other. Therefore, different inputs are recognized cyclically-a process we term 'automatic perception switching'. Experiments verified the system's ability of automatic perception switching, investigated its response to randomized images, and compared the performance of adaptive and non-adaptive versions of the neural substrate.


Evidence from many human and rodent studies has established that T lymphocytes enhance inflammation in atherosclerotic plaques and contribute to lesion progression and remodeling. Recent work also indicates that regulatory T cells are important in limiting proatherogenic T-cell responses. Given the important role of T cells in atherosclerosis, there is a need to fully understand how proatherogenic T cells are activated and regulated. Antigen-dependent activation of naïve T cells, leading to clonal expansion and effector T-cell differentiation, and effector and memory T cells, is enhanced by signals provided by costimulatory molecules expressed by antigen presenting cells, which bind to receptors on the T cells. In addition, T-cell responses to antigen are negatively regulated by coinhibitory molecules expressed by antigen-presenting cells, which bind to receptors on T cells. Two major families of costimulatory molecules include the B7 and the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) families. These molecules bind to receptors on T cells belonging to the CD28 or TNF receptor families, respectively. The best-defined coinhibitors and their receptors belong to the B7 and CD28 families. Recent work has begun to define how these T-cell costimulatory and coinhibitory pathways influence atherosclerosis, largely in mouse models of the disease. Profound effects are attributable to molecules in both the B7/CD28 (B7-1/2, ICOS, and PDL-1/2) and the TNF/TNF receptor (CD40, OX40, and CD137) families. One emerging theme is that both pathogenic effector T-cell responses and regulatory T cells are influenced by overlapping sets of costimulators and coinhibitors. These complexities must be considered as immunotherapeutic approaches for atherosclerotic disease are developed.


Lesser kestrels Falco naumanni are migratory central-place foragers that breed in dynamic arable landscapes. After arriving from migration, kestrels have no knowledge of the distribution of crops, and consequently prey, around their colony. The energy demand of pairs increases as breeding season progresses, but at the same time prey abundance, and their knowledge on prey distribution, also increases. Wind can have a strong influence on flight cost and kestrels should try to reduce energy expendi- ture when possible. When prey abundance is low, kestrels have little knowledge of prey distribution, and pairs have no chicks, they could reduce foraging flight cost by leaving the colony with tailwinds. When prey is abundant, knowledge on prey distribu- tion has increased, and chick demand is high, kestrels should fly to the most favorable foraging patches. We analyzed foraging trips directions in a lesser kestrel colony along the breeding season and in relation to wind speed and direction. We recorded 664 foraging trips from 19 individuals using GPS-dataloggers. We found that outward flights direction changed from uniform to a concentrated distribution along the season, as prey abundance and individual experience increased. We also found a temporal trend in the angular difference between outward flights and wind directions, with low values early in the season and then increa- sing as expected, but again low values at the end, contrary to expectation. Results suggest changes in kestrels foraging strategy along the season in relation to wind. Kestrels depart more with tailwinds in exploratory flights early in the season, while there is a spurious coincidence in direction to preferred foraging patches and dominant wind direction at the end (Current Zoology 60 (5): 604-615, 2014).


Innovation policy is increasingly coming under the spotlight in the European Union, and has been given a prominent role in the EU 2020 strategy and in the flagship initiatives that will aim to ensure that Europe succeeds where the Lisbon strategy failed. In years to come, problems such as the fragmentation of competences at EU and member state level; the need to fill the 'skills gap' and address the changing nature of innovation; the absence of a Community patent and a common framework for litigation; the need to refine the EU policy on technology transfer and standardisation; and the need to provide suitable funding instruments to boost the potential of innovative companies will all take on more urgency. The CEPS Task Force on Innovation Policy – chaired by Maria Anvret – reflected on these issues between September 2009 and May 2010. This Report, drafted by Rapporteurs Massimilano Granieri and Andrea Renda on the basis of contributions by industry representatives, officials of EU institutions, academics and practitioners provides recommendations on all the above-mentioned issues, with a view to contributing to one of the greatest challenges of today: unlocking the EU's innovation potential and promoting its competitiveness in a global economy.


Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to help understand how US expatriates living and working in dangerous environments characterized by pervasive corruption deal with the phenomena and make decisions about the degree to which they get involved.

Design/methodology/approach

To answer this question, 30 US executives who worked in such countries were interviewed.

Findings

Some executives refused to participate in corrupt practices; others chose to reluctantly succumb to extortion, while others willingly participated in corruption. The study found that social norms played a significant role in their decisions. There are four social norms: personal norms, subjective norms, injunctive norms, and descriptive norms. US executives rely on personal norms and injunctive norms for deciding to refuse to participate in corrupt practices, on descriptive norms and subjective norms for deciding to reluctantly succumb to extortion, and on descriptive norms and personal norms for deciding to willingly participate in corruption.

Originality/value

These findings illustrate what motivates US executives to make decisions about participating in corruption when living and working in countries with pervasive corruption. This has implications for policy, research, and practice.


Background: This paper explores local community perceptions of a relatively new rural medical school. For the purposes of this paper, community engagement is conceptualized as involvement in planning, delivering, and evaluating the medical program. Although there are several reviews of patient involvement in medical curricula development, this study was designed to pilot an approach to exploring the perspectives of well members of the community in the transition of institutional policy on community engagement to one medical school. Methods: An advertisement in the local newspaper invited volunteers to participate in a telephone interview about the new medical school. An independent researcher external to the medical school conducted the interviews using a topic guide. Audio recordings were not made, but detailed notes including verbatim statements were recorded. At least two research team members analyzed interview records for emergent themes. Human research ethics approval was obtained. Results: Twelve interviews were conducted. Participants offered rich imaginings on the role of the school and expectations and opportunities for students. Most participants expressed strong and positive views, especially in addressing long-term health workforce issues. It was considered important that students live, mix, and study in the community. Some participants had very clear ideas about the need of the school to address specified needs, such as indigenous health, obesity, aging, drug and alcohol problems, teenage pregnancy, ethnic diversity, and working with people of low socioeconomic status. Conclusion: This study has initiated a dialogue with potential partners in the community, which can be built upon to shape the medical school's mission and contribution to the society it serves. The telephone interview approach and thematic analysis yielded valuable insights and is recommended for further studies. Our study was limited by its small study size and the single recruitment source. The community is a rich resource for medical education, but there is a dearth of literature on the perspectives of the community and its role in medical education.


This paper investigates how to represent and solve multiagent task scheduling as a Distributed Constraint Optimization Problem (DCOP). Recently multiagent researchers have adopted the C_TAEMS language as a standard for multiagent task scheduling. We contribute an automated mapping that transforms C_TAEMS into a DCOP. Further, we propose a set of representational compromises for C_TAEMS that allow existing distributed algorithms for DCOP to be immediately brought to bear on C_TAEMS problems. Next, we demonstrate a key advantage of a constraint based representation is the ability to leverage the representation to do efficient solving. We contribute a set of pre-processing algorithms that leverage existing constraint propagation techniques to do variable domain pruning on the DCOP. We show that these algorithms can result in 96% reduction in state space size for a given set of C_TAEMS problems. Finally, we demonstrate up to a 60% increase in the ability to optimally solve C_TAEMS problems in a reasonable amount of time and in a distributed manner as a result of applying our mapping and domain pruning algorithms.


What is the hangman but a servant of law? And what is that law but an expression of public opinion? And if public opinion be brutal and thou a component part thereof, art thou not the hangman's accomplice?Writing in 1842, Lydia Maria Child articulates a crisis in the relationship of democracy to sovereign power that continues to occupy political theory today. Is sovereignty, with its reliance on singular and exceptional power, fundamentally inimical to democracy? Or might a more fully realized democracy distribute, share, and popularize sovereignty, thus blunting its exceptional character and its basic violence? In Democracy's Spectacle, Jennifer Greiman looks to an earlier moment in the history of American democracy's vexed interpretation of sovereignty to argue that such questions about the popularization of sovereign power shaped debates about political belonging and public life in the antebellum United States. In an emergent democracy that was also an expansionist slave society, Greiman argues, the problems that sovereignty posed were less concerned with a singular and exceptional power lodged in the state than with a power over life and death that involved all Americans intimately.Drawing on Alexis de Tocqueville's analysis of the sovereignty of the people in Democracy in America, along with work by Gustave de Beaumont, Lydia Maria Child, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville, Greiman tracks the crises of sovereign power as it migrates out of the state to become a constitutive feature of the public sphere. Greiman brings together literature and political theory, as well as materials on antebellum performance culture, antislavery activism, and penitentiary reform, to argue that the antebellum public sphere, transformed by its empowerment, emerges as a spectacle with investments in both punishment and entertainment.


We present the first comprehensive study on automatic knowledge base construction for two prevalent commonsense knowledge graphs: ATOMIC (Sap et al., 2019) and ConceptNet (Speer et al., 2017). Contrary to many conventional KBs that store knowledge with canonical templates, commonsense KBs only store loosely structured open-text descriptions of knowledge. We posit that an important step toward automatic commonsense completion is the development of generative models of commonsense knowledge, and propose COMmonsEnse Transformers (COMET) that learn to generate rich and diverse commonsense descriptions in natural language. Despite the challenges of commonsense modeling, our investigation reveals promising results when implicit knowledge from deep pre-trained language models is transferred to generate explicit knowledge in commonsense knowledge graphs. Empirical results demonstrate that COMET is able to generate novel knowledge that humans rate as high quality, with up to 77.5% (ATOMIC) and 91.7% (ConceptNet) precision at top 1, which approaches human performance for these resources. Our findings suggest that using generative commonsense models for automatic commonsense KB completion could soon be a plausible alternative to extractive methods.


Numerical tables are important objects of study in a range of fields, yet they have been largely ignored by historians of science. This paper contrasts and compares ways in which numerical tables were used by Galileo and Mersenne, especially in the Dialogo and Harmonie Universelle. I argue that Galileo and Mersenne used tables in radically different ways, though rarely to present experimental data. Galileo relied on tables in his work on error theory in day three of the Dialogo and also used them in a very different setting in the last day of the Discorsi. In Mersenne's case they represent an important but so far unrecognized feature of his notion of universal harmony. I conclude by presenting a classification of different ways in which tables were used within the well-defined disciplinary and temporal boundaries of my research. In doing so, however, I provide a useful tool for extending similar investigations to broader domains.


Over the last five years, IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies (TLT) published 20 journal issues on a range of topics in the fi eld of learning technologies written by researchers from many countries and research teams. Altogether, these papers demonstrate an amazing diversity of our field, learning technologies, with a broad interest in this topic shown all over the world. In the last three years, the number of yearly submissions increased from 135 to 161, with the acceptance rate now at 17.8%. We hope that over the next five years, TLT will continue to serve as a leading archival journal, publishing papers on exciting new developments in various parts of our quickly expanding field. Continuity will be provided by the new editorial team, which has been fully engaged in TLT activities in the past. Peter Brusilovsky, who assumed the role of Editor-in-Chief (EiC) in January 2013, has served as the Associate Editor-in-Chief, and Mike Sharples, the new Associate EiC, has served as a guest editor and Editorial Board member. With this message, we welcome you to the sixth year of TLT, and we pass the leadership to the new team.


For all practical purposes, contracting with a company means contracting with its directors or other authorised individuals. However, the company remains a separate juristic person and those acting on its behalf are required to do so in accordance with the objects and powers of the company, as well as any specific procedures laid down in its memorandum and articles. Accordingly, dealing with a company introduces the risk that the person ostensibly acting for the company may not have the requisite authority to bind the company, either because the purported act falls outside the company's power or the agent herself has not been duly appointed.


Air pollution, which is a threat to human health and to the natural environment, is growing worldwide day by day and the regulations for air pollutants made us to investigate an alternative method to control the emissions from industries, which is of low cost, simple design and of high performance. Plate scrubbers are medium level energy wet scrubbers which have enormous advantages in various chemical process industries for simultaneous removal of particulate matter and gas pollutants from effluent gas streams. A sieve plate scrubber has been modelled and installed in the lab scale. This paper presents the hydrodynamics of the three stage plate column wet scrubber which will be used to clean the synthesis gas by removing particulate matter and gaseous pollutants simultaneously. Experimental study has been done for the pressure drop (P) measurement at different liquid-gas ratios. The highest plate scrubber pressure drop is 1456 Pa, which is obtained at gas flow rate (QG) of 15.134x10-3 Nm3/s and liquid flow rate (QL) of 48.183x10-6 m3/s with 7.5x10-3 kg/m3 inlet fly ash loading (Si) and it is a medium value when compared to other type of scrubbers. The effect of different variables such as inlet flow rates of air and liquid, and inlet fly ash loading on the hydrodynamics was keenly observed. A model has been suggested for the prediction of pressure drop for which the values from the experimental study and predicted values matched with attainable standard deviation and percentage error.


Chakeola, a solitary latest Lochkovian to late Emsian (Early Devonian) new genus of the operculate tetracoral family Calceolidae, is characterised by: opercular septa that are present from adjacent to the median septum to the lateral extremities of the operculum; a lack of rootlets on the counter face of the corallite; a weak counter opercular face in mature specimens; and eccentric growth increments on the external opercular surface. The type species, C. johnsoni new species, is described from latest Lochkovian pesavis Zone), early Pragian (suleatus Zone) and late Pragian (pireneae Zone) strata of the Garra Formation, Wellington, NSW. C. whitehollsei new species is described from the Ukalunda Beds (perbonlls Zone, mid-Emsian), near Ukalunda, Queensland. Specifically indeterminate occurrences of the genus from the Mudgee district in New South Wales are in: the Taylors Hill Formation (?kindlei Zone, late Pragian); the Sutchers Creek Formation (serotinlls Zone, late Emsian); and possibly the Mullamuddy Formation (sllleatlls Zone, early Pragian). Rhizophyllum ealeeoloides from the Tabberabbera Formation (Emsian), Victoria also belongs in this new genus. Calceola sinensis and Caleeola sandalina aellminata from Emsian strata in northern Vietnam are also assigned to this genus. Chakeola thus ranges from the latest Lochkovian (pesavis Zone) to the late Emsian serotinlls Zone; it presumably arose from Rhizophyllum or a related form, and probably gave rise to Caleeola in the Emsian in eastern Australia or SE Asia. The occurrence of the genus in eastern Australia and Vietnam provides further evidence of faunal exchange during the Early Devonian. This study concludes that features of the exterior and interior surfaces of the opercula of genera of the Calceolidac are diagnostic at the generic level. Abstract - Chakeola, a solitary latest Lochkovian to late Emsian (Early Devonian) new genus of the operculate tetracoral family Calceolidae, is characterised by: opercular septa that are present from adjacent to the median septum to the lateral extremities of the operculum; a lack of rootlets on the counter face of the corallite; a weak counter opercular face in mature specimens; and eccentric growth increments on the external opercular surface. The type species, C. johnsoni new species, is described from latest Lochkovian pesavis Zone), early Pragian (sllleatlls Zone) and late Pragian (pireneae Zone) strata of the Garra Formation, Wellington, NSW. C. whitehollsei new species is described from the Ukalunda Beds (perbonlls Zone, mid-Emsian), near Ukalunda, Queensland. Specifically indeterminate occurrences of the genus from the Mudgee district in New South Wales are in: the Taylors Hill Formation (?kindlei Zone, late Pragian); the Sutchers Creek Formation (serotinlls Zone, late Emsian); and possibly the Mullamuddy Formation (sllleatlls Zone, early Pragian). Rhizophyllllm ealeeoloides from the Tabberabbera Formation (Emsian), Victoria also belongs in this new genus. Calceola sinensis and Caleeola sandalina aellminata from Emsian strata in northern Vietnam are also assigned to this genus. The occurrence of the genus in eastern Australia and Vietnam provides further evidence of faunal exchange during the Early Devonian. This study concludes that features of the exterior and interior surfaces of the opercula of genera of the Calceolidac are diagnostic at the generic level.


The chemical interactions and spin structure of (O2)4 in its ground singlet state are analyzed by means of Quantum Chemical Topology descriptors. The energetic contributions of the Interacting Quantum Atoms approach are used to obtain information about the class of interactions displayed along the dissociation path of (O2)4. The exchange-correlation contribution to the binding energy is non-negligible for the O2-O2 interactions at intermolecular distances close to those found for the pressure induced ε phase of solid (O2) and this strengthening of the intermolecular bonding is built up from a simultaneous weakening of the intramolecular bond. This result is of interest in connection with the observed softening of the IR vibron frequency in the lower pressure range of the ε phase. The spin structure in the real space along the dissociation process is interpreted with the help of the so-called electron number distribution functions. At large distances, the four triplet O2 molecules are arranged in a way consistent with an antiferromagnetic structure, whereas at short distances, a significant spin redistribution is driven by the exchange process and it involves a propensity toward a null magnetic moment per molecule. Such probability behavior can be related with the magnetic evolution of solid oxygen across the δ → ε phase transition. Additional calculations of (O2)4 excited states support the conclusion that the relative stabilization and magnetic features of the ground singlet state are due to the onset of the new intermolecular bonds, and not to an exclusive modification of the electronic character within the O2 molecules.


This book is for math and computer science majors, for students and representatives of many other disciplines (like bioinformatics, for example) taking courses in graph theory, discrete mathematics, data structures, algorithms. It is also for anyone who wants to understand the basics of graph theory, or just is curious. No previous knowledge in graph theory or any other significant mathematics is required. The very basic facts from set theory, proof techniques and algorithms are sufficient to understand it; but even those are explained in the text. Structurally, the text is divided into two parts where Part II is the generalization of Part I.The first part discusses the key concepts of graph theory with emphasis on trees, bipartite graphs, cycles, chordal graphs, planar graphs and graph coloring. The second part considers generalizations of Part I and discusses hypertrees, bipartite hyper graphs, hyper cycles, chordal hyper graphs, planar hyper graphs and hyper graph coloring. There is an interaction between the parts and within the parts to show how ideas of generalizations work. The main point is to exhibit the ways of generalizations and interactions of mathematical concepts from the very simple to the most advanced. One of the features of this text is the duality of hyper graphs.This fundamental concept is missing in graph theory (and in its introductory teaching) because dual graphs are not properly graphs, they are hyper graphs. However, as Part II shows, the duality is a very powerful tool in understanding, simplifying and unifying many combinatorial relations; it is basically a look at the same structure from the opposite (vertices versus edges) point of view.


Saying something is true does not make it so. And saying it louder does not make it truer. But such is the legislative posture behind modern day sex offense registration laws that punish those who commit sex crimes because of entrenched myths that overstate the laws' positive impact on public safety and exaggerate recidivism rates of offenders. And it is not only registration schemes themselves that have been scaffold-ed by these myths, but numerous ancillary laws that exclude benefits to offenders strictly because they have committed sex offenses.

Sadly, this sticky, but false, narrative has provided the animus that galvanized implementation of registration and notification regimes. And in its most recent chapter, the narrative has been formalized into blanket exclusions – or what this article calls "all except for" provisions – that have inserted into a myriad of criminal justice reform efforts without much notoriety.

The effect? Registrants and their families have been prohibited from broad-based and important ameliorative changes to the carceral state, many to which they should be entitled, and to which they are denied only because of their status as registrants. Indeed, within comprehensive legislation covering numerous crime and sentencing reforms, these ubiquitous blanket exclusions have the markings of boilerplate language that have been introduced even where the new legislation has no rational relationship to the protection of the public's safety or the prior sex offense conviction.

This article examines the moral panic and false data used to buttress blanket exclusion provisions – their inflated importance obvious. It concludes that these measures, which are un-tethered to public safety concerns, and only supported by governmental and community animus, violate fourteenth amendment protections.


Slovakian opals are found in an andesitic host-rock and believed to have formed by water circulation during a tectonic event. Their physical properties are investigated: X-Ray Diffraction (opal-A), Raman spectra (main Raman peak at 437 cm −1 ) and microstructure (large silica spheres 125 to 270 nm in diameter) surprisingly are properties of opals usually found in sedimentary deposits, and differ from those of opals found in other volcanic deposits. The temperature is proposed to control these physical properties rather than the nature of the host-rock. Some preliminary results of oxygen isotopic composition indicate a high δ 18 O for Slovakian and Australian opals (≈ 31‰) consistent with low temperatures of formation (lower than 45°C); by contrast, Mexican opals-CT show a lower δ 18 O at 13‰ consistent with a formation at a higher temperature, possibly up to 190°C.