Bridging the gap between statistics texts and SAS documentation, Elementary Statistics Using SAS is written for those who want to perform analyses to solve problems. The first section of the book explains the basics of SAS data sets and shows how to use SAS for descriptive statistics and graphs. The second section discusses fundamental statistical concepts, including normality and hypothesis testing. The remaining sections of the book show analyses for comparing two groups, comparing multiple groups, fitting regression equations, and exploring contingency tables. For each analysis, author Sandra Schlotzhauer explains assumptions, statistical approach, and SAS methods and syntax, and makes conclusions from the results. Statistical methods covered include two-sample t-tests, paired-difference t-tests, analysis of variance, multiple comparison techniques, regression, regression diagnostics, and chi-square tests. Elementary Statistics Using SAS is a thoroughly revised and updated edition of Ramon Littell and Sandra Schlotzhauer's SAS System for Elementary Statistical Analysis.


Book synopsis: Rome was the largest city in the ancient world. As the capital of the Roman Empire, it was clearly an exceptional city in terms of size, diversity and complexity. While the Colosseum, imperial palaces and Pantheon are among its most famous features, this volume explores Rome primarily as a city in which many thousands of men and women were born, lived and died. The thirty-one chapters by leading historians, classicists and archaeologists discuss issues ranging from the monuments and the games to the food and water supply, from policing and riots to domestic housing, from death and disease to pagan cults and the impact of Christianity. Richly illustrated, the volume introduces groundbreaking new research against the background of current debates and is designed as a readable survey accessible in particular to undergraduates and non-specialists.


The effects of intravenous administration of potassium phosphate in the treatment of diabetic ketoacidosis were studied in nine children, ages 99/12 to 1710/12 yr. During phosphate infusion (20–40 meq/L of fluid), all children maintained normal serum concentrations of phosphorus. Transient hypocalcemia occurred in six and transient hypomagnesemia in five patients. One child developed carpopedal spasms refractory to intravenous infusion of calcium gluconate but responsive to intramuscular injection of magnesium sulfate. In three patients, serum levels of intact parathyroid hormone were low at the time of hypocalcemia, an observation that suggests transient hypoparathyroidism. This study indicates that the use of potassium phosphate as the sole source of potassium replacement might potentiate ketoacidosis-induced hypocalcemia through multiple mechanisms.


Clifford Davidson. Corpus Christi Plays at York: A Context for Religious Drama, with a contribution in collaboration with Sheila White. AMS Studies in the Middle Ages, No. 30. New York: AMS Press, 2013. Pp. xii + 242. $84.50. English medieval drama, which has come down to us only in a small body of texts, has produced a stunning amount of research into its contexts. Clifford Davidson, who established the EDAM (Early Drama, Art, and Music) Project at the Medieval Institute of Western Michigan University in the 1970s (1) (and for a long time was editor of Comparative Drama) is one of the most prominent pioneers of this truly interdisciplinary approach. The very first sentence of the book under review states that the importance of the local context, "in historical time and space" (ix), for the study of the Corpus Christi plays was brought home to him more than forty years ago, on his first visit to St. Michael-le-Belfry near York Minster. The title modestly promises "a context," but with equal justice one could distinguish five or six contexts. These do not strictly coincide with the subject matter of one chapter each, but there certainly is a distribution of emphases. Chapter 1 ("York Guilds and the Corpus Christi Plays") concentrates on the social and administrative context and offers important insights into local conflicts surrounding the production of the pageants. Guilds often pleaded poverty that prevented them from participating. After the Reformation there was also reluctance on the part of individuals, as of the four drapers who refused to support their guild's Death of the Virgin in 1554. The Corporation of York harshly rebuked this "great encoragyng of suche lyke wilfull persones and disordre in the sayed craftes" (11; after REED York 1:313). The wording suggests that the refusal reflected a more general mood, but it also shows that the Corporation felt strongly about continuing the plays. In 1569, a year after Elizabeth's succession to the throne, they were banned "under pressure from the ecclesiastical authorities" (16), but "against, apparently, the wishes of most of York's citizens" (167). Chapter 2 ("The York Plays and Visual Piety") concentrates on an aspect of religious mentality and devotes considerable space to the effect of playing out the Passion scenes. While allowing that the spectators were not "necessarily uniformly reverent" (49), Davidson concludes that a Bakhtinian spirit of blasphemous Schadenfreude about Christ's suffering at the hands of the Torturers is most unlikely. Strong support for this view comes from the antitheatrical, Wycliffite Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge, which admits that the Passion plays often move spectators "to compassion and devocion, wepinge bitere teris" (50). The subject is also touched on in chapter 3 in a section (67-69) called "Blood, Suffering, and Devotion," and the book returns to it in the final, collaborative chapter. In the main, chapter 3 ("The Color of Devotion") deals with the painters' contribution to the overall effect of the pageants; it benefits particularly from Davidson's earlier work on the material culture of medieval York. Chapter 4 ("The Pageant Route, the City as Stage, and the Sacred"), which treats the physical context of the pageants, is of special interest in that it touches on the relationship between the Corpus Christi procession and the Corpus Christi play or pageant. The traditional view that the play or plays somehow "evolved" from the procession is almost certainly untenable. In the York records, which are far from providing a complete picture, however, the first mention of the play antedates that of the procession, if only by a year. (2) Plays "growing out of" the procession would have created logistical problems that seem impossible to overcome. As Davidson puts it, "instead of ever having been joined, it is more likely that the pageants and the procession had always been separate" (87). But even this arrangement "would have involved a logistical complication" (87). …


Purpose: To achieve the balancing of interests between airlines and passengers, the dynamic refund fee model is designed, which meets the interests of both airlines and passengers.Design/methodology/approach: In the study, the expectation utility function is constructed respectively for passengers and airlines, and the equilibrium point of the two is chosen to solve the passenger refund fee. Then, a dynamic refund fee model based on refund time and real-time sales revenue is proposed according to the actual operating conditions of the flight.Findings:The results show that refund fee is negatively related to three variables, the ticket price, the probability of ticket sales and the probability of refund. Besides, The maximum payment limit is the airline single seat cost or the actual fare paid below it, and the lowest can be exempt.Originality/value: A better standard of the rufund is proposed. The refund mode breaks the traditional static charging mode, and charges different refund fees to passengers for different refund time and the real time income of flights. Comparing with the current refund policy, the new charge of refund fee could best meets the interests of both parties.a refund fee standard.


Outliers in geodetic networks badly affect all parameters and their variances estimated by least-squares. Tests for outliers (e.g. Baarda's and Pope's tests) are frequently used to detect outliers in geodetic networks. To measure the ability of these tests, the mean success rate (MSR) is proposed. Studies have shown that the MSRs of these tests in geodetic networks are low due to the smearing effect of the least-squares estimation even if there is only one outlier in the data set. In this paper, a new approach, for small outliers, is presented to increase the MSRs of the tests for outliers in geodetic networks. The main idea is that if the weight of one observation is increased, the corresponding studentized or normalized residuals are increased, too. This thesis is proved. Hence, the ability of the tests to detect outliers can be increased by appropriately increasing the weight of one observation at a time and repeating this for all observations. This approach is applied to three simulated geodetic networks. We show that the MSRs of the outlier tests are improved by approximately 5% if there is one small outlier in the data set. However, the improvements in the MSRs for more than one outlier are low.


Social media has been an important outlet for newspapers. Social media have advantages in terms of reaching wider audience and sharing comments about news. Being a digital platform, modularity and automation make social media suitable for newspapers to disseminate their news. In social media there are very large amounts of data. Some of them are about news. To collect those data and analyze them to get meaningful information is a difficult task. Beside the software designed to be used for this purpose, it is possible to collect data with simple search tools like Twitter's search function. Although automation very similar to manual data gathering is possible, data gathering is limited with this function. On the other hand, it is easy to use such functions and gives an idea on how complicated monitoring software work. In this work, by looking at the dispersion of news from different sections of newspapers on Twitter, the tweeting ratio of news were calculated. The relation of dissemination of news between newspapers and social media was examined. It is found that the higher the comment ratio on newspaper Website, the higher the dissemination of news on Twitter.


People to rely upon oil for primary energy and this for a few more decades. Other conventional sources may be more enduring, but are not without serious disadvantages. The renewable energy resources are particularly suited for the provision of rural power supplies and a major advantage is that equipment such as flat plate solar driers, wind machines, etc., can be constructed using local resources and without the advantage results from the feasibility of local maintenance and the general encouragement such local manufacture gives to the build up of small-scale rural based industry. This article comprises a comprehensive review of energy sources, the environment and sustainable development. It includes the renewable energy technologies, energy efficiency systems, energy conservation scenarios, energy savings in greenhouses environment and other mitigation measures necessary to reduce climate change. This article gives some examples of small-scale energy converters, nevertheless it should be noted that small conventional comma i.e, engines are currently the major source of power in rural areas and will continue to be so for a long time to come. There is a need for some further development to suit local conditions, to minimise spares holdings, to maximise interchangeability both of engine parts and of the engine application. Emphasis should be placed on full local manufacture. It is concluded that renewable environmentally friendly energy must be encouraged, promoted, implemented and demonstrated by full-scale plant especially for use in remote rural areas.


A measurement of the atmospheric muon neutrino energy spectrum from 100 GeV to 400 TeV was performed using a data sample of about 18 000 up-going atmospheric muon neutrino events in IceCube. Boosted decision trees were used for event selection to reject misreconstructed atmospheric muons and obtain a sample of up-going muon neutrino events. Background contamination in the final event sample is less than 1%. This is the first measurement of atmospheric neutrinos up to 400 TeV, and is fundamental to understanding the impact of this neutrino background on astrophysical neutrino observations with IceCube. The measured spectrum is consistent with predictions for the atmospheric nu(mu) + (nu) over bar (mu) flux.


The research examines the adult status of those people with learning difficulties both within and outside adult education. Being adult is considered against Knowles' (1990) definition of adult through the research literature and empirical research. The research literature is used to investigate the history of how those adults with learning difficulties have been regarded in and treated by society and is used to consider terminology, legislation and the concept of 'difference'. What emerges is the notion that those with learning difficulties have been perceived as a group apart. The empirical research tested contemporary perceptions. The empirical research poses two key questions: what factors do we actually use to distinguish children from adults and, secondly, how adults with learning difficulties perceived themselves. Data to determine this was obtained by a picture sorting exercise to identify adults, an innovative approach to enable all to participate, and semi-structured interviews with groups of young people and adults with and without learning difficulties. The same research approaches were used with all respondents irrespective of variations in cognitive ability. The empirical research also examined the views of tutors within the Basic Skills sector in one unitary authority regarding the inclusion in classes of those with learning difficulties. Information from tutors was obtained by questionnaires and follow up interviews. Whilst virtually all respondents were apparently in favour of such inclusion, nevertheless they perceived students with learning difficulties as presenting particular problems. The research, undertaken in a unitary authority in central England, indicates that far from being a separate group, those with learning difficulties have much in common with all other adults. Indeed when considered against Knowles' definition it is mainly within one domain that there is any real difference. The research literature and the findings from the empirical research indicate reasons for this which are discussed within the thesis. Despite changes in legislation and changes in national policy towards people with disabilities in recent years, it is apparent that very little has changed significantly in terms of status for those adults with learning difficulties and major shifts in attitudes are still required if significant rather than cosmetic change is to happen.


In recent years, gun manufacturers and dealers have faced a wave of tort litigation in courts across the country. Shooting victims and their families have sued, claiming that they suffered injuries attributable to gun companies designing and distributing firearms in unreasonably dangerous ways. Dozens of major cities and counties have sued as well, seeking to recover costs for law enforcement, medical, and other public services allegedly incurred as a result of gun industry practices that foster criminal possession and misuse of guns. Patterned after the lawsuits by state attorneys general that shattered the tobacco industry's aura of legal invulnerability several years earlier, these government suits received widespread attention and generated predictions of a similar breakthrough against the gun companies. As these cases made their way through the courts, they caught the attention of writers and producers of various forms of popular entertainment. Stories about litigation against gun manufacturers and dealers became the basis for episodes of two of the most popular television courtroom dramas, a Hollywood star-studded legal thriller, a novel by a best-selling author, and an investigative journalist's account of the legal and political controversy surrounding guns. This Article examines these dramatic portrayals of litigation against gun companies, looks at the messages and information they conveyed to audiences, and considers what they reveal about the real legal battles that inspired them. The creators of these dramatic works used real litigation as source material. They drew facts, events, and arguments from actual cases and wove them into stories. Some strived to portray the gun litigation realistically and others relied more heavily on artistic license and imagination. While varying widely in the extent to which they aimed for realism, they shared several core goals. First and foremost, each sought to tell a compelling story that people would want to watch or read. In addition, for a mix of ideological and dramatic reasons, each strived to present a strong and convincing case against the defendant gun companies. To accomplish those goals, the creators of these works relied on techniques of melodrama. They simplified and personalized the issues, ratcheting up the pathos of plaintiffs and villainy of defendants to create a stark conflict between moral extremes. That process of developing narratives and using dramatic techniques to enhance their impact is similar in many ways to what lawyers inevitably do in litigation. They select and arrange facts to tell stories that judges and juries will find more coherent, credible, and convincing than the competing stories created by the adversaries. Narrative and melodrama play vital roles in real litigation just as in the depictions of litigation that appear on screen and in print. A review of popular entertainment's portrayal of lawsuits against gun manufacturers thus provides an illuminating way of approaching the real litigation and thinking about what types of claims and strategies did, or did not, work. In particular, it suggests explanations for one of the central puzzles of the gun litigation: the relatively weak results achieved by the most potentially potent litigation. Lawsuits brought by cities and counties initially appeared to pose the greatest threat to the gun industry. They were aggregative in nature, asserting claims based on a broad swath of incidents and an immense accumulation of injuries, rather than just a single event as in a conventional lawsuit brought by one, or a few, individuals. At least to date, these government lawsuits have not achieved the breakthrough results for which their proponents hoped, confounding expectations that the aggregative approach would prove more powerful than conventional, individualized claims. Examining television, film, and literary portrayals of gun litigation provides insight into what occurred in the real litigation, shedding light on significant but overlooked shortcomings of the aggregative litigation approach. The cities' and counties' lawsuits addressed the issue of gun violence in an unusually comprehensive, but abstract, way. While that initially seemed like an advantage, it ultimately undermined the cases. In analyzing and comparing the construction of narratives in real cases and their dramatic counterparts, this Article crosses through the intersection of several subjects that have been the focus of intense academic interest and extensive writing in recent years. Scholars have lavished attention on the significance of narrative in law. In addition, scholars have begun to pay substantial attention to the relationship between law and popular culture, looking carefully at law's reflection in movies, television, and books. Popular culture not only has a profound influence on how millions of Americans view the legal system and legal issues, but constitutes a valuable cultural record of ideas and attitudes about lawyers and law. Part I of this Article provides a brief overview of the real lawsuits against the gun industry and, in doing so, notes a key distinction between traditional individual cases which focus on one incident, and broader, aggregative cases brought by local governments and other entities. Part II describes how gun litigation has been depicted on the television programs Law & Order and The Practice, in the film Runaway Jury, in Richard North Patterson's novel Balance of Power, and in a non-fiction account entitled Outgunned: Up Against the NRA -- The First Complete Insider Account of the Battle over Gun Control. Part III compares the creation of narratives and the use of melodrama in the dramatic portrayals of gun litigation with the same phenomena in the real litigation. The analysis suggests that the absence of crucial melodramatic narrative features has been a fundamental deficiency in the government lawsuits and similarly expansive forms of litigation against the gun industry. In the interests of full disclosure, I emphasize that I am by no means an impartial observer of lawsuits concerning firearms, whether the litigation is real or fictional. As a staff attorney for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, I helped represent plaintiffs or amici curiae in many of the cases discussed here. In addition, I provided information and ideas to two writers, Brian Koppelman and David Levien, at an early stage of their work on adapting John Grisham's book Runaway Jury into a screenplay. Whatever one thinks about their ultimate merits, lawsuits against gun makers provide a revealing opportunity to look at the relationships between one of the most controversial types of litigation in recent years and its fictional reflections in the realm of popular culture.


Electric pulse based technology has been developed and studied as a non-thermal ablation method for local control of pancreatic cancer. Irreversible electroporation (IRE) has shown a significant survival benefit for local advanced pancreatic cancer in clinical trials. How- ever, incomplete ablation with local recurrence and major complications limit the potential of this new technology. We have developed an integrated moderate heating electric pulse delivery system which consists of controllable tumor heating, multi-parameter monitoring and electric pulse delivery. The impedance of tumor is greatly decreased after moderate heating at 42 (cid:1) C for 1 – 2 min, which does not cause any cell death. Moderate heating significantly enlarges the ablation zone of tumor treated with IRE. In contrast to IRE alone, moderate heating assisted IRE results in a high rate of complete tumor regression and a significant longer median survival. Another electric pulse technology, nanosec- ond electric pulses, has been assessed for the treatment of pancreatic cancer as well. Nanosecond electric pulse treatment achieves more survival benefit in animals with par- tial tumor ablation than those treated with IRE and leads to a vaccine-like protective effect in animals with complete local ablation. More studies are needed to demonstrate the advantages and translational feasibility of the enhanced electric pulse technologies.


In the recent past, Natural language Inference (NLI) has gained significant attention, particularly given its promise for downstream NLP tasks. However, its true impact is limited and has not been well studied. Therefore, in this paper, we explore the utility of NLI for one of the most prominent downstream tasks, viz. Question Answering (QA). We transform one of the largest available MRC dataset (RACE) to an NLI form, and compare the performances of a state-of-the-art model (RoBERTa) on both these forms. We propose new characterizations of questions, and evaluate the performance of QA and NLI models on these categories. We highlight clear categories for which the model is able to perform better when the data is presented in a coherent entailment form, and a structured question-answer concatenation form, respectively.


In the open marketplaces found in cities and villages throughout Africa, women traders usually predominate. This gives women considerable weight as economic actors, because these marketplace systems are the primary distributive networks in most parts of Africa. A large proportion of Africa's consumer goods and foodstuffs move through their intricate chains of intermediaries, which can include market retailers, neighborhood shops, street vendors, wholesalers, and travelers who collect goods from farms, factories, and ports. Although the vast majority of women traders live at or below the poverty line, some have risen to powerful positions that earn them the sobriquet of queen.
 Different regions of Africa show distinctive patterns of trading practices and of men and women's participation in specific trading roles, reflecting specific gendered histories of precolonial trade, colonial interventions, and waves of national policy. These variations arise not from some primordial isolation, but from traders' varied positioning within longstanding trade relations that have linked Africans since ancient times between regions, across the Sahara Desert and over adjoining oceans. Women's trading roles are more highly developed in western Africa than in eastern, northern, and southern Africa, where precolonial trading patterns were more radically disrupted by conquest, land appropriation, and apartheid.
 Ideologies and arenas of practice such as Islam, Christianity, modernization, socialism, structural adjustment, and globalization likewise shape the constraints and opportunities facing women traders in any given situation. Because these influences operate around the globe, though not uniformly, they to some extent create parallel or convergent trends in widely separated nations. Deepening economic pressures today push even more women and men into trading to support their families and sustain the hope of prosperity. Market women struggle individually and collectively to keep their communities going under difficult circumstances that make formal economic channels function poorly. Their determined efforts give African economies more resilience as they respond to the challenges of war, political instability, and climate change.


This book provides practical know-how on understanding, implementing, and managing main stream social media tools (e.g., blogs and micro-blogs, social network sites, and content communities) from a public sector perspective. Through social media, government organizations can inform citizens, promote their services, seek public views and feedback, and monitor satisfaction with the services they offer so as to improve their quality. Given the exponential growth of social media in contemporary society, it has become anessential tool for communication, content sharing, and collaboration. This growth and these tools also present an unparalleled opportunityto implement a transparent, open, and collaborative government. However, many government organization, particularly those in the developing world, are still somewhat reluctant to leverage social media, as it requires significant policy and governance changes, as well as specific know-how, skills and resources to plan, implement and manage social media tools. As a result, governments around the world ignore or mishandle the opportunities and threats presented by social media. To help policy makers and governments implement a social media driven government, this book provides guidance in developing an effectivesocial media policy and strategy. It also addresses issues such as those related to security and privacy.


Leukocyte egress from peripheral tissues to draining lymph nodes is not only critical for immune surveillance and initiation but also contributes to the resolution of peripheral tissue responses. While a variety of methods are used to quantify leukocyte egress from non-lymphoid, peripheral tissues, the cellular and molecular mechanisms that govern context-dependent egress remain poorly understood. Here, we describe the use of in situ photoconversion for quantitative analysis of leukocyte egress from murine skin and tumors. Photoconversion allows for the direct labeling of leukocytes resident within cutaneous tissue. Though skin exposure to violet light induces local inflammatory responses characterized by leukocyte infiltrates and vascular leakiness, in a head-to-head comparison with transdermal application of fluorescent tracers, photoconversion specifically labeled migratory dendritic cell populations and simultaneously enabled the quantification of myeloid and lymphoid egress from cutaneous microenvironments and tumors. The mechanisms of leukocyte egress remain a missing component in our understanding of intratumoral leukocyte complexity, and thus the application of the tools described herein will provide unique insight into the dynamics of tumor immune microenvironments both at steady state and in response to therapy.


Rishal et al. have described a novel mode of heterotrimeric guanine nucleotide-binding protein (G protein) regulation that points to a possible role for Na+ as a second messenger. G protein-activated inward rectifier K+ channels (GIRKs) play a role in regulating the heartbeat and mediate the effects of many inhibitory neurotransmitters. These channels are activated by the G protein βγ heterodimer (Gβγ), which is released from the heterotrimer after stimulation of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and GTP binding to the Gα subunit. GIRKs are also rapidly activated by intracellular Na+ independently of G proteins. Rishal et al. used inside-out patch clamp analysis to investigate activation of GIRK channels expressed in Xenopus oocytes. They observed a slow phase of Na+-dependent activation in both wild-type channels and mutant channels lacking fast Na+-dependent activation. Although slow Na+ activation of GIRK was inhibited by a protein that bound Gβγ, it did not require GTP in the medium. High Na+ reduced the association of radiolabeled Gβγ with a GDP-bound fusion protein of Gα with glutathione S-transferase (GST-GαGDP) and decreased Gβγ binding to GST-GαGDP as assessed by surface plasmon resonance. Mild overexpression of Gα (which should increase the fraction of total Gβγ bound to GαGDP) enhanced slow Na+-dependent activation of GIRK. These data suggest that Na+ regulates the resting equilibrium between free Gβγ and Gβγ bound to GαGDP and may, under some conditions, act as a second messenger coupling electrical activity in excitable cells to GPCR-independent effects of Gβγ on target proteins. I. Rishal, T. Keren-Raifman, D. Yakubovich, T. Ivanina, C. W. Dessauer, V. Z. Slepak, N. Dascal, Na+ promotes the dissociation between GαGDP and Gβγ, activating G protein-gated K+ channels. J. Biol. Chem. 278, 3840-3845 (2003). [Abstract] [Full Text]


The topic of climate change offers unique challenges to simulation game designers largely because standard game mechanics fail to capture the complexity of this real-world problem. Climate change dynamics are characterized by the second-order delayed effects of carbon emissions on global temperatures and by political actors, who often have unique individual goals and asymmetrical abilities. However, many climate change games exhibit mechanics such as immediate and first-order delayed effects, zero-sum collaborative play, zero-sum competitive play, and players with symmetrical abilities and goals. By examining variants of an asymmetrical three-player common pool resource game, this research illustrates how inclusion or omission of mechanics found in real-life climate change impact the outcome of simulations and gameplay.


Across cultures and countries, people have different understandings of what health entails, so improving the health of the elderly would also mean improving different health factors. Universal health as a notion is an illusionary idea, because it is context-dependent. Countries face different issues with elderly populations, and so they have different objectives for their healthcare systems. Even when elderly populations have similar problems, the social, political and cultural differences between countries make the implementation of universal health measures impossible. Countries' healthcare systems are already different due to the different circumstances, and so healthy ageing should be promoted in a more localised fashion. Healthcare systems are not efficient in addressing local issues when the different understandings of health are not respected. For a healthcare system to work to its full potential, measures have to be adapted to local needs, local values, and local priorities. Healthy ageing might be a universal problem, but it has no universal solution.


The total baroreflex arc is the open-loop system relating carotid sinus pressure (CSP) to arterial pressure (AP). The nonlinear dynamics of this system were recently characterized. First, Gaussian white noise CSP stimulation was employed in open-loop conditions in normotensive and hypertensive rats with sectioned vagal and aortic depressor nerves. Nonparametric system identification was then applied to measured CSP and AP to establish a second-order nonlinear Uryson model. The aim in this study was to assess the importance of higher-order nonlinear dynamics via development and evaluation of a third-order nonlinear model of the total arc using the same experimental data. Third-order Volterra and Uryson models were developed by employing nonparametric and parametric identification methods. The R2 values between the AP predicted by the best third-order Volterra model and measured AP in response to Gaussian white noise CSP not utilized in developing the model were 0.69 ± 0.03 and 0.70 ± 0.03 for normotensive and hypertensive rats, respectively. The analogous R2 values for the best third-order Uryson model were 0.71 ± 0.03 and 0.73 ± 0.03. These R2 values were not statistically different from the corresponding values for the previously established second-order Uryson model, which were both 0.71 ± 0.03 (P > 0.1). Furthermore, none of the third-order models predicted well-known nonlinear behaviors including thresholding and saturation better than the second-order Uryson model. Additional experiments suggested that the unexplained AP variance was partly due to higher brain center activity. In conclusion, the second-order Uryson model sufficed to represent the sympathetically mediated total arc under the employed experimental conditions.


The paleontologic data (calcareous nannofossils, foraminifers, ostracods, molluscs and pollen) of the Trave section (south of Ancona, central Italy) are presented in order to describe the fossil content of the pre-evaporitic and post-evaporitc units and evaluate the paleoenvironmental evolution of the sedimentary deposits from the Tortonian/Messinian boundary to the top of the Messinian. Several calcareous plankton bio-horizons astronomically calibrated, temporally constrain the pre-evaporitic sequence between 7.44 Ma (FO of Amaurolithus primus) and 6.35 Ma (sinistral to dextral coiling change in Neogloboquadrina acostaensis). Resedi- mented evaporites mark the base of the post-evaporitic sub-unit p-ev1 (5.6 Ma) which is overlain by the cyclic stacking pattern of p-ev2 sub-unit. The MPl 3 zone of the Zanclean seals the section. The paleontological record of the post-evaporitic interval allows to verify that the p-ev1/p-ev2 boundary defined in terms of facies is well recognizable also in terms of bioevents; in fact, a Lago Mare low diver- sity assemblage first occurs a few meters below the boundary, while the first occurrence of Loxocorniculina djafarovi, continuously present all along the p-ev2, is observed above it. A second change in the overall assemblage is recorded a few meters above the physical boundary, where the ostracod assemblage diversifies and Parathetyan dinocysts appear. The open marine conditions during the late Tortonian gradually turned into the poor oxygenated water masses of the early Messinian (deposition of organic-rich layers) under a prevalent humid and warm climate. The presence, in the p-ev1 sub-unit, of small-sized foraminifers, reworked calcareous plankton, and the absence of ostracods and normal marine foraminifer assemblages sug- gest a diluted marine environment due to strong runoff responsible for the deposition of a great amount of clastic sediments. Towards the top of the p-ev1 and within the p-ev2 the environment changes. The pollen record shows well evident wetter/drier fluctuations and the benthic foraminifers, ostracods, molluscs and dinocysts testify a decreasing water depth and alternating oligo-to mesohaline waters before the Pliocene deluge.


BACKGROUND
Although reduction in the use of secondary care mental health services is a suggested benefit of counselling in general practice, there has been little empirical investigation of this relationship.

AIM
To investigate the relationship between the provision of counselling in general practice and the use of outpatient psychiatry and clinical psychology services across a geographical area.

METHOD
Information on referrals to outpatient psychiatry and clinical psychology from all general practices in the London Borough of Islington over one year (October 1993 to September 1994) was collected from the routine information systems of the main hospital departments serving this area. Referral rates per 1000 practice population were compared for practices with and without a practice-based counsellor.

RESULTS
Fifteen (35%) of the 43 practices had a counsellor based in the practice. The median referral rate to clinical psychology was higher in practices with a counsellor (4.1 per 1000) than in practices without a counsellor (0.8 per 1000). There was no relationship between the provision of practice counselling and median referral rates to outpatient psychiatry (1.8 per 1000 with a counsellor, 1.7 per 1000 without a counsellor).

CONCLUSION
Provision of practice counselling in the study was associated with higher referral rates to clinical psychology and no difference in referral rates to outpatient psychiatry. This is in contrast to the hypothesis that counselling reduces the use of secondary care mental health services.


Abstract The objective of this study is to investigate the residual stresses formed during the process of directly attaching optical fibres to v-grooves in silicon submounts under field-assisted anodic bonding. Simulations conducted with finite element model revealed that the stresses at the fibre–silicon interface exceed the fracture strength of the silica–fibre bond. These predictions are verified by experimental investigations, exposing the silica traces of fibre along the flat submount surface during the cooling process. With the introduction of 1µm layer of compliant Al or Ti onto the v-groove promoted increased bonding area and acted as a stress-relieving layer to lower the peak residual stresses at the interface, and bonds formed with this compliant metal layer are robust at room temperature.


Brown dwarfs are the lowest mass products of star formation. Their low masses don't allow them to sustain, or sometimes even begin, the thermonuclear processes that provide stars with internal energy and the thermal pressure necessary to maintain hydrostatic equilibrium. Thus, their radii and effective temperatures decrease as they age, continually changing their spectral classification. However, it is now a well-known fact that the spectral appearance of ultracool dwarfs is governed by more than just temperature. Factors such as gravity, metallicity and cloud distribution play an important role in the structure and composition of ultra-cool dwarf atmospheres and ultimately their spectra. Pinning down the effects of some of the contributing factors to the structure and evolution of brown dwarf atmospheres has been the goal of my thesis research. Through a joint positional and colour cross-match of optical, nearinfrared and mid-infrared all-sky surveys, I have identified 20 new brown dwarfs with "peculiar photometric colours which are candidates for having unusual atmospheric properties. I have determined that a number of these objects have atypical surface gravities and/or atmospheric dust content using near-infrared spectroscopic observations. I have also determined the timescales for the various peculiarities by comparing these objects to the population of "normal" objects. In addition, I have studied in detail a few of the most peculiar objects in order to understand how conditions on individual objects affect their atmospheric structure and composition.


A total of 3,700 Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates were collected from 17 general hospitals in Japan from 1992 to 1994. Of these isolates, 132 carbapenem-resistant strains were subjected to DNA hybridization analysis with the metallo-beta-lactamase gene (blaIMP)-specific probe. Fifteen strains carrying the metallo-beta-lactamase gene were identified in five hospitals in different geographical areas. Three strains of P. aeruginosa demonstrated high-level imipenem resistance (MIC, > or = 128 micrograms/ml), two strains exhibited low-level imipenem resistance (MIC, < or = 4 micrograms/ml), and the rest of the strains were in between. These results revealed that the acquisition of a metallo-beta-lactamase gene alone does not necessarily confer elevated resistance to carbapenems. In several strains, the metallo-beta-lactamase gene was carried by large plasmids, and carbapenem resistance was transferred from P. aeruginosa to Escherichia coli by electroporation in association with the acquisition of the large plasmid. Southern hybridization analysis and genomic DNA fingerprinting profiles revealed different genetic backgrounds for these 15 isolates, although considerable similarity was observed for the strains isolated from the same hospital. These findings suggest that the metallo-beta-lactamase-producing P. aeruginosa strains are not confined to a unique clonal lineage but proliferated multifocally by plasmid-mediated dissemination of the metallo-beta-lactamase gene in strains of different genetic backgrounds. Thus, further proliferation of metallo-beta-lactamase-producing strains with resistance to various beta-lactams may well be inevitable in the future, which emphasizes the need for early recognition of metallo-beta-lactamase-producing strains, rigorous infection control, and restricted clinical use of broad-spectrum beta-lactams including carbapenems.


The One-Strike Rule, contemplated in a model lease provision, has been the primary mechanism employed by Congress to eliminate the "scourge of drugs" in public housing projects. The rule gives public housing authorities (PHA) discretion to evict tenants engaged in drug-related criminal activity and hold the tenant equally liable if a guest or family member engaged in the criminal activity, even if the tenant had no knowledge of the offense. The Supreme Court most notably upheld this policy in 2002 in United States Department of Housing and Urban Development v. Rucker.Today the wisdom of that rule, which has served as the foundation for PHAs' eviction policies, has come under attack by recent court decisions in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. In Housing Authority of Pittsburgh v. Somerville, the trial court disrupted the normal state of affairs by denying the eviction of a young, unemployed, single woman, expecting her first child, notwithstanding a prior drug-related conviction, holding that eviction would result in a "serious injustice." While in Eastern Carolina Regional Housing Authority v. Lofton, a state appellate court found that the eviction of a single mother and her three young children, all innocent bystanders to drug-related criminal activity, would be excessive and shockingly unjust and that eviction would produce an "unconscionable" result.This Article engages in a normative interpretation of the statutes the courts in Pennsylvania and North Carolina relied upon in denying the eviction of poor tenants, specifically 35 P.S. § 780-157(b) of the Pennsylvania Expedited Eviction of Drug Traffickers Act and § 42-26(a)(2) of the North Carolina General Statutes. The statutes implicitly attack Rucker by authorizing trial courts to deny the eviction of the tenant if the courts are convinced the eviction would result in serious injustices or unconscionable consequences, thus running afoul of the post-Rucker normal state of affairs. This Article argues that the Pennsylvania and North Carolina eviction statutes, and the recent rulings relying on the serious injustice exemption and unconscionability rule, serve as the foundation for what I coin a "new eviction jurisprudence" that gives special consideration to the constitutional protections of property afforded to groups most vulnerable to the One-Strike Rule: households headed by poor women with children.


Cognitive radio (CR) is seen as a promising technology to make radio spectrum usage more effective by providing an opportunistic access for secondary users to the licensed spectrum areas. CR systems need to detect the presence of a primary user (PU) signal by continuously sensing the spectrum area of interest. Radiowave propagation effects like fading and shadowing often complicate sensing of spectrum holes because the PU signal can be weak in a particular area. Cooperative spectrum sensing is seen as a prospective solution to enhance the detection of PU signals. This paper studies distributed spectrum sensing in a cognitive radio context. We investigate distributed energy detection schemes without using any fusion center. We propose the usage of distributed, diffusion least mean square (LMS) type of power estimation algorithms. In this paper an Adapt and Combine (ATC) diffusion based power estimation scheme is proposed and the performance is compared with the Combine and Adapt (CTA) and ring-around schemes in a common framework. The PU signal is assumed to be slowly fading. We analyse the resulting energy detection performance and verify the theoretical findings through simulations.


In the wake of a severe recession and a sluggish recovery, labor market slack cannot be gauged solely in terms of the conventional measure of the unemployment rate (that is, the number of individuals who are not working at all and actively searching for a job). Rather, assessments of the employment gap should reflect the incidence of underemployment (that is, people working part time who want a full-time job) and the extent of hidden unemployment (that is, people who are not actively searching but who would rejoin the workforce if the job market were stronger). In this paper, we examine the evolution of U.S. labor market slack and show that underemployment and hidden unemployment currently account for the bulk of the U.S. employment gap. Next, using state-level data, we find strong statistical evidence that each of these forms of labor market slack exerts significant downward pressure on nominal wages. Finally, we consider the monetary policy implications of the employment gap in light of prescriptions from Taylor-style benchmark rules.


As recently as thirty years ago, Americans lived in a financial world that today seems distant. Investment and borrowing choices were meager: virtually all transactions were conducted in cash or by check. The financial services industry was heavily regulated, as an outgrowth of the Depression, while an elaborate safety net was constructed to prevent a repeat of that dismal episode in American history. Today, consumers and businesses have a dizzying array of choices about where to invest and borrow. Plastic credit cards and electronic transfers increasingly are replacing cash and checks. Much regulation has been dismantled, although the industry remains fragmented by rules that continue to separate banks from other enterprises. Meanwhile, finance has gone global and increasingly high-tech. This book, originally prepared as a report to Congress by the Treasury Department, outlines a framework for setting policy toward the financial services industry in the coming decades. The authors, who worked closely with senior Treasury officials in developing their recommendations, identify three core principles that lie at the heart of that framework: an enhanced role for competition; a shift in emphasis from preventing failures of financial institutions at all cost toward containing the damage of any failures that inevitably occur in a competitive market; and a greater reliance on more targeted interventions to achieve policy goals rather than broad measures, such as flat prohibitions on certain activities.


We consider the problem of aggregating data at a mobile fusion center (fusor) (eg. a PDA or a cellular phone) moving within a spatial region over which a wireless sensor network (eg., fixed motes) has been deployed. Each sensor node generates packets destined to the fusor, and our objective is to develop strategies that can route the packets to the mobile fusor. For an arbitrary (possibly random) fusor mobility pattern over any connected subset of the sensor deployment area, we first derive upper bounds on the aggregation data rate (i.e., the uniform rate region from each sensor node to the mobile fusor), where we allow all sensor nodes to have complete knowledge of the mobility pattern of the fusor. We then consider aggregation data rates that can be achieved when the mobility pattern of the fusor is unknown to the sensor nodes. Surprisingly, we show that for a class of mobility patterns (random mobility over connected-compositions of convex sets of the deployment region, e.g. random walks over piece-wise linear sets), we can construct "universal" mobility-oblivious routing strategies that achieve aggregation data rates that are of the same order as the (mobility-aware) upper bound.


The development of 3D technologies during the last decades in many different areas, leads us towards the complete 3D representation of planet earth on a high level of detail. On the lowest level we have geographical information systems (GIS) representing the outer layer of our planet as a 3D model. In the meantime these systems do not only give a geographical model but also present additional information like ownership, infrastructure and others that might be of interest for the construction business. In future these systems will serve as basis for virtual environments for planning and simulation of construction sites. In addition to this work is done on the integration of GIS systems with 3D city models in the area of urban planning and thus integration of different levels of detail. This article presents research work on the use of 3D models in construction on the next level of detail below the level of urban planning. The 3D city model is taken as basis for the 3D model of the construction site. In this virtual nD-world a contractor can organize and plan his resources, simulate different variants of construction processes and thus find out the most effective solution for the consideration of costs and time. On the basis of former researches the authors present a new approach for cost estimation and simulation using development technologies from game software.


Abstract In this paper, the improvement over a novel format for selective solid-phase extraction based on a molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) is described. A small amount of MIP has been synthesized within the superficial pores of commercial polyethylene (PE) frits and attached to its surface using benzophenone (BP), a photo-initiator capable to start the polymerization from the surface of the support material. Key properties affecting the obtainment of a proper polymeric layer, such as polymerization time and kind of cross-linker were optimized. Prepared composite material was applied to the SPE of TBZ in real samples extracts, showing an impressive clean-up ability. Calibrations showed good linearity in the concentration range of 0.05–5.00 μg g-1, referred to the original solid sample, and the regression coefficients obtained were greater than 0.998. The calculated detection limit was 0.01 μg g-1, low enough to satisfactory analysis of TBZ in real samples. Mean recoveries were about 70 % at different concentration levels with RSDs always ranged below 15% in all the cases.


Despite recent interest in transfer zones in regions of continental extension, their detailed geometry and kinematics remain unclear. Four late Palaeogene and Neogene transfer zones within the southern Rio Grande rift, USA, are described, based on geological mapping at the scale of 1:24 000 and analysis of synrift stratigraphy. The Cutter Sag transfer zone is located between the overlapping tips of north-trending, west-dipping faults, and is characterized by a north-dipping structural ramp segmented by closely spaced, NE-trending normal faults. Similarly, the West Potrillo transfer zone occupies a position in the zone of overlap of north-trending, west-dipping faults, but the structural details of the transfer zone are largely hidden beneath Quaternary lava flows. However, isolated bedrock exposures outside the lava field, gravity data, and the alignment of cinder cones suggest that the West Potrillo transfer zone is a NW-dipping synclinal ramp cut by NE-trending fractures and/or faults. Positioned between north-trending, overlapping border faults that dip toward each other, the Cedar Hills transfer zone is a broad, north-trending arch whose summit collapsed into a graben along a series of north-trending normal faults. The Rincon transfer zone separates border faults that do not overlap and has a long history of faulting and sedimentation beginning in latest Oligocene and extending into the Quaternary. With the possible exception of reactivated early Tertiary compressional structures in the Rincon transfer zone, the transfer zones described here do not appear to be influenced by pre-rift zones of weakness. However, the Cutter Sag and West Potrillo transfer zones are preferred sites of basaltic volcanism, and the Cutter Sag.- Rincon, and Cedar Hill transfer zones influenced the location of the Plio-Pleistocene ancestral Rio Grande.


China's control of information online is often imposed by social media platforms in the name of "rumor management." This article examines the content moderation strategies of Sina Weibo, China's largest microblogging platform, in regulating discussion of rumors following the 2015 Tianjin blasts. More than 100,000 Weibo posts were collected and categorized into three data sets: rumor discussion posts from the public, rumor-debunking posts from Weibo's official rumor rebuttal accounts, and posts removed from the system. Two content-moderation rumor strategies, namely rumor rebuttal and content removal, were identified. Clustering analysis and time series analysis was applied to test how these two strategies were used to filter posts of different topics and how they were associated with public discussion of rumor-related topics. Our findings suggest that the platform's response to rumor varied depending on the political sensitivity of the topic. Time-series analysis indicated that the implementation of both strategies was usually associated with a subsequent increase in general discussion about the rumor, suggesting that these strategies do not create a consistent chilling effect on public speech.


The paper studies endogenous world balanced growth equilibria in which national learning productivity differentials govern relative per capita products. Learning productivities depend on the national share of world specialized goods production, national and world scale, and familiarity with the foreign economy. Familiarity indexes the extent to which imported specialized goods enhance learning productivity. We find that mutual familarization causes per capita products to converge. Unfamiliar economies diverge substantially and persistently. Unilateral familiarization of a less-developed country (LDC) with the leading economy causes the LDC to catch up to, and even overtake, the leader.


A total of 1,215 barrows and gilts (PIC; 359 × Camborough) with an initial pen average body weight (BW) of 55.7 ± 2.06 lb were used in a 114-d growth trial to determine the effects of different analyzed calcium to analyzed phosphorus ratios on performance of growing-finishing pigs from 57to 279-lb fed diets containing 1,000 phytase units. Pens of pigs were randomly assigned to 1 of 5 dietary treatments in a randomized complete block design with BW as a blocking factor. There were 9 replicate pens per treatment and 27 pigs per pen. The experimental diets were corn-soybean meal-based and were fed in 4 phases. The 5 dietary treatments were formulated to contain 0.75:1, 1.00:1, 1.25:1, 1.50:1, and 2.00:1 analyzed Ca:P ratios. The diets contained 1,000 phytase units (FYT) of Ronozyme Hiphos 2500 (DSM Nutritional Products, Inc., Parsippany, NJ) with assumed releasing values of 0.15% available P (aP) and 0.132% standardized total tract digestible P (STTD P). All the diets were formulated to contain adequate STTD P across the dietary treatments in all phases, which included the expected release of phytase. The treatments were achieved by increasing the amount of calcium carbonate at the expense of corn while maintaining monocalcium phosphate constant. Overall, increasing analyzed Ca:P ratio quadratically increased (P < 0.05) average daily gain (ADG), final BW, and average daily feed intake (ADFI) (P < 0.10). The greatest increase in these criteria was observed as the ratio increased from 0.75:1 to 1.50:1, with no improvement thereafter. Feed efficiency improved linearly (P < 0.05) with increasing analyzed Ca:P ratio up to 2.00:1. For carcass characteristics, hot carcass weight (HCW) increased quadratically (P < 0.05) as the analyzed Ca:P ratio increased from 0.75:1 to 1.50:1, and started to decrease thereafter. Percentage carcass yield decreased (quadratic, P < 0.10) from 0.75:1 analyzed Ca:P ratio to 1.25:1, slightly increasing at higher ratios. Bone mineralization increased quadratically (P < 0.05) with increasing analyzed Ca:P ratio. The greatest improvement in percentage bone ash was observed as analyzed Ca:P ratio increased from 0.75:1 to 1.25:1, with no further increase. Feed cost per pig increased linearly (P < 0.05) with increasing analyzed Ca:P ratio. No evidence of differences (P > 0.10) was observed for feed cost per pound of gain. Gain value per pig increased quadratically (P < 0.05), with the greatest revenue observed for pigs fed diets with 1.50:1 analyzed Ca:P ratio. There was a marginal quadratic improvement (P < 0.10) in income over feed cost (IOFC), with the highest income observed at 1.25:1 analyzed Ca:P ratio. The best fitting models for ADG, ADFI, feed efficiency, HCW, and bone ash were the quadratic polynomial (QP), linear, broken-line linear (BLL), QP, and BLL models, respectively. The maximum responses in ADG, feed efficiency, HCW, and bone ash were estimated at 1.63:1, 1.05:1, 1.11:1, and 1.25:1 analyzed Ca:P ratio, respectively. In conclusion, the estimated analyzed Ca:P ratio requirement for finishing pigs from 56to 279-lb fed diets containing 1,000 phytase units and that were adequate in STTD P ranged from 1.05:1 to 1.63:1 to maximize growth rate, feed efficiency, HCW, and bone mineralization criteria.


Building on the work undertaken in the 'Caring Project' (Gwilt, Leaver, Fisher, Young. 2015), this secondary inquiry seeks to ascertain specific aspects of maintenance practices that are employed by users and to understand the drivers behind some of the key decisions taken when maintaining products. Through an empirical study that involved gathering data using methods including a survey, observations and cultural probes, the findings reveal some of the motivations behind the choices of those who self-maintain and those who choose to have that work carried out by a service provider. Moreover some insight into the prompts that trigger why users instigate product maintenance, and the equipment selected and used in the maintenance of common objects are also discussed. These initial insights support the potential for a larger study with the ultimate aim of influencing designers and manufacturers in the development of longer lasting products.


Abstract. Black carbon (BC) particles over the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau (HTP), both airborne and those deposited on snow, have been shown to affect snowmelt and glacier retreat. Since BC over the HTP may originate from a variety of geographical regions and emission sectors, it is essential to quantify the source–receptor relationships of BC in order to understand the contributions of natural and anthropogenic emissions and provide guidance for potential mitigation actions. In this study, we use the Community Atmosphere Model version 5 (CAM5) with a newly developed source-tagging technique, nudged towards the MERRA meteorological reanalysis, to characterize the fate of BC particles emitted from various geographical regions and sectors. Evaluated against observations over the HTP and surrounding regions, the model simulation shows a good agreement in the seasonal variation in the near-surface airborne BC concentrations, providing confidence to use this modeling framework for characterizing BC source–receptor relationships. Our analysis shows that the relative contributions from different geographical regions and source sectors depend on season and location in the HTP. The largest contribution to annual mean BC burden and surface deposition in the entire HTP region is from biofuel and biomass (BB) emissions in South Asia, followed by fossil fuel (FF) emissions from South Asia, then FF from East Asia. The same roles hold for all the seasonal means except for the summer, when East Asia FF becomes more important. For finer receptor regions of interest, South Asia BB and FF have the largest impact on BC in the Himalayas and central Tibetan Plateau, while East Asia FF and BB contribute the most to the northeast plateau in all seasons and southeast plateau in the summer. Central Asia and Middle East FF emissions have relatively more important contributions to BC reaching the northwest plateau, especially in the summer. Although local emissions only contribute about 10% of BC in the HTP, this contribution is extremely sensitive to local emission changes. Lastly, we show that the annual mean radiative forcing (0.42 W m−2) due to BC in snow outweighs the BC dimming effect (−0.3 W m−2) at the surface over the HTP. We also find strong seasonal and spatial variation with a peak value of 5 W m−2 in the spring over the northwest plateau. Such a large forcing of BC in snow is sufficient to cause earlier snow melting and potentially contribute to the acceleration of glacier retreat.


Several case studies have analysed the potential of natural resource (NR) based industrialisation, a process based on diversification towards high value-added products, in the Latin American region. However, there is limited evidence on how the development of productive linkages - a key aspect of this strategy - behave at the country level. Based on input-output analysis, this paper provides a clearer picture of the extent and evolution of productive linkages of NR sectors across a sample of middle- and high-income countries in Latin America as well as in other developing and developed regions. The paper focuses on the degree to which extractive industries, i.e. oil, gas, and mining, are connected to the rest of the economy by studying both backward and forward linkages using OECD IO data. It also makes a distinction between local and foreign inputs to account for the level of integration that these sectors have into global value chains and/or import dependence. Furthermore, it tries to identify whether the importance of the extractive sectors in exports and total economic output is related to the level of intersectoral linkages. We find that in most countries intersectoral linkages have become smaller despite the expansion of the extractive sector suggesting a higher level of enclaveness as predicted by the resource curse literature.


Cork is the bark of the cork oak tree (Quercus suber L), a renewable and biodegradable raw bioresource concentrated mainly in the Mediterranean region. Development of its potential uses as a biosorbent will require the investigation of its chemical composition; such information can be of help to understand its interactions with organic pollutants. The present study investigates the summative chemical composition of three bark layers (back, cork, and belly) of five Spanish cork samples and one cork sample from Portugal. Suberin was the main component in all the samples (21.1 to 53.1%), followed by lignin (14.8 to 31%), holocellulose (2.3 to 33.6%), extractives (7.3 to 20.4%), and ash (0.4 to 3.3%). The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to determine whether the variations in chemical composition with respect to the production area and bark layers were significant. The results indicate that, with respect to the bark layer, significant differences were found only for suberin and holocellulose contents: they were higher in the belly and cork than in the back. Based on the results presented, cork is a material with a lot of potential because of its heterogeneity in chemical composition.


The mechanisms of nonlinear-optical limitation in suspensions of carbon and fulleroid nanoparticles have been studied experimentally and theoretically. The study was carried out in the wide spectral range of 300-1064 nm. Suspensions of fulleroid nanoparticles - astralenes - have proven to be more promising in a number of parameters (the limitation efficiency, the possibility of multiple use). © 2004 Optical Society of America


Soils function as Earth's life support system, a thin layer full of life covering most of the terrestrial surfaces. Soils form the foundation of society. Norman Borlaug stated in his Nobel laureate lecture that "the first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all mankind." If we are to provide this component while sustaining environmental quality in the midst of a growing population and rapidly diminishing resources, it is imperative to study and obtain a deeper level of understanding of soil functions using state‐of‐the‐art technologies as well as provide the next generation of environmentalists, soil scientists, and environmental engineers with the best education possible. The 16 papers in this special section on soil architecture and physicochemical functions in the Vadose Zone Journal contribute to these goals by improving and linking measurement, visualization, and modeling of soil structure (architecture) and physical, chemical, and biological processes in different porous media systems and at different scales. Several studies in this special section also outline and discuss emerging and exciting interdisciplinary challenges for the rapidly growing vadose zone research community, including the need for enhanced public awareness of the soil's essential life‐support functions, putting value on soil ecosystem services ("capital of soil"), and design of optimal soil‐based growth media for long‐term missions in space.


Objective: Evaluate and compare the research contributions of Community Pharmacy Foundation (CPF) funding on community pharmacy practice innovation between non-academic and academic principal investigators (PIs) with respect to the following measurements: 1) "Pharmacy Practice Activity Classifications" (PPAC); 2) CPF "Coordinated Use of Medications"; and 3) CPF Investigator Impact.
Methods: Quantitative data for all 124 CPF-funded grants awarded from 2002-2016 were obtained from the CPF website and personnel, while ethnographic qualitative data was generated from queries of PIs. Grant categorization was conducted by researchers serving as judges trained on the rules and procedures for coding. A threshold level of 90% agreement in scores of independent judging was established a priori. Findings were summarized and groups were compared using descriptive statistics for quantitative data and a thematic analysis of PI ethnographic reflections for qualitative data.
Results: There were no differences between non-academic and academic PI groups for Coordinated Use of Medications and PPAC domains, but non-academics contributed more to two dispensing-related PPAC subclasses: 'Preparing the Product' (10% vs. 2%) and 'Delivering the Medication or Device' (13% vs. 2%). Analysis of investigator reflections revealed similarities between groups regarding impact on practice innovations, expanded collaborations, new practice tools, and patient-care financing models.
Conclusions: CPF funding contributed new knowledge and resources for expanding and enhancing practice innovations as shown by quantitative (PPAC & Coordinated Use of Medications) and qualitative (PI impact) measures. Similarities between PI groups suggest that the CPF has established a funding niche with unique diversity of practice innovation opportunities. This investigation's findings may be useful to the CPF's continuous quality improvement efforts, as well as future grant applicants to assess research gaps in the medication use process and develop sustainable, transferable, and replicable patient-care innovations in community pharmacy practice.
Conflict of Interest
This program evaluation analysis was funded by the Community Pharmacy Foundation (CPF). Co-author Anne Marie Kondic is Executive Director and Grants Administrator for the Community Pharmacy Foundation. The ideas articulated in the manuscript are those of the authors to characterize historical CPF grant funding and do not necessarily indicate or impact future funding priorities.

Type: Original Research


In this article I explore how George Eastman and the Eastman Kodak Company encouraged early twentieth-century camera users to think of snapshots as pictorial biographies. Analysing a wide selection of articles from the Kodakery, one of Kodak's most popular magazines in the first half of the twentieth century, I demonstrate that the company endeavoured to secure its prominence in the photographic market by encouraging members of the public to integrate picture-taking into everyday life, and regard photographs as self-contained repositories of biographical details. To this end, Kodak framed the speedy pace of life that characterised the practice of being in the industrial world as a reality that allegedly weakened the human eye and mind's ability to process the experience of life itself. Introducing the idea of the camera and picture-taking as the ultimate cures for this purported human deficiency, Kodak provided camera users with advice that helped to cement an understanding of photographs as surrogates of both the changing human body and individual subjects' experiences in time and space. As in popular culture, and sometimes also in academia, photographs are still widely regarded as pictorial biographies, I argue that considering the popular photographic industry's role in shaping photographic practices and photographs' perceived meanings can help clarify the relationship between photography and life-writing.


Apples and Ashes offers the first literary history of the Civil War South. The product of extensive archival research, it tells an expansive story about a nation struggling to write itself into existence. Confederate literature was in intimate conversation with other contemporary literary cultures, especially those of the United States and Britain. Thus, Coleman Hutchison argues, it has profound implications for our understanding of American literary nationalism and the relationship between literature and nationalism more broadly. Apples and Ashe s is organised by genre, with each chapter using a single text or a small set of texts to limn a broader aspect of Confederate literary culture. Hutchison discusses an understudied and diverse archive of literary texts including the literary criticism of Edgar Allan Poe; southern responses to Uncle Tom's Cabin ; the novels of Augusta Jane Evans; Confederate popular poetry; the de facto Confederate national anthem, "Dixie"; and several postwar southern memoirs. In addition to emphasising the centrality of slavery to the Confederate literary imagination, the book also considers a series of novel topics: the reprinting of European novels in the Confederate South, including Charles Dickens's Great Expectations and Victor Hugo's Les Miserables ; Confederate propaganda in Europe; and postwar Confederate emigration to Latin America. In discussing literary criticism, fiction, poetry, popular song, and memoir, Apples and Ashe s reminds us of Confederate literature's once-great expectations. Before their defeat and abjection--before apples turned to ashes in their mouths--many Confederates thought they were in the process of creating a nation and a national literature that would endure.


In the aftermath of the First World War, the poet Paul Valery wrote of a 'crisis of spirit', brought about by the instrumentalization of knowledge and the destructive subordination of culture to profit. Recent events demonstrate all too clearly that that the stock of mind, or spirit, continues to fall. The economy is toxically organized around the pursuit of short-term gain, supported by an infantilizing, dumbed-down media. Advertising technologies make relentless demands on our attention, reducing us to idiotic beasts, no longer capable of living. Spiralling rates of mental illness show that the fragile life of the mind is at breaking point.

Underlying these multiple symptoms is consumer capitalism, which systematically immiserates those whom it purports to liberate. Returning to Marx's theory, Stiegler argues that consumerism marks a new stage in the history of proletarianization. It is no longer just labour that is exploited, pushed below the limits of subsistence, but the desire that is characteristic of human spirit.

The cure to this malaise is to be found in what Stiegler calls a 'pharmacology of the spirit'. Here, pharmacology has nothing to do with the chemical supplements developed by the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmakon, defined as both cure and poison, refers to the technical objects through which we open ourselves to new futures, and thereby create the spirit that makes us human. By reference to a range of figures, from Socrates, Simondon and Derrida to the child psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, Stiegler shows that technics are both the cause of our suffering and also what makes life worth living.


Abstract A variety of surprising effects arise from the nonlinear light-matter interaction of circularly polarized laser light propagating through sodium vapor. We present experimental evidence for an asymmetry in the absorption of left hand and right hand circularly polarized light as well as for the creation of a collimated light beam of apposite polarization within the light-matter interaction region. Both effects are not yet explained by common theories.


The regional statistics provides the quantitative methods requested to a right knowledge of phenomena variability in territorial profile, as well as, the substantiation of regional strategies and policies of economic development. Also, the regional statistics supplies the explicit analyses of the space variability, being a principal instrument for the factor identification and evaluation of the disparities between "regional and territorial", between "territorial and national". In this way, the regional statistic research requires efficiency, particularity, opportunity, as the harmonization of national statistic information is not possible without taking into account the specific, regional and spatial variability. The factor modeling of spatial phenomena, from the research point of view, is a paradigm that requires a large scale of statistic techniques and methods to explicitly analyzing the general phenomena within a geographic space. The centroid method provides information about the extend to which, the joint factors, taken into consideration individually or in assembly, contribute to explaining the factor variability of the studied variable, enabling to select the joint factors with significant influence upon the analyzed model.


Parsing complex acoustic scenes involves an intricate interplay between bottom-up, stimulus-driven salient elements in the scene with top-down, goal-directed, mechanisms that shift our attention to particular parts of the scene. Here, we present a framework for exploring the interaction between these two processes in a simulated cocktail party setting. The model shows improved digit recognition in a multi-talker environment with a goal of tracking the source uttering the highest value. This work highlights the relevance of both data-driven and goal-driven processes in tackling real multi-talker, multi-source sound analysis.


A study on the interrelationship between the factors influencing vegetation change and composition of insectivorous plant community was carried out at Karungalagudi, India. Anthropogenic intervention at this site due to industrial development, agro-industrial pollution, mining, quarrying has accelerated the pace by which the microclimatic and environmental conditions have shown ever-changing temporal and special variation. This has resulted in alteration in community composition of insectivorous plants at this consortium. Anthropogenic activities along with changes in ecological process have altered the microclimatic conditions conducive for the sustenance of the tiny plant association among the members of insectivorous (Droseraceae, Lentibulariaceae), non insectivorous (Eriocaulaceae, Polygalaceae and Scrophulariaceae) and other lower plants. Changes in the environmental condition are reflected by the decline in species diversity, count of a single species and dynamics of community composition at the site. Understanding of the impact on the future changes has been hampered by the inability to disentangle conflicting, forcing factors that regulate the dynamic environment and vegetation composition of carnivorous and associated plants.


A spoofing attack is a critical issue in wireless communication in which a malicious transmitter outside a system attempts to be genuine. As a countermeasure against this, we propose a device-authentication method based on position identification using radio-propagation characteristics (RPCs). Not depending on information processing such as encryption technology, this method can be applied to sensing devices etc. which commonly have many resource restrictions. We call the space from which attacks achieve success as the "attack space." In order to confine the attack space inside of the target system to prevent spoofing attacks from the outside, formulation of the relationship between combinations of transceivers and the attack space is necessary. In this research, we consider two RPCs, the received signal strength ratio (RSSR) and the time difference of arrival (TDoA), and construct the attack-space model which uses these RPCs simultaneously. We take a tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) as a case study of this method and execute a security evaluation based on radio-wave-propagation simulation. The simulation results assuming multiple noise environments all indicate that it is possible to eliminate the attack possibility from a distant location.


Virtually all political organizations are "section 527" political organizations, which means that they are tax-exempt. 527 organizations are created to influence the election or defeat of public officials. This report compares the tax and election laws relating to political organizations and political committees prior to the enactment of P.L. 106-230 in an attempt to highlight the differences between them, and discusses some of the proposals in the 106th Congress to require additional reporting by organizations engaging in political activities. This report does not address the taxation of other tax-exempt organizations making political expenditures taxable under IRC § 527.


Description: A visual guide to market trading using intermarket analysis and exchange-traded funds With global markets and asset classes growing even more interconnected, intermarket analysis—the analysis of related asset classes or financial markets to determine their strengths and weaknesses—has become an essential part of any trader's due diligence. In Trading with Intermarket Analysis, John J. Murphy, former technical analyst for CNBC, lays out the technical and intermarket tools needed to understand global markets and illustrates how they help traders profit in volatile climates using exchange-traded funds. Armed with a knowledge of how economic forces impact various markets and financial sectors, investors and traders can profit by exploiting opportunities in markets about to rise and avoiding those poised to fall. Trading with Intermarket Analysis provides advice on trend following, chart patterns, moving averages, oscillators, spotting tops and bottoms, using exchange-traded funds, tracking market sectors, and the new world of intermarket relationships, all presented in a highly visual way. Gives readers a visually rich introduction to the world of intermarket analysis, the ultimate tool for beating the markets Provides practical advice on trend following, chart patterns, moving averages, oscillators, spotting tops and bottoms, using exchange-traded funds, tracking market sectors, and intermarket relationships Includes appendices on Japanese candlesticks and point-and-figure charting Comprehensive and easy-to-use, Trading with Intermarket Analysis presents the most important concepts related to using exchange-traded funds to beat the markets in a visually accessible format.


Belief-Desire-Intention agents typically pursue multiple goals in parallel. However the interleaving of steps in different intentions may result in conflicts, e.g., where the execution of a step in one plan makes the execution of a step in another concurrently executing plan impossible. Previous approaches to avoiding conflicts between concurrently executing intentions treat plans as atomic units, and attempt to interleave plans in different intentions so as to minimise conflicts. However some conflicts cannot be resolved by appropriate ordering of plans and can only be resolved by appropriate interleaving of steps within plans. In this paper, we present SA, an approach to intention selection based on Single-Player Monte Carlo Tree Search that selects which intention to progress at the current cycle at the level of individual plan steps. We evaluate the performance of our approach in a range of scenarios of increasing difficulty in both static and dynamic environments. The results suggest SA out-performs existing approaches to intention selection both in terms of goals achieved and the variance in goal achievement time.


The paper considers the question of why subjects are poor at performing two tasks simultaneously if both require attention. It is shown using positron emission tomography (PET) that during new learning of a motor sequence task the prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex are extensively activated, but that they are no longer activated when a motor sequence has been practiced for an hour until it is automatic. It is also shown that early in motor learning there is interference if subjects are required to generate verbs at the same time, but that the interference is much less if they are required to do this late in motor learning. The prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex are activated during verb generation. It is therefore suggested that the interference occurs centrally, and that it occurs in either prefrontal or anterior cingulate cortex.


The business of tertiary education has become more and more competitive in recent years due to reductions in government funding and higher study fees. As the nature of the environment grows more competitive the role of marketing, previously non-existent in most universities, has grown significantly. One of the key pieces of information that would assist the marketing effort of any university is an understanding of what determines university preference. This study examines university preference in Western Australia. A form of conjoint analysis, known as Adaptive Conjoint Analysis (ACA), was used to investigate the relative importance of a number of attributes to university preference. The study involved presenting 259 Western Australian school lea. ers (Year 12 students) with a combination of paper and disk based questionnaires. Results indicated that the four most important determinants of university preference for Western Australian school leavers were course suitability, academic reputation, job prospects and teaching quality. The results are compared to previous research findings and their implications for the marketing of universities are discussed.


Cuba is a country that is highly dependent on fossil fuel for the domestic electricity supply. Oil-fired power plants account for a major share of the power generation. A mutual issue with these power plants is that they suffer from being inefficient, outdated and insufficiently maintained. Another critical aspect is the quality of the oil, specifically the high levels of sulfur. The result is considerable emissions of SO2 which effects both environment and public health. It is of great interest to make the oil-fired power plants on Cuba more efficient. By improving plant efficiency it is possible to reduce the fuel consumption, resulting in less emissions of SO2 per generated kWh. The thesis analyses the Tallapiedra oil-fired steam power plant in Havana and investigates how different efficiency improvements affect the emissions of SO2. The efficiency of the Tallapiedra vapor cycle can be improved by raising boiler pressure and by increasing superheating temperature. Both these efficiency improvements reduce the emissions of SO2. However, the impact of reducing the sulfur content of the fuel is superior to the gains in terms of reduced emissions that can be accomplished solely from improving vapor cycle performance.


ABSTRACT In recent years several scholars claim to see a religious revival resulting in a resurgence of religious clashes. To what extent do these claims have validity? This article tries to answer this question by focusing on the importance of religion as a source of identity as well as a source of conflict for people, both over time and across cultures. Based on survey data from the World Value Surveys (WVS) as well as the Uppsala Conflict database, this article concludes that religion remains an important source of identity for people, and that to some extent it has become more important recently. Further, although the relative importance of religion varies between civilizations, religion remains an important factor in the West. These differences are not fully accounted for by economic and political factors, meaning that the type of civilization matters more for the importance of religion than whether the country is rich or poor. Religious differences also seem to increase the risk of intrastate armed conflict, at least since the end of the cold war. Although armed conflicts over identity are decreasing, those which do involve religious differences seem more intractable. In sum, these tendencies seem to confirm the notion of a resurgence of religion and religious conflicts. The assumption we live in a secularized world is false…. The world today is as furiously religious as it ever was. —Berger, The Desecularization of the World


Abstract. Mobile mapping systems are increasingly developing ad hoc solution and integrated approaches for rapid and accurate 3D digitization in different operating environments belonging to built heritage assets. The use of emerging compact, portable and low-cost solution for imaging and ranging well fits in the purposes of mapping complex indoor spaces especially for narrow and underground ones (tunnels, mines, caves and ancient spaces), that are very challenging contexts in which to experiment integrated technological solutions and tailored workflows. In these cases, the main key issues are generally the difficulty in the seamless positioning and the complete and successful metric-radiometric content association in metric surface, due to the reduced manoeuvring space and complex lighting conditions. The prevalent goals for which the 3D digitization could be conceived are, beyond the accurate metric documentation, the analysis of mutual relations of volumes in complex structures, the virtual reconstruction and navigation of spaces with reduced accessibility for dissemination aims. The new SLAM-based positioning solutions implemented in some recent portable systems for indoor/outdoor mapping are increasingly developing and favoured by geometric features extraction algorithms even in traveling through complex and irregular environments. In parallel, the possibility to exploit the advances in digital photogrammetry algorithms for image matching and dense reconstruction using action-cam, compact and fisheye cameras allows to deploy investigation solutions even in complex environments at first sight impossible to map by photogrammetric approach. Here within the F.I.N.E. benchmark in the site of the San Vigilio Castle (Bergamo) and the "nottole" tunnels, a fusion-based workflow is proposed. It is focused on the purposes of providing radiometrically enriched 3D data from the possibility to colourized ZEB point cloud and a textured mesh surfaces with an oriented image block, taking care of the time processing steps optimization.


In 2017 the Council of Europe opened for signature the first ever international treaty aimed at policing cultural property. As more attention has been paid to the damage done by the theft, looting, and illicit trafficking of cultural objects, the Council of Europe has met this challenge with an ambitious convention which aims to fill gaps in the current criminal laws. These gaps have too often been exploited by individuals in the illicit antiquities trade. The author had an opportunity to present his analysis of a draft version of the Council of Europe's Convention at a meeting held in Lucca, Italy in 2017. The meeting of that group of experts revealed a document that had the benefit of grand ambitions and tough talk on the policing of illicit antiquities. Yet there was pessimism expressed by many experts that the Convention would accomplish the goals which it set out to achieve. The essay which follows is an expansion of the remarks given at that meeting. It argues that the cultural property trade badly needs to be properly regulated. This includes not simply seizure and forfeiture of objects, but also the prosecution of persistent bad actors. The Nicosia Convention opens up new possibilities for prosecution at all levels of the illicit trade. Although the Convention is the first of its kind, it has been met with surprisingly little attention in the cultural heritage law academy. This essay introduces the main reforms offered by the Convention and argues that it points the way forward for future policing of the illicit trade in cultural property.


From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 'March' and 'People of the Book'. A young woman's struggle to save her family and her soul during the extraordinary year of 1666, when plague suddenly struck a small Derbyshire village. In 1666, plague swept through London, driving the King and his court to Oxford, and Samuel Pepys to Greenwich, in an attempt to escape contagion. The north of England remained untouched until, in a small community of leadminers and hill farmers, a bolt of cloth arrived from the capital. The tailor who cut the cloth had no way of knowing that the damp fabric carried with it bubonic infection. So begins the Year of Wonders, in which a Pennine village of 350 souls confronts a scourge beyond remedy or understanding. Desperate, the villagers turn to sorcery, herb lore, and murderous witch-hunting. Then, led by a young and charismatic preacher, they elect to isolate themselves in a fatal quarantine. The story is told through the eyes of Anna Frith who, at only 18, must contend with the death of her family, the disintegration of her society, and the lure of a dangerous and illicit attraction. Geraldine Brooks's novel explores love and learning, fear and fanaticism, and the struggle of 17th century science and religion to deal with a seemingly diabolical pestilence. 'Year of Wonders' is also an eloquent memorial to the real-life Derbyshire villagers who chose to suffer alone during England's last great plague.


The paper presents one view of the state of the art of the anthropology of tourism. It approaches this broad aim by, firstly, looking at the subject's foundations. The precursors of the field lead us, secondly, to a reading of five seminal ethnographic monographs, written during the course of the past twelve years or so, in which tourism plays a central role. The purpose here is to identify common thematic threads that provide us with the basis upon which to draw the contours of a plausible map of the field. This is followed, thirdly, by looking at a select collection of more recent work in order to trace the ways in which the subject is presently developing and likely to move in the future. The notion that underpins the paper, and which is explored in the opening pages, is enchantment. Following its use by various sociological and anthropological writers (including Weber, Gellner, Bennett, Gell, and others) it is argued both that the tourism industry itself depends in large measure on processes of enchantment and also that the idea is a powerful hermeneutic to frame studies of tourism. however, it is additionally argued that processes of enchantment are always located within political and economic contexts and thus that the fuller definition of the subject matter of the anthropology of tourism is the political-economy of enchantment.


Background/Context Although doctoral education is an important component of research universities, few investigations of doctoral education exist. Furthermore, with the push in education and in other disciplines to help beginning researchers understand multiple paradigmatic, epistemological, and theoretical orientations that define fields of study, few reports explore the attempts and their effects. Purpose This study sought to understand the unusually strong student responses to a new doctoral core course that aimed to initiate them into the competing theoretical, epistemological, and paradigmatic complexity of contemporary educational research. This study developed from the authors' experiences with the course in an attempt to understand students' conflicted responses. Setting A private urban graduate school of education was the setting for this study. Participants Participants were doctoral students who enrolled in the core course between 1999 and 2002. By virtue of the action research design, the authors were also participants. Research Design The overarching design developed from action research in that we sought to investigate a question that arose from our teaching practice. Our initial research question was, How can we understand students' highly charged responses to the doctoral core course? The inquiry drew upon three traditions in qualitative interpretive research: action research, collective memory work, and deep interpretation and reflection. Data Collection and Analysis Data were collected via three collective memory groups and through the sustained and collaborative sharing of the authors' own varied experiences of the doctoral core course. Findings/Results Students' stories of turmoil in the doctoral course are interpreted as disruptions that occurred when familiar ideas about knowledge and learning, identities, and social networks were breached. These disturbances—encounters with ambivalence, and the awareness of more than one way to interpret, categorize, and feel about phenomena—were related to instances in which their reading, perceptions, and identities were challenged. These disturbances were frightening, and students defended against the uncertainty and the attendant questions of their own competence by recuperating stable ideas of knowledge, self, and community through talk of authentic learning, noncompetitive peers, caring professors, and a harmonious academic community. Conclusions/Recommendations The doctoral core course took on a life of its own, like Frankenstein, achieving effects beyond the original intention and desires of its creators and its students. We now recognize some of the limits to the critical curriculum that we developed, revised, and enacted. We have sought to tame some disturbing aspects of the course and also to admit that teaching that interferes will always produce unpredictable and mixed responses.


John Bradshaw is Project Manager of Project 1 (Regional Analysis) in the GEODISC research project at the Australian Petroleum Cooperative Research Centre. He has a B.Sc. (Honours) and Ph.D. in Applied Geology from the University of New South Wales. John is an exploration technologist, with a regional knowledge of Australian sedimentary basins, and is employed as a Principal Research Scientist at the Australian Geological Survey Organisation. He has also worked for Esso (Australia) and on staff exchange for a year with WMC Petroleum and Ampolex/Mobil. He has extensive fieldwork experience throughout central Australia and Papua New Guinea, where he consulted for several years. John has previously run major industry-funded research projects examining the petroleum systems of Australia. He is a member of GSA, PESA, and AAPG. Peter Cook is currently Executive Director of the Australian Petroleum Cooperative Research Centre (APCRC) and a director of various companies. Previous positions include Senior Research Fellow (Australian National University), Division Chief-Associate Director (Australian Geological Survey), and Director of the British Geological Survey (1990–1998). It was during his time as Director of BGS that he became interested in the issue of geological sequestration of CO2, and on his return to Australia he established the GEODISC program of the APCRC. He has acted as an adviser to government organizations and companies in Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America, and he has held academic positions in Australia, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. Peter Cook holds degrees in geology from the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States. His research career has included studies of the sedimentology, geochemistry, and economic geology of ancient and modern environments in both inland and coastal parts of Australia and the evolution of Australia over the past 500 million years. He was leader of a major UNESCO program …