Amniotic band sequence describes highly variable spectrum of congenital anomalies that occur in association with amniotic bands. İntrauterine synechiae is a condition in which scar tissue develops within the uterine cavity. We aim to present a case of amniotic band sequence and a case of intrauterine synechiae and compare their ultrasonographic findings. Ultrasonography revealed contraction ring in the right groin area of the first fetus but second fetus was healthy. The diagnosis of amniotic band sequence is based upon the presence of characteristic structural findings on prenatal ultrasound or postnatal physical examination. The diagnosis of intrauterine adhesions is based upon visualization of intrauterine adhesions either directly by hysteroscopy or indirectly by other imaging studies. The floor of the intrauterine adhesions is widely and lateral of the uterine cavity and occurs from four layers while the amniotic band is a thin layer and forms fluctuations in the amniotic fluid. Amniotic bands may cause variable spectrum of congenital anomalies whereas intrauterine adhesions do not increase the probability of fetal anomaly because it is out of the amniotic cavity.


Near-zone Förster resonant energy transfer is the main effect responsible for excitation energy flow in the optical region and is frequently used to obtain structural information. In the hard X-ray region, the Förster law is inadequate because the wavelength is generally shorter than the distance between donors and acceptors; hence, far-zone resonant energy transfer (FZRET) becomes dominant. We demonstrate the characteristics of X-ray FZRET and its fundamental differences with the ordinary near-zone resonant energy-transfer process in the optical region by recording and analyzing two qualitatively different systems: high-density CuO polycrystalline powder and SF6 diluted gas. We suggest a method to estimate geometrical structure using X-ray FZRET employing as a ruler the distance-dependent shift of the acceptor core ionization potential induced by the Coulomb field of the core-ionized donor.


Farmers face constraints in farming activities with differing impacts in terms of type and dept. The, relatively recent, GSM introduction in Nigeria has eased the conduct of business activities including agricultural business with elimination of hitches in the communication system. This study assessed constraints to the use of GSM in farm activities of crop farming households in South-west Nigeria. Two out of six States' Agricultural Development Programmes (ADPs) in South-west Nigeria namely Oyo and Osun States were selected for the study. 130 farmers were randomly sampled from two randomly selected agricultural zones in the (selected) State ADPs. Primary data was obtained with the use of well-structured questionnaire through interviews of respondents. Descriptive statistics, ANOVA and chi-square techniques were used in data analysis. Result revealed that males (79.2%) dominated crop farming in the study area. The major constraints in GSM use by farmers were network coverage (31.58%) and financial (36.84%). All (100%) of the farmers asserted that using GSM in farm business activities is worthwhile and a necessity. Furthermore, the constraints to effective use of GSM by farmers differed significantly for different levels of socio-economic variables such as farm household expenditures and income (p < 0.01 respectively). It was recommended that any action plan to tackle constraints to GSM use by farmers must take into consideration farmers' dynamics such as differences in social interactions, farm households' expenditures and income as well as cultivation practices. Consequently, it is expected that enhanced technology and extension information dissemination to crop farmers will be achieved.


A set of three dedicated triggers designed to detect long-lived neutral particles decaying throughout the ATLAS detector to a pair of hadronic jets is described. The efficiencies of the triggers for selecting displaced decays as a function of the decay position are presented for simulated events. The effect of pile-up interactions on the trigger efficiencies and the dependence of the trigger rate on instantaneous luminosity during the 2012 data-taking period at the LHC are discussed.


Once upon a time, Carolene Products provided an inspiring charter for the exercise of the power of judicial review. Intervene to correct flaws in the political process, Carolene instructed courts, but otherwise allow American democracy to operate unimpeded. In this Article, I use the Supreme Court's recent decision in Rucho v Common Cause to argue that the current Court flips Carolene on its head. It both fails to act when the political process is malfunctioning and intercedes to block other actors from ameliorating American democracy. Rucho is the quintessential example of judicial apathy when, under Carolene, judicial engagement was sorely needed. The Court acknowledged that partisan gerrymandering offends democratic values like majoritarianism, responsiveness, and participation. But the Court didn't take the obvious next step under Carolene and hold that extreme gerrymanders are unlawful. Instead it went in exactly the opposite direction, announcing that partisan gerrymandering claims are categorically nonjusticiable.

Rucho, however, is only the tip of the current Court's anti-Carolene spear. Past cases have compounded (and future cases will likely exacerbate) the democratic damage by preventing non-judicial institutions from addressing defects in the political process. Looking back, the Court's campaign finance decisions have struck down regulation after regulation aimed at curbing the harms of money in politics. Looking forward, the Court may well nullify the main non-judicial response to gerrymandering: independent redistricting commissions adopted through voter initiatives. What can possibly explain this doctrinal pattern? Conventional modes of analysis — originalism, judicial restraint, respect for precedent, and so on — all fail as justifications. They're riddled by too many exceptions to be persuasive. What does seem to run like a red thread through the current Court's rulings, though, is partisanship. The anti-Carolene Court may spurn pro-democratic judicial review in part because, at this historical juncture, it often happens to be pro-Democratic.


Objectives: A qualitative study was made to explore healthcare staff's discussions about existential issues when caring for patients with cancer on a surgical ward, as described in supervision sessions. Methods: Secondary content analysis of twelve tape-recorded supervision sessions was used. The sessions lasted for two hours every third week during one year. The supervision sessions were conducted at a surgical clinic in a county hospital in the middle of Sweden. Twenty-one participants, 25 to 55 years of age (MD=38) who had worked on a surgical clinic for 1 to 30 years (MD=10) participated. Findings: The analysis showed that reflections about existential issues do exist among healthcare staff in surgical wards. There are barriers, in staff themselves as well as in the organisation hindering them to encounter patients' existential needs which is illustrated by the domain: "Health care staff's discussions of their existential dilemmas" and the themes "feelings of powerlessness", "identifying with patients", and "getting close or keeping a distance". Staff observed that patients have existential needs which are illustrated by the domain: "Health care staff's discussions of patients' existential distress" and the themes "being in despair" and "feelings of isolation". Conclusions: This study shows that healthcare staff in surgical wards is conscious of patients' existential distress. Yet staff lack strategies to encounter patients' existential issues. There is a need for knowledge about the meaning of existential issues and education for staff working in a surgical ward and how to encounter patients' existential needs.


Although non‐adherence is common across all branches of medicine, psychotic disorders pose additional challenges that increase its risk. Despite the importance of non‐adherence, clinicians generally spend too little time on assessing and addressing adherence attitudes and behaviors. Importantly, how adherence is measured significantly impacts the findings, and the most frequently employed methods of asking patients or judging adherence indirectly based on efficacy or tolerability information have poor validity. Novel technologies are being developed that directly assess adherence and that can also be used to both provide real‐time feedback to clinicians and serve as an intervention with patients. Several treatments are available that can positively impact adherence. Among psychosocial interventions, those combining multiple approaches and involving multiple domains seem to be most effective. Although long‐acting injectable antipsychotics are theoretically a very powerful tool to assure adherence and signal non‐adherence, recent results from randomized controlled trials failed to show superiority compared to oral antipsychotics. These data are in contrast to nationwide cohort studies and mirror‐image studies, which arguably include more representative patients receiving long‐acting antipsychotics in clinical practice. This disconnect suggests that traditional randomized controlled trials are not necessarily the best way to study interventions that are thought to work via reducing non‐adherence. Clearly, non‐adherence is likely to remain a major public health problem despite treatment advances. However, increasing knowledge about factors affecting adherence and leveraging novel technologies can enhance its early assessment and adequate management, particularly in patients with psychotic disorders.


Slightly alkaline bicarbonate sulfate ground water, similar to modern ground water, is thought to have been the agent that formed uranium deposits in fluviatile sandstone in Wyoming. Such water has the general characteristics of the aqueous solution which investigations indicate could transport uranium at low temperatures and from which it could be precipitated. Lack of evidence for conduits in underlying rocks and absence of igneous rocks near deposits suggest that they were not formed by juvenile thermal water. The large volume of mildly oxidized rocks marginal to the deposits suggests that oxygen-poor connate water was not the agent. Modern ground water moves downward in the same direction as associated surface drainage; the ancient water which formed the deposits undoubtedly moved in a similar way. Besides being the agent for emplacement of uranium, ground water may be a guide to general areas in which deposits occur.


This book explores the dynamic changes now taking place in the South Korean government as a result of recent social and economic liberalization. Sung Deuk Hahm and L. Christopher Plein trace the emergence in Korea of a post-developmental state, in which both increasingly autonomous capital interests and growing public expectations of a higher quality of life challenge existing authoritarian institutions. Separating out the constituent parts of the Korean state, they then explore the evolving roles of the Korean presidency and bureaucracy in setting national policy. The authors analyze the importance of social and cultural factors, as well as the motives of individual political actors, in shaping institutional change in Korea. They show how shifting socioeconomic conditions have altered the way political decisions are made. Hahm and Plein illustrate these transitions with concrete examples of policy making in the area of technology development and transfer - an area of critical importance to Korea's rapid modernization.


There is little to refute in Collerton et al.'s argument that recurrent complex visual hallucinations involve multiple physiological mechanisms, and the target article's proposed PAD model implicitly incorporates this concept, advancing the field. The novel concept in this model is the intrusion of hallucinatory proto-objects into relatively preserved scenes. The weakness of the model is the lack of physiological detail for this mechanism.


The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) is focusing on and shifting toward a Network Enabled Capability (NEC) approach for improved military effect. This is being realised through the physical networking and coherent integration of existing and future resources including sensors, effectors, support services, and decision makers. This paper is a case study (for NEC) of how the development and use of scenarios for demonstrating academic research can aid and help manage innovation. It illustrates the development, use and application of a multiple stakeholder scenario within the NECTISE research programme that helped establish and exploit a collaborative multidisciplinary working environment and how it helped manage innovative academic research. Our experience suggests that this approach can support the engagement of multiple stakeholders with differing perceptions and priorities and will provide a scenario development strategy for improved research and innovation for many other large systems.


Purpose To descriptively assess medical students' concerns for their mental and emotional state, perceived need to conceal mental problems, perceived level of support at university, knowledge and use of student support services, and experience of stresses of daily life. Study design From March to September 2011, medical students at an Australian university were invited to complete an anonymous online survey. Results 475 responses were received. Students rated study and examinations (48.9%), financial concerns (38.1%), isolation (19.4%) and relationship concerns (19.2%) as very or extremely stressful issues. Knowledge of available support services was high, with 90.8% indicating they were aware of the university's medical centre. Treatment rates were modest (31.7%). Students' concerns about their mental state were generally low, but one in five strongly felt they needed to conceal their emotional problems. Conclusions Despite widespread awareness of appropriate support services, a large proportion of students felt they needed to conceal mental and emotional problems. Overall treatment rates for students who were greatly concerned about their mental and emotional state appeared modest, and, although comparable with those of similarly aged community populations, may reflect undertreatment. It would be appropriate for universities to address stressors identified by students. Strategies for encouraging distressed students to obtain appropriate assessment and treatment should also be explored. Those students who do seek healthcare are most likely to see a primary care physician, suggesting an important screening role for these health professionals.


This paper discusses the conditions of birth and growth of business networks in the veterinary drugs sector based on Brazilian examples examined by the authors. The beginnings of business networks are approached from two paradigms, one advocating the idea that the birth and growth of networks depend on some variables' historical processes which define social networks, such as trust, cooperation and commitment, and another postulating that these attributes are not necessary for the formation of networks, it being sufficient to have only consistent economic expectations and a proper agreement. The aim of this paper was to assess which of the two network paradigms (the social paradigm and the business paradigm) best explains the birth of two networks in the veterinary drugs sector. An exploratory study was conducted, using the case study methodology, to collect and analyze information from these two types of network. The analyses of the two starting networks (one a failure and the other a case of initial success) confirm the importance of trust, cooperation and commitment in relationships. The final discussion indicates some theoretical and managerial paths that can be followed in social networks as a backdrop for business networks in the agricultural sector.


Study is the Fourth to Show a Significantly Reduced Risk of Disease Recurrence Pairing the targeted therapy Herceptin with chemotherapy in patients with early stage breast cancer significantly increases disease-free survival time in women who test positive for a genetic mutation that results in a particularly aggressive form of the disease, according to a large, international study. The study also tested Herceptin with a chemotherapy combination that eliminated Adriamycin, an anthracycline commonly used to treat breast cancer but a drug that, when used with Herceptin, can result in heart damage. That regimen also significantly improves survival. Conducted by the Breast Cancer International Research Group (BCIRG), this study is the fourth large clinical trial to show that Herceptin plus chemotherapy significantly reduces risk of disease recurrence in early breast cancer. Results were presented Thursday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium by Dr. Dennis Slamon, co-chairman of BCIRG, director of Clinical/Translational Research at UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center and the scientist whose laboratory and clinical research laid the groundwork for the development of Herceptin. "The chemotherapy combinations we tested with Herceptin proved to be superior to the best available standard therapy for early breast cancer," said Slamon, principal investigator for the BCIRG study. "This further illustrates the promise of targeted therapies and moves us closer to our goal of minimizing the toxicity of therapy while maximizing efficacy." Herceptin is effective in women with HER-2 positive breast cancer, about one in four diagnosed with the disease every year. HER-2 positive breast cancer patients have a particularly aggressive form of the disease, a poorer prognosis and shorter survival times, said Slamon, who discovered the link between HER-2 positivity and aggressive breast cancer in 1987. The study enrolled 3,222 women from all over the world with early stage HER-2 positive breast cancer between March 2001 and February 2004. Patients received one of three regimens: The standard therapy of Adriamycin and Carboplatin followed by Taxotere (ACT). An experimental regimen of Adriamycin and Carboplatin followed by Taxotere and one year of Herceptin (ACTH). An experimental regimen of Taxotere and Carboplatin with one year of Herceptin (TCH). Reduction in risk of disease recurrence, the study's primary endpoint, was 51 percent in the ACTH study arm and 39 percent in the TCH arm. "This is very promising news for the 250,000 women worldwide, including 50,000 in the United States, who will be diagnosed every year with this aggressive breast cancer," Slamon said. The BCIRG study also resulted in two other important findings. Researchers knew that giving Herceptin with Adriamycin resulted in heart damage in some patients, the most severe of which was congestive heart failure. It was theorized, however, that this damage was not long lasting. But the BCIRG study showed the cardiac toxicity was significant and still persisted for more than 18 months at the date of the last follow up, Slamon said. This is vital information for doctors and patients to have when deciding which treatment regimen to use. Of the 3,222 patients in the study, 306 experienced a greater than 10 percent loss of heart function. Of those, 91 patients (9 percent) were enrolled in the ACT study arm; 82 patients (8 percent) were in the TCH arm; and 180 patients (17.3 percent) were in the ACTH arm, which paired Adriamycin with Herceptin. "We've always known that the major safety problem with Herceptin has been cardiac toxicity when it is used with Adriamycin," Slamon said. "When breast cancer patients lose their hair, it grows back. When we suppress their bone marrow, that comes back, too. Heart failure, however, is a much larger problem, especially if it does not improve over time." The good news, Slamon said, is that Herceptin given with the chemotherapy combination that eliminates Adriamycin is still significantly superior to the best available chemotherapy alone, reducing risk of relapse by 39 percent. That gives physicians and patients worried about heart damage an additional option. The study's other important finding is that a subset of HER-2 positive patients - about 35 percent - also have amplification of a gene called topo II, which makes them more likely to respond to Adriamycin. As Herceptin targets HER-2, Adriamycin targets topo II. Patients who test positive for amplification of both HER-2 and topo II might opt for the drug regimen with Adriamycin, risking heart damage in exchange for a better response to therapy. Slamon said a test that indicates both HER-2 and topo II amplification is being developed so doctors will better be able to tell which patients should be on which drug regimen. "Women will have the information they need to decide if the risk is worth the benefit," Slamon said. At UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center, doctors are testing Herceptin in combination with other targeted therapies such as the angiogenesis inhibitor Avastin. That, Slamon said, may be the future of breast cancer therapy - the elimination of chemotherapy. "In the future, we're likely to come up with therapies that are very much improved over what we have now and offer maximum efficacy with little or no toxicity," Slamon said. UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center comprises more than 240 researchers and clinicians engaged in research, prevention, detection, control, treatment and education. One of the nation's largest comprehensive cancer centers, the Jonsson center is dedicated to promoting research and translating the results into leading-edge clinical studies. In July 2005, the Jonsson Cancer Center was named the best cancer center in the western United States by U.S. News & World Report, a ranking it has held for six consecutive years. For more information on the Jonsson Cancer Center, visit our web site at www.cancer.mednet.ucla.edu Kim Irwin Director, Media Relations UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center (310) 206-2805


This academic presentation is based on the slides we prepared for delivery by one of us at the Federal Trade Commission hearing on Competition and Consumer Protection in the 21st Century on December 6, 2018, which focused on common ownership. The slides discuss the implications of our research work for the common ownership debate. The research work whose implications we consider includes Bebchuk, Cohen, and Hirst, The Agency Problems of Institutional Investors (2017) (https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2982617) and Bebchuk and Hirst, Index Funds and the Future of Corporate Governance: Theory, Evidence, and Policy (2018) (https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3282794).

We argue that the attack on common ownership is misguided.The claims of common ownership critics, we argue, fail to take into account how the agency problems of investment fund managers provide them with incentives to under-invest in stewardship and to be deferential toward the corporate managers of portfolio companies. Given these problems, policymakers should be primarily concerned that investment fund managers engage too little and not that they engage too much. The measures advocated by common ownership critics are not merely unnecessary but would be counterproductive; they could well discourage investment fund managers from stewardship activities that should be encouraged.


Accurate prosthesis classification is critical for total joint arthroplasty surveillance and assessment of comparative effectiveness. Historically, prosthesis classification was based solely on the names of the prosthesis manufacturers. As a result, prosthesis designs changed without corresponding name changes, and other prostheses' names changed over time without substantial design modifications. As the number of prostheses used in total joint arthroplasty on the market increased, catalog and lot numbers associated with prosthesis descriptions were introduced by manufacturers. Currently, these catalog and lot numbers are not standardized, and there is no consensus on categorization of these numbers into brands or subbrands. Classification of the attributes of a prosthesis also varies, limiting comparisons of prostheses across studies and reports. The development of a universal prosthesis classification system would standardize prosthesis classification and enhance total joint arthroplasty research collaboration worldwide. This is a current area of focus for the International Consortium of Orthopaedic Registries (ICOR).


'Open yourself up again to all that terrible light and savage bliss and deafening reverberation ...' In the Summer of 1971, a charismatic family seeks refuge in the quiet, English coastal backwater of Pett Level. Bran Cleary is a controversial Irish muralist; his fractious and promiscuous wife (and muse) 'Lonely' Allaway is half Aboriginal; their strange, sickly daughter, Orla Nor, is almost a Saint. Thirteen years later, a shifty individual turns up in Pett Level, apparently determined to get to the bottom of the bizarre and ultimately tragic events which unfolded in the aftermath of that arrival. But does he really want to understand, or is he just way too close to the story to make any clear sense of it? And what of the locals who seem so determined to resist and undermine his investigations? 'In The Approaches' is a fabulously twisted comedy of very bad manners which starts out as a seaside idyll and ends up as a pilgrimage - sometimes sacred, sometimes profane, and frequently both at once. Set in a 1984 which seems almost as distantly located in the past as Orwell's was in the future, Nicola Barker's tenth novel offers a captivating glimpse of something more shocking than any dystopia - the possibility of faith.


This thesis is about integrating the sense of smell into artificial intelligent systems. In order to endow such systems with olfaction, we use a device called an electronic nose or e-nose. An e-nose consists of a number of gas sensors with partial selectivity and a pattern recognition component trained to recognize both complex and simple types of odours. Discussed in this thesis are a number of challenges which makes the integration of electronic noses into an intelligent system non-trivial. Challenges unique to the current technological state of odour identification include the characteristics of the gas sensing technologies such as sensitivity and drift, and the limitations of the pattern recognition algorithms to cope with these characteristics. Another challenge general to olfaction is the inherent difficulty in conveying or communicating a perception of an odour to a human user. If we are to consider e-noses into today's and tomorrow's intelligent systems, it is important to examine the ingredients currently present in such systems. Sensing modalities such as vision, sonar and infrared are often used to collect a number of different properties about the external world. Planning and reasoning components are used to determine the appropriate responses to execute. The system can also perform actions which can then change the state of the environment. Using an electronic nose in a system containing these properties requires much more than simply mounting a physical sensor. In order for the system to really embody electronic olfaction, each level of the system architecture needs to be considered. We investigate the use of current techniques from AI and robotics that are available to confront these integration problems. Specifically this thesis investigates (1) the abstraction e-nose data from low-level sensor readings to a high-level representation of odour concepts, (2) the combination of perceptual information from the e-nose with other sensing modalities (3) coordination of sensing actions to determine where and when the e-nose should be activated in this context. We view these three constituents as important contributions for the advancement of electronic olfaction towards real application domains ranging from safety and security to the food industry. The major experimental platforms used for validation consists of a mobile robot equipped with an electronic nose and vision and tactile modalities that can perform a number of olfactory related tasks. Other experimental platforms include e-noses as part of a distributed sensing network and also as part of a visual interface interacting with humans.


Fact-centric information needs are rarely one-shot; users typically ask follow-up questions to explore a topic. In such a conversational setting, the user's inputs are often incomplete, with entities or predicates left out, and ungrammatical phrases. This poses a huge challenge to question answering (QA) systems that typically rely on cues in full-fledged interrogative sentences. As a solution, we develop CONVEX, an unsupervised method that can answer incomplete questions over a knowledge graph (KG) by maintaining conversation context using entities and predicates seen so far and automatically inferring missing or ambiguous pieces for follow-up questions. The core of our method is a graph exploration algorithm that judiciously expands a frontier to find candidate answers for the current question. To evaluate CONVEX, we release ConvQuestions, a crowdsourced benchmark with 11,200 distinct conversations from five different domains. We show that CONVEX: (i) adds conversational support to any stand-alone QA system, and (ii) outperforms state-of-the-art baselines and question completion strategies.


This paper presents a model to estimate travel time using cumulative plots. Three
different cases considered are i) case-Det, for only detector data; ii) case-DetSig,
for detector data and signal controller data and iii) case-DetSigSFR: for detector
data, signal controller data and saturation flow rate. The performance of the
model for different detection intervals is evaluated. It is observed that detection
interval is not critical if signal timings are available. Comparable accuracy can
be obtained from larger detection interval with signal timings or from shorter
detection interval without signal timings. The performance for case-DetSig and
for case-DetSigSFR is consistent with accuracy generally more than 95%
whereas, case-Det is highly sensitive to the signal phases in the detection interval
and its performance is uncertain if detection interval is integral multiple of signal
cycles.


Demographic and epidemiological transitions in global South countries, on the one hand, and the neoliberalisation both of national health systems and international development aid, on the other, have produced widening health gaps between those who can afford care and those who cannot. The vast majority of so-called medical tourists receiving treatment in global South destinations today are themselves from other parts of the global South, their transnational movements reflecting and fostering asymmetrical social, economic and political relations that enable actors in some countries to be in a position to address the care deficiencies of people in other countries. This chapter argues that medical tourism reconfigures relations between and within source and destination countries' populations, by establishing novel forms of post-national market-mediated solidarities and forms of aid. Furthermore, medical tourism reconfigures relations between national governments and their citizens by advancing subjects' neoliberal self-responsibilisation or reclaiming bonds of social solidarity between states and their subjects. These alliances between medical tourism destinations' private hospitals, at one end, and national and state governments, insurers, intermediaries, and individuals and their families, at the other, largely bypass government-to-government diplomatic and aid relations. This upends conventional thinking about the geography of care and solidarity.


Previous research provides evidence that much of the cross-sectional variation in equity returns can be explained by firm characteristics or sectors such as market capitalization, price-to-earnings ratios, change in operating earnings, and book-to-market ratios. Some of the newest equity investment vehicles these days are exchange-traded funds, or ETFs. These funds trade very closely to the value of the underlying stocks in the portfolio and are generally categorized by indexes or sectors that they track. This study demonstrates the potential for portfolio return enhancement when portfolio optimization techniques are employed on subsets of a broader population of stocks that are grouped according to sectors similar to those that catagorize ETFs. Specifically, ex ante optimization over portfolios formed on the basis of decile classifications of market capitalization, price-to-earnings ratios, change in operating earnings, and book-to-market ratios demonstrates significant potential for enhancing overall equity portfolio returns relative to value-weighted and equal-weighted benchmark portfolios constructed from the population of stocks from which the characteristic portfolios are formed.


Defining a research question, describing why it needs to be answered and explaining how methods are selected and applied are challenging tasks for anyone embarking on academic research within the field of landscape architecture. Whether you are an early career researcher or a senior academic, it is essential to draw meaningful conclusions and robust answers to research questions. Research in Landscape Architecture provides guidance on the rationales needed for selecting methods and offers direction to help to frame and design academic research within the discipline. Over the last couple of decades the traditional orientation in landscape architecture as a field of professional practice has gradually been complemented by a growing focus on research. This book will help you to develop the connections between research, teaching and practice, to help you to build a common framework of theory and research methods. Bringing together contributions from landscape architects across the world, this book covers a broad range of research methodologies and examples to help you conduct research successfully. Also included is a study in which the editors discuss the most important priorities for the research within the discipline over the coming years. This book will provide a definitive path to developing research within landscape architecture.


Introduction: Shewanella spp. are a major cause of fish spoilage. Terminalia spp. have a long history of medicinal uses, including being used to treat bacterial infections. Despite their well-established antibacterial properties, the Indian Terminalia spp. have not been tested for the ability to inhibit the growth of fish spoilage bacteria. Methods: Solvent extracts were prepared using Indian Terminalia spp. known to inhibit microbial growth. The growth inhibitory activity of the extracts was investigated by disc diffusion assay against four Shewanella spp. environmental isolates. Their MIC values were calculated to quantify and compare their relative efficacies. Toxicity was determined using the Artemia franciscana nauplii bioassay. Results: Extracts prepared from several Indian Terminalia spp. displayed potent antibacterial activity in the disc diffusion assay against the environmental Shewanella spp. isolates. The methanolic T. chebula fruit extract was particularly effective at inhibiting Shewanella spp. growth, with MIC values of 198, 329, 162 and 176 μg/mL against S. putrefaciens, S. baltica, S. frigidimarina and S. loihica respectively. The T. chebula fruit ethyl acetate and T. catappa fruit methanolic extracts were similarly potent, with MIC values generally substantially <1000 μg/mL against all Shewanella spp. In contrast, the T. catappa bark and all T. arjuna extracts were only moderate growth inhibitors (MIC values 1000-5000 μg/mL). All other extracts were either inactive or of only low growth inhibitory activity. All the extracts were nontoxic, with all recorded LC50 values substantially >1000 μg/mL. Conclusions: The potent growth inhibitory activity of the methanolic and ethyl acetate T. chebula fruit extracts against all Shewanella spp. indicates their potential in the prevention of fish spoilage. Furthermore, the lack of toxicity of these extracts indicates their suitability for use as natural fish preservatives.


Environmental data are spatial, temporal, and often come with many zeros. In this paper, we included space‐time random effects in zero‐inflated Poisson (ZIP) and 'hurdle' models to investigate haulout patterns of harbor seals on glacial ice. The data consisted of counts, for 18 dates on a lattice grid of samples, of harbor seals hauled out on glacial ice in Disenchantment Bay, near Yakutat, Alaska. A hurdle model is similar to a ZIP model except it does not mix zeros from the binary and count processes. Both models can be used for zero‐inflated data, and we compared space‐time ZIP and hurdle models in a Bayesian hierarchical model. Space‐time ZIP and hurdle models were constructed by using spatial conditional autoregressive (CAR) models and temporal first‐order autoregressive (AR(1)) models as random effects in ZIP and hurdle regression models. We created maps of smoothed predictions for harbor seal counts based on ice density, other covariates, and spatio‐temporal random effects. For both models predictions around the edges appeared to be positively biased. The linex loss function is an asymmetric loss function that penalizes overprediction more than underprediction, and we used it to correct for prediction bias to get the best map for space‐time ZIP and hurdle models. Published in 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


If a vertical line is surrounded by a tilted frame, it is typically perceived as being tilted in the opposite direction. This rod-and-frame illusion is thought to be driven by two distinct mechanisms. Large frames cause a distortion of the egocentric reference frame, with perceived vertical biased in the direction of the frame's tilt (i.e., a visuovestibular effect). Small frames are thought to drive the illusion through local contrast effects within early visual processing. Wenderoth and Beh (1977) found that the visuovestibular effect could be induced by a stimulus consisting of only two lines, indicating that an intact frame was not necessary to achieve the illusion. Furthermore, Li and Matin (2005) demonstrated that the Gestalt of an intact frame provided no additional impact to the illusion, as the visuovestibular effect of an intact frame was less than the sum of its parts. It is unclear whether the same is true for the local contrast effects caused by small frames. Participants performed a perceptual task in which they reported the orientation of a target line (12' in length) presented in the context of either an intact frame (32' on a side, tilted ± 15°) or partial frame (that is, flankers consisting of either the top and bottom of the frame in collinear locations with respect to the target line, or the left and right sides in lateral locations). Significant contrast effects occurred for all stimulus conditions, with the top and bottom flankers causing an effect substantially larger than that of the left and right flankers. Indeed, the effect of the top and bottom flankers even surpassed that of the intact frame, indicating that the overall effect of the frame was a weighted average of the two flanker conditions. These findings suggest an underadditivity of the cellular mechanisms responsible for the contextual effects of lateral and collinear flankers.


Do investors pay enough attention to long-term fundamentals? We consider the case of demographic information. Cohort size fluctuations produce forecastable demand changes for age-sensitive sectors, such as toys, bicycles, beer, life insurance, and nursing homes. These demand changes are predictable once a specific cohort is born. We use lagged consumption and demographic data to forecast future consumption demand growth induced by changes in age structure. We find that demand forecasts predict profitability by industry. Moreover, forecasted demand changes 5 to 10 years in the future predict annual industry returns. One additional percentage point of annualized demand growth due to demographics predicts a 5 to 10 percentage point increase in annual abnormal industry stock returns. However, forecasted demand changes over shorter horizons do not predict stock returns. The predictability results are more substantial for industries with higher barriers to entry and with more pronounced age patterns in consumption. A trading strategy exploiting demographic information earns an annualized risk-adjusted return of 5 to 7 percent. We present a model of underreaction to information about the distant future that is consistent with the findings.


In May 1992, the new airport in Munich, Germany, became fully operational. In 1991, two research programmes within the Bavarian Climate Research Programme (BayFORKLIM) in Germany/Bavaria were established to measure, calculate and model the assumed change of the air quality in the vicinity of the new airport. By analysing the synoptic and local weather situation, measured and modelled air pollution distribution modifications in the air quality can be recognised. The results show no effect on the ozone but some effect in the NOx concentrations. The sum of NOx (NO + NO2) concentrations shifts towards lower NO and higher NO2) concentrations. The morning peak of the NO maximum occurs about one hour later than before the operation. During the weekend a significant increase of NOx is seen within a range of 6 to 7 ppbv. The modelling studies indicate that emissions from motor vehicles are the predominant source of NOx, aircraft emissions are of lesser importance.


This study tested the hypothesis that the magnitude of rectus femoris (RF) damage and the repeated bout effect (RBE) would be greater after knee extensor eccentric exercise performed in a supine (long RF lengths) than a sitting (short RF lengths) position, and the muscle length effects would be more prominent at the proximal than distal RF. Young untrained men were placed to one of the two groups (n = 14 per group). S group performed the knee extensor eccentric exercise in the sitting position for the first bout and the supine position for the second bout, and L group performed the exercise in the supine position for two bouts, with 4 weeks between bouts. Dependent variables included evoked and maximal voluntary isometric contraction (MVC) torque, electromyography (EMG) during MVC, muscle soreness, and shear modulus, which were measured before and 1‐3 days after each exercise bout. After the first bout, L group in comparison with S group showed greater (P < .05) changes in hip flexor MVC torque (average of 1‐3 days post‐exercise: −11.1 ± 9.4% vs −5.0 ± 7.5%), proximal RF EMG (−22.4 ± 16% vs −9.0 ± 21.9%), and proximal RF shear modulus (33.2 ± 22.8% vs 16.9 ± 13.5%). No significant differences between groups were evident for any of other variables after the first bout including knee extensor MVC torque, and for the changes in all variables after the second bout. These results supported the hypothesis that RF damage would be greater for the spine than sitting position especially at the proximal region, but did not support the hypothesis about the RBE.


Abstract The field sampling of the Aphodiini scarab beetles in Dosang environs (Astrakhan Province, European Russia) in 2006–2012 resulted in the collection of 44 species. All but one of them belong to Aphodius Hellwig (sensu lato). This is apparently the richest recorded local Aphodiini fauna in Russia. The high Aphodiini diversity in the area can be explained by the long vegetative season with high effective heat sum, large livestock providing abundant food resources throughout the year, and location in the transition belt between Volga-Akhtuba Floodplain and Desert floristic districts. The core fauna consists of mesophilous species widely distributed in the Palearctic region and confined to the intrazonal habitats. Other species have ranges mostly limited to the steppe, semidesert, and desert zones.


Iron oxides are minerals resistant to chemical alteration and mechanical abrasion, and which have ferromagnetic properties and a range of chemical compositions. These characteristics are useful as indicator minerals in exploration, for example using till in glaciated terrains. Iron oxide proportions, grain size, and chemical composition of till samples collected near the Sue-Dianne Cu-Au-Ag IOCG deposit in the Great Bear magmatic zone (Northwest Territories, Canada) and magmatic Ni-Cu deposits in the Thompson Nickel Belt (Manitoba, Canada) show that subsamples containing c. 100 grains from the 0.25–1.0 mm grain size ferromagnetic fraction yield a representative mineralogical and compositional range of oxide grains from a till sample. Subsamples with less than 100 grains yield statistically less representative data. The 1–2 mm grain size fraction typically contains too few iron oxide grains and thus using this fraction is not statistically representative. The composition of iron oxides from eight till and five bedrock samples was determined along transects up- and down-ice of the Cu-Au-Ag Sue-Dianne IOCG deposit. At, and immediately down-ice of, the deposit, hematite is the principal oxide and shows dominant BIF and IOCG chemical signatures in the Ca+Al+Mn v. Ti+V discriminant diagram. Up-ice and farther down-ice of the deposit, magnetite and titanomagnetite are the dominant oxides and magnetite shows dominant Kiruna and IOCG signatures. The composition of iron oxides from six till samples along a north–south transect and 11 till samples from a 180 km-long east–west transect, along the older and younger directions of ice-flow, respectively, was determined in the Thompson Nickel Belt (Manitoba, Canada). The proportion of magnetite in till with the signature of Ni-Cu deposits increases for at least 1 km south of the Pipe Ni-Cu deposit along the direction of the older southward ice flow, whereas the glacial dispersal of magnetite with a chemical signature typical of Ni-Cu deposits was limited during the younger westerly ice flow.


Previously established data indicate that cemeteries have contributed to groundwater and soil pollution. This study aimed to determine whether there was a variation in the microbes in cemeteries due to embalming techniques and to identify primary microbial communities in each cemetery. Different embalming techniques were used during different eras in recent history. These fluids can impact both epinecrotic and thanatomicrobiomes, the microbiomes that exist in decomposing remains. Additionally, these fluids can seep into the microbial communities, affecting the microbiome composition, and continue to leach into the larger surrounding environment, contributing to water source and aquifer pollution. We evaluated the 16S rDNA microbial gene followed by QIIME analyses using the Jupyter Notebooks application. We hypothesized that microbial variation would be high between cemeteries of different eras due to dissimilarities between embalming techniques employed, and furthermore, that specific microbes would act as an indication for certain contaminants. The results indicate that the following phyla were present: Proteobacteria, Planctomycetes, Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria, Chloroflexi, Verrucomicrobia, Acidobacteria, and AD3. These taxonomic classifications were present in all sites with the exception of AD3 which was absent in the Civil War Cemetery. Overall, cemetery sites were clustered together based on location due to variations in the concentrations of the phyla and their more specific taxa.


The morphology and taxonomy of the fossil diatom resting spore morpho-genera Xanthioisthmus Suto gen. nov. and Quadrocistella Suto gen. nov. are described. The two new genera are probably fossil resting spores of the marine diatom genus Chaetoceros. They were studied by examining samples from DSDP Sites 436, 438 (northwest Pacific) and 338 (Norwegian Sea), and the Newport Beach Section (California). The genus Xanthioisthmus is characterized by an elongate valve composed of two flat circles joined together by a hyaline broad isthmus and includes five species: X. biscoctiformis (Forti) Suto comb. nov., X. specticularis (Hanna) Suto comb. nov., X. panduraeformis (Pantocsek) Suto comb. nov., X. praemaculata sp. nov. and X. maculata (Hanna) Suto comb. nov. The genus Quadrocistella differs from Xanthioisthmus by its elongate and rectangular valve and bears five new species: Q. rectagonuma sp. nov., Q. tubera sp. nov., Q. paliesa sp. nov., Q. montana sp. nov. and Q. palmesa sp. nov.


ABSTRACT The content of chlorophyll a of a group of plant species from freshwater, brackish-water and nearshore marine environments was found spectrophotometrically to range from 1 to nearly 300 mg/g on a dry-weight, ash-free basis. The average chlorophyll content of marine, mostly algal, plants from Dillon Beach area, California, was highest among collections studied (38 mg/g), followed by freshwater pondweeds from Minnesota lakes (29 mg/g), marine algae from Coos Bay, Oregon, (25 mg/g) and brackish water pondweeds and algae from Chesapeake Bay (8 mg/g). The low values in Chesapeake Bay species are partly due to the absence of forms that in the other areas studied have chlorophyll values of 100 mg/g or higher. The content of pheophytin a in Minnesota lake sediments from the same, as well as different, localities from which plants were studied amounts to 200-600 ppm of dry organic matter (ash free and corrected for carbonate) in surface samples but only about 70 ppm in silty tidal flat sediments from Tomales Bay, California. In both the marine and freshwater sediments a rapid decrease in pheophytin takes place a few cm beneath the surface. The downward decrease probably results from the utilization of pheophytin as food in the microzone just beneath the surface. The relative pheophytin content of lake sediments although mainly due to the prevailing level of productivity of the lake, is in part governed by the morphometry of the basin and prevailing wind action. Smooth margined, steeply sloping basins show generally not only lower organic productivity but also lower pheophytin content than those with irregular margins and gentle slopes. Some tendency for sedimentary pheophytin enrichment was noted on the lee sides of the latter type of lake due to wave transport. A period of relatively high organic productivity between depths of 500 and 700 cm in sediments of Blue Lake, Minnesota is reflected in an increase in chlorinoid pigments at these depths. A variety of fluorescent substances tentatively identified as flavinoids, indole acids and other heterocyclic substances have been found in lake and bog deposits and associated plants. These are believed to have been formed by organisms living in the sediments. In a general way the fluorescent substances represent the products of animal metabolism under poorly oxidative conditions, and the amount reflects the level of such activity in individual deposits. An episode of increased sedimentary-biologic activity of depths of 8 to 10 meters (dark copropel layer) in Cedar Creek Bog, Minnesota is suggested by an increase in flavinoid pigments in sediments at these depths.


'All I knew about "The Lady" was what all middle-class mothers of a certain age and income bracket knew about "The Lady". It was where you got a nanny from. End of.' When Rachel Johnson was appointed the new editor of the oldest women's weekly magazine in the world, she was facing the challenge of a lifetime. For a start, how do you become an editor when you've never, really, edited? How do you turn around a venerable title, full of gloomy articles on watery eyes and ads for walk-in baths, into a totally cookin' property ...during the worst recession EVER? And forget about doubling the circulation in a year at "The Lady" - what on earth do you WEAR to work when you've spent the last fifteen years sitting at home in sweatpants? As she puts on her best Bree Van der Kamp silk blouse and penetrates the time-capsule six-storey cream and pink HQ in Covent Garden - with its Fred West basement, Ladies' Smoking Room, Anne Frank Annexe and wall safe filled with custard creams - she soon realizes: if "The Lady" was ever to become more hip than hip replacement, it would need emergency surgery. And fast. This is Rachel's riotous and alarmingly frank account of her first year as her Ladyship, as she tackles redesigning the magazine, drags the title from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, persuades big names to write for peanuts, attempts to sell advertising space to the bewildered executives of Astroglide (don't ask), tackles her dreaded intray, but above all tries to persuade her existing readers to keep going and new ones to hop on board. Will Rachel save "The Lady" - or sink it?


Multidimensional indices of well-being and deprivation have become increasingly popular, both in the theoretical and in the policy-oriented literature. By now, there is a wide range of methods to construct multidimensional well-being indices, differing in the way they transform, aggregate and weight the relevant dimensions. We use a unifying framework that allows us to compare the different approaches and to analyze the specific role of the dimension weights in each of them. In interplay with the choices on the transformation and aggregation, the weights play a crucial role in determining the trade-offs between the dimensions. Setting weights is hence inherently a delicate matter, reflecting important value judgements about the exact notion of well-being. From this perspective, we critically survey six methods that are proposed in the literature to set the weights.


Abstract. Knowledge about isoprene emissions and concentration distribution is important for chemistry transport models (CTMs), because isoprene acts as a precursor for tropospheric ozone and subsequently affects the atmospheric concentrations of many other atmospheric compounds. Isoprene has a short lifetime, and hence it is very difficult to evaluate its emission estimates against measurements. For this reason, we coupled two isoprene emission models with the Danish Eulerian Hemispheric Model (DEHM), and evaluated the simulated background ozone concentrations based on different models for isoprene emissions. In this research, results of using the two global biogenic emission models; GEIA (Global Emissions Inventory Activity) and MEGAN (the global Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature) are compared and evaluated. The total annual emissions of isoprene for the year 2006 estimated by using MEGAN is 592 Tg yr−1 for an extended area of the Northern Hemisphere, which is 21% higher than that estimated by using GEIA. The overall feature of the emissions from the two models is quite similar, but differences are found mainly in Africa's savannah and in the southern part of North America. Differences in spatial distribution of emission factors are found to be a key source of these discrepancies. In spite of the short life-time of isoprene, a direct evaluation of isoprene concentrations using the two biogenic emission models in DEHM has been made against available measurements in Europe. Results show an agreement between two models simulations and the measurements in general and that the CTM is able to simulate isoprene concentrations. Additionally, investigation of ozone concentrations resulting from the two biogenic emission models show that isoprene simulated by MEGAN strongly affects the ozone production in the African savannah; the effect is up to 10% more than that obtained using GEIA. In contrast, the impact of using GEIA is higher in the Amazon region with more than 8% higher ozone concentrations compared to that of using MEGAN. Comparing the ozone concentrations obtained by DEHM using the two different isoprene models with measurements from Europe and North America, show an agreement on the hourly, mean daily and daily maximum values. However, the average of ozone daily maximum value simulated by using MEGAN is slightly closer to the measured value for the average of all measuring sites in Europe.


Enabling Future Arrays in Tidal (EnFAIT) is an EU Horizon 2020 flagship tidal energy project. It aims to demonstrate the development, operation and decommissioning of the world's largest tidal array (six turbines), over a five-year period, to prove a cost reduction pathway for tidal energy and confirm that it can be cost competitive with other forms of renewable energy. To determine the optimal site layout and spacing between turbines within a tidal array, it is essential to accurately characterise tidal turbine wakes and their effects. This paper presents a state-of-the-art review of tidal turbine wake modelling methods, with an overview of the relevant fundamental theories. Numerical and physical modelling research completed by both academia and industry are considered to provide an overview of the contemporary understanding in this area. The scalability of single device modelling techniques to an array situation is discussed, particularly with respect to wake interactions.


Kanak and the Polynesian languages exhibit a wide range of impersonal constructions which may involve: (i) the lack or frequent omission of
arguments; (ii) optional impersonal construction of monovalent verbs or intransitive construction of bivalent verbs, associated with different meanings; (iii) differential agent marking such as oblique adjuncts or agents/experiencers expressed as a possessor; (iv) the use of impersonal pronouns or non-referential 'dummy' pronouns. These constructions are considered to be impersonal from two perspectives: (a) as constraints (impersonal verbs, dummy pronouns) and options (labile verbs) offered by a language system, and (b) as discourse strategies offered to the speaker of a language to make the agent impersonal (through its omission, by making it peripheral as an oblique adjunct or a possessor).
Keywords: Oceanic languages; labile verbs; argument omission; differential agent marking; impersonal pronouns


We study saving motives and household saving behavior in fifteen euro-area countries using the first wave of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey that covers the years 2008–11. We find that precautionary saving is the most commonly reported motive in all countries, followed by saving for old-age provision. Preferences for other motives are then rather heterogeneous across countries. Saving for home purchase and precautionary saving are monotonically decreasingly important with age. Variables related to the structure of the tax system and to the generosity of the social security and welfare systems are important determinants of household saving. As for actual saving behavior, we find that most households in the euro area perceived their expenses over the last twelve months to be about the same as expenses in a "normal" year in the past and about the same as income over the last twelve months. The analysis by country reveals some degree of heterogeneity for this measure of self-assessed household saving: the countries that were hit most severely by the financial crisis display higher financial stress.


This thesis presents an investigation into the mechanical properties of ductile polyphase materials, which were studied by a number of different techniques. The first approach was to do creep tests and transparent deformation cell experiments with two-phase composites of organic crystalline rock-analogues, camphor and octachloropropane (OCP). A deformation apparatus to deform these materials in simple shear to very high bulk shear strain (up to )'=185) was developed and built during this study. The method for the analysis of progressive deformation in the transparent deformation cell, using small marker particles, was improved and a computer program was written to perform this analysis. In the search for new rock analogues, norcamphor was found to be a promising material. First observations on its microstructural behaviour and rheological properties are presented. The rheological properties of OCP and camphor at 28°C were determined: both are power-law creep materials with stress exponents of 4.5 and 3.3 respectively. The strain rate difference is two to three orders of magnitude within the experimental range of stresses (0.2-1.2 MPa). Mixtures of OCP and camphor are also power-law creep materials at these stresses. The soft phase OCP forms a matrix around the harder camphor inclusions and can accommodate most of the deformation. The properties of these mixtures can be described with matrix-rigid inclusion models, even at small volume fractions of OCP, because the camphor is virtually rigid compared to the OCP. Simple shear experiments allowed the observation of microstructural developments to high finite shear strain. Isotropic composites of camphor inclusions in OCP showed the development of a foliation of camphor lenses and layers and finally (y>50-75) folding of the foliation. Folding commenced with buckling of the camphor layers. Axial planes were initially at a high angle (45-90°) to the flow plane, and rotated towards it as the folds tightened. Experiments were done at a constant shear stress and the bulk shear strain rate response to these developments was an initial shear strain rate increase (softening) as the foliation formed and a subsequent shear strain rate decrease (hardening) at the onset of folding. Localisation of deformation into a narrow shear zone was observed in a composite of OCP inclusions in camphor at Y<1. The shear zone was formed by linking up of the OCP inclusions, which caused softening of the composite as a whole.Numerical modelling was the second approach. This was used to investigate the effect of anisotropy of the phase distribution on bulk properties of a composite. It was observed that, for a given pair of phases, the bulk bulk properties of a composite are strongly related to the percolation fraction of the stronger phase. This is the fraction at which, with increasing concentration, this phase starts to form a connected framework, which is dependent on the geometrical distribution of the phases. The percolation fraction determines the horizontal distance of the composite properties between the Voigt or constant strain/strain rate bound and the Reuss or constant stress bound. Thus one can make an estimate of the composite properties if the percolation fraction is known, as well as the properties of the constituent phases and their volume fractions. Grain growth and its effects on microstructure were also studied. Grain growth during deformation may suppress foliation development in a polycrystalline aggregate. Deformation induced neighbour switching was found to be an important mechanism for this. A computer model was written to model grain growth. With this model one can outline microstructural and topological features, such as grain shape, grain boundary curvature and the frequency distribution of size and number of sides of grains, which are indicative of the grain growth history of the grain aggregate. Drag by second phase particles and deformation during grain growth are incorporated in the model.


George Bernard Shaw said "we are made wise not by the recollections of our past, but by the responsibility for our future." Colleges and universities across the country are continuously struggling with the past and future challenges that are unique to the academic enterprise. There is a sense among many academicians, as well as others outside the academy, that there is a need to build coherent curricula that is user friendly for both student learning and faculty productivity; the need to establish professional boundaries for educational collaboration between and among publics on and off campus; the need to create institutional cohesion and interdependence of resources toward the university or college mission; and finally, the need to connect curriculum aims with teaching strategies, students with faculty, the academy with the economy, and fiscal, human, technological and environmental resources toward the educational centrality and mission of the institution. This synopsis describes how the York College Academic Vice President plans, and other chief academic officers could plan, to meet the challenges of the 1990's, at a time when resourcefulness, vision, and planning are viewed by many as among the necessary ingredients for contemporary leadership and institutional change. The following outlines some of the more compelling areas to consider for initiating and implementing a vision for institutional success. They represent hopefully thought-provoking issues to consider for readers interested in getting a synopsis of what it may take for the chief academic officer to be successful today and tomorrow on the college campus. Renewing the Liberal Arts Undergraduate Experience: To act as a catalyst for providing undergraduate programs that develop student-centered competencies in critical thinking, leadership empowerment, intellectual inquiry, ethical values, human development, and most importantly, lifelong "discovery" - through the ongoing development of educational forums for discussion, dialogue, debate and deliberation. After all, it was Nobel Laureate, Albert Szentgyorgyi who metaphorically stated that "discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else, but thinking something different." This metaphor applies to physics as well as painting; biology as well as business; music as well as mathematics; English as well as engineering; art as well as accounting; language as well as literature; and history as well as humanities. Current and future chief academic officers might also consider doing something that we often fail to do as leaders - and that is, looking "inward." We all know from our own personal experiences during undergraduate studies what made us successful then as students to be successful now as academicians. What did that professor provide through the preceptorial advice that helped us make the decision for the academic major? What interactive classroom experience stimulated us to conduct research on our own? What was the role of academic advising and student services in providing support programs on our behalf? What was the title of that intriguing lecture or literature that held our attention and persuaded us to view the world so critically? And finally, how did the general education and disciplined-centered curricula bridge the learning gaps to foster the whole academic experience? Cultivating Systemic Leadership: To facilitate the productive collaboration between sectors representing business, industry, government, education and other learning communities toward the mutual benefit of the academy and the economy, particularly in the urban milieu - utilizing skills in consensus building, participatory leadership and conflict resolution. It was the 29 year old President Robert Hutchins at the University of Chicago who once noted that "a university must be more than a collection of departments that are jointly connected by a mutual heating system." That heating system now extends beyond the perimeters of the collegiate campus and into the community, the economy, and the global market place. …


The special architecture of the Cell BE processor has made scientists revisit the problem of sorting. This paper implements and tests a variant of merge sort where a number of 2-to-1 mergers are connected in a pipelined tree. For large trees there are many more such mergers than processors which means they must be mapped to the processors in some way. Optimized mappings are tested and results show that changing the model used when optimizing might be beneficiary. It is also shown that the small size of the local storages on the co-processors is not limiting the performance.


Intrinsically motivated reinforcement learning aims to address the exploration challenge for sparse-reward tasks. However, the study of exploration methods in transition-dependent multi-agent settings is largely absent from the literature. We aim to take a step towards solving this problem. We present two exploration methods: exploration via information-theoretic influence (EITI) and exploration via decision-theoretic influence (EDTI), by exploiting the role of interaction in coordinated behaviors of agents. EITI uses mutual information to capture influence transition dynamics. EDTI uses a novel intrinsic reward, called Value of Interaction (VoI), to characterize and quantify the influence of one agent's behavior on expected returns of other agents. By optimizing EITI or EDTI objective as a regularizer, agents are encouraged to coordinate their exploration and learn policies to optimize team performance. We show how to optimize these regularizers so that they can be easily integrated with policy gradient reinforcement learning. The resulting update rule draws a connection between coordinated exploration and intrinsic reward distribution. Finally, we empirically demonstrate the significant strength of our method in a variety of multi-agent scenarios.


The study critically looks at the socio-political, psychological and conflicts arising from Oil and Gas Operations in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria.. This paper therefore aims at (re)presenting theatre side-by-side other disciplines within the context of conflicts and crises management. The fallout of oil and gas operations in the area is a topical and highly volatile issue in the country since 1990s, especially as this resource is the economic mainstay of the nation until late 2014 when the sales and demand for crude oil began to dwindle. In order to proffer solution, the issue has been over-flogged through debates, playlets, seminars, video clips and so on. On one such workshops of crises management with the theme: "the fallout of oil and gas operations in the Niger Delta area: community point of view" this writer was invited as a guest speaker. The first question raised the first year of my attendance borders on "the role of theatre personnel in crises management", especially when they are neither social scientists nor economists?" These questions is a reminder of the arguments on the relevance of theatre to the society during Plato and Socrates" era; which one could have said to be non-consequential today, especially with the advent of films and home videos. The play titled "The Pen" was staged by unskilled performers without rehearsal or knowledge of what was to unfold and it led to a heated discourse that helps to confirm that theatre through drama can be used for conflict resolution. In conclusion this paper is a report and analysis of the "The Pen" as a proof that TfD can be used as tool in handling topical issues as predominant in crises prone areas as the Niger Delta.


A 38 years old Man subjected to stab injury 3 years ago. On presentation, 9 month ago, a tethered and depressed scar was observed on the left cheek. He was seeking medical advice concerning improvement of the scar appearance. A complete clarification of the condition was explained to the patient as "Once Scar always Scar "but will do our best to improve the scar as far as we can. Autologous fat injection was decided without any scar excision. Autologous fat grafting plays a significant part in facial rejuvenation. Indeed, thanks to its filling properties and the role of ASCs, the unique regenerative potential of lipofilling results in excellent results. Traditional facial rejuvenation approaches have relied on subtractive surgical techniques, focusing on skin , muscle and/or fat excision. Instead, modern approaches focus on filling the "ventilated" facial compartments, mainly through fat grafting. Traditional fat grafting involves Coleman's harvesting technique with 2 mm side-port cannulas, followed by the distribution of a structural fat implant from deep to superficial throughout the various dermal layers of the face. Body fat makes filler material excellent for soft tissue. Fat injection (also called autologous fat transplantation) transfers fat over the face from one part of the body to another; decreases frown lines, crow's feet and nasolabial folds (smile lines); and defines areas such as cheeks and chin. It can also be used at any part of the body to fill depressed scarred areas. Fat injection is not permanent, and an effective maintenance program may be required. Local anesthetic is injected into the donor site (abdomen, buttocks, or thighs) and treatment site. To facilitate collection of fat, intravenous fluids are also injected into the donor site. Fat cells are extracted by means of a small needle fixed to a syringe. The fat is then processed in multiple thin strands in the desired area to remove excess fluids, and reinjected with another needle. "Overfilling" is a necessary corrective in the weeks after treatment, due to fat absorption. Fat can also be harvested in one area of the body during a lipoplastic procedure, and then reinjected into another. In general, patients receive 3 to 4 treatments over a six-month period for longest-lasting effect. This type of procedure has the benefits of being natural, non-allergenic. Outpatient procedure which usually takes less than an hour. Injections can last from a few months until permanent. Small to no downtime. Minimum discomfort, controllable with medication. Since fat comes from the patient's own body, no pre-testing is required and the fat can't be dismissed. If the patient is allergic to bovine collagen, then a good alternative. If combined with another procedure such as lipoplasty (liposuction) cost effective. Other considerations include, the longevity of outcomes may vary considerably from patient to patient. Some swelling, bruising — usually approximately 48 hours. Until the condition subsides, patient should avoid the sun. Not every area is suitable for injection into fat. For example, injecting fat into the breast makes it harder to detect cancer via mammography and is strongly discouraged. Lasts the longest in relatively stationary areas (such as the cheeks) when reinjected. In this case, as the patient came for scar treatment, we didn't have a problem. Under local anesthesia, two small incisions within the umbilicus and fat was harvested using 3 mm cannula using power assisted liposuction.


"Explores the history of Woolf's diaries, not only to reveal heretofore unremarked sources but also to trace her evolving sense of possibilities in diary-writing, possibilities which helped shape Woolf as a fiction writer. A must-read for devotees of Virginia Woolf."--Panthea Reid, author of "Art and Affection: A Life of Virginia Woolf" "This revealing book gives us a diarist with greater literary range than Pepys and affords us a second pleasure: the infinitely varied voices of the diaries Virginia read. They fascinate us as they fascinate her: those writers who encouraged, warned, comforted, and trained a developing genius."--Nancy Price, author of "Sleeping with the Enemy" "Lounsberry's deeply researched and gracefully written book shows not only Woolf's development into a great diarist but also her evolvement into the fiction and nonfiction writer revered today."--Gay Talese, author of "A Writer's Life" Encompassing thirty-eight handwritten volumes, Virginia Woolf's diary is her lengthiest and longest-sustained work--and her last to reach the public. In the only full-length book to explore deeply this luminous and boundary-stretching masterpiece, Barbara Lounsberry traces Woolf's development as a writer through her first twelve diaries--a fascinating experimental stage, where the earliest hints of Woolf's pioneering modernist style can be seen. Starting with fourteen-year-old Woolf's first palm-sized leather diary, "Becoming Virginia Woolf" illuminates how her private and public writing was shaped by the diaries of other writers including Samuel Pepys, James Boswell, the French Goncourt brothers, Mary Coleridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Woolf's "diary parents"--Sir Walter Scott and Fanny Burney. These key literary connections open a new and indispensable window onto the story of one of literature's most renowned modernists. Barbara Lounsberry is professor emerita of English at the University of Northern Iowa. She is the author of "The Art of Fact: Contemporary Artists of Nonfiction" and coeditor of "Writing Creative Nonfiction: The Literature of Reality."


The transformed root cultures of Datura metel L (kecubung) was successfully
established via Agrobacterium rhizogenes-mediated, which contained the pBI 121
plasmid harbouring the GUS and kanamycin coding genes. The transformation was
biochemically confirmed with GUS assay indicated by the presence of blue spot on
roots, Southern blotting and the resistance of transformed root to Kanamycin.
Transformed roots were showed a typical character of transformed root, which is
sensitive to exogenous IAA (auxin). Sustained root cultures appeared to produce
hyoscyamine and scopolamine ten times higher than that produced in the intact plant.
The ability of the transformed roots to produce hyoscyamine and
scopolamine in different types of basal media used was examined. It was ubserved
that Gamborg's B 5 basal medium was the best medium for root growth as well as the
hyoscyamine and scopolamine production. Gamborg's B5 medium was used for
subsequent studies. Among the carbon source tested, sucrose appeared to be the best
carbon source for root growth. Consequently, the effect of Gamborg's B5 medium
ionic strength and sucrose concentration was examined. Gamborg's BS medium was used in quarter, half and full strength, and supplemented with sucrose concentration
in the range of 1 - to 8% (w/v). Full strength Gamborg' s B5 medium with 4%
sucrose was observed to enhance the root growth as well as hyoscyamine and
scopolamine production. Studies were also carried out to examine the effect of
various concentrations of macro and microelements on root growth, hyoscyamine
and scopolamine production. The macro elements used were nitrogen (ammonium
and nitrate balance), magnesium, calcium and phosphate. Amongst the macro
element tested, nitrogen, which is in the form of nitrate and/or ammonium, was
found to have a significant effect on the hyoscyamine and scopolamine production.
Meanwhile, the microelements that have been studied were copper, ferric,
manganese, zinc and boron. Ferric and copper appeared to have the greater effect on
hyoscyamine and scopolamine production than other elements. Roots cultured in
medium with lower concentration of microelement than that present in Gamborg's
B5 medium was also observed to enhance the hyoscyamine and scopolamine
content.
Feeding of each precursors i. e. putrescine, I-ornithine, arginine,
1-phenylalanine, hyoscyamine and scopolamine at lower concentration (less than
0.2 mM) into treatment medium was observed to reduce the root growth as well as
the hyoscyamine and scopolamine production. Combination of l-phenylalanine with
putrescine appeared the best precursor for both hyoscyamine and scopolamine
production.


Transversal coherent beam oscillations can occur in synchrotrons directly after injection due to errors in position and angle, which stem from inaccurate injection kicker reactions. Furthermore, the demand for higher beam intensities is always increasing in particle accelerators. The wake fields generated by the traveling particles will be increased by increasing the beam intensity. This leads to a stronger interaction between the beam and the different accelerator components, which increases the potential of coherent instabilities. Thus, undesired beam oscillations will occur when the natural damping is not enough to attenuate the oscillations generated by the coherent beamaccelerator interactions. The instabilities and oscillations can be either in transversal or longitudinal direction. In this work we are concerned with transversal beam oscillations only.

In normal operation, transversal beam oscillations are undesired since they lead to beam quality deterioration and emittance blow up caused by the decoherence of the oscillating beam. This decoherence is caused by the tune spread of the beam particles. The emittance blow up reduces the luminosity of the beam, and thus the collision quality [1,2]. Therefore, beam oscillations must be suppressed in order to maintain high beam quality during acceleration. A powerful way to mitigate coherent instabilities is to employ a feedback system. A Transversal Feedback System (TFS) senses instabilities of the beam by means of Pickups (PUs), and acts back on the beam through actuators, called kickers [3, 4].

In this thesis, a novel concept to use multiple PUs for estimating the beam displacement at the position with 90◦ phase advance before the kicker is proposed. The estimated values should be the driving feedback signal. The signals from the different PUs are delayed such that they correspond to the same bunch. Subsequently, a weighted sum of the delayed signals is suggested as an estimator of the feedback correction signal. The weighting coefficients are calculated in order to achieve an unbiased estimator, i.e., the output corresponds to the actual beam displacement at the position with 90◦ phase advance before the kicker for non-noisy PU signals. Furthermore, the estimator must provide the minimal noise power at the output among all linear unbiased estimators. This proposed concept is applied in our new approach to find optimal places for the PUs and the kicker around the accelerator ring such that the noise effect on the feedback quality is minimized. A new TFS design for the heavy ions synchrotrons SIS 18 and SIS 100 at the GSI has been developed and implemented using FPGA.

The correction signal of transverse feedback system is usually calculated according to the transfer matrices between the pickups and the kickers. However, errors due to magnetic field imperfections and magnets misalignment lead to deviations in the transfer matrices from their nominal values. Therefore, using the nominal values of the transfer optics with uncertainties leads to feedback quality degradation, and thus beam disturbances.

Therefore, we address a novel concept for feedback systems that are robust against optics errors or uncertainties. One kicker and multiple pickups are assumed to be used for each transversal direction. We introduce perturbation terms to the transfer matrices between the kicker and the pickups. Subsequently, the Extended Kalman Filter is used to estimate the feedback signal and the perturbation terms using the measurements from the pickups.

Moreover, we propose a method for measuring the phase advances and amplitude scaling between the positions of the kicker and the Beam Position Monitors (BPMs). Directly after applying a kick on the beam by means of the kicker, we record the BPM signals. Subsequently, we use the Second-Order Blind Identification (SOBI) algorithm to decompose the recorded noised signals into independent sources mixture [5, 6]. Finally, we determine the required optics parameters by identifying and analyzing the betatron oscillation sourced from the kick based on its mixing and temporal patterns.

The accelerator magnets can generate unwanted spurious linear and non-linear fields [7] due to fabrication errors or aging. These error fields in the magnets can excite undesired resonances leading together with the space charge tune spread to long term beam losses and reducing dynamic aperture [8–10]. Therefore, the knowledge of the linear and non-linear magnets errors in circular accelerator optics is very crucial for controlling and compensating resonances and their consequent beam losses and beam quality deterioration. This is indispensable, especially for high beam intensity machines. Fortunately, the relationship between the beam offset oscillation signals recorded at the BPMs is a manifestation of the accelerator optics, and can therefore be exploited in the determination of the optics linear and non-linear components. Thus, beam transversal oscillations can be excited deliberately for purposes of dignostics operation of particle accelerators.

In this thesis, we propose a novel method for detecting and estimating the optics lattice non-linear components located in-between the locations of two BPMs by analyzing the beam offset oscillation signals of a BPMs-triple containing these two BPMs. Depending on the non-linear components in-between the locations of the BPMs-triple, the relationship between the beam offsets follows a multivariate polynomial accordingly. After calculating the covariance matrix of the polynomial terms, the Generalized Total Least Squares method is used to find the model parameters, and thus the non-linear components. A bootstrap technique is used to detect the existing polynomial model orders by means of multiple hypothesis testing, and determine confidence intervals for the model parameters.


The Internet has become an unlimited resource of knowledge, and is thus widely used in many applications. Web mining plays an important role in discovering such knowledge. This mining can be roughly divided into three categories, including Web usage mining, Web content mining, and Web structure mining. Data and knowledge on the Web may, however, consist of imprecise, incomplete, and uncertain data. Because fuzzy‐set theory is often used to handle such data, several fuzzy Web‐mining techniques have been proposed to reveal fuzzy and linguistic knowledge. This paper reviews these techniques according to the three Web‐mining categories above—fuzzy Web usage mining, fuzzy Web content mining, and fuzzy Web structure mining. Some representative approaches in each category are introduced and compared. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


Context Dependent Species Interaction Outcomes in Ant-plant Protection Mutualisms by Scott Alan Chamberlain We often study the outcomes of species interactions, whether they be predation, competition, or mutualism, at one site in a single year. However, we increasingly recognize that species interaction outcomes are not static, but context dependent by varying along many ecological axes. Here, I asked to what extent and along what axes are ant-plant protection interactions, in which plants provide rewards for ants that in turn defend plants from herbivores, context dependent. First, a meta-analytic summary of published studies on ant-plant protection interactions revealed that interaction outcomes are on average mutualistic, and context dependency occurred due to plant reward type (domatia vs food bodies vs extrafloral nectaries), ant species richness, and latitude. Second, in a case study in the Sonoran Desert, extrafloral nectar production caused context dependent mutualistic and antagonistic ant-plant interactions, despite largely commensalistic interaction outcomes. These results suggest some ecological axes resulting in context dependency in mutualisms.


Pancreatic islet beta cells require a fine-tuned ER stress response for normal function; abnormal ER stress contributes to diabetes pathogenesis. Here, we identified a small molecule, SW016789, with time-dependent effects on beta cell ER stress and function. Acute treatment with SW016789 potentiated nutrient-induced calcium influx and insulin secretion, while chronic exposure to SW016789 transiently induced ER stress and shut down secretory function in a reversible manner. Distinct from the effects of thapsigargin, SW016789 did not affect beta cell viability or apoptosis, potentially due to a rapid induction of adaptive genes, weak signaling through the eIF2α kinase PERK, and lack of oxidative stress gene Txnip induction. We determined that SW016789 acted upstream of voltage-dependent calcium channels (VDCCs) and potentiated nutrient- but not KCl-stimulated calcium influx. Measurements of metabolomics, oxygen consumption rate, and G protein-coupled receptor signaling did not explain the potentiating effects of SW016789. In chemical co-treatment experiments we discovered synergy between SW016789 and activators of protein kinase C (PKC) and VDCCs, suggesting involvement of these pathways in the mechanism of action. Finally, chronically elevated calcium influx was required for the inhibitory impact of SW016789, as blockade of VDCCs protected human islets and MIN6 beta cells from hypersecretion-induced dysfunction. We conclude that beta cells undergoing this type of pharmacological hypersecretion have the capacity to suppress their function to mitigate ER stress and avoid apoptosis. These results have the potential to uncover beta cell ER stress mitigation factors and add support to beta cell rest strategies to preserve function.


Old Believers' service books from the Piirissaar house of prayer in Estonia were rescued from a fire and the damaged oak boards of the wooden covers of one of the books were dendrochronologically dated back to AD 1353. The dendrochronological reference shows that the oak wood originates from East Pomerania-Gdansk region. The intriguing fact is that the book was not printed until 1879 in Moscow. The seemingly contradictory dates and locations can be explained by the adventurous history of the Old Believers sects in Russia. The Old Believers were suppressed during the Russian Orthodox Church reforms between 1652 and 1666 and many of them escaped to remote marginal areas of the empire or emigrated, e.g. to Rzeczpospolita. Due to lively communication between the Old Believers' congregations, their literature moved from country to country. In this case, a newer book of the Old Believers was bound with old wooden covers from Poland.


Megasplay faults, very long thrust faults that rise from the subduction plate boundary megathrust and intersect the sea floor at the landward edge of the accretionary prism, are thought to play a role in tsunami genesis. We imaged a megasplay thrust system along the Nankai Trough in three dimensions, which allowed us to map the splay fault geometry and its lateral continuity. The megasplay is continuous from the main plate interface fault upwards to the sea floor, where it cuts older thrust slices of the frontal accretionary prism. The thrust geometry and evidence of large-scale slumping of surficial sediments show that the fault is active and that the activity has evolved toward the landward direction with time, contrary to the usual seaward progression of accretionary thrusts. The megasplay fault has progressively steepened, substantially increasing the potential for vertical uplift of the sea floor with slip. We conclude that slip on the megasplay fault most likely contributed to generating devastating historic tsunamis, such as the 1944 moment magnitude 8.1 Tonankai event, and it is this geometry that makes this margin and others like it particularly prone to tsunami genesis.


Supporting gender equality in the deployment of and access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) involves accepting that gender relations and ICTs within any given community are continuously being shaped by one another. There is a growing body of research on gender and ICTs in the developing world. However, little empirical evidence exists on how certain aspects of gender relations can inouence the ways that ICTs are perceived and used, framings which can, in turn, reinforce or reshape existing gender norms and practices. This article examines the relationships that exist between gendered access to education and the ways in which mobile phones, axed phones, and the Internet are perceived and used in a rural and an urban Bhutanese community. The andings, organized by levels of literacy, reveal similar patterns in ICT perceptions and use across the two communities.


Degree Doctor of Philosophy Program Comparative Literature Supervisor Călin Mihăilescu Abstract Aristotle famously asked the question: why are extraordinary people so often melancholics? "Problem XXX," written by Aristotle or one of his disciples, speculates that black bile, the humour once believed to cause melancholy, can promote a form of genius, a profound intellectual power. Walter Benjamin and Charles Baudelaire are two writers for whom this theory was true: though they suffered from gloominess and despondency, they also recognized that in the interior of sadness, and even madness, is a kernel of aesthetic, artistic, and philosophical truth. Melencolia illa heroica – whose theory was authoritatively formulated by Ficino, taking after Aristotle's Problems and Plato's theory of divine madness – emerged in the Renaissance and established a melancholy, understood as a virtue, rather than a vice, such as acedia [sloth]. This virtuous melancholy – which Benjamin referred to as "sublime melancholy," and others as "heroic(al) melancholy" – is always flanked by its counterpart, the "splenetic melancholia." This conception of a positive melancholy underwent a variety of transfigurations – by the path set, in part, through Dürer's "Melencolia I," Milton's pastoral poems, and Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy – and turned into the "melancholy malcontent" stereotype prevalent in Hamlet and Le Misanthrope. Later, become the Romantic theory of genius, melancholy enjoyed a significant return via the writings of Blake, Keats and Kierkegaard. With Baudelaire, and the advent of modernity, melancholy is put into correspondance with spleen – classically understood as the site of black bile – with astonishing results. In the first instance, Baudelaire was able to get closer to a vision of melancholy through the relationship between spleen and idéal; in the second, he crafted an interior correspondance of spleen with(in) itself. Benjamin, in his early career, influentially reinterprets the Renaissance melancholy tradition, and its impacts on the Baroque Trauerspiel [mourning play]. Later, as his work turns to Baudelaire, Benjamin's form of melancholy as philosophical method reaches its acme. This work holds, as its main conclusion, that the interior, dialectical complementarity of opposites, which melancholy exemplifies all along the line, is a necessary mechanism to the productions of literature and philosophy. Recommended Citation Godbout, Kevin, "Saturnine Constellations: Melancholy in Literary History and in the Works of Baudelaire and Benjamin" (2016). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 4291. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/4291  Download


The institutional organizers of IDS 2018 are the Department of Food Technology at the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia and the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illes Balears. Like its previous biannual IDS conferences, the objective of 21th IDS is to provide the most advanced and comprehensive global forum for disseminating results and data in research, development, and applications in drying/dewatering sciences and technologies. This Symposium will be held in the main campus of the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia and aims to bring together leading researchers and engineers from academia and from industry from all around the world in this university environment. It is also planned during the meeting an exposition of industrial equipment and developments. An Award program will be also part of the event for the international drying community. This Symposium is the 21th event in the series founded by Professor Arun S. Mujumdar at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, in 1978.


Earth observation researchers use specialised computing services for satellite image processing offered by various data backends. The source of data is often the same, for example Sentinel-2 satellites operated by Copernicus, but the way how data is pre-processed, corrected, updated, and later analysed may differ among the backends. Backends often lack mechanisms for data versioning, for example, data corrections are not tracked. Furthermore, an evolving software stack used for data processing remains a black box to researchers. Researchers have no means to identify why executions of the same code deliver different results. This hinders reproducibility of earth observation experiments. In this paper, we present how infrastructure of existing earth observation data backends can be modified to support reproducibility. The proposed extensions are based on recommendations of the Research Data Alliance regarding data identification and the VFramework for automated process provenance documentation. We implemented these extensions at the Earth Observation Data Centre, a partner in the openEO consortium. We evaluated the solution on a variety of usage scenarios, providing also performance and storage measures to evaluate the impact of the modifications. The results indicate reproducibility can be supported with minimal performance and storage overhead.


We develop a probabilistic approach to the problem of signal recovery from noisy data. In particular, in constructing the approximation, we introduce a truncation method that is related to an order–disorder transition point of the Fourier coefficients of the data. Through a statistical method we show how to determine this truncation point without using any prior information.