Following the 'Maidan revolution' of February 2014, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) abandoned the exchange rate peg to the US dollar and switched to a flexible exchange rate, which was later formalised within the framework of the newly adopted inflation targeting regime. Our analysis suggests that this move has been questionable and, at the very least, premature. First, the presumed success of inflation targeting as a universally applicable 'magical tool' to reach low and stable levels of inflation in many countries has in reality been largely due to other factors rather than the inflation targeting concept. Second, the NBU's announced inflation target (5% in the medium term) appears to be overly ambitious given Ukraine's development level. Experience from other countries suggests that sticking to this target at all cost will likely require a consistently overly restrictive monetary policy, which will constrain Ukraine's growth prospects. Last but not least, as capital controls are gradually eased, the exchange rate will likely become vulnerable to speculative attacks once again, given the numerous political and geopolitical uncertainties and the 'thinness' of the country's foreign exchange market. Attempts at macroeconomic stabilisation in response to such exchange rate shocks by using 'classical' inflation targeting instruments such as interest rates will have a pro-cyclical impact, given the high degree of dollarisation and the related prevalence of so-called 'balance sheet effects'. The experience of other countries in similar circumstances – both in Central and Eastern Europe and elsewhere – suggests that a preferable strategy would be to smooth exchange rate fluctuations via interventions rather than monetary policy instruments. For this, a certain minimum level of reserves is needed; the latter will not only provide the necessary policy space for interventions should such a need arise, but should discourage speculations against the currency in the first place. Another major reform effort undertaken recently (October 2017) has been a comprehensive pension reform, which envisaged most notably a gradual increase in the effective retirement age. Our analysis suggests that the current situation in Ukraine's pension system hardly justifies such a step. The country's statutory retirement age may be indeed rather low, but it is more than offset by the low life expectancy of Ukrainians, and the share of pensioners in the total population is not particularly high by international standards. Besides, while Ukraine's Pension Fund may be in deficit, this is not very different from the situation observed in other countries, and there are no theoretical arguments why the Pension Fund must be necessarily balanced. Finally, the sustainability of the pension system is not necessarily a cause of major concern either, taking into account the likely future improvements in the labour market. To the extent that any reform of the pension system is needed at all, it should target above all efforts to curb the shadow economy and/or partial reversion of last year's cuts in social security contributions.


First-degree family history of sporadic Alzheimer disease (AD) and the apolipoprotein E ε4 (APOE4) are risk factors for developing AD. Although the role of APOE4 in AD pathogenesis has been well studied, family history remains a rarely studied and poorly understood risk factor. Both putatively cause early brain changes before symptomatic disease, but the relative contribution of each to brain function is unknown. We examined 68 middle-aged participants with a parent diagnosed with AD [family history (+FH)] and 64 age- and education-matched controls without a first-degree family history of any dementia [no family history (−FH)]. All underwent cognitive testing, APOE genotyping, and a functional magnetic resonance imaging encoding task that required discrimination of novel items from previously learned items. A 2 × 2 factorial ANOVA (presence/absence of parental family history and presence/absence of the APOE4) was used to detect group effects. A greater response to novel items was detected in the mesial temporal lobe and fusiform gyrus bilaterally among persons without a first-degree family history of AD. In hippocampal areas, the −FH +ε4 group exhibited the greatest signal change, and the +FH +ε4 group exhibited the least. These findings indicate that FH of AD is an important predictor of hippocampal activation during encoding and that FH may modulate the effect of APOE4 in these middle-aged adults, suggesting that an as yet unspecified factor embodied in first-degree family history of AD is influencing the expression of APOE4 on brain function.


Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) are matrix-degrading enzymes that are over-expressed in joints of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. However, the contribution of specific MMPs for the development of arthritic joints is unknown. This study is aimed at studying the role of matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) in mice, using the K/BxN serum-transfer model of RA. Arthritis was induced in Balb/c mice by injecting K/BxN serum. Development of arthritis was followed in these mice by measuring ankle thickness and clinical index score. MMP-9 expression in the joints of mice killed at various time points during the disease progression was determined by gelatin zymography using ankle lysates. We found that MMP-9 expression increased with the severity of arthritis. Importantly MMP-9 deficient mice injected with K/BxN serum showed a milder form of arthritis in comparison to the control C57BL/6 mice injected with K/BxN serum. We therefore conclude that MMP-9 promotes arthritis in mice.


The intention of this work has been threefold. Firstly it examines in some detail the
history of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) from its inception during
the late 1950's to the beginning of the 1990's, as the Peace Movement begins to
respond to the changes wrought by the ending of the cold war at the end of the 1980's.
It examines in detail the relationship between the movement and their supporters and
opponents. In particular, detailed attention is paid to the relationships that have
existed between CND and the British Labour Party, as well as the wider Political
Opportunity Structure - other major political parties, associated pressure groups, the
Trade Union movement and the established churches.
Secondly, it examines the utility of the various Social Movement theories that are in
existence, and applies these directly to CND in both an historical and contemporary
context. Extensive examination of these theories will reveal that in the case of the
majority (Resource Mobilisation, Relative Deprivation, New Social Movement
theory), these are of limited utility in the case of CND in particular and British Social
Movements in general.
Finally, with the use of original survey data and statistical analysis, the thesis will
evaluate these perspectives, and will conclude with a discussion of new approaches to
the study of the wider Social Movement phenomenon. In particular, the final chapter
will discuss the concept of 'Habitual Membership' as a possible explanation for
continuing CND membership and activity in the post cold-war period of the early
1990's.


This article is part of a special issue with the aim of assessing the potential for Sustainable Development – Policies and Measures (SD-PAM) to stimulate developing country commitments in a future climate regime. In China, agricultural waste products, particularly manure from animal husbandry, represent a local source of rural energy, which can possibly be utilised through simple biogas digesters, thereby promoting rural development. For at least 50 years China has promoted this among farmers' not only with the goal of providing local clean energy for rural development, but also to improve health and reduce pressure on fuelwood. Until the early 2000s these policies failed or had limited impact, although substantial subsidy-based programmes in the past decade have led to considerable growth. However, our field trip interviews suggest that this growth hides deep-rooted problems. For biogas to fulfil its potential, it is crucial that the policy adapts to the changing realities of Chinese livestock production. Arguably, policies to promote rural biogas combine development goals with mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions in a way that matches well with an SD-PAM mechanism. There are two main ways in which China could benefit from submitting its rural biogas policies to an SD-PAM-based regime. Such a biogas programme could get access to technology and funding for large-scale biogas systems and/or opportunities to sell credits. However, it would need to adapt to the international requirements and to accept international monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV). Alternatively, China could register its rural biogas programme as a unilateral SD-PAM, with less strict MRV requirements. This may win China recognition for its domestic policies, but would then not provide a mechanism for bringing international knowhow or possible financing to China.


Factors affecting baby pigs postweaning performance. Management postweaning is one of the most critical factor that affect future pig performance. Two main factors affecting the animal performance are the body weight at weaning and the environment. Lighter body weights animals obtained Iower gains and less efficient feed conversion at the same age of weaning. The environmental factors are those afected by the climate, social status and type of facilities. In relation to the climate, room temperature, air draught, ventilation, cleanness and wet floors are the most importante factors. Temperatures between 28 and 30 Co are the most convenient for the period two weeks after weaning. Temperatures below 24 Co causes diarrhea and low performance. The social environment is determined by the pig social order mixture of litters, size and weight of the groups, the floor space allowances and the size and type of feeders. The type of facilities include all-in all out, three side productions and the type of floor and pens.


Coded aperture X-ray coherent scatter imaging is a novel modality for ascertaining the molecular structure of an object. Measurements from different spatial locations and spectral channels in the object are multiplexed through a radiopaque material (coded aperture) onto the detectors. Iterative algorithms such as penalized expectation maximization (EM) and fully separable spectrally-grouped edge-preserving reconstruction have been proposed to recover the spatially-dependent coherent scatter spectral image from the multiplexed measurements. Such image recovery methods fall into the category of domain decomposition methods since they recover independent pieces of the image at a time. Ordered subsets has also been utilized in conjunction with penalized EM to accelerate its convergence. Ordered subsets is a range decomposition method because it uses parts of the measurements at a time to recover the image. In this paper, we analyze domain and range decomposition methods as they apply to coded aperture X-ray coherent scatter imaging using a spectrally-grouped edge-preserving regularizer and discuss the implications of the increased availability of parallel computational architecture on the choice of decomposition methods. We present results of applying the decomposition methods on experimental coded aperture X-ray coherent scatter measurements. Based on the results, an underlying observation is that updating different parts of the image or using different parts of the measurements in parallel, decreases the rate of convergence, whereas using the parts sequentially can accelerate the rate of convergence.


Negotiation scholars typically take the individual deal, or a few linked deals, as the unit of analysis. While analyzing one deal requires a familiar conceptual framework, doing the same for a broader "negotiation campaign" calls for a different focus and set of concepts: how to orchestrate a large number of subsidiary deals, often grouped into modular "fronts", in order to realize an ultimate "target agreement" with sufficient support to be sustainable. For example, generating the backing necessary from several organizational units for a proposed project to be approved may call for a small-scale "internal" negotiation campaign. A final cross-border merger agreement may represent the culmination of a massive negotiation campaign with multiple, related fronts: financial, shareholder, internal corporate, labor, supplier, political, and regulatory. Complex sales with long cycles and many influential parties as well as major diplomatic initiatives may call more for crafting negotiation campaigns for than doing solo deals. Analysis of negotiation campaigns builds on familiar concepts such as linkage and coalition building. In many cases, however, the parties relevant to a campaign as well as the fronts may not be obvious a priori and may represent choice variables rather than givens for the analysis. Beyond identifying and specifying parties and fronts, negotiation campaign analysis and design calls for assessing interdependencies among fronts, deciding on separation v. combination of fronts, parallel v. sequential tactical emphasis, as well as information revelation v. concealment at different stages of the campaign.


The author surveys economic development theory and concludes that policies that conform to a nation's institutional context are likely to be more successful than those involving radical social reconstruction. The author then explores the implications of this argument for the ability of different national institutional contexts to adjust to the changes brought about by globalization. Key Words: Institutions, economic development, globalization, Great Britain Understanding the process of economic growth and development is a central concern to academics and policy-makers alike, particularly as the rates of growth across countries vary widely. Clearly the economies of some states do a better job at increasing national prosperity than others. But why? Explaining variations in economic growth and development across countries is crucial, but the answers to these questions are highly controversial. Within political science, the focus on how to explain this phenomenon has shifted over the years. During the first twenty-five years of the postwar era, Keynesian demand management was held as the sine qua non of stable, long-term growth. During this golden age of rapid growth, differences in performance were considered a question of the appropriate fine tuning of the economy within a broadly Keynesian framework. But the Keynesian consensus foundered on the shoals of oil crises and stagflation in the 1970s. Two intellectual and policy trends resulted. First, the elections of Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the U.S. initiated the long march of neoliberal ideas and policy to their currently dominant position across the industrialized world. At the same time, the perception that some states had weathered the storms of the 1970s much more successfully than others focused attention on microeconomic (or industrial) policies. The ability of states like Japan, France and the Asian Newly Industrialized Countries (NIC's) to couple high growth with low unemployment was attributed to the various tools of sectoral intervention used to restructure their economies towards competitive, high value-added industries. A flurry of academic works followed, each noting how various policies and institutions of these so-called "developmentalist states" explained their success.l Given the stark contrast of these arguments with the neoliberal belief that the state need only retreat from the market to secure growth, academic and political debate throughout the 1980s largely revolved around the pros and cons of industrial policies. The intellectual ground shifted once again in the 1990s. The long-term efficacy of the neoliberal solution was called into question as Thatcher's Britain and Reagan's America plunged sharply into recession in the early 1990s. Yet the theoretical victory of those who favored more interventionist solutions was short-lived. The late 1990s have seen the return of high growth and low unemployment in America and Britain. In contrast, the heroes of the interventionist cause have faltered. The political consensus in Germany and France has been rocked by unemployment stuck in double-digits despite relatively brisk growth. More significantly, the economy of Japan, the epitome of state-led growth, has collapsed, leading to a general Asian economic crisis that has since spread to Russia. Of significance is that it is the very institutional structures of these countries that commentators encouraged others to emulate that are now producing economic failure. The corporatist welfare states of France and Germany burden firms with high labor costs (and thus low labor productivity) and have created a rigid labor market unable to adjust easily to changes in the global economy.2 The foundation of the "Japanese model" - the close connection between firms and banks, strategically guided by government officials - led to banks maintaining investments in failing firms, which has overburdened the banking system with bad debt and left firms desperate for increased sales and investment. …


In spite of their differences, both a cash-flow consumption tax and a Schanz-Haig-Simons income tax require that dollars paid out as business or investment expenses be eliminated from the base. This is necessary under a cash-flow consumption tax because business and investment expenses are not consumption and it is necessary under an SHS tax because these expenditures are neither consumption nor additions to savings. Since business and investment outlays have no place in the base of either tax, intuition suggests that business and investment interest expenses would be treated identically under a cash-flow consumption tax and an SHS tax. But they are not. The cash-flow regime allows a deduction for such interest only if the related debt is included in the tax base whereas business and investment interest is always deductible under an SHS tax even though the related debt is never part of the base (unless the debt is bogus or is ultimately canceled). The apparent conflict is, however, deceptive because the interest expense deduction serves different functions in these two different taxing regimes. In the cash-flow system, business and investment capital income is wholly excluded from the tax base with the result that a deduction for related interest expense is not required to arrive at a net taxable amount. Instead, the cash-flow consumption tax employs an interest expense deduction as part of an adjustment mechanism that removes previously included borrowings from the tax base. Thus, an interest deduction is not appropriate under a cash-flow regime unless the related debt was part of the base at an earlier time. By contrast, an SHS tax always excludes borrowed amounts from its base so that no interest expense deduction is necessary to assist in canceling the prior inclusion of borrowed sums. But an SHS regime invariably includes business and investment income in the base. Consequently, and SHS deduction for business and investment interest expense is required to reduce related gross income to a net amount even though the debt which generated the interest outlay was not a previously included item. This illustrates the point that the propriety of an interest expense deduction depends on the role which is assigned to the deduction in the particular tax system.


Downward movement of soil moisture due to rainfall and supplemental irrigation in the unsaturated zone has been followed by tagging a layer of soil with tritiated water at a number of sites in the state of Haryana. The activity apparently moves by a piston type flow. The average recharge for 15 sites during the interval July - November, 1973 has been equivalent to 9 cm of water which is 14% of the irrigation plus rainfall. For 18 sites sampled after two monsoons (July 1973 to December 1974) the average recharge is 19 cm and the fractional recharge is 0.15. Wide variations in recharge values are noted. The most significant factor affecting the fractional recharge is the clay content of the soil.


The objective of this work was to find a model to estimate surface soil moisture by using the available andfree satellite imagery data of synergy of single polarized C-band sentinel-1 and Optical Sentinel-2 Data acquired in dry and wet seasons on study site in Niger.Water cloud model (WCM) was selected in this study due to its ability to describe backscattering coefficients interms of soil proprieties and vegetation proprieties. First, we founded the relation between Sentinel-1 backscattering coefficientsσVV 0 and σVH 0 in Cbandthat are adjusted to minimizevegetation effect, and ground measurement of soil moisture [downloaded from the International Soil Moisture Network (ISMN)], using linear regression with Gradient descent. The sensitivity of the SAR backscatter to in situ measurement was estimated as 0.7 and 0.43db/Vol% for VV and VH polarizations, respectively. Second, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was used as vegetation descriptor in the WCM, it is extracted directly from the preprocessed sentinel-2 optical images. The Calibration of WCM consists in fitting the model against ground measurements and estimated parameters for VV and VH polarization by minimizing the sum of squares of the differences between the simulated and measured radar signal.


The paper addresses judicial activism in Supreme Court decisions. It defines judicial activism as decisions that use statutory or constitutional provisions to reach broad decisions that make it difficult or impossible for democratically elected officials in local, state or federal government to implement a desired policy. It offers six content-neutral tests for measuring judicial activism and applies them to key Supreme Court decisions involving First Amendment election law and the Sherman Antitrust Act. A final section of the paper reviews possible reform options aimed at restoring the Court to a role as a traditional judicial tribunal that decides cases or controversies narrowly. It urges a public discussion aimed at refining and implementing reform.


This paper describes a new approach to industrial styling design that combines the advantages of pen-based sketching with concepts from variational design to facilitate rapid and fluid development of 3D geometry. The approach is particularly useful for designing products that are primarily stylistic variations of existing ones. The input to the system is a 2D concept sketch of the object, and a generic 3D wireframe template. In the first step, the underlying template is aligned with the input sketch using a camera calibration algorithm. Next, the user traces the feature edges of the sketch on the computer screen; user's 2D strokes are processed and interpreted in 3D to modify the edges of the template. The resulting wireframe is then surfaced, followed by a user-controlled refinement of the initial surfaces using physically-based deformation techniques. Finally, new design edges can be added and manipulated through direct sketching over existing surfaces. Our preliminary evaluation involving several industrial products have demonstrated that with the proposed system, design times can be significantly reduced compared to those obtained through conventional software.


Background: Neural Tube Defects (NTDs) are serious birth defects of which Spina Bifida (SB) is the most common. This paper aims to provide an estimate of the burden of illness for patients with SB and their caregivers in Canada, to assess the benefit of primary prevention. Methods: Individuals with NTDs were recruited through a hospital in Toronto. Using the clinic's database, individuals with SB and caregivers were screened to confirm eligibility. Data were collected using three types of questionnaires: sociodemographic, resource use and Quality of Life (QoL). Results: Of 310 questionnaires sent, 66 individuals with SB and 66 caregivers responded. Most individuals with SB had a lesion in the lumbar area. More than half had presence of hydrocephalus. In the past 10 years, hospitalisation was the most used health care resource and most visited a urologist in the previous year. Caregivers reported various health conditions resulting from their role as carer. QoL scores were standardised using a United States general population. Results demonstrated that individuals with SB are lower on the physical component score but better on the mental component score. Conclusions: The burden associated with individuals with SB in Canada is considerable. Our study highlights the need for primary prevention.


BACKGROUND
Excessive alcohol use contributes significantly to physical and psychological illness, injury and death, and a wide array of social harm in all age groups. A proven strategy for reducing excessive alcohol consumption levels is to offer a brief conversation-based intervention in primary care settings, but more recent technological innovations have enabled people to interact directly via computer, mobile device or smartphone with digital interventions designed to address problem alcohol consumption.

OBJECTIVES
To assess the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of digital interventions for reducing hazardous and harmful alcohol consumption, alcohol-related problems, or both, in people living in the community, specifically: (i) Are digital interventions more effective and cost-effective than no intervention (or minimal input) controls? (ii) Are digital interventions at least equally effective as face-to-face brief alcohol interventions? (iii) What are the effective component behaviour change techniques (BCTs) of such interventions and their mechanisms of action? (iv) What theories or models have been used in the development and/or evaluation of the intervention? Secondary objectives were (i) to assess whether outcomes differ between trials where the digital intervention targets participants attending health, social care, education or other community-based settings and those where it is offered remotely via the internet or mobile phone platforms; (ii) to specify interventions according to their mode of delivery (e.g. functionality features) and assess the impact of mode of delivery on outcomes.

SEARCH METHODS
We searched CENTRAL, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, ERIC, HTA and Web of Knowledge databases; ClinicalTrials.com and WHO ICTRP trials registers and relevant websites to April 2017. We also checked the reference lists of included trials and relevant systematic reviews.

SELECTION CRITERIA
We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) that evaluated the effectiveness of digital interventions compared with no intervention or with face-to-face interventions for reducing hazardous or harmful alcohol consumption in people living in the community and reported a measure of alcohol consumption.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
We used standard methodological procedures expected by The Cochrane Collaboration.

MAIN RESULTS
We included 57 studies which randomised a total of 34,390 participants. The main sources of bias were from attrition and participant blinding (36% and 21% of studies respectively, high risk of bias). Forty one studies (42 comparisons, 19,241 participants) provided data for the primary meta-analysis, which demonstrated that participants using a digital intervention drank approximately 23 g alcohol weekly (95% CI 15 to 30) (about 3 UK units) less than participants who received no or minimal interventions at end of follow up (moderate-quality evidence).Fifteen studies (16 comparisons, 10,862 participants) demonstrated that participants who engaged with digital interventions had less than one drinking day per month fewer than no intervention controls (moderate-quality evidence), 15 studies (3587 participants) showed about one binge drinking session less per month in the intervention group compared to no intervention controls (moderate-quality evidence), and in 15 studies (9791 participants) intervention participants drank one unit per occasion less than no intervention control participants (moderate-quality evidence).Only five small studies (390 participants) compared digital and face-to-face interventions. There was no difference in alcohol consumption at end of follow up (MD 0.52 g/week, 95% CI -24.59 to 25.63; low-quality evidence). Thus, digital alcohol interventions produced broadly similar outcomes in these studies. No studies reported whether any adverse effects resulted from the interventions.A median of nine BCTs were used in experimental arms (range = 1 to 22). 'B' is an estimate of effect (MD in quantity of drinking, expressed in g/week) per unit increase in the BCT, and is a way to report whether individual BCTs are linked to the effect of the intervention. The BCTs of goal setting (B -43.94, 95% CI -78.59 to -9.30), problem solving (B -48.03, 95% CI -77.79 to -18.27), information about antecedents (B -74.20, 95% CI -117.72 to -30.68), behaviour substitution (B -123.71, 95% CI -184.63 to -62.80) and credible source (B -39.89, 95% CI -72.66 to -7.11) were significantly associated with reduced alcohol consumption in unadjusted models. In a multivariable model that included BCTs with B > 23 in the unadjusted model, the BCTs of behaviour substitution (B -95.12, 95% CI -162.90 to -27.34), problem solving (B -45.92, 95% CI -90.97 to -0.87), and credible source (B -32.09, 95% CI -60.64 to -3.55) were associated with reduced alcohol consumption.The most frequently mentioned theories or models in the included studies were Motivational Interviewing Theory (7/20), Transtheoretical Model (6/20) and Social Norms Theory (6/20). Over half of the interventions (n = 21, 51%) made no mention of theory. Only two studies used theory to select participants or tailor the intervention. There was no evidence of an association between reporting theory use and intervention effectiveness.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
There is moderate-quality evidence that digital interventions may lower alcohol consumption, with an average reduction of up to three (UK) standard drinks per week compared to control participants. Substantial heterogeneity and risk of performance and publication bias may mean the reduction was lower. Low-quality evidence from fewer studies suggested there may be little or no difference in impact on alcohol consumption between digital and face-to-face interventions.The BCTs of behaviour substitution, problem solving and credible source were associated with the effectiveness of digital interventions to reduce alcohol consumption and warrant further investigation in an experimental context.Reporting of theory use was very limited and often unclear when present. Over half of the interventions made no reference to any theories. Limited reporting of theory use was unrelated to heterogeneity in intervention effectiveness.


Chorismate mutase is one of the essential enzymes in the shikimate pathway and is key to the survival of the organism Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The x-ray crystal structure of this enzyme from Mycobacterium tuberculosis was manipulated to prepare an initial set of in silico protein models of the active site. Known inhibitors of the enzyme were docked into the active site using the flexible ligand / flexible active site side chains approach implemented in CAChe Worksystem (Fujitsu Ltd). The resulting complexes were refined by molecular dynamics studies in explicit water using Amber 9. This yielded a further set of protein models that were used for additional rounds of ligand docking. A binding hypothesis was established for the enzyme and this was used to screen a database of commercially available drug-like compounds. From these results new potential ligands were designed that fitted appropriately into the active site and matched the functional groups and binding motifs founds therein. Some of these compounds and close analogues were then synthesized and submitted for biological evaluation. As a separate part of this thesis, analogues of very active anti-tuberculosis pyridylcarboxamidrazone were also prepared. This was carried out by the addition and the deletion of the substitutions from the lead compound thereby preparing heteroaryl carboxamidrazone derivatives and related compounds. All these compounds were initially evaluated for biological activity against various gram positive organisms and then sent to the TAACF (USA) for screening against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Some of the new compounds proved to be at least as potent as the original lead compound but less toxic.


Learn all the Java and Android skills you need to start making powerful mobile applicationsAbout This BookKick-start your Android programming career, or just have fun publishing apps to the Google Play marketplaceA first-principles introduction to Java, via Android, which means you'll be able to start building your own applications from scratchLearn by example and build three real-world apps and over 40 mini apps throughout the bookWho This Book Is ForAre you trying to start a career in programming, but haven't found the right way in? Do you have a great idea for an app, but don't know how to make it a reality? Or maybe you're just frustrated that "to learn Android, you must know java." If so, Android Programming for Beginners is for you. You don't need any programming experience to follow along with this book, just a computer and a sense of adventure.What You Will LearnMaster the fundamentals of coding Java for AndroidInstall and set up your Android development environmentBuild functional user interfaces with the Android Studio visual designerAdd user interaction, data captures, sound, and animation to your appsManage your apps' data using the built-in Android SQLite databaseFind out about the design patterns used by professionals to make top-grade applicationsBuild, deploy, and publish real Android applications to the Google Play marketplaceIn DetailAndroid is the most popular OS in the world. There are millions of devices accessing tens of thousands of applications. It is many people's entry point into the world of technology; it is an operating system for everyone. Despite this, the entry-fee to actually make Android applications is usually a computer science degree, or five years' worth of Java experience.Android Programming for Beginners will be your companion to create Android applications from scratch—whether you're looking to start your programming career, make an application for work, be reintroduced to mobile development, or are just looking to program for fun. We will introduce you to all the fundamental concepts of programming in an Android context, from the Java basics to working with the Android API. All examples are created from within Android Studio, the official Android development environment that helps supercharge your application development process.After this crash-course, we'll dive deeper into Android programming and you'll learn how to create applications with a professional-standard UI through fragments, make location-aware apps with Google Maps integration, and store your user's data with SQLite. In addition, you'll see how to make your apps multilingual, capture images from a device's camera, and work with graphics, sound, and animations too.By the end of this book, you'll be ready to start building your own custom applications in Android and Java.Style and approachWith more than 40 mini apps to code and run, Android Programming for Beginners is a hands-on guide to learning Android and Java. Each example application demonstrates a different aspect of Android programming. Alongside these mini apps, we push your abilities by building three larger applications to demonstrate Android application development in context.


American working conditions have deteriorated over the last 40 years. One commonly-noted change is the rise of nonstandard and unstable work schedules. Such schedules, especially when held by mothers, negatively affect family functioning and the well-being and development of children; they have implications for the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage. This article describes and compares the working schedules—in terms of type, duration, and variability—of American mothers in 1990 and 2012 in an attempt to assess whether nonstandard and unstable schedules are growing more common. Analyses demonstrate that evening work has increased in prevalence for single mothers but not for their partnered peers. Mothers in both single-mother and two-partner households experienced considerably greater within-week schedule variability and higher likelihood of weekend work in 2012 than they did in 1990. These changes resulted from widespread shifts in the nature of work, especially affecting less educated mothers.


Over the last thirty years, international political economy and international relations have become increasingly sophisticated, both empirically and theoretically. Realist, liberal, and constructivist theorists have developed research programs that yield new insights into some of the most perplexing areas of international politics: the interplay between conflict and cooperation, the impact of domestic political structures on foreign policy, the role of institutions, and the influence of worldviews and causal beliefs on decision-making. In exploring these developments, this book also considers them from the perspectives of security studies, organization theory, and economics.


A critique of both classical humanism and dominant trends in posthumanism that formulates the ultimate form of intelligence as a theoretical and practical thought unfettered by the temporal order of things.In Intelligence and Spirit Reza Negarestani formulates the ultimate form of intelligence as a theoretical and practical thought unfettered by the temporal order of things, a real movement capable of overcoming any state of affairs that, from the perspective of the present, may appear to be the complete totality of history. Intelligence pierces through what seems to be the totality or the inevitable outcome of its history, be it the manifest portrait of the human or technocapitalism as the alleged pilot of history.Building on Hegel's account of Geist as a multiagent conception of mind and on Kant's transcendental psychology as a functional analysis of the conditions of possibility of mind, Negarestani provides a critique of both classical humanism and dominant trends in posthumanism. The assumptions of the former are exposed by way of a critique of the transcendental structure of experience as a tissue of subjective or psychological dogmas; the claims of the latter regarding the ubiquity of mind or the inevitable advent of an unconstrained superintelligence are challenged as no more than ideological fixations which do not stand the test of systematic scrutiny.This remarkable fusion of continental philosophy in the form of a renewal of the speculative ambitions of German Idealism and analytic philosophy in the form of extended thought-experiments and a philosophy of artificial languages opens up new perspectives on the meaning of human intelligence and explores the real potential of posthuman intelligence and what it means for us to live in its prehistory.


The close relationship between machine technology and the literature of American modernism has long been acknowledged. Indeed, it is hard to imagine Fitzgerald's work without its hyper-materialised cars (and metaphysically potent car crashes), or Dos Passos's USA without the representational possibilities of the camera eye. Other writers in the 1920s had equally famous fascinations with what cultural producers and critics often abstracted into the concept of "the machine"; William Carlos Williams described poetry as being "machines made of words," and Hart Crane used one of the triumphs of American engineering, the Brooklyn Bridge, as the organising metaphor and structuring principle of his poem The Bridge, identifying his theme as "the conquest of space and knowledge."1 Of course, writers' fascination with how machinery or technological innovation was effecting social change had not begun with modernism. Yet often goaded by the speed of innovation in the visual arts, some American modernist writers responded to what Cecelia Tichi has called a "gears-and-girders" world by rethinking their relation to time, space, communication and economy with an unprecedented radicalism. And in the 1920s – a decade which saw more cars in Manhattan than in the whole of Britain, Lindbergh's pioneering flight across the Atlantic, and the USA move decisively ahead of Europe in industrial productivity – this rethinking had a particularly pressing urgency. Jean Toomer was one of the writers who participated in this exercise, engaging with European art movements such as Dadaism and Futurism and their proposals for new relations between machine design and literary aesthetics.


The Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) has over 31,000 miles of track covering a 24 state region. Planning and scheduling the production, packaging, delivery, and pickup of rail, involved in the maintenance of this network, is a very complex task. Manually scheduling only a subset of the resources required has historically taken several days to accomplish. Moreover, the inability to fully schedule all resources can lead to inefficient resource utilization. This paper describes the Rail Train Scheduler (RTS), designed and developed to capture the expertise of the UPRR scheduler, generate production schedules of all the resources involved, and provide a decision support tool for determining the best mix of resources required. RTS is an expert system that uses constraint satisfaction and domain specific heuristics to produce good, low cost schedules. It has been deployed since January, 1996. UPRR anticipates a savings of about $500,000 per year from the use of RTS.


The identification of biologically active compounds from high-throughput screening (HTS) can involve considerable postscreening analysis to verify the nature of the sample activity. In this study we evaluated the performance of micro-parallel liquid chromatography (microPLC) as a separation-based enzyme assay platform for follow-up of compound activities found in quantitative HTS of two different targets, a hydrolase and an oxidoreductase. In an effort to couple secondary analysis to primary screening we explored the application of microPLC immediately after a primary screen. In microPLC, up to 24 samples can be loaded and analyzed simultaneously via high-performance liquid chromatography within a specially designed cartridge. In a proof-of-concept experiment for screen-coupled actives verification, we identified, selected, and consolidated the contents of "active" wells from a 1,536-well format HTS experiment into a 384-well plate and subsequently analyzed these samples by a 24-channel microPLC system. The method utilized 0.6% of the original 6-microl 1,536-well assay for the analysis. The analysis revealed several non-biological-based "positive" samples. The main examples included "false" enzyme activators resulting from an increase in well fluorescence due to fluorescent compound or impurity. The microPLC analysis also provided a verification of the activity of two activators of glucocerebrosidase. We discuss the benefits of microPLC and its limitations from the standpoint of ease of use and integration into a seamless postscreen workflow.


In the light of recent centenaries commemorating the heroic era of Antarctic exploration and the current focus on climate research in Antarctica, this thesis asks how art and writing, made out of observations of Antarctica through the archive, can inform contemporary questions regarding climate change. It pays specific attention to Edward Wilson (1872–1912) and the impossible practice of 'en plein air' watercolour painting in the extreme sub-zero conditions of the polar environment, and considers Wilson's biography and watercolours through the early work of anthropologist Franz Boas (1858–1942) on the colour of water, and his later anthropological writing. Crossing over between art, anthropology, material culture and architecture, and engaging with feminist new materialism or, 'how matter comes to matter',1 and in the light of thinking on ecological and post-human subjectivity, this thesis takes up a critical position concerning the role of observation in the history of anthropology, science, and art. I employ a refractive methodology, informed by Rosi Braidotti's 'transposition',2 and Sigmund Freud's 'Entstellung'.3 The refractive method gives the accent to the distorting and displacing effects of medium by practising and thinking through 'elsewhere'. The artworks are initiated by copying from archival sources and result in drawings, watercolours, pin-board assemblages, blown-glass globes, moulded glass, wax maquettes, and re-enacted magic-lantern shows. Informed by Jane Rendell's 'Site-writing',4 the writing is an ekphrasis, structured as a literary chiasmus, in which readings crossover, and refract through, each other. This chiastic ekphrasis is a material-discursive method, which combines art making and writing. It brings a feminist new materialist critical engagement with the race and gender normativity of Antarctic heroism, to argue that the archive of Antarctic watercolours can be interpreted to produce an ecological posthuman ethics and optics founded on ice rather than glass.


Multi-dimensional sensory data would likely have uneven resolution, hence, necessitating pre-processing steps before these could be useful for data analytics. In this study, we analyzed the performance of a multivariate regression model using multi-layer perceptron subjected to inputs that have asynchronous sampling rates. We adopted a publicly available sensor-based dataset to explore the feasibility of the MLP for the predictive analytics of data gathered at mixed-sampling rates. The sensor data consisted of temperature and humidity measurements at 1.67, 1.11 and 0.55-mHz sampling frequencies. Applying MinMax normalization to the input layer, the RMSE of the regression model with Gradient Descent optimizer was reduced by around 8 per cent. Downsampling the input data using spatial filters improved the performance of the MLP regression model based on its generally lower RMSE and higher R2 values compared to the baseline. Our findings suggest that MLP networks provide a suitable baseline analytics on mixed-rate input data. Intricate methods could later build on the architecture presented in our current study.


Abstract The aim of the study was to evaluate the feasibility of tailored and dose-dense epirubicin and cyclophosphamide followed by docetaxel as adjuvant breast cancer therapy. Material and methods. Patients with node-positive breast cancer received either four cycles of biweekly and tailored EC (epirubicin 38-60-75-90-105-120 mg/m2, cyclophosphamide 450-600-900-1200 mg/m2) followed by four cycles of docetaxel (60-75-85-100 mg/m2) (arm A) or the same regimen with fixed doses (E90C600 + 4 → T75 + 4) (arm B) or docetaxel, doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide (T75A50C500) every three weeks for six cycles (arm C). All patients received G-CSF support and prophylactic ciprofloxacin. Results. One-hundred and twenty-four patients were randomised in the study. In the A, B and C arm, 17% 19% and 3% of the patients had one or more cycles delayed due to side-effects whereas 24%, 5% and 15% experienced a grade 3 infection or febrile neutropenia. After the introduction of an extra week between the EC and T parts in the A and B arms, grade 3 hand-foot-skin reactions were reduced from 5 to 0.2%. Twenty-nine percent (A and B) and 20% (C) of the patients were hospitalised due to side-effects. Discussion. Dose-dense and tailored EC/T can be given with manageable toxicity and is after adjustment presently studied in the phase III Panther trial.


According to previous research, American cultural values are reflected in the external communication of organizations. This study aimed to explore how cultural features are reflected in a specific American organization's, the Coca-cola Company's, web based media releases and to hypothesize what kind of effects the discourses could have on the viewers' perceptions of the world. In this cultural studies oriented research, the notion of cultural transference was adopted to explore the way texts can carry and represent cultural features, such as values, norms and behaviour models. In addition, effects research was adopted to reveal the texts' potential effect on people's worldviews. Specific research questions included: (1) What American cultural characteristics (values, norms or behavior models) are represented in the discourse of media releases? And (2) what kind of general judgments can be made from these representations of the North American culture on the public's perception of "normality" (cultural change phenomena)? The data consisted of 24 media news releases posted in the year 2009 on the target company's official website's Press Centre section targeted to North American press and audience. Theoretically based content analysis was used to study the data. Althen's (1988) five characteristics of American culture were used as the main theoretical background in the study: (1) high level of individualism; (2) emphasis on equality; (3) future orientations; (4) desire for action and achievement; and (5) directness and assertiveness (Okigbo, Martin & Amienyi 2005: 315). According to the study findings, the media releases reflected many of Althen's model's American cultural characteristics at least on an average level. Especially desire for action and achievement and directness and assertiveness were strongly transferred in the discourse. On the other hand, surprisingly the results revealed more collectivist values instead of individualist values and a differentiation perspective was emphasized instead of equality. The contradictory values could have potential effect on viewers' cultural perceptions. In conclusion, the results reveal interesting cultural transference aspects of media releases which might need future research especially from the release objective perspective.


Whether figuring out where to eat in an unfamiliar city or deciding which apartment to live in, consumer generated data (i.e. reviews and forum posts) are often an important influence in online decision making. To make sense of these rich repositories of diverse opinions, searchers need to sift through a large number of reviews to characterize each item based on aspects that they care about. We introduce a novel system, SearchLens, where searchers build up a collection of "Lenses" that reflect their different latent interests, and compose the Lenses to find relevant items across different contexts. Based on the Lenses, SearchLens generates personalized interfaces with visual explanations that promotes transparency and enables deeper exploration. While prior work found searchers may not wish to put in effort specifying their goals without immediate and sufficient benefits, results from a controlled lab study suggest that our approach incentivized participants to express their interests more richly than in a baseline condition, and a field study showed that participants found benefits in SearchLens while conducting their own tasks.


The purpose of this research is to discover how cultural diversity is managed in organisations in order to explore the influence that has in organisations. The research was conducted to three small and medium enterprises in Dublin, where a case study was build for each organisation and then a comparison between the companies has been carried out. The theoretical framework explored cultural diversity in organisations as well as positive and negative implications; consequently, the International Model of Cultural Diversity was selected as a theoretical framework to base the research on it.

The investigation looks at an interpretivist philosophy. This is an explanatory research and multiple case-study design with a qualitative strategy. The empirical data was carried out through interviews and the main findings were breaking down by the diverse climate, the individual outcomes and the organisational effectiveness according to the model selected. Coding and pattern matching were the main techniques for the analysis of the data. The main limitations were the little access provided from one organisation and therefore the implications were an incomplete analysis to that specific organisation. Nonetheless, for the other organisations, the analysis of the findings suggests that cultural diversity has positive outcomes in the three organisations.

For companies, the research contributes to a better understanding of multiculturalism in organisations and how important it is to understand the benefits and challenges that cultural diversity represents in order to manage it adequately.


The Oxford Handbook of Fiduciary Law provides a comprehensive overview of critical topics in fiduciary law and theory through chapters authored by leading scholars. The Handbook opens with surveys of the many fields of law in which fiduciary duties arise. Drawing on these surveys, the Handbook offers a synthetic analysis of fiduciary law's key concepts and principles. Chapters in the volume explore the defining features of fiduciary relationships, clarify the distinctive fiduciary duties that arise in these relationships, and identify the remedies available for breach of fiduciary duties. The Handbook also provides numerous comparative perspectives on fiduciary law from eminent legal historians and from scholars with deep expertise in a diverse array of the world's legal systems. Finally, the Handbook lays the groundwork for future research on fiduciary law and theory by highlighting cross-cutting themes, identifying persistent theoretical and practical challenges, and exploring how the field could be enriched through empirical analysis and interdisciplinary insights from economics, philosophy, and psychology. Unparalleled in its breadth and depth of coverage, the Oxford Handbook of Fiduciary Law represents an invaluable resource for practitioners, policymakers, scholars, and students of this essential field of law.


The style of activity of a volcano is controlled by the evolution of its magma chamber, as well as external factors and processes, such as the structural framework, the stress field and possibly also the climatic changes. In order to understand the interplay between the various factors controlling the evolution through time of a volcano, the stratigraphy of the volcanic rocks must show both the syn-eruptive and the inter-eruptive products, the latter usually representing much longer period of the volcano life than the former, and how they relate to tectono-sedimentary events at regional scale. Both the Unconformity Bounded Stratigraphic Units (UBSU) and the Allostratigraphy offer tools to organise the stratigraphy based on the hierarchy of the unconformities that bound different rock bodies, i.e. recognising different orders of processes controlling the emplacement of volcanic rocks. This paper proposes to organise the stratigraphy of volcanic rock sequences following the principles of the UBSU and/or the Allostratigraphy. We propose to introduce the Eruptive Unit as the basic lithostratigraphic unit, which comprises the primary products of a single eruption and the deposits of their syn-eruptive reworking. Rock units at a higher or lower hierarchical order will then be associations of eruptive units or part of them respectively. This allows to tie invariantly the organisation of the stratigraphy to a phenomenon (the eruption) that is intrinsically related to the volcano activity, which would make comparable the stratigraphies of different volcanoes, both modern and ancient and at any scale of representation. The legend for volcanic rocks should be compared with the legend for sedimentary rocks of the surrounding plains in order, to evaluate the reciprocal influence of volcanism, tectonism and eustatism on sedimentation, by correlating the unconformities developed in different depositional environments.


If wind energy converters are located anywhere near a residential area, they must never become too noisy even in high winds. Even the most careful design cannot prevent noise from arising at times: one source is the motion of the rotor blades, another is the cogwheels that produce vibrations in the gearbox. These are relayed to the tower of the wind turbine, where they are emitted across a wide area – and what the residents hear is a humming noise. "People find these monotone sounds particularly unpleasant, rather like the whining of a mosquito," says Andre Illgen, a research associate at the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology IWU in Dresden. If the wind energy converters hum too loudly, they are only permitted to operate under partial load. They rotate at a slower speed and generate less electricity. In some cases the operators have to install additional damping systems or even replace the generator – an expensive business. However, the effectiveness of the passive damping systems used until now is somewhat limited: they only absorb noise at a certain frequency. Since modern wind energy converters adapt their rotational speed to the wind velocity in order to generate as much electricity as possible, however, the frequency of the humming sound also varies. Despite noise attenuation measures, humming noises penetrate the surrounding area. In a joint project with colleagues from Schirmer GmbH, ESM Energieand Schwingungstechnik Mitsch GmbH and the Dr. Ziegler engineering office, IWU researchers have developed an active damping system for wind turbines. The project is being funded by the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt. "These systems react autonomously to any change in frequency and damp the noise – regardless of how fast the wind generator is turning," says Illgen. The key components of this system are piezo actuators. These devices convert electric into mechanical motion and generate "negative vibrations", or a kind of anti-noise that precisely counteracts the vibrations of the wind turbine and cancels them out. The piezo actuator are mounted on the gearbox bearings that connect the gearbox to the pylon. But how do these piezo actuators adjust themselves to the respective noise frequencies? "We have integrated sensors into the system. They constantly measure the vibrations arising in the gearbox, and pass on the results to the actuator control system," says Illgen. The researchers have already developed a working model of the active vibration dampers, and their next step will be to perform field trials.


"Vehicle-to-grid" (V2G) power will be a new green energy scheme in which electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles communicate with the smart grid to sell demand response services by either delivering electricity into the grid or by throttling their charging rate. Due to high vehicular speed, sporadic connection, limited communication range, and large volume of data that need to be transmitted, V2G communications have the crucial requirements of fast authentication and encryption/decryption. This paper proposes a unique batch authentication protocol UBAPV2G that takes into account the characteristics of vehicle communication. The performance analysis shows that UBAPV2G can achieve less authentication delay, less computational cost, and less communication traffic, and security analysis shows that UBAPV2G is strong enough to defend against security attacks. The experimental results also demonstrate that UBAPV2G can achieve less authentication delay for large number of packets. Thus, UBAPV2G protocol is suitable for the stringent requirement of real time V2G communications.


Hip extension is a joint action that contributes to athletic movement during performance in various sports. Within the sport of professional soccer, high intensity efforts encompass an important proportion of athletic movement and optimal hip extensor functioning can be seen as a crucial action for the successful performance of such actions. Perhaps related to the importance placed upon high intensity efforts in soccer, the number of hamstring strain injuries that occur are of major concern to practitioners within the field. As such, great efforts are made to establish methods of managing and mitigating these injuries, one of which being improving hip extension function. Methods of establishing an individual's maximal hip extension strength capacity are available yet are not void of several clinical and practical limitations. As such, understanding the relationship between the specific ability of hip extension with performance and injury related measures are difficult to investigate. Therefore, it may be of use to investigate the development of new strength assessment methods. In study 1 (chapter 3) a framework of considerations was outlined that surround various methodological and theoretical concepts believed to influence the subsequent validity, reliability and operational success of hip extension assessment tools in the applied field. These considerations arose from information in previous scientific research and from the research team's (PhD candidate and supervisors) wealth of experience working in applied professional sport. Throughout the framework of considerations, the assessment tools currently available for hip extension strength were critiqued and a rationale for the development of a new tool was outlined. Further into the chapter the adherence of these considerations was presented throughout the development of a new assessment tool (Hip Extension Bench). Finally, the ultimate section of this chapter then introduced information surrounding practical application of the Hip Extension Bench. In study 2 (chapter 4) the sensitivity of the Hip Extension Bench was investigated where the research team assessed muscle activity and force changes in response to various hip flexion positions. The investigations were undertaken with a mixed population of elite soccer players (n = 10), competitive sprinters (n = 10) and recreationally active males (n = 5) and consisted of assessment across 6 different hip positions (70, 60, 45, 30, 15 and 0 hip flexion). Results displayed precise and specific changes in individual hip extensor muscle activity and force production under maximal isometric contractions at different hip joint angles. Gluteus maximus muscle peak activity was pronounced at positions of inner range hip flexion (0 and 15) whereas maximum force and biceps femoris long head and semitendinosus peak activity was pronounced at positions of greater hip flexion (60 and 70). These data suggest that the Hip Extension Bench can be manipulated to selectively target specific hip extensor muscles and careful precisions must be adhered to upon assessment setup to confirm standardised conditions. In study 3 (chapter 5) the test-retest reliability of the Hip Extension Bench under non-fatigued conditions was investigated. A group of 40 elite youth soccer players and 15 competitive sprinters undertook maximal isometric hip extension contractions at two angles (15 and 60) on two occasions with a minimum and maximum of 7 and 14 days between test days. Generally, both cohorts demonstrated good reliability of bilateral and unilateral isometric hip extension strength assessments. The findings also demonstrated the difficulties surrounding data collection in the applied field where several complications may arise that influence the subsequent findings and informed decisions that are made on reflection of the data. In study 4 (chapter 6) the first implementation of the Hip Extension Bench within research surrounding isometric hip extension strength and sprint-acceleration and jump performance associations was presented. A sample of 10 competitive sprinters completed a minimum of three 40 m sprints on test day 1 and a comprehensive battery of strength and power assessments on test day 2 with a minimum and maximum of 7 and 14 days between each test day. The main findings confirmed that isometric hip extension strength was highly correlated with several force-based variables of sprint-acceleration performance (theoretical maximum force; F0, total force; FT Peak, total force across distances of 2, 20 and 40 m; FT 2, 20 & 40 m, mean horizontal force; FH Mean, horizontal force across distances of 2 and 20 m; FH 2 & 20 m and peak power; Pmax) and jump performance in the horizontal direction (the sum of left and right leg horizontal countermovement jumps; UL HCMJ Sum). These findings provide evidence for the role and importance of hip extension strength, specifically under isometric conditions, in high intensity effort performance. Overall, these findings suggest that a new assessment tool for isometric hip extension strength has been developed that is suitable for application in the environment of applied professional sport. The findings also confirmed the important of hip extension for high intensity effort performance and in conclusion provide a strong rationale for the implementation of the Hip Extension Bench for future research and application in performance and injury management.


This paper reports on the OpenupEd Quality Label, a quality assurance process for MOOCs (massive open online courses) developed for the European OpenupEd portal (http://www.openuped.eu).

The OpenupEd Quality Label is offered as a way of ensuring that MOOCs offer a good quality educational experience. It adopts a quality enhancement approach, based on initial self-assessment against benchmark indicators, followed by a review leading to an improvement action plan. It is designed to complement both an institutional course approval process, and ongoing evaluation and monitoring of courses in presentation. The overall approach and the benchmarks are derived from the E-xcellence e-learning quality projects (E-xcellencelabel.eadtu.eu).

The benchmarks are divided into two groups: course-level and institutional. There are 11 benchmarks that apply at course-level and which should be checked for each MOOC. There are 21 institutional benchmarks grouped into six areas: Strategic Management, Curriculum Design, Course Design, Course Delivery, Staff Support and Student Support. The institutional benchmarks are only reviewed periodically. The benchmarks are supported by the E-xcellence manual which provides background material and more detailed indicators of good practice, with a supplement for MOOC-specific aspects. A 'quick scan' checklist is provided to capture the extent to which each benchmark is achieved. Other templates are provided to gather evidence and prepare an action plan.

OpenupEd has further distinctive features intended to enhance the quality of MOOCs. The initial providers are members of EADTU (European Association of Distance Teaching Universities) and will bring extensive experience of open and distance learning to bear on MOOCs. Their commitment to 'open education' acts to remove unnecessary barriers to learning, and OpenupEd MOOCs should demonstrate specific values: openness to learners, digital openness, a learner-centred approach, support for independent learning, media-supported interactions, recognition options, a focus on quality, and embracing a spectrum of diversity.

The OpenupEd label should benefit all stakeholders in MOOCs. Students can be reassured about the experience they are committing to. Employers can recognise the content and skills demonstrated by a MOOC certificate. MOOC authors can achieve recognition for their input. Institutions can protect their brand reputation. Funders can be reassured that products are worthwhile. Quality agencies, who work on behalf of all the above parties, may find their task eased.


Managing patients in the perioperative setting receiving novel oral anticoagulation agents for thromboprophylaxis or stroke prevention with atrial fibrillation is an important consideration for clinicians. The novel oral anticoagulation agents include direct Factor Xa inhibitors rivaroxaban and apixaban, and the direct thrombin inhibitor dabigatran. In elective surgery, discontinuing their use is important, but renal function must also be considered because elimination is highly dependent on renal elimination. If bleeding occurs in patients who have received these agents, common principles of bleeding management as with any anticoagulant (including the known principles for warfarin) should be considered. This review summarizes the available data regarding the management of bleeding with novel oral anticoagulation agents. Hemodialysis is a therapeutic option for dabigatran-related bleeding, while in vitro studies showed that prothrombin complex concentrates are reported to be useful for rivaroxaban-related bleeding. Additional clinical studies are needed to determine the best method for reversal of the novel oral anticoagulation agents when bleeding occurs.


This handbook documents sixty methods used in design innovation projects leading to the design of new products or services. It is the first publication to bring together methods, tools and case studies that involve multiple design disciplines and perspectives – from product and service design to interaction and user experience design. Design. Think. Make. Break. Repeat. addresses the needs of anyone interested in deploying design thinking academically or operationally inside their organisation. With design thinking becoming an increasingly valued skillset across a wide range of industries, there is an increasing demand for design-based skills in the workplace. More and more organisations are looking at design to improve their businesses and the services and products they offer. The book offers an easily accessible overview of the design thinking process along with a wide range of methods that can be applied across many different areas and contexts.


A set of eight large (20 m3) mesocosms were moored in Johnson's Dock (62°39.576'S, 60°22.408'W, Livingston Island, Antarctica) to experimentally generate a gradient of phytoplankton biomass and production in order to test the extent of coupling between bacteria (heterotrophic Bacteria and Archaea) and phytoplankton, as well as the role of bacterial losses to protist grazers. This was achieved by imposing four light levels (100%, 50%, 25%, and 10%) in the presence or absence of nutrient additions (0.1 mol NH4Cl, 0.1 mol F6Na2Si, and 0.01 mol KH2PO4 per day per mesocosm). The experimental treatments resulted in a broad range of chlorophyll a (Chl a) (0.31–93.5 µg Chl a L-1) and average primary production rates, while bacteria responded in a much narrower range of biomass (3–447 µg C L-1) and production (0.21– 15.71 µg C L-1 d-1). Results confirm that bacteria‐chlorophyll and bacterial production‐primary production relationships in the Southern Ocean differ from the typical relationships applicable to aquatic ecosystems elsewhere. Bacteria respond to phytoplankton blooms, but they respond so weakly that bacterial production represents a small percentage of primary production (1–10%). Although other mechanisms might also contribute to the weak bacterial response to phytoplankton blooms, we demonstrate that the reason for it is likely the tight control of bacterial populations by their predators. Protist grazers are able to sustain faster growth rates in the cold waters of the Southern Ocean than are bacteria, thereby preventing bacteria from responding to phytoplankton blooms more forcibly.


This article compares risk reduction from MPCI and GRP crop insurance contracts. The analysis extends and improves on the existing area-yield insurance literature in four important respects. First, the geographical scope greatly exceeds that of previous work. Second, unlike previous efforts, the area is not assumed to consist only of those farms included in the analysis. Third, the analysis is based on the actual GRP indemnity function rather than the area-yield indemnity function commonly used in the literature. Fourth, the analysis avoids the questionable assumption that GRP scale can be optimized at the individual farm level. Even with a number of conservative assumptions favoring MPCI relative to GRP, results indicate that at least for some crops and regions GRP is aviable alternative to MPCI.


Current endeavors in the type 2 diabetes (T2D) field include gaining a better understanding of extracellular signaling pathways that regulate pancreatic islet function. Recent data suggest that both Bmp and Wnt pathways are operative in pancreatic islets and play a positive role in insulin secretion and glucose homeostasis. Our laboratory found the dual Bmp and Wnt antagonist Sostdc1 to be upregulated in a mouse model of islet dysmorphogenesis and nonimmune-mediated lean diabetes. Because Bmp signaling has been proposed to enhance β-cell function, we evaluated the role of Sostdc1 in adult islet function using animals in which Sostdc1 was globally deleted. While Sostdc1-null animals exhibited no pancreas development phenotype, a subset of mutants exhibited enhanced insulin secretion and improved glucose homeostasis compared with control animals after 12-wk exposure to high-fat diet. Loss of Sostdc1 in the setting of metabolic stress results in altered expression of Bmp-responsive genes in islets but did not affect expression of Wnt target genes, suggesting that Sostdc1 primarily regulates the Bmp pathway in the murine pancreas. Furthermore, our data indicate that removal of Sostdc1 enhances the downregulation of the closely related Bmp inhibitors Ctgf and Gremlin in islets after 8-wk exposure to high-fat diet. These data imply that Sostdc1 regulates expression of these inhibitors and provide a means by which Sostdc1-null animals show enhanced insulin secretion and glucose homeostasis. Our studies provide insights into Bmp pathway regulation in the endocrine pancreas and reveal new avenues for improving β-cell function under metabolic stress.


Human health and biological safety problems resulting from urban drinking water pipe network biofilms pollution have attracted wide concern. Despite the inclusion of residual chlorine in drinking water distribution systems supplies, the bacterium is a recalcitrant human pathogen capable of forming biofilms on pipe walls and causing health risks. Typical drinking water bacterial biofilms and their response to different concentrations of chlorination was monitored. The results showed that the four bacteria all formed single biofilms susceptible to sodium hypochlorite. After 30 min disinfection, biomass and cultivability decreased with increasing concentration of disinfectant but then increased in high disinfectant doses. PMA-qPCR results indicated that it resulted in little cellular damage. Flow cytometry analysis showed that with increasing doses of disinfectant, the numbers of clusters increased and the sizes of clusters decreased. Under high disinfectant treatment, EPS was depleted by disinfectant and about 0.5-1 mg/L of residual chlorine seemed to be appropriate for drinking water treatment. This research provides an insight into the EPS protection to biofilms. Resistance of biofilms against high levels of chlorine has implications for the delivery of drinking water.


In mathematics, morphism is a term that indicates structure-preserving mappings between mathematical structures of the same type. Linear transformations for linear spaces, homomorphisms for algebraic structures and continuous functions for topological spaces are examples. Many data researched in machine learning, on the other hand, can include mathematical structures in them. Strings are totally ordered sets, and trees can be understood not only as graphs but also as partially ordered sets with respect to an ancestor-to-descendent order and semigroups with respect to the binary operation to determine nearest common ancestor. In this paper, we propose a generic and theoretic framework to investigate similarity of structured data through structure-preserving one-to-one partial mappings, which we call morphisms. Through morphisms, useful and important methods studied in the literature can be abstracted into common concepts, although they have been studied separately. When we study new structures of data, we will be able to extend the legacy methods for the purpose of studying the new structure, if we can define morphisms properly. Also, this view reveals hidden relations between methods known in the literature and can let us understand them more clearly. For example, we see that the center star algorithm, which was originally developed to compute sequential multiple alignments, can be abstracted so that it not only applies to data structures other than strings but also can be used to solve problems of pattern extraction. The methods that we study in this paper include edit distance, multiple alignment, pattern extraction and kernel, but it is sure that there exist much more methods that can be abstracted within our framework.


The H.264/AVC deblocking filter is becoming the performance bottleneck of H.264/AVC parallelization on many-core platform. Efficient parallelization of the deblocking filter on a many-core platform is challenging, because the deblocking filter has complicated data dependencies, which provide insufficient parallelism for so many cores. Furthermore, parallelization may have significant synchronization and load imbalance overhead. At present, research on the parallelizing deblocking filter on a many-core platform is rare and focuses on data-level parallelization. In this paper, we propose a three-step framework considering task-level segmentation and data-level parallelization to efficiently parallelize the deblocking filter. First, we review the entire deblocking filter process in 4 × 4 block edge-level and divide it into two parts: 1) boundary strength computation (BSC) and 2) edge discrimination and filtering (EDF), which increases the parallelism. Then, we apply the Markov empirical transition probability matrix and Huffman tree (METPMHT) to the BSC, which alleviate the load imbalance problem. Finally, we use an independent pixel connected area parallelization (IPCAP) for the EDF, which increases the parallelism and reduces the synchronization. In experiments, we apply our parallel method to the deblocking filter of the H.264/AVC reference software JM15.1 on the Tile64 platform without any Tile64 platform-based optimizations. Compared to the well-known 2D-wavefront method, the proposed method achieves on average 14.85, 17.83, and 10.60 times speed-up for QCIF, CIF, and HD videos using 62 cores, respectively.


The science of restoration ecology seeks ways to advance the understanding of how to restore native ecosystems that have been degraded or destroyed. Ecological theory suggests that environmental filters influence the outcome of ecological restoration and ultimately long-term restoration success. In this study, three types of environmental filters: dispersal, abiotic, biotic were manipulated to improve understanding of how to successfully re-establish native plant communities. The abiotic filter was manipulated by decreasing soil compaction (ripping) and evaporation (shade). The biotic filter was addressed with control of herbivory (fencing) and weeds (herbicide). The dispersal limitation was examined by altering the application depth of the transferred topsoil (deep and shallow topsoil volume) and application of germination cues (smoke and heat).

This study was located in Banksia woodland - a Mediterranean-type ecosystem restricted to the Swan Coastal Plain in Western Australia that is diminishing due to rapid urban expansion. Topsoil from Banksia woodland vegetation contains a large native soil seed bank. Here, topsoil from a newly cleared site was stripped, transferred and applied to six recipient sites within two months of vegetation clearing. The recipient sites had been grazed for about 80 years prior to purchasing for conservation as part of a biodiversity offset program. Following topsoil transfer, a fully factorial combination of three filter manipulation treatments was applied across the six sites to identify successful restoration techniques. The dispersal filter was tested by altering the volume of topsoil seed bank applied. The abiotic filter experimental manipulation was performed using topsoil ripping. The biotic filter was examined by installing herbivore exclosures.

Emergence and survival of Banksia woodland species were quantified in spring and autumn for two consecutive years after topsoil transfer. Manipulation of the abiotic filter in soil ripping treatment reduced the densities of the emerging native perennials significantly (t = 4, P < 0.001). Overall, the most successful technique was the application of a high volume of unripped topsoil, with resulting mean densities of native perennials of 15.9 ± 0.2 (SE) m-2 in the first year. Similarly, high volume of unripped topsoil resulted in the highest mean densities of native perennials of 7.6 ± 0.1 (SE) m-2 in the second year after topsoil transfer. Application of plot-scale heat treatments in the second year recorded 4.5 % increase in the emergence densities of native perennials compared with site-scale control plots (t = 11.4, P < 0.001). Mean seedling survival over the 2-year sampling period was 2.44% ± 0.2 (SE). The highest survival through the first summer drought occurred within topsoil ripping treatment in combination with artificial shade (mean survival of 27.3 % ± 5.6 (SE), t=7.8, P<0.001). High mortality occurred during the second summer drought and overall mean seedling survival over the 2-year sampling period was 2.44% ± 0.2 (SE).

Breaking plant species into key functional groups, the number of non-resprouters oscillated around 70% in both years. Nitrogen-fixers comprised 50% of total native flora richness in the first year after topsoil transfer and decreased markedly to 20% in the second year. Plant assemblages in the second year after topsoil transfer comprised mostly of non-native perennial grasses and perennial, small-seeded native woody shrubs.

The transferred topsoil seed bank contained a close-to-reference species richness of native species propagules. Deep topsoil returned the highest mean densities of native plant species and second highest number of native plant taxa (163 on deep topsoil, 166 on fenced topsoil, of total 171 plant species recorded in this study). The recorded plant species richness comprised about 25% of total species pool recorded in Banksia woodland ecosystems in its natural distribution on Swan Coastal Plain, Western Australia and about 105% of total plant taxa recorded in the reference site before clearing. These plant taxa were mostly understorey species that suggests a high potential for mitigating environmental barriers on restoration sites with the use of transferred topsoil, but more research needs to focus on improving survival of native seedlings in their early stages of establishment.


The aim of this study was to investigate whether it is necessary to feed Solen marginatus (Pennant, 1777) larvae externally and the evolution of fatty acids in the neutral and polar lipids during larval development in starved larvae and larvae fed on two different microalgal diets. Larvae were subjected to three different treatments: 1. 10 equivalent cells ( Isochrysis galbana, Pavlova lutheri and Chaetoceros calcitrans ) plus 20 equivalent cells of Tetraselmis suecica ; 2. 80 equivalent cells of I. galbana and 3. starvation during eight days, and then individuals were re-fed on diet 1. The best results for growth were observed in larvae fed on diet 1. Starved larvae reached the best survival rate at day 8 (66%). However, three days after re-feeding all larvae died, suggesting that the "point of no return" was exceeded. In spite of the large size of S. marginatus eggs and the great amount of stored reserves, the larvae need to feed on microalgae to undergo metamorphosis. Non-methyle-interrupted dienoic fatty acids and their precursors 16:1n-7 and 18:1n-9 are of great importance in starved larvae. Saturated fatty acids, especially 16:0, fuel larval development. A certain degree of bioconversion of 18:2n-6 to 20:4n-6 was observed in S. marginatus larvae.


Steel and concrete composite structures are commonly applied in multi-story buildings as they maximise the material strength through composite action. Despite the popularity of employing a trapezoidal deck slab, limited experimental data are available under elevated temperatures. The behaviour of the headed shear stud embedded in a transverse trapezoidal deck and solid slab was investigated at both ambient and fire conditions. Twelve push-out tests were conducted according to the ISO 834 standard fire utilising a customised electric furnace. A stud shearing failure was observed in the solid slab specimen, whereas the failure mode was changed from a concrete-dominated failure to the stud shearing in the transverse deck specimen with an increase in temperature. Comparisons between the experimental observations and design requirements are presented. The Eurocode design guidance on the transverse deck slab gives a highly conservative estimate for shear resistance. A new design formula was proposed to determine the capacity of the shear connection regardless of the slab type when the stud shearing occurs at high temperatures.


Pharmacometric modelling is widely used in many aspects related to type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), for instance in the anti-diabetes drug development, and in quantifying the disease progression of T2DM.The aim of this thesis were to improve the design of early phase anti-diabetes drug development studies with the focus on the power to identify mechanism of drug action (MoA), and to characterize and quantify the progression from prediabetes to overt diabetes, both the natural progression and the progression with diet and exercise interventions, using pharmacometrics modelling.The appropriateness of a study design depends on the MoAs of the anti-hyperglycaemic drug. Depending on if the focus is power to identify drug effect or accuracy and precision of drug effect, the best design will be different. Using insulin measurements on top of glucose has increase the power to identify a correct drug effect, distinguish a correct MoA from the incorrect, and to identify a secondary MoA in most cases. The accuracy and precision of drug parameter estimates, however, was not affected by insulin. A natural diabetes disease progression model was successfully added in a previously developed model to describe parameter changes of glucose and insulin regulation among impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) subjects, with the quantification of the lifestyle intervention. In this model, the assessment of multiple short-term provocations was combined to predict the long-term disease progression, and offers apart from the assessment of the onset of T2DM also the framework for how to perform similar analysis. Another previously published model was further developed to characterize the weight change in driving the changes in glucose homeostasis in subjects with IGT. This model includes the complex relationship between dropout from study and weight and glucose changes.This thesis has provided a first written guidance in designing a study for pharmacometrics analysis when characterizing drug effects, for early phase anti-diabetes drug development. The characterisation of the progression from prediabetes to overt diabetes using pharmacometrics modelling was successfully performed. Both the natural progression and the progression with diet and exercise interventions were quantified in this thesis.


The city in the contemporary context, is witnessed as the place of many socio-spatial differentations. These are greatly manifested in its urban neighbourhoods. The better-quality urban neighbourhoods are more desirable for existing diverse potentials of social advantages and the poorer-quality urban neighbourhoods can no longer provide a considerable integration between inhabitants and the environment of their 'living place', because of poor housing conditions and the lack of local services needed. Many cities in the world are experiencing such situations. Tehran, as the capital of Iran and one of the largest cities in the Middle East is the typical example in this context. To explore its neighbourhood areas and the relationships between people and the environment of these areas, it is assumed to be a vital task to look at the important dimensions of neighbourhoods and their environment. In terms of local public services and social networks, the relation between residents and the environment of their 'living place' is indicated as the central focus of this study. The aim was to contribute to the goal of expanding choice and opportunity with special responsibility for the needs of residents as groups and as individuals. The identification of this issue in the city of Tehran has been undertaken as a contribution to bridging the existing gap between planning for this city and the reality of the urban environment of its `living places'. From this investigation and the exploration of the explained problems, it is anticipated that this study and its findings will facilitate attempts to investigate and to manage the local conditions of areas such as these A variety of research methods and tools were used. Interviewing local informants, structured observations; analysis of available documents; and a household survey of a representative sample of residents in each of the two selected neighbourhoods in Tehran. Overall, it has been found that residents in both advantaged and disadvantaged residential areas in Tehran used, interpreted, and evaluated their environment of THE residential areas through the filter of their socio-economic reference system. Their attitudes in this case were based on four socio-economic dimensions: the pattern of the dwelling, educational achievements, financial status and jobs. In addition, overall satisfaction with the environment of neighbourhoods was the result of congruence in major components such as: the affordably a suitable housing, the accessibility to public services and the formal and informal social support system in terms of local social networks. From the survey findings it was also evident how small a role social bonding played in advantaged neighbourhoods as a determinant of residential mobility while this notion has been very important to residents in disadvantaged areas. From this point of view it is concluded that social ties and their location were independent of the inclination to move to another neighbourhood in advantaged areas. But, they were related to the level of residential mobility in an area in the sense that the more stable the area, the more likely a household is to establish ties in a neighbourhood, but the existence or absence of such ties does not affect the households' desire to remain or move.


Energies with high-order non-sub modular interactions have been shown to be very useful in vision due to their high modeling power. Optimization of such energies, however, is generally NP-hard. A naive approach that works for small problem instances is exhaustive search, that is, enumeration of all possible labelings of the underlying graph. We propose a general minimization approach for large graphs based on enumeration of labelings of certain small patches. This partial enumeration technique reduces complex high-order energy formulations to pair wise Constraint Satisfaction Problems with unary costs (uCSP), which can be efficiently solved using standard methods like TRW-S. Our approach outperforms a number of existing state-of-the-art algorithms on well known difficult problems (e.g. curvature regularization, stereo, deconvolution), it gives near global minimum and better speed. Our main application of interest is curvature regularization. In the context of segmentation, our partial enumeration technique allows to evaluate curvature directly on small patches using a novel integral geometry approach.


In enlightened or utilitarian reasoning, nationalism is considered a reactionary and irrational belief in an invented tradition. Utopian imaginary, for its part, is cast into the background together with escapist fantasy or useless science fiction. This paper will look at alternative theories that challenge these interpretations. In this new light, utopianism serves as a critique of the status quo and an impulse against it – Ernst Bloch's principle of hope and Tom Moylan's critical utopia are our compass in this regard. On the other hand, cultural nationalism is interpreted as a desire to modernise a community through cultural praxis and not subordinated to state-building projects, as argued by John Hutchinson. These theories are the framework for the revision of the Basque '68. As far as nationalism is concerned, this period has been interpreted from a political perspective, with the foundation of ETA and demands for independence as the key features. The new framework, however, allows us to consider cultural praxis as a way to critically recreate the community through new utopian imaginaries. Therefore, the Basque '68 keeps the nation's imaginary from being subordinated to statist politics and becomes an ambiguous yet open-ended movement in search of the (n)ever true Heimat .


Background and Study Aim: Leg attack is the most basic skill in free-style wrestling. Before executing a leg attack, balance and anticipation of the opponent must be disrupted. We defined this action as the "set up". The aim of this study is knowledge about the effects of "set up" on the success rate of leg attacks, and answer to question: whether or not a gender difference exists in the use and effectiveness of "set ups" in the elite level of the wrestling matches. Material and Methods: We analyzed video recordings of 57 matches of male free-style wrestling seniors, 58 matches of female seniors, 60 matches of male cadets, and 59 matches of female cadets all in international competitions (not necessarily the same). Analyzed were: (1) the use of "set ups" before a leg attack; (2) the result (success or failure) of the leg attack; (3) the points given to the attacker in relation to the leg attack. To examine the associations between "set up" and success/points, we performed a chi-square test. Results: In male free-style wrestler seniors there was a statistically significant association between the presence of a "set up" and success of the leg attack, as well as between the presence of a set up and the points received for the leg attack. However, in female seniors, and male and female cadets there was no significant relationship for either of the above associations. Conclusions: In men's freestyle wrestling, the "set up" before a leg attack improves the success rate of the leg attack and also increases the points awarded to the attacker. However, senior women and the cadet generation of both males and females did not exhibit either of these relationships.


Abstraction haunts medieval art, both withdrawing figuration and suggesting elusive presence. How does it make or destroy meaning in the process? Does it suggest the failure of figuration, the faltering of iconography? Does medieval abstraction function because it is imperfect, incomplete, and uncorrected-and therefore cognitively, visually demanding? Is it, conversely, precisely about perfection? To what extent is the abstract predicated on theorization of the unrepresentable and imperceptible? Does medieval abstraction pit aesthetics against metaphysics, or does it enrich it, or frame it, or both? Essays in this collection explore these and other questions that coalesce around three broad themes: medieval abstraction as the untethering of the image from what it purports to represent; abstraction as a vehicle for signification; and abstraction as a form of figuration. Contributors approach the concept of medieval abstraction from a multitude of perspectives-formal, semiotic, iconographic, material, phenomenological, epistemological.


Arctic Sea ice monitoring has attracted increasing attention over the last few decades. Besides the scientific interest in sea ice, the operational aspect of ice charting is becoming more important due to growing navigational possibilities in an increasingly ice free Arctic. For this purpose, satellite borne SAR imagery has become an invaluable tool. In past, mostly single polarimetric datasets were investigated with supervised or unsupervised classification schemes for sea ice investigation. Despite proven sea ice classification achievements on single polarimetric data, a fully automatic, general purpose classifier for single-pol data has not been established due to large variation of sea ice manifestations and incidence angle impact. Recently, through the advent of polarimetric SAR sensors, polarimetric features have moved into the focus of ice classification research. The higher information content of four polarimetric channels promises greater insight into sea ice scattering mechanism and overcome some of the shortcomings of single polarimetric classifiers. Two spatially and temporally coincident, fully polarimetric acquisitions from the TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X, RADARSAT-2 and ALSO-2 satellites and Multi Frequency Fully polarimetric acquisitions from DLR-FSAR were investigated. Proposed supervised classification algorithm consists of two steps: The first step comprises a feature extraction, the results of which are ingested into a neural network classifier in the second step. Based on the common coherency and covariance matrix, we extract a number of features and analyse the relevance and redundancy by means of mutual information for the purpose of sea ice classification.


The optimisation of time domain cost functions to generate tuning rules has been well explored. However, there have been very few extensions of this procedure to an optimal PID trade-off from a formal time domain or frequency domain LQG or LQ cost minimisation problem. In this paper an LQG cost minimisation problem is defined and the PID controller coefficients which minimise the index are required. The advantages of the approach are that direct cost function optimisation is performed rather than simply matching a PID controller to an LQG solution. This enables the LQG underlying problem to be used more directly for the design process. A key idea is to choose the LQG cost function specification allowing for the constraints of the PID structure. The result is a PID design approach which is very closely integrated with the underlying optimisation problem. In the paper the algorithm is specified and some potential applications are explored.