In this magnificent synthesis of military, technological, and social history, William H. McNeill explores a whole millennium of human upheaval and traces the path by which we have arrived at the frightening dilemmas that now confront us. McNeill moves with equal mastery from the crossbow banned by the Church in 1139 as too lethal for Christians to use against one another to the nuclear missile, from the sociological consequences of drill in the seventeenth century to the emergence of the military-industrial complex in the twentieth. His central argument is that a commercial transformation of world society in the eleventh century caused military activity to respond increasingly to market forces as well as to the commands of rulers. Only in our own time, suggests McNeill, are command economies replacing the market control of large-scale human effort. The Pursuit of Power does not solve the problems of the present, but its discoveries, hypotheses, and sheer breadth of learning do offer a perspective on our current fears and, as McNeill hopes, "a ground for wiser action." "No summary can do justice to McNeill's intricate, encyclopedic treatment. . . . McNeill's erudition is stunning, as he moves easily from European to Chinese and Islamic cultures and from military and technological to socio-economic and political developments. The result is a grand synthesis of sweeping proportions and interdisciplinary character that tells us almost as much about the history of butter as the history of guns. . . . McNeill's larger accomplishment is to remind us that all humankind has a shared past and, particularly with regard to its choice of weapons and warfare, a shared stake in the future." Stuart Rochester, "Washington Post Book World " "Mr. McNeill's comprehensiveness and sensitivity do for the reader what Henry James said that Turgenev's conversation did for him: they suggest 'all sorts of valuable things.' This narrative of rationality applied to irrational purposes and of ingenuity cannibalizing itself is a work of clarity, which delineates mysteries. The greatest of them, to my mind, is why human beings have never learned to cherish their own species." Naomi Bliven, "The New Yorker ""


Joomla! is the world's most popular open-source CMS website-building software, used by many of today's top companies to build websites and powerful online applications. JOOMLA! 3 BOOT CAMP: 30-MINUTE LESSONS TO JOOMLA! 3 MASTERY takes a unique approach to helping you master Joomla! 3. After a thorough introduction to the newly revamped Joomla! platform, the authors present a series of solutions for installing and managing a Joomla! 3 website. With the book's handy exercise-based format, you simply look up the tasks you want to perform and learn how to insert content using Joomla! 3 and its extensions. Then follow the easy, step-by-step instructions to accomplish each task. Among other skills, you will learn the details of Joomla! content structure and site layout; how to create and edit a commercial-quality website using the Joomla! 3 backend administrator control panel; how to integrate advanced extensions, specialized components, and modules, and much more. The book's companion website offers exercises, updates, and a wealth of valuable information for website administrators, including an online course written by the authors. With JOOMLA! 3 BOOT CAMP, you can master any content-management task in a half hour or less, even if you're new to the software. Intermediate and advanced users will find a quick reference, with special hints and tips to simplify the insertion of content items. Take control of your websites with JOOMLA! 3 BOOT CAMP: 30-MINUTE LESSONS TO JOOMLA! 3 MASTERY.


Tourette syndrome (TS) is a childhood onset neurodevelopmental disorder. Although it is widely accepted that genetic factors play a significant role in TS pathogenesis the etiology of this disorder is largely unknown. Identification of rare copy number variations (CNVs) as susceptibility factors in several neuropsychiatric disorders such as attention deficit‐hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism and schizophrenia, suggests involvement of these rare structural changes also in TS etiology. In a male patient with TS, ADHD, and OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) we identified two microduplications (at 15q13.3 and Xq21.31) inherited from a mother with subclinical ADHD. The 15q duplication included the CHRNA7 gene; while two genes, PABPC5 and PCDH11X, were within the Xq duplication. The Xq21.31 duplication was present in three brothers with TS including the proband, but not in an unaffected brother, whereas the 15q duplication was present only in the proband and his mother. The structural variations observed in this family may contribute to the observed symptoms, but further studies are necessary to investigate the possible involvement of the described variations in the TS etiology. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


What is social capital? In answering this question, the paper reports on new research which differentiates between social interaction processes and social capital as the product of those processes. Following a review of literature, structured as a social theory against which social capital might be understood, the paper then describes a study of a rural community, and reports on two analyses of data which contribute to answering the question, 'What is the nature of the interactive productivity between the local networks in a community?' The paper concludes that social capital, for which a new definition is forwarded, can only 'exist' if it is somehow able to be produced. This is the chief assumption of the paper. Social capital is defined as an accumulation of the knowledge and identity resources drawn on by communities-of-common-purpose. If social capital originates in micro interactions which are in turn embedded in a meso and macro social order, then these processes and connections should be observable. This paper makes an initial contribution to the establishment of such micro, mesa and macro links.


We describe Red-Green dichromats' use of basic colour terms and compare this with naming errors predicted by metameric equivalence derived from confusion lines in CIE (International Commission on Illumination) coordinates. After briefly reviewing previous work, the results from two tasks – prototype selection and colour term mapping – are presented. Dichromats' choice of prototype was surprisingly similar to that of typical observers, especially for primary BCTs. More errors were made in the mapping task by including stimuli that were similar in transformed lightness and that shared a confusion line with stimuli that typical observers included in the range of the given term. Additionally, evidence was obtained that use of BCTs was dependent on residual R–G (red-green) mechanism activity.


This paper identifies a number of questions that need to be answered if the growing interest in building investment portfolios of firms that follow socially and environmentally sustainable practices is to be successful in transforming the financial institutions and analysts from a liability to an asset in expanding the number of sustainable firms in the economy. Evidence from three decades of research on "high performance workplace practices" is reviewed that identifies what is required for firms to align human capital and financial strategies. A longer term research and education agenda is presented for answering the remaining open questions.


Highlighting the new aspects of MATLAB 7.10 and expanding on many existing features, MATLAB Primer, Eighth Edition shows you how to solve problems in science, engineering, and mathematics. Now in its eighth edition, this popular primer continues to offer a hands-on, step-by-step introduction to using the powerful tools of MATLAB. New to the Eighth Edition A new chapter on object-oriented programming Discussion of the MATLAB File Exchange window, which provides direct access to over 10,000 submissions by MATLAB users Major changes to the MATLAB Editor, such as code folding and the integration of the Code Analyzer (M-Lint) into the Editor Explanation of more powerful Help tools, such as quick help popups for functions via the Function Browser The new bsxfun function A synopsis of each of the MATLAB Top 500 most frequently used functions, operators, and special characters The addition of several useful features, including sets, logical indexing, isequal, repmat, reshape, varargin, and varargout The book takes you through a series of simple examples that become progressively more complex. Starting with the core components of the MATLAB desktop, it demonstrates how to handle basic matrix operations and expressions in MATLAB. The text then introduces commonly used functions and explains how to write your own functions, before covering advanced features, such as object-oriented programming, calling other languages from MATLAB, and MATLAB graphics. It also presents an in-depth look at the Symbolic Toolbox, which solves problems analytically rather than numerically.


Models of driving have traditionally been couched either in terms of guidance and control or in terms of human factors. There is, however, a need for more powerful models that can match the rapidly growing complexity and sophistication of modern cars. Such models must provide coherent and consistent ways of describing driver performance to help engineers develop and validate technical concepts for semiand fully automated systems in cars. This paper presents a qualitative model for Driverin-Control (DiC) based on the principles of cognitive systems engineering. The model describes driving in terms of multiple, simultaneous control loops with the joint driver-vehicle system (JVDS) as a unit. This provides the capability to explain how disturbances may propagate between control levels. The model also enables new functions to be evaluated at the specific level at which they are aimed, rather than by their effects on global driving performance.


Object based image processing and analysis is challenging research in very high resolution satellite utilisation. Commonly ei ther pixel based classification or visual interpretation is used to recognize and delineate land cover categories. The pixel based classification techniques use rich spectral content of satellite images and fail to utilise spatial relations. To overcome th is drawback, traditional time consuming visual interpretation methods are being used operational ly for preparation of thematic maps. This paper addresses computational vision principles to object level image segmentation. In this study, computer vision algorithms are developed to define the boundary between two object regions and segmentation by representing image as graph. Image is represented as a graph G (V, E), where nodes belong to pixels and, edges (E) connect nodes belonging to neighbouring pixels. The transformed Mahalanobis distance has been used to define a weight function for partition of graph into components such that each component represents the region of land category. This implies that edges between two vertices in the same component have relatively low weights and edges between vertices in different components should have higher weights. The derived segments are categorised to different land cover using supervised classification. The paper presents the experimental results on real world multi-spectral remote sensing images of different landscapes such as Urban, agriculture and mixed land cover. Graph construction done in C program and list the run time for both graph construction and segmentation calculation on dual core Intel i7 system with 16 GB RAM, running 64bit window 7.


The nutritional status of under five children is a sensitive sign of a country's health status as well as economic condition. This study investigated differential impact of some demographic, socioeconomic, environmental and health related factors on nutritional status among under five children in Bangladesh whose fathers' occupation was agriculture. The study used Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2007 data. Bivariate analysis, multivariate analysis (Cox's linear logistic regression model) and two-level random intercept binary logistic regression analysis were used to identify the determinants of under-five malnutrition. The analyses revealed that 19.6 percent of the children were severely stunted, 29.4 percent were moderately stunted and 51 percent were not stunted. This study also found that 3.5 percent of the children were severely wasted, 16.5 percent were moderately wasted and 80 percent were not wasted. Furthermore, the analyses revealed that 14.5 percent of the children were severely underweight, 32.5 percent were moderately underweight and 53 percent children were not underweight. The main contributing factors for under five malnutrition were found to be child's age, birth order, mother's education, father's education, family wealth index, sanitation facility, place of delivery, place of residence and division. Community level variations were found significant for wasting only in the analyses.


Color naming in the world's languages has traditionally been viewed as reflecting either a universal set of focal colors, or linguistic relativity. Recently, a different view has gained support: color naming may be accounted for in terms of the overall shape of perceptual color space. Here, we show that the new shape-based perspective can clarify which languages have color-naming systems that deviate from what universal forces would predict. Specifically, we find that the color-naming systems of two languages that have been held to counterexemplify universals of color naming—Pirahã and Warlpiri—are in fact consistent with the structure of color space. In contrast, two other languages that have not yet been the focus of much attention—Karajá and Waorani—are apparently inconsistent with that structure in a substantial way. We propose that the notion of 'fit to the shape of color space' provides a useful and objective means of determining which languages have genuinely unusual color-naming systems.


Author(s): Shaheen, Susan A | Abstract: The number of senior citizens is expected to double by the year 2020, representing 18% of the nation's population. After age 75, driving performance begins to decline due to changes in health and medication effects. Indeed, one quarter of seniors over 75 are expected to require alternative transportation services in the future. This chapter examines transit and innovative mobility options to better meet the needs of the growing older population in the near (2011) and more distant (2021) future.Barriers to transit use among older adults include anxiety and confusion about using transit; inconvenience; cost and payment; safety; and physical discomfort. Emerging intelligent transportation systems (ITS) technologies can help to overcome these barriers and provide alternative mobility options, such as real-time information, simpler payment, demand-responsive door-to-door services, carsharing, and smart parking linked to transit. Other approaches include user training, smaller and more comfortable vehicles, and low-floor buses. While the scaling and cost reduction benefits of ITS are exciting, there are several obstacles to wide-scale deployment. One of the most significant is coordination among health and human service and transportation providers, particularly in suburban and rural locations. Some operators already struggle to provide services, and many staffers have limited experience with ITS technology. Thus, a concerted effort is needed across many different types of transit agencies to share information and compatible technologies. In the future, coordination strategies and ITS technologies will play a critical role in providing more flexibility, convenience, and choice for older travelers.


A two-dimensional (2D) optimized nanotaper mode converter is presented and analyzed using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. It can convert the mode size in a silicon pillar waveguide (PWG) from 4 \mum to 1 \mum over a length of 7 \mum and achieve a transmission efficiency of 83.6% at a wavelength of 1.55 \mum. The dual directional mode conversion of the nanotaper and its ability to perform mode compression and expansion are also demonstrated. The broadband with high transmittance is satisfied in this structure. Using this silicon-based nanotaper, mode conversion between integrated photonic devices can be more compact and efficient.


This paper advances the case for how performance magic can be used as a larger medium for communicating fundamental ideas and addressing enduring questions. The paper begins with a stylized definition of performance magic as having a role for 'disruption' and 'subversion' in terms of audience perception of reality as well as an audience's set of beliefs, predispositions, and 'lifeworlds'. The section also engages with performance magicians as well as luminaries from the occult and Western esoteric traditions to illustrate the disruptive function of magicians broadly understood. The second part provides an overview of mentalism and mystery entertainment as a sub-genre within performance magic that is highly amenable to a more academic frame and mode of delivery. The third part outlines how key principles and effects from this sub-genre of performance magic can be applied to two broad areas of academic concern: (1) epistemology and the human condition, and (2) larger political and philosophical questions of morality, justice, rights, agency, and the power of the state. The paper concludes with a short summary and implications for the future of performance magic that moves beyond mere entertainment.


"5 William & Mary Business Law Review 105 (2014)The purpose of this Article is to explore, and explain the stubborn persistence of, a central paradox that is endemic to the retail Islamic bank as it operates in the United States. The paradox is that retail Islamic banking in the United States is impossible, and yet it remains highly desired. It is impossible because the principles that are supposed to underlie the practice of Islamic finance deal with the trading of assets and the equitable sharing of risks, profits and losses among bank, depositor and portfolio investment. It is true that much of this can be, and is, circumvented through artifice. However, federal rules that prohibit outright any possibility of loss, such as requirements that deposits be insured against loss, plainly constitute core violations of the shari'a. At the same time, these same federal rules for deposit insurance and similar prohibitions against banks holding extensive amounts of particularly risky assets such as real property are central features of modern banking regulation, which is designed to minimize risk sharing, not support it. It is unimaginable that regulators will create exceptions to, or somehow significantly amend, the modern financial regulatory system in the radical fashion necessary so as to accommodate Islamic finance. Yet notwithstanding such impossibility, Islamic banking is also highly desired in that there is a preoccupation with finding a way to enhance the very limited Islamic commercial banking opportunities that exist in the United States. Law review articles, government issued policy reports, trade publications and Islamic finance outlets themselves have discussed and in some cases advanced such initiatives at one time or another. If this is so, then why such interest in Islamic retail banking? Why the endless repetition of a charade, where one side pretends to care about accommodation, and the other to accommodate, when it is perfectly clear that on the clear plains of doctrine, the two sides cannot possibly, sensibly meet? The reason is that the bank, and the accommodation of it within the U.S. regulatory sphere, is a powerful symbol for the accommodation of the broader, pious Muslim public. The pious Muslim eager to see an Islamic bank open in her neighborhood is at best only partly interested in adherence to religious doctrine. The Islamic bank is more importantly a reflection of a broader recognition of her space in the broader American fabric. Her religion is not only recognized, but her financial practices respected and indeed legitimized by the relevant, American legal and regulatory regime. She is, in this sense, comfortable being both thoroughly American and thoroughly Muslim. As for American regulators and most policymakers, being part of the nation's elite, instinctually preferring messages of inclusion to those that appear xenophobic or intolerant, they are predisposed to help find a way to accommodate this broad Muslim desire. Hence they engage in dialogue to demonstrate that the government is determined to help to find space for the pious Muslim in the United States, respectful of the pious Muslim's religious commitments and aware of the Muslim's ability to function both as Muslim and as American simultaneously. There are broader lessons to be gleaned from this story that pertain to global Islamic finance that are touched upon in the Article's conclusion. In particular, it is no secret that Islamic finance has failed to live up to its ideals of realizing a financial system that is more attuned to fairness and social justice than its conventional counterpart. Instead, it functions as a form of mimicry of conventional vehicles using a series of artifices. Yet despite this, and despite prognostications of doom if the practice does not change its ways, it continues to enjoy explosive growth. As with the case in the United States, Islamic finance does not seem willing or able to function in the way intended, and yet it remains highly desired. As with the United States, the reasons involve considerations beyond the legal; specifically in the global case, the desire of Muslim states to demonstrate some sort of fealty to the shari'a at minimal cost. Finally, as with the United States, the only sensible way that Islamic finance could possibly move forward to satisfy these demands is by remaining the narrow, largely compliant practice that it is. Anything else would either be illegal (if attempted in the United States) or deemed too radical to support (if advanced as a genuine alternative to conventional finance in the Muslim world)."


The thesis presents a perceptual approach to audio-visual instrument design, composition and performance. The approach informs practical work as well as a parametric visualisation model, which can be used to analyse sensory dominance, sonic expression and spatial presence in any audio-visual performance language.

The practical work intends for the image to function as a stage scene, which reacts to the music and allows for attention to focus on the relation between the sounds themselves. This is challenging, because usually vision dominates over audition. To clarify the problem, the thesis extrapolates from audio-visual theory, psychology, neuroscience, interaction design and musicology. The investigations lead to three creative principles, which inform the design of an instrument that combines a custom zither and audio-visual 3D software. The instrument uses disparities between the acoustic and digital outputs so as to explore those creative principles: a) to threshold the performer's control over the instrument and the instrument's unpredictability, in ways that convey musical expression; b) to facilitate perceptual simplification of visual dynamics; c) to create an audio-visual relationship that produces a sense of causation, and simultaneously confounds the cause and effect relationships. This latter principle is demonstrated with a study on audio-visual mapping and perception, whose conclusions are equally applicable to the audio-visual relationship in space. Yet importantly, my creative decisions are not driven by demonstrative aims. Regarding the visual dynamics, the initial creative work assures perceptual simplification, but the final work exposes a gray area that respects to how the audience's attention might change over time.

In any case, the parametric visualisation model can reveal how any audio-visual performance work might converge or diverge from these three creative principles. It combines parameters for interaction, sonic & visual dynamics, audio-visual relationship, physical performance setup and semantics. The parameters for dynamics and semantics reflect how stimuli inform attention at a particular timescale. The thesis uses the model to analyse a set of audio-visual performance languages, to represent my solo performance work from a creative perspective, and to visualise the work's versatility in collaboration with other musicians.


People have deliberately or accidentally introduced animals to many sub-Antarctic islands over the
past 250 years. Environmental changes
as a consequence of these introductions can be inferred from observations made directly before or
following eradication. Broad options for managing invasive animals include prevention, eradication,
sustained control or no control, circumstances usually dictating the best option. xamples of
successful management of invasive animals in the sub-Antarctic region include Enderby and Campbell
islands. Key challenges
in furthering management of invasive animals in the region include improving biosecurity to
prevent pests reaching new locations (including
islands from which they may have been eradicated) and increasing the scale of islands on
which eradication of rodents is attempted. Success with the Macquarie Island rabbit eradication
project will greatly increase understanding and confidence in what can be done.


Covalent binding of aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) with hepatic DNA may be a critical step in hepatocarcinogenesis. The extent of the AFB1 binding to DNA may depend on various endogenous factors and concurrent exposure to other environmental agents. This study was performed to determine whether any individual characteristics correlated with the formation of AFB1-DNA adducts. The major AFB1-DNA adduct, AFB1-N7-guanine, was measured using a high performance liquid chromatographic assay in urine samples from 43 asymptomatic hepatitis B virus surface antigen carriers and 43 noncarriers randomly selected from a cohort study in Taiwan. The total aflatoxin metabolite level was associated with the detection rate of urinary AFB1-N7-guanine adducts in a dose-dependent manner. The AFB1-DNA adduct excreted in the urine was detectable in 60% of individuals who smoked cigarettes but abstained from alcohol, 64% of individuals who had a habit of drinking alcohol but not smoking cigarettes, and only 29% of those who neither smoked nor drank alcohol. The association between urinary AFB1-DNA adduct level and habits of smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol remained statistically significant when adjustment was made for potential confounders. There was a significant increase with age for the detection rate of urinary AFB1-N7-guanine adducts. Age and habits of cigarette smoking and alcohol drinking were also found to be associated with a higher percentage of AFB1-N7-guanine in total AFB1 metabolite excretion, indicating an increased activation of AFB1. No significant association with the AFB1-DNA adduct level was observed for hepatitis B virus surface antigen carrier status, educational level, and ethnicity. These data suggest a potential role of age, cigarette smoking, and alcohol drinking in AFB1-induced hepatocarcinogenesis.


Eruptions of Oraefajokull have produced mafic and silicic magmas, and have taken place in both glacial and interglacial periods. The geology of the volcano records the differing response of magmas of contrasting composition to interaction with ice of variable thickness and gives insight into the development of a long-lived ice-covered stratovolcano. Vatnafjall, a ridge on the southeast flank of Oraefajokull, is the first area of the volcano to have been mapped in detail and the geological map is presented here alongside descriptions of each erupted unit. The oldest units comprise pillow lavas, hyaloclastite and jointed lava flows that were formed during subglacial basaltic eruptions involving abundant meltwater. The products of a subsequent explosive, initially phreatomagmatic, subglacial rhyolite eruption were confined by ice to form a tephra pile over 200 m thick that was intruded by dense rhyolite magma towards the end of the eruption. Confinement by ice caused a later trachydacite lava flow to form buttresses and a steep pillar. Whilst some of the meltwater produced infiltrated the lava (to generate red and black glassy breccias and cause localised steam explosions), it is likely that much of it drained down the steep topography. The most recently-erupted units are subaerial basaltic lava flows, the oldest of which were erupted during an interglacial period and have subsequently been partially eroded and scoured by advancing ice. Ice has been important in shaping the edifice by confining eruptive products to form constructional features and by later eroding parts of them to form deep valleys. Reconstructions of volcano-ice interaction allowed the local thickness of the glacier at the time of each eruption to be estimated, and demonstrates that the upper surface of the ice has varied in elevation by over ∼700 m.


Despite widespread agreement that a carbon tax would be more efficient, many countries use fuel economy standards to reduce transportation-related carbon dioxide emissions. We pair a simple model of the automakers' profit maximization problem with unusually rich nationally representative data on vehicle registrations to estimate the distributional impact of US fuel economy standards. The key insight from the model is that fuel economy standards impose a constraint on automakers that creates an implicit subsidy for fuel-efficient vehicles and an implicit tax for fuel-inefficient vehicles. Moreover, when these obligations are tradable, permit prices make it possible to quantify the exact magnitude of these implicit subsidies and taxes. We use the model to determine which vehicles are most subsidized and taxed, and we compare the pattern of ownership of these vehicles between high- and low-income census tracts. Finally, we compare these distributional impacts with existing estimates in the literature for a carbon tax.


This paper presents a novel computer-aided modeling of 3D hollowed tissue scaffolds with a controlled internal architecture. Functionally gradient variational porosity architecture is proposed with continuous material deposition planning scheme. The complex internal architecture of scaffolds is discritized into sub-regions accumulated from ruling lines that are generated from outer to inner features. The desired pore size and hence the porosity have been achieved by geometrically partitioning those sub-regions based on the area while meeting the tissue scaffold design constraint. Thus the desired controlled variational porosity along the scaffold architecture has been achieved with the combination of two geometrically oriented consecutive layers. A continuous, interconnected and optimized tool-path has been generated for both layers aiming at the standard solid free form fabrication process. A zigzag pattern tool-path has been proposed for accumulated sub-region layer. And a concentric spiral like optimal tool-path pattern has been derived for the successive layer to ensure fabricatable continuity along the structure. A micro-nozzle biomaterial deposition system driven by NC motion control has been used to fabricate sample designed structure with desired pore size and porosity level. Besides proper characterization of the fabrication sample has been performed to validate the proposed methodology. Moreover a comparative study between proposed design and conventional cartesian coordinate scaffolds has been performed. The results demonstrate significant reduction in design error with the proposed method.Copyright © 2011 by ASME


The coordinate descent (CD) method is a classical optimization algorithm that has seen a revival of interest because of its competitive performance in machine learning applications. A number of recent papers provided convergence rate estimates for their deterministic (cyclic) and randomized variants that differ in the selection of update coordinates. These estimates suggest randomized coordinate descent (RCD) performs better than cyclic coordinate descent (CCD), although numerical experiments do not provide clear justification for this comparison. In this paper, we provide examples and more generally problem classes for which CCD (or CD with any deterministic order) is faster than RCD in terms of asymptotic worst-case convergence. Furthermore, we provide lower and upper bounds on the amount of improvement on the rate of CCD relative to RCD, which depends on the deterministic order used. We also provide a characterization of the best deterministic order (that leads to the maximum improvement in convergence rate) in terms of the combinatorial properties of the Hessian matrix of the objective function.


Within the overall objective of developing a low dead volume technology for basic microfluidic valving, shunting and switching functionalities, the use of microbubbles is proposed. As a case study, a normally-closed, bubble-based microvalve design is presented. The valve, implemented using an all-Pyrex technology, can withstand high pressures limited only by the degree to which the vertical etch rate of Pyrex can be controlled. Measurements made on several prototypes show valve breaking pressures of approximately 180 kPa (gage) which closely match theoretically predicted values. A geometry-based trap is used to form bubbles of air with long persistence times (>24 hours). Presentation of the microvalve is followed by a general discussion of design and engineering issues surrounding the control and creation of microbubbles for microfluidic applications. Issues include bubble pinning at sharp transitions and inclusions, and actuation.


Summary This paper develops a methodology for asymmetric treatment of desirable and undesirable outputs. First, a hyperbolic output efficiency measurement is used to describe a middle term transformation of production processes where producers try to improve their competitiveness together with a reduction of the negative impact on the environment. Second, a radial efficiency measurement, called directional output distance function, is used to depict a long-term transformation of the production process. A non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and a Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) are used to evaluate the impact of agricultural policy changes, both in France and Germany, on the technical and environmental efficiency of arable farms, taking into account participation or not in agri-environmental programs. The results from both methods indicate only limited possibilities for environmental improvements, mainly for farms participating in agri-environmental programs.


In this paper, we address the problem of detecting previously unseen anomalous audio events, when the training dataset itself does not contain any examples of anomalies. While the traditional density estimation techniques, such as Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) showed promise in past for the problem at hand, recent advances in neural density estimation techniques, have made them suitable for anomaly detection task. In this work, we develop a novel neural density estimation technique based on the Group-Masked Autoencoder, that estimates the density of an audio time series by taking into account the intra-frame statistics of the signal. Our proposed approach has been validated using the DCASE 2020 challenge dataset (Task 2 Unsupervised Detection of Anomalous Sounds for Machine Condition Monitoring). We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by comparing against the baseline autoencoder model, and also against recently proposed Interpolating Deep Neural Network (IDNN) model.


Star-topology decoupled state space search decomposes a planning task and searches over the component state spaces instead of multiplying the state variables. This can lead to an exponential reduction of the search effort. To do so, in a preprocess before the search, the given planning task is partitioned into factors, such that the interaction between these factors takes the form of a star topology. Prior work has identified several ways to automatically decompose planning tasks, however, was not able to release the full potential of decoupled search. We try to close this gap by introducing an integer linear programming formulation of the factoring process, allowing us to explicitly specify the properties that a factoring should have. We prove that our approach returns the factoring that maximizes the number of factors, if this is the objective, and employ two other properties to assess the quality of a factoring. Our experimental evaluation shows that this leads to superior performance and substantially increases the applicability of decoupled search.


Fused deposition modelling (FDM) is one of the low cost additive manufacturing (AM) process. The feed stock filament of FDM is the only consumable in the process and by preparing (in-house) bio compatible feed stock filament the application domain can be increased. Some studies have reported the use of twin screw extrusion (TSE) process for preparation of bio compatible feed stock filament (comprising of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polypropylene (PP) and hydroxyapatite (HAp) particles) with improved mechanical, dimensional and thermal properties, for commercial FDM setup. But hitherto very less has been reported on process capability of in-house prepared biocompatible feed stock filament. In the present work statistical analysis (for tensile strength, hardness and dimensional accuracy) has been performed for investigations of process capability. The results have been also supported by control charts (X-chart and R-chart) based upon the best feedstock filament wire.


Dominance by cyanobacteria hampers human use of lakes and reservoirs worldwide. Previous studies indicate that excessive nutrient loading and warmer conditions promote dominance by cyanobacteria, but evidence from global scale field data has so far been scarce. Our analysis, based on a study of 143 lakes along a latitudinal transect ranging from subarctic Europe to southern South America, shows that although warmer climates do not result in higher overall phytoplankton biomass, the percentage of the total phytoplankton biovolume attributable to cyanobacteria increases steeply with temperature. Our results also reveal that the percent cyanobacteria is greater in lakes with high rates of light absorption. This points to a positive feedback because restriction of light availability is often a consequence of high phytoplankton biovolume, which in turn may be driven by nutrient loading. Our results indicate a synergistic effect of nutrients and climate. The implications are that in a future warmer climate, nutrient concentrations may have to be reduced substantially from present values in many lakes if cyanobacterial dominance is to be controlled.


Journal quality metrics (also referred to as bibliometrics), such as impact factors, are increasingly being used as a measure of researchers' and educators' success and prestige. Occupational therapists who submit articles to peer-reviewed journals may face a professional and research dilemma: Do they submit their articles to journals that largely have a professional audience and potentially do not have an impact factor, or do they opt not to publish their research material in occupational therapy-oriented journals? Occupational therapy authors can consider other journal quality metric alternatives, in addition to the impact factor option, including the Eigenfactor Score, Article Influence Score, h-index, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), Source Normalised Impact per Paper (SNIP), and discipline-specific generated journal quality measures. These other journal quality metrics can be important reference points for occupational therapists who publish and may encourage authors to publish in journals relevant to the discipline. This process, in turn, will build the occupational therapy body of knowledge as well as provide an essential, growing reference source for evidence-based practice.


A mobile relay station (MRS) with soft handover experiences performance degradation because the received signal at the MRS located between two base stations (BSs) is the sum of these two signals with different carrier frequency offsets (CFOs). In this paper, two receive beamforming techniques with CFO compensation (a joint receive beamforming (JB) technique and a spatially separated receive beamforming (SB) technique) are proposed for the MRS with a uniform linear array (ULA) in orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The SB technique is shown to be robust against CFO errors and can be effectively used for the MRS in a multipath fading channel. The performance of the proposed techniques is evaluated via simulation in a Long Term Evolution (LTE) environment.


Nanostructured ZnO (without stabilizers) has been synthesized using conventional (non-ultrasound i.e. NUS) as well as sonochemically assisted (US) synthesis method. Zinc nitrate hexahydrate (Zn(NO 3 ) 2 .6H 2 O) and sodium hydroxide (NaOH) have been used as raw materials (synthesis precursors). Zinc nitrate hexahydrate reacts with sodium hydroxide at room temperature (35 ± 2°C) to form ZnO powder. It is found that equilibrium conversion occurred in a shorter time in sonochemically (US) assisted method when compared to conventional (NUS) method. The ZnO powders synthesized by both the methods have shown to have nanometric-sized crystallites. It was found that the crystallite size of the sonochemically (US) synthesized ZnO and conventionally (NUS) synthesized ZnO are 23 ± 1 nm and 32 ± 1 nm respectively. The FTIR spectra analysis confirms the occurrence of the reaction to form Zinc Oxide by both NUS and US methods. Needle shaped structures agglomerated in the forms of bundles were also found in SEM micrographs. It was found that sonochemical synthesis method have saved more than 90% of energy utilized by conventional synthesis method along with the reduced in the reaction duration by 110 minutes.


PURPOSE
To analyze and compare the main outcomes of two techniques of combined surgery; mitomycin enhanced trabeculectomy combined with phacoemulsification and intraocular lens implantation through a single incision versus a two incisions approach.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
The authors retrospectively reviewed one surgeon's consecutive 395 combined phacoemulsification/trabeculectomy surgeries. Patients were divided into two groups, those who underwent phacoemulsification and intraocular lens implantation through one incision (Phaco 1) and the other through two incisions (Phaco 2), both combined with trabeculectomy. Analysis of postoperative visual acuity, intraocular pressure, number of glaucoma medications, postoperative adverse events and additional procedures required, was done. Minimum follow-up was 12 months with an average of 49.2 months.

RESULTS
There was a significant difference (p = 0.0237) between the groups in terms of visual acuity improvement rate. By the end of the follow up period, both techniques were equally effective in reducing IOPs by an average of 8.1 mmHg. Postoperative pressure spikes occurred in 9% versus 11% (p = 0.6838) of the eyes. No significant difference (63% Phaco 1 versus 69% Phaco 2, p = 0.3230) between the two groups in terms of glaucoma medication reduction was found. There was no significant difference (p = 0.1181), in the total postoperative complications between the two groups (60% Phaco 1 vs. 51% Phaco 2), as well as in the total number of eyes which required further interventions (60% versus 68%, p = 0.2223).

CONCLUSION
Combined phacoemulsification/ trabeculectomy using either a single or a two site approach, are equally effective in treating glaucoma patients with cataracts.


This application report presents a solution to control a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) using the TMS320F2837x microcontrollers. TMS320F2837x devices are part of the family of C2000 microcontrollers, which enables the cost-effective design of intelligent controllers for three phase motors by reducing system components and increasing efficiency. With these devices, it is possible to realize far more precise digital vector control algorithms like the field orientated control (FOC). This algorithm's implementation is discussed in this document. The FOC algorithm maintains efficiency in a wide range of speeds and takes into consideration torque changes with transient phases by processing a dynamic model of the motor. This application report covers the following:


A commonly-held belief is that locking up and forcibly drugging people diagnosed with mental illness is in their best interests as well as society's as a whole. The truth is far different. Rather than protecting the public from harm, public safety is decreased. Rather than helping psychiatric respondents, many are greatly harmed. The evidence on this is clear. Constitutional, statutory, and judge-made law, if followed, would protect psychiatric respondents from being erroneously deprived of their freedom and right to decline psychiatric drugs. However, lawyers representing psychiatric respondents, and judges hearing these cases uncritically reflect society's beliefs and do not engage in legitimate legal processes when conducting involuntarily commitment and forced drugging proceedings. By abandoning their core principle of zealous advocacy, lawyers representing psychiatric respondents interpose little, if any, defense and are not discovering and presenting to judges the evidence of the harm to their clients. By abandoning their core principle of being faithful to the law, judges have become instruments of oppression, rather than protectors of the rights of the downtrodden. This article weaves legal analysis with the scientific evidence, as well as describes how the recipients of these unwanted interventions experience them. While this Article focuses on Alaska, similar processes are found in other United States' jurisdictions, with only the details differing.


This paper examines the impact of institutional factors on the structure of matching processes in external labour markets. Drawing on 1984-1995 employment history data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and the German Socio-Economic Panel, the paper describes re-employment dynamics for unemployed workers in the United States and West Germany. Consistent with earlier research that has emphasized the strong skill stratification of the German labour market, the data show lower rates of occupational mobility among unemployed workers in Germany. Using a two-sided probit model, the paper tests for two key generative mechanisms: more comprehensive labour market regulation potentially implying risk-averse hiring by employers, and more comprehensive social security that may induce more selective job search by workers. The empirical data support both predictions, so that both low levels of labour market regulation and low levels of welfare state support are conducive to higher levels of occupational mobility, higher churning of specific skills and loose linkages between individual and job skills in the US labour market


Rate ratios were obtained for the base-catalyzed 1,4-dehydrochlorination of (E)- and (Z)-Me3CCCl:C:C:CClCMe3 to give Me3CC.tplbond.CC.tplbond.CCMe3. In the KOMe/MeOH or KOCMe3/Me2SO systems the reactivity of both isomers was similar. With KOCMe3 in Me3COH, THF or C6H6 the 2 isomers exhibited similar reactivity when 18-crown-6 was present, but the E isomer was much more reactive in its absence. These findings suggested a conveyor-belt-type transition state with an aggregate of the base interacting with the H and Cl atoms undergoing elimination. [on SciFinder (R)]


Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are the state of the art solution for many computer vision problems, and many researchers have explored optimized implementations. Most implementations heuristically block the computation to deal with the large data sizes and high data reuse of CNNs. This paper explores how to block CNN computations for memory locality by creating an analytical model for CNN-like loop nests. Using this model we automatically derive optimized blockings for common networks that improve the energy efficiency of custom hardware implementations by up to an order of magnitude. Compared to traditional CNN CPU implementations based on highly-tuned, hand-optimized BLAS libraries,our x86 programs implementing the optimal blocking reduce the number of memory accesses by up to 90%.


ABSTRACT Agricultural development on floodplains contributes to hydrologic alteration and forest fragmentation, which may alter landscape-level processes. These changes may be related to shifts in the seed bank composition of floodplain wetlands. We examined the patterns of seed bank composition across a floodplain watershed by looking at the number of seeds germinating per m2 by species in 60 farmed and intact forested wetlands along the Cache River watershed in Illinois. The seed bank composition was compared above and below a water diversion (position), which artificially subdivides the watershed. Position of these wetlands represented the most variability of Axis 1 in a Nonmetric Multidimensional Scaling (NMS) analysis of site environmental variables and their relationship to seed bank composition (coefficient of determination for Axis 1: r2 = 0.376; Pearson correlation of position to Axis 1: r = 0.223). The 3 primary axes were also represented by other site environmental variables, including farming status (farmed or unfarmed), distance from the mouth of the river, latitude, and longitude. Spatial analysis based on Mantel correlograms showed that both water-dispersed and wind/water-dispersed seed assemblages had strong spatial structure in the upper Cache (above the water diversion), but the spatial structure of water-dispersed seed assemblage was diminished in the lower Cache (below the water diversion), which lost floodpulsing. Bearing analysis also suggested that water-dispersal process had a stronger influence on the overall spatial pattern of seed assemblage in the upper Cache, while wind/water-dispersal process had a stronger influence in the lower Cache. An analysis of the landscapes along the river showed that the mid–lower Cache (below the water diversion) had undergone greater land cover changes associated with agriculture than did the upper Cache watershed. Thus, the combination of forest fragmentation and hydrologic changes in the surrounding landscape may have had an influence on the seed bank composition and spatial distribution of the seed banks of the Cache River watershed. Our study suggests that the spatial pattern of seed bank composition may be influenced by landscape-level factors and processes. Nomenclature: USDA, 2005.


This chapter builds on the comprehensive summary of climate change scenarios in the first BACC assessment published in 2008. This chapter first addresses the dynamical downscaling of general circulation model (GCM) results to the regional scale, focussing on results from 13 regional climate model (RCM) simulations in the ENSEMBLES project as this European-scale ensemble simulation is also relevant for the Baltic Sea region and many studies on temperature, precipitation, wind speed and snow amounts have been performed. This chapter then reviews statistical downscaling studies that use large-scale atmospheric variables (predictors) to estimate possible future change in several smaller scale fields (predictands), with the greatest emphasis given to hydrological variables (such as precipitation and run-off). For the Baltic Sea basin, the findings of the statistical downscaling studies are generally in line with studies employing dynamical downscaling.


Demands for moral development are increasing in business and professional training. Mixed results of diversity training programs in the higher education sector suggest that innovative approaches are required for preparing students to become morally upright leaders and teachers. This research looks at the implementation of an online interactive tutorial that focuses on students working and learning together with others from a variety of diverse backgrounds. The study comprises a three-year investigation on the attitudes and understandings of students prior to a group work assessment task, and after completing the online tutorial. First year primary education students (n=594) completed preand post-surveys on their perspective of working with others, with a moderating educational intervention. Results revealed mixed views about the value of the program to this generation of students. We make suggestions for institutions of higher education to consider when creating diversity training and support for university students.


Abstract Additive manufacturing provides the production of many machine parts and components with complex geometries. The adhesive bonding technique can be alternative method for joining parts produced with additive manufacturing. This experimental study investigates the applicability of the adhesive bonding technique for PLA (polylactic acid) adherends produced with additive manufacturing and especially the effects of loading rate on the strength of 3D-printed PLA adhesive single-lap joints under tensile, three-point bending (with shear) and four-point bending (no shear effect) loadings. Both PLA and adhesive tensile test specimens exhibited a better strength but lower failure strain with increasing loading rate. PLA had better mechanical behaviour in the raster orientation than those in the layer-build direction. The strength of adhesive single-lap joints improved slightly with increasing loading rate for the tensile and three-point bending tests whilst a decrease of strength and an improvement of bending stiffness were observed for the four-point bending test. Failure initiated at the free edge of the top adherend-adhesive interface for all tests, and propagated along this interface for both bending tests whilst a sudden through-the-thickness failure of top adherend occurred for tensile load after a small interfacial damage propagation. The failure propagation appeared in a wavy form for the three-point bending test whilst it was along the top adherend-adhesive interface for the four-point bending test. Digital Image Correlation (DIC) method for tensile tests showed that the peeling and shear strains were more critical and concentrated around both free edges of adherend-adhesive interfaces; thus, at the right free edge of the top adherend-adhesive interface and at the left free edge of the bottom adherend-adhesive interface.


In order to understand how to remediate soils contaminated with heavy metals, it is important to first understand their sorption mechanisms. The objective of this study was to evaluate the bioavailability of elevated levels of soil copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn) via sequential extraction. Elevated levels of Cu and Zn were added separately and concurrently to a Mollisol and an Entisol from the central coast of California. The exchangeable amount of Cu and Zn was then extracted from the sorbed amount via 0.1 M NaNO3. The residual fraction was then extracted with 0.1 M sodium citrate (NaC6O7H7) to determine if citrate removed any additional metals. Higher amounts of Cu (> 80 %) was sorbed than Zn (>64 %) for both soils. Cu was shown to inhibit Zn sorption to the Entisol, but not in the Mollisol, when the metals were added concurrently. Zn was more exchangeable in the Mollisol but less exchangeable than Cu in the Entisol. Citrate extracted significantly more Cu and Zn from the Mollisol than the Entisol. Both metals had a low bioavailability. Exchangeable and extractable Cu and Zn were 12-16 % and 3 – 6 % of the originally sorbed amount for the Mollisol and the Entisol. Citrate was able to desorb non-exchangeable Cu and Zn from both a Mollisol and an Entisol, thus, was an important extractant used in assessing the bioavailability of these metals.


Background: Non-structural protein 4 (NSP4) is a critical protein for rotavirus (RV) replication and assembly. This protein has multiple domains and motifs that predispose its function and activity. NSP4 has a sequence divergence in human and animal RVs. Recently, 14 genotypes (E1-E14) of NSP4 have been identified, and E1 and E2 have been shown to be the most common genotypes in human. Methods: The gene and protein sequence of NSP4 in RV-positive samples were inspected with the aim of NSP4 genotyping and variation analysis in viroporin and other domains. P and G typings of RV samples were carried out by WHO primers using a semi-multiplex PCR method. Non-typeable RV samples were amplified by conserved primers and sequenced. Results: In viroporin and enterotoxin, conserved sequence was detected, and amino acids substitution with the same biochemical properties was found. Conclusion: Association of NSP4 genotype with P or G genotyping G1/G9 correlates with E1 genogroups. In electrophoretyping of RV, E2 genotype had a short pattern when compared to E1.


Detection of coastline is an important procedure for management of coastal zones. According to the International Geographic Data Committee (IGDC), coastlines are one of the most important environmental heritages on the earth's surface. In the coastal areas, main challenge is to understand the present coastline dynamics and to predict its future developments. Therefore the coastal zone monitoring is an essential process for sustainable coastal management and environmental protection. Shoreline extraction is an important issue for coastal zone monitoring. In this study, efficiency of two different methods for detection of coastline features from satellite images, which cover Lakeland region of Turkey, has been tested. Firstly, object based classification method (OBC) has been used to extract shoreline automatically. Developed process based rule set extracts coastline as a vector file from satellite imagery. As a second method, support vector machine (SVM) algorithm has been used to extract coastline. For the application of these two different methods, Landsat 8 data have been used. The results of these two automatic coastline extraction methods were compared with the results derived from manual digitization process. Random control points over the coastline were used in the evaluation. Results showed that both methods have a sub-pixel accuracy to detect coastline features from Landsat 8 imagery.


This well-chosen and skilfully edited collection of papers is a milestone in the study of Southeast Asian states. The book is a tangible expression of informal and sustained communication for more than a decade among scholars who have concerned themselves with understanding the compelling empirical material about Bali in the light of theories of Southeast Asian states. The papers shed light on the historical transformation of local institutions and cultural forms and thereby enhance our understanding of the condition of post-modernity and its antecedents in these societies, of which Bali is a well-studied example.

In her introduction, the editor, Hildred Geertz, alerts the reader to the importance each contributor places on engaging with Balinese perspectives and Balinese representations, in an effort to come to an understanding of the political processes that constituted state and society at various points in Balinese history. Reification of 'the state' has been avoided, in favour of an approach which moves inductively from the ethnographic, historical and textual material to connect with current theories about the production and reading of texts, the politics of ritual representation, the colonial experience and the emergence of the nation-state, and the articulation of local communities with more embracing governmental structures.


Physics-based approaches could simplify terrain modeling by increasing its realism. However, most simulations provide only a low level of user control because they fail on large-scale phenomena or focus only on the modeling of limited effects. A new physics-based system for digital terrain editing is suitable for digital-content authors such as game designers, artists, and 3D modelers. It doesn't assume in-depth knowledge about physics-based simulations. Users can load large terrains from external sources, generate them procedurally, or create them manually, and they can edit them at interactive frame rates on a GPU. To allow large-scale editing, the system divides terrain into tiles of different resolutions according to the terrain's complexity, and it stores each tile as a mip-map texture. In addition, the physics-based simulation uses different levels of detail, depending on the terrain-change dynamics. Compared to nonadaptive computation, this approach can achieve 50 percent speedup and use 25 percent less memory. The Web extra is a video that shows how physics-based approaches to modeling can process terrain sizes larger than what was previously possible.


This study evaluated two treatments based on addition of two commercial microbial inoculants of lactic acid-producing bacteria (LAPB), one of the homolactic type (HOT) and the other a combination of homolatic with heterolactic bacteria (HHT), plus a control treatment without inoculation (CNT), on the fermentative characteristics of tropical maize in micro-silos and aerobic stability (AS) of the resulting silage. The fermentative characteristics were determined in triplicate samples taken at various lengths of fermentation (15, 30, 58 and 90 d), which were analyzed for pH, concentration of organic acids and NHL. To evaluate AS, changes in pH and temperature of the silage were monitored during five days of exposure to air. No significant differences were found among treatments in any of the fermentation characteristics studied. HOT resulted in the numerically lowest average pH (4.23) and the highest average percentage content of lactic acid (2.18), followed by HHT (4.28 and 2.11) and CNT (4.32 and 1.94), respectively. Also, regarding indicators of AS there were no significant differences among treatments, but numerically the average pH of exposed HOT silage was lower (5.30 vs 5.43 the average value of both HHT and CNT) and there was a trend (P <0.15) toward lower average temperature (°C ) in favor of HHT (29.61 vs. 30.26 and 30.28 for HOT and CNT silages). In general, the use of LAPB inoculants in tropical maize silage did not result in large differences relative to non-inoculated silage in the variables under study regarding fermentation characteristics and AS.


The reflection of light from surfaces is a fundamental problem in computer graphics. Although many reflection models have been proposed, few take into account the wave nature of light. In this paper, we derive a new class of reflection models for metallic surfaces that handle the effects of diffraction. Diffraction is a purely wave-like phenomenon and cannot be properly modeled using the ray theory of light alone. A common example of a surface which exhibits diffraction is the compact disk. A characteristic of such surfaces is that they reflect light in a very colorful manner. Our model is also a generalization of most reflection models encountered in computer graphics. In particular, we extend the He-Torrance model to handle anisotropic reflections. This is achieved by rederiving, in a more general setting, results from surface wave physics which were taken for granted by other researchers. Specifically, our use of Fourier analysis has enabled us to tackle the difficult task of analytically computing the Kirchhoff integral of surface scattering. CR Categories: I.3.7 [Computer Graphics]: Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism—Color, shading, shadowing, and texture J.2 [Physical Sciences and Engineering]: Physics


Objective: The study sought to evaluate whether topiramate prevents development of chronic daily headache (CDH, ≥15 headache days per month) in adult subjects with high-frequency episodic migraine (HFEM, 9–14 migraine headache days/month). A secondary objective was to assess the efficacy of topiramate as preventive migraine treatment in this population. Methods: This was a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study comparing topiramate 100 mg/day and placebo for 26 weeks. The primary efficacy variable was new-onset CDH at month 6. Secondary efficacy measures included migraine and headache days. Adverse events (AEs) were evaluated. Results: A total of 159 topiramate subjects and 171 placebo subjects were efficacy-evaluable. At month 6, 1.4% of topiramate subjects versus 2.3% of placebo subjects had CDH (p = .589). Compared with placebo, topiramate treatment was associated with statistically significant reductions in mean number of migraine days (6.6 vs. 5.3/28 days; p = .001) and headache days (6.6 vs 5.3/28 days; p = .001). Most commonly reported AEs in the topiramate versus placebo group included paresthesia (32.4% vs. 7.0%), fatigue (14.8% vs. 8.6%), dizziness (11.4% vs. 7.6%) and nausea (10.8% vs. 9.2%). Conclusion: Topiramate 100 mg/day did not prevent the development of CDH at six months in subjects with HFEM. Topiramate was effective in reducing headache days and migraine headache days and generally well tolerated.


This chapter focuses on the role of ethics in United States private international law. The chapter explores the common law ethos of judicial decision making that grounds the U.S. experience with law generally. The resolution of legal disputes in the United States is a part of an ongoing legal and ethical conversation within a community's law. When courts are asked, however, to examine private international law cases, the chapter argues that the conversation is at risk of breaking down, either because cases stand outside the Anglo-American tradition or because of unique facts that stretch positive and common law decision making beyond the bounds previously encountered in case law. The chapter shows that courts have looked to the conflict-of-law tradition for answers. The chapter proposes that a focus of future private international law scholarship should be to (a) define or refine the criteria for assessing ethical judgment in the multistate transnational context and (b) define the circumstances under which ethics and ethical reasoning can tip the scale in transnational cases, if at all.


Time to completion of the baccalaureate degree has increased markedly in the United States over the last three decades, even as the wage premium for college graduates has continued to rise. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of the High School Class of 1972 and the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988, we show that the increase in time to degree is localized among those who begin their postsecondary education at public colleges outside the most selective universities. In addition, we find evidence that the increases in time to degree were more marked amongst low income students. We consider several potential explanations for these trends. First, we find no evidence that changes in the college preparedness or the demographic composition of degree recipients can account for the observed increases. Instead, our results suggest that declines in collegiate resources in the less-selective public sector increased time to degree. Furthermore, we present evidence of increased hours of employment among students, which is consistent with students working more to meet rising college costs and likely increases time to degree by crowding out time spent on academic pursuits.


Whereas there are recent papers on the effect of robot adoption on employment and wages, there is no evidence on how robots affect non-monetary working conditions. We explore the impact of robot adoption on several domains of non-monetary working conditions in Europe over the period 1995-2005 combining information from the World Robotics Survey and the European Working Conditions Survey. In order to deal with the possible endogeneity of robot deployment, we employ an instrumental variables strategy, using the robot exposure by sector in other developed countries as an instrument. Our results indicate that robotization has a negative impact on the quality of work in the dimension of work intensity and no relevant impact on the domains of physical environment or skills and discretion.


An Introduction to Psychopathology. By D. Russell Davis. (Pp. 388+vi. 30s.) London: Oxford Umversity Press. 1957. We have long lacked in Great Britain any book on general psychopathology which can be recommended with confidence to the student. In this way we are badly handicapped in comparison with Germany, for instance, where in every textbook of psychiatry a substantial part of the whole volume is given to this part of teaching. What we have had instead is a number of works, many of them of great excellence, on psychopathology in the limited Freudian sense. Dr. Russell Davis has now supplied the deficiency with a book which covers the whole ground and is so lucid and intelligent that it is a pleasure to read. The author's basic tenet is that the most promising line of advance in psychiatry at the present time lies in the application of the findings of experimental psychology. His book is essentially the discussion of mental illness in the context of psychological theories. This is done with great ability, and the evidence has been collected and presented in a critical and stimulating way. Nevertheless the result is a work which is, as the author himself admits, somewhat one-sided in nature. The lack of appreciation felt for observations and theories along physical, medical, and genetical lines constantly involves him in difficulties. In presenting the hypothesis of a purely environmental and psychological causation for some condition he has to say that "there is little conclusive evidence with which to support it" or that it "would be possible to deny any weight to the arguments from which the theory has been built up." Though it is always made clear to the reader when the author's partialities are taking him beyond the evidence, one cannot but regret that a more judicial attitude was not found possible. Despite these criticisms, this is an excellent and important book. It will not escape the thoughtful reader that in the present state of knowledge the psychological theories cannot bear the whole of the weight that is placed upon them. Yet the author has collected a mass of data, especially from the fields of experimental psychology and sociology, which are not easily available to psychiatrists, and he has poinited out lines of approach which may very well prove fruitful. Teachers and students are alike in his debt. ELIO,T SLATER.


Safety expenditures usually follow the law of diminishing returns, i.e. marginal cost of risk reduction increases progressively with the level of safety achieved. Though the risk of a facility can in principle be reduced below any given value it is not possible to reduce the risk to zero, to reach "absolute safety". This poses the question about the level at which further risk reduction is no longer cost-effective.

This paper demonstrates that these considerations are only valid if a system element (e.g. a plant) is analyzed. When the total economic system is considered another source of risk has to be added: the occupational and public health effects associated with the production of safety equipment.

Using some simplifying assumptions and data from national economic input-output tables and occupational accident statistics it is possible to derive a linear relationship between the cost of the safety equipment and the health effects caused by its production. When this relation is combined with the. exponential risk-cost relationship of the facility under consideration, the combined curve exhibits a minimum value where the health effects of producing the safety feature equals the health effects avoided when it is installed. It is shown that if one probable health effect at some unknown future, time is avoided by use of $30 million of safety equipments, one equivalent health effect will certainly occur at the present time. The problem of balancing these two effects is a societal decision which is not addressed herein.


Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a fatal disease caused by a mutation of the CFTR gene and severe inflammation of the lungs. The inflammatory process is characterised by increased production of the potent neutrophil-attracting chemokine interleukin 8 (CXCL8), but the mechanism responsible is poorly understood. We tested the hypothesis that altered epigenetic regulation is responsible for the basal and cytokine-induced CXCL8 upregulation in CF airway epithelial cells. We found that CXCL8 protein levels and mRNA expression were higher in CF as compared to normal cells both basally and following cytokine stimulation. The difference in the expression was independent of increased mRNA stability or increased transcription factor activation and/or expression in CF cells. We found increased basal, but not cytokine-induced transcription factor binding to the CXCL8 promoter in a chromatin environment in CF cells in comparison with normal cells, increased histone H3 lysine 4 trimethylation, hypomethylation of CpG sites and increased binding of BRD3 and BRD4 to the CXCL8 promoter. Disruption of BRD4 association with chromatin using the selective BET bromodomain inhibitor JQ1 decreased CXCL8 protein release from CF cells to the levels observed in normal cells. Our observations suggest that epigenetic alterations are responsible for the upregulation of CXCL8 in CF and could become potential targets in the development of new therapeutic strategies.


This paper attempts to establish the value of good relationships between countries by considering their effect on a group of individuals who are arguably intimately affected by them: immigrants. We appeal to an index of conflict/cooperation which is calculated as an annual weighted sum of news items between two countries. This index is matched to a sample of immigrants to Germany in the SOEP data. The index of bilateral relations thus exhibits both time-series and cross-section variation. Good relations are positively and significantly correlated with immigrant life satisfaction, especially when we downplay low-value news events. This significant effect is much stronger for immigrants who have been in Germany longer, and who expect to stay there forever. This is consistent with good relations directly affecting the quality of immigrants' lives in the host country, but is not consistent with assimilation. There is thus a significant value to diplomacy: good relationships between home and host countries generate significant well-being externalities for those who live abroad.


Background: Dipeptidyl peptidase 4 inhibitors (DPP4i) could exert their glucagonostatic action through a functional autonomic nervous system independently from insulin secretion. We explored this hypothesis. Methods: We studied C-peptide negative type 1 diabetic patients (T1D) with (AN+) or without (AN-) autonomic neuropathy. Plasma glucagon, active and total glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), GIP, pancreatic polypeptide (PP), and glucose concentrations were quantified over 180 minutes following a meal test. Furthermore, to increase the plasma concentration of GLP-1 between groups and study its impact on glucagon secretion, 50 mg of vildagliptin and a second meal test were administered to the same patients. Results: The plasma concentration of glucagon was higher in AN+ patients than in AN- patients, which was associated with lower PP and active GLP-1 plasma concentrations. This first set of data suggest that AN, presumably involving parasympathetic activity, results in loss of glucose-regulated glucagon secretion. After DPP4i treatment, AN+ patients lost the ability to suppress plasma glucagon, and the low plasma PP responses were not restored. Conclusions: We here show that a functional autonomic nervous system is required for the proper control of glucagon secretion. The mechanism is insulin-independent. The glucagonostatic action of DPP4i also requires this mechanism. J Endocrinol Metab. 2015;5(4):229-237 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14740/jem289w


This paper reviews experimental studies that investigate the effects of communication on behavior in organizational settings. Two main classes of studies are identified: (a) studies on coordination and competition, which include experimental research that tests whether communication can help to overcome coordination failure within organizations, and (b) studies that analyze the role of communication in alleviating problems arising from information asymmetries at the workplace. The evidence from these studies indicates that communication is suited to improve efficient coordination within firms and to mitigate information problems in employer-employee relationships. In addition, studies are presented that focus on the interaction between communication and monetary incentive schemes in companies.


The joint detection of gravitational waves (GWs) and electromagnetic (EM) radiation from the binary neutron star merger GW170817 ushered in a new era of multi-messenger astronomy. Joint GW–EM observations can be used to measure the parameters of the binary with better precision than either observation alone. Here, we use joint GW–EM observations to measure the viewing angle of GW170817, the angle between the binary's angular momentum and the line of sight. We combine a direct measurement of the distance to the host galaxy of GW170817 (NGC 4993) of 40.7 ± 2.36 Mpc with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO)/Virgo GW data and find that the viewing angle is degrees (90% confidence, statistical, and systematic errors). We place a conservative lower limit on the viewing angle of ≥13°, which is robust to the choice of prior. This measurement provides a constraint on models of the prompt γ-ray and radio/X-ray afterglow emission associated with the merger; for example, it is consistent with the off-axis viewing angle inferred for a structured jet model. We provide for the first time the full posterior samples from Bayesian parameter estimation of LIGO/Virgo data to enable further analysis by the community.


We evaluated 25 inland populations of Chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha in the Snake River with 13 microsatellite loci to test for contemporary genetic differentiation at three scales: between life history types, among regions within life history types, and among populations within regions. The genetic distance and diversity of natural Chinook salmon populations were also contrasted with those of Chinook salmon from several hatcheries. The results provide strong evidence for reproductive isolation among ocean- and stream-type life histories (F ST range, 0.080-0.120). Regional structuring of stream-type Chinook salmon within subbasins was also significant, as all populations were differentiated (F ST range, 0.017-0.045), but populations generally clustered together by region in a neighbor-joining dendrogram. This evidence suggests high levels of philopatry to natal areas in stream-type Chinook salmon, but ocean-type collections were not significantly different from one another (F ST range, 0.001-0.002). Higher levels of genetic diversity in ocean- type (306 total alleles; allelic richness, 16.5) than in stream-type collections (206 total alleles; allelic richness, 12.2) may also reflect variable levels of gene flow within each life history type and colonization history. The genetic similarity of populations within regions suggests gene flow not only from transplanted stocks but also from natural dispersal that provides metapopulation structure. None of the 25 populations in this study offered significant evidence for a genetic bottleneck (M ratio , 0.68) despite apparent demographic bottlenecks in several populations throughout the Snake River drainage in the last century. The combination of dispersal through metapopulation dynamics and transfers of hatchery stocks may be responsible for reducing the genetic bottleneck signal.


The copulatory structure of the C. elegans male tail includes a set of nine bilaterally symmetrical pairs of sense organs known as rays. Each ray comprises three cells, which are generated by a stereotyped cell sublineage expressed by 18 epidermal ray precursor cells. A pattern formation mechanism in the epidermis guides the specification of morphogenetic differences between the rays necessary for correct organelle assembly at specific positions within the epidermis. Expression of these ray differences was altered in mutations we described previously, resulting in displaced and fused rays. Here we show that two genes of the C. elegans HOM-C/Hox gene complex play a role in the pattern formation mechanism. Increasing or decreasing the gene dosage of mab-5, an Antennapedia homolog, and egl-5, an Abdominal B homolog, results in displacement and fusion of specific rays. These changes are interpreted as anterior or posterior transformations in ray identities. Mutations in the genes previously described are dominant modifiers of these effects. This suggests that these genes act in the same morphogenetic pathway as mab-5 and egl-5. Several lines of evidence, including cell ablation experiments, argue that the identity of each ray is specified cell-autonomously in the terminal cells of the ray lineages. mab-5 and egl-5, therefore, specify the morphogenetic properties of differentiating cells, without change in cell lineage or apparent cell type. Modifier genes may act upstream of mab-5 and egl-5 to regulate their expression. Alternatively, they may act at the same step in the pathway, as cofactors, or they may be target genes. Target genes could include genes specifying cell recognition and adhesion molecules governing ray organelle assembly.


Since the beginnings of Public Administration in the US and its accompanying education in other parts of the world, government and policy have become more complex. The education in Public Administration created a professional pathway to public service. The addition of education to Public Administration came out of the Progressive Movement in the United States to make knowledge in Public Administration more important in the face of corruption brought on by patronage appointments. When nonprofits became part the US public sector as elsewhere along with nonprofit healthcare, the complexity expanded enormously, requiring professionals to know more in what has become a multidisciplinary field of study. Given the diversity and complexity of the public sector and the need for Public Administration to embrace more knowledge from many disciplines, it stands to reason that an earlier start on the education portion of Public Administration or a pathway would be beneficial. A model of early Public Administration knowledge transfer is described and illustrated below. The Academy described is based on the US career pathways and high school academies as part of the school to work educational movement. The success of the combination of these two areas will also be pointed out in the academy described. Translation of lessons learned from the Acdemy to Europe and Asia are also considered.


Waveguides were written into single crystalline Yb(7%):YAG with a femtosecond laser. Laser oscillation of the waveguides without external mirrors at an output coupling transmission of 99% was demonstrated. The laser performance of the waveguide lasers, pumped with various light sources, was examined. With an optically pumped semiconductor laser (OPS) as pump source a slope efficiency of 51% regarding incident pump power and a maximum output power of 1.76 W could be achieved. By using a high brightness DBR tapered diode laser as pump source the possible miniaturization of the waveguide laser device was demonstrated. With this pump source even 2.35 W of output power from the waveguide laser was achieved. The beam quality at highest output power turned out to be excellent with an M2-factor of less than 1.3.


The existence of natural resources should normally bring a windfall of benefits to a nation. Yet, international experience testifies to the fact that conflicts originating in the context of resources are beget not only between nations, but also within them. Prevalent cleavages have for varied reasons and in varying manners, been exacerbated in several resource rich countries. The phenomena is not exclusive to the possessors of any single natural resource; yet, undeniably, oil wealth seems the most prominent harbinger of poor political and economic discipline. Nearly a third of the petroleum rich nations appear mired in poor developmental statistics. The nature of internal troubles in these countries or the trajectory of it, may vary, but all these nations unfailingly manage to evoke images of unrest. The idea here, therefore, is to consider whether it is a matter of mere chance that so many petroleum economies bear a distinctly unstable and undemocratic social and political circumstance.


European standards of interpretation (including interpretation of comparative law) and reference to the directive and to instruments of European law are now part of sound legal practice even in the most routine of domestic cases. The huge reforms in many national laws, in some countries the rewriting of their Code to reflect the Directive, is no more than good approximation. What really matters and what ultimately will be the decisive standard is the Directive. The Geneva Conventions on bills of exchange and cheques, the Vienna Convention on the International Sale of Goods and the Brussels Convention on jurisdiction and recognition of judgments were milestones. They did not, however, influence national private law in its core area as profoundly and as extensively as the EU Sales Law Directive will. This book starts off by explaining the instruments of European law and their influence on national law and lays solid foundations for a thorough transnational understanding of every single pro-vision of the directive. Also discussed are the philosophical, historical and economic foundations of the different rules, which are followed by a detailed commentary on each individual article.


Teleworking offers alternatives for people to work without concerning their geographical boundary or time zone. Work can be performed anywhere and anytime without restriction.Teleworking tends to be the trend in the world of business.However, in spite of its popularity, Malaysia is still lagging behind in its implementation.Telecommunication technology is the key factor in contributing to the successful implementation of teleworking.In order to carry out the task of teleworking,a variety of telecommunication facilities are available.However, nowadays, only one approach is considered effective that is using the Internet facilities (e-teleworking).The main objective of the research is to evaluate the effectiveness of e-teleworking. In depth literature review had been done in recognizing the traits of teleworking that can be implemented using Internet facilities.A prototype of e-teleworking had been developed as a tool in the evaluation phase. The findings had proven that Internet facilities are indeed one of the most effective alternatives in
performing teleworking.


European Union in 2004 and European cohesion policy have had a substantial impact on regional policy in Poland. In recent years new important theoretical inspirations have appeared for regional policymakers, including new economic geography and the economics of location. International organizations such as the OECD, the World Bank and the EU are formulating proposals for a major modification of regional policy in the world. The research method is based on a benchmarking analysis and qualitative assessment of program documents. The results obtained by the researchers point to a shortage of theoretical foundations and the growing importance of regional policy to Poland's socioeconomic development. Szlachta and Zaleski identify various risks connected with the implementation of a modern regional policy in Poland and formulate a set of questions about the theory of regional policymaking. In the first part of the paper, the authors discuss the experience of regional development programming in Poland since 1990. The next part focuses on the financial and institutional dilemmas of regional policymaking in Poland in the coming years. Later on the authors propose benchmarks for a National Regional Development Strategy until 2020. The paper ends with the formulation of key conclusions, recommendations and questions about the theory of regional policymaking.


If individuals own the right to take any action that they please, and are free to contract about behaviour, will outcomes be efficient in all situations? That is, does the Coase theorem hold? We study this classic question through the lens of a non-cooperative model of contract negotiations, considering both compulsory and voluntary participation in negotiations. In either case, we find that all consistent equilibria of the contracting game are efficient in the case of two players. But if participation is voluntary, and there are more than two players, there are situations in which all consistent equilibria are inefficient. Specifically, the provision of public goods tends to be inefficiently low due to strategic abstention from contracting. Free-riding on others' agreements can be avoided if individuals do not own all their actions. When actions involve the use of assets, efficient action ownership may correspond to collective rather than individual asset ownership.


In the face of the socio-political and economic crisis that characterised the 20th century, Emmanuel Mounier's ethics of personalism (1905- 1950) was characterised by resistance to the absorption of the human will in the hands of collectivism in defending the value of the unique- ness of the human person. Mounier adopted such ideas based on the Kantian ethical perspective of treating all human beings as ends in themselves and not merely as means to satisfy other people's desires and interests. However, although we are in a century in which, through the use of reason, man has achieved many accomplishments for the wellbeing of humanity, he has not been able to solve the greatest chal- lenges posed by the moral crisis that he himself has caused. In most situations, human reason has been and still is used to the disadvantage of other human beings. For these reasons, using a qualitative- hermeneutical approach, through an analysis of the current literature, this article aims to discuss the crisis of moral values in Mozambican so- ciety, within the context of Emmanuel Mounier's philosophical person- alism. Keywords: Personalism; lynching; human dignity.


Until now the Elapid genus Denisonia had not been recorded from New Guinea, and this is remarkable in so far as the genus is known from Australia (and Tasmania) to the south, and from the Solomon Islands to the northeast of New Guinea. It is therefore not very surprising that now evidence has been procured of the presence of the genus in New Guinea. A single specimen of a species that we believe to be new to science was collected at Merauke in southern West New Guinea by Mr. A. J. M. Monsanto in 1959. The genus Denisonia is here accepted in its old sense, such as it was used by Boulenger (1896, p. 332), and by the majority of subsequent authors. Recently, Worrell (1961a; 1961b, pp. 24-26; 1963) has made attempts to divide Denisonia into eight genera, but as yet the new genera diagnosed by him do not seem to be well founded. In his key to seven of the genera distinguished by him at that time, Worrell (1961b, p. 25) uses inter alia the character "preocular and prefrontal scales in contact" as opposed to "preocular and prefrontal scales not in contact". However, in all species concerned the preocular is in contact with the prefrontal. Probably Worrell meant to indicate that in one of the genera described by him (Unechis) the prefrontal borders the preocular not only above, but also anteriorly, thus reaching the labials, and separating the nasal from the preocular; in other genera described by Worrell (1961b: Cryptophis, Drysdalia, Parasuta, and also in Suta and Denisonia Krefft) the preocular is in contact with the nasal, separating the prefrontal from the labials. However, it may be pointed out that this character is subject to individual variations. Thus, Boulenger (1896, p. 345) already stated that in Denisonia pallidiceps (Gunther), the type


Theoretical investigations have been carried out to explore the possibilities of Li+ ion intercalation or insertion through the side-wall or through the cap region of carbon nanotubes. Hartree−Fock(HF), MP2 and density functional (DFT) theories with minimal to extended basis sets were used to examine simple models of 5, 6, 7, and eight-membered-rings. The barrier to insert Li+ ion through these rings depends on the ring size. Insertion is easier as the ring size increases. Lithium ion favors two positions:  (a) inside the tube close to the wall, and (b) outside of the tube. Energetic information is provided using simple models with different diameters. Movement of the cation(s) within a single-wall tube, in interstitial zone and within multiwall tube, are also studied and discussed.


The principle of self-government through political parties, the cornerstone of democracy, has come to be regarded as a solution to the problem of nationality. This is because the principle of nationality entails the acceptance of the idea of popular government. The importance of the principle of nationality is undeniable, and most of the national questions of Western Europe might be solved in accordance with this principle. Matters are complicated by geographical and strategical considerations, such as the difficulty of determining natural frontiers and the frequent need to establish strategic frontiers. Moreover, the principle of nationality cannot help us where nationalities barely exist or where they are entangled in inextricable confusion. The present work is a critical discussion of the problem of democracy. Michels believes that democracy, as an intellectual theory and as a practical movement, has entered upon a critical phase from which exit will be extremely difficult. In this book he analyzes the tendencies that oppose the realization of democracy, and claims that these tendencies can be classified in three ways: dependence upon the nature of the individual; dependence upon the nature of the political structure; and dependence upon the nature of organization. This edition, described by Morris Janowitz as a "classic of modern social science" and by Melvin Tumin as "the beginning of a tradition", offers a landmark study in political science. Following its original publication in 1910, the study and analysis of political parties was established as a new branch of science. "Political Parties" continues to be a foundation work in the literature and is a necessary addition to the libraries of contemporary political scientists, sociologists and historians.


Agriculture as the economic sector is an important factor of economic development of Serbia and an important part of economic structure. Serbia has agrarian resources (land, climate and water) that are not used enough, and therefore, represent a significant economic potential for further development. Vojvodina is the best-developed economic region of the Republic of Serbia, with dominant role of agricultural production. The main economic potential of Vojvodina development is, among other things, the strengthening and improvement of agriculture in the private sector. Economic potential of agriculture impose the need to analyze this situation in the field of small and medium sized entrepreneurship as the bearer of the future development of agriculture in Vojvodina. Cluster analysis is a method that will determine how to group communes in Vojvodina according to the level of development of small and medium-sized enterprises in the field of agriculture, and thus get an insight into the current state of development of this sector of agriculture, as well as point out the possibilities for the future development of SMEs in agribusiness of Vojvodina.


The Cumberland Bay Formation on South Georgia (South Atlantic) is an Upper Jurassic–Lower Cretaceous andesitic turbidite sequence >8 km thick, derived from a contemporary volcanic are and deposited in part of the southern Andes back-arc basin. 4 main lithofacies are recognized which show coarsening and thickening upward cycles. A Lower Cretaceous palinspastic reconstruction shows that lobes of sand-rich material were banked against the (?) fault-bounded SW margin of the basin, adjacent to the volcanic arc. The basin had a northerly-directed palaeoslope and evidence for both axial and lateral palaeocurrents is preserved. Sedimentation of the formation cannot be explained by the classical fan model but resembles that described from linear, tectonically-controlled troughs (cf. Grenada Basin, Lesser Antilles). Folding resulted from mid-Cretaceous closure of the basin and increases in intensity to the NE: open, upright folds pass into trains of inclined chevron folds with progressive decrease in interlimb angle, axial plane dip and wavelength. The turbidites were affected by up to 55% shortening and had a minimum original cross-strike width of about 60 km. The geometry of the structures is consistent with deformation above a gently inclined simple shear zone resulting from limited underthrusting or subduction of the basin floor beneath the arc terrane. Extension of both sedimentary and tectonic models to the southern Andes is discussed.


We parallelize a version of the active-set iterative algorithm derived from the original works of Lawson and Hanson (1974) on multi-core architectures. This algorithm requires the solution of an unconstrained least squares problem in every step of the iteration for a matrix composed of the passive columns of the original system matrix. To achieve improved performance, we use parallelizable procedures to efficiently update and downdate the QR factorization of the matrix at each iteration, to account for inserted and removed columns. We use a reordering strategy of the columns in the decomposition to reduce computation and memory access costs. We consider graphics processing units (GPUs) as a new mode for efficient parallel computations and compare our implementations to that of multi-core CPUs. Both synthetic and non-synthetic data are used in the experiments.