This study of medieval stories of accused queens - noble and hapless victims whose suffering becomes a metaphor of larger social injustice - identifies the two principal types of this fictional narrative and explores their popularity from the 13th to the 15th century. Offering evidence of lively debate in the Middle Ages about the nature of women, the volume considers such topics as the perpetual lustiness of men, the powerlessness of women, the nature of "good" women, slander as evidence of legal failure, the purifying value of affliction, and economic discrepancies between the rich and the poor. Nancy Black characterizes each type of narrative as a four-part structure in which the virtuous heroine falls twice from a position of high status and then twice recovers that status. Focusing chiefly on non-Chaucerian texts, Black examines influential or representative tales by Gautier de Coinci, Philippe de Remi, Jehan Maillart, Jehan Wauquelin, Nicholas Trevet, John Gower, Thomas Hoccleve, two plays from the "Miracles de Nostre Dame Par Personnages", and Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale". Integrating her analysis with illustrations and related contemporary texts, she places each story within the living community that produced, read and listened to the stories. Because relatively few medieval stories feature female protagonists, these tales stand out for presenting a positive image of women who were active in the world rather than cloistered in a convent. The narratives do more than model feminine behaviour for dutiful wives - they advance the notion that adherence to a religious moral code is more important than blind obedience to patriarchal customs. Their analysis should help the reader to understand the complicated interactions in the Middle Ages between gendered stereotypes and depictions of holiness.


Study Objective: To compare haemodynamic response in nasotracheal intubation under general anaesthesia between FOB and DLS as one accomplished with a FOB is thought to attenuate the circulatory responses to intubation as stimulation of the oropharyngeal structures may be avoi ded. Design: Randomized, prospective study. Patients: 50 ASA grade I and II patients of both sexes in the age group of 18 - 60 years scheduled for an elective surgery under general anesthesia. Interventions: Patients were randomly allocated to nasotracheal intubation facilitated with either the FOB (Group I) or the DLS (Group II). A uniform protocol of anesthesia was used. Measurements: Heart Rate (HR), Systolic Blood Pressure (SBP), Diastolic Blood Pressure (DBP) & Mean Arterial Pressure (MAP) in the two groups were compared at their baseline, post -induction values, at the time of insertion of the scope, immediately after intubation & at 3, 5 and 10 minutes after intubation. Results: Haemodynamic response in the form tachycardia, increase in SBP, DBP & MAP occurred in nasotracheal intubations with both the fiberoptic bronchoscope and with direct laryngoscope. Tachycardia of similar magnitude was noted in both the groups following insertion of scope and after intubation whereas SBP , DBP & MAP were significantly high in Group II (p<0.01) at the time of intubation & SBP immediately after intubation was significantly high in Group I(p<0.05) Conclusions: Fiberoptic bronchoscopy provides no advantage over conventional laryngoscopy, in te rms of decreasing the hemodynamic response to nasotracheal intubation under general anaesthesia.


The sensitivity of multilayer microporous polymer structures (MPSs) for in situ and label-free organic vapor sensing is investigated in terahertz frequency. The porous structure provides a large hydrophilic surface area and numerous micropores to adsorb or fill polar vapors, thereby leading to greatly enhanced wave-analyte interaction with an apparent terahertz signal change. Different configurations of MPS with distinct geometric parameters are fabricated to study the structure-dependent sensitivity. The signal responses from the acetone-vapor-filled MPS, represented as effective absorption coefficient and refractive index variation, are proportional to the amounts of vaporized molecules. The responsivity is independent of MPS stacking configuration but can be significantly improved by decreasing the micropore volume. The linear responsivity range for the acetone vapor concentration is as wide as 200 ppm, and the detection limit can be as low as 1 ppm corresponding to the molecular density of 31 pmol/mm3. Different concentrations of toxic methanol adulterated in alcoholic aqueous solutions are successfully identified in their vapor phase by using the MPS-based terahertz sensor with an optimal sensitivity.


Drug trade-related violence has escalated dramatically in Mexico since 2007, and recent years have also witnessed large-scale efforts to combat trafficking, spearheaded by Mexico's conservative PAN party. This study examines the direct and spillover effects of Mexican policy towards the drug trade. Regression discontinuity estimates show that drug-related violence increases substantially after close elections of PAN mayors. Empirical evidence suggests that the violence reflects rival traffickers' attempts to usurp territories after crackdowns have weakened incumbent criminals. Moreover, the study uses a network model of trafficking routes to show that PAN victories divert drug traffic, increasing violence along alternative drug routes.


Throughout her extraordinary career, Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter has always pushed the boundaries through her high-level field research, and her breakthrough ideas with practical applications for a broad audience. One of the world's bestselling business thinkers, her work on leadership and change management has influenced the most enlightened and successful executives and entrepreneurs. Supercorp, based on a three-year worldwide research program, provides the answer to a question crucial to both business and society more broadly: as a company grows, how can it avoid becoming a lumbering, corrupt giant? Companies such as IBM, Procter & Gamble, Mexican-based Cemex and Japanese-based Omron provide the models that businesses small and large can use to stay on track, outstrip the competition, and attract and motivate the new generation of talent. And, Professor Kanter provides the evidence of the powerful synergy between the financial success shareholders want and social conscience - it is only these 'vanguard companies' that are big but human, efficient but innovative, global but local, that will succeed in the future.


The first parliamentary election campaign in Albania was held in March – April 1921. This constituted innovation for Albania, since it was considered as a country with a fragile democracy and parliamentarism. The second experience was in December 1923, in the framework of the elections of the Constitutional Assamble, as the institution that would determine the kind of regime in Albania. In January 1924, after the Konstitutional Assamble fulfilled its mission, it changed into Parliament, which executed its activity in two periods 21 January – 2 June; December 1924 – 2 March 1925. The bourgeois-democratic revolution that prevailed in june 1924, continued up to the end of the same year. On 21 January 1925, the constitutional assamble declared the Parliamentary Republic of Albania, with president Ahmet Zogu; on 31 of January there were enacted the first articles of the Republican Status. The new Parliament consisted of two rooms, the Senate and the chamber of deputies. This new system lasted for a short period of time, and it constituted a unique experience in the history of Albanian parliamemtarism. The law concerning the parliamentary elections was enacted on 14 of March 1925. According to the law the elections would be realized at two levels. The opposition and the independent deputies were missing. The parliamentary election campaign in Elbasan, local characteristics, candidates, th two levels of voting, the results and its importance constitute the topic of this paper. The paper is based on archived and media documents, as well as the memorial one.


Objective To study the additional effect of a pneumatic leg brace with standard rehabilitation for the treatment of medial tibial stress syndrome (MTSS) in recruits. Methods In a single blinded randomized study, 15 recruits (age 17-22) followed a rehabilitation programme consisting of leg exercises and a graded running programme. Recruits performed daily exercises and ran three times a week. The running programme consisted of 6 consecutive phases. One group was, after randomization, additionally provided with a pneumatic leg brace. Follow-up was provided every other week. Days to completing the running programme was the primary outcome measure, the Sports Activity Rating Scale (SARS) score and satisfaction with the treatment were secondary outcome measures. Results In total 14 recruits completed the rehabilitation programme. No differences were found in the number of days until phase six of the running schedule was finished between the brace and the control group (Brace 58.8 ± 27.7 (mean ± SD) vs Non-Brace 57.9 ± 26.2 (mean ± SD, p = 0.57). Also no differences were found in the SARS scores between the groups. Overall satisfaction with the treatment was 6.4 ± 1.1 (mean ± SD) on a 1-10 scale for the brace group and 7.1 ± 0.7 (mean ± SD) for the control group (p = 0.06). Comfort of the brace was assessed as 4.8 ± 1.3 (mean ± SD) on a 1-10 scale. Conclusions No additional large effect of the pneumatic leg brace could be found in recruits and wearing of the brace was not feasible, since the wearing comfort was low.


As genetic testing for the presence of potentially health-affecting mutations becomes available for more genetic conditions, many people will soon be faced with the decision of whether or not to have a genetic test. Making an informed decision requires an understanding and evaluation of the arguments for and against having the test. As a case in point, this paper considers argumentation involving the decision of whether to have a BRCA gene test, one of the first commercially available genetic tests. First, argumentation in a five-page patient brochure from a for-profit company that provides BRCA gene testing, is analyzed. Next, for comparison, argumentation on BRCA testing in materials for healthcare consumers written by a not-for-profit health plan and a government organization, is analyzed. In view of the challenges identified by considering these examples, this article discusses how argumentation-oriented computer systems may be able to help the healthcare consumer to make informed decisions about genetic testing.


Interconnection networks are important parts of modern com puting systems, facilitating communication between a system's components. Switches connecti g various nodes of an interconnection network serve to move data in the network. The switch's delay and throughput impact the overall performance of the network and thus the system. Scheduling e fficient movement of data through a switch and configuring the switch to realize a schedule are t he main themes of this research. We consider various interconnection network switches incl uding(i) crossbar-based switches, (ii) circuit-switched tree switches, and (iii ) fat-tree switches. For crossbar-based input-queued switches, a recent result established that logarithmic packet delay is possible. However, this result assumes that packet transmission time through the switch is no less than schedule-generation time. We prove that with out this assumption (as is the case in practice) packet delay becomes linear. We also report res ults of simulations that bear out our result for practical switch sizes and indicate that a fast sc heduling algorithm reduces not only packet delay but also buffer size. We also propose a fast mesh -of-trees based distributed switch scheduling (maximal-matching based) algorithm that has po lylog complexity. A circuit-switched tree (CST) can serve as an interconnect st ructure for various computing architectures and models such as the self-reconfigurable gate array and the reconfigurable mesh. A CST is a tree structure with source and destination processin g elements as leaves and switches as internal nodes. We design several scheduling and configurat ion lgorithms that distributedly partition a given set of communications into non-conflicting subs ets and then establish switch settings and paths on the CST corresponding to the communications. A fat-tree is another widely used interconnection structur e in many of today's high-performance clusters. We embed a reconfigurable mesh inside a fat-tree sw itch to generate efficient connections. We present an R-Mesh-based algorithm for a fat-tree switch th at creates buses connecting input and output ports corresponding to various communications usin g that switch.


Dr M G SELSON (Rotherham S65 IDS) writes: I have just read a comment (10 January, p 153) concerning the word Caucasian, and have often wondered what it means. I guess that it is a political rather than biological term, a euphemism for "white." . . . The "Caucasian" peoples were supposed to have arisen near the Caucasus . . . and were traditionally tallish, fairish, and with straightish hair, with recent ancestry from somewhere in northwest Europe. There are, however, many dark, curly runts with an equal claim to be included in this group, and coming from almost anywhere in the world. Throughout recorded human history migrations have taken place all over the globe, with a resultant complete genetic mix. It is therefore surely nonsense to talk about races in any scientific context. Is it not therefore time that this quaint, rather obnoxious word was dropped from articles and letters in this august journal ?


The aim of this study was to appraise project performance and Total Quality Management (TQM) in the Libyan oil and gas sector. In achieving this aim , the study developed five objectives which are: to review current definitions and models of Project Performance in relation to theory and practices, to examine current definitions and models of TQM in a project context, to identify methodological norms in this research domain and propose a way forward , to analyse the interrelationship between TQM principles and project performance practices for oil and gas industry related projects and, finally, to model and propose the predictive value of TQM principles that could be used to enhance project management performance in the Libyan oil and gas industry.

The research adopted a mixed methods approach. An extensive literature review was conducted on the history of the oil and gas industry, review of the energy sector in Libya, socio-economic development in Libya, social context and human development in Libya, the current practice in the Libyan energy sector, the importance of TQM, leaders in the Quality Management movement, TQM and performance, project and PM performance and TQM and PM performance. A conceptual framework was developed from the literature. Subsequently, twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted with project managers and professionals from three oil and gas companies from different categories of the oil and gas industry. The conceptual framework was improved after the analysis of interview findings, and then a questionnaire was used to launch the next stage of the study. One hundred and thirty-one questionnaires were analysed by SPSS V16 in order to examine the relationship between TQM practices and project performance in the Libyan oil and gas industry related projects, and to predict the model of TQM practices to project performance in the Libyan oil and gas related projects.
Key findings of this research were that there was a positive significant relationship between TQM practices and project performance in oil and gas-related projects, and the interesting finding was that the hard TQM practices have more impact on Project Management Performance (PM performance) than the soft practices. Additionally, the predictive models were developed and the highest had a value of (R2=0.776).
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Consequently, this research has made an important contribution to PM performance in the oil and gas industry by developing a framework of TQM practices that positively impact on PM performance. The practical applications of this research mean that managers can focus on those practices to achieve maximum PM performance in the oil and gas industry. The study highlights opportunities for future research including more in-depth exploration of the TQM practices in other oil and gas industry categories as well as the impact of the interrelationships of the practices on insights into PM performance.


Cognitive and non-cognitive skills are important determinants of labor market outcomes, but are often unobserved. We propose a proxy for these skills derived from item non-response information and a procedure to test its validity. Exploiting a unique data-collection feature of an Australian survey, we find that fraction answered on a self-completion questionnaire fulfils all necessary requirements to be a valid proxy for cognitive skills and outperforms alternative proxies derived from paradata. Fraction answered captures a third of the effect of cognitive ability on wages and education. We provide a simple solution to reduce omitted-variable biases by up to 11%.


This article discusses the use of continuous improvement process teams (CIP Teams) and Corrective Action Teams (CATs) at Varian Australia, a manufacturing organisation based in Melbourne, Australia. The company manufactures high-technology instruments that are largely exported to the USA and Europe. The paper describes the experiences of the company with CIP Teams and CATs in the 1990s. The article discusses the reasons for the slow down of the process improvement program and the appropriate changes that were made to relaunch the continuous improvement strategy at Varian Australia. Based on the qualitative analysis in this article, a number of interesting lessons can be learned. The main lesson is that voluntary, cross-functional teams are more effective than compulsory membership as team members are motivated to work towards their goals and better understand the processes. Team members found that by working together the result of their combined effort was much greater than the combined results of their individual efforts. This approach reduced the product development cycle on Varian projects by up to fifty percent.


Although the Body Surface Potential Map (BSPM) is considered to be an improved technique for the detection of cardiac pathologies when compared to the 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG), it has not been adopted for routine clinical practice. This is partly due to a lack of clinician-friendly tools for visualizing the large amount of data a BSPM contains. This work presents the details of a usability evaluation of a BSPM viewer. This evaluation was conducted at the 2010 Computing in Cardiology meeting. Seven delegates (7 males, age:39±11) were recruited to take part in the evaluation. The protocol required the participants to complete a pre-test questionnaire, attempt a series of tasks whilst 'thinking-aloud' and at the end of the session, complete a post-test questionnaire. Based on 3.5 hours of video and audio recordings (circa), 41 use errors were discovered and given a severity rating (mean:2.24±1.09, 1=cosmetic, 4=critical). Using a five-star scale, participants rated the responsiveness of the viewer (mode: 4/5), its usefulness (mode:3/4), learnability (mode:3/4), and its 'look and feel' (mode:5). In conclusion, a usability evaluation was carried out in a conference setting to assess and improve the interface of a BSPM visualization system.


AbstractThis study was undertaken to investigate the pain intensity, time to peak of pain, bruise, swelling, itching, life limitation, blurred vision, and duration of pain after upper lid blepharoplasty using a survey of pain scale, and to provide objective evidence to aid in education and preoperative counseling of our patients. After upper lid blepharoplasty under local anesthesia, patients were asked to rate their pain on a standardized 11-point pain scale (0–10). After pain assessment of the immediate postoperative period, the evaluation was repeated after 2 to 4 hours, 24 hours, 2 days, 3 days, 7 days, and 1 month. Time to peak of pain, bruise, swelling, itching, life limitation, and blurred vision after surgery were investigated. A total of 60 eyelids (30 patients) were included. Average pain score during the immediate postoperative period was 3.5 in males and 2.2 in females. Pain measurement was maintained up to 7 days after surgery. A significant difference in these pain scores according to gender was observed during the immediate postoperative period and up to 24 hours after surgery. Time to peak after upper lid blepharoplasty was as follows: pain 4.4 hours; swelling 17.3 hours; bruise 33.6 hours; itching 21.1 hours; limitation of life 16.6 hours; and blurred vision 8.7 hours. Most severe pain was observed during the immediate postoperative period and up to 2 to 4 hours after surgery. Pain after upper lid blepharoplasty was mostly mild to moderate and did not exceed a score of 4, which would require reevaluation, and could remain persistent for up to 7 days after surgery. Specific pain-targeted assessment and treatment based on these results are warranted.


This edited volume of original chapters brings together researchers from around the world who are exploring the facets of health care organization and delivery that are sometimes marginal to mainstream patient safety theories and methodologies but offer important insights into the socio-cultural and organizational context of patient safety. By examining these critical insights or perspectives and drawing upon theories and methodologies often neglected by mainstream safety researchers, this collection shows we can learn more about not only the barriers and drivers to implementing patient safety programmes, but also about the more fundamental issues that shape notions of safety, alternate strategies for enhancing safety, and the wider implications of the safety agenda on the future of health care delivery. In so doing, A Socio-cultural Perspective on Patient Safety challenges the taken-for-granted assumptions around fundamental philosophical and political issues upon which mainstream orthodoxy relies.

The book draws upon a range of theoretical and empirical approaches from across the social sciences to investigate and question the patient safety movement. Each chapter takes as its focus and question a particular aspect of the patient safety reforms, from its policy context and theoretical foundations to its practical application and manifestation in clinical practice, whilst also considering the wider implications for the organization and delivery of health care services. Accordingly, the chapters each draw upon a distinct theoretical or methodological approach to critically explore specific dimensions of the patient safety agenda. Taken as a whole, the collection advances a strong, coherent argument that is much needed to counter some of the uncritical assumptions that need to be described and analyzed if patient safety is indeed to be achieved.


Fewer than 100 people own and control more wealth than 50 per cent of the world's population. The Handbook on Wealth and the Super-Rich is a unique examination of both the lives and lifestyles of the super-rich, as well as the processes that underpin super-wealth generation and its unequal distribution. Drawing on a multiplicity of international examples, leading experts from across the social sciences offer a landmark multidisciplinary contribution to emerging analyses of the global super-rich and their astonishing wealth. The book's 22 accessible and coherently organised chapters cover a range of captivating topics from biographies of illicit super-wealth, to tax footprint reduction, to the environmental consequences of super-rich lives and their conspicuous consumption.


Accuracy when assessing mistuned forced response analyses is still a major concern. Since a fully coupled analysis is still very computational expensive, several simplifications and reduced-order models (ROMs) are carried out. The use of a reduction method, the assumptions and simplifications, generate different uncertainties that challenge the accuracy of the results. Experimental data are needed for validation and also to understand the propagation of these uncertainties. This paper shows a detailed mistuned forced response analysis of a compressor blisk. The blisk belongs to the Purdue Three-Stage (P3S) Compressor Research Facility. Two different stator–rotor–stator configurations of 38 and 44 upstream stator vanes are taken into consideration. Several loading conditions are analyzed at three different speed lines. A ROM known as subset nominal mode (SNM), has been used for all the analyses. This reduction takes as a basis a set of modes within a selected frequency spectrum. It can consider a complete family of modes to study the disk–blade modal interaction. A detailed comparison between the predicted and measured results has been performed, showing a good agreement for the high loading (HL) conditions.


Natural forests in the humid tropics differ from temperate and plantation forests in several ways: there may be many tree species; many of these may occur infrequently; there may be a large range of tree sizes and shapes present; tree ages may be unknown and indeterminate; and despite the luxuriant appearance some rainforests, growth rates may be relatively low. This has many implications for timber harvesting and yield estimation and means that most of the estimation techniques devised for even-aged single-species forests cannot be used. A timber harvest represents the culmination of many years of growth, even in "fast growing" plantations. Thus, unlike the farmer of annual crops, the forest manager must consider the distribution of the harvest over time. Several "rules-of-thumb" for estimating the annual allowable cut are examined, with special emphasis given to the selection of the cutting cycle, to growth and harvesting models, and to inventory and monitoring systems. Strengths and weaknesses of cutting cycle analysis are discussed, and are contrasted with the more sophisticated yield scheduling systems. Tools, techniques and information sources for estimating timber yields are reviewed. Yield calculations should make full use of existing information, including data from old surveys and casual inspections. Remote sensing and geographic information systems offer several interesting possibilities for yield estimation, particularly for sensitivity testing, but are not without limitations. A check list and extensive references are given.


Impending rapid development of the abundant energy resources found in western North America may have dramatic consequences for its terrestrial ecosystems. We used lease and license data to provide an approximate estimate of direct and indirect potential impacts from renewable and non-renewable energy development on each of five major terrestrial ecosystems and completed more detailed analyses for shrubland ecosystems. We found that energy development could impact up to 21 percent (96 million ha) of the five major ecosystems in western North America. The highest overall predicted impacts as a percent of the ecosystem type are to boreal forest (23-32 percent), shrublands (6-24 percent), and grasslands (9-21 percent). In absolute terms, the largest potential impacts are to shrublands (9.9 to 41.1 million ha). Oil, gas, wind, solar, and geothermal development each have their greatest potential impacts on shrublands. The impacts to shrublands occur in all ecological regions across western North America, but potential impacts are greatest in the North American Deserts (up to 27 percent or 25.8 million ha), Great Plains (up to 24 percent or 8.9 million ha), and Northern Forests (up to 47 percent or 4.3 million ha). Conventional oil and gas development accounts for the largest proportion of the potential impact in all three of these regions. Some states or provinces may experience particularly large impacts to shrublands, including Alberta and Wyoming, where potential for oil and gas development is especially high, and New Mexico, where solar development could potentially affect large areas of shrubland. Understanding the scale of anticipated impacts to these ecosystems through this type of coarse-scale analysis may help to catalyze policy makers to engage in proactive planning. ____________________________________ In Monaco, T.A. et al. comps. 2011. Proceedings – Threats to Shrubland Ecosystem Integrity; 2010 May 18-20; Logan, UT. Natural Resources and Environmental Issues, Volume XVII. S.J. and Jessie E. Quinney Natural Resources Research Library, Logan Utah, USA.


Abstract. A variety of methods are used to measure the capability of particulate matter (PM) to catalytically generate reactive oxygen species (ROS) in vivo, also defined as the aerosol oxidative potential. A widely used measure of aerosol oxidative potential is the dithiothreitol (DTT) assay, which monitors the depletion of DTT (a surrogate for cellular antioxidants) as catalyzed by the redox-active species in PM. However, a major constraint in the routine use of the DTT assay for integrating it with large-scale health studies is its labor-intensive and time-consuming protocol. To specifically address this concern, we have developed a semi-automated system for quantifying the oxidative potential of aerosol liquid extracts using the DTT assay. The system, capable of unattended analysis at one sample per hour, has a high analytical precision (coefficient of variation of 15% for positive control, 4% for ambient samples) and reasonably low limit of detection (0.31 nmol min−1). Comparison of the automated approach with the manual method conducted on ambient samples yielded good agreement (slope = 1.08 ± 0.12, r2 = 0.92, N = 9). The system was utilized for the Southeastern Center for Air Pollution & Epidemiology (SCAPE) to generate an extensive data set on DTT activity of ambient particles collected from contrasting environments (urban, roadside, and rural) in the southeastern US. We find that water-soluble PM2.5 DTT activity on a per-air-volume basis was spatially uniform and often well correlated with PM2.5 mass (r = 0.49 to 0.88), suggesting regional sources contributing to the PM oxidative potential in the southeastern US. The correlation may also suggest a mechanistic explanation (oxidative stress) for observed PM2.5 mass-health associations. The heterogeneity in the intrinsic DTT activity (per-PM-mass basis) across seasons indicates variability in the DTT activity associated with aerosols from sources that vary with season. Although developed for the DTT assay, the instrument can also be used to determine oxidative potential with other acellular assays.


The big bang hypothesis is widely accepted despite numerous physics conflicts. It rests upon two experimental supports, galactic red shift and the cosmic microwave background. Both are produced by dark matter, shown here to be hydrogen dominated aggregates with a few percent of helium nodules. Scattering from these non-radiating intergalactic masses produce a red shift that normally correlates with distance. Warmed by our galaxy to an Eigenvalue of 2.735 K, drawn near the Earth, these bodies, kept cold by ablation, resonance radiate the Planckian microwave signal. Several tests are proposed that will distinguish between this model and the big bang.


The development of distributed urban drainage models is becoming more important as cities prepare for the challenges associated with climate change such as more intense precipitation events (McCarthy et al. 2010; Allan, 2011; Simõeset et al. 2011; Blumensaat et al. 2012; Leitãoet al. 2012). GIS-based tools were developed to generate input datasets for a 1-D distributed urban drainage model for part of Toronto's combined area, resulting in an efficient model development process compared to those utilizing manual approaches. These automatic GIS-based tools included the delineation of Wet Weather Flow (WWF) subcatchments (stormwater) and Dry Weather Flow (DWF) subcatchments (sanitary). It also included the determination of the intensity of rainfall on a more detailed scale than the coarse coverage provided by the City's rain gauges and the traditional Thiessen polygon interpolation method. Through testing the new tools designed in ModelBuilder, it was determined that 66% and 52% of DWF and WWF subcatchments respectively, were automatically delineated to a degree where they would be "Acceptable" for input into the urban drainage model, InfoWorks CS. Although the rainfall tools were able to continuously interpolate measured rainfall (on a seemingly unprecedented basis),and generate over 700 virtual rain gauges, the validity of the approach remains imperfect due to irresolvable inconsistencies between the City's gauges and those used for validation purposes.


Graphene antidot lattices (GALs) offer an attractive approach to band-gap engineering in graphene. Theoretical studies indicate that the size of the opened gap is sensitive to the shape, size, and architecture of the nanoholes introduced into the graphene sheet. We have investigated the temperature-dependent electrical conductivity of GALs comprising 50-nm-diameter nanoholes with a pitch of 80, 100, and 200 nm, respectively. The data reveal the presence of localized states within a transport gap, whose interactions lead to a soft Coulomb gap and associated Efros-Shklovskii variable range hopping (ES-VRH). This conduction type is preserved upon application of magnetic fields up to 1 Tesla, above which a transition to Mott variable range hopping occurs. Such a crossover can alternatively be introduced at zero magnetic fields by increasing either the nanohole spacing or the gate-controlled carrier concentration. Furthermore, at intermediate magnetic fields, the hopping exponent assumes a value of 2/3, as predicted by percolation theory for ES-VRH under this condition.


Coral reef community composition and ecosystem function may change in response to anthropogenic ocean acidification. However, the magnitude of acidification on reefs will be modified by natural spatial and temporal variability in seawater CO2 chemistry. Consequently, it is necessary to quantify the ecological, biogeochemical, and physical drivers of this natural variability before making robust predictions of future acidification on reefs. In this study, we measured temporal and spatial physiochemical variability on a reef flat in Kāne'ohe Bay, O'ahu, Hawai'i, using autonomous sensors at sites with contrasting benthic communities and by sampling surface seawater CO2 chemistry across the reef flat at different times of the day during June and November. Mean and diurnal temporal variability of seawater CO2 chemistry was more strongly influenced by depth gradients (~ 0.5–10 m) on the reef rather than benthic community composition. Spatial CO2 chemistry gradients across the reef flat reflected the cumulative influence from benthic metabolism, bathymetry, and hydrodynamics. Based on graphical assessment of total alkalinity–dissolved inorganic carbon data, reef metabolism in November was dominated by organic carbon cycling over inorganic carbon cycling, while these processes were closely balanced in June. Overall, this study highlights the strong influence of depth on reef seawater CO2 chemistry variability through its effects on benthic biomass to seawater volume ratio, seawater flow rates, and residence time. Thus, the natural complexity of ecosystems where a combination of ecological and physical factors influence reef chemistry must be considered when predicting ecosystem biogeochemical responses to future anthropogenic changes in seawater CO2 chemistry.


We address the task of person search, that is, localizing and re-identifying query persons from a set of raw scene images. Recent approaches are typically built upon OIMNet, a pioneer work on person search, that learns joint person representations for performing both detection and person re-identification (reID) tasks. To obtain the representations, they extract features from pedestrian proposals, and then project them on a unit hypersphere with L2 normalization. These methods also incorporate all positive proposals, that sufficiently overlap with the ground truth, equally to learn person representations for reID. We have found that 1) the L2 normalization without considering feature distributions degenerates the discriminative power of person representations, and 2) positive proposals often also depict background clutter and person overlaps, which could encode noisy features to person representations. In this paper, we introduce OIMNet++ that addresses the aforementioned limitations. To this end, we introduce a novel normalization layer, dubbed ProtoNorm, that calibrates features from pedestrian proposals, while considering a long-tail distribution of person IDs, enabling L2 normalized person representations to be discriminative. We also propose a localization-aware feature learning scheme that encourages better-aligned proposals to contribute more in learning discriminative representations. Experimental results and analysis on standard person search benchmarks demonstrate the effectiveness of OIMNet++.


Despite increasing evidence for a pathogenetic role for the beta-amyloid precursor protein (beta APP) in Alzheimer disease, the physiological function of the protein remains unclear. The expression of the neural-specific isoform containing 695 amino acids, beta APP695, is consistent with a role for the protein in neuronal development. In this study, we analyzed the expression of beta APP during the retinoic acid-induced neuronal differentiation of P19 murine embryonal carcinoma cells. Northern blot and RNase protection analyses show a selective increase in beta APP695 expression, concomitant with the morphologic differentiation of P19-derived neurons. Moreover, the time course of increase observed for the beta APP695 mRNA is paralleled by other neuronal-specific transcripts. A similar increase in beta APP695 is observed at the protein level. Furthermore, we show that levels of beta APP695 protein progressively increase during the in vitro differentiation of primary hippocampal neurons. The finding that beta APP695 increases selectively and progressively during neuronal differentiation in two different cell culture systems suggests that this isoform has an important cellular function during this process in the brain. Unlike beta APP in most peripheral cell types, the increased levels of beta APP found in terminally differentiated neuronal cells are not processed in significant amounts by secretory cleavage. Thus, differentiation of neurons is accompanied by increased beta APP695 expression and membrane retention of the protein as intact, full-length molecules that could serve as potential substrates for amyloidogenesis.


The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, which established the minimum standards for the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights for WTO members, remains one of the more controversial international intellectual property agreements that have entered into force. Although that Agreement embraces a highly problematic super-size-fits-all approach, it includes a number of safeguards and flexibilities to facilitate economic development and to protect the public interest. Articles 7 and 8, in particular, lay out explicit and important objectives and principles that can play important roles in the interpretation and implementation of the Agreement. Presented at the 2009 Santa Fe Conference, this article begins by tracing the origins and development of Articles 7 and 8 of the TRIPs Agreement. It then examines the normative content of these provisions while highlighting the interpretations made by WTO panels and the Appellate Body as well as the implications of the two Doha declarations. The article concludes by exploring five different ways in which Articles 7 and 8 can be used to facilitate a more flexible interpretation and implementation of the TRIPs Agreement: (1) as a guiding light for interpretation and implementation; (2) as a shield against aggressive demands for increased intellectual property protection; (3) as a sword to challenge provisions that overprotect intellectual property rights or tolerate their abuse; (4) as a bridge to connect the TRIPS regime with other intellectual property or related international regimes; and (5) as a seed for the development of future international intellectual property norms.


This thesis examines the congruency between destination brand identity and brand image. The focus of the study is on Thailand's brand image as perceived by potential Australian travellers, as well as Thailand's brand identity as intended by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT). The study bridges the concepts of corporate branding in the marketing literature and destination image in the tourism literature and contributes to the field of tourism theoretically and practically. A mixed methods research design employing both qualitative and quantitative approaches is used in this study. The qualitative phase explores the brand development of Thailand and its positioning using in-depth interviews with key TAT executives. Further analysis of how Thailand positions itself in relation to its regional competitors, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong is conducted by means of content analysis. The quantitative phase uses surveys to collect data from samples of Australian travellers and non-travellers to Thailand as well as the TAT in order to compare between Thailand's destination brand image (as perceived by travellers) and brand identity (as projected by the TAT). Overall, results of the study point to 1) the strategic importance of maintaining consistency of its internal brand 2) the need to minimise the gap between destination brand identity (internal brand) and image (external brand) and 3) the challenge of managing a positive and distinctive destination brand. As revealed by the results from the qualitative phase, Thailand's positive image has not been consistently communicated to potential tourists via its official tourism website. Results from the quantitative phase indicate that there are some gaps or incongruence between the brand as perceived by travellers and non-travellers to Thailand versus brand as projected by the TAT. The findings offer important implications for the development of destination marketing strategies. In order to positively improve the brand image of Thailand, destination marketers of Thailand should focus on consistently and positively promoting its destination personality, the symbolic components of its destination brand via its TAT website and other communication channels.


Objectives: Injuries of the sternoclavicular (SC) joint are rare and are usually caused by high energy mechanisms, such as collision sports or motor vehicle accidents. The aims of this study were to assess functional outcomes and return to sport following resection arthroplasty for osteoarthritis of the sternoclavicular joint. Methods: 20 SC joints (18 patients) had undergone resection arthroplasty of up to a maximum of 10 mm of the medial end of the clavicle for painful osteoarthritis, without instability, between November 2006 and November 2013. Patients at least two years out from surgery and living in the U.S. were included in the study. This was an IRB-approved retrospective outcomes study with prospectively collected data. Preoperative and postoperative function and pain levels were assessed with the ASES, SF-12 PCS, QuickDASH and SANE scores. Additionally, the level of sport intensity and the pain levels during activities of daily living, work and recreation were assessed pre- and postoperatively. The results of the functional outcome scores were normally distributed and were compared with the paired sample t-test. The results of pain level assessment were not normally distributed and were compared with the paired Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Results: 19 SC joints in 17 patients (9 female, 8 male; mean age at time of surgery 39.5±17.1 years) met inclusion criteria. One patient refused participation in the study. Two patients (10.5%) were considered failures as they required additional SC joint surgery (one patient with revision resection of the medial clavicle for persistent symptoms and one patient with secondary figure-of-eight graft stabilization for instability). Minimum 2-year outcomes data were available for 14 of the remaining 16 SC joints (88%). The mean time to follow-up was 3.1 years (range, 2.0-8.8 years). The ASES score, QuickDASH, and pain levels demonstrated significant improvement postoperatively (p<0.05; Table 1). No significant differences were observed between the pre- and postoperative SANE and SF-12 PCS scores (p>0.05; Table 1). All patients (100%, n=11) that answered the question were able to return to sport, with 64% of these patients (n=7) returning to their pre-injury level or slightly below. Conclusion: Resection arthroplasty of up to a maximum of 10 mm of the medial end of the clavicle in patients with osteoarthritis of the SC joint results in significant functional improvement, pain reduction, and a high rate of return to sport at mid-term follow-up.


The Grammar and Lexis of Conversational Informal English in Advanced Textbooks defends the view that the acquisition of conversational English depends highly on the kind of materials available to L2 learners. The need to acquire a proficient competence in English is growing exponentially in an incessantly demanding society, but it is the oral skill, and more specifically the ability to communicate in everyday situations, that learners are calling for. The current learning process, nonetheless, is not particularly effective, as is shown in the data collected by the Eurobarometer and published in June 2012, which shows that only 38% of the Europeans surveyed were able to maintain a conversation in English, although 67% believed it to be the most useful language to learn for personal development. The present study supports the idea expressed in The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, which states that a language is learnt "reactively, following the instructions and carrying out the activities prescribed for them by teachers and by textbooks" (2001: 141). Consequently, these materials should reflect the everyday use of informal discourse and allow learners to analyse, understand and interpret the different underlying messages conveyed by means of lexico-syntactic, as well as paralinguistic, elements. The book is divided into seven chapters in which various different linguistic aspects of conversation are dealt with. In the opening chapters, spoken language is presented and approached as a multidimensional entity, particularly as the sum of lexico-syntactic and socio-linguistic elements. The following chapters provide a description of the main characteristics of conversational English based on corpus-informed grammars and publications. The final chapter analyses twenty ESL textbooks in order to determine how corpus data has influenced the materials designed for the acquisition of conversational discourse.


The crystal structure of johachidolite, CaAl[B 3 O 7 ], ( Cmma , a = 9.767(2), b = 11.723(3), c = 4.3718(5) A, V = 408.3(1) A 3 , Z = 4) has been refined ( R 1 = 2.5 %) from a light-green gem-quality crystal from the Mogok gem-mining district in Myanmar. A fragment from the same gem was measured by electron microprobe and Laser-Ablation Inductively-Coupled-Plasma Mass-spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), and is almost end-member composition with ca. 0.3 wt.% ThO 2 and ca. 1000 ppm Ln probably replacing Ca. Johachidolite has a very dense structure with all cations in maximum oxygen coordination. Boron is tetrahedrally coordinated and the tetrahedra form four- and six-membered rings that link to give a sheet, the only borate layer-structure among minerals with only BO 4 tetrahedra. The interlayer space is filled by octahedrally coordinated Al and ten-coordinated Ca. Johachidolite, forming in boron-rich skarn or pegmatite, has never been synthesized. Other ternary compounds, synthesized from corresponding glass compositions, CaAlBO 4 and CaAl 2 B 2 O 7 , are unknown as minerals and have B (three-coordinate), Al (tetrahedral), and Ca (octahedral) in their lowest known oxygen coordination. Johachidolite displays the structural characteristics of a mineral with high-pressure stability.


Polyurethane foam composites is widely used in insulation industry. Since the material is exposed the cryogenic environment for a certain period of time, it is essential to estimate the mechanical properties of the material. In this study, compression tests for the polyurethane foam which is recognized as the insulation material for the storage tank of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) were carried out for investigation of the material characteristic of mechanical behavior. To investigate the effect of immersion of cryogenic liquid on polyurethane foam according to immersion time, each compressive test was conductive at five times for reliability, and the test results were obtained by eliminating the maximum and minimum values to reduce experimental error. As a results, Deformation recovery ratio according to the various initial deformation levels were estimated and the mechanical behavior of foams that are experienced compressive deformation was also obtained experimentally. The test results were analyzed based on the conditions of initially applied strain level and engineering strain rate. In addition, the microstructure of the test specimen after the test was analyzed to investigate the relationship between mechanical behavior and immersion time. Key-Words: Liquefied natural gas, Leakage, Immersion, Polyurethane foam, Deformation recovery, Compression test


Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) for snacks in Indonesia currently has a good growth rate on one hand; but on the other hand, its level of competition is also quite high.  Growth in sales volume of the Indonesian snack industry, both in modern and traditional markets in 2012, was recorded at 10-15 percent far beyond the growth of other manufacturing industries.  However, the level of competition in the snack industry is also relatively high. Business people in the snacks sector do not only compete with fellow local business people but also with imported products, both legal and illegal.  Currently, Banten Province is indeed not known as a culinary destination with a variety of distinctively local foods. The growth  of the food industry in Banten Province is not as rapid as other manufacturing industries. However, in Banten, some types of food produced in small and medium scales (SMEs) are also known.  Therefore, efforts to develop and empower typical local snack SMEs in Banten Province needs to be conducted to be able to increase its competitiveness in facing the globalization era and the ASEAN free market in 2015.  The purpose of this reseach is to map the performance profile of Banten typical local snack SMEs and to provide recommendation on SME development strategies for competitive and sustainable Banten typical local snacks.  The research method used combines the descriptive research method, IPA (Importance Performance Analysis), and SWOT analysis.  The performance level measurement for Banten typical local snack SMEs is based on stakeholder perceptions on the condition of the existing 16 attributes compared to the perception on the development expectation of each of these attributes.  Results of SWOT matrix mapping puts  the products of Banten typical local snack SMEs in quadran II.  The strategy prioritized is the quality attribute maintenance strategy for superior products, as well as product diversification to expand market share, competitiveness, and sustainability of Banten typical local snack SME products.


The control of the current, position and shape of an elongated cross-section tokamak plasma is complicated by the instability of the plasma vertical position. In this case the control becomes a significant problem when saturation of the power supplies is considered. Current saturation is relatively benign due to the integrating nature of the tokamak, resulting in a reasonable time horizon for strategically handling this problem. On the other hand, voltage saturation is produced by the feedback controller itself, with no intrinsic delay. In practice, during large plasma disturbances, such as sawteeth, ELMs and minor disruptions, voltage saturation of the power supply can occur and as a consequence the vertical position control can be lost. If such a loss of control happens the plasma displaces vertically and hits the wall of the vessel, which can cause damage to the tokamak. The consideration and study of voltage saturation is especially important for ITER. Due to the size and therefore the cost of ITER, there will naturally be smaller margins in the Poloidal Field coil power supplies implying that the feedback will experience actuator saturation during large transients due to a variety of plasma disturbances. The next generation of tokamaks under construction will require vertical position and active shape control and will be fully superconducting. When the magnetic transverse field in superconducting magnets changes, the magnet generates two types of heat loss, the so-called coupling loss and the so-called hysteresis loss, grouped together as AC losses. Superconducting coils possess superconducting properties only below a critical temperature around a few K. AC losses are detrimental since they heat up the superconducting material. Thus, if AC losses are too large, the cryogenic plant can no longer hold the required temperature to maintain the superconductivity properties. Once the superconductivity is lost, the electric currents in the coils produce an enormous heat loss due to the ohmic resistivity, which can lead to a possible damage to the coils. In general, the coils are designed with enough margin to absorb all likely losses. A possible loss reduction could allow us to downsize the superconducting cross section in the cables, reducing the overall cost, or simply increase the operational cooling margin for given coils. In this thesis we have tried to take into consideration these two major problems. The thesis is therefore focused on the following main objectives: i) the stability analysis of the tokamak considering voltage saturation of the power supplies and ii) the proposition of a new controller which enhances the stability properties of the tokamak under voltage saturation and iii) the proposition of a controller which takes into consideration the problem of reducing the AC losses. The subject of the thesis is therefore situated in an interdisciplinary framework and as a result the thesis is subdivided into two principal parts. The first part is devoted to tokamak physics and engineering, while the second part focuses on control theory. In the tokamak physics and engineering part we present the linear tokamak models and the nonlinear tokamak code used for the controller design and the validation of the new proposed controller. The discussion is especially focused on the presence of a single unstable pole when the vertical plasma position is unstable since this characteristic is essential for the work presented in the control theory part. In order to determine the enhancement of the stability properties we have to bring the new proposed controller to its stability limits by means of large disturbances. Validation by means of simulations with either linear or nonlinear tokamak models are imperatively required before considering the implementation of the new controller on a tokamak in operation. A linear tokamak model will probably be inadequate since large disturbances can move its state outside its validity regions. A full nonlinear tokamak evolution code like DINA is indispensable for this purpose. We give a detailed description of the principal plasma physics implemented in the DINA code. Additionally, validation of DINA is provided by comparing TCV experimental VDE responses with DINA code simulations. To allow a study of the AC losses reduction, the nature of the AC losses has to be reduced to a simplified form. We analyse to what extent the accumulated AC losses in ITER could be reduced by taking into account the losses themselves when designing the feedback control loops. In order to be able to carry out this investigation a simple and fast AC loss model, referred to as "AC-CRPP" model, is proposed. In the control theory part we study the stability region in state space, referred to as the region of attraction, for linear tokamak-like systems with input saturation (voltage saturation) and a linear state feedback. Only linear systems with a single unstable pole (mode) and a single saturated input are considered. We demonstrate that the characterisation of the region of attraction is possible for a second order linear system with one unstable and one stable pole. For such systems the region of attraction possesses a topological bifurcation and we provide an analytical condition under which this bifurcation occurs. Since the analysis relies on methodologies like Poincare and Bendixson's theorems which are unfortunately only valid for second order systems it is evident that there is no way to apply the results for second order systems to higher order systems. It turned out that the search for characterising the region of attraction for higher order systems was illusory and thus this research direction had to be abandoned. We therefore focused on controllers for which the region of attraction is the maximal region of attraction that can be achieved under input saturation. This region is referred to as the null controllable region and its characterisation is simple for any arbitrary high order system possessing a single unstable pole. We present a new globally stabilising controller for which its region of attraction is equal to the null controllable region. This result is obtained by incorporating a simple continuous nonlinear function into a linear state feedback controller. There are several advantages linked to this new controller: i) the stability properties are enhanced, ii) the performance, AC loss reduction and fast disturbance rejection, can be taken into account, iii) the controller can be applied to any arbitrary high order system and iv) the controller possesses a simple structure which simplifies the design procedure. We close the control theory part by focusing on the application of the proposed new controller to tokamaks. Since this controller is a state feedback controller one of the major problems is linked to the state reconstruction. Other pertinent topics are: i) the study of the effect of the disturbances on the closed-loop system stability, ii) the problem inherent to the nature of a state feedback controller when we want an output of the system to track a reference signal and iii) the discussion of the detrimental effects on stability if a pure time delay or a limited bandwidth are added to the closed-loop system, as is the case in reality. The validation of the proposed controller is carried out by means of simulations. We present results for ITER-FEAT and JET using the linear tokamak model CREATE-L. Finally, we present a validation for the case of TCV using the nonlinear DINA-CH code.


This Article analyzes how scientific uncertainty is handled in international environmental law. It identifies ten legal techniques used for this purpose (i.e., precautionary reasoning; framework-protocol approach; advisory scientific bodies; lawmaking by treaty bodies; managerial approaches to compliance; prior informed consent; environmental impact assessment and monitoring; provisional measures; evidence; and facilitated liability) and links them to four different stages of development of environmental regimes (i.e., advocacy, design, implementation, and reparation). These techniques are illustrated by reference to some fifteen environmental treaties and other instruments as well as through a detailed case study focusing on the climate change regime.


Although empathy is the phenomenon that connects otherwise isolated individuals, knowledge concerning the nature of this phenomenon is still scarce. This thesis presents three studies on empathy based on qualitative and quantitative data. In Study 1, narrative accounts of empathy situations were collected to identify constituents that exist in both empathizers' and targets' experiences of empathy. From both perspectives, the constituents of empathy included the empathizer understanding the target, the target experiencing one or more emotions, the empathizer perceiving a similarity between what the target is experiencing and something the empathizer has experienced earlier, and the empathizer being concerned for the target's well-being. Similarity of experience occurs at different levels of abstraction. Study 2 consisted of three experiments exploring the role of a person's actions in how empathetic the person is perceived as being. In the experiments participants read different versions of an empathy story. The results suggested that action is crucial in the experience of empathy from both empathizer's and target's perspectives, as well as from the perspective of an unspecified observer. Study 3 explored in two experiments how empathy is related to viewing another individual as a subject/object. The results revealed that subject view and perceived difficulty of the person's situation together explain a considerable part of differences in empathy. The empirical findings are discussed in a broader context of altruism, morality, similarity of experience, and foreign experience.


The Variational Autoencoder (VAE) has proven to be an effective model for producing semantically meaningful latent representations for natural data. However, it has thus far seen limited application to sequential data, and, as we demonstrate, existing recurrent VAE models have difficulty modeling sequences with long-term structure. To address this issue, we propose the use of a hierarchical decoder, which first outputs embeddings for subsequences of the input and then uses these embeddings to generate each subsequence independently. This structure encourages the model to utilize its latent code, thereby avoiding the "posterior collapse" problem, which remains an issue for recurrent VAEs. We apply this architecture to modeling sequences of musical notes and find that it exhibits dramatically better sampling, interpolation, and reconstruction performance than a "flat" baseline model. An implementation of our "MusicVAE" is available online at this http URL.


Abolition of the G.L.C. led to a complex web of governmental institutions for London consisting of specific offices within central government departments, various appointed boards, and the boroughs and City of London. The Departments of Environment and Transport both had regional offices governing London. The Government Office for London was perhaps the most important of reforms instituted after 1992. The post 1986 framework for government relied heavily on government appointed or controlled institutions. Fragmentation led to pressures for joint arrangements and inter-borough co-operation, emphasising the need to overcome the fractious behaviour that had characterised relations prior to 1986. Abolition transferred significant powers to the boroughs and these, together with new responsibilities, enhanced their authority. Different forms of partnerships emerged, including city-wide, multi-borough and private-public committees.


Legal instructors have been urged to incorporate peer reviewing into law school courses as a way to provide students much needed feedback. Peer review can benefit legal education, but only if law school instructors adopt peer review on a large scale, and for that, computer-supported peer review systems are crucial. These web-based systems orchestrate the mechanics of students submitting written assignments on-line and distributing them to other students for anonymous review, making it considerably easier for instructors to manage. Beyond the problem of orchestrating mechanics, however, a deeper obstacle to widespread acceptance of peer review in legal education is the question of how well student peer feedback focuses on the legal analytical aspects of the student-authored texts. Can students receive useful feedback on substantive legal issues from peers who, after all, are law students taking the same course and learning the material for the first time, too? This article reports an experiment assessing the pedagogical utility of computer-supported peer review in a legal educational context. We compared two kinds of review rubrics, suites of instructor-provided prompts focusing student reviewers on a set of pedagogically relevant reviewing criteria: legal domain-related versus problem-specific rubrics. In particular, we compared peer ratings elicited with each of these rubrics to independently assigned instructor scores. Our results show that peer-generated review scores using either type of rubric are correlated with an instructor's independently assigned grades and support the belief that peer review can serve as an additional source of useful feedback, including on substantive legal issues. In addition, analysis of the data can inform instructors about how well the writing exercise met their instructional goals and can assist instructors in adopting more pedagogically effective review criteria. The article concludes by explaining how legal instructors can administer a computer-supported peer-review writing exercise in their own courses using a web-based program.


The development of the energy policy of the European Union (EU) has been accompanied by organizational reforms of the EU's energy bureaucracy. Much attention has been paid to Commission President Juncker's reorganization of the European Commission, including how this has influenced the Energy Union initiative. The establishment of EU agencies has also expanded the EU administration and the capacity for developing new initiatives and coordinating implementation of EU legislation. However, recent research has not been sufficiently connected to policy studies on energy, climate and environment. This article analyses the extent to which two EU agencies—the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators, and the European Environmental Agency—augment the policymaking capacity of the Commission by providing information that aids its work. The article ends with a discussion of the potential implications of agencification.


The Red-billed Quelea Quelea quelea has been steadily expanding its range into the Western Cape province. The earliest record is of a vagrant in 1946. The next record came from 1986 in the Karoo and since 1997 there have been annual reports of the species in the province. It has become resident in the Karoo, especially in the Beaufort West to Leeu Gamka area. In April and May 2007 there was an invasion of Red-billed Queleas in the Western Cape province, particularly on the Cape Peninsula and Overberg region. Sixty-eight percent of records were within 5 km of the coast, over a stretch of 1 000 km of coastline. Adult males in breeding plumage were frequently observed, indicating that this irruption was not limited to post-juvenile dispersal. This influx was not repeated in 2008, but from April 2008 to January 2009, monthly records of queleas were higher than the combined monthly totals in years prior to the influx. The increasing occurrence of queleas in the Western Cape province is a potential threat to a major wheat-producing area and continued monitoring is required.


Before the totalitarian reign of Mao Zedong and his immediate successors, never in human history had an entire nation been under such intense surveillance. The Chinese not only had to speak alike; they had to think alike. Traveling to China regularly since 1967, and spending all of 2005 and 2006 there, Guy Sorman saw it all, and in this jaw-dropping book, he documents the horrifying stories of China through the 21st century. He shows how the Party's primary concern is not improving the lives of the downtrodden; it seeks power more than it seeks social development. It expends extraordinary energy in suppressing Chinese freedoms-the media operate under suffocating censorship, and political opposition can result in expulsion or prison-even as it tries to seduce the West, which has conferred greater legitimacy on it than do the Chinese themselves.


European states are embedded in multiple and overlapping layers of constitutional governance. The same is true for the international and transnational systems of governance, such as the WTO, within which both the EU and its constituent member states are firmly embedded. It is inevitable that these different layers of governance will at times rub against each other, producing inter-layer "irritation". This "irritation" can take different forms, but in general often has the capacity to generate significant change, development and evolution within both national and transnational systems. Inter-layer irritation can have particular significance where the protection of fundamental rights is at issue, where tensions are often generated between "cosmopolitan" and "particularist" approaches to rights. "Cosmopolitan" rights standards can be defined as legal norms generated by international or transnational processes of deliberation and embedded in transnational layers of governance. "Particularist" standards, in contrast, are generated within the specific constitutional order of each state and often interpreted by national courts in a manner that reflects how these rights have emerged and evolved within the particular national context in question. The "open architecture" of the European human rights system often allows such tensions to be resolved through a process of pluralistic and political interaction. However, there are times when sharp fault lines are uncovered, where the interaction of cosmopolitan and domestic systems generates conflict, generating inter-layer "irritation" but also at times driving forward the process of legal change and development.


The construction sector is under growing pressure to increase productivity and improve quality, most notably in reports by Latham (1994, Constructing the Team, HMSO, London) and Egan (1998, Rethinking Construction, HMSO, London). A major problem for construction companies is the lack of project predictability. One method of increasing predictability and delivering increased customer value is through the systematic management of construction processes. However, the industry has no methodological mechanism to assess process capability and prioritise process improvements. Standardized Process Improvement for Construction Enterprises (SPICE) is a research project that is attempting to develop a stepwise process improvement framework for the construction industry, utilizing experience from the software industry, and in particular the Capability Maturity Model (CMM), which has resulted in significant productivity improvements in the software industry. This paper introduces SPICE concepts and presents the results from two case studies conducted on design and build projects. These studies have provided further in‐sight into the relevance and accuracy of the framework, as well as its value for the construction sector.


Abstract Little systematic research has been conducted on the extent of psychiatric disorders among South African patients in general, and among patients living with HIV in particular. The present study reports on a survey conducted among 85 patients receiving treatment at three HIV clinics in the Western Cape. Participants completed the Hopkins Symptom Checklist (HSCL) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), two self-report instruments designed to measure mood disturbance. The mean score of the sample on the HSCL was 47.54, which was significantly different from the commonly used cut-point of 44 for clinically significant distress; 52.9% of the sample scored in the elevated range on this measure. On the BDI, 37.6% of the sample fell in or above the moderate range for depression. The results suggest that a considerable proportion of the sample may be experiencing psychiatric difficulty, for which they may not be receiving treatment.


This paper investigates how ideas and sociocultural preferences with regard to "public" versus "private" spheres can account for bribery and corruption. An improved understanding of corruption in terms of differences among cultures concerning which goods are considered private or public not only can have new and unexpected implications for a general theory on this phenomenon, but more significantly it can provide insights into the high level of variation among societies. The methodology used in this research is a quantitative analysis of ethnographic data collected from the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) which explores the relationship between economic subsistence and bribery. The ways in which bribery is understood in different cultures relate not to different moral understandings of the problem of corruption, but rather to how different societies value the difference between private and public goods and the convertibility or blurring of goods belonging to the public and private spheres.


Criminal justice plays a major role in regulating undesirable conduct. As part of that role, the system relies on deterrence, incapacitation, and the shaping of social norms and preferences in an effort to prevent conduct considered harmful. But that preventive role is routinely misunderstood. This paper rethinks preventive enforcement by training attention on the relationship between criminal law and the institutional realities affecting risk regulation in environmental, health, and national security regulation. First, while not denying a host of problems with the expansive reach of criminal enforcement, the article describes how the structure of criminal enforcement does not draw particularly stable or convincing lines excluding risk regulation from its domain. Distinctions between administrative regulation and criminal enforcement therefore blur on the issue of whether preventing harm and regulating risks are crucial goals, but remain important with respect to matters such as type of sanction available (a commonly appreciated distinction) and type of agency used for enforcement (a less-commonly appreciated distinction). Second, the analysis trains attention on preventive enforcement in a world where social regulation faces a variety of institutional constraints and where multiple political dynamics drive expansive criminal liability. In such a world, a coercive and costly darker side of criminal justice coexists with the socially-valuable institutional characteristics of law enforcement organizations. As examples from food and drug regulation, environmental policy, and national security demonstrate, the mix of unique sanctions and procedural constraints associated with criminal enforcement have distinct institutional effects on public agencies. Specifically, the criminal justice system is capable of fostering a measure of autonomy that often eludes conventional regulatory agencies, provides incentives for investigative competence, and creates contextual effects in the choice of sanctioning regime, allowing politicians to signal the national state's competence to a potentially skeptical public. This perspective does not necessarily legitimize all preventive criminal enforcement. Instead, three major implications follow from the analysis. (1) Policymakers should rethink the unfavorable comparisons of law enforcement to intelligence agencies in the national security context. (2) Society should recognize that circumscribing preventive criminal liability has subtle and underappreciated costs for regulatory policy. (3) Scholars should better appreciate the interdependence between legal mandates and the evolution of organizations. By ignoring or minimizing the importance of criminal enforcement's distinctive institutional structure, however, scholars and policymakers have often misconceived the central role of criminal enforcement agencies in advanced industrialized states, providing policy prescriptions that are at best incomplete and at worse perverse and highly problematic.


Management of Uncertainties in Publish/Subscribe System Haifeng Liu Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Computer Science University of Toronto 2009 In the publish/subscribe paradigm, information providers disseminate publications to all consumers who have expressed interest by registering subscriptions. This paradigm has found wide-spread applications, ranging from selective information dissemination to network management. However, all existing publish/subscribe systems cannot capture uncertainty inherent to the information in either subscriptions or publications. In many situations the large number of data sources exhibit various kinds of uncertainties. Examples of imprecision include: exact knowledge to either specify subscriptions or publications is not available; the match between a subscription and a publication with uncertain data is approximate; the constraints used to define a match is not only content based, but also take the semantic information into consideration. All these kinds of uncertainties have not received much attention in the context of publish/subscribe systems. In this thesis, we propose new publish/subscribe models to express uncertainties and semantics in publications and subscriptions, along with the matching semantics for each model. We also develop efficient algorithms to perform filtering for our models so that it can be applied to process the rapidly increasing information on the Internet. A thorough experimental evaluation is presented to demonstrate that the proposed systems can offer scalability to large number of subscribers and high publishing rates.


The use of biological networks such as protein-protein interaction and transcriptional regulatory networks is becoming an integral part of biological research in the genomics era. However, these networks are not static, and during phenotypic transitions like disease onset, they can acquire new "communities" of genes that carry out key cellular processes. Changes in community structure can be detected by maximizing a modularity-based score, but because biological systems and network inference algorithms are inherently noisy, it remains a challenge to determine whether these changes represent real cellular responses or whether they appeared by random chance. Here, we introduce Constrained Random Alteration of Network Edges (CRANE), a computational method that samples networks with fixed node strengths to identify a null distribution and assess the robustness of observed changes in network structure. In contrast with other approaches, such as consensus clustering or established network generative models, CRANE produces more biologically realistic results and performs better in simulations. When applied to breast and ovarian cancer networks, CRANE improves the recovery of cancer-relevant GO terms while reducing the signal from non-specific housekeeping processes. CRANE is a general tool that can be applied in tandem with a variety of stochastic community detection methods to evaluate the veracity of their results.


While performing everyday interactions, we often incidentally touch and move objects in subtle ways. These objects are not necessarily directly related to the task at hand, and the movement of an object might even be entirely unintentional. If another person is touching the object at the same time, the movement can transfer through the object and be experienced - however subtly - by the other person. For example, when one person hands a drink to another, at some point both individuals will be touching the glass, and consequently exerting small (often unnoticed) forces on the other person. Despite the frequency of such subtle incidental movements of shared objects in everyday interactions, few have examined how these movements affect human-virtual human (VH) interaction. We ran an experiment to assess how presence and social presence are affected when a person experiences subtle, incidental movement through a shared real-virtual object. We constructed a real-virtual room with a table that spanned the boundary between the real and virtual environments. The participant was seated on the real side of the table, which visually extended into the virtual world via a projection screen, and the VH was seated on the virtual side of the table. The two interacted by playing a game of "Twenty Questions," where one player asked the other a series of 20 yes/no questions to deduce what object the other player was thinking about. During the game, the "wobbly" group of subjects experienced subtle incidental movements of the real-virtual table: the entire real-virtual table tilted slightly away/toward the subject when the virtual/real human leaned on it. The control group also played the same game, except the table did not wobble. Results indicate that the wobbly group had higher presence and social presence with the virtual human in general, with statistically significant increases in presence, co-presence, and attentional allocation. We present the experiment and results, and discuss some potential implications for virtual human systems and some potential future studies.


Previous studies indicate that acculturative stress is associated with greater depressive symptoms in Latino adolescents. Ethnic identity is an important cultural variable that has been linked with positive mental health outcomes. The current study examined whether different aspects of ethnic identity moderated the relation between acculturative stress and depressive symptoms among 7th - 10th graders in an emerging Latino community in North Carolina. First, the study examined the main effects of acculturative stress and ethnic identity on depressive symptoms. As hypothesized, greater acculturative stress predicted greater depressive symptoms. Similarly, as hypothesized, lower public regard predicted greater depressive symptoms. In contrast, private regard/centrality did not significantly predict depressive symptoms. It was also hypothesized that ethnic private regard, public regard, and centrality would moderate the relationship between acculturative stress and depressive symptoms such that youth with high levels of ethnic identity would report lower depressive symptoms when confronting acculturative stress. The results of this current study did not support this moderation hypothesis. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that there would be a three-way interaction in which private regard would moderate the relationship between acculturative stress and depressive symptoms only when youth endorsed high levels of ethnic centrality. Due to the strong correlation between private regard and centrality, a three-way interaction analyses could not be performed. Acculturative stress and public regard were the only factors in the current study that were associated with depressive symptoms.


The unique rumen of dairy cows allows them to digest fibrous forages and feedstuffs. Surprisingly, to date few attempts have been made to develop national methods to gain an understanding on the make-up of a dairy cow's diet, despite the importance of milk production. Consumer interest is growing in purchasing milk based on the composition of the cows' diet and the time they spend grazing. The goal of this research was to develop such a methodology using the national farm survey of Ireland as a data source. The analysis was completed for a 3-yr period from 2013 to 2015 on a nationally representative sample of 275 to 318 dairy farms. Trained auditors carried out economic surveys on farms 3 to 4 times per annum. The auditors collected important additional information necessary to estimate the diet of cows including the length of the grazing season, monthly concentrate feeding, type of forage(s) conserved, and milk production. Annual cow intakes were calculated to meet net energy requirements for production, maintenance, activity, pregnancy, growth, and live weight change using survey data and published literature. Our analysis showed that the average annual cow feed intake on a fresh matter basis ranged from 22.7 t in 2013 to 24.8 t in 2015 and from 4.8 to 5 t on a dry matter basis for the same period. Forage, particularly pasture, was the largest component of the Irish cow diet, typically accounting for 96% of the diet on a fresh matter basis and 82% of dry matter intake over the 3 yr. Within the cows' forage diet, grazed pasture was the dominant component and on average contributed 74 to 77% to the average annual cow fresh matter diet over the period. The proportion of pasture in the annual cow diet as fed was also identified as a good indicator of the time cows spend grazing (e.g., coefficient of determination = 0.85). Monthly, forage was typically the main component of the cow diet, but the average contribution of concentrate was substantial for the early spring months of January and February (30 to 35% of dry matter intake). Grazed pasture was the dominant source of forage from March to October and usually contributed 95 to 97% of the diet as fed in the summer period. Overall, the national farm survey from 2013 to 2015 shows that Irish dairy farms are very reliant on forage, particularly pasture, regardless of whether it is reported on a dry matter basis or as fed. There is potential to replicate this methodology in any regions or nations where representative farm surveys are conducted.


Government responses to COVID-19 have dramatically altered the social quality of daily circumstances. Consequently, theoretical questions about social cohesion require recalibration as we explore new models of social quality. Central to this article is trust, one of the fundamental tenets of social cohesion. We present data from interviews with 40 women in midlife (45–64 years) regarding their everyday experiences of "life in lockdown" during the pandemic. Key themes focus on women's (dis)trust in individuals (e.g., politicians, public health experts, family, themselves) and systems (e.g., politics, medicine, the media). This study provides insights into the differential impact of the pandemic in shaping public trust and hence social cohesion—in authority, institutions, and "each other"—with important lessons for how future efforts can rebuild trust in post-pandemic times.


Background—Left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) have improved survival in patients with end-stage heart failure. Compared with previous trials, the Randomized Evaluation of Mechanical Assistance in Treatment of Chronic Heart Failure (REMATCH) trial enrolled patients with more advanced heart failure and high prevalence of intravenous inotropic therapy. This study analyzes, on a post hoc basis, outcomes in patients undergoing inotropic infusions at randomization. Methods and Results—Of 129 patients randomized, 91 were receiving intravenous inotropic therapy at randomization to LVAD or optimal medical management (OMM). Mean systolic pressure was 100 versus 107 mm Hg in those not receiving inotropes, serum sodium was 134 versus 137 mEq/L, and left ventricular ejection fraction was 17% for both groups. LVADs improved survival throughout follow-up for patients undergoing baseline inotropic infusions (P=0.0014); for the LVAD group versus the OMM group, respectively, 6-month survival was 60% versus 39%, 1-year survival rates were 49% versus 24%, and 2-year survival rates were 28% versus 11%. For 38 patients not undergoing inotropic infusions, 6-month survival was 61% for those with LVADs and 67% for those with OMM, whereas 1-year rates were 57% and 40%, respectively (P=0.55). Quality-of-life scores for survivors improved. Median days out of hospital for patients on inotropic therapy at randomization were 255 with LVAD and 105 with OMM. Conclusions—Despite severe compromise, patients undergoing inotropic infusions at randomization derived major LVAD survival benefit with improved quality of life. Patients not undergoing inotropic infusions had higher survival rates both with and without LVAD, but differences did not reach significance. Future studies should prespecify analyses of inotropic and other therapies to determine how disease severity and parallel medical treatment influence the benefits offered by mechanical circulatory support.


This paper presents an automated method for detecting microaneurysms in the retinal angiographic images by using image processing techniques. In the presented method, in order to fade or remove the pseudo images, first retinal images are preprocessed. Then microaneurysms are identified by circular Hough transform. In the existing methods of detecting microaneurysms, it is necessary to identify the vessels in the surface of the retina and to remove them from the background of the image. But in the proposed method, first by using the circular Hough transform the central point of the microaneurysms lesion is identified. Then by using the region growing technique, the total areas of pixels associated with these lesions are identified. In this proposed method due to the removal of the vascular diagnosis which has been very time consuming, the speed of the algorithm has significantly been increased. Results received from the retinal images of five patients show that the accuracy of the proposed method in detecting microaneurysms is about %88.5 that in comparison with other existing methods has higher speed and more accuracy.


Recent measurement studies report that a significant portion of Internet traffic is unknown. It is very likely that the majority of the unidentified traffic originates from peer-to-peer (P2P) applications. However, traditional techniques to identify P2P traffic seem to fail since these applications usually disguise their existence by using arbitrary ports. In addition to the identification of actual P2P traffic, the characteristics of that type of traffic are also scarcely known. The main purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we propose a novel identification method to reveal P2P traffic from traffic aggregation. Our method does not rely on packet payload so we avoid the difficulties arising from legal, privacy-related, financial and technical obstacles. Instead, our method is based on a set of heuristics derived from the robust properties of P2P traffic. We demonstrate our method with current traffic data obtained from one of the largest Internet providers in Hungary. We also show the high accuracy of the proposed algorithm by means of a validation study. Second, several results of a comprehensive traffic analysis study are reported in the paper. We show the daily behavior of P2P users compared to the non-P2P users. We present our important finding about the almost constant ratio of the P2P and total number of users. Flow sizes and holding times are also analyzed and results of a heavy-tail analysis are described. Finally, we discuss the popularity distribution properties of P2P applications. Our results show that the unique properties of P2P application traffic seem to fade away during aggregation and characteristics of the traffic will be similar to that of other non-P2P traffic aggregation.


Fluids1 in subduction zones have been a subject of growing interest for at least the last 20 years. Subduction zones are the major places on Earth for mass transfer, element recycling and chemical differentiation through magmatic processes in which fluids released from the slab play a central role. Hydrous subduction zone magmas are essential in the formation of numerous types of hydrothermal ore deposits and are the driving force behind magmatic-hydrothermal and geothermal systems in volcanic arcs. It is widely recognized that the characteristic geochemical signature of arc magmas results from the metasomatism of the magma source by a slab-derived flux (McCulloch and Gamble 1991; Elliott 2003). Large uncertainties remain however concerning the chemical composition and nature of the slab flux (aqueous fluid, hydrous melt or supercritical fluid?) and, ultimately, about the mechanisms of mass transfer from the slab to the mantle wedge. Correlating inputs and outputs in subduction zones to quantitatively estimate mass transfer and element recycling relies on thermodynamic modeling of fluid-rock interactions at pressure-temperature above 5 GPa and 1500 K (Manning 2004a). Key constraints on these models are the phase relations, mineral solubility, the behavior of trace elements (partition coefficients) and the physico-chemical and thermodynamic properties of high-pressure fluids at relevant conditions. Unfortunately, quantitative information on fluid properties at relevant P - T conditions are in most cases not available due to experimental difficulties associated with the non-quenchable character of fluid phases. New experimental designs, especially those using laser or synchrotron-based spectroscopic techniques combined with high temperature diamond anvil cells (Basset et al. 1993), are now opening the possibility for monitoring in situ the chemical composition of fluid phases and for the determination of structural parameters and thermodynamic quantities.

In this chapter, I review recent progress in determining the thermodynamic properties and molecular-scale structure of …


Contrasting with the major attention that left heart failure has received, right heart failure remains understudied both at the preclinical and clinical levels. However, right ventricle failure is a major predictor of outcomes in patients with precapillary pulmonary hypertension because of pulmonary arterial hypertension, and in patients with postcapillary pulmonary hypertension because of left heart disease. In pulmonary hypertension, the status of the right ventricle is one of the most important predictors of both morbidity and mortality. Paradoxically, there are currently no approved therapies targeting the right ventricle in pulmonary hypertension. By analogy with the key role of &bgr;-blockers in the management of left heart failure, some authors have proposed to use these agents to support the right ventricle function in pulmonary hypertension. In this review, we summarize the current knowledge on the use of &bgr;-blockers in pulmonary hypertension.


Among the oilseeds grown around the world, mustard is one of the important crop worldwide due to its wide adaptability and high yielding capacity. Owing to the importance of its utilities as condiment, cooking oil and some medical aids, the demand for its seed production is too high. The present study was carried out to evaluate the impact of Mr. Trivedi's biofield energy treatment on mustard (Brassica juncea) for its growth-germination of seedling, glutathione (GSH) content in leaves, indole acetic acid (IAA) content in shoots and roots and DNA polymorphism by random amplified polymorphic-DNA (RAPD). The sample of B. juncea was divided into two groups. One group was remained as untreated and coded as control, while the other group was subjected to Mr. Trivedi's biofield energy treatment and referred as the treated sample. The growth-germination of B. juncea seedling data exhibited that the biofield treated seeds were germinated faster on day 5 as compared to the control (on day between 7-10). The shoot and root length of seedling were slightly increased in the treated seeds of 10 days old with respect to untreated seedling. Moreover, the major plant antioxidant i.e. GSH content in mustard leaves was significantly increased by 206.72% (p<0.001) as compared to the untreated sample. Additionally, the plant growth regulatory constituent i.e. IAA level in root and shoot was increased by 15.81% and 12.99%, respectively with respect to the control. Besides, the DNA fingerprinting data using RAPD revealed that the treated sample showed an average 26% of DNA polymorphism as compared to the control. The overall results envisaged that the biofield energy treatment on mustard seeds showed a significant improvement in germination, growth of roots and shoots, GSH and IAA content in the treated sample. In conclusion, the biofield energy treatment of mustard seeds could be used as an alternative way to increase the production of mustard.


Present workwas undertaken to adsorption of formic acid and acetic acid on activated carbon in aqueous phase. The influence of initial acid concentration, contact time, adsorbent dosage and temperature has been studied. The Langmuir and Freundlich model gives a good representation of the adsorption of the studied carboxylic acids. The results showed the studied carboxylic acids removal were increased by increase of contact time and adsorbent dosage, while decreased by increase of initial acid concentration and temperature.At contact time equal 60 min, adsorbent dosage 1.5 g/50 ml and initial acid concentration of 0.1 mol.l-1 removal efficiency was obtained 91 % for formic acid and 80% for acetic acid.