In this paper, we review the debate on "new regionalism," focusing on the tools used to evaluate regional trade agreements (RTAs). We find that much analysis uses tools from old trade theory in the Viner-Meade tradition, focusing on trade creation, trade diversion, and terms-of-trade effects. These tools are adequate for the analysis of the effects of removing commodity trade barriers ("shallow" integration), but the comfortable Viner-Meade framework misses many of the impacts associated with new regionalism, which typically involves "deep integration," often between developing and developed countries. A framework for analyzing new regionalism should include dynamic changes such as trade-productivity links and endogenous growth theory, international factor mobility, the role of imperfect competition, rent seeking behavior, and political-economy considerations such as potential conflicts between regionalism and multilateralism. Agriculture poses problems for new regionalism because of high tariffs, the use of domestic subsidies and entrenched special interest groups, but the role of trade liberalization on its productivity is often overlooked. For developing countries, a crucial issue is whether and how regionalism can be part of a successful development strategy. While "new trade theory" is concerned with a number of the issues relevant to new regionalism, and is providing new tools, the work is eclectic and is far from providing a unified framework for empirical analysis of new regionalism. Both theoretical and empirical research is needed to improve the reach and scope of new trade theory applied to issues of new regionalism.


The work is oriented at conceptual and methodological substantiation of the strategy of formation of "green cities" on the basis of medium industrially developed cities of Russia and post-Soviet countries, which provide new ecological and socio-economic standards of living standards of population. The concept of "green city" has not only to correspond to imperatives of competitiveness, sustainability, and security of economy, but to form mechanisms of creation of material and informational, humanitarian and technical, institutional and organizational, commercial and financial conditions for effective realization of potential of medium cities. In order to substantiate the results of the research, the following methods of scientific analysis were used: systemic, situational, historical and logical, typological; methods of structural & functional, subjective & objective, descriptive, comparative, expert, statistical, graphic, and table analysis, and economic & mathematical modeling. Study of the processes of transformation of socio-economic system of medium cities on the basis of developed institutional criteria allowed expanding methodological basis of strategic management – in particular, substantiating the totality of methodological and methodical decisions, related to conduct of the analysis, substantiation of goals and mission, development and realization of strategy. Analysis of external and internal possibilities and limitations of medium city development allows determining factors which influence its state and trajectory of development positively and negatively: organizational & managerial (dominant of local authorities' focus at cooperation with regional and federal structures), technical and technological (orientation of vector of industry modernization), infrastructural (imperative of implementation of resource-saving technologies), ecological (recession of ecological culture of population), tourist and recreational (slowdown in development of recreational resources and creation of tourism industry), informational and communicational (priority of creation of "E-city"), and social (horizon of new social standards).


How much assistance should a trial judge provide a self-represented litigant [SRL] before the judge's impartiality will be reasonably questioned? This question has been of continuing concern to both the bench and bar ever since the rise of the pro se litigation movement in the late 1990s, particularly in the context of "mixed" cases involving an SRL and a represented party. Case law and ethics codes provide inconsistent decisions and vague guidelines for judges, who must balance their duty to provide reasonable assistance with their duty to ensure a fair trial for all parties. This paper reports the results of a survey administered to 210 Canadian family law practitioners who were presented with 16 hypothetical scenarios involving an SRL and a represented party. Respondents indicated their views regarding the impartiality and helpfulness of the trial judge in each scenario, involving various procedural defaults by the SRL and different forms of judicial assistance or lack thereof. The results indicate that lawyers' perceptions of a judge's impartiality are affected, inter alia, by the favourability of the outcome for the SRL, and whether the assistance provided dealt with procedural or substantive matters. Future research is needed to determine whether a consensus can be established regarding perceptions of lawyers, lay persons, and judges regarding which forms of assistance are reasonable and required, permissible, or impermissible.


Many existing methods for transit assignment and path finding do not support schedule coordination in network search or optimization processes. Other methods do not provide adequate performance that meets the demands for Internet trip-planning applications. Two schedule-based path-finding algorithms (forward search and backward search) are presented for the transit network, in which schedule coordination is an inherent feature. The forward-search algorithm finds the optimal path from an origin to a destination with a planned departure time, and the backward-search algorithm finds the optimal path for an expected arrival time at the destination. In addition, a non-schedule-based minimal-transfer-path algorithm for the transit network is also developed, which is capable of accommodating more path optimization criteria for sophisticated path finding. Facilitated by a uniquely designed network structure based on a geographic information system and an objectoriented data model, these algorithms demonstrated good performance in path finding on a dynamic transit network. These algorithms have been implemented in an Internet transit trip-planning system in the city of Waukesha, Wisconsin.


This paper presents and tests a new model of multinational firms to explain a rich array of multinational behavior. In contrast to most approaches, here the multinational faces costs to transferring its know-how that are increasing in technological complexity. Costly technology transfer gives rise to increasing marginal costs of serving foreign markets, which explains why multinational firms are often much more successful in their home market compared to foreign markets. The model has several key predictions. First, as transport costs between multinational parent and affiliate increase, firms with complex production technologies find it relatively difficult to substitute local production for imports from the parent, because complex technologies are relatively costly to transfer. Second, the activity of affiliates with complex technologies declines relatively strongly as transport costs from the home market increase, both at the intensive and the extensive margin. We also show that as transport costs from the home market increase, affiliates concentrate their imports from the parent on intermediates that are technologically more complex. We test these hypotheses by employing information on the activities of individual multinational firms, on the nature of intra-firm trade at the product level, and on the skills required for occupations with different complexity. The empirical analysis finds strong evidence in support of the model by confirming all four hypotheses. The analysis shows that accounting for costly technology transfer within multinational firms is important for explaining the structure of trade and multinational production.


This community impact study maps the development of women's football on the predominantly Muslim island of Zanzibar as portrayed in two documentary films: "Zanzibar Soccer Queens" (2006, Florence Ayisi) and "Zanzibar Soccer Dreams" (2013, Florence Ayisi, Catalin Brylla). "Zanzibar Soccer Queens" contributed to the development of local women's football by challenging traditional gender divisions, promoting the renegotiation of female self-identity and subverting stereotypical media portrayals of African women. Thus, the film encouraged a paradigm shift within Zanzibar, as well as within an international public, medial and academic context. This impetus resulted in considerable transformations in the local community, which "Zanzibar Soccer Dreams" and a related community impact study (http://www.zanzibarsoccerdreams.com/home.html) map with regards to education, emancipation and the new status of women's football.

Both documentaries focus on Zanzibar's first women's football club, Women Fighters FC, and its coach, Nassra Mohammed, who founded the club in the 1980s. Nassra has been a driving force in developing women's football in Zanzibar, despite obstacles generated out of orthodox socio-cultural and religious traditions. Women Fighters is not only a club but also a community of women that has resisted traditional definitions of womanhood and the male-dominated oppressions impeding women's participation in outdoor sports.

The government has listened to Nassra and responded positively by changing its policy to allow girls to participate in football as part of sports education in schools.


Our environmental organizations win many battles, but we are losing the planet. Forty-six years after the first Earth Day, we find ourselves on the path to a ruined planet, not one sustained and whole. The hard data on climate, biodiversity, water and more are truly frightening. Clearly, more of the same environmentalism is not going to do the job. We have had huge growth in the size, sophistication and resources of our leading environmental groups. So, clearly, something new is needed – a new environmentalism that offers hope of finally turning the corner before it is too late. To discover this new approach, we have got to ask again: what is an environmental issue? The answer puts us on the search for a new more joyful economy.


The GATA family zinc finger transcription factors GATA4 and GATA6 are known to play important roles in the development of the pancreas. In mice, both Gata4 and Gata6 are required for pancreatic development. In humans, GATA6 haploinsufficiency can cause pancreatic agenesis and heart defects. Congenital heart defects also are common in patients with GATA4 mutations and deletions, but the role of GATA4 in the developing human pancreas is unproven. We report five patients with deletions (n = 4) or mutations of the GATA4 gene who have diabetes and a variable exocrine phenotype. In four cases, diabetes presented in the neonatal period (age at diagnosis 1–7 days). A de novo GATA4 missense mutation (p.N273K) was identified in a patient with complete absence of the pancreas confirmed at postmortem. This mutation affects a highly conserved residue located in the second zinc finger domain of the GATA4 protein. In vitro studies showed reduced DNA binding and transactivational activity of the mutant protein. We show that GATA4 mutations/deletions are a cause of neonatal or childhood-onset diabetes with or without exocrine insufficiency. These results confirm a role for GATA4 in normal development of the human pancreas.


A design which uses bistable beams to modulate light is suggested in this thesis and appropriate processing techniques are presented. A beam when placed under compression above the Euler limit has two stable states. The compression in an electroplated beam can be controlled by the plating current density of nickel during electrodeposition. This beam is attached to an electromechanical comb. Voltages applied to the combs cause the beam to snap from one stable state to another. Structures were designed with dimensions that gave feasible voltages, snap distances, compressions required to snap. A two mask process was used for the fabrication of the device. The first mask delineates the sacrificial layer (AZ P4620) and the second mask delineates the electroplating mould (SU8-50). Developing techniques such as mechanical stirring at room temperature obtained bistable beam lengths of up to 1mm having an aspect ratio of 4. For higher aspect ratios such as 10 the amount of developed beam length was 200um. The dimensions that could be obtained were not adequate for practical applications. Use of better equipment such as a mega sonic bath is suggested to improve the development in the bistable beam length. Reducing the bistable beam lengths is also suggested as an option.


Despite grammatical class being a fundamental organising principle of the human mental lexicon, recent morphological models of visual word identification remain silent as to whether and how it is represented in the lexical system. The present study addresses this issue by investigating cross-class morphological priming (i.e., the effect obtained when nouns prime verbs sharing the same root or vice versa) to clarify whether morphological stems subserving the formation of both nouns and verbs (e.g., depart-) have a unique, grammatical class–independent representation. Experiments 1 and 2 suggest this to be the case, as they show that morphological priming crosses grammatical class boundaries in overt paradigm conditions. Experiment 3 shows that, in masked priming conditions, cross-class facilitation emerges both for genuine derivations and pseudo-related pairs with a homographic stem (e.g., port-e, doors, and port-are, to carry), which is taken to suggest that grammatical class–free stem representations are located at a pre-lexical level of morphological processing.


GPUs can enable significant performance improvements for certain classes of data parallel applications and are widely used in recent computer systems. However, GPU execution currently requires explicit low-level operations such as 1) managing memory allocations and transfers between the host system and the GPU, 2) writing GPU kernels in a low-level programming model such as CUDA or OpenCL, and 3) optimizing the kernels by utilizing appropriate memory types on the GPU. Because of this complexity, in many cases, only expert programmers can exploit the computational capabilities of GPUs through the CUDA/OpenCL languages. This is unfortunate since a large number of programmers use high-level languages, such as Java, due to their advantages of productivity, safety, and platform portability, but would still like to exploit the performance benefits of GPUs. Thus, one challenging problem is how to utilize GPUs while allowing programmers to continue to benefit from the productivity advantages of languages like Java. This paper presents a just-in-time (JIT) compiler that can generate and optimize GPU code from a pure Java program written using lambda expressions with the new parallel streams APIs in Java 8. These APIs allow Java programmers to express data parallelism at a higher level than threads and tasks. Our approach translates lambda expressions with parallel streams APIs in Java 8 into GPU code and automatically generates runtime calls that handle the low-level operations mentioned above. Additionally, our optimization techniques 1) allocate and align the starting address of the Java array body in the GPUs with the memory transaction boundary to increase memory bandwidth, 2) utilize read-only cache for array accesses to increase memory efficiency in GPUs, and 3) eliminate redundant data transfer between the host and the GPU. The compiler also performs loop versioning for eliminating redundant exception checks and for supporting virtual method invocations within GPU kernels. These features and optimizations are supported and automatically performed by a JIT compiler that is built on top of a production version of the IBM Java 8 runtime environment. Our experimental results on an NVIDIA Tesla GPU show significant performance improvements over sequential execution (127.9 × geometric mean) and parallel execution (3.3 × geometric mean) for eight Java 8 benchmark programs running on a 160-thread POWER8 machine. This paper also includes an in-depth analysis of GPU execution to show the impact of our optimization techniques by selectively disabling each optimization. Our experimental results show a geometric-mean speed-up of 1.15 × in the GPU kernel over state-of-the-art approaches. Overall, our JIT compiler can improve the performance of Java 8 programs by automatically leveraging the computational capability of GPUs.


This study presents historical evidence for six countries (the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Canada, Sweden) in the period 1870-1933 on the impactof financial crises on economic activity and on the international transmission of financial crises. The paper examines two approaches in the literature to the role and importance of financial crises as disturbances to domestic and international economic activity, that of the monetarists--Friedman and Schwartz and Cagan, and that of Fisher-Minsky and Kindleberger. In a comparison of reference cycle contractions for the six countries over the period 1870-1933 severe contractions in economic activity were in all cases accompanied by monetary contraction, in most cases with stock market crashes, but not with the exception of the U.S., by banking crises. The unique performance of the U.S. can be attributed to the absence of a nationwide branch banking system compared to the five other countries examined, and the less effective role played by the U.S. monetary authorities in acting as a lender of last resort. Our principal findings on the international transmission of financial crises are two. First, consistent with the monetarist approach, that under the Classical gold standard, in periods containing financial crises, nations' money supplies were linked by gold flows and changes in high powered money, while under periods of flexible exchange rates there is evidence of insulation of domestic monetary and real variables from foreign shocks. Second, in sympathy with the Kindleberger-Minsky approach, the similarity between countries of turning points in stock market prices, the common incidence of stock market crises, and the similar importance of the deposit reserve ratio as the key determinant of monetary contraction in all countries (except the u.s.) suggests that arbitrage in stock prices was a channel for the international transmission of crises.


Rapid population growth and economic development have led to increased anthropogenic pressures on the Tibetan Plateau, causing significant land cover changes with potentially severe ecological consequences. To assess whether or not these pressures are also affecting the remote montane‐boreal lakes on the SE Tibetan Plateau, fossil pollen and diatom data from two lakes were synthesized. The interplay of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem response was explored in respect to climate variability and human activity over the past 200 years. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling and Procrustes rotation analysis were undertaken to determine whether pollen and diatom responses in each lake were similar and synchronous. Detrended canonical correspondence analysis was used to develop quantitative estimates of compositional species turnover. Despite instrumental evidence of significant climatic warming on the southeastern Plateau, the pollen and diatom records indicate very stable species composition throughout their profiles and show only very subtle responses to environmental changes over the past 200 years. The compositional species turnover (0.36–0.94 SD) is relatively low in comparison to the species reorganizations known from the periods during the mid‐ and early‐Holocene (0.64–1.61 SD) on the SE Plateau, and also in comparison to turnover rates of sediment records from climate‐sensitive regions in the circum arctic. Our results indicate that climatically induced ecological thresholds are not yet crossed, but that human activity has an increasing influence, particularly on the terrestrial ecosystem in our study area. Synergistic processes of post‐Little Ice Age warming, 20th century climate warming and extensive reforestations since the 19th century have initiated a change from natural oak‐pine forests to seminatural, likely less resilient pine‐oak forests. Further warming and anthropogenic disturbances would possibly exceed the ecological threshold of these ecosystems and lead to severe ecological consequences.


This study examines the effectiveness of a current Airborne Infection Isolation Room (AIIR) in protecting health-care workers (HCWs) from airborne-infection (AI) exposure, and compares HCW AI exposures within an AIIR and a traditional patient room. We numerically simulated the air-flow patterns in the rooms, using room geometries and layout (room dimensions, bathroom dimensions and details, placement of vents and furniture), ventilation parameters (flow rates at the inlet and outlet vents, diffuser design, thermal sources, etc.), and pressurization corresponding to those measured at a local hospital. A patient-cough was introduced into each simulation, and the AI dispersal was tracked in time using a multi-phase flow simulation approach. The measured data showed that ventilation rates for both rooms exceeded 12 air-changes per hour (ACH), and the AIIR was at almost 16 ACH. Thus, the AIIR met the recommended design criteria for ventilation rate and pressurization. However, the computed results revealed incomplete air mixing, and not all of the room air was changed 12 (or 16) times per hour. In fact, in some regions of the room, the air merely circulated, and did not refresh. With the main exhaust flow rate exceeding the main supply, mass flow rate conservation required a part of the deficit to be accounted for by air migration from the corridor through the gaps around the main door. Hence, the AIIR was effective in containing the "infectious aerosol" within the room. However, it showed increased exposure of the HCW to the AI pathogens, as the flow from the ceiling-mounted supply louver first encountered the patient and then the HCW almost directly on its way to the main exhaust, also located on the ceiling. The traditional patient room exhibited a similar flow path. In addition, for the traditional patient room, some cough-generated aerosol is observed very close to the gaps around the door to the corridor, indicating that the aerosol may escape to the corridor, and spread the infection beyond the room. The computational results suggest that ventilation arrangement can have an important role in better protecting the HCW from exposure to airborne infectious pathogens.


Objective : This study was designed to determine intra-rater and inter-rater reliability of hand held dynamometer for testing knee flexors and extensors isometric muscle strength. Study Design : Cross sectional study Subjects: 29 young healthy children, 15 boys and 14 girls between the age group of 10 -15 years with mean age12.58 ± 1.63 (Mean ± SD) were included in the study. Methodology : Subjects were tested with a Base line portable hand held dynamometer on three separate occasions by two separate examiners to determine maximal isometric strength values for knee flexors, and knee extensors. Results : The mean scores for knee flexion and extension exhibited excellent inter-rater reliability with ICC ranging from 0.93 to 0.96 and moderate to good intra-rater reliability with ICC ranging from 0.65 to 0.86 at 95% of CI. Conclusion : The hand held dynamometer is a reliable tool to use in determining lower limb muscle force production. And it can be reliably used in assessment of muscle strength in healthy pediatric population age 10-15 years. Implications : Since the hand held dynamometer has been found to be reliable in healthy pediatric population, further studies are recommended for its reliability in children with various dysfunctions.


Consumptive forms of wildlife tourism (hunting, shooting and fishing) have become a topic of interest - both to the tourism industry, in terms of destinations seeking to establish or grow this sector, and to other stakeholders such as environmental organisations, animal-rights groups, and the general public. Hunting tourism, in particular, has come under fire with accusations that it is contributing to the demise of some species. Practices such as "canned hunting" (within fenced safari parks) or the use of hounds are described as unethical, and fishing tourism too has attracted recent negative publicity as it is said to be cruel. At the same time, however, many peripheral and indigenous communities around the world are strategising how to capitalise on consumptive forms of wildlife tourism. This book addresses a range of contentious issues facing the consumptive wildlife tourism sector across a number of destinations in Europe, North America, Africa, India, Arabia and Oceania. Practices such as baited bear hunting, trophy hunting of threatened species, and hunting for conservation are debated, along with the impact of this type of tourism on indigenous communities and on wider societies. Research on all aspects of "consumptive wildlife tourism" is included, which for the purposes of the book is defined to include all tourism that involves the intended killing of wildlife for sport purposes, and may include the harvest of wildlife products. This includes, among others, recreational hunting, big-game hunting and safari operations, traditional/indigenous hunting, game-bird shooting, hunting with hounds, freshwater angling and saltwater game fishing etc. This is the first book to specifically address tourist aspects of consumption of wildlife. It will appeal to tourism and recreation academics and students, tourism industry operators, community tourism planners and wildlife managers.


Dominoes is a full-colour, interactive readers series that offers students a fun reading experience while building their language skills. With integrated activities and on-page glossaries the new edition of the series makes reading motivating for learners. Each reader is carefully graded to ensure each student reads from the right level from the very beginning.


Present study was based on 'Folkman's theory of neovascularisation' , according to which malignant neoplasms elaborate a factor named Tumor Angiogenesis factor (TAF), which stimulates rapid formation of new capillaries. The study aimed at evaluating the efficacy of Color and Spectral Doppler in diagnosing the ovarian malignancy. In all, 121 patients with adnexal masses were examined over a period of 2 years, out of which 60 patients with neoplastic ovarian tumors were retained as the study subject. Color Doppler showed blood flow in 92.59 percent of malignant tumors in contrast to only 42.24 per cent of benign tumors. Absent blood flow in a solid tumor almost always ruled out the possibility of malignancy. Spectral Doppler helped to assess the nature of the blood vessels picked up on Color Doppler. In the present study. 96.29 per cent of malignant tumors had PI less thsn 0.8 in contrast to only 6.06 per cent of benign tumors. Similarly, 92.59 percent of malignant tumors showed RI less than 0.6 in contrast to only 9.09 per cent of benign tumors. Thus, Color Doppler and Spectral Doppler tremendously increased the reliability in diagnosing a malignant ovarian tumor. Color Doppler served as an important tool to rule out malignancy in solid tumors if they failed to show any intratumoral vascularity. B-Mode USG in combination with Color Doppler and Spectral Doppler is proposed as the first and foremost diagnostic modality in patients with ovarian tumor, so as to establish the definite diagnosis of malignancy early in the course of the disease.


Here we describe the first worldwide haplotype map for soybean (GmHapMap) constructed using whole-genome sequence data for 1,007 Glycine max accessions and yielding 15 million variants. The number of unique haplotypes plateaued within this collection (4.3 million tag SNPs) suggesting extensive coverage of diversity within the cultivated germplasm. We imputed GmHapMap variants onto 21,618 previously genotyped (50K array/210K GBS) accessions with up to 96% success for common alleles. A GWAS performed with imputed data enabled us to identify a causal SNP residing in the NPC1 gene and to demonstrate its role in controlling seed oil content. We identified 405,101 haplotypes for the 55,589 genes and show that such haplotypes can help define alleles. Finally, we predicted 18,031 putative loss-of-function (LOF) mutations in 10,662 genes and illustrate how such a resource can be used to explore gene function. The GmHapMap provides a unique worldwide resource for soybean genomics and breeding.


This paper builds upon recent publication (SAE Technical Paper 2011-01-1388, 2011, doi:10.4271/2011-01-1388) and outlines the on-going development of an advanced simulator for virtual engine mapping and optimization of engine performance, combustion and emissions characteristics. The model is further advanced through development of new sub-models for turbulent mixing, multiple injection events, variable injection pressures, engine breathing and gas exchange, as well as particulates formation and oxidation. The result is a simulator which offers engine design and performance data typically associated with 1D thermodynamic engine cycle simulations but with the "physics-based" model robustness usually associated with 3D CFD methods. This combination then enables efficient optimization of engine design with respect to engine performance, combustion characteristics and exhaust gas emissions. As a demonstration, a detailed method to parameterize (calibrate) the advanced PDF-based model is presented followed by application to three case studies: 1) a concept study of a heavy duty diesel engine, examining the impact of increased injection pressure and lower compression ratio to meet engine design constraints and Stage IV/Tier 4 exhaust gas emission limits for both NOx and PM, 2) examining the performance of both the proposed model and 3D-CFD to simulate heat release and exhaust gas emissions in a HSDI diesel engine, 3) performance of the model over a full loadspeed map in terms of combustion and NOx emissions. The results demonstrate the robustness of the model compared to experimental observations and equivalent performance compared to more human resource and CPU cost intensive 3D-CFD simulations.


This policy review summarises key documents relating to urbanisation and development that focus on cities in a global sense or on cities in developing countries, in Africa in particular. It discusses recent reports produced by a range of relevant stakeholders and international organisations such as UN-Habitat, the African Development Bank Group, The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa or the African Growth Initiative. The aim of this working paper is to examine the main policy issues and key discussions in relation to urbanisation and development and assess the extent to which the role played by a wide range of urban actors, in particular religious groups and Faith-Based Organisations (FBOs), is taken into consideration. This paper argues that within policy discourse, especially with regards to urbanisation and development in African cities, religious urbanisation lies awkwardly between an example of 'legitimate' infrastructural development, urban informalisation, social business-led development and innovative, community-based funding. Religious urbanisation is not a prominent feature of policy narrative but tends to appear as a disruptive or 'complexifying' influence.


To finance resolution funds, the regulatory toolkit has been expanded in many countries by bank levies. In addition, these levies are often designed to reduce incentives for banks to rely excessively on wholesale funding resulting in high leverage ratios. At the same time, corporate income taxation biases banks' capital structure towards debt financing in light of the deductibility of interest on debt. A recent paper published in the Journal of Banking and Finance shows that the implementation of bank levies can significantly reduce leverage ratios, however, only in case corporate income taxes are not too high. The result demonstrates that the effectiveness of regulatory tools can depend upon non-regulatory measures such as corporate taxes, which differ at the country level. SUERF Policy Briefs No 21, July 2020


Limits of detection have been calculated for the air-acetylene and nitrous oxide-acetylene flames used in atomic absorption spectrometry using the theoretical treatment developed by Winefordner. Values for the parameters were chosen for these calculations to give the lowest possible limits of detection. These calculated values have been compared with experimentally determined limits of detection. Values of the atom fraction, β, are also estimated by means of this comparison. The values for the air-acetylene flame are in fair agreement; however, the comparison of the nitrous oxide flame showed anomalous behavior. An attempt to explain this is made, as well as a general discussion of the results.


Experimental observations suggest that there are differences between the behavior of particles optically trapped in air and trapped in a liquid phase. We have modified the Mie-Debye spherical aberration theory to numerically simulate an aerosol optical trap in an attempt to explain and predict the differences. The model incorporates Mie scattering and a trapping beam focused through media of stratified refractive index. We show that geometrical optics cannot correctly describe the aerosol optical trap and that spherical aberration must be included. We qualitatively explain the observed phenomena before discussing the limits of the experimental techniques and methods to improve it. We conclude that the system does not behave as a true "optical tweezers," varying between levitation and single beam gradient force trapping, depending on particle and beam parameters.


This is a first study attempting to suggest an automatic categorization of microRNA articles from PubMed. In this study, text classification techniques using binary representations were applied on the abstract section of the articles. The PubMed articles related to microRNA targets were regarded as the positive class whereas documents retrieved using different criteria are used as a negative class. The results show that with a careful choice of the negative class, the PubMed articles about microRNA targets can be accurately distinguished. Moreover, we showed the robustness of the automatic text classification by building models not just from the top keywords but also from a combination of other keywords.


Field investigations in habitats colonized by Galba truncatula or Omphiscola glabra were carried out to determine if the number of habitats, their area and the number of overwintering snails had not changed over the past 20 years. These habitats were studied in 57 cattle- or sheep-breeding farms located in three French natural regions on sedimentary soils. Compared to the numbers of snail habitats recorded before 1998, the values observed in 2016–2017 were significantly lower, with an overall decline rate of 30% for G. truncatula and 38% for O. glabra . Variations in this decline rate were noted with the type of snail habitat and the largest decreases were observed for vernal pools in meadows. Significantly lower areas in 2016–2017 were noted in two habitat types (drainage furrows, road ditches) for G. truncatula and two other habitat types (drainage furrows, pond banks) for O. glabra. Significantly lower densities of overwintering snails were observed in 2016–2017 in G. truncatula habitats located in drainage furrows and road ditches, while no significant difference was noted for O. glabra , whatever the habitat type. Several causes were at the origin of this population decline and the most important were the present development of mechanical cleaning in road ditches, that of subsurface drainage in meadows and regular gyro-crushing of vegetation around pools in meadows. The data reported in this study confirm the decline that several authors have already noted for O. glabra in Western Europe. The results obtained for G. truncatula require reviewing the biogeographical status of this species and taking possible measures to ensure its conservation while taking into account its role as intermediate host in the F. hepatica cycle.


In this piece, I respond to the comments on my article, "Copyright and Innovation: The Untold Story," offered by Steven Marks of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Mike Masnick of Floor 64 and Techdirt, and Randal Picker of the University of Chicago Law School. I begin by noting how Marks's response overemphasizes old business models and insufficiently appreciates the synergy between technological and creative innovation, while offering an ironically upbeat assessment of new technologies the record labels tried to quash and a newfound unsupported interpretation of the Constitution. I then explain how Picker's emphasis on an ideal solution that would maximize copyright-related distribution innovation runs aground on the realities of copyright enforcement today. Finally, I highlight Masnick's recounting of the themes I described in my article in settings ranging from ringtones to videogames to cable television alternatives. In today's copyright debates centering on piracy and theft, the relationship between copyright and innovation needs all the attention it can get. This discussion will hopefully play a role in nudging the needle in that direction.


Capturing and rendering an image that fulfills the observer's expectations is a difficult task. This is due to the fact that the signal reaching the eye is processed by a complex mechanism before forming a percept, whereas a capturing device only retains the physical value of light intensities. It is especially difficult to render complex scenes with highly varying luminances. For example, a picture taken inside a room where objects are visible through the windows will not be rendered correctly by a global technique. Either details in the dim room will be hidden in shadow or the objects viewed through the window will be too bright. The image has to be treated locally to resemble more closely to what the observer remembers. The purpose of this work is to develop a technique for rendering images based on human local adaptation. We take inspiration from a model of color vision called Retinex. This model determines the perceived color given spatial relationships of the captured signals. Retinex has been used as a computational model for image rendering. In this article, we propose a new solution inspired by Retinex that is based on a single filter applied to the luminance channel. All parameters are image-dependent so that the process requires no parameter tuning. That makes the method more flexible than other existing ones. The presented results show that our method suitably enhances high dynamic range images.


In a rare speech to a joint session of Congress and in interviews with U.S. and British news media, Dr. [Ayad Allawi] insisted that the insurgency is dissipating and national elections will proceed as planned in late January. "Elections will occur in Iraq on time in January because Iraqis want elections on time," Dr. Allawi told Congress. Is this how to build a new, democratic Iraq? Is Dr. Allawi creating another authoritarian Iraq? An Iraqi politician bluntly told Western journalists that Dr. Allawi "appeared to be reverting to his roots as a former member of [Saddam Hussein]'s Baath Party, where political dissent was often silenced with the gun." Iraq does not need another autocrat. It already had more than its share of dictators who promised heaven but delivered hell. Dr. Allawi's American benefactors must impress on him the urgent need to build bridges to all Iraqi communities and honor the rule of law. Paying lip service to reconstruction and democracy won't do. A policy of reconciliation must be fully embraced, and all Iraqis must be given a stake in their country's future in order to defeat the brutal insurgency that has caused too many deaths and too much pain and destruction.


The recent decrease of the male-female mortality gap in Western Europe has been accompanied by changes in the life style, educational level, family roles and employment of women. In this paper we try to find out whether a relationship indeed exists between the increase in gender equality and the decrease in the male/female mortality difference. We used regional-level data for the Netherlands for the periods 1980-83 and 1996-99 on gender differences in life expectancy, by age group and cause of death, and various measures of gender inequality on the same regional level. In doing this we followed as far as possible a framework recently developed by Ingrid Waldron to analyse changes in gender differences in mortality in the US. The cross-sectional analyses showed that in 1980-83 it was rather socioeconomic than gender role variables that were important in explaining gender difference in mortality, while in the period 1996-99, it was the other way around.


In this paper we present and discuss measurements of electric (vertical and radial) and magnetic fields from leaders and return strokes associated with lightning strikes to the 100 m tall Gaisberg tower in Austria obtained in 2007 and 2008. The fields were measured at a distance of about 20 m from the tower. Simultaneously, return stroke currents were also measured at the top of the tower. The data include, for the first time at such close distances, simultaneous records of vertical and horizontal electric fields. The vertical electric field waveforms appeared as asymmetrical V-shaped pulses. The initial, relatively slow, negative electric field change is due to the downward leader, and the following, fast, positive electric field change is due to the upward return stroke phase of the lightning discharge. The horizontal (radial) electric field due to the leader phase has a waveshape similar to that of the vertical electric field. However, the horizontal field due to the return stroke is characterized by a short negative pulse of the order of 1 mu s or so, starting with a fast negative excursion followed by a positive one. The return stroke vertical electric field changes appear to be significantly smaller than similar measurements obtained using triggered lightning. This finding confirms the shadowing effect of the tower, which results in a significant decrease of the electric field at distances of about the height of the tower or less. The vertical and horizontal E field changes due to the return stroke were also found to be larger on average than the leader electric field changes. In a significant number of cases (33%), the vertical electric field waveforms due to the return stroke were characterized by a first peak exceeding the typical late-time flattening due to the electrostatic term. This is in contrast with similar measurements related to triggered lightning which do not exhibit such a first peak. About one quarter of the measured vertical electric field waveforms (18 pulses out of 76) featured an unusual waveform characterized by a positive leader field change followed by a bipolar return stroke field change with a zero crossing time of about 60 mu s.


Reducing conditions in soils alter a variety of biogeochemical processes that affects the mobility of nutrients and pollutants, the emission of greenhouse gases, and the formation of redoximorphic features. Hence, a precise characterization and monitoring of reducing conditions is important for land use management and risk assessment. Conventionally, platinum (Pt) electrodes are used to measure the redox potential (EH) for delineation of the soil redox status. In combination with a data-logger system the EH can be monitored at high temporal resolution but with the shortcoming of cost-intensive technical equipment. Alternatively, the Indicator of Reduction In Soils (IRIS) method can be used to delineate soil reducing conditions that consists of synthesized iron (FeIII) oxides coated onto white polyvinyl chloride (PVC) bars. The bars are installed for a period of 30 days in the soil and visually assessed for the effects of reduction by the depletion of the FeIII oxide coating. Currently, a differentiation into redox classes of oxidizing (EH > 300 mV; oxygen (O2) is present in the soil), weakly reducing (EH 300 to 100 mV; manganese (MnIII,IV) oxide reduc-tion), and moderately reducing (EH 100 to –100 mV; FeIII oxide reduction) soil conditions can only be achieved by Pt electrodes.
The objectives of this thesis are to investigate the temporal and spatial distribution of the EH by different monitoring approaches. Automated Pt electrode measurements on hourly basis (2011 to 2014) were compared with measurements on a weekly basis (1990 to 1993) to query the benefit of high temporal resolution EH monitoring. Additionally, the IRIS method was adopted by coating MnIII,IV oxides onto white PVC bars (in the following referred to as 'Mn and Fe redox bars') and evaluated for their potential to differentiate into weakly and moderately reducing soil conditions in field and laboratory experiments. An important characteristic of MnIII,IV and FeIII oxides is their functioning as a sorbent for ele-ments in soil solution. Therefore, the oxide coatings of previously field-installed redox bars were extracted and analyzed to investigate the element sorption behavior. Finally, long-term groundwater data (1997 to 2012) was analyzed to assess trends of the water table (WT) depth development along a 17 km2 sized mesotrophic fen, which is relevant for the onset of reduction and with impact on the soil redox status. All field-experiments were conducted at different study sites in North-West Germany.
Daily EH readings by Pt electrodes were sufficient to equally derive trends of the redox class distribution over time compared with hourly measurements but a loss of information occurred when weekly or monthly EH readings were performed. Since fluctuations up to 540 mV were measured within a day, hourly readings were essential to identify biogeo-chemical processes. Besides EH measurements by Pt electrodes, it was possible to facili-tate a durable MnIII,IV oxide coating onto white PVC bars enabling to monitor the soil redox status. Laboratory experiments at defined EH-pH conditions went along with MnIII,IV oxide dissolution under weakly reducing conditions. The capillary fringe above the groundwater surface was identified as a hot spot for MnIII,IV oxide reduction with minor FeIII oxide remov-al. Hence, the simultaneous application of Mn and Fe redox bars enabled to differentiate zones of weakly and moderately reducing soil conditions. It was found that the presence of ferrous Fe2+ (reductant) in soil solution mediated an abiotic redox reaction with the for-mation of durable FeIII oxide coatings along Mn redox bars. Subsequently, MnIII,IV oxides (oxidant) transformed to manganous Mn2+ being removed from the PVC surface. The Fe precipitates and the remaining MnIII,IV oxide coating differed remarkably in color enabling to quantify the percentage area of these patterns over time. Thereby, temporally and spatially diverse pathways of FeIII oxide forming processes can be studied. Selective chemical ex-traction of these oxide coatings along Mn redox bars verified a preferential sorption of cati-onic elements (e.g. copper, lead, zinc) to the surface of MnIII,IV oxides, whereas the posi-tively charged surface of in situ formed FeIII oxides were enriched in elements having an oxyanionic character (e.g. arsenic, molybdenum, phosphorus, vanadium). Moreover, in situ formed FeIII oxides ('field'-Fe oxides) revealed higher element loadings compared with synthesized FeIII oxides along Fe redox bars ('lab'-Fe oxides). In accordance with this find-ing, field-Fe oxides were solely composed of short-range ordered minerals exhibiting a higher sorption capacity. The WT depth was the main driver for the above-mentioned pro-cesses and controlled the (i) EH dynamics, (ii) oxide removal along Mn and Fe redox bars, and (iii) element relocation into the topsoil by capillary rise. In this regard, WT depth read-ings along a mesotrophic fen indicated a lowering by on average 20 cm at 39 out of 46 monitoring wells. A meteorological forecast of the climatic water balance until the year 2100 indicated that the development of decreasing WT depths will be intensified. Obvious-ly, this will have impact on the soil redox status and associated biogeochemical processes within the top soil.
Overall, monitoring by Mn and Fe redox bars improves the understanding of the spatial and temporal distribution of soil reducing conditions but does not capture the 'true' dynam-ic nature that can be determined by Pt electrodes. A continuous monitoring of the soil re-dox status by Pt electrodes or redox bars over decadal time scales is important to evaluate the impact of climate change on biogeochemical processes in waterlogged soils.


ABSTRACT Students of Southeast Asian Heritage Learning Chinese (SSAHLC) in Taiwan have frequently demonstrated difficulty with traditional Chinese (a graphical character) radical recognition due to their limited exposure to the written language form since childhood. In this study, we designed a Chinese radical learning game (CRLG), which adopted a drill and practice mode, for SSAHLC to practice recognizing Chinese radicals. To facilitate Chinese writing, non-native learners need to use aspects of the radical knowledge as cues to encode characters, from which the contents of the game were built up for SSAHLC to master the Chinese written forms by playing the CRLG with gesture-based interactions. In addition, the game was used to explore the students' intrinsic motivation relevant to online learning self-efficacy, as well as the experience of flow, to predict the degree of learning progress. Data were collected from 78 SSAHLC participating in the study, and 73 valid questionnaires were returned. After applying confirmatory factor analysis as well as structural equation modeling to the valid data, it was found that four constructs, namely intrinsic motivation, online learning self-efficacy, flow experience, and learning progress, were all positively correlated. Our results indicated that intrinsic motivation of Chinese learning predicted online learning self-efficacy, and that flow experience was relevant to the students' learning progress. Moreover, the degree of learning progress could be predicted by the mediating factors. These findings imply that heritage language teachers may utilize the CRLG to enhance learners' Chinese radical recognition ability, and eventually improve their Chinese character recognition ability.


OBJECTIVE
The authors sought to 1) understand the sources of familial resemblance for religiosity, 2) clarify the relationship between religiosity and current psychiatric symptoms, current substance use, lifetime psychiatric disorders, and lifetime substance dependence, and 3) explore the stress-buffering properties of religiosity.

METHOD
Data were obtained by personal interview of 1,902 twins from female-female pairs in the population-based Virginia Twin Registry. Measures included 1) 10 items reflecting a range of religious behavior and beliefs, 2) a scale of institutional conservatism of current religious affiliation, 3) previous history of stressful life events, 4) current psychiatric symptoms and substance use, and 5) lifetime psychiatric disorders and substance dependence. Statistical methods used included factor analyses, Cox and linear regression, and twin modeling.

RESULTS
Personal devotion and personal and institutional conservatism were all strongly familial, and model fitting suggested that this familial resemblance was due largely to the effect of environmental factors. None of the dimensions of religiosity was strongly associated with lifetime psychopathology or current symptoms, but low levels of depressive symptoms were related to high levels of personal devotion. By contrast, personal devotion and personal and institutional conservatism were significantly and inversely associated with current levels of drinking and smoking as well as lifetime risk for alcoholism and nicotine dependence. Personal devotion, but not personal or institutional conservatism, buffered the depressogenic effects of stressful life events.

CONCLUSIONS
The dimensions of religiosity are not strongly related to risk for psychiatric symptoms and disorders. However, religiosity may be one of the more important familial-environmental factors that affect the risk for substance use and dependence. Religious devotion but not conservatism assists in coping with stress.


We investigated the role of plant interactions in producing the zonation of strong competitors, i.e. clonal dominants, and weak competitors, i.e. interstitials. In addition, it was tested whether the effect of plant interactions on species richness depends on the position on the flooding gradient. During one growing season vegetation canopy was removed at a low elevation, dominated by Phragmites australis and at a high one, dominated by tall forbs, mainly Urtica dioica. The seed bank was examined and in half of the plots seeds of clonal dominants from high elevations and interstitials from low elevations were sown to ensure that seeds of both groups were present at both zones. At both elevations, removal of vegetation canopy resulted in a strong increase of interstitial species, but interstitials from low elevations failed to establish in cleared plots at the tall forb zone. This could not be attributed to the absence of seeds and we concluded that conditions unfavourable for germination, rather than plant interactions determine the zonation of interstitials from the P. australis zone. Many seedlings of tall forb dominants emerged in cleared plots at the low elevation. However, number of seedlings rapidly declined during the first year. Hence, abiotic conditions, most probably flooding, prevented seedling establishment of tall forb dominants at zones dominated by P. australis. Canopy removal increased species richness at the low elevation in the first year only, whereas at the higher elevation species richness in cleared plots remained higher throughout the second year when the canopy was no longer removed. We therefore concluded that species richness of freshwater shorelines is controlled by abiotic factors in the frequently flooded zone and by plant interactions at higher elevations. [KEYWORDS: Water tidal wetland; seed-bank; emergent macrophytes; fen vegetation; salt-marsh; communities; england; growth; level; competition]


Longleaf pine is known as an unpredictable seed producer, with adequate or better seed crops occurring once every 5 years or longer. However, in the spring before seed fall, good cone crops can be predicted by visually counting green cones in the canopy, which by then are large enough to be seen, especially when binoculars of suitable power are used. During the spring of 2014, cone surveys in eastern Texas suggested that the autumn longleaf pine cone crop there could be a bumper crop. As a result, staff of the National Forests and Grasslands in Texas, in cooperation with Southern Region Forest Management staff, planned and conducted a longleaf pine cone collection that was implemented during the fall of 2014. Results were a great success, with more than 1,000 bushels of cones collected, producing nearly 1,000 pounds of seed (equivalent to approximately 5 million seedlings, enough to plant roughly 8,000 acres at typical planting rates). This seed supply will meet the needs of the National Forest and Grasslands in Texas for the foreseeable future.


This paper offers a preliminary reflection on the degree to which the concept of 'digital labour' appears in current library and information studies (LIS) education language, including in course titles, course descriptions, and course content. A basis for this paper was established from September 2010 to April 2011 through examination of a global range of online publicly accessible LIS program information. First stage analysis indicates that LIS education language appears to treat digital labour reductively; it fails to account for the labour conditions that frame the work. A tightening of the search examined evidence of critical teaching and learning of digital labour that allow for determinations of how the digital work environment relates to library labour rights and movements. This resulted in a scan of English language and translated information for a total of 121 individual LIS programs. Several trends emerged, which suggest that digital labour is generally, and most often out of necessity, inherently connected to other issues studied in LIS programs. A potential, yet unborn, paradigm in LIS education negates the basic notion of digital labour movement. Recommendations include research into the potential value of teaching and learning about the theory and practice of digital labour, a more sufficient and sophisticated approach to digital labour within LIS education in foundations courses, and a proposed set of possible advanced topics for teaching and learning in LIS education. Limitations of this topical exploration include what might be explained by the unknown factor of what is actually unseen from publicly accessible documents. To test the meaning of our first-stage work, future inquiry might involve interviews with teachers and looking into classroom communication of learners to see how the idea of digital labour is being addressed by them even if it is only in the most subtle manner.


The definitive guide to a Hollywood legend. Few stars are as loved as Audrey Hepburn, today as much as ever. Beautiful, delicate, graceful - but always warm and natural - she stole our hearts. She was also brave, working tirelessly for UNICEF in the face of her own failing health. in this moving and heartwarming biography Alexander Walker traces the extraordinary combination of luck and talent that allowed a fragile little girl,who nearly died in Hitler's occupied Europe, to conquer, in just one year, the New York stage and the Hollywood screen. Walker analyses her ascent to power and world fame and reveals the sadness of her life: two failed marriages, a broken engagement, and the crushing disappointment that occupied her triumph in My Fair Lady. Most importantly of all, this biography reveals what no one has known until now: the truly terrifying family secret that tore Audrey's childhood apart and kept her forever silent about her parents.


Abstract Globally, the issue of water management and women has thus far been almost exclusively focused on women responsible for the provision and management of water at the household and community levels. Their presence and contributions at the managerial and decision-making levels have received little attention in the past. The present paper focuses on the role women play, and can play, in the planning, management, and operation of water resources systems in Morocco. Based on this analysis, it appears to be a matter of education, training, personal choice, and time before more women will work professionally in the water-related institutions in Morocco, and also obtain more positions at the higher levels.


This study presents a self-assessment tool and process that facilitate community capacity building and social learning for natural resource management. The tool and process provide opportunities for rural landholders and project teams both to self-assess their capacity to plan and deliver natural resource management (NRM) programs and to reflect on their capacities relative to other organizations and institutions that operate in their region. We first outline the tool and process and then present a critical review of the pilot in the South Australian Arid Lands NRM region, South Australia. Results indicate that participants representing local, organizational, and institutional tiers of government were able to arrive at a group consensus position on the strength, importance, and confidence of a variety of capacities for NRM categorized broadly as human, social, physical, and financial. During the process, participants learned a lot about their current capacity as well as capacity needs. Broad conclusions are discussed with reference to the iterative process for assessing and reflecting on community capacity.


New examples of precarious rocks are presented. These rocks provide constraints on ground motion for historical and recent large earthquakes. An approximate field calibration of the precarious-rock methodology was provided by the M 7.1 Hector Mine earthquake of 16 October 1999. Previously documented rocks at Granite Pass near Kelso, California (Brune, 1996), were overturned by the earthquake, and a nearby strong-motion station indicated ground motions of about 0.2 g , consistent with the toppling accelerations estimated in the published article. The time of the last earthquake for the section of the fault nearest the precarious rocks has recently been determined to be more than 10 ka, consistent with previously estimated ages for precarious rocks. This first example of an actual earthquake field test lends strong support to the precarious-rock methodology.

The other rocks discussed here give constraints on ground motions for historic earthquakes, such as the 1812 and 1857 San Andreas fault earthquakes, the 1899 and 1912 San Jacinto Fault earthquakes, the 1952 Kern County earthquake, and possibly recent but prehistoric earthquakes on the Banning and Garlock faults. The ground-motion constraints for these earthquakes are lower than predicted by some recent ground-motion attenuation curves (which are extrapolations to near-fault distances from a data set dominated by data from larger distances) but are generally consistent with peak ground accelerations observed from the recent large Turkey and Taiwan earthquakes and provide important additional information for seismic-hazard analysis.

On the other hand, there are areas where precarious rocks would be expected on the basis of previous studies but are apparently not found. This suggests possible earthquakes on previously unrecognized, or only recently recognized, faults. One such area is in northwestern San Diego and southwestern Orange County between the Elsinore and Newport–Inglewood faults. The lack of precarious rocks in this area might be attributed to recent earthquakes on the blind-thrust faults proposed in the area by Grant et al. (1999, 2002) and Rivero et al. (2000).


The thesis begins with a description of recent advances in
the development of microelectrodes and chemically modified
electrodes and reviews some of the more important and
interesting examples of their an analytical applications.

The second chapter describes the development of a
chemically modified electrode for the amperometric detection of nitrite. The sensor is based on the immobilisation of a ruthenium polymerin a carbon paste matrix which serves to lower the overpotential for nitritoxidation, hence permittingits determination at a lower potential.

An investigation into the electrochemical pretreatment of carbon fibre microelectrodes is presented in chapter 3, and a pretreatment regime was optimised for the determination of folic acid. The effects of the pretreatment on the functional characteristics of the microelectrode is also presented.

In chapter 4, the design and evaluation of two capillary electrophoresis systems, one employing a UV/VIS detector, and the other employing an amperometric detector based on a carbon fibre microelectrode is described.

Finally, in chapter 5, and presented in two sections, is the application of microdialysis sampling coupled to capillary electrophoresis with electrochemical detection (employing the system developed in chapter 4), for in vivo studies. The first study involves a pharmacokinetic investigation of the drup L-dopa. The second study presented is a neurochemical analysis of amino acid neurotransmitters.


Today's legislation on exhaust gas emissions for heavy duty diesel (HDD) vehicles is more stringent than ever and will be even more tough in the future. More over, in a few years HDD vehicles have to be equipped with OBD (On-Board Diagnostics). This place very high demands on the manufacturers to develop better engines and strategies for OBD. As an aid in the process models can be used. This thesis presents extensions of an existing diesel engine model in Matlab/Simulink to be able to simulate emissions during standardized european test cycles. Faults in the sensor and actuator signals are implemented into the model to find out if there is an increase or decrease in the emissions. This is used to create a fault tree where it can be seen why predefined emission thresholds are exceeded. The tree is an aid when developing OBD. The results from the simulations showed that almost no faults made the emissions cross the thresholds. The only interesting faults were faults in the ambient temperature sensor and the injection angle actuator. This means that the OBD-system only needs to monitor a few components which implies a smaller system and less work.


Low coral islands are heavily dependent on groundwater for freshwater supplies. The availability, quality, and management of groundwater are central to sustainable development and poverty alleviation in many developing small island nations. The declaration by the Government of Kiribati of water reserves on the atoll of Tarawa, over privately owned land, has lead to conflicts, illegal settlements and vandalism of public assets. Beside, the water consumption per capita tends to increase towards western-like standards, threatening the sustainability of the actual exploitation system. Finally, pollution generated by the 45 000 habitants of South Tarawa has already contaminated all the freshwater lenses, with the exception of the existing reserves so far. Our project, called AtollGame, aims at providing the relevant information to the local actors, including institutional and local community representatives in order to facilitate the dialogue and devise together sustainable and equitable water management practices. Multi-Agent Based Simulations (MABS) coupled with a Role-Playing Game have been implemented to fulfil this aim. They have the potential to greatly reduce conflict over natural resource management and resource allocation. In order to collect, understand and merge viewpoints coming from different stakeholders, the following 3-stage methodology is applied: collecting local and expert knowledge, blending the different viewpoints into a gamebased model, playing the game with the different stakeholders in order to explore different scenarii and their simulated outcomes. Although game sessions delivered successful outcomes, the final stage of the project is characterised by the upheaval of contradictory Government stands that undermine the whole process. It is argued that heterogeneous viewpoints may be handled in a satisfactory manner during the gaming sessions, but that longterm hidden agendas may override the outcomes. Beyond the inherent question of legitimacy attached to such approaches, it is clear, from our experience, that some players - especially those representing Government or supra-national institutions - have to deal with constraints that often genuinely first considered as external to the on-going negotiation process. (Resume d'auteur)


We study a class of classification problems best exemplified by the \emph{bank loan} problem, where a lender decides whether or not to issue a loan. The lender only observes whether a customer will repay a loan if the loan is issued to begin with, and thus modeled decisions affect what data is available to the lender for future decisions. As a result, it is possible for the lender's algorithm to ``get stuck'' with a self-fulfilling model. This model never corrects its false negatives, since it never sees the true label for rejected data, thus accumulating infinite regret. In the case of linear models, this issue can be addressed by adding optimism directly into the model predictions. However, there are few methods that extend to the function approximation case using Deep Neural Networks. We present Pseudo-Label Optimism (PLOT), a conceptually and computationally simple method for this setting applicable to DNNs. \PLOT{} adds an optimistic label to the subset of decision points the current model is deciding on, trains the model on all data so far (including these points along with their optimistic labels), and finally uses the resulting \emph{optimistic} model for decision making. \PLOT{} achieves competitive performance on a set of three challenging benchmark problems, requiring minimal hyperparameter tuning. We also show that \PLOT{} satisfies a logarithmic regret guarantee, under a Lipschitz and logistic mean label model, and under a separability condition on the data.


Background: Despite the significant improvements in pharmacotherapy, nonadherence to antipsychotic medication is consistently reported in the literature. Many studies evaluated the side effects of antipsychotic medications but there is scanty evidence regarding screening linked intervention. Aim: The study investigated the effect of nurse-led screening linked brief psycho-education in improving adherence to antipsychotic medication among treatment-seeking clients with mental illness. Materials and Methods: This study is a quasi-experimental study in which a total of 80 subjects were consecutively recruited as per the sampling criteria. The side effect of antipsychotic medication was measured using the Udvalg for Kliniske Undersøgelser Side Effect Rating Scale (UKU-SERS). A trained nurse delivered a 30-minute individual-based screening linked brief psychoeducation for the management of side effects as per the standard module. The outcome measures were changes in adherence to medication measured as per the medication adherence rating scale (MARS-5©Professor Rob Horne) during a 1-month follow-up. Results: Anxiety (40%), reduced duration of sleep (40%), reduced salivation (36%) were the most common moderate-to-severe side effects as per UKU-SERS. Overall, the study observed a significant improvement of self-reported medication adherence in the intervention group as compared to the control group during the 1-month follow-up (F = 46.49; P < 0.001). Conclusion: The nurse-led screening linked brief psychoeducation may be an effective strategy for improving adherence to antipsychotic medication in this setting. More studies should be conducted in similar settings for an evidence base to advocate the role of the nurse as a brief intervention therapist in the routine mental health care setting.


Observations indicate that substantial changes in the dynamics of marine-terminating ice sheets and glaciers are tightly coupled to calving-induced changes in the terminus position. However, the calving process itself remains poorly understood and is not well parametrized in current numerical ice sheet models. In this study, we address this uncertainty by deriving plausible upper and lower limits for the maximum stable ice thickness at the calving face of marine-terminating glaciers, using two complementary models. The first model assumes that a combination of tensile and shear failure can render the ice cliff near the terminus unstable and/or enable pre-existing crevasses to intersect. A direct consequence of this model is that thick glaciers must terminate in deep water to stabilize the calving front, yielding a predicted maximum ice cliff height that increases with increasing water depth, consistent with observations culled from glaciers in West Greenland, Antarctica, Svalbard and Alaska. The second model considers an analogous lower limit derived by assuming that the ice is already fractured and fractures are lubricated by pore pressure. In this model, a floating ice tongue can only form when the ice entering the terminus region is relatively intact with few pre-existing, deeply penetrating crevasses.


How do terrorists move money?  This article examines six of the most widely used methods: cash couriers, informal transfer systems (e.g. hawala), money service businesses, formal banking, false trade invoicing, and high value commodities.  When terrorists move money, they choose methods that take into account issues of: volume, risk, convenience, simplicity, costs, and speed. This article analyzes the methods according to these issues. It draws on multiple cases and examples, including the most recent cases of Hezbollah's and al Shabaab's use of money service businesses, and many others.


This study describes the temporal and spatial variations in hyporheic water quality in three boreal rivers, the River Tobyälven, an unregulated river, the river Mangälven, a regulated river with a minimum discharge requirement and the river Järperudsälven, a regulated river without any minimum discharge requirements. A total of 43 permanent piezometers were used to measure dissolved oxygen (DO), temperature, electrical conductivity, pH, NO  3− and NH  4+ in the hyporheic water at 150 mm and 300 mm depth, at monthly intervals from October 2001 to October 2002. Another seven piezometers were installed in brown trout redds and monitored during the incubation period, from December 2001 to April 2002. In the river Tobyälven, temporal patterns in hyporheic water chemistry correlated to variations in surface water chemistry and discharge. In the river Järperudsälven, the hyporheic water chemistry did not correlate to discharge or surface water chemistry. In the river Mangälven, the water chemistry was dominated by releases from a large upstream lake, and there were weak correlations between surface water chemistry and hyporheic water chemistry at some sites. The incubation conditions for brown trout eggs were most favourable in the unregulated river, characterized by high DO levels that remained high throughout the incubation period. In the river Järperudsälven the DO levels were variable during spawning, and then gradually declined to critically low levels during incubation, whereas in the river Mangälven the DO conditions were intermediate and stable. Thus we observed a stronger coupling between surface water conditions and hyporheic conditions, i.e. vertical connectivity, in the unregulated river than in the regulated river with minimum flow requirements, which in turn was stronger than in the river without minimum flow requirements. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


This study was carried to determine the size and quality and potential of pastures by using Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS),in the province of Isparta located on the West Mediterranean Region of Turkey. In this study, Merkez, Şarkikarağaç and Yalvaç districts were chosen as test areas which comprise of 80% of whole grassland area of Isparta Province. A digital map showing areas of pasture belonging to the district of Şarkikaraağaç was prepared and the grassland area was estimated. Sowing times for grass samples was identified as May\ July and September in 2011 to determine dry matter (DM) in the amount of biomass, botanical composition and ADF, NDF and crude protein (CP) values. The amounts of biomass on DM basis per hectare in the districts of Merkez, Şarkikaraağaç and Yalvac 3.11, 2.71 and 2.69 ton/ha, respectively. Botanical compositions for Merkezleguminosae 21%, Gramineae 37% and 42% others respectively; Şarkikaraağaç 36%, 40% and 25%; Yalvaç 36% and 33% was 31%. Average ADF and NDF contents were increased during the vegetation period; CP rates were decreased. Both DM yields and protein contents towards the end of vegetation period were reduced. Therefore, the most appropriate animal grazing period was determined as between the beginning of May and the early September, and also in relation to the botanical composition of grasses in grassland areas, Gramineae was found to be greater than other species. Therefore, cattle grazing would be a more appropriate grassland management system in the study area. When setting up an inventory that is required for animal pasture and the results of similar studies related to Isparta province, the realization of an effective pasture management and exploitation of RS and GIS technologies and techniques will help to make decisions about the use of these technologies in terms of both time and economic contributions.


This study was conducted to evaluate the quality of 78 honey samples (Acacia, sage- Salvia officinalis L., linden, chestnut, honeydew and blossom) from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Reducing sugars, sucrose content, moisture, hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), free acidity, water-insoluble content, diastase activity, electrical conductivity were analyzed. The samples of honey, collected during the 2016 -2017 season, were analyzed by using recommendation methods. Results show that in 2016 and 2017, a great number of honey samples were of insufficient quality to satisfy regulatory requirements. Among the overall determined parameters, hydroxymethylfurfural and diastase activities in same honey samples were not accepted by national and international regulation. A correlation between free acidity and electrical conductivity was found in acacia and blossom honey samples. The correlation between HMF content and diastase activity showed strong negative relationship. The quality of honey was varied based on botanical origins, handling and storage conditions.


Learning an input-output mapping from a set of examples, of the type that many neural networks have been constructed to perform, can be regarded as synthesizing an approximation of a multidimensional function (that is, solving the problem of hypersurface reconstruction). From this point of view, this form of learning is closely related to classical approximation techniques, such as generalized splines and regularization theory. A theory is reported that shows the equivalence between regularization and a class of three-layer networks called regularization networks or hyper basis functions. These networks are not only equivalent to generalized splines but are also closely related to the classical radial basis functions used for interpolation tasks and to several pattern recognition and neural network algorithms. They also have an interesting interpretation in terms of prototypes that are synthesized and optimally combined during the learning stage.


This paper describes the design method of a linear phase finite wordlength finite-duration impulse response (FIR) filter using simulated annealing. In many applications, the word length of the FIR filter is limited for various reasons. Main reasons are the computational complexity and the system limitation. Simulated annealing is used to obtain FIR filter coefficients having desired frequency response, since this algorithm has a capability of finding the minimum value of the arbitrary function. Different from previous algorithms, block update which changes all the filter coefficients simultaneously and element-wise update which change one filter coefficient at once are both considered.


Blood is a dense suspension of flexible red blood cells. In response to a background flow, these cells distribute themselves non-uniformly throughout the vessel. As a result, material properties that are well defined in homogeneous fluids, such as viscosity, are no longer so, and depend upon the flow geometry along with the particle properties. Using a simple model that accounts for the steady-state particle distribution in vessel flow, we derive an expression for the effective viscosity of blood and the suspension flow velocity field in a pressure-driven tube flow. We derive the steady-state particle distribution from a conservation equation with convective flux arising from particle deformation in the flow. We then relate the particle microstructure to the overall flow through a generalized Newtonian stress-tensor, with the particle volume fraction appearing in the expression for the local viscosity. Comparing with experimental data, we show that the model quantitatively reproduces the observed rheology of blood in tube flow. We reconsider the problem in an alternate geometry corresponding to the flow between two concentric cylinders. The steady-state particle distribution, suspension velocity field and the measured effective viscosity are all very different from their counterparts in tube flow, casting serious doubt upon the practice of using data from a Couette viscometer to parameterize constitutive models applied to vascular blood flow. Finally, we calculate the effect of random fluctuations in the particle velocity on the averaged behaviour of the particle conservation equation. Using a smoothing method for linear stochastic differential equations, we derive a correction to the free Einstein-Stokes diffusion coefficient that is due to the interaction of the particles with their neighbours.


Given the vast number of observations in a transparent environment, the interaction between players and referees in the National Basketball Association (NBA) provides a real-world laboratory that allows for observation and testing of implicit height-based biases (the so-called "Napoleon Complex"). Controlling for a plethora of referee-specific characteristics and including 4,463 regular season games from 2008 to 2012, we find that: (i) more personal fouls are called when a relatively shorter three-person officiating crew is working and (ii) no more or fewer fouls are called when games involve relatively taller players. Such biases are probably not large enough to impact game outcomes, but could affect gambling markets. Our findings support the conclusion that relatively shorter NBA referees officiate basketball games differently than their taller peers. The analysis spotlights an oft-suggested but rarely-studied bias in a workplace where employees are heavily scrutinized and monitored.


Group-deal websites, where customers purchase products or services in groups, are an interesting phenomenon on the Web. Each purchase is kicked off by a group initiator, and other customers can join in. Customers form communities with people with similar interests and preferences (as in a social network), and this drives bulk purchasing (similar to online stores, but in larger quantities per order, thus customers get a better deal). In this work, we aim to better understand what factors influence customers' purchasing behavior for such social group-deal websites. We propose two probabilistic graphical models, i.e., a product-centric inference model (PCIM) and a group-initiator-centric inference model (GICIM), based on Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). Instead of merely using customers' own purchase history to predict purchasing decisions, these two models include other social factors. Using a lift curve analysis, we show that by including social factors in the inference models, PCIM achieves 35% of the target customers within 5% of the total number of customers while GICIM is able to reach 85% of the target customers. Both PCIM and GICIM outperform random guessing and models that do not take social factors into account.


Introduction We explored whether routine pregnancy self-testing is feasible and acceptable to women at risk of late recognition of pregnancy as a strategy to facilitate early entry into either antenatal or abortion care. Methods A feasibility study among South African sexually active women not desiring pregnancy within 1 year, and not using long-acting or injectable contraceptives. At recruitment, we provided five free urine pregnancy tests for self-testing on the first day of each of the next 3 months. We sent monthly text reminders to use the tests with requests for no-cost text replies. Our main outcome was the proportion of participants self-testing within 5 days of the text reminder over three consecutive months. Other outcomes were ease of use of tests, preference for self-testing versus clinic testing, acceptability of routine self-testing (all binary responses followed by open response options) and response to text messages (four-point Likert scale). Results We followed up 71/76 (93%) participants. Two confirmed new pregnancies at the first scheduled test and completed exit interviews, and 64/69 (93%) self-reported completing all three monthly tests. Self-testing was easy to do (66/71, 93%); advantages were convenience (21/71, 30%) and privacy (18/71, 25%), while the main disadvantage was no nurse present to advise (17/71, 24%). Most would recommend monthly testing (70/71, 99%). Text reminders were generally not bothersome (57/71, 80%); 35/69 (51%) participants replied with test results over all three months. Conclusion Providing free pregnancy tests to women at risk of late recognition of pregnancy is feasible to strengthen early confirmation of pregnancy status.


ABSTRACT Women's radicalization is a pending issue in empirical research that is worthy of attention. It has been found that the role of women in international terrorism is much greater than previously thought, but we know almost nothing about the factors underlying the process that would lead them to perpetrate radicalized acts, as almost no empirical research has been carried out on the subject. In this work we aim to explore a model of radicalization of thought and action among young women. The hypothesized model included ten predictors: cultural identity, cultural discrimination, religious involvement, depressive symptoms, and schizotypal, borderline, and the Dark Tetrad traits of personality. Dogmatism was hypothesized as a mediator between these factors and the level of radicalized cognitions and behaviors. The sample comprises 643 college women (aged 18 to 29) from French universities. Our results suggest that women becoming involved in radicalization are more "dark" than "disturbed." Schizotypal, borderline, and depressive features, although being associated to radicalization, do not contribute to the model. Both the dark traits and socio-cultural factors are revealed as predictors of radicalization, while dogmatism is clearly shown as a mediator. Orientations in terms of prevention among young women are proposed.


Lithium-Selenium secondary battery is similar to Lithium-Sulfur battery, but Li-Se batteries have some advantages like better electrochemical performance and good cyclability. It is due to better conductivity and weak bonding in elemental Selenium than Sulfur. However, lithium ions can react with both Selenium and Sulfur to produce polyanions. [1] Despite similarities; there are some disadvantages like toxicity and shuttle phenomenon (i.e., the back and forth movement of soluble polyselenides/polysulfides between both electrodes). We have developed selenium-carbon rice husk composites as cathodes for rechargeable Li–Se battery with excellent rate capability, cycling performance with high Coulombic efficiency. The cell was run in an ether-based electrolyte (1 M LiTFSI solution) with composite and found excellent electrochemical performance with an initial discharge capacity of 821.34 mA h gSe1-, and the remaining capacity was 319.16 mA h gSe1- even after 100 cycles with high Coulombic efficiency. A novel strategy is also applied by using polycarbazole in an advanced Lithium (Li)-Selenium (Se) to enhance the cycling stability, electrochemical performance as well as the storage capacity of the cell. Compared to pristine ball-milled Se, the Se@RHC hybrid with 70 % selenium shows a high Se utilization in the full Li-Se cell by giving a high capacity of 821.3 mA h gSe-1 compared to 421.5 mA h gSe-1 achieved for the cell with pristine Se. The main reason behind this exceptional electrochemical performance is that the excellent electronic conductivity of the composite and large surface of Rice-husk derived carbon (RHC) that can increase the reaction depth (or low-order polyselenides intermediates formed and were stabilized by RHC via volume expansion) and constrain the polyselenides. The excellent characteristics like high capacity and stability of cell demonstrate that Se-based active materials will be another promising cathode candidate for the future rechargeable lithium secondary batteries (LIBs).


Walking—whether for exercise, recreation or transport—often occurs within the bounds of the families, communities and neighbourhoods in which we live. It is a behaviour shaped by our physical and social environment, including social norms and networks.1 Recent advocacy work has seen great strides made in calling for changing the physical (built) environment to support physical activity and walking behaviour. However, built environments are difficult and costly to change. Using inherent social structures in our societies may provide a cost-efficient way of encouraging people to walk and better use the built environment in which we live, work and play, and promote population-level change. These social factors may also have a key role to play in the maintenance of walking behaviour (as we are all embedded in these networks) and 'scaling up' nationwide and worldwide interventions (based on the principles of social norms).

Walking, as a social behaviour, is influenced by our social networks (ie, the people around us). Social norms—the standards of behaviour that are considered acceptable or appealing in a group or society—are also important for walking. Yet seldom are these networks or norms taken into account when promoting walking behaviour, and they are subsequently underutilised in our interventions.2 Promoting walking to individuals without considering these social constructs inherent in 'social settings' (such as schools, workplaces, parks, neighbourhoods, streets and public spaces) may risk missing opportunities to more effectively produce behaviour change or maintained behaviour change. We may also be missing …


EEGcorco is a computer program designed to analyze the degree of synchronization between two electroencephalographic signals (EEG) by mean the analysis of correlation and coherence index. The correlation and coherence values permit the quantitative determination of the similarity among EEG signals from homologous areas of the cerebral hemispheres (interhemispheric), and among localized areas within one cerebral hemisphere (intrahemispheric). EEG coherence is a function of frequency; thus it is commonly presented in a spectral manner (coherence values in every frequency of the spectrum), in contrast, the correlation function has been employed mainly to search periodic components of bioelectrical signals, and normally appears as punctual values defined in time, hence it is not common calculate correlation spectra. EEGcorco offers an easy and novel way to calculate correlation spectra by mean the application of the Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT) to digitized EEG signals. Both, correlation and coherence spectra are obtained in both independent frequencies and frequencies grouped in wide bands. Moreover, the program applies parametric statistical analyses to those coherence and correlation spectra also, for each individual frequency and for the frequencies grouped in bands. The program functions on any PC-compatible computer equipped with a Pentium or superior processor and a minimum of 512 Mb of RAM memory (though the higher the capacity the better). The space required on the hard disk depends on the signals to be analyzed, as the output takes the form of files in text format that occupy very little space. The program has been elaborated completely in the Delphi environment for the Windows operating system. The efficacy and versatility of EEGcorco allow it to be easily adapted to different experimental and clinical needs.


With recent improvements in the energy efficiency of digital microprocessors and radio transceivers, the relative contribution of the analog front end in the overall power consumption of a wireless health system has been steadily rising. A key reason for this is that sampling rates in most medical applications are extremely low, providing opportunities to aggressively duty cycle the power hungry processor and radio. Analog front ends have not traditionally been duty cycled because analog filters with large time constants dictate a prohibitively high wake up latency. In this paper, we show that this latency can be reduced to a large extent and duty cycling made feasible by making filters "remember" their state across power gating cycles. This is done using slight hardware modifications that can even be applied to existing boards. We illustrate our technique on a commercially available wireless electro-cardiography system. Using our methodology, we reduced the restart delay of the circuit by three orders of magnitude from 6s to 5ms. We employ our circuit design for energy efficient QRS complex detection and extraction, which results in a 3× reduction in analog front end energy consumption.


L. Klein Titan Grade 2 is an unalloyed, commercially pure titanium grade. It is the most widely used commercially pure titanium grade. It offers a combination of moderate strength and good ductility, with outstanding corrosion resistance in many challenging service environments. L. Klein Titan Grade 2 can operate in continuous service up to 425 °C (800 °F) and in intermittent service up to 540 °C (1005 °F). This datasheet provides information on composition, physical properties, and tensile properties. It also includes information on corrosion resistance and wear resistance as well as forming, heat treating, machining, and joining. Filing Code: Ti-177. Producer or source: L. Klein SA.


Emerging technologies, such as intelligent agents, avatars, and distributed environments offer new opportunities for the improvement of business games used for training decision makers. The advent of these technologies also creates new challenges to game developers and training consultants. We investigate these opportunities and offer suggestions on how to better address technical and pedagogical challenges.


'Life for De Quincey was either angels ascending on vaults of cloud or vagrants shivering on the city streets.'

Thomas De Quincey - opium-eater, celebrity journalist, and professional doppelganger – is embedded in our culture. Modelling his character on Coleridge and his sensibility on Wordsworth, De Quincey took over the poet's former cottage in Grasmere and turned it into an opium den. Here, increasingly detached from the world, he nurtured his growing hatred of his former idols and his obsession with murder as one of the fine arts.

De Quincey may never have felt the equal of the giants of the Romantic Literature he so worshipped but the writing style he pioneered – scripted and sculptured emotional memoir – was to inspire generations of writers: Dickens, Dostoevsky, Virginia Woolf. James Joyce knew whole pages of his work off by heart and he was arguably the father of what we now call psychogeography.

This spectacular biography, the produce of meticulous scholarship and beautifully supple prose, tells the riches-to-rags story of a figure of dazzling complexity and dazzling originality, whose rackety life was lived on the run, and both brings De Quincey and his martyred but wild soul triumphantly to life and firmly establishes Frances Wilson in the front rank of contemporary biographers.


We assessed the role of cyclic nucleotides in modulating lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) generation in human peripheral blood monocytes. Exposure of monocytes to LPS (3 ng/ml) evoked a delayed, time-dependent generation of TNF-alpha that reached a maximum level 5-6 hr after LPS challenge and remained constant for up to 24 hr. This effect was concentration dependent and resulted in a 20-40-fold increase in the release of TNF-alpha that was sensitive to actinomycin D and cycloheximide. Treatment of monocytes with agents reputed to activate the cAMP/cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) cascade in general inhibited LPS-induced TNF-alpha generation. Thus, the beta 2-adrenoceptor agonists albuterol and procaterol partially (approximately 40%) suppressed TNF-alpha generation in a propranolol-sensitive manner. Furthermore, 8-bromo-cAMP, cholera toxin, prostaglandin E2, and a number of drugs (i.e., rolipram (ZK 62711), denbufylline (BRL 30892), Ro 20-1724, benafentrine (AH 21-132), that inhibit the phosphodiesterase (PDE) 4 isoenzyme family abolished cytokine generation. In contrast, forskolin, inhibitors of PDE3 and PDE5, and activators of soluble and particulate guanylyl cyclase were essentially inactive. Interestingly, rolipram failed to potentiate the inhibitory effect of albuterol on LPS-induced TNF-alpha biosynthesis but, paradoxically, synergized with albuterol in the generation of cAMP and in the activation of PKA. When PGE2 was used to activate adenylyl cyclase, however, rolipram potentiated cAMP accumulation, PKA activation, and inhibition of TNF-alpha generation. In contrast, forskolin did not increase the cAMP content of monocytes in the absence or presence of rolipram. Collectively, these data suggest that LPS-induced TNF-alpha generation by human peripheral blood monocytes is due to increased transcription and subsequent translation of the TNF-alpha gene and that these effects are suppressed by a range of agents that activate the cAMP/PKA cascade. However, the failure of rolipram to potentiate the inhibitory effect of albuterol and procaterol on TNF-alpha generation suggests that beta 2-adrenoceptor agonists may affect gene expression and/or post-transcriptional regulatory processes by, at least in part, a cAMP-independent mechanism(s).


Two low power-delay-product (PDP) dynamic CMOS circuit design techniques are proposed. The techniques can simply modify existing dynamic CMOS designs to improve dynamic circuit delay and PDP. Conventional benchmark circuits and the modi fi ed circuits using the proposed techniques are implemented in 90 nm CMOS technology with a 1.2 V power supply. Simulation results indicate that the proposed techniques can improve circuit PDP by 19.2 and 61.9% in two non-inverted dynamic benchmarks, respectively, and 6.2 and 33.72% in two inverted dynamic benchmarks, respectively.