A proven way of interpreting the shield leg pressure sensor data within each shield load cycle has been developed by the authors and this has been encapsulated into real time and non real time software. A load cycle is the change in support pressure with time from setting the support against the roof to the next release and movement of the support. It is now possible to automatically identify when a shield has too low a set pressure, and when a shield is faulty and/or has an inadequate capacity for the conditions. It has been found that once set conditions deteriorate and shields are set manually it is very common for set pressures to be too low for the conditions, resulting in roof control problems. The software can automatically identify set pressures that are too low which will enable auditing of shield operation and corrections to be made. Up to 10% of shield legs have faults on a typical Australian longwall and these periodically result in localised roof control problems. Faulty support components are automatically identified, enabling timely repairs to be made. On some longwalls the shields become overloaded at the peak of the periodic weighting cycle and the software can identify the difference between a heavily loaded support and one that is overloaded. By minimising the cycle time and making sure that set pressures are adequate in cycles following the overloading event, it is quite possible to successfully mine through an overloading event if the event is correctly identified. The use of this software has the potential to significantly reduce or even eliminate roof control problems on a longwall face with significant benefits to both productivity and safety. By automatically identifying potential causes of roof control problems and offering solutions, the software has the potential to aid longwall automation. A Beta test version of the real time software has been successfully working at BMA's Broadmeadow Mine for some time and several mines have benefited from expert off-line analyses using the software. The software can also be used to isolate the many interconnected factors affecting roof control on a longwall face, which will enable their quantification and is therefore a powerful research tool.


ABSTRACT Aspects of the dispersal characteristics of two nonnative shrubs, Elaeagnus umbellata and Ligustrum sinense, were compared with those of two native shrubs, Cornus amomum and Frangula caroliniana, to identify factors that contribute to successful invasion of the nonnative species. For each species, the following aspects were examined: shrub abundance, physical characteristics and nutritional values of fruits, arrangement of fruits along the stem and number of fruits per branch, phenology of fruit maturation and foliage coloration, and animal interactions. The two native shrubs and E. umbellata were similar in abundance, but L. sinense was significantly more abundant than the others. Cornus amomum and F. caroliniana present bicolored displays of fruits that are rapidly dispersed during autumn avian migration. Elaeagnus umbellata produces moisture- and protein-rich fruits during summer that are also rapidly removed. In contrast, L. sinense produces high numbers of fruits in late autumn that remain available to frugivores throughout the winter. The large quantities and prolonged availability of L. sinense fruits enable the dispersal of this shrub by a diverse array of frugivores and contribute at least partially to its successful invasion of new habitat and its observed abundance.


Various concurrency primitives have been added to sequential programming languages, in order to turn them concurrent. Prominent examples are concurrent buffers for Haskell, channels in Concurrent ML, joins in JoCaml, and handled futures in Alice ML. Even though one might conjecture that all these primitives provide the same expressiveness, proving this equivalence is an open challenge in the area of program semantics. In this paper, we establish a first instance of this conjecture. We show that concurrent buffers can be encoded in the lambda calculus with futures underlying Alice ML. Our correctness proof results from a systematic method, based on observational semantics with respect to may and must convergence.


To function effectively, individuals must voluntarily postpone immediate gratification and persist in goal-directed behavior for the sake of later outcomes. The present research program analyzed the nature of this type of future-oriented self-control and the psychological processes that underlie it. Enduring individual differences in self-control were found as early as the preschool years. Those 4-year-old children who delayed gratification longer in certain laboratory situations developed into more cognitively and socially competent adolescents, achieving higher scholastic performance and coping better with frustration and stress. Experiments in the same research program also identified specific cognitive and attentional processes that allow effective self-regulation early in the course of development. The experimental results, in turn, specified the particular types of preschool delay situations diagnostic for predicting aspects of cognitive and social competence later in life.


The consequences of media attention for politics have been heavily debated, but little was known about its effects on actors close to, but outside the direct political domain: public organizations. Previous research in the field of media & politics as well as in public accountability studies suggests two possible categories of effects. The first one is that intensive media coverage can, eventually via public accountability processes, lead to extreme caution at the side of the account-giver, thus the public organization, out of fear to be punished again in case of failure. The second category of possible consequences is that heavy media attention – directly or through formal accountability processes – leads to corrective effects on the organization: the organization improves its functioning as a consequence of accountability and media attention. This qualitative research deals with the question of 'who is right?': do mediatized incidents concerning public organizations, either directly or through formal processes of accountability, lead to goal displacement or goal attainment? This research draws upon insights from public administration and organizational theory to explore the consequences of mediatized incidents for public sector organizations in the Netherlands. First, media presence public sector organizations has been analyzed in terms of quantity. This research shows that – for 802 articles in a two-week period – public organizations are often mentioned in newspaper articles (40 per cent of all articles), but are less often the main actor in these messages (13 per cent of all articles) and in only 1 per cent journalists have acted as an independent forum. Regarding all mentions, the amount of media coverage is comparable to that for political actors.Subsequently, it has been investigated if critical media reports on public sector organizations lead to formal public accountability (parliamentary questions). It can be concluded that critical reports hardly ever lead to formal political accountability in the form of questions by MP's. To be sure, a large share of the questions (119 out of 164) is based on media news (tv, internet, newspaper), but they do not deal with public organizations. The second and largest part of the research consists of case studies. Did media attention, eventually via accountability processes, have consequences for their internal and external accountability relations, as well as for their incident-related and external communication policies? My cases are organizations with a public task that faced incidents which received media coverage. I investigated housing corporation Mitros with boiler problems, the (former) Food and Consumer Safety Authority (VWA) and livestock transport, the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) with the HPV vaccination campaign and ProRail with wintry weather that caused railway disruptions. The main conclusions of these case studies are that mediatized accountability activates and intensifies external account giving, often with explicit reference to media coverage. With some exceptions, it seems that the activation of formal account giving through mediatized accountability leads to more frequent interaction, but this quickly subsides once political attention shifts to other issues. Adaptation can also be found in communication and incident-related policies. This dissertation shows that goal displacement is relatively rare. Way more often, I find goal attainment and goal adjustment. Public organizations facing an incident therefore seem to adapt to a changing environment, they mediatise, and in doing so move in a more functional direction, but sometimes less functional, too.


This article critically reviews and synthesizes the contributions found in theoretical and empirical studies of firm-level innovation search processes. It explores the advantages and disadvantages of local and non-local search, discusses organizational responses, and identifies potential exogenous triggers for different kinds of search. It argues that the initial focus on local search was a consequence, in part, of the attention in evolutionary economics to path-dependent behavior, but that as localized behavior was increasingly accepted as the standard mode, studies began to question whether local search was the best solution in all cases. More recently, the literature has focused on the trade-offs being created, by firms having to balance local and non-local search. We account also for the apparent "variety paradox" in the stylized fact that organizations within the same industry tend to follow different search strategies, but end up with very similar technological profiles in fast-growing technologies. The article concludes by highlighting what we have learnt from the literature and suggesting some new avenues for research.


Dire word of the cultural threat of the lowbrow goes back at least to the ancient Greeks, and yet, Stephanie Sieburth suggests, no division between "high" and "low" culture will stand up to logical scrutiny. Why, then, does the opposition persist? In this book Sieburth questions the terms of this perennial debate and uncovers the deep cultural, economic, and psychological tensions that lead each generation to reinvent the distinction between high and low. She focuses on Spain, where this opposition plays a special role in notions of cultural development and where leading writers have often made the relation of literature to mass culture the theme of their novels. Choosing two historical moments of sweeping material and cultural change in Spanish history, Sieburth reads two novels from the 1880s (by Benito Perez Galdos) and two from the 1970s (by Juan Goytisolo and Carmen Martin Gaite) as fictional theories about the impact of modernity on culture and politics. Her analysis reveals that the high/low division in the cultural sphere reinforces other kinds of separations-between social classes or between men and women-dear to the elite but endangered by progress. This tension, she shows, is particularly evident in Spain, where modernization has been a contradictory and uneven process, rarely accompanied by political freedom, and where consumerism and mass culture coexist uneasily with older ways of life. Weaving together a wide spectrum of diverse material, her work will be of interest to readers concerned with Spanish history and literature, literary theory, popular culture, and the relations between politics, economics, gender, and the novel.


Context Educational reform in the United States has had a growing dependence on accountability achieved through large-scale assessment. Despite discussion and advocacy for assessment purposes that would assist learning, provide help to teachers' instructional plans and execution, and give a broader perspective of the depth and breadth of learning, the general focus still remains on accountability, now elaborated with sanctions for schools and personnel. Focus of Study To generate scholarly discussion, options for practice, and grounded predictions about testing in the next decades, the Gordon Commission on the Future of Assessment in Education. Participants Convened over a two-year period and with 30 people on the steering committee, the commissioners included well-known scholars grounded in psychometrics, assessment design, technology, learning, instruction, language, subject matter, and teaching in discussion. Commissioners, additional authors, and reviewers were largely drawn from universities, private profit, and nonprofit institutions. Professor Edmund W. Gordon was the Chair of the Commission. Design A knowledge acquisition and synthesis study, the product design relied on papers authored by expert scholars describing their understanding of productive student testing in their own domains. The commission funded papers on a wide variety of topics. This paper focuses on two of the major topics of the reports, the emphasis on shifting assessment to help rather than simply to mark progress and how future contexts, including technological change, may impinge on testing options. Conclusions The paper calls for a transformation of assessment purpose and use, from annual, time-controlled accountability assessments to more continuous assessments used in the course of a learners' acquisition of understanding, motivation for learning, collaboration, and deep application of knowledge in problem solving, communication, and authentic settings. Assessments should emphasize helping students of varying backgrounds and goals as well as their teachers. The role of technology as an assessment design, administration, and reporting toolset is described, in the context of changing knowledge expectations and a global competitive environment.


This paper identifies a global trend towards hardened, militarised borders through the use of military technologies, hardware and personnel. In contrast to claims of waning state sovereignty, drawing on detailed case studies from the United States and European Union, we argue the militarisation of borders represents a re-articulation and expansion of state sovereignty into new spaces and arenas. We argue that the nexus of military-security contractors, dramatically increased security budgets, and the discourse of threats from terrorism and immigration is resulting in a profound shift in border security. The construction of barriers, deployment of more personnel and the investment in a wide range of military and security technologies from drones to smart border technologies that attempt to monitor, identify and prevent unauthorised movements are emblematic of this shift. We link this increasing militarisation to dehumanisation of migrant others and to the increasing mortality in border spaces. By documenting this trend and identifying a range of different practices that are included under the rubric of militarisation, this paper is both a call for nuanced interpretation and more sustained investigation of the expansion of the military into the policing of borders.


A 81-year-old man, who had undergone subtotal gastric resection with Roux-en-Y anastomosis for gastric adenocarcinoma 2 years earlier, was admitted to our hospital for obstructive jaundice. Abdominal computed tomography showed a solid mass (30×30mm) at the pancreatic head, involving the common bile duct and the duodenum and suspicious for portal vein and mesenteric axis invasion (▶Fig. 1). An endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS)-guided fine needle aspiration was performed and a diagnosis of metastasis of gastric adenocarcinoma was made. Considering the post-surgical anatomy, and in order to obtain endoscopic biliary drainage, a transgastric intrahepatic EUS-guided approach was attempted. A linear echoendoscope (GF-UCT140; Olympus, Tokyo, Japan) was used but the intrahepatic bile ducts were not dilated enough to access them. However the hydropic gallbladder was clearly visible from the jejunal route. EUS-guided transluminal gallbladder drainage was therefore performed using a lumen-apposing metal stent (LAMS) (Hot Axios; Boston Scientific, Natick, Massachusetts, USA) with a lumen diameter of 10mm. The gallbladder was first punctured using a 19G access needle (EchoTip Ultra; Cook Medical, Limerick, Ireland) and a 0.035-inch guidewire (VisiGlide; Olympus) was left inside to stabilize the echoendoscope position. Subsequently the stent was introduced into the gallbladder lumen using its cautery tip. Finally the stent was deployed (▶Fig. 2), with subsequent rapid drainage of the gallbladder into the jejunal lumen (▶Fig. 3, and ▶Video1), and nasobiliary drainage was inserted through the stent into the lumen of the gallbladder (▶Fig. 4). The procedure was successful and the patient's jaundice rapidly resolved; after 2 weeks total bilirubin had fallen from 11.3g/dL to 2.5 g/dL). E-Videos


Deprotection of methylphosphonate oligonucleotides with ethylenediamine was evaluated in a model system. Methylphosphonate sequences of the form 5'-TTTNNTTT, where N was either N4-bz-dC, N4-ibu-dC, N2-ibu-O6-DPC-dG, N2-ibu-dG, N6-bz-dA, or T, were used to determine the extent of modifications that occur during deprotection. Up to 15% of N4-bz-dC was found to transaminate at the C4 position when treated with ethylenediamine. A similar displacement reaction with ethylenediamine was observed at the O6 position of N2-ibu-O6-DPC-dG, and to a much lesser extent of N2-ibu-dG. Side reactions were not observed when oligonucleotides containing N4-ibu-dC, N6-bz-dA, or T were treated with ethylenediamine. A novel method of deprotecting methylphosphonate oligonucleotides was developed from these studies. The method incorporates a brief treatment with dilute ammonia for 30 minutes followed by addition of ethylenediamine for 6 hours at room temperature to complete deprotection in a one-pot format. The solution is then diluted and neutralized to stop the reaction and prepare the crude product for chromatographic purification. This method was used to successfully deprotect a series of oligonucleotides at the 1, 100, and 150 mumole scales. These deprotection results were compared to a commonly used two-step method and found to be superior in yield of product by as much as 250%.


mining has as goal to discover knowledge from huge volume of data. Rule mining is considered as one of the usable mining method in order to obtain valuable knowledge from stored data on database systems. In this paper, a genetic algorithm-based approach for mining classification rules from large database is presented. For emphasizing on accuracy, coverage and comprehensibility of the rules and simplifying the implementation of a genetic algorithm. The design of encoding, genetic operators and fitness function of genetic algorithm for this task are discussed. Experimental results show that genetic algorithm proposed in this paper is suitable for classification rule mining and those rules discovered by the algorithm have higher classification performance to unknown data.


White light endoscopy is widely used for diagnostic imaging of the interior of organs and body cavities, but the inability to correlate individual 2D images with 3D organ morphology limits its utility for quantitative or longitudinal studies of disease physiology or cancer surveillance. As a result, most endoscopy videos, which carry enormous data potential, are used only for real-time guidance and are discarded after collection. We present a computational method to reconstruct and visualize a 3D model of organs from an endoscopic video that captures the shape and surface appearance of the organ. A key aspect of our strategy is the use of advanced computer vision techniques and unmodified, clinical-grade endoscopy hardware with few constraints on the image acquisition protocol, which presents a low barrier to clinical translation. We validate the accuracy and robustness of our reconstruction and co-registration method using cystoscopy videos from tissue-mimicking bladder phantoms and show clinical utility during cystoscopy in the operating room for bladder cancer evaluation. As our method can powerfully augment the visual medical record of the appearance of internal organs, it is broadly applicable to endoscopy and represents a significant advance in cancer surveillance opportunities for big-data cancer research.


The aim of this study was to establish the morphological basis for the classification of major cassava cultivars (Manihot esculenta Crantz) planted in Vietnam. Twenty typical descriptors were observed in various specific growth stages. Four traits related to mature leaves and two traits related to leaf veins were detected in cassava plants after the 4-month stage. At the same time, 12 rootand stemrelated descriptors were collected in cassava plants from 8 months old to harvest. We found that two traits in the apical leaves can be observed in every growth stage. A classification tree based on these traits was constructed with 6 essential morphological descriptors to recognize the 7 most common cassava cultivars in Vietnam. KM 140 variety is distinguished by purplish-red in apical leaves, while KM 98-7 can be classified with straight or linear shapes of central leaflet. The irregular orientation of the petiole is a unique descriptor of local cultivar XVP. In the case of SM 937-26, weak foliar scars are observed. Finally, KM 94, KM 419, and KM 98-5 varieties can be classified by the color of the stem epidermis. These morphological descriptors will be a foundation to classify all cassava varieties planted in Vietnam.


In order to parametrize a leaf submodel of a canopy level gas-exchange model, a series of photosynthesis and stomatal conductance measurements were made on leaves of white oak (Quercus alba L.) and red maple (Acer rubrum L.) in a mature deciduous forest near Oak Ridge, TN. Gas-exchange characteristics of sun leaves growing at the top of a 30 m canopy and of shade leaves growing at a depth of 3–4 m from the top of the canopy were determined. Measured rates of net photosynthesis at a leaf temperature of 30°C and saturating photosynthetic photon flux density, expressed on a leaf area basis, were significantly lower (P = 0.01; n = 8) in shade leaves (7.9μmol m−2 s−1) than in sun leaves (11–5μmol m−2 s−1). Specific leaf area increased significantly with depth in the canopy, and when photosynthesis rates were expressed on a dry mass basis, they were not significantly different for shade and sun leaves. The percentage leaf nitrogen did not vary significantly with height in the canopy; thus, rates expressed on a per unit nitrogen basis were also not significantly different in shade and sun leaves. A widely used model integrating photosynthesis and stomatal conductance was parametrized independently for sun and shade leaves, enabling us to model successfully diurnal variations in photosynthesis and evapotranspiration of both classes of leaves. Key photosynthesis model parameters were found to scale with leaf nitrogen levels. The leaf model parametrizations were then incorporated into a canopy-scale gas-exchange model that is discussed and tested in a companion paper (Baldocchi & Harley 1995, Plant, Cell and Environment 18, 1157–1173).


This article reports a study that investigated how two Saudi Arabian men negotiated their positionality vis-a-vis a host community in the United States and how they engaged in different discursive practices in order to achieve fuller participation in the various worlds that became important to them. The study takes data from a larger research project that looked at the narrated experiences of nine adult learners enrolled in an intensive English program in the United States. Data were collected over a 6-month period using ethnographic data collection tools such as classroom observations, individual interviews, and student-designed second language (L2) photo narratives. The article focuses on the processes by which two language learners of a particularly politicized and racialized cultural group (Muslims of Arab descent) were able to renegotiate their peripherality through their ongoing interactions as "novices" in new L2 "expert" communities (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Although the two cases diverge in critical ways, the findings show not only how post-9/11 discourses served as powerfully marginalizing structures, but also how the learners actively managed those structures in their bids for fuller participation in L2 communities.


In a previous post, we examined the job search behavior of workers, both on the job and while unemployed. We found that job seeking is pervasive among employed workers, and that searching while employed is more effective than searching while unemployed in producing employer contacts and job offers. But how do the offers received through ?on the job? searches compare to those received while unemployed? What do their wages look like, how do they compare in terms of nonwage benefits, and how much bargaining between employers and job applicants is involved? In this post, we shed some light on how job offers may vary depending on the employment status of the job seeker.


Animals that reside, reproduce, and develop in nearshore habitats are often exposed to strong fluctuations in abiotic conditions, including temperature and salinity. We studied the developmental responses of five echinoid echinoderms (sea urchins and sand dollars) to increased temperature and reduced salinity. We aimed to document two recently described phenomena: delay of hatching (DOH) and polyembryony. First, we found that DOH is a widespread response to reduced salinity. Hatching was delayed by 79% in Echinarachnius parma, 26% in Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis, 22% in Lytechinus variegatus, and 17% in Dendraster excentricus. Only embryos of Arbacia punctulata failed to delay hatching in response to reduced salinity. Second, we observed polyembryony in both of the irregular echinoids studied (E. parma and D. excentricus). In D. excentricus, we tested the competency of twinned and normal embryos to reach metamorphosis. We found that twin embryos generated from a single egg are both capable of reaching metamorphosis. To investigate the mechanisms underlying polyembryony, we tested whether reduced Calcium levels in low salinity seawater reduce cell-cell adhesion and allow cells to separate and develop as multiple embryos within a fertilization envelope. We also tested whether osmotic stress caused swelling of the fertilization envelope, allowing embryos more room to produce multiples, or delay hatching into a later, larger stage. However, neither reduced Calcium levels nor osmotic stress alone appears sufficient to induce polyembryony. We currently hypothesize that early suppression of the hatching enzyme plays a major role in the delaying hatching and that the swelling of the hyaline layer within the fertilization envelope may facilitate polyembryony.


The field of machine programming (MP), the automation of the development of software, is making notable research advances. This is, in part, due to the emergence of a wide range of novel techniques in machine learning. In this paper, we apply MP to the automation of software performance regression testing. A performance regression is a software performance degradation caused by a code change. We present AutoPerf - a novel approach to automate regression testing that utilizes three core techniques: (i) zero-positive learning, (ii) autoencoders, and (iii) hardware telemetry. We demonstrate AutoPerf's generality and efficacy against 3 types of performance regressions across 10 real performance bugs in 7 benchmark and open-source programs. On average, AutoPerf exhibits 4% profiling overhead and accurately diagnoses more performance bugs than prior state-of-the-art approaches. Thus far, AutoPerf has produced no false negatives.


Liquid crystals are defined as the fourth state of matter forming between solid and liquid states. Earlier the applications of liquid crystals were confined to electronic instruments, but recent research findings suggest multiple applications of liquid crystals in biology and medicine. Here, the purpose of this review article is to discuss the potential biological impacts of liquid crystals in the diagnosis and prognosis of cancer along with the risk assessment. In this review, we also discussed the recent advances of liquid crystals in cancer biomarker detection and treatment in multiple cell line models. Cases reviewed here will demonstrate that cancer diagnostics based on the multidisciplinary technology and intriguingly utilization of liquid crystals may become an alternative to regular cancer detection methodologies. Additionally, we discussed the formidable challenges and problems in applying liquid crystal technologies. Solving these problems will require great effort and the way forward is through the multidisciplinary collaboration of physicists, biologists, chemists, material-scientists, clinicians, and engineers. The triumphant outcome of these liquid crystals and their applications in cancer research would be convenient testing for the detection of cancer and may result in treating the cancer patients non-invasively.


The mission of  the Eurasian Journal of Social Sciences (EJSS)  is to give opportunity to papers which tests theory and contributes to practice. All empirical methods - including, but are not limited to, qualitative, quantitative, field, laboratory, and combination methods - are welcome. Studies focused on developing countries are especially encouraged. EJSS publishes articles on topics that combines social sciences (such as politics, education, psychology, sociology but not limited to) and fields like economics, business, finance, and management. EJSS also welcomes literature surveys and book reviews. While EJSS attracts more papers from European and Asian economies, all papers from related fields on any region or country are highly encouraged. To be included in the journal, a manuscript must make empirical and/or theoretical contributions to the field. Consequently, preference is given to submissions that test, extend, or build theoretical frameworks while empirically examining issues with high importance for theory and practice. EJSS aims to give priority to manuscripts that examine countries in the Eurasia region. However, all papers from related fields on any region or country are highly encouraged. Single country studies, multi-country or regional studies could also be submitted.


The EFSA Comprehensive European Food Consumption Database (Comprehensive Database) has been built from existing national information on food consumption at a detailed level. Competent organisations in the European Union's Member States provided EFSA with data from those most recent national dietary survey in their country, at the level of consumption by the individual consumer. This included food consumption data concerning infants (2 surveys from 2 Member States), toddlers (8 surveys from 8 Member States), children (16 surveys from 14 Member States), adolescents (14 surveys from 12 Member States), adults (21 surveys from 20 Member States), elderly (9 surveys from 9 Member States) and very elderly (8 surveys from 8 Member States) for a total of 32 different dietary surveys carried out in 22 different Member States. Surveys on children were mainly obtained through the Article 36 project. Individual food consumption data and exposure assessment studies for children (acronym EXPOCHI). The aim of the present document is to give an overview of the Comprehensive Database and to provide guidance on its use for dietary exposure assessments. Summary statistics of this database are available on the EFSA website.


Transformation of XML documents is typically understood as noninteractive. In contrast, we formulate the specific task of XML–based transformation of knowledge contained in semi–formal documents, which heavily depends on human understanding of element content and thus requires frequent user intervention. Yet, many aspects of this process are predetermined, and their automation is highly desirable. We implemented a software tool (called Stepper) supporting interactive step–by–step transformation of 'knowledge blocks'. The transformation is governed by rules expressed in a new 'interactive transformation' language (called XKBT), while its non–interactive aspects are handled by embedded XSLT rules.


Freight transportation, through highway, rail, water and air, is critical to the Nation's economy. In 2002, $11,082,859 million worth of goods and services were transported throughout the nation. The volume of freight in the United States is expected to increase 70 percent by 2020. Therefore, there is a need for a reliable freight transportation system. The primary objective of this research was to create a freight analysis framework for the greater Kansas City Area so that the Kansas Department of Transportation (KDOT) will be able to properly plan for future increases in freight traffic, identify current issues and future trends regarding freight transportation in Kansas, and ensure that the transportation infrastructure throughout the state can meet future freight transportation methods. The objective was accomplished through a four-step approach. The first, a literature review, found common practices used to transport freight in and out of the state. Second, the research team collected data on the major commodities, industries, corridors, origins and destinations of the freight transportation industry in Kansas. The team also collected data on the weight and value of the shipments and the quantity by each mode (highway, rail, water, air). Third, the research team analyzed the data and developed the Kansas Freight Analysis Framework (KFAF), a commodity-destination database that estimates tonnage and value of goods shipped by type of commodity and mode of transportation. It also found the number of trucks passing through the Kansas City Metropolitan Area's highways. Finally, the team developed recommendations to KDOT for implementation of this framework. The research results demonstrate that there is a need to research the accuracy of the data and if there is a more accurate data source for the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. There is a need to apply more specific assumptions to the types of trucks used. For this study, 18 wheelers were assumed to ship all commodities. However, in reality a combination of trucks were used to ship commodities in and out of Kansas City. The through truck calculations could be improved with a more accurate way of choosing in and out locations. There is a need to consider the future intermodal facilities and the new manufacturing warehouses in the projections and forecasts of truck numbers and commodity shipments. The Missouri DOT and KDOT need to work together to create a transportation plan for the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. There is a need to study the effects of the new light rail plan on future transportation issues. There is also a need to study the effects of the through truck traffic on the Kansas City highways, such as highway capacity and road conditions.


In recent years, there has been an increase in consumer protection class action litigation in federal courts. These suits arise from a group of consumers who have felt deceived by a particular product, ceased using that product, and then tried to sue a defendant manufacturer through state consumer protection statutes. Often, these individuals seek to enjoin the defendant's use of an allegedly unfair business practice, such as "all natural" labeling. Since the plaintiff no longer uses the product, however, many district courts have refused to recognize that they may be at risk of a future injury and have held that these plaintiffs do not have standing to seek an injunction in the federal forum. This Note discusses the tension between the purposes and aims of state consumer protection statutes and the heavily ingrained—yet vague— Supreme Court precedent regarding Article III standing. While many lower courts continue to conservatively interpret the Court's decisions on standing, some California district courts have bucked this trend and begun granting consumer plaintiffs standing. This Note ultimately concludes that consumer classes must begin relying on individuals who continue to use the disputed product throughout litigation or redefine the scope of their future injury to better conform to current Supreme Court precedent.


The rapidly growing use of technology in education is changing the way in which knowledge is produced, stored and distributed. Online education has already been accepted as the way of the future; knowledge may be distributed across both time and space. Knowledge Management (KM) techniques can be used to capture, organise and deliver this knowledge and management systems can be used to quickly identify the most relevant information and distribute it to meet specific needs. In this paper, light is shed on the basic concepts of KM and e-learning. A discussion on how KM and e-learning can be integrated and leveraged for effective online education and training is presented.


Regulatory compliance has become a critical concern for many industries around the globe and investment to achieve compliance has increased drastically inline with that concern. While Information Systems (IS) are considered a part of the support architecture, anecdotal evidence suggests that organisations struggle with finding the right tools and guidance on approaches for compliance management. For this reason, we undertake a review of the current research on compliance management topics in the Information Systems domain, with the ultimate goal to carry out a gap-analysis between research-based solutions and the current needs of compliance management professionals. In this paper, we consider thirteen Information Systems journals and perform an exhaustive analysis of the type of compliance management research published at these venues in the last five years. The analysis found forty-five relevant articles, which were then further classified depending on the type of their contribution. The results of the analysis suggest that IS research in managing compliance has received increasing attention in the recent years. The study also suggests that research has predominantly focussed on exploratory studies, rather than proposition of solutions that can assist organizations in their compliance management regimens.


The chapter continues previous reviews on radiation effects in optical fibers and on the use of optical fibers/optical fiber sensors in radiation monitoring, published by InTech in 2010 and 2012, by referring to radiation effects in optical materials, with an empha‐ sis on those operating from visible to mid-IR, and on some photonic devices such as optical fibers for amplifiers, fiber Bragg gratings and long period gratings. The focus is on optical materials and fiber-based devices designed for both terrestrial and space‐ borne applications. For the presented subjects, an overview of available data on Xrays or gamma rays, electron beams, alpha particles, neutrons, and protons effects is provided. In addition, comments on dose rate, dose, and/or temperature effects on materials and devices degradation under irradiation are mentioned, where appropri‐ ate. The optical materials and photonic devices reliability under ionizing radiation exposure is discussed as well, as the opportunities to use them in developing radia‐ tion sensors or dosimeters. The chapter includes an extensive bibliography and references to last published results in the field. Novel proposed applications of photonic devices in charged particle beam diagnostics, quasi-distributed radiation field mapping and the evaluation of radiation effects in materials for mid-IR spectroscopy are briefly introduced to the reader.


Urea cycle disorders (UCDs) comprise a group of inherited defects of metabolism affecting the detoxification of excess nitrogen and, hereby, leading to hyperammonemia. The urea cycle consists of six consecutive enzymatic steps and is located both in the mitochondria and cytosol of periportal hepatocytes. In addition, two transporters are required for the urea cycle function. Besides the detoxification of excess nitrogen, the endogenous synthesis of the amino acid arginine is the second role of the urea cycle. The clinical presentation of UCDs comprises a continuum ranging from early onset hyperammonemic decompensation in severe defects to late onset presentation in less severe affected patients at any age. Since ammonia is primarily toxic to the central nervous system, signs and symptoms of UCDs are mainly neurological but, unfortunately, highly unspecific. Therefore, it can be challenging to clinically diagnose patients suffering from UCDs. If a UCD is suspected, ammonia should be measured immediately. To confirm the diagnosis, a variety of biochemical, enzymatic and genetic tools exist. Most UCD patients need a strict treatment protocol consisting of dietary protein restriction, nitrogen scavenger drugs, and vitamin and amino acid supplementations. Treatment must be followed lifelong unless liver transplantation is performed. Patients with UCDs are still affected by a poor outcome quoad vitam et sanitam. To improve both survival rates as well as the quality of life in surviving patients will largely depend on an increased awareness of all medical professionals towards this group of inherited metabolic defects.


Adhesion of cells to the extracellular matrix regulates cell survival through the activation of cell surface integrins and their associated signaling pathways. The laminin receptor α6β4 is one example of an integrin that appears to both promote cell survival and induce apoptosis, depending on the cell type. Bachelder et al. examined how this integrin mediates both responses in various carcinoma cell lines and found that when cells were deficient in the p53 tumor suppressor protein, α6β4 promoted cell survival through activation of the serine-threonine kinase AKT/Protein Kinase B (PKB). However, when p53 was expressed, activation of this integrin induced apoptosis instead. AKT/PKB inactivation occurred, in the presence of p53, through cleavage events that were initiated by caspase 3, an enzyme implicated in other p53-dependent apoptotic pathways. These findings suggest the contradictory functions of α6β4 may be associated with the presence of p53. Hence, it is possible that AKT/PKB is a mechanistic link in some cell types between tumor suppressor function and integrin signaling. Bachelder, R.E., Ribick, M.J., Marchetti, A., Falcioni, R., Soddu, S., Davis, K.R., and Mercurio, A.M. (1999) p53 inhibits α6β4 integrin survival signaling by promoting the caspase 3-dependent cleavage of AKT/PKB. J. Cell Biol. 147: 1063-1072. [Abstract] [Full Text]


Introduction: Multiple studies have reported genetic associations with prognostic outcomes of urinary bladder cancer. However, the lack of replication of these associations prohibits establishing further evidence-based research directions. Moreover, there is a lack of independent bladder cancer patient samples that contain prognostic measures, making genetic replication analyses even more challenging. Materials and Methods: We have identified 1,534 eligible patients and used data on Hospital Episode Statistics in the UK Biobank to model variables of otherwise non-collected events on bladder cancer recurrence and progression. Data on survival was extracted from the Death Registry. We have used SNPTEST software to replicate previously reported genetic associations with bladder cancer recurrence (N = 69), progression (N = 23), survival (N = 53), and age at the time of diagnosis (N = 20). Results: Using our algorithm, we have identified 618 recurrence and 58 UBC progression events. In total, there were 209 deaths (106 UBC-specific). In replication analyses, eight SNPs have reached nominal statistical significance (p < 0.05). Rs2042329 (CWC27) for UBC recurrence; rs804256, rs4639, and rs804276 (in/close to NEIL2) for NMIBC recurrence; rs2293347 (EGFR) for UBC OS; rs3756712 (PDCD6) for NMIBC OS; rs2344673 (RGS5) for MIBC OS, and rs2297518 (NOS2) for UBC progression. However, none have remained significant after adjustments for multiple comparisons. Discussion: External replication in genetic epidemiology is an essential step to identify credible findings. In our study, we identify potential genetic targets of higher interest for UBC prognosis. In addition, we propose an algorithm for identifying UBC recurrence and progression using routinely-collected data on patient interventions.


The primary objective of this study was to determine if activation of coagulation and fibrinolysis occurs in canine pleural effusions. Thirty-three dogs with pleural effusions of different origin were studied. Pleural effusion fibrinogen concentrations were significantly lower, while pleural fibrin-fibrinogen degradation products (FDPs) and D-dimer concentrations were significantly higher than those in plasma (P < 0.001 for all comparisons). These results show that, in canine pleural fluids, there is evidence of coagulation activation and fibrinolysis. The secondary aims of the current study were to determine if primary hyperfibrinolysis ([PHF] i.e., elevated plasma FDPs with a normal D-dimer concentrations), occurs in dogs with pleural effusion, and whether the presence of a concurrent inflammatory process may have activated the hemostatic cascade, with its intrinsically linked secondary hyperfibrinolysis, masking the concurrent PHF. The previously 33 selected dogs with pleural effusion (group 1) were compared to two control groups of 33 healthy (group 2) and 33 sick dogs without pleural effusion (group 3). Serum fibrinogen, FDPs, D-dimer, C-reactive protein (CRP), fibrinogen/CRP ratio, and frequency of PHF were determined. Fibrinogen, FDPs, D-dimer and CRP concentrations in group 1 were significantly increased compared to group 2 (P < 0.001 for all comparisons). FDPs and CRP concentrations in group 1 were also significantly increased compared to group 3 (P = 0.001 and P < 0.001, respectively). The fibrinogen/CRP ratio was significantly decreased in group 1 compared to groups 2 and 3 (P < 0.001 for both comparison). The frequency of PHF was significantly higher in group 1 compared to groups 2 (P = 0.004), but not compared to group 3. These results support the hypothesis that PHF occurs significantly more often in dogs with pleural effusion compared to healthy dogs. Nevertheless, the decrease in the fibrinogen/CRP ratio in group 1 compared to group 3, considering the higher FDPs and similar D-dimer concentrations, would suggest that PHF is also more frequent in dogs with pleural effusion compared to sick control dogs, and that this phenomenon is hidden due to concurrent secondary hyperfibrinolysis.


A green, genereal and efficient synthesis of amidoalkyl naphthols using succinic acid as a catalyst for the three-component condensation reaction of 2-naphthol, aldehydes and amides/urea under thermal solvent-free conditions is described. The advantages of this protocol are excellent yields, short reaction time, simple work-up, higher availability economical attraction, low cost catalyst, lack of toxicity and more environmentally friendly catalyst.


In this pioneering book Daniel Usner examines the economic and cultural interactions among the Indians, Europeans, and African slaves of colonial Louisiana, including the province of West Florida. Rather than focusing on a single cultural group or on a particular economic activity, this study traces the complex social linkages among Indian villages, colonial plantations, hunting camps, military outposts, and port towns across a large region of pre-cotton South. Usner begins by providing a chronological overview of events from French settlement of the area in 1699 to Spanish acquisition of West Florida after the Revolution. He then shows how early confrontations and transactions shaped the formation of Louisiana into a distinct colonial region with a social system based on mutual needs of subsistence. Usner's focus on commerce allows him to illuminate the motives in the contest for empire among the French, English, and Spanish, as well as to trace the personal networks of communication and exchange that existed among the territory's inhabitants. By revealing the economic and social world of early Louisianians, he lays the groundwork for a better understanding of later Southern society.


All scientific and intellectual endeavours advance by building on earlier observations. In organismal biology, we can in fact directly replicate original studies of morphology and anatomy, when the original material is still present and accessible in the permanent care of museums. We refer to the apparently miraculous "Lazarisation" of these historical specimens, when the application of state-of-the-art scientific techniques brings new life to material in natural history collections. Classical anatomical, histological and palaeontological work established our fundamental understanding of the natural world over centuries of meticulous and dedicated research, much of which remains unsurpassed to this day. Many of these original specimens are still available to active researchers through dedicated permanent collections in the care of universities and museums. An explosion of advancing methods in recent decades has opened new avenues of research that can exploit invaluable historical material. We review the application of novel techniques, primarily new imaging methods, to historic and important specimens. The pursuit of ultra-high resolution magnification, three-dimensional digital modelling, non-invasive scanning techniques, and, increasingly, elemental analyses all have enormous implications for the future of morphology. Palaeontology, comparative anatomy, and development in particular make ideal platforms for the exploitation of these new techniques. These methods are revolutionizing our use of museum collections and reinventing their role in modern morphological research, which comes at a time of increasing threat to collections and museum curation funding. Future innovations in imaging and non-invasive analyses will doubtless accelerate the renewed research efforts dedicated to existing specimens. Most importantly, we celebrate the continued contributions to morphology from these invaluable pieces of our scientific heritage. How to cite this article: Sumner-Rooney L., Sigwart D. 2017. Lazarus in the museum: resurrecting historic specimens through new technology // Invert. Zool. Vol.14. No.1. P.73– 84. doi: 10.15298/invertzool.14.1.11


In this article, we are interested in flow downstream a horizontal axis wind turbine. First the experimental investigations are carried out by means of the PIV measurements. To obtain the flow field in a rotating frame of reference in which the rotor appears fixed, the phase-locked technique is applied. To ensure synchronization between the camera, the lasers and the angular position of the blade an optical sensor is used. At each turn of the rotor the sensor gives a signal, which permits to detect the vertical position of reference blade. This signal is introduced in a delay circuit so that image acquisition takes place according to desired azimuth angles. Explorations are carried out in planes with the angles 0, 30, 60 and 90deg. Due to the camera resolution and the laser power the dimension of one single window of examination is equal to 300 x 300 mm. Because of large dimensions of the flow field studied, each azimuthal plane is divided into 6 windows. Then for each window, the velocity field is obtained by averaging the results of 95 pairs of image. Next, the 3D velocity field is reconstituted by treating the results of images corresponding to the explored azimuth planes. These results are compared with RANS numerical simulation. Generally the numerical results are coherent with experiments, but some discrepancy concerning wind turbine power is revealed.


I Heralded as "the most famous photo in the history of jazz,"1 Art Kane's 1958 group portrait of fifty-seven of the leading musicians of the "golden age" of jazz has certainly attained iconic stature. The inspiration for Jean Bach's Oscarnominated documentary film, A Great Day in Harlem (1994), that single photographic frame, capturing a gathering of jazz figures both major and minor on the stoop and on the sidewalk in front of a brownstone on West 126th Street in Harlem, has morphed into a multipaned virtual window into a world unto itself, inviting viewers to reflect deeply on the music, the personalities, the livelihoods, the lifestyles of a vibrant subculture. Dramatizing the convergence, on an ordinary August morning in New York City, of both luminaries and lesser lights -Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Count Basic, Coleman Hawkins, and Lester Young at one end of the spectrum, and Bill Crump, Dickie Wells, Buster Bailey, and Miff Mole at the other-the combination of the film and its spin-off book of essays and reminiscences, The Great Jazz Day (1999), verifies engagingly the galvanizing agent of jazz in the lives of immortals and mere mortals alike. Intrinsically, film and book also draw viewers into the story behind the photo shoot, the results of which appeared in Esquire in January 1959: the serendipity of Kane even receiving the assignment (his first ever); the challenge that he faced not just in assembling the musicians but in keeping them together for the four hours needed to complete the shoot (apparently only pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith strayed outside the angle of the camera's lens); and the related challenge of getting them agreeably positioned along the sidewalk and on the stoop. Clearly, Kane's photo supports the old adage that every picture tells a story ... or two. But it also supports a corollary to that adagethat different kinds of pictures tell different kinds of stories -as Kane's perspective on the art, or the craft, of photographic portraiture may reflect as much on what his photo fails to register vis-a-vis jazz-as-subject as on what it actually records. Indeed, Kane's claim to photographic fame came long before Bach's filmic resurrection of "Four Decades of Jazz Musicians" (as Esquire referred to his photo); in fact, that "most famous photo" anticipates the work that would make him a legend in his own time during the 1960s - carefully posed shots of such emerging rock music stars as The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and The Who. Admitting that his portrait of The Who draped in the Union Jack derives from Henri CartierBresson's well-known photo of a vagrant sleeping in Trafalgar Square on George VI's Coronation Day in 1937, Kane clearly practiced in these photos the philosophy that he once preached in a lecture: "Performance shots are a waste of time, they look like everyone else's. If you want to shoot a performer, then grab them, own them, you have to own people, then twist them into what you want to say about them" ("Art Kane: Biography"). In this respect, in presenting not a caughtin-the-act moment on stage or bandstand -the evocative stock-in-trade of most jazz photographers -but a staged moment, a manufactured occasion,2 Kane's "Four Decades of Jazz Musicians" differs radically from the expansive catalogue of enduring photographs registering the jazz world of the 1940s and 1950s. Including the work of William Gottlieb, William Claxton, Chuck Stewart, Lee Tanner, Dennis Stock, Ray Avery, Duncan Schiedt, Roy DeCarava, Herman Leonard, and Francis Woolf, these photographs typically aimed to capture not the static features of a calculated pose but the truly dynamic -the inherently ephemeral-nature of musicians utterly and unselfconsciously immersed in artistic creation. Many of them have entered the popular field of vision, achieving collectively the permanence of a public archive, a distinctive graphic complement to the richness of the music itself: Leonard's 1949 portrait of Ella Fitzgerald lost in song before an enraptured Duke Ellington and a mesmerized Benny Goodman at the Downbeat jazz club in New York; his photo of a smokeenshrouded Dexter Gordon at ease between solos in 1948; Gottlieb's 1948 headshot of Billie Holiday that, in his own estimation, "succeeded in capturing the beauty of her face and the pain in her voice" (Gottlieb, Golden Age 98); Tanner's close-up of Cootie Williams pinching breath into and notes out of his trumpet at Connolly's in Boston in 1959; Stock's image of Miles Davis performing m a halo of light at New York City's Birdland in 1958; and any number of Bluenote album covers by Woolf. …


Across the globe, both cyclical downturns and structural changes episodically eliminate substantial numbers of jobs and in the process create serious dislocations. For instance, the rise in joblessness because of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis is projected to be extraordinarily steep. As a response to job displacements, governments have implemented a range of measures to financially compensate displaced workers, assist them in finding reemployment, or both. The challenges should not be minimized: job losses have significant economic as well as social and psychological consequences; laid-off workers often lack the skills or geographic proximity to easily transfer to sectors that are growing; and providing adequate support can be expensive. Nonetheless, careful public policy responses can help mitigate the costs of job displacements and support workers in finding productive reemployment.


Abstract In this paper I raise a difficulty for Joseph LaPorte's account of chemical kind terms. LaPorte has argued against Putnam that H2O content is neither necessary nor sufficient to fix the reference of the kind term 'water' and that we did not discover that water is H2O. To this purpose, he revisits Putnam's Twin Earth story with the fictional scenario of Deuterium Earth, whose ocean consists of 'dwater', to conclude that we did not discover that deuterium oxide is (a kind of) water (usually called 'heavy water'). Instead, according to LaPorte, by including deuterium oxide in the extension of the term 'water', we simply refined our vague use of the term 'water'. But we could have decided to exclude deuterium oxide from the extension of the term 'water'. Let us call this the thesis of semantic stipulation. I raise two problems for LaPorte's Deuterium Earth story. First, I show that 'dwater' (i.e. deuterium oxide not as a kind of water) does not have the same scientific credibility of 'heavy water' (i.e. deuterium oxide as a kind of water). Second, I argue that for the thesis of semantic stipulation to go through one would need to show that 'dwater' is semantically on a par with 'heavy water'. Namely, one would need to show that 'dwater' is a projectible kind term, capable of supporting inductive inferences. But, in fact, it is not, because the term is vulnerable to an unwelcome Goodmanian scenario, unless one surreptitiously reintroduces some Putnamian assumptions about D2O content being necessary and sufficient to fix the reference of the term.


Opioids are cationic compounds that mediate their biological action through three highly homologous receptors (mu, delta, and kappa) known to belong to the G protein-coupled receptor (GPR) family. The third putative transmembrane domain of opioid receptors contains a conserved aspartate residue that is typically found in biogenic amine binding GPRs and is generally believed to form an ion pair with the cationic neurotransmitters. Using site-directed mutagenesis, we investigated the possibility of an identical role for this residue (Asp128) in the mouse delta-opioid receptor. Removal of the carboxylate group via an aspartate-to-alanine mutation did not modify binding affinity of a representative set of opioid compounds, including bremazocine, diprenorphine, naloxone, Tyr-D-Thr-Gly-Phe-Leu-Thr, [D-Ala2,D-Leu5]enkephalin, cyclic[D-penicillamine2,D-penicillamine5]enkephalin, deltorphin II, (+/-)-4-[(a-R*)-a-[(2S*,5R*)-4-allyl-2,5-di-methyl-1- piperazinyl]-3-hydroxybenzyl]-N,N-diethylbenzamide, and naltrindole. It nevertheless decreased receptor expression level and affected the binding of three agonists ([D-Ala2,D-Leu5]enkephalin, Tyr-D-Thr-Gly-Phe-Leu-Thr, and (+/-)-4-[(a-R*)-a-[(2S*,5R*)-4-allyl-2,5-di- methyl-1-piperazinyl]-3-hydroxybenzyl]-N,N-diethylbenzamide) when the receptor was under Na(+)-induced low affinity state. On the other hand, the aspartate-to-asparagine mutation strongly impaired the binding of all of the above ligands and highlighted differential modes of interaction for alkaloids and peptides. Finally, removal of the homologous carboxylate group in the mouse mu receptor had distinct effects because it dramatically reduced the binding potency of some, but not all, tested ligands. Taken together, these results demonstrate that (i) the direct ligand/receptor interaction previously demonstrated for the beta-adrenergic receptor does not take place in the delta receptor, (ii) Asp128 nevertheless contributes to stabilization of the spatial conformation of the binding pocket, and (iii) these conclusions cannot be extended to the closely related mu receptor.


How an area measuring no more than about 11,000 square kilometers could become arguably "ground zero" for the formation of post-Cold War international law is a bit of a mystery, but the province (and now country) of Kosovo, in the late twentieth/early twenty-first centuries, somehow managed to pull off that feat. In Contested Statehood: Kosovo's Struggle for Independence Marc Weller provides the best history to date of the Kosovo crisis from the end of the Cold War up to the point that Kosovo's independence was declared in February 2008. In its July 2009 advisory opinion on that legality of that Declaration, the International Court of Justice avoided a lengthy account of Kosovo's contemporary history, hewing closely to just those facts and law necessary to answer the narrow question before it. As such, anyone interested in the backdrop for the Court's advisory opinion would do well to keep Contested Statehood close at hand.


When cat V1/V2 cells are adapted to contrast at their optimal orientation, a reduction in gain and/or a shift in the contrast response function is found. We investigated how these factors combine at the population level to affect the accuracy for detecting variations in contrast. Using the contrast response function parameters from a physiologically measured population, we model the population accuracy (using Fisher information) for contrast discrimination. Adaptation at 16%, 32%, and 100% contrast causes a shift in peak accuracy. Despite an overall drop in firing rate over the whole population, accuracy is enhanced around the adapted contrast and at higher contrasts, leading to greater efficiency of contrast coding at these levels. The estimated contrast discrimination threshold curve becomes elevated and shifted toward higher contrasts after adaptation, as has been found previously in human psychophysical experiments.


The aim of this study was to compare 11 treatment regimes (TR) in grapevine nurseries in order to eradicate trunk pathogens. Grapevine propagation material was subjected to treatments before cold storage, before and after grafting, before planting and after uprooting. Isolations were made from roots, rootstocks and graft unions of uprooted vines. None of the treatments consistently affected the number of certifiable vines produced. TR 1 (benomyl), TR 3 (Sporekill) and TR 4 (Trichoflow) increased root mass. Phaeomoniella chlamydospora was the most frequently isolated pathogen from all plant parts. In general, TR 2, 7, 9 and 11 caused the lowest occurrence of Phaeomoniella. TR 9 consistently reduced the incidence of Phaeoacremonium. Pleurostomophora richardsiae occurred most frequently in graft unions, but treatments were too inconsistent to draw meaningful conclusions. TR 7 (hot water treatment (HWT) of uprooted grapevines) consistently reduced incidences of black foot disease (BFD) pathogens. The highest incidence of Botryosphaeriaceae occurred in graft unions, but all treatments significantly reduced infections. The colonisation of rootstocks and graft unions by Trichoderma was significantly better with TR 4 (Trichoflow). The other Trichoderma treatments (TR 9, 10 and 11) differed from the control treatment only in the graft unions. This is a first report of an integrated strategy covering all the phases of the propagation process, from the moment the nursery receives the propagation material until the dormant vines are removed. TR 9 is recommended for use in nurseries, although HWT of dormant vines is recommended to eradicate BFD pathogens. Benomyl can be replaced by carbendazim when benomyl is no longer available.


In the United States, farm-workers are traditionally excluded from the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and from the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) which guarantee basic rights to workers, including the right to organize and engage in collective bargaining. In a sense, farm-workers are confined to a secondary market characterized by substandard wages and labor conditions. This study explores how migrant farm-workers in North Carolina have responded to their labor conditions with a campaign that culminated in the achievement of the first labor contract for guest-workers in US history. Based on ethnographic research, it reflects upon the role of grassroots organizing in challenging a culture of racism that has remained dangerously alive in many parts of our society.


This study aimed to assess the knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) of food handlers in relation to food safety. Data collection was conducted using questionnaires that were completed by food handlers working in foodservice in public universities. Data were also collected by direct observation of food handlers performing their routines, the foodservice premises, and detection of pathogens in randomly selected food samples. Questionnaires were completed by 260 food handlers, and 130 food handlers were observed. Eleven public universities located across Malaysia were involved. Thirty-three premises were observed, and 127 randomly selected food samples were collected for pathogen detection. Rasch model analysis was used for validation, odds ratios were determined, and multivariate analysis of variance was performed to determine the relationships between the variables. The majority of the food handlers had not received any formal food safety training; therefore, they did not have a high level of general food safety knowledge, and corresponding behavioural practices were lacking. The majority of the food handlers who had completed training had higher knowledge scores than those who had not, but this was not statistically significant. Food handlers with or without training demonstrated knowledge of risks of foodborne illnesses, time and temperature abuse, improper hand washing as well as cleaning practices. Overall, food handlers' attitudes toward food safety were positive regardless of food safety training. Lower attitudes scores for food safety and personal hygiene were found among the food handlers in the foodservice industry. The following unsafe practices were observed: inadequate hand washing, misuse of gloves, inaccurate use of thermometers, incorrect holding and storage of food, poor personal hygiene, and improper cleaning and sanitizing of work surfaces. A farther finding that should be of great concern to law-enforcing bodies, such as the Ministry of Health, is that pathogens, such as Escherichia coli 0157:H7, E. coli 0157, and Vibrio cholerae, were detected in food samples. Recommendations are made to improve the KAP of food handlers. Greater emphasis should also be placed on increasing food handlers' personal sense of responsibility for food safety, increasing their food safety knowledge, and improving their food safety practices. Further studies are also needed to better understand how training affects food handlers' KAP. Recognizing the need for training programs that are accessible and relevant to institutional managers and food handlers, this research seeks to determine what prevents foodservice managers from allowing employees to participate in food safety training.


How should fitness be measured to determine which phenotype or "strategy" is uninvadable when evolution occurs in subdivided populations subject to local demographic and environmental heterogeneity? Several invasion fitness measures, such as basic reproductive number, lifetime dispersal success of a local lineage, or inclusive fitness have been proposed to address this question, but the relationships between them and their generality remains unclear. Here, we ascertain uninvadability (all mutant strategies always go extinct) in terms of the growth rate of a mutant allele arising as a single copy in a population. We show from this growth rate that uninvadability is equivalently characterized by at least three conceptually distinct invasion fitness measures: (i) lineage fitness, giving the average personal fitness of a randomly sampled mutant lineage member; (ii) inclusive fitness, giving a reproductive value weighted average of the direct fitness cost and relatedness weighted indirect fitness benefits accruing to a randomly sampled mutant lineage member; and (iii) three types of reproductive numbers, giving lifetime success of a local lineage. Our analysis connects approaches that have been deemed different, generalizes the exact version of inclusive fitness to class-structured populations, and provides a biological interpretation of selection on a mutant allele under arbitrary strength of selection.


Thesis (M.A.)--Georgetown University, 2009.; Includes bibliographical
 references. Integration problems among Europe's Muslims have led to alienation and resentment,
 leading some Muslims to turn to extremist groups and terrorist violence. Muslims living in
 Germany are among the least integrated Muslims of the major European countries, with some of
 the highest unemployment rates and lowest levels of education. The problem is likely to get
 worse in the near future due to changing demographics in which the German birth rate is
 declining and the Muslim birth rate is increasing. This paper contends that Germany's Muslim
 integration problem was caused by the political situation in divided Germany during the Cold
 War. After reunification the German government became somewhat `normalized', and has tried to
 correct the problem through changes to its laws on immigration, citizenship and political
 asylum, as well as new integration policies. The government is making the legal changes
 necessary for successful integration however the wider social changes that are necessary for
 integration have been slow to change. These changes must be made or Germany and the rest of
 the world may be subject to more terrorist threats and violence. It is an important issue for
 Germany as well as for global security.


The Venture Capital and Private Equity industry in India has grown significantly in recent years. Using the data from the years 2004 – 08, the life cycle analysis provides findings that can impact the long term growth of the industry. A large proportion of the deals are round 1 investments with a dramatic drop in subsequent rounds.  Most investments are in late stage financing and take place many years after the incorporation of the investee firm. The industry is also characterized by the short duration of the investments. To ensure long term growth of the industry in India, investments should be made in early stage financing, investors should stay invested for a longer duration, and larger rounds of funding should be made in the portfolio companies.


This study presents the modeling of the system of educational facilities included in a large city or a municipality, to facilitate a decision regarding the optimum location of a new educational facility. As will be shown, the allocation of a new school is a multidimensional one and for this reason, a particularly complex decision will have to be made, based on examining a large number of variables, relating both to the deficiencies in areas shown per each educational level, as well as the available land for erecting schools located within the urban area of study. The complexity of this decision necessarily leads to the modeling of the educational system and its management, using GIS. Specifically, the analysis data, which needs to be integrated into the GIS, is presented along with the process of analysis, interpretation and the conclusion drawing relating to the problems of the existing situation in conjunction with the methodology of finding those critical spatial entities, where the construction of a new, and of a particular level, educational installation, is more urgent. For the application of the methodology, the educational system of Thessaloniki, Greece, will be used as a case study.


Collating conviction data reported by Texas Department of Public Safety, crime data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and census data, it's possible to determine relative criminality of handgun carry licensees to their equivalent non-licensee population. This paper analyzes Texas carry licensees versus non-licensee Texans over age 21 to determine relative criminality, and also cites research enabling a comparison between police officer malfeasance and carry licensees.
There are five sections in this report:
• Conviction rates determine relative criminality of each population. • Carry licensees more law-abiding than police officers. • Carry licensees are more law-abiding than non-licensees. • Over 96% FBI crime reduction, if non-licensees were as law-abiding. • About $10 billion annual savings, if non-licensees were as law-abiding.


The aim of this paper is to use Monte Carlo simulation to analyse the effect of stream data variation on the economic performance of retrofit designs. The input stream data is fitted to a distribution which can be sampled from to calculate the outputs of the Heat Exchanger Network model, stochastically. A simple four-stream problem is used to demonstrate the method, comparing two retrofit designs that each reduce the hot utility by 700 kW. Monte Carlo simulation analyses how the similar designs behave differently under the variable conditions and the results show that time-average analysis can not only overestimate the Total Retrofit Profit but can also favour a different design to that favoured by the Monte Carlo results. Of the two compared designs, the Design 2 was selected with an annual Total Retrofit Profit of NZD 215,553, requiring one new exchanger and additional area on an existing one. The Monte Carlo analysis also shed light on controllability and feasibility issues in the Heat Exchanger Network.


In this paper we use data coming from the new Italian Survey on Health Ageing and Wealth (SHAW) to analyse physician services utilization in Italy explicitly acknowledging the existence of two different classes of providers: public and private. We consider visits by a specialist physician as the measure of individual services utilization. In particular we assess the relative importance of variables like income, education, private insurance and supply characteristics as determinants of the utilization of such services, while controlling for individual health and need. We do that by estimating some alternative count data regression models of which we discuss the relative advantages and disadvantages and the entailed different interpretation of the results.


TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I. THE EVOLUTION AND CURRENT LANDSCAPE OF THE SIXTH AMENDMENT'S CONFRONTATION CLAUSE A. The Confrontation Clause: General Background B. What Triggers Confrontation Clause Protections? C. What is Testimonial? D. What Is a Witness? E. Post-Melendez-Diaz Forensic Evidence II. CHILD PORNOGRAPHY PROSECUTION COMPELS US TO REEXAMINE THE CONFRONTATION CLAUSE A. Child Pornography Is Cyber Crime B. The Convictions in United States v. Cameron 1. Internet Account Information and Activity Records 2. Receipts of Yahoo! CP 3. NCMEC's CyberTipline Reports III. CONFRONTATION CLAUSE QUESTIONS FOR THE DIGITAL AGE A. How Should We Weigh Logistical Concerns? B. Is a Surrogate Witness Sufficient? C. Is the Confrontation Clause Insulation Against Error, or Is It Something Else? IV. CONCLUSION AND WHY THIS MATTERS A. What's at Stake? B. The Need for a New Dialogue The ideal society is not outside of the real society; it is part of it. Far from being divided between them as between two poles which mutually repel each other, we cannot hold to one without holding to the other ... [T]hese conflicts which break forth are not between the ideal and reality, but between two ideals, that of yesterday and that of to-day. --Jurgen Habermas (1) INTRODUCTION In this paper I argue that as digital information becomes more prolific and data gathering operates yet more independently of human control, we will need to reconsider the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause rights. The Court has attempted to untangle Confrontation Clause implications in the areas of lab forensics, including urinalysis results and DNA testing. (2) However, child pornography prosecution represents a new manifestation of constitutional questions regarding digital forensic evidence, and as an Internet crime, it forms a case study for the difficulty in applying constitutional case law to Internet evidence. (3) Child pornography prosecution involves fairly traditional business records collected in the ordinary course of Internet business, and it also includes data collected or aggregated in response to a reported suspicion of criminality. Specific questions arising from these forms of digitized, aggregated evidence prompt broad questions--Who is the witness to an Internet crime? How is that witness to be examined? Ultimately, how do we preserve the guarantees of process that foster a sense of justice in trials? I begin in Part I with a general review of developments leading to the current landscape of the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause protections, including factors informing determinations of what is testimonial and what it means to require confrontation of a witness. In Part II, I offer examples in current case law involving forensic evidence and the Confrontation Clause, which has been in urinalysis cases and the use of DNA evidence. In Part Ill, I delve into the fairly new questions raised by the use of Internet records in child pornography prosecution, looking at the First Circuit's holding in United States v. Cameron in particular. (4) Finally, in Part IV, I explore some of the broader questions that the transition to digital records raises and I argue that we need to make a decision as to the intent and therefore the substance of the Confrontation Clause in the context of digital evidence. I. THE EVOLUTION AND CURRENT LANDSCAPE OF THE SIXTH AMENDMENT'S CONFRONTATION CLAUSE A. The Confrontation Clause: General Background The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment guarantees, "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to ... be confronted with the witnesses against him...." (5) That is, it proscribes the admission of hearsay statements. (6) The Supreme Court clarified that the right is one of "face-to-face" confrontation. (7) Despite the blanket phrasing of the Confrontation Clause's guarantee, the Supreme Court recognized explicitly as early as 1895 that the right of confrontation is "subject to exceptions, recognized long before the adoption of the Constitution. …


Histogenesis of fatty marrow in extramedullary sites was compared to histogenesis of the red marrow. Both tissues undergo a similar sequence of events leading to reconstruction of hemopoietic marrow nodules. Histogenesis of yellow marrow then continues; such implants become nodules of fatty marrow, whereas implants of red marrow remain hemopoietically active. This observation supports the concept that histogenesis of the bone marrow recapitulates the ontogeny of this organ and indicates an intrinsic difference between the stroma of red and yellow marrow.


Industrial process automation systems are adopting event based communication. Pushing control loops towards low-level devices implies a need for lightweight embedded devices that are able to recognize and to react to events. Atomic events however, such as a value read by an individual sensor exceeding certain value, do not separately suffice to capture scenarios where a reaction should occur to a sequence of low-level events matching certain pattern, rather than to a single atomic event. Therefore, it becomes desirable that resource-constrained low-level devices are equipped with some, possibly lightweight, form of event filtering and processing. In this paper we propose to implement a lightweight complex event processing using the concurrent reactive objects (CRO) model. A core feature of the CRO model is its s ability to react to atomic events. Between the reactions, which basically are function executions, the system remains idle, and thus does not occupy the CPU and is energy-efficient. Additionally, CRO models can be executed in an efficient and predictable manner onto resource constrained platforms and offers low-overhead real-time scheduling through exploiting underlying interrupt hardware according to given time constraints.


Life Cycle Costing (LCC) technique, is a useful and effective tool widely used in engineering, manufacturing, and business. It features easy-processing, cost-effectiveness, and directly provides numerical results, all of which can be used in the function of cost control, optimal alternatives selection, asset or products assessment, budget planning, preliminary design, project feasibility study, etc. This research, "Life Cycle Costing for Office Buildings in Canada" has been carried out with emphases on investment, development, assessment and management decision-making at the early stage. The computing model is designed for quick and inexpensive OB property evaluating system. The study of historical and current cost data for predicting future cost is one of the features of the LCC technique. The data is obtained from different data sources gathered by contact with government agencies, local real estate companies, BOMA International; as well as from surveys (questionnaires); e-mail; Internet; telephones and inter-library loans. The research has established a data treatment system and database management system; practiced statistics, financing modeling, data regression, and costs forecasting. The main purpose of an LCC analysis is to provide numerical results, which is an important part in the decision-making process. The research methodology and computing model have been developed in order to measure the total net present value (TNPV). Computer programs entitled ${\bf OFFICE\sb-LCC98}$ and ${\bf OFFICE\sb-DB98}$ has been developed and implemented to assist the LCC study. Lastly, this study is unique from previous works in that it assigns examples for explaining speculative office building development and determination of economic rental rates in real estate (RE) practice. And it applies the LCC technique with traditional RE appraisal methods for OB evaluation, as well as setting up a reference for other commercial RE market LCC applications.


Abstract We analyse a sample of 1,652 elliptical galaxies morphologically selected from the SDSS DR4 with respect to their stellar population properties such as luminosity weighted ages, metallicities and α/Fe element abundance ratios. We confirm and statistically strengthen earlier results that all three stellar population parameters correlate with velocity dispersion, hence galaxy mass. Most surprisingly and differently from previous work, however, these scaling relations turn out to be independent of environmental density for the bulk of the population. This implies that the formation epochs and timescales of the stellar populations in massive galaxies are entirely independent of the environmental density and only driven by galaxy mass. At the low-mass end some fraction of the galaxies show signs of recent star formation on top of the general downsizing trend. It is only the fractional amount of such rejuvenated galaxies that reveals strong dependence with environment. The influence of the environment apparently undergoes a phase transition at about z∼ 1. An early galaxy formation phase without environmental dependence is followed by a rejuvenation phase at redshifts below z∼ 1 affecting mostly low-mass galaxies, during which the environment plays a crucial role.


A weighted potential methodology is developed by utilizing pure mode I and mode II energy release rate experiments to determine the traction-separation relations for thin adhesive layers. The experimentally measured energy release rates act as boundary conditions for developing a weighted potential function. Thus, the tractions for any mixed mode loading can be established. Changes of mode mix during an experiment can also be captured by the law since every mixed mode variation is given by the potential function. Furthermore, by use of an inverse J-integral approach and damage type variables, the traction-separation relations for any mode mix can be approximated by use of pure mode experiments. Numerical simulations show the applicability of the methodology. The results indicate that the methodology is promising when simulating the constitutive behavior of adhesive layers.


We study single-candidate voting embedded in a metric space, where both voters and candidates are points in the space, and the distances between voters and candidates specify the voters' preferences over candidates. In the voting, each voter is asked to submit her favorite candidate. Given the collection of favorite candidates, a mechanism for eliminating the least popular candidate finds a committee containing all candidates but the one to be eliminated.
Each committee is associated with a social value that is the sum of the costs (utilities) it imposes (provides) to the voters. We design mechanisms for finding a committee to optimize the social value. We measure the quality of a mechanism by its distortion, defined as the worst-case ratio between the social value of the committee found by the mechanism and the optimal one. We establish new upper and lower bounds on the distortion of mechanisms in this single-candidate voting, for both general metrics and well-motivated special cases.


This study seeks to develop an instructional resource for active teaching and learning of colour mixing and application in visual art. This would assist students to develop experiential colour mixing methods and colour application skills derived from the new colour theory exercises. The tool would also provide knowledge for students and lecturers to appreciate how instructional media can enhance the understanding of colour theory and its application to colour work. It is the hypothesis that the sample instructional resource be used for active teaching and learning of complex of colour systems. The population was the School of Applied Art Takoradi Technical University. A sample size of 384 was use for the study, including students and lectures. Interviews and observation was used for data collection. Findings from testing revealed that the tool made teaching and learning of Colour as active as possible. The students were not subjected to passive roles during the instructional hours as was found during the observation of teaching and learning in the various classes prior to the innovation.


| In recent decades, environmental crisis has been regarded as the most critical humans' concerns. Besides, sustainable development as a holistic approach plays a noticeable role in meeting the challenges and problems raised by this crisis. One of the most practical methods to develop the concepts of sustainable development is teaching these concepts to various people of the societies. Meanwhile, education especially in elementary school, considered as the most basic education levels in every societies, is one of most important objectives of fostering future generations for living in the society. This paper aims to propose an ecological pattern of education for sustainable development through elementary school ground by applying the research method based on documentary studies, reviewing the sources, and their analysis. The assumption is that the school ground especially in terms of designing based on sustainable development principals, can act as a 3D book. It is also assumed that school ground has the potentiality to teach the concepts of sustainability to the students and people involved in the school. Accordingly, a model is presented for school ground based on the three principals of sustainable design including economy of resources, life cycle, and humanistic design. The outcomes show that designing school ground based on these principals can extensively teach the concepts of sustainable development to students and other individuals in school.


Detecting the frequency of the mains supply is a crucial component of maintaining the grid frequency at its nominal level. Most frequency counters enable the user to monitor frequencies but monitoring frequency variations at a high resolution is often expensive. Electronic systems that measure frequency also have to generate a local time base to calculate the frequency upon. All time bases suffer from the effect of frequency jitter, which makes the timing source deviate from the nominal second by a quantified amount. Modern systems have improved drastically and have relatively insignificant jitter for most timing applications, but high-precision applications require a quantification of this source of timing error.

The purpose of this thesis is to document the background, implementation, testing, results and identified future improvements for a frequency meter that can record minor fluctuations of the grid frequency. By achieving this objective, the grid supply and demand data can be logged and used for several applications, such as network forecasting or maintaining nominal grid frequency.

An extensive research period was required to determine key design facets pertaining to the frequency meter. Key identified tasks included choosing a timing source, finding a suitable software development platform and associated hardware, developing a graphical software implementation that displays real-time frequency fluctuations, contingency alarming for nominal frequency deviation events, communications design between the frequency meter and the PC, quantifying clock precision and evaluating the performance of the final frequency meter.

A GPS time source was chosen to provide an accurate source of 1 second pulses. An Arduino Due microcontroller used a KX-7 quartz crystal oscillator to maintain its time base and the accuracy of the KX-7's time base was analysed against the Trimble Copernicus II and GlobalSat EM406-A GPS receivers' time base. When analysed relative to the GPS receivers' accurate time base, the KX-7 maintained a low time base variation, well within it's data sheet specifications.

The Arduino Due microcontroller was programmed and provided relevant frequency data to a LabVIEW PC terminal, which allowed frequency visualisation, data storage, grid frequency contingency detection, recovery time logging, GPS initialisation data and cross-platform communication protocols.

Frequency data was logged on the frequency meter and was able to provide a microHertz resolution. The primary limitation of the design was low-level noise on the mains supply line as this affected the designed electronics when logging frequency measurements below the milliHertz range. Multiple recommendations for future work have been identified and included in this report.


Discrete event simulation (DES) is an appropriate framework for the plant-wide analysis of copper smelters. These smelters apply a common set of chemical reactions: copper-iron sulfides are blasted with oxygen-enriched air, sending the iron into a slag phase and the sulfur into the offgas. Moreover, conventional copper smelters exhibit similar operational dynamics: a smelting furnace operates continually, feeding into an alternating set of converters that produce batches of blister copper. The thermochemical and operational commonalities of copper smelters are integrated within the DES framework. This serves as a common basis to begin evaluating the system dynamics of individual smelters. For complex problems, the simulation framework should be developed in phases, incorporating feedback from different personnel who have complementary perspectives. Sample computations are provided in this paper based on the Hernán Videla Lira smelter, whose production is constrained by meteorological conditions.


This document reports the results of the fourth workshop run by the project "Policy Dialogues on a Bioeconomy for Sustainable Development". The project is co-financed by the Swedish Innovation Agency, Vinnova, and the SEI Governing Bioeconomy Pathways initiative. The overarching goal of the project is to facilitate a more constructive dialogue on the development of the global bioeconomy. There is a particular focus on analysing national and regional contexts in order to gain a better understanding of what is envisaged by a sustainable bioeconomy and the possible mechanisms for achieving bioeconomy-related goals.


Access to higher education has continuously been a challenge in Uganda. The research brought out the relationship between financial inclusion and access to higher education. Descriptive survey research design was adopted and the findings established that digital financing eases making deposits in banks, transacting via mobile money and switching from one bank to the other. Students find it easy to deposit tuition in the bank just as they find it easy to access money via mobile money. While financial inclusion makes financial services available in the economy, students, especially those from low-income families find difficulty accessing a wider range of these products, which hinders their access to higher education. The study also establishes that a good number of students fail to meet admission requirements. Since students from low-income families attend high schools of low quality, they have insufficient understanding of some subjects, and thus unable to join higher education. Online registration and payment, students' decision not to join, peer influence, and rigidity of university programs; are deeply flawed to limit accessing higher education. However, financial services remain accessible to rich individuals who demonstrate ability to pay. The study recommends that the government of Uganda through the concerned ministry should review the implementation of their policies on Students loan scheme and district quota systems. The government should always publish the lists of students admitted to higher education institutions in popular media and newspapers to create awareness to those being admitted to particular institutions. Keywords: Financial Inclusion. Digital Financing, Financial Services, Access to Higher Education, Higher Education Financing DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/12-17-10 Publication date: June 30th 2020


Motivated by wide cross-sectional variations in intensity of care that are unrelated to quality of care, researchers and policymakers commonly claim that healthcare providers waste considerable resources, engaging in so-called "flat-of-the-curve" medicine. A key yet elusive prediction of this hypothesis is that providers ought to be able to cut back on care without sacrificing quality. This article examines the effects of a particular form of provider cutbacks—those generated by physicians working in high-pressure peer group environments. Using expansive, time-stamped discharge data from 137 hospital-based emergency departments, I document that physicians systematically alter their pace and intensity of care across frequently shuffled peer groups. Peer groups that induce a physician to work faster also induce her to order fewer tests and spend less money. Contrary to the flat-of-the-curve hypothesis, these cutbacks lead to large reductions in quality of care. This evidence, paired with the fact that slower physicians do not produce better average outcomes, suggests that cross-physician differences in resource utilization reflect substantial differences in physician productivity within a hospital.