This thesis focuses on the electrochemical production of H₂O₂ via water oxidation and its subsequent use as a fuel in direct H₂O₂ fuel cells. H₂O₂ is a useful chemical both in industrial and scientific applications as it is not only a strong oxidant but also produces no harmful by-products when it is used as such. Shortly prior to the commencement of this thesis it was found that H₂O₂ may be produced electrochemically via water oxidation. This process only occurred in a specific electrolyte, namely one in which the salt contained an ammonium-based cation and free amine was present in solution. It was hypothesised that the presence of free amine helped to stabilise the H₂O₂. To further understand this phenomenon this research focused on changing the parameters involved in the water oxidation mechanism. This included using different ammonium-based salts in the electrolyte, measuring H₂O₂ production rates at different pHs and different oxidative potentials and observing the rate of H₂O₂ production over different oxidation times. It was found that H₂O₂ was only generated efficiently in a narrow range of oxidation potentials and pHs. It was proposed that the role of the free amine in solution was two-fold, one to help stabilise the H₂O₂ during water oxidation and prevent its further oxidation to O₂, and the other to act as a pH buffer at the surface of the water oxidation catalyst. The research went on to attempt to utilise this electrogenerated H₂O₂ in direct H₂O₂ fuel cells (DHPFCs). DHPFCs are a fascinating alternative to H₂ gas or methanol fuel cells as H₂O₂ can be used as both the fuel and the oxidant. This is because H₂O₂ can be reduced and oxidised relatively easily compared to other fuels. As a consequence of this DHPFCs may be designed and utilised in a number of different ways which has certain advantages in cost, efficiency and safety. As part of this thesis novel catalysts for H₂O₂ reduction and oxidation were tested as anodes and cathodes in DHPFCs and were found to perform well. Specifically, using a mixed cobalt oxide-carbon black film as a cathode in combination with a heat treated nickel foam anode was found to give quite high open circuit potentials compared to other catalysts that have been used previously in similar conditions. Ultimately, this thesis was able to demonstrate a fully reversible system in which H₂O₂ was generated electrochemically and then used to produce power in a single-electrolyte fuel cell without any processing of the fuel or electrolyte. This reversibility is important if such a system were to be used in real world applications and shows great promise for this technology.


Online multi-kernel learning is promising in the era of mobile computing, in which a combined classifier with multiple kernels are offline trained, and online adapts to personalized features for serving the end user precisely and smartly. The online adaptation is mainly carried out at the end-devices, which requires the adaptation algorithms to be light, efficient and accurate. Previous results focused mainly on efficiency. This paper proposes an novel online model adaptation framework for not only efficiency but also optimal online adaptation. At first, an online optimal incremental simplex tableau (IST)algorithm is proposed, which approaches the model adaption by linear programming and produces the optimized model update in each step when a personalized training data is collected.But keeping online optimal in each step is expensive and may cause over-fitting especially when the online data is noisy. A Fast-IST approach is therefore proposed, which measures the deviation between the training data and the current model. It schedules updating only when enough deviation is detected. The efficiency of each update is further enhanced by running IST only limited iterations, which bounds the computation complexity. Theoretical analysis and extensive evaluations show that Fast-IST saves computation cost greatly, while achieving speedy and accurate model adaptation.It provides better model adaptation speed and accuracy while using even lower computing cost than the state-of-the art.


Derive from the characteristic, decisions connected with travelling have high risk for the travellers therefore they try to collect more detailed information and thoroughly map decision alternatives in order to decrease uncertainty. Wide spread of the Internet and rapid technological evolution have revolutionized all industries in the World especially tourism. Platform of tourism increasingly get to the Internet nowadays which is vitally important because tourism is an informationbased and information-intensive industry. Thanks to development of the internet tourists have an opportunity to access such information and purchasing opportunities which were available with the help of intermediaries earlier. Providing wide range of possibilities, Web 2.0 fundamentally changed the way of tourists' information search behaviour and travelling decision making. This article collects some of the most significant new applications (social networking sites, blogs) in tourism – examine them from the two sides of tourism (demand, supply) – which principally based on active participation of users. Furthermore an offline questionnaire was made in order to survey the social media usage of the student (University of Debrecen, Centre for Agricultural and Applied Economic Sciences) during their leisure travel planning process. Although findings of the study reveal that vast majority of students use social networking sites every day, they don't really use these platforms during their trip planning process. Among students, friends and relatives are the most important and the most trustworthy source of information due to characteristics of sample.


Bangladesh has often been regarded as a country whose food security situation is frequently worsened by price rise of essential foodstuffs. Rice has been the most significant cereal food in Bangladesh because it accounts for around 42 percent of per capita daily energy intake. Food price rise has become the most serious concern of majority of the country's household as price rise becomes the regular phenomenon in the country. One-third of the country's total population have been living under the poverty line. Regardless of the domestic rice production, Bangladesh imports around three million tonnes of rice every year which constitutes 17 percent of the country's total import. Therefore, this empirical paper has attempted to explore how Bangladeshi local rice price is being affected by the world rice price, and how rising rice price affects household food security. In doing so, co-integration model and error correction model were applied to weekly rice price data obtained from the on-line database of the Food Policy Monitoring Unit of the Ministry of Food, Government of Bangladesh. The results confirm that world rice price and Bangladesh local market rice price are co-integrated. Although there has not been any immediate impact of world price shock in Bangladesh due to the influence of short term measures taken by the government, there are long term impacts of such price shock. Logit model has been employed to determine the rice price threshold beyond which households become unable to ensure their food security. For this purpose a sample of 80 poor households whose per capita income was less than $1, was surveyed in order to obtain the required data. The results of the logit model suggest that if rice price goes beyond Tk 34 per kilogram, sample poor households become extremely vulnerable in respect of food security. Finally, some recommendations have been made at the end of this paper based on the empirical findings.


This study's aims were two-fold: to contribute to an understanding of the relationship between religious fundamentalism and psychological well-being and to test the psychometric properties of the Italian adaptation of the revised Religious Fundamentalism Scale (RFS-12; Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 2004), one of the most important instruments for assessing religious fundamentalism when it is conceptualized as a cognitive process. Confirmative factor analysis and reliability and correlational analyses were conducted on a sample of 319 Catholic undergraduate students. Findings indicate that the Italian adaptation of the Religious Fundamentalism Scale, as a one-dimensional construct, represents a valid and reliable measure of religious fundamentalism. Furthermore, results highlight the positive role that religious fundamentalism plays in promoting life satisfaction and psychological well-being.


The perirhinal cortex (PRh) and basolateral amygdala (BLA) appear to mediate distinct aspects of learning and memory. Here, we used rats to investigate the involvement of the PRh and BLA in acquisition and extinction of associations between two different environmental stimuli (e.g., a tone and a light) in higher-order conditioning. When both stimuli were neutral, infusion of the GABAA, muscimol, or the NMDA receptor (NMDAR) antagonist ifenprodil into the PRh impaired associative formation. However, when one stimulus was neutral and the other was a learned danger signal, acquisition and extinction of the association between them was unaffected by manipulations targeting the PRh. Temporary inactivation of the BLA had the opposite effect: formation and extinction of an association between two stimuli was spared when both stimuli were neutral, but impaired when one stimulus was a learned danger signal. Subsequent experiments showed that the experience of fear per se shifts processing of an association between neutral stimuli from the PRh to the BLA. When training was conducted in a dangerous environment, formation and extinction of an association between neutral stimuli was impaired by BLA inactivation or NMDAR blockade in this region, but was unaffected by PRh inactivation. These double dissociations in the roles of the PRh and BLA in learning under different stimulus and environmental conditions imply that fear-induced activation of the amygdala changes how the brain processes sensory stimuli. Harmless stimuli are treated as potentially harmful, resulting in a shift from cortical to subcortical processing in the BLA.


The dynamics and predictability of Stommel's (1961) box model of the thermohaline circulation is studied. This nonlinear model with idealized geometry of the North Atlantic is solved exactly. A phase space analysis of the model reveals that the optimal perturbation affecting long-term climate variability is provided by high latitude haline forcing in the Atlantic ocean, although this perturbation has little resemblance with the most unstable mode of the system and the leading EOF.Furthermore, the predictability problem is investigated by means of singular vector analysis and the evolution of the probability distribution function. Uncertainties in the oceanic initial conditions do increase in the phase space of the model. In the stochastically forced box model with identical oceanic initial conditions, the climate predictability is examined for the damped persistence forecast. We find that the loss of the predictability is related to the different stages of the variance evolution which is also measured by the relative entropy. Our analysis shows that the non-normal system matrix of Stommel's model does affect the dynamics and predictability of the system which is useful for the interpretation of long-term climate variability and predictability.ConfigurationPhase Space DynamicsPhase space invariances yield exactly soluble evolution equations.A class of exactly solvable nonlinear evolution equations is presented that arise in the context of the oceanic circulation and population dynamics. Using Lyapunov techniques the solution of this type of equations is obtained by isolating their invariant subsets in phase space. It is shown that some solutions have finite escape time. In extension, the method is applicable to the analysis of partial differential equations of similar structure.


This paper resolves a common complexity issue in the Bethe approximation of statistical physics and the sum-product Belief Propagation (BP) algorithm of artificial intelligence. The Bethe approximation reduces the problem of computing the partition function in a graphical model to that of solving a set of non-linear equations, so-called the Bethe equation. On the other hand, the BP algorithm is a popular heuristic method for estimating marginal distribution in a graphical model. Although they are inspired and developed from dierent directions, Yedidia, Freeman and Weiss (2004) established a somewhat surprising connection: the BP algorithm solves the Bethe equation if it converges (however, it often does not). This naturally motivates the following important question to understand their limitations and empirical successes: the Bethe equation is computationally easy to solve? We present a message passing algorithm solving the Bethe equation in polynomial number of bitwise operations for arbitrary binary graphical models of n nodes where the maximum degree in the underlying graph is O(logn). Our algorithm, an alternative to BP fixing its convergence issue, is the first fully polynomial-time approximation scheme for the BP fixed point computation in such a large class of graphical models. Moreover, we believe that our technique is of broader interest to understand the computational complexity of the cavity method in statistical physics.


Purpose: To evaluate the efficacy of the viscoadaptive OVD Healon5 in protecting the corneal endothelium during phacoemulsification of hard cataract as compared to using the dispersive-cohesive soft-shell technique in which the dispersive OVD Viscoat is combined with the cohesive OVD Provisc during surgery. Methods: In this prospective randomized study, 30 eyes of 22 patients underwent phacoemulsification using either Healon5 (Group A, 15 eyes) or the dispersive-cohesive softshell technique (Group B, 15 eyes) with Viscoat and Provisc. All patients had age-related cataract, grades 3 and 4, with no other ocular pathology. Central corneal thickness (CCT) was examined preoperatively and at 1 and 7 days, as well as 1 month postoperatively. Corneal endothelial cell density (ECD) was examined preoperatively and 3 months postoperatively. The CCT and ECD were compared between the two groups. Results: There was no statistically significant difference in the mean preoperative and the mean postoperative central corneal thickness between the two groups during any of the follow-up visits at 1 day, 7 days and 1 month postoperative. At 1 day postoperative, the mean increase in CCT in Group A was 64±6μm while the mean increase in CCT in group B was 59±8μm (p=0.076). At 7 days postoperative, the mean increase in CCT in Group A was 23 ±7μm while in Group B it was 20±8μm (p=0.302). After 1 month postoperative, the mean increase in CCT was 2 ±4 and 3± 1 for Groups A and B respectively (p=0.452). Such differences in the mean increase in CCT between both groups were statistically insignificant in any of the follow-up visits. Comparing endothelial cell loss after 3 postoperative months in the two groups, Group A had a 6.2±0.4% cell loss while Group B showed 6.4±0.3% cell loss. Such difference between the two groups was statistically insignificant (p=0.072). Conclusion: The viscoadaptive agent Healon5 when utilized on its own is as effective as the dispersive cohesive soft-shell technique in protecting corneal endothelial cells during phacoemulsification of hard cataract. Correspondence to: Dr. Ahmed E.M. Habib, The Ophthalmology Department, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University


On the 28th of March 2015 the Chinese government published "Vision and Actions on Jointly Building the New Silk Road, The Economic and 21st - Century Maritime Silk Road"2. This document signifies China's decision to become a global hegemon. With its issue this Chinese African - Eurasian "silk bridge" strategy redirected geopolitical analysts' attention away from another Beijing's strategic objective: control of key maritime straits, especially those featuring "maritime chokepoints", where concentrations of commercial and military naval routes flow. Which are the main maritime straits covered by the Chinese "offensive"? What are the geostrategic implications of this approach?


The Independent - article by Jack Williams Liverpool Echo "In the unlikely event of the World Cup failing to produce any scandal, there"s plenty here to keep cricket fans awake during rain stoppages." The Twelfth Man "This highly academic and studious work seeks to evaluate to what extent cricket reflected the cultural and social time in England between the two World Wars. For those with a keen interest in social and cricket history this book will be required reading, if one does consider it a little expensively priced at GBP25.00 for a hardback of just 200 pages.An impressive and wide ranging number of reference sources have been consulted, which clearly indicates that this study of the inter-war period and cricket"s rle and place in the social order has been thoroughly researched and evaluated" The Guardian- " Jack Williams"s excellent (though outrageously overpriced) book...is tightly focussed, well written and adept in putting cricket into a broader culktural framework...Williams is not frightened to ask some big questions and writes for an audience beyond the boundaries of the academic series of which his book is part" "Cricket and England...attempts to dispell the cosily bucolic notalgia the game has inspired"- The Daily Telegraph Times Literary Supplement- see file- mixed report Day by Day- " This intelligent and interesting book considers how the break-up of the United Kingdom may make English cricket represent uniquely English qualities...This carefully researched, tightly written, thorough and detailed cultural and social history of the inter-war years " Farnham/Haslemere Herald "This is a brilliant study based on meticulous research and the astute questioning of some impressive sources. It is particularly rewarding when examining the relationship between the amateurs and professionals." The Journal of the Cricket Society, Vol 19, No 4, Spring 2000 "Thorough and searching, this is a valuable book." British Society for Sports History, at http://www.umist.ac.uk/UMIST_Sport/Reviews May 99.htm "Cricket and England is well-researched and well-written, even though there is more than the occasional hint of repetition. It includes many interesting illustrations, some valuable statistical tables and a fine bibliography. It succeeds in demonstrating that cricket was directly related to the politics, culture and religion of inter-war England and showed the strength of social cohesion and cultural conformity of the English society at that time.


Background Patient- and clinician-related factors may explain variability in blood pressure (BP) outcomes and the differences between real-world effectiveness and efficacy seen in randomized trials of antihypertensive agents. Objective To examine the effectiveness of 90 days of second-line valsartan treatment and identify patient- and physician-level determinants that impact BP outcomes. Methods A prospective, multicenter, multilevel pharmacoepidemiologic study was conducted in 3194 hypertensive patients (systolic BP [SBP] ≥140 mm Hg, diastolic BP [DBP] ≥90 mm Hg; for diabetic patients, ≥130 and ≥80 mm Hg, respectively) treated by 504 general practitioners (GPs). Statistical analysis included heuristic data mining, and hierarchical linear and logistic modeling. Results With valsartan treatment, mean ± SD SBP decreased from 154.4 ± 15.5 mm Hg to 139.0 ± 12.0 mm Hg and mean DBP decreased from 91.3 ± 9.2 mm Hg to 82.6 ± 7.4 mm Hg. SBP control rates increased from 9.0% to 38.6%, DBP from 25.5% to 65.5%, and combined SBP/DBP from 7.3% to 34.4%. A highly vulnerable cohort (n = 1063;35.4%) of patients was identified. Twenty-four percent of variability in SBP and 25% of variability in DBP at 90 days were attributable to physician-related variables: guideline-compliant BP management, hypertension, practice patterns, hypertensive patient volume, and years in practice. The remaining 76% and 75% of variability in SBP and DBP, respectively, were due to patient factors, notably diabetes and related complications, vulnerability to uncontrolled BP, nonadherence, cardiovascular risk, and age. Simitar factors increased the odds of treatment nonresponse, with diabetes being the single largest determinant of uncontrolled SBP (OR 8.99), DBP (OR 20.35), and combined SBP/DBP (OR = 18.64). Conclusions Valsartan is effective and well tolerated in a broad range of patients in whom first-line antihypertensive treatment failed or was not tolerated. Mitigating the impact of BP-elevating variables and optimizing the effect of BP-lowering factors provides therapeutic benefits incremental to valsartan's pharmacologic effect. Improving outcomes in hypertensive patients involves 3 steps: (1) identifying, intuitively rather than formally, patients less likely to achieve BP control; (2) targeting modifiable or manageable patient- and physician-level determinants with BP-elevating or BP-lowering effects; and (3) managing variables that increase the odds and optimizing those that lower the odds of uncontrolled BP.


A novel solgel process for making porous silica fiber and doping the fiber core with sensing material is described. A CoCl(2) -doped solgel fiber was fabricated and was used to construct an active-core optical fiber moisture sensor. Test results show that the sensitivity of the active-core optical fiber sensor is much higher than that of an evanescent-wave-based optical fiber sensor.


This article surveys traditional research topics in industrial robotics and mobile robotics and then expands on new trends in robotics research that focus more on the interaction between human and robot. The new trends in robotics research have been denominated service robotics because of their general goal of getting robots closer to human social needs, and this article surveys research on service robotics such as medical robotics, rehabilitation robotics, underwater robotics, field robotics, construction robotics and humanoid robotics. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the evolution of research topics in robotics from classical motion control for industrial robots to modern intelligent control techniques and social learning paradigms, among other aspects.


We demonstrate broadband light generation by focusing two-color ultrashort laser pulses into a Raman-active crystal, lead tungstate (PbWO(4)). As many as 20 anti-Stokes and 2 Stokes fields are generated due to strong near-resonant excitation of a Raman transition. The generated spectrum extends from the infrared, through the visible region, to the ultraviolet, and it consists of discrete spatially separated sidebands. Our measurements confirm good mutual spatial and temporal coherence among the generated fields and open possibilities for synthesis of subfemtosecond light waveforms.


This article investigates new paths for achieving a binding treaty on emission stabilization. Because industry support for US participation in such an agreement is essential, an empirical analysis of lobbying expenditures during Congress's last attempt to pass emission-restricting legislation is used to gauge industry support and opposition for such reform. The article qualifies its finding of no major spending asymmetry and explains the role of ideological and structural features of the US political system in impeding the passage of any such bill. Scepticism aside, it argues that a shift in US climate policy is coming due to: (i) the implementation of foreign carbon-restricting regimes; and (ii) the US exporters' response to these reforms. A microeconomic analysis demonstrates that US exporters will increasingly elect carbon-efficient technologies to minimize costs and adjust to a changing regulatory environment. This shift in the carbon intensity of production will cause these industries to form a majority coalition with pro-environment groups in favour of domestic and global emission-restricting reforms. Because these developments lead to the use of border measures designed to curb carbon leakage and address trade concerns, the article makes a few suggestions for reducing potential conflicts between the trade and climate change regimes.


China and Vietnam have developed some of the most ambitious payments for ecosystem services (PES) initiatives for watershed conservation and forest management. These include the Sloping Land Conversion Programme in China and pilot projects designed to implement Decision 380 and the subsequent national PES law in Vietnam. This study reviews how these two government-driven initiatives are achieving their environment and development objectives in terms of their institutional arrangements, implementation in practice, and sustainability prospects. Although it remains too soon to determine the effects of these programs on watershed services, early evidence indicates that they are resulting in vulnerable land being retired from cultivation supported, in some cases, by considerable contributions to household income. A review of these initiatives has revealed two emerging questions that are relevant within the wider discussion on PES theory: (1) What is the ideal role for government in an evolving socio-cultural and political context? (2) What are the implications of a lack of voluntary participation in government administered PES schemes? Future prospects for harnessing the substantial political commitment for watershed protection toward more strategic, flexible, and long-term sustainable outcomes hinge on the ongoing responsiveness of these governments to stakeholder needs and objectives.


The presence of the zeolite mineral yugawaralite (CaAl2Si6O16 4H2O) is reported in the Jurassic basaltic rocks of the Letaba Formation (Karoo Sequence) near Mkuze. Although many other members of the zeolite group have been reported from various localities in southern Africa, this is the first record of yugawaralite. Theyugawaralite occurs in association with laumontite, wairakite, calcite, and quartz in an exposure of the basaltic rocks on the banks of the Mkuze River at 27° 35.50S 32°00.30E, 5 km northwest of the town of Mkuze, northern KwaZulu—Natal. The presence ofyugawaralite indicates that the basaltic rocks at Mkuze underwent a grade of alteration during the accumulation and post-eruptive development of the sequence differentfrom that elsewhere in the region, as it does not fit into the previously published zones of regional diagenesis and metamorphism. It is suggested that the formation ofyugawaralite at this site is related to a local dolerite dyke intruded at avery shallow depth.


Near-duplicate keyframe (NDK) retrieval techniques are critical to many real-world multimedia applications. Over the last few years, we have witnessed a surge of attention on studying near-duplicate image/keyframe retrieval in the multimedia community. To facilitate an effective approach to NDK retrieval on large-scale data, we suggest an effective Multi-Level Ranking (MLR) scheme that effectively retrieves NDKs in a coarse-to-fine manner. One key stage of the MLR ranking scheme is how to learn an effective ranking function with extremely small training examples in a near-duplicate detection task. To attack this challenge, we employ a semi-supervised learning method, semi-supervised support vector machines, which is able to significantly improve the retrieval performance by exploiting unlabeled data. Another key stage of the MLR scheme is to perform a fine matching among a subset of keyframe candidates retrieved from the previous coarse ranking stage. In contrast to previous approaches based on either simple heuristics or rigid matching models, we propose a novel Nonrigid Image Matching (NIM) approach to tackle near-duplicate keyframe retrieval from real-world video corpora in order to conduct an effective fine matching. Compared with the conventional methods, the proposed NIM approach can recover explicit mapping between two near-duplicate images with a few deformation parameters and find out the correct correspondences from noisy data simultaneously. To evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed approach, we performed extensive experiments on two benchmark testbeds extracted from the TRECVID2003 and TRECVID2004 corpora. The promising results indicate that our proposed method is more effective than other state-of-the-art approaches for near-duplicate keyframe retrieval.


An intimate knowledge of available disinfection processes is a prerequisite in selecting
the most appropriate system. This report is to decide on an in-situ chlorine generation
and its effectiveness to be use in water disinfection. This technology is to eliminate the
hazards of transportation and storage. Also this alternative technology is to lower the
probability of workers exposure to the potential discharge of a toxic vapor cloud
resulting from an attack on chlorine storage room. There are several types of
disinfection that could be generated on-site which are chlorine gas, chlorine dioxide
and sodium hypochlorite. The suitable particular type of on-site generator in this report
is sodium hypochlorite. The sodium hypochlorite was generated in an electrochemical
cell. The electrodes used were MMO-coated titanium as the anode and titanium as the
cathode. The results show that the MMO-coated titanium anode has better performance
than graphite anode. The MMO-coated titanium anode was also better than Ti/RuOz
anode. Under the following conditions, a concentration of as high as 45.42 gil Ch of
Free Available Chlorine was obtained, surfuce area of the anode; 15 cm2
, interelectrode
gap, 0.5 em; current density, 200 rnNcm2
; concentration of NaCl aqueous
solution, 2M; and time, 120 minutes.


This article explores the enabling intimacy between sentimentalism and biopolitics by turning to a less-than-obvious and yet characteristic example of the sentimental mode: the ubiquitous orphan tale of the mid- to late nineteenth century. It argues that individual orphan heroines of domestic plots not only function as tropes of domestic and national belonging, as has been widely recognized, but also of population regulation at the biological level of species. Sentimentalism functions as a mode of evolutionary theory, one that articulated the Lamarckian belief that sensory impressions shape the development of the individual body and of the species. Sentimental Lamarckism extended across literature, reform, and scientific theory and preceded naturalism's deep engagement with evolutionary thought by decades. The sentimental orphan trope figures as a key aesthetic technology for regulating the growth of the population. Sentimental novels about orphans are not just about children who transform through their experiences; they were also directed at children readers and crafted to elicit emotional identification that could spur similar changes off the page.


The current leading algorithms for both convolutional sparse coding and dictionary learning are based on variable splitting and Augmented Lagrangian methods. The dictionary learning algorithms alternate between sparse coding and dictionary subproblems, typically interleaving the updates for each of these two subproblems. Due to the variable splitting, in each subproblem one of these two variables must be chosen to be passed to the other subproblem. We perform a careful comparison of the algorithm convergence resulting from the different choices in conjunction with a number of different algorithms for the dictionary subproblem, showing that one of these choices consistently provides the best convergence.


The populations in coastal areas in east Africa have increased dramatically in the last decades, resulting in increased pressure on coastal resources. The examples are declining fish catches, deteriorating conditions of coral reefs and reduction of mangroves forests. The objective of the study was to asses the potential of grow-out Aquac of mud crabs Scylla serrata, as an alternative livelihood for resource-poor coastal communities. Growth rate and survival of mud crabs (S. serrata) cultured in individual drive-in cages (30 x 30 x 30 cm) located in the mangrove forests dominated by Rhizophora mucronata were evaluated. The effect of feed (Terebralia pallustris - gastropod meat, fish offal and mixture of the 2) was determined in a completely randomised design. Feeding was done at 10% body weight at incoming tide throughout the experimental period of 120 days. Monthly sampling was employed and total weight (g), cheliped length (cm), carapace length (cm) and width (cm) were measured. The study aimed at establishing the growth rate, moulting and mortality of crabs fed using locally available feeds. A total of 180 drive-in cages were used for the experiment giving 60 replicates for each treatment. Drive-in cages were built with "fitos" and grouped in sets of 10 for easy management. Crab seed stock of 50 - 380 g for the experiment were bought from artisanal fishermen application of ANOVA and post-hoc test revealed that crabs fed with mixed feed had significantly higher % growth (47.9%) compared to fish offal (33.4%) but were similar to gastropod meat (43.2%) p < 0.05. Growth rate was significantly affected by feed type, where higher values were recorded in mixed feed diets (gastropod meat and fish offal, 1.29 g/day) compared to the individual feeds (0.96 and 0.97 g/day for fish offal and gastropods meat respectively. There was no significant difference in growth of monosex crabs female (0.996 - 1.55 g/day) and males (0.893 -1.01 g/day) p = 0.373.

 Key words: Mangrove, mud crab, feed, drive-in cage, growth.


In shallow vegetated aquatic habitats exceeding 2 m depth, conventional methods to determine fish abundances are of limited success. In this study, the sampling qualities of 2 methods for investigating the fish community associated with the eelgrass Zostera marina were tested: a newly developed enclosure drop trap (ET) operated from the water surface and a visual diving strip transect technique. The construction and the sampling procedure of the enclosure trap are described in detail. Both sampling procedures were performed simultaneously at the same eelgrass sampling site at depths between 2 and 5 m. The comparison revealed deficiencies in relative catch efficiency for both methods. Limitations with respect to bottom‐dwelling forms are obvious for the ET and with respect to the Syngnathidae and Gasterosteidae for the visual diving census. Abundance estimates of pelagic, schooling species were highly variable with both methods. Correction coefficients for the different behavioral categories of eelgrass fish were calculated. The fish species composition showed good agreement between the 2 methods, but the number of species on each sampling occasion was consistently higher in the ET catches. The length class frequency distributions estimated by the divers corresponded approximately with direct measurements of fish from the ET catches. The methods complemented one another and can be recommended for simultaneous deployment to get accurate quantitative estimates of eelgrass fish populations. The relative capture efficiency of the enclosure trap can be incorporated to improve abundance measurements of small fish in Zostera marina beds without the help of divers.


We provide an assessment of the design and calibration of the 2018 EU-wide stress test. The adverse scenario for the 2018 stress test is more severe than for previous stress tests in terms of the assumed GDP decline in the EU area. However, the test is less severe in terms of the losses that banks are expected to incur under the scenario. The adverse scenario has a highly asymmetric impact on different European countries, such that countries with a high degree of trade openness are affected considerably more. It seems unlikely that the assumed scenario constitutes the most plausible threat scenario for the EU economy. Since banks use heterogeneous models to forecast the stress scenario impact on loan losses and since the EBA does not publish its own respective benchmark parameters, the public cannot fully assess the true severity of the test in terms of its impact on banks' capital. We argue that both the lack of transparency and the heterogeneity of banks' practices to forecast stress scenario induced losses considerably weaken the credibility of the stress test and limit its usefulness in supporting market discipline among European banks.


Transformation of hematopoietic cells by the p210bcr/abl tyrosine kinase appears to require the expression of a functional MYC protein, suggesting that simultaneous targeting of BCR-ABL and c-myc might be a rational strategy for attempting treatment of Phil-adelphia leukemia. To test this hypothesis, severe combined immunodeficiency mice injected with Philadelphia leukemic cells were treated systemically with equal doses of bcr-abl or c-myc antisense oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs) or with both ODNs in combination. Compared with the mice treated with individual agents, the disease process was much slower in the group treated with both ODNs, as revealed by flow cytometry, clonogenic assay, and reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction analysis to detect leukemic cells in mouse tissue cell suspensions, and by enumeration of liver metastases. The retardation of the disease process was positively correlated with a markedly increased survival of leukemic mice treated with both ODNs. These data demonstrate the therapeutic potential of targeting multiple cooperating oncogenes.


Human height is a highly variable trait, both within and between populations, has a high heritability, and influences the manner in which people behave and are treated in society. Although we know much about human height, this information has rarely been brought together in a comprehensive, systematic fashion. Here, we present a synthetic review of the literature on human height from an explicit evolutionary perspective, addressing its phylogenetic history, development, and environmental and genetic influences on growth and stature. In addition to presenting evidence to suggest the past action of natural selection on human height, we also assess the evidence that natural and sexual selection continues to act on height in contemporary populations. Although there is clear evidence to suggest that selection acts on height, mainly through life‐history processes but perhaps also directly, it is also apparent that methodological factors reduce the confidence with which such inferences can be drawn, and there remain surprising gaps in our knowledge. The inability to draw firm conclusions about the adaptiveness of such a highly visible and easily measured trait suggests we should show an appropriate degree of caution when dealing with other human traits in evolutionary perspective.


The investigation of speech acts has been of interest, especially in cross-cultural pragmatics, to many L1/L2 researchers for many years (Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper 1989). Favor-asking, as an important speech act, is centered upon having the other party of conversation do a specific act (Goldschmidt 1999). Although some research has been done on favor-asking in different contexts, studies on this speech act are still scarce, if any, in Persian settings. The main thrust of the current study was to investigate favor-asking among a sample of 20 native speakers of Persian (10 women and 10 men). The participants were selected from graduate students, since the employed oral DCT scenarios were designed to elicit favors asked from three different academic statuses: Higher, equal, and lower (professors, peers, and students, respectively). A total of 240 responses were then analyzed to identify the recurring patterns under the three open-coded categories of pre-favor, favor, and post-favor . The examination of the responses illustrated some variation triggered by gender and academic status differences, namely, the length of favors, frequency of some (sub)themes, and formality degree. Additionally, some relevant syntactic issues were explored (e.g. plural/singular pronouns/verbs), which contributed to the formality/informality of the favors, depending upon the contexts in which they were incorporated. Finally, some insights into Persian sociocultural interactions, favor-asking in particular, were provided.


The reconfiguration of channel or wavelength routes in optically transparent mesh networks can lead to deviations in channel power that may impact transmission performance. A new experimental approach, applied constant gain, is used to maintain constant gain in a circulating loop enabling the study of gain error effects on long-haul transmission under reconfigured channel loading. Using this technique we examine a number of channel configurations and system tuning operations for both full-span dispersion-compensated and optimized dispersion-managed systems. For each system design, large power divergence was observed with a maximum of 15 dB at 2240 km, when switching was implemented without additional system tuning. For a bit error rate of 10-3, the maximum number of loop circulations was reduced by up to 33%.


In this study, we investigated postnatal changes in Rexed's laminae and distribution of nociceptive afferents in the dorsal horn of the rat lumbar spinal cord at postnatal days 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 60. Transverse sections of the L4–L5 segments were processed for triple labeling with isolectin B4 (IB4)‐binding as a marker of nonpeptidergic C‐fibers, calcitonin gene‐related peptide (CGRP) immunoreactivity to label peptidergic nociceptive afferents, and a fluorescent Nissl stain to visualize cells and lamination at different stages of postnatal development. The Nissl staining revealed that the thickness of lamina I (LI) and outer lamina II remained mostly unchanged from birth until adulthood. CGRP afferents terminated mostly in LI and the outer two‐thirds of lamina II, whereas the termination area of fibers binding IB4 was centered on the middle one‐third of lamina II at all ages studied. In absolute values, the overall width of the bands of intense CGRP and IB4 labeling increased with age but decreased as a percentage of the overall thickness of the dorsal horn with maturation. The overlap of CGRP termination area with that of IB4 afferents increased with age. The consequences of these findings are twofold. First, the size of the different laminae does not grow evenly across the dorsal horn. Second, CGRP and IB4 labeling cannot be considered per se to be reliable markers of lamination during development. These findings have implications for comparing data obtained in immature and mature tissues with respect to localization of structures in the dorsal horn. J. Comp. Neurol. 508:592–604, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Amphibian populations worldwide have experienced dramatic declines, and many species have already become locally, regionally, or globally extirpated with thousands more being threatened with extinction. These declines have occurred more rapidly in amphibians than any other group of vertebrates, which is especially concerning to scientists because amphibians serve as indicator species of overall environmental health. Major causes for amphibian declines are discussed in Chapter 1 and include: habitat modification and destruction, commercial overexploitation, introduced species, environmental contaminants, global climate change, and infectious diseases. Chapter 2 discusses the major research aspects of the thesis by examining the interactive effects of multiple stressors on two species of larval amphibians. The study investigated the individual and combined effects of a major environmental contaminant (Glyphosate, commercial Roundup®), increased temperatures, and predatory cues on survival, growth, and development of tadpoles from two species (Lithobates catesbeianus and Anaxyrus americanus). Glyphosate reduced tadpole survival in both amphibian species and becomes more toxic to tadpoles as temperature increases. Increased temperature reduced survivorship over time in both species; however, survivorship decreased only when temperature interacted with glyphosate. Increased temperature also caused a decrease in growth in L. catesbeianus and an increase in growth and development in A. americanus. Accelerated growth and development caused by temperature may ameliorate the adverse effects of glyphosate by reducing larval period and increasing size at metamorphosis. Glyphosate caused significant anatomical shape variation in L. catebeianus, while increased temperature caused significant anatomical shape variation in A. americanus. The shape variations caused by the different stressors may lead to further developmental and behavioral abnormalities. Predatory cues had no effect on A. americanus survival, and only decreased growth and development at intermediate glyphosate concentrations and temperatures; therefore, the effects of temperature and glyphosate concentration may have been enhanced in the presence of predatory cues. The study highlighted the importance of examining the interactions between multiple stressors on amphibian declines. Chapter 3 focuses on potential solutions for global amphibian declines. Conservation efforts such as educational outreach, effective land management and water quality regulation guidelines, captive breeding programs, and several others are discussed.


After an overview of the stylised facts about Africa's natural resources, we discuss the problems and challenges facing the management of natural resources in Africa. We highlight the paradox of plenty, which is that many resource-rich countries in Africa have bad growth performance. They typically also have low investment rates and high degrees of inequality. The curse is especially bad for point-source resources such as oil, gas and diamonds and less for diffuse resources. We point out on the basis of cross-country evidence that this paradox can be resolved if institutions are good, financial systems well developed and the economy open to international trade. We argue that the quintessential nature of the paradox of plenty arises from the very high volatility of commodity prices. This further strengthens the case for good financial systems. We subsequently focus on an analytical framework for the assessment of the management of natural resource wealth. We point out that rapacious rent seeking and the lack of effective mineral property rights has led to negative genuine saving rates and the gradual erosion of the wealth of many African countries. Although there may be a rationale for negative genuine saving if countries are investing heavily in new innovative exploration technology, this hardly seems the case for Africa. The challenge for policymakers in Africa is therefore how to get more incentive-compatible contracts and transparent accounts of mineral extraction. A key question is how to manage natural resource wealth and whether it should be used to save and invest or to boost purchasing power of the people. If it is spent, the challenge is to spend the resource revenues on productive purposes. We conclude with a discussion of the role of China and India in the new 'scramble' for Africa's natural resources.


This dissertation presents a new type of fuel control algorithm for gaseous fuelled vehicles. Gaseous fuels such as hydrogen and natural gas have been shown to be less polluting than liquid fuels such as gasoline, both at the tailpipe and on a total cycle basis. Unfortunately, it can be expensive to convert vehicles to gaseous fuels, partially due to small production runs for these vehicles. One of major development costs for a new vehicle is the development and calibration of the fuel controller. The research presented here includes a fuel controller which does not require an expensive calibration phase.The controller is based upon a two-part model, separating steady state and dynamic effects. This model is then used to estimate the optimum fuelling for the measured operating condition. The steady state model is calculated using an artificial neural network with an online learning scheme, allowing the model to continually update to improve the controller's performance. This is important during both the initial learning of the characteristics of a new engine, as well as tracking changes due to wear or damage.The dynamic model of the system is concerned with the significant transport delay between the time the fuel is injected and when the exhaust gas oxygen sensor makes the reading. One significant result of this research is the realization that a previous commonly used model for this delay has become significantly less accurate due to the shift from carburettors or central point injection to port injection.In addition to a description of the control scheme used, this dissertation includes a new method of algebraically inverting a neural network, avoiding computationally expensive iterative methods of optimizing the model. This can greatly speed up the control loop (or allow for less expensive, slower hardware).An important feature of a fuel control scheme is that it produces a small, stable limit cycle between rich and lean fuel-air mixtures. This dissertation expands the currently available models for the limit cycle characteristics of a system with a linear controller as well as developing a similar model for the neural network controller by linearizing the learning scheme.One of the most important aspects of this research is an experimental test, in which the controller was installed on a truck fuelled by natural gas. The tailpipe emissions of the truck with the new controller showed better results than the OEM controller on both carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides, and the controller required no calibration and very little information about the properties of the engine.The significant original contributions resulting from this research include:
-collection and summarization of previous work,
-development of a method of automatically determining the pure time delay between the fuel injection event and the feedback measurement,
-development of a more accurate model for the variability of the transport delay in modern port injection engines,
-developing a fuel-air controller requiring minimal knowledge of…


The giant freshwater prawn, Macrobrachium rosenbergii, or locally know as udang galah has become the most popular freshwater prawn for commercial culture and a
significant cash crop for many poor farmers throughout Asia and the Pacific region.
Ninety microsatellite repeat sequences were successfully isolated from M.
rosenbergii using the 5' anchored-PCR technique. BLAST analysis of the
micro satellite marker flanking regions showed similarities towards expressed
sequence tags (ESTs) in aquatic species. Sixty-two microsatellite primer pairs were
designed with 29 perfect microsatellites, four were imperfect or interrupted
microsatellites and the rest were compound microsatellites. Of these 62 single locus
DNA microsatellite markers, 24 showed polymorphisms in the giant freshwater
prawns of which four loci had dinucleotide, 16 trinucleotide, three tetranucleotide
and one pentanucleotide core repeat units. Nine microsatellite primer pairs from the green-lipped mussel (Perna viridis) were successful in cross-amplifying the giant
freshwater prawn genome. However, only four of these cross-amplified
microsatellite primer pairs were reliable and used in this study. Hence, the levels of
genetic variability in 12 populations of wild M. rosenbergii and one cultured
population in Malaysia were evaluated by using 28 microsatellite loci. The number
of alleles per locus ranged from 2 to 26 and the total observed heterozygosity ranged
from 0.2618 to 0.7265. A high level of polymorphism was also detected in each of
the wild M. rosenbergii populations by using five RAPD and four LP-RAPD primers
which generated 191 bands ranging in molecular weights from 150 bp to 2100 bp in
11 populations. The cross-amplifications of 32 of the 47 newly developed
microsatellite primer pairs in nine other prawn species showed the presence of many
highly conserved regions among the prawn species tested. However, some of the
microsatellite motifs in the nine species tested differed slightly from the originally
designed microsatellite loci for M. rosenbergii. These newly developed microsatellite
loci were used to assess the genetic diversity and relationships of eleven wild M. rosenbergii stocks.


In order to develop a harmonised and efficient IT system, such as a database, it is important to be familiar with the underlying concept model (concept systems) for the relevant domain which the IT system should be designed to accommodate, as this forms the necessary firm foundation for designing the conceptual data model. Although there is no one-to-one correlation between concept and characteristic features in the concept model and classes and attributes in the conceptual data model, there are many similarities between concept modelling and conceptual data modelling, and by closely examining the relationship between the two models, we have strived to construct an algorithm for creating conceptual data models in Unified Modelling Language (UML) on the basis of concept models that adhere to the traditional principles and methods of terminology work.


In this paper we address a particular issue dealing with the delivery of commodities related to HemoDialysis (HD) to patients at home with limited holding capacity. The aim is to optimize the visit frequency to patients and to construct vehicle tours simultaneously, in order to find the best compromise between the patients' inventory holding and traveling costs. Therefore, we introduce a new Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) model based on special needs of home patient hemodialysis. In order to display the interest of flexibility ensured by our model, we compare two scenarios, a first one with fixed visit frequency and another one treating the visit frequency as a decision variable. Computational experiments are conducted on some instances taken from literature. The obtained results show that the scenario which treats the visit frequency as a decision variable is more interesting, and the patients storage cost in the objective function can impact considerably these results.


The purpose of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic performance of a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system, on the detection of pulmonary nodules in multidetector row computed tomography (MDCT) images, by using  two different MDCT scanners. The computerized scheme was based on the iris filter. We have collected CT cases of patients with pulmonary nodules. We have included in the study one hundred and thirty-two calcified and noncalcified nodules, measuring 4-30 mm in diameter. CT examinations were performed by using two different equipments: a CT scanner (SOMATOM Emotion 6), and a dual-source computed tomography system (SOMATOM Definition) (Siemens Medical System, Forchheim, Germany), with the following parameters: collimation, 6x1.0mm (Emotion 6); and 64×0.6mm (Definition); 100-130 kV; 70-110 mAs. Data were reconstructed with a slice thickness of 1.25mm (Emotion 6) and 1mm (Definition). True positive cases were determined by an independent interpretation of the study by three experienced chest radiologists,  the panel decision being used as the reference standard. Free-response Receiver Operating Characteristic curves, sensitivity and number of false-positive per scan, were calculated. Our CAD scheme, for the test set of the study, yielded a sensitivity of 80%, with an average of 5.2 FPs per examination. At an average false positive rate of 9 per scan, our CAD scheme achieved sensitivities of 94% for all nodules, 94.5% for solid, 80% for non-solid, 84% for spiculated, and 97% for non-spiculated nodules. These encouraging results suggest that our CAD system, advocated as a second reader, may help radiologists in the detection of lung nodules in MDCT.


Here we report a new type of Ni2P–CoP hybrid nanosheet array (HNSAs) supported on carbon cloth (CC) (Ni2P–CoP HNSAs/CC) as an efficient flexible cathode for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). This synthesized Ni2P–CoP HNSAs/CC shows excellent electrocatalytic performance for the HER in both acid and alkaline solutions compared with Ni2P/CC and CoP/CC cathodes that have been considered to be good candidates for the HER. The significantly improved electrocatalytic performance of Ni2P–CoP HNSAs/CC can be attributed to the special surface effects of hybrid nanosheet arrays and synergistic effects between Ni2P and CoP. The Ni2P–CoP HNSAs/CC shows excellent flexibility and exhibits unchangeable electrochemical performance under the various distorted states, such as bending and twisting sates.


Antimicrobial-resistant microorganisms have become a major challenge for public health and food industries because of their fast adaptability and slow response to synthetic antimicrobials. Bioactive compounds from marine sources exert various biological roles including antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, antihypertensive, and anticancer properties. Their advantage as an antimicrobial compound is gradually be exploited, particularly in marine-based foods (MBFs), which are highly perishable since they are abundant in proteins, lipids, and other nutrients. Also, the growing demand for fresh products with prolonged shelf-life is making the MBFs industry to urgently seek the effective methods for preservation of fresh or refrigerated MBFs. Crustaceans, which are invertebrates, are valuable source of essential nutrient based on their richness in protein, carbohydrate, minerals, lipids, and vitamins. Additionally, the by-product from the processing of crustaceans could be used as an alternative source of antimicrobials, which can be employed in MBFs as natural preservatives. This review therefore revisited the recovery of antimicrobials compounds such as antimicrobial peptides, carotenoids, and chitosan derivatives from crustaceans. The uses of these crustacean antimicrobials in extending the shelf-life of MBFs are also discussed.


Participation is a concept and practice that governs many aspects of new media and new publics. There are a wide range of attempts to create more of it and a surprising lack of theorization. In this paper I attempt to present a "grammar" of participation by looking at three cases where participation has been central in the contemporary moment of new, social media and the Internet as well as in the past, stretching back to the 1930s: citizen participation in public administration, workplace participation, and participatory international development. Across these three cases I demonstrate that the grammar of participation shifts from a language of normative enthusiasm to one of critiques of co-optation and bureaucratization and back again. I suggest that this perpetually aspirational logic results in the problem of "too much democracy in all the wrong places."


to coin a new word, and it's a linguistic tool that technologists aren't shy about using. This is particularly true when the neologism identifies something that differs in some specific quality from a preexisting thing. For example, many new technological inventions are electronic or online versions of familiar objects or services, so the innovations are easily named by tacking on one of the half dozen common technological prefixes: e-, cyber-, Net-, i-, info-, and techno-. Unfortunately, it's so easy to use those prefixes that a movement against them has developed. The backlash has been going full throttle since the tech meltdown of 2000, but it began before that. For example, in their 1999 book, Wired Style (Broadway Books), authors Constance Hale and Jessie Scanlon pleaded for some restraint in their entry for the prefix e-, frequently seen attached to commerce, trading, cards, and so on: "Please, resist the urge to use this vowel-as-cliché." The prefix cyberfares no better, with Hale and Scanlon calling it "terminally overused." The use of the infoprefix is now so common that John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, writing in their 2000 book, The Social Life of Information (Harvard Business School Press), call this process "infoprefixation." And perhaps the death knell of technowas sounded with the coinage of technosexual, a term for a male with a strong aesthetic sense and a love of technology, obviously derived from the ubiquitous metrosexual. This anti-technology-prefix trend explains at least in part why many "real world" prefixes have become extremely popular. For example, consider the prefix bio-, which means "life" or "biology." In recent years, we've seen coinages such as biobreak (geek-speak for a trip to the bathroom); biohacker (a hobbyist who tinkers with DNA and other aspects of genetics); biometrics (the identification of an individual based on biological traits, such as fingerprints, iris patterns, and facial features); biopharming (using genetically modified plants to grow pharmaceuticals); and biopiracy (the patenting of plants, genes, and other biological products that are indigenous to a foreign country). The German prefix über-, "super," has become übertrendy in the last few years. Here are some coinages I've seen in the tech arena: übercomputing, überdatabase, überengineer, übergeek, übernerd, überprogrammer, and übersoftware. One of my favorite new prefixes is Franken-, which refers to something genetically modified, but in a bad way. This prefix was first used in the word Frankenfood, which entered the language in 1992 and now appears in some major dictionaries. Other Frankenwords that have recently sprouted are Frankenbean, Frankencorn, Frankenfish, Frankenfruit, Frankenplant, Frankenrice, Frankensalmon, Frankentomato, and Frankentree. Another oft-used prefix these days is eco-, short for "ecological" or "ecology," which has been in the language at least since the word ecosystem showed up in 1935. Other ecocoinages include ecoefficiency (the ability to manufacture goods efficiently and with as little effect on the environment as possible); ecotech (technology designed to alleviate environmental problems and reduce the use of natural resources); and global ecophagy (the potential destruction of life caused by rampant nanotechnological machines that break down organic matter to use as raw materials for replicating themselves). Speaking of nanotechnology, nano(one-billionth) is the prefix du jour for describing something as extremely small, having in the past couple of years replaced micro(which had replaced minia while back). The nanoprefix is de rigueur for most new things in the nanotechnology sphere, of course, but this prefix is as ambitious as the science that spawned it. We now hear talk of nanopublishing (an online publishing model that uses a scaled-down, inexpensive operation to reach a targeted audience, especially by using blogging techniques); nanofont (really small print in a contract); nanocorp (a business with just a few employees); Nano-Care (a trademarked technology that creates wrinkle-resistant and liquid-repelling pants); and even a nanosundae (an ice-cream treat on an edible spoon). Just as nanoreplaced microas a prefix standard, so too has hyperreplaced super-. Among many other examples, I've seen hyperdating (dating many different people in a short period of time, usually by meeting them online). As we saw with eand cyberand the other older tech prefixes, backlashes form when word parts are used too promiscuously. The same will likely happen with the newer prefixes. It's already happening with nano-: with hundreds of products and dozens of company names jumping on the nanotech bandwagon, many people are starting to wonder if perhaps this prefix has had its day. Pico(one-trillionth) appears poised to jump in as the new new thing in "very small" prefixes (witness, for example, the piconet, a small ad hoc network created when two or more Bluetooth-compatible devices recognize each other and communicate). If you want to stay ahead of this itsy-bitsy curve, I suggest going with femto-, which means "one-quadrillionth." Now, that is small. TECHNICALLY SPEAKING


Certain highly emotional experiences have the potential to produce long-lasting and meaningful changes in personality. Two such experiences are spiritual transformations and experiences of profound beauty. However, little is known about the cognitive appraisals or narrative elements involved in such experiences, how they are similar, and how they differ. In a study of emotion-related narratives, these experiences were found to share many features but also differ in their valence. Experiences of profound beauty are almost always positive, but spiritual transformations are both positive and negative. Moreover, spiritual transformations seem to produce long-lasting change, but experiences of profound beauty, although evocative, do not seem to produce long-lasting change. An emotion approach helps to elucidate two understudied but important emotional experiences.


A novel non-enzymatic electrochemical sensor for highly sensitive and selective detection of dopamine was developed based on a 3,4,9,10-perylene tetracarboxylic acid functionalized graphene-multiwalled carbon nanotube-gold nanoparticle nanocomposite modified glassy carbon electrode (PTCA-RGO-MWCNTs-Au NPs/GCE). The nanocomposite film was prepared by a facile, eco-friendly and controllable route and its morphology was characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopic (EDX) analysis, and X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectroscopy, respectively. Cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry were used for evaluating the electrochemical behaviors of the prepared sensor. The DA sensor exhibited excellent electrochemical performance toward DA with a sensitivity as high as 0.124 μA mM-1, a wide linear range of 1-100 μM and a low detection limit of 0.07 μM (S/N = 3). Moreover, it showed good selectivity toward DA without any obvious interference by AA and UA. Furthermore, the prepared DA sensor was applied to detect DA in real samples with satisfactory results.


The focus of this study of the medieval English fur trade is the Skinners' Company of London, which governed the usage, manufacture and sale of furs and controlled the conditions of apprenticeship in the craft. Veale discusses the international nature of the trade in fur and the evolution of its usage following changes in mercantile activity and fashion. While fur trimmed the garments of those of exalted rank, the book stresses just how universal was its employment among all classes. A new preface surveys notable work in the area since the book's first publication (1966) and a glossary of fur terms and technical language is also included.


We applied logistic regression analysis to a group of 736 patients with chest pain to determine which radionuclide angiographic (RNA) parameters were most useful in the diagnosis of significant coronary artery disease. The most useful parameters were exercise ejection fraction, exercise heart rate, "ischemia score," and the presence of a regional wall motion abnormality at exercise. Ten clinical variables were used in one logistic regression model to estimate each patient's pretest probability of disease. A second logistic regression model considered these clinical variables and the four important RNA parameters to estimate each patient's posttest probability. These models were applied prospectively to a group of 76 patients with chest pain who did not have a high pretest probability of disease. Twenty-four patients (32%) could be diagnosed with 90% probability; 32 patients (42%) could be diagnosed with 85% probability. RNA testing is therefore helpful in the noninvasive diagnosis of coronary artery disease. However, a majority of patients who do have a low or intermediate pretest probability of disease will require additional testing for a definitive diagnosis.


This panel discussion asks us to consider continuities in the exercise of presidential war powers from the administration of George W. Bush to the administration of Barack Obama. I agree to a large extent with what has become conventional wisdom-that despite candidate Obama's criticism of President Bush, once candidate Obama became President Obama, large areas of continuity arose. Particularly in the war on terror, examples spring readily to mind: detaining terrorism suspects without trial at Guantanamo and elsewhere; conducting trials of terrorism suspects by military commission; and energetically using military force abroad against terrorist groups, not only in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. I want to dissent, however, from the panel's implicit premise that continuity should be the principal theme in examining the exercise of presidential war powers between the Bush and Obama administrations. Despite persistent and at times shrill complaints that President Bush exceeded his constitutional authority, in several fundamental respects we have experienced wider assertions of unconstitutional executive authority under President Obama, to much more muted criticism. I want to focus on that contrast. This expansion of presidential war powers should be a concern at a conference focused on a Constitution of limited government. I do not think the Framers envisioned a national security exception to the idea of constitutionally restrained power. Many of the constitutional provisions that the Framers wrote were specifically directed at national security issues and, moreover, were specifically directed at effecting a separation of powers and a checking function in those areas. (1) The constitutional checks in national security law have come under more stress in recent times, and the Obama Administration has been especially aggressive in ways the Bush Administration was not. Consider two examples. The first is the recent intervention in Libya. I think it is clear that the Constitution's original meaning does not allow the President to initiate war, at least in the absence of an immediate threat of attack on the United States. This restriction comes from the Declare War Clause, (2) which the Framers understood as shorthand for initiation of war. The phrase "declare war" was used in two ways during the eighteenth century: A nation could declare war by a formal declaration or it could declare war by initiating the use of armed force. (3) The Framers disagreed on many things in their comments about their handiwork, but Madison, Hamilton, Washington, Jefferson, Marshall, and others agreed that the President could not begin war on his own authority. (4) In Libya, there is no doubt, despite what the administration might say, (5) that the President initiated war on his own authority. (6) The Libya intervention is clearly a war in the eighteenth-century sense--"the exercise of violence under sovereign command." (7) A sustained military attack on a foreign sovereign government to force it to do our will must surely qualify as war. (8) Therefore, we have in Libya a manifest violation of the Constitution's original meaning regarding war powers. In contrast, this behavior is not something we saw in the Bush Administration. President Bush honored the constitutional limit on initiation of war. He sought and received approval from Congress to use military force in the war on terror, (9) even though it was not entirely clear that the President needed approval to respond to an attack on the United States. The President, in my view, has significant independent authority to respond to such an attack. (10) But by seeking congressional approval, rather than relying on a contested version of the Executive's independent powers, President Bush assured that his military responses to the attacks of September 11, 2001, in particular the subsequent intervention in Afghanistan, did not transgress the separation of powers. …


We study a fermionic Dark Matter particle carrying magnetic dipole moment and analyze its impact on direct detection experiments. In particular we show that it can accommodate the DAMA, CoGeNT and CRESST experimental results. Assuming conservative bounds, this candidate is shown not to be ruled out by the CDMS, XENON and PICASSO experiments. We offer an analytic understanding of how the long-range interaction modifies the experimental allowed regions, in the cross section versus Dark Matter mass parameter space, with respect to the typically assumed contact interaction. Finally, in the context of a symmetric Dark Matter sector, we determine the associated thermal relic density, and further provide relevant constraints imposed by indirect searches and colliders.


Abstract: Identifying the meanings of resilience assists nurses in helping individuals facing adversity across diverse cultural contexts. The purpose of this ethnonursing study was to describe resilience among African American women recovering from prostitution. Audio-taped interviews were conducted at a transitional home with eleven key and two general participants using the ethnonursing qualitative research method. The major findings include: (a) resilience as an ever-changing process that is different for each person when meeting life's challenges; (b) spirituality is a sustaining force when encountering difficult times; and (c) a culturally sensitive support system and establishing social connectedness fosters resilience. Three modes of culturally sensitive nursing care decisions and actions are offered to guide nurses when working with African American women who attempt to leave the lifestyle of prostitution. This study contributes to new knowledge and understanding about resilience among prostituted African American women because it identifies the participants' ability to seek positive social connectedness and identifies their ability to maintain a strong spiritual belief, which had not been previously located in the literature. Key Words: Prostitution, Culture Care, Resilience, African Americans, Women The domain of inquiry for this research was resilience among African American women recovering from prostitution. This study on resilience points to the understanding of complex relational and contextual aspects of positive outcome in the face of adversity (Rutter, 1987, 1999). An understanding of the meaning of resilience assists us in making inferences as to why one individual reacts with psychological and physiological symptoms to an objectively minor incident (Glantz & Sloboda, 1999) when another individual may hold up under conditions that seem insupportable to well-being. Yet, few research studies have identified resilience from diverse cultures and subcultures. Thus, the absence of identifying the meanings and expressions of resilience limits the ability to assist individuals facing adversity across diverse cultural and subcultural contexts (Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000; Todd & Worell, 2000). DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM Scholars have identified female street prostitution as a subculture (Brock & Thistlewaite, 1996; Dalla, 2002; Delacoste & Alexander, 1998; Parley & Kelly, 2000) with distinctive patterns of living, such as identifiable cultural norms, values, and practices that differentiate them from the dominant culture. Investigators in the past decade have examined the patterns of living of prostituted women that specifically addressed the research objectives of governmental funding sources. These studies have focused on violence, substance abuse, or associated risk-taking (HIV/AIDS knowledge and condom use) behaviors (Kramer, 2003; Pyett, 2003; Williamson & Folaron, 2001; Young, Boyd, & Hubbell, 2000). Furthermore, women of color are more likely to be arrested and serve jail time although they represent a small number of women involved in prostitution (Scott, 2001). Consequently, a substantive knowledge of how and what African-American women do to recover from the adversities of prostitution through the process of resilience is not well known (Dalla, 2000; Williamson & Folaron, 2001) Discovering gender specific care needs relative to social structure and cultural context among this group is needed, that will recognize and build on the strengths of African American women who attempt to leave the lifestyle of prostitution. Therefore, the purpose of this ethnographic study, which was part of a larger investigation, was to describe resilience among African-American women who were former prostitutes with the goal of discovering knowledge to guide nurses in providing culturally sensitive care. The research question is: what are the experiences, values, beliefs, meanings, and practices of resilience for African American women formerly involved in street prostitution? …


Standard single-objective methods such as value iteration are not applicable to multi-objective Markov decision processes (MOMDPs) because they depend on a maximization, which is not defined if the rewards are multi-dimensional. As a result, special multi-objective algorithms are needed to find a set of policies that contains all optimal trade-offs between objectives, i.e. a set of Pareto optimal policies. In this paper, we propose Pareto local policy search (PLoPS), a new planning method for MOMDPs based on Pareto local search (PLS) [3]. This method produces a good set of policies by iteratively scanning the neighbourhood of locally non-dominated policies for improvements. It is fast because neighbouring policies can be quickly identified as improvements, and their values can be computed incrementally. We test the performance of PLoPS on several MOMDP benchmarks, and compare it to popular decision-theoretic and evolutionary alternatives. The results show that PLoPS outperforms the alternatives.


When designing novel GUI controls, interaction designers are challenged by the "immaterial" materiality of the digital domain; they lack tools that effectively support a reflecting conversation with the material of software as they attempt to conceive, refine, and communicate their ideas. To investigate this situation, we conducted two participatory design workshops. In the first workshop, focused on conceiving, we observed that designers want to invent controls by exploring gestures, context, and examples. In the second workshop, on refining and communicating, designers proposed tools that could refine movement, document context through usage scenarios, and support the use of examples. In this workshop they struggled to effectively communicate their ideas for developers because their ideas had not been fully explored. In reflecting on this struggle, we began to see an opportunity for the output of a design tool to be a boundary object that would allow for an ongoing conversation between the design and the material of software, in which the developer acts as a mediator for software.


From 1964 until 2002, the State of Nebraska sponsored a defined contribution plan for its employees. During this period, the plan was unique among state pension plans because it was an individual account-type plan that offered participants the choice of a lump sum or annuity distribution upon retirement. Such a choice presents the opportunity to learn more about how individuals perceive financial risks and weigh various factors when deciding how to access their retirement benefits. This study reports the results of a new survey of Nebraska state workers who retired or terminated employment in 1997. The results offer a perspective on how individuals perceive their decisions 10 years later. The findings reveal three general themes. First, retirees tended to underestimate the financial risks associated with uninsured health care expenses. Sixty-five percent of retiree respondents said that they had initially underestimated such risk. Second, federal policies may influence the distribution decision. For example, many respondents cited tax penalties on lump sum distributions as a major factor in their decision, which is consistent with a high percentage choosing a nontaxable direct rollover distribution. Finally, the results provide a basis for cautious optimism that retirees will be able to successfully manage a present value sum distribution during retirement. Over 90 percent of retiree respondents reported that they were able to cover their living expenses 10 years after their retirement.


Twitter is a unique social media channel, in the sense that users discuss and talk about the most diverse topics, including their health conditions. In this paper we analyze how Dengue epidemic is reflected on Twitter and to what extent that information can be used for the sake of surveillance. Dengue is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that is a leading cause of illness and death in tropical and subtropical regions, including Brazil. We propose an active surveillance methodology that is based on four dimensions: volume, location, time and public perception. First we explore the public perception dimension by performing sentiment analysis. This analysis enables us to filter out content that is not relevant for the sake of Dengue surveillance. Then, we verify the high correlation between the number of cases reported by official statistics and the number of tweets posted during the same time period (i.e., R2 = 0.9578). A clustering approach was used in order to exploit the spatio-temporal dimension, and the quality of the clusters obtained becomes evident when they are compared to official data (i.e., RandIndex = 0.8914). As an application, we propose a Dengue surveillance system that shows the evolution of the dengue situation reported in tweets, which is implemented in www.observatorio.inweb.org.br/dengue/.


The P2Y12 inhibitors, clopidogrel, prasugrel, and ticagrelor, are administered in fixed doses without laboratory monitoring. Randomized trials in acute coronary syndrome have shown that prasugrel and ticagrelor are more effective than standard-dose clopidogrel. Nonetheless, standard-dose clopidogrel remains widely used because it causes less bleeding and is less expensive. Patients treated with standard-dose clopidogrel have substantial variability in platelet inhibition, which is partly explained by genetic polymorphisms encoding CYP2C19, the hepatic enzyme involved in biotransformation of clopidogrel to its active metabolite. Some advocate tailoring P2Y12 inhibitor therapy according to the results of routine laboratory testing. Although there is good evidence for analytic, biological, and clinical validity of several phenotypic and genotypic biomarkers, the benefit of a management strategy that incorporates routine biomarker testing over standard of care without such testing remains unproven. Appropriately designed, adequately powered trials are needed but face the challenges of feasibility, cost, and the progressive switch from clopidogrel to prasugrel or ticagrelor.


We have performed spectral interferometry with Rayleigh scattered light coming from a single speckle and emitted after resonant creation of excitons in GaAs quantum wells:: The experiment confirms the coherence of the secondary emission at early times, regardless of sample:parameters. but underlines the stochastic nature of a single speckle. The scattered electric field is calculated, correctly accounting for the center-of-mass quantization in the disordered potential. We find that the amplitudes of the electric fields emitted by different excitons are uncorrelated, so that the well-known Poisson distribution for speckle intensities applies.


Extracellular and intracellular acid-base balance is necessary for the maintenance of normal metabolic processes. The primary source of acid is metabolically produced CO2, and the CO2/HCO3− system is the most significant buffer. The regulation of acid-base balance is complex, involving the interaction between respiratory gas exchange and ion transport. In aquatic crustaceans respiration is governed by the need to extract oxygen from water, an O2-poor medium; thus, acid-base balance is maintained primarily through ion transport mechanisms. These mechanisms include Na+/H+ and Cl−/HCO3− exchange processes that are sensitive to the extracellular acid-base status of the animal. In marine crabs, ion regulation and acid-base balance are accomplished by the posterior gills, while in freshwater species all gills and the antennal gland perform these functions. Intracellular acid-base balance appears to be maintained primarily by ion transport across the cell membrane. Hemolymph pH varies inversely with acclimation temperature and salinity. In both cases Pco2 remains nearly constant, and the pH change is a result of changes in hemolymph HCO3− concentrations brought about by ion exchange mechanisms. Environmental hypercapnia or hyperoxia induces a repiratory acidosis characterized by increased Pco2, low pH, and elevated HCO3−; this is partially compensated for by ion exchange processes that bring about a further increase in hemolymph HCO3−. Exercise causes a mixed respiratory and metabolic acidosis with compensation via H+ ion excretion and hyperventilation.


The debugging cycle is the most common methodology for finding and correcting errors in sequential programs. Cyclic debugging is effective because sequential programs are usually deterministic. Debugging parallel programs is considerably more difficult because successive executions of the same program often do not produce the same results. In this paper we present a general solution for reproducing the execution behavior of parallel programs, termed Instant Replay. During program execution we save the relative order of significant events as they occur, not the data associated with such events. As a result, our approach requires less time and space to save the information needed for program replay than other methods. Our technique is not dependent on any particular form of interprocess communication. It provides for replay of an entire program, rather than individual processes in isolation. No centralized bottlenecks are introduced and there is no need for synchronized clocks or a globally consistent logical time. We describe a prototype implementation of Instant Replay on the BBN Butterfly™ Parallel Processor, and discuss how it can be incorporated into the debugging cycle for parallel programs.


A distributed fiber-optic sensor system is proposed and demonstrated for long-distance intrusion-detection, which employs the hybrid time/wavelength division multiplexing architecture. The sensing elements are single-mode telecommunication fiber which can be hanged on the fence and hedge or buried along the monitored perimeter. The pulsed light generated by the superluminescent diode was filtered by the filter which has multichannel (m=6), and then amplified by erbium-doped fiber amplifiers. A 1×(n+1) (n=20) splitter of which every port has a fiber delay coil except the first port splits the amplified light. The fiber delay coils have different lengths, which generate different delay time and produce n time zones. By utilizing the m channel dense wave-length division multiplexing modules, every fiber sensing unit (OSU)-based unbalance Mach-Zehnder Sagnac interferometer technology occupy a time zone and a wavelength. By utilizing 20 time zones and 6 wavelengths, the system contains up to 120 OSUs, of which the distributed sensing distance is from 0 to 500 m. So, the whole sensing distance of this system could reach 60 km. The system has been demonstrated to stably run over six months with the false alarm rate of less than 4%.


A large number of diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, inflammatory disease, neurodegenerative disorders and ageing are consequences of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS). Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) damage, lipid peroxidation and protein damage are biomarkers for damage in the cell caused by ROS and RNS. Various plant extracts have been tested for anti-oxidant properties. Due to the chlorophyll in the extracts, false negative results from spectrophotometric tests are often observed. A pilot study was done to determine the stability of the secondary compounds with high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) after the samples were bleached with ultraviolet (UV) radiation and treated with activated charcoal. The chlorophyll a was successfully degraded with UV radiation in all the samples leaving a bleached extract suitable for biological assays.


State-of-the-art Arctic Ocean mean sea surface (MSS) models and global geoid models (GGMs) are used to support sea ice freeboard estimation from satellite altimeters, as well as in oceanographic studies such as mapping sea level anomalies and mean dynamic ocean topography. However, errors in a given model in the high frequency domain, primarily due to unresolved gravity features, can result in errors in the estimated along-track freeboard. These errors are exacerbated in areas with a sparse lead distribution in consolidated ice pack conditions. Additionally model errors can impact ocean geostrophic currents, derived from satellite altimeter data, while remaining biases in these models may impact longer-term, multi-sensor oceanographic time-series of sea level change in the Arctic. This study focuses on an assessment of five state-of-the-art Arctic MSS models (UCL13/04, DTU15/13/10) and a commonly used GGM (EGM2008). We describe errors due to unresolved gravity features, inter-satellite biases, and remaining satellite orbit errors, and their impact on the derivation of sea ice freeboard. The latest MSS models, incorporating CryoSat-2 sea surface height measurements, show improved definition of gravity features, such as the Gakkel Ridge. The standard deviation between models ranges 0.03-0.25 m. The impact of remaining MSS/GGM errors on freeboard retrieval can reach several decimeters in parts of the Arctic. While the maximum observed freeboard difference found in the central Arctic was 0.59 m (UCL13 MSS minus EGM2008 GGM), the standard deviation in freeboard differences is 0.03-0.06 m.


Abstract. We introduce a global-to-regional nesting scheme for atmospheric transport models used in simulating concentrations of green house gases from globally distributed surface fluxes. The coupled system of the regional Stochastic Time-Inverted Lagrangian Transport (STILT) model and the global atmospheric transport model (TM3) is designed to resolve atmospheric trace gas concentrations at high temporal and spatial resolutions in a specified domain e.g. for regional inverse applications. The nesting technique used for the coupling is based on a decomposition of the atmospheric concentration signal into a far-field and a near-field contribution enabling the usage of different model types for global (Eulerian) and regional (Lagrangian) scales. For illustrating the performance of the coupled TM3-STILT system we compare simulated mixing ratios of carbon dioxide with available observations at 10 sites in Europe. For all chosen sites the TM3-STILT provided higher correlations between the modelled and the measured time series than the TM3 global model. Autocorrelation analysis demonstrated that the TM3-STILT model captured temporal variability of measured tracer concentrations better than TM3 at most sites.


Background: Cardiovascular diseases are among the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. The association between HIV and CVD has been established in many studies. However, information is still lacking on subclinical disease as well as its associated risk factors in this population. This study aimed at establishing the prevalence of subclinical CVD among clinically healthy HIV people attending their regular out- patient visits. It also looked at risk factors (traditional and non traditional) as well as the association of CVD to the CD4 count.
Methods: we enrolled a total of 243 asymptomatic HIVinfected patients from the HIV outpatient clinic at the University Teaching Hospital. Data collected included demographic characteristics, duration of HIV infection, drug history including HAART regimen and cardiovascular risk factors (hypertension, diabetes and smoking). Clinical data included blood pressure, weight and height. Laboratory data included CD4 counts, serum creatinine, total cholesterol and triglycerides. We  tested for subclinical CVD using 3 tools: Ankle Brachial Index (ABI) to measure for the presence of peripheral artery disease, 12 lead Electrocardiogram (ECG) for  electrical abnormalities and transthoracic Echocardiography (ECHO), to measure abnormalities in cardiac structure and function. At analysis, patients where  dichotomised into those with CD4≤350 and those with CD4>350.
Results: participants characteristics were as follows: the mean age, 42 years (SD±10); 143 (58.5%) females; CD4≤350cells/ml was found in 140 (57.6%); 112(86.2%) were receiving HAART with 86.2% being on 1st line regimen. Systolic hypertension was present in 84(34.6%), diastolic hypertension in 89(36.6%) and 39.5% had creatinine clearance<90. Diabetes and current smoking were not very common (3.3% and 2.9% respectively). High total cholesterol was found in  19(7.82%) of the participants while 37(15.23%) had high triglycerides. On ECG, ECHO and ABI, abnormalities were found in 53.9%, 44.4% and 20.2%   respectively). The commonest cardiac lesion on both ECG and ECHO was left ventricular hypertrophy (27.4% and 23.3%  respectively). Participants with CD4≤350 had higher prevalence of abnormalities on ECG (P=0.022) and ABI (P=0.043). Clinical factors associated with increased risk of subclinical CVD on multivariate logistical regression included CD4≤350, systolic BP>140mmHg and diastolic BP >90mmHg.
Conclusions: Prevalence of subclinical CVD in healthy HIV infected patients is high and those with CD4≤350 have a higher risk. Hypertension is the most important traditional CVD risk factor in this population. There is need to screen HIV patients attending their routine clinic visits for hypertension and subclinical CVD. ABI and ECG are readily available in most institutions and can be used with minimal  expertise.


Before the 1989 case of Graham v. Connor, excessive force cases were pursued under either state law or the insuperable "shocks the conscience" test of the Fourteenth Amendment. Only after Graham did excessive force cases — now under the Fourth Amendment and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 — inundate the federal courts, which had by then granted far-reaching immunities to officers for their constitutional torts. As a result of federal qualified immunity doctrine, which many states have adopted for themselves, excessive force cases rarely get to trial, plaintiffs often cannot recover, and courts struggle to find principled distinctions from one qualified immunity case to the next.Part II of this Article describes the evolution of this qualified immunity doctrine and demonstrates how common law immunities were traditionally held to have been incorporated into § 1983 by the Congress of 1871 as a matter of statutory interpretation. It claims that only when the Court began hearing federal Bivens actions and created an immunity doctrine untethered from statutory interpretation, the common-law approach was lost and the modern, nearly insurmountable qualified immunity doctrine was adopted. Part II thus establishes the historical importance of common-law interpretation to § 1983 suits. Part III then shows how differently excessive force cases would have to be treated were the court to return to the common law interpretive methods in § 1983 cases. At common law, excessive force actions were quite common and more liberal toward plaintiffs seeking redress; officers were expected to pay damages for any unnecessary force; and it was the province of the jury to determine such questions. Parts IV-V then make the theoretical case under both constitutional and statutory interpretation for replacing modern qualified immunity doctrine with a return to its common law variety in excessive-force actions, an approach that would also be far more judicially workable than the current doctrine.


This paper discusses the relevance of normative approaches to define and measure the social dimension of vulnerability, from an initial critique to the notion of resilience. From a critical realist perspective, the paper assesses the applicability of the notion of resilience in vulnerability studies, and proposes a conceptual and methodological alternative based on normative, objective well-being approaches. The paper also discusses in depth the main methodological issues that are necessary to clarify for making this proposal operative. The core elements of the methodology are well-being thresholds and weights, which are taken as the reference point to measure the potentially negative effects on well-being in a situation of vulnerability to different hazards.


Abstract. The definition of a methodology for estimating suitable areas for new renewable sources needs to identify possible indexes that describe the fields. One interesting index is the Evapotranspiration (ET). This is usually determined from hydrological models, which however do not provide a real-time estimation. So, new different procedures have been tested to compute it, for example, the use of Satellite images. The Sen-ET project allows using the Copernicus data to compute daily evapotranspiration. An improvement in the automatization of methodology is presented within this work. The model is tested in two different Italian regions with different climates and geographical conditions, considering also different months to study the results in different seasons over the same area. Results are then compared with those obtained in the same areas and period with two hydrological models (BIGBANG and GlobWat). The different outputs are analysed according to their spatial resolutions and respect to agricultural land cover classes. The comparison between Sen-ET evapotranspiration maps and hydrological model results has shown, in the analysed areas, relevant differences and suggests interesting future insights for continuous monitoring of land subject to water stress.