ocial media (SM) us  age is increasing across the globe. Of the 7.6 billion people populating earth, 4 billion are believed to be Internet users. Over 3 billion are SM users, representing over 40% global pen etration [1], [2]. In this issue of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, we contem plate SM; we can postulate effects on political, economic, sociocultural, technological, legal, and environmen tal (PESTLE) factors. We reviewed how social networking sites (SNS) are channels used to sociopolitically raise awareness and mobilize people during elections. We reviewed opin ions shared by females who face strict gender segregation rules. We brought special focus to the Middle East, the transcontinental region with an estimated 130 mil lion active SM users (up almost 40% from 2017) and 164 million Inter net users (or 65% penetration) [1], [2]. Our authors confirmed findings from previous studies [3]: SM users in the Middle East describe a lack of freedom of expression, and worry about legal consequences when creating and sharing content. Some users can face fines and prison sentences if posts are interpreted as critical or insulting, or if photo graphs or videos of others are post ed without consent [4]. Some clerics, or others in author ity in this region, have blamed SM for uprisings. Therefore, some govern ments block, restrict, or prohibit pop ular sites and services. Yet, SM are not the causes of discontent or disaf fection. SM are channels of commu nication. Discontent and disaffection are upstream, flowing downstream into many various tributaries for communication; tributaries can be online and offline channels. Yet, undeniably, SM continue to prove powerful. Communication is a formidable tool for empowerment. Citizens can use SM to communi cate to influence large audiences, to build group identity and unity, and to expose abuses. SM can give voice to the voiceless. People can become empowered. In an interconnected world, the autocratic will continue to face chal lenges with the digital. Savvy users persist to find methods to bypass communication suppression, much like the 46% of survey respondents in Arab regions reporting multiple accounts on a single SNS platform [5]. With all the suppression efforts aimed at avoiding political instabil ity, perhaps the autocratic misjudge the empowerment borne through SM. Particularly, because empower ment/civic participation is believed to be one of the four necessary con ditions required to achieve sustain able political stability [6]. Author Information Christine Perakslis is Associate Pro fessor in the MBA Program, College of Management, Johnson & Wales University, Providence, RI. Email: firstname.lastname@example.com.


Digital video computing and organization are two important issues in multimedia systems, signal compression, and databases. The segmentation of the video into shots requires identification and indexing. This approach requires a suitable method for the automatic location of cut points in order to separate the shots in a video. Various changes may happen within a single shot such as those related to camera operations, object movements and flashes. Therefore, we propose a new cut detection technique, based on linear correlation coefficients of inter frame motion vectors, and a new video indexing method that uses motion vectors to identify video sequences. The index is based on the identification of discrete cut points and camera operations made possible by analyzing motion vectors. Experimental results applied to commercial video are presented and evaluated.


Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of barbell type on lifting technique and muscle and joint load during submaximal weights in deadlift.Method: Barbells from olympic weightlifting (OWL) and power lifting (PL) were used. Sixteen subjects from different strength disciplines executed twelve submaximal lifts at minimum 150 kg. Electromyography, force plate and ProReflex were used to collect data about muscle activity, force production, moment on joint and barbell trajectory.Results: Shows significantly differences in barbell qualities between the OWL and PL (71574 ± 4611 vs. 85502 ± 9818, p < 0,05). One EMG measurements were found to be significant, m. vastus medialis (holdsteady) (65 ± 37 vs. 57 ± 36, p< 0,05). One EMG measurement were a trend, m. longissimus (earlystart) (243 ± 129 vs. 255 ± 125, p 0,059). Sixteen EMG measurements were non significant. No significant moment differences on joints were found, such as the pelvis (holdsteady) (392 ± 136 vs. 390 ± 141, p 0,914) and the knee (maxmoment) (384 ± 141 vs. 384 ± 130, p 0,995). Other measurements such as rate of force development (RFD), barbell trajectories and maximal force (MaxFz) were non significant.Conclusion: The results indicate that the barbell choice when executing a submaximal deadlift has no effect on physical load or technique.


The turbomachinery department of the University of Queensland Mechanical and Mining Engineering group has CGNS format files that are not compatible with the in house gas dynamics simulation code Eilmer3. For this a conversion software has been designed to read the CGNS files and write
the grid to an ASCII format VTK file. The conversion software also writes a text file with the boundary condtions stored in the CGNS file. The software has been proven to succesfully convert the CGNS files into Eilmer3
friendly format files. Next the converted files were read using Python andmade ready for simulations with Eilmer3. During preprocessing it became evident that the CGNS file used as a reference throughout the assignment as corrupted. The grid was constructed, but because it was corrupted no flow simulations were possible. Despite the fact that no full simulations could be run with the example CGNS file a number of things were learned throughout the project. The
most important being that working with CGNS files can be time intensive and frustrating. It is therefore recommended that either time is dedicated to CGNS and to work consistently when writing CGNS files or to explore
possible alternatives like GridPro, Pointwise, or OpenFOAM to work with grids in the future.


In his presidential address to the Society of Biblical Literature delivered at Haverford College on December 26, 1916, Morris Jastrow (1861-1922) reflected on the role of the critic ("Constructive Elements in the Critical Study of the Old Testament," JBL 36 [1917]: 1-30). Jastrow noted that "the critic has never been a popular figure. At his worst he is an iconoclast, at his best he makes us feel uncomfortable. ... The biblical critic ... fortunately appeared at a time when it was no longer fashionable to burn people at the stake, but he has been alternatively denounced as an enemy to the church and as a foe to religion" (p. 1). Despite such risks, Jastrow argued, the fundamental commitment of biblical scholars must be to cultivate critical engagement: "A scholar tied or pledged to traditional views can never become a critic, even though his learning reaches to the pinnacles of human industry" (p. 2). Jastrow's words, which read as an encomium for critical methodologies and bear repeating in our own context, aptly celebrate the spirit and scholarship fostered by the Society of Biblical Literature over the last 125 years. And Jastrow spurs us onward, affirming that the "progress of critical study" cannot be obstructed "any more than it is possible to dam up the ocean" (p. 1). Looking back at one facet of the Society's commitment to critical study, namely, book reviews in the Journal of Biblical Literature (titled Journal of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis until vol. 9 [ 1889] ), one is struck by how gradually and variously the journal incorporated reviews into its content. This may be a consequence of the Society's initial stated purpose: "The object of the Society is to stimulate the critical study of the Scriptures by presenting, discussing, and publishing original papers on biblical topics" ("Constitution and By-Laws," JSBLE 7 [1887]: 71, emphasis added). Review of published materials was not a high priority. Accordingly, in the first fifty-four years of JBL (1881-1935, vols. 1-54), book "reviews" were sporadic (e.g., vols. 9 and 10 contain none) and only occasionally resemble what we expect today. Readers may find a line or two summarizing a book and evaluating its significance in the "Books Received" section (e.g., see two examples from vol. 47 reprinted below). More typical were articlelength reviews of certain scholarly theories, such as George Barton's "Higher Archaeology and the Verdict of Criticism," JBL 32 ( 1913): 244-60 (cf. S. M. Jackson, "Eberhard Vischer's Theory of the Composition of the Revelation," JSBLE 7 [1887]: 93-95; Lewis B. Paton, "Notes on Driver's Leviticus," JBL 14 [1895]: 48-56; C. W. Rishell, "Baldensperger's Theory of the Origin of the Fourth Gospel," JBL 20 [1901]: 38-49; and James A. Montgomery, "Torrey's Aramaic Gospels," JBL 53 [1934]: 79-99). There were also intermittent precursors to the genre as it currently appears in JBL. The first is Isaac H. Hall's brief review titled "A New ArabicFrench Dictionary" (/5BLE 5 [1885]: 108, reprinted below). Hall's brief review is noteworthy for two reasons. First, it highlights the Society's early concern to locate and identify pertinent resources, to "map" the emergent territory of biblical and cognate studies: "This dictionary has been drawn from the best sources, and is the ablest production of the Jesuit establishment at Beirut. Its existence is not generally known by the Protestant missionaries." In this context it made sense to publish pieces like "Professor Tsagareli's Catalogue of the Georgian Manuscripts in the Monastery of the Holy Cross at Jerusalem" (trans. Oliver Wardrop; JBL 12 [1893]: 168-79). Extensive lists and descriptions of basic materials that would serve as the bases for analyses were thus being catalogued and made known to the scholarly world. second, Hall reminds us that books were comparatively difficult to come by. He made it a point to suggest ways to purchase the new Arabic-French dictionary ("through Westermann of New York, or through a consul at Beirut"). …


The growth in various types of industries together with population growth has resulted in enormous increase in production of various types of waste materials world over creating a problem of its disposal in eco-friendly way. To deal with the problem, study on use of plastic waste as partial replacement to bitumen in flexible pavement is considered in the present work. The work consists of an experimental approach towards waste management and finding alternative to conventional materials in flexible pavements. To simulate with the field conditions Marshall stability method is considered to carryout experimental work. The objective of work is to investigate the effect of plastic waste in flexible pavement and to suggest the optimum percentage of bitumen that can be replaced by plastic waste for the improvement of roads. Number of laboratory tests has been carried out by replacing bitumen by plastic waste. The results obtained in laboratory investigation indicate major gain in strength with substantial saving in cost.


In order to operate a power system at optimum economy, the production costs and transmission losses must be coordinated. A straightforward derivation of the co-ordination conditions is given. A widely adopted method of finding transmission penalty factors used so-called "B-constants." These constants are not easily modified to consider changes in the transmission system or deviation from "base-case" system conditions. By starting with the equilibrium equation of a power system written in terms of admittance constants, a concise expression for the total losses of a power transmission system which does not neglect shunt paths to neutral or the effect of off-nominal turns ratios is developed. Following this same approach, an easily modified, approximate expression for the penalty factor is formed. Any errors incurred by using this approximate penalty factor are small when compared with the inaccuracy of the original data on production costs. Several test cases on hypothetical systems are given. The generation schedules for economic dispatch, using approximate penalty factors, compare quite favorably in actual hourly costs with the costs of schedules obtained by exact penalty factors.


Moon Lake, MS is a 947 ha. oxbow lake of the Mississippi River Alluvial Plain also known as the Mississippi Delta. Land
use within the Moon Lake watershed during the sampling period was predominantly conventionally tilled cotton and
soybean farming. Water was sampled from five sites, bi-weekly from 1982 to 1985. Analysis of surface water quality
reviled loading of nutrients from nonpoint source pollution associated with agricultural runoff. Significant negatives
correlation was found between total phosphorus and chlorophyll a which seems counterintuitive until the effects of
sediment on light availability are considered. As expected, Secchi depth was positively related to chlorophyll a and
negatively correlated to total phosphorus and nitrogen. Significant positive correlations were found between total sediments
and both total nitrogen and total phosphorus however, a significant negative correlation was found between total sediments
and chlorophyll a. The strong association of phosphorous with total sediments, the negative correlation of Secchi depth to
phosphorus and nitrogen and the positive correlation to chlorophyll a indicate that Moon Lake primary productivity is
driven by light availability rather than nutrients. The connection of productivity to sediment effects on light is important to
ecosystem services of Delta oxbow lakes.


Abstract. Tropospheric NO2 vertical column densities have been retrieved and compared for the first time in Toronto, Canada, using three methods of differing spatial scales. Remotely sensed NO2 vertical column densities, retrieved from multi-axis differential optical absorption spectroscopy and satellite remote sensing, were evaluated by comparison with in situ vertical column densities estimated using a pair of chemiluminescence monitors situated 0.01 and 0.5 km a.g.l. (above ground level). The chemiluminescence measurements were corrected for the influence of NOz, which reduced the NO2 concentrations at 0.01 and 0.5 km by an average of 8 ± 1% and 12 ± 1%, respectively. The average absolute decrease in the chemiluminescence NO2 measurement as a result of this correction was less than 1 ppb. The monthly averaged ratio of the NO2 concentration at 0.5 to 0.01 km varied seasonally, and exhibited a negative linear dependence on the monthly average temperature, with Pearson's R = 0.83. During the coldest month, February, this ratio was 0.52 ± 0.04, while during the warmest month, July, this ratio was 0.34 ± 0.04, illustrating that NO2 is not well mixed within 0.5 km above ground level. Good correlation was observed between the remotely sensed and in situ NO2 vertical column densities (Pearson's R value ranging from 0.72 to 0.81), but the in situ vertical column densities were 52 to 58% greater than the remotely sensed columns. These results indicate that NO2 horizontal heterogeneity strongly impacted the magnitude of the remotely sensed columns. The in situ columns reflected an urban environment with major traffic sources, while the remotely sensed NO2 vertical column densities were representative of the region, which included spatial heterogeneity introduced by residential neighbourhoods and Lake Ontario. Despite the difference in absolute values, the reasonable correlation between the vertical column densities determined by three distinct methods increased confidence in the validity of the values provided by each measurement technique.


In this study we investigate what software development project team members consider to be a good project manager. Previous research has been carried out using project manager self-assessments, other project stakeholder views, or recruiters' views. This qualitative study used the repertory grid technique to identify the characteristics that project team members associate with a good project manager. This technique has been adopted because of its strength in eliciting personal constructs. Among the 18 characteristics identified, the seven most relevant were classified and compared with previous findings, which reveals differences between the team members' and project managers' and other stakeholders' perceptions. Those findings complement the existing skill set and could be considered when recruiting and training project managers and staffing projects.


Context An emerging body of research has begun to re-envision how nondominant families and communities might become powerful actors in equity-based educational change when issues of power, race, culture, language, and class are integrated into family engagement efforts. Beyond the commitment to more equitable engagement, the field offers little empirically-grounded evidence with regard to how to shift power and build collective agency, particularly in the moment-to-moment interactions that constitute the ongoing daily practice of family-school relations. Purpose of Study We sought to understand how nondominant parents and educators could enact equitable collaboration in the school-based co-design of a parent education curriculum. We sought to better "map" the journey to transformative agency of nondominant parents by asking: What were the turning points in the emergence and evolution of transformative agency amongst nondominant parents from different racial/cultural/linguistic communities? Within and across these turning points, how did parents narrate and negotiate their roles and evolve their transformative agency? Setting The research took place in a suburban school district in the Western United States outside a major urban city, in a region of increasing suburban poverty and marked racial, cultural, and linguistic diversity. Participants The design team included nine parents from two schools who identified as African/African American, Latina, Vietnamese, and white; three white teachers, two white principals, two district administrators (African American and multiracial), and five researchers (Asian American, African American, and Latino/a). Research Design This study merged a framework of equitable collaborations with expansive learning theory and employed participatory design research (PDR) methodologies to examine 10 design meetings with historically marginalized parents that sought to build authentic relationships, reciprocity, and accountability to one another and the targeted outcome. Findings/Results Our findings suggest a series of turning points marked by discursive expansions in which nondominant parents re-envisioned their own and educators' roles in educational change. Through the design process, parents surfaced and engaged historical contradictions, developed collective understandings, modeled possibilities for collective voice and influence, and enacted their collective influence through the collection of data from other parents, the development and piloting of a lesson on bullying, and the completion of the curriculum. Conclusions/Recommendations We argue that these methods and theories offer ways forward from documenting deficit-based processes and historically-rooted power asymmetries in family engagement towards enacting equitable and democratic processes that leverage the expertise of nondominant families in tandem with that of formal educators and researchers.


No doubt unity and consensus has a miraculous role in developing a nation and achieving their higher goals. Muslim's unity is a major and undeniable problem of the time. The increasing sectarian ethnocentrism has spattered and blemished the fundamental Islamic teachings. Today's Muslims are suffering from numerous problems, and the basic reasons for their plight are i.e. sectarian hatred, creed prejudices, lust for power, intolerance and many other materialistic interests. All these things have combined to confirm falling for Muslims, which deprived them of their honor, dignity and power. On the other hand the enemies of Muslim are united and they are fully aware that their strength lies in the weakness of Muslims. Hence they are engaged in making conspiracies to divide Muslims. Historically, it is proved that sowing germs of disunity and disintegration among Muslims has been a very old and an effective tool of Jews and Christians. Whereas the Holy Quran warns us to be united and to remain aloof from them. God also commands Muslims to observe patience and retain unity among them by following the principles of piety and brotherhood. It is possible only when Muslims involved in "fraternity" with broadmindedness. At the same time, it remains the core responsibility of the Muslim rulers to play their role in this connection.


Stimulation of the facial nerve system (e.g., electrically, electromagnetically, etc.) in stroke patients will cause dilation of occluded arteries and dilation of surrounding arteries, allowing for blood flow to circumvent the obstruction and reach previously-deprived tissue. The device approaches the facial nerve and its branches in the vicinity of the ear. In use, the device can be inserted into the ear canal or placed in proximity to the ear in order to stimulate the facial nerve system without puncturing the tympanic membrane. The device can also be advanced into the middle ear through a puncture created in the tympanic membrane. Branches of the facial nerve in the middle ear can then be stimulated directly. The device can be used in the emergency treatment of acute stroke or as chronically-implanted/inserted variations for long-term maintenance of blood flow to the brain and stroke prevention.


There have been several corresponding trends in the availability, use and treatment of methylamphetamines since 2003–04. Following a decline between 2006–07 and 2009–10, there have been increases across many factors relating to methylamphetamines to 2013–14. Arrests, seizures and detections have all increased. Users are now favouring the crystal form of methylamphetamine. They are using it more frequently, and, there appear to be more new users of crystal. There are more people in treatment reporting smoking as their usual method of use for amphetamines than previously. See related content for policy related to methylamphetamine in Australia between 2003-04 and 2013-14 (PDF)


According to Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), the Source-Path-Goal (SPG) schema constitutes a central concept in cognition. Apart from literally structuring "movement", SPG also shapes our understanding of "purposive activity", including questing and story-telling. A problem in CMT, however, is that the existence of image schemas is almost exclusively postulated on the basis of verbal expressions. To examine the claim that people recruit image schemas such as SPG to make sense of life, it is essential to examine non-verbal modalities. Animation has highly medium-specific opportunities to exploit SPG by its emphasis on "manner of movement" and "balance". Three animation films (Father and Daughter, Quest, and O) exemplifying MOVEMENT, QUEST, and STORY are analyzed in terms of SPG to chart how they exploit this schema. We end the paper by positioning our findings with respect to recent discussions about image schemas in Hampe (2005a) and by suggesting avenues for further research.


I. Introduction Momentum is building towards the creation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). That much appears to be undeniable. What is more uncertain, and therefore stimulates much speculative debate, is the final structure that the FTAA will take and the process that will be required to complete its construction. Although unanswerable at this stage, these questions and their examination contribute towards the emerging vision of an FTAA. No matter what its final form, establishing an FTAA will require a combined effort of considerable political will and a tremendous amount of technical groundwork. Part II of this article reviews the mandate that has been given to the Organization of American States (OAS) to participate in this process. It outlines the role played by the various organs of this regional organization in fulfilling that mandate and examines the steps that have been taken by these OAS organs to date. Part III of this article considers three important questions that have been precipitated by the movement towards the FTAA.(1) These questions are: What are the prospects for the expansion of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)? Is the NAFTA an appropriate model for a hemispheric agreement? Do regional trading blocs weaken the multilateral trading system and the World Trade Organization (WTO)? Keys to questions such as these may be revealed through examination of the process that is already underway. II. Participation by the OAS in the FTAA Process A. Mandate Given to the OAS At the Summit of the Americas which was held in Miami, Florida, December 9-11, 1994, leaders of the western hemisphere "resolve[d] to conclude the negotiation of the [FTAA] no later than 2005, and agree that concrete progress toward the attainment of this objective will be made by the end of this century."(2) The OAS, with the support of other organizations, was called upon to implement the steps outlined towards achieving that goal.(3) The roles of the various organs within the OAS in implementing these steps are outlined below. B. Outline of Participating OAS Organs 1. Political Organs of the OAS a. Special Committee on Trade In 1993, recognizing "the prevailing economic and trade conditions in the Hemisphere, as evidenced, inter alia, in the spirit of the U.S. Enterprise for the Americas Initiative," OAS member states established the Special Committee on Trade (SCT).(4) It is composed of high level trade officials from all OAS member states(5) and its objective is "promoting trade liberalization and expansion, among the countries of the Hemisphere."(6) An Advisory Group, comprised of nine senior trade policy officials from the OAS member states, was formed to assist the Committee in fulfilling its mandate.(7) The SCT is directed to act in close cooperation and coordination with the regional and subregional organizations (ALADI [Latin American Integration Association], IDB [Inter-American Development Bank], ECLAC [United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean], SELA [Latin American Economic System]), and with integration mechanisms (Andean Pact, CARICOM [Caribbean Community], MERCOSUR [Common Market of the South], SICA [Central American Integration System]).(8) The Plan of Action adopted at the Miami Summit directs the SCT "to assist in the systematization of data in the region and to continue its work on studying economic integration arrangements in the Hemisphere, including brief comparative descriptions of the obligations in each of the Hemisphere's existing trade agreements."(9) This is to be done with the support of the IDB, ECLAC, and other specialized regional and subregional organizations.(10) The Plan includes a time frame for the initiation of work programs and submission of preliminary and final reports by the SCT to the Ministers responsible for trade. …


The Adaptiveness of IWRM provides new insights and knowledge on the challenges and solutions that current water management faces in a situation of complexity and uncertainty. Drawing on the available results from a wide range of European research projects under several framework programmes, the book provides an overview of the state of the art in European research on Integrated Water Resources Management on the topics of Participation, Transboundary regimes, Economics, Vulnerability, Climate change, Advanced monitoring, Spatial planning, and the Social dimensions of water management. The achievements of EU research projects are considered in view of the extent to which IWRM responds to the current complexity and uncertainty water management is facing. These achievements are positioned in a wider context of worldwide developments in the respective topics which account for the future challenges. From this, the book concludes with the required focus of European research in the near future and promotes the concept of Adaptive Water Management as the preferred direction for the development of IWRM. The book presents the achievements of European IWRM research on a range of water management topics and offers conclusions and recommendations for research foci that will be invaluable to water managers, policy-makers and academic researchers working in the field of IWRM.


This paper, the product of an interdisciplinary team effort, seeks to find an acceptable procedure for ensuring that proper consideration is given to the environmental consequences of the construction works necessary for progress.
It examines and commends the EPPIC approach of a voluntary assumption of responsibility by the professional planner - it being accepted that there is no substitute for good planning - but concludes that the support of carefully structured legislation is essential. The characteristics of such legislation are thoroughly examined in the paper.
A practical procedure which should be acceptable to the public is proposed. This is, briefly, to make public disclosure of the environmental impacts of significant projects mandatory in a prescribed manner, the role of the courts being solely to ensure that the proposed procedures are properly followed.


Diffraction from a periodic structure is sensitive to small changes in the shape of that structure. It is possible to exploit this behavior of the scatter data for accurate, precise, rapid, nondestructive, and in situ measurements of grating structures. We present the use of rigorous coupled-wave theory to generate diffraction profiles to train a partial least-squares (PLS) multivariate calibration routine. The resulting PLS calibration model was applied to experimental diffraction data from gratings in etched bulk silicon to predict etch depths. A single-detector scanning scatterometer was used to measure the scatter from 32-μm-pitch structures illuminated with a He–Ne laser beam. The scatterometer measured the diffraction patterns from grating structures at 14 die locations on each of a set of five wafers. The theoretically based PLS estimator was then used to predict etch depths from scatterometry data obtained from the 70 different grating structures. The etch depth predictions were in excellent agreement with those obtained with a scanning force microscope (i.e., 0.9-μm-deep structures were predicted with an average error of 0.007 μm). This is a significant step toward the solution of the parametric inverse grating diffraction problem: that of quantitative prediction of structure dimensions from the measurement of scatter data.


Friction Bit Joining of Dissimilar Combinations of DP 980 Steel and AA 7075 Rebecca Hilary Mercy Peterson School of Technology, BYU Master of Science Friction Bit Joining (FBJ) is a new technology that allows lightweight metals to be joined to advanced high-strength steels (AHSS). Joining of dissimilar metals is especially beneficial to the automotive industry because of the desire to use materials such as aluminum and AHSS in order to reduce weight and increase fuel efficiency. In this study, FBJ was used to join 7075 aluminum and DP980 ultra-high-strength steel. FBJ is a two-stage process using a consumable bit. In the first stage, the bit cuts through the top material (aluminum), and in the second stage the bit is friction welded to the base material (steel). The purpose of the research was to examine the impact a solid head bit design would have on joint strength, manufacturability, and ease of automation. The solid head design was driven externally. This design was compared to a previous internally driven head design. Joint strength was assessed according to an automotive standard established by Honda. Joints were mechanically tested in lap-shear tension, cross-tension, and peel configurations. Joints were also fatigue tested, cycling between loads of 100 N and 750 N. The failure modes that joints could experience during testing include: head, nugget, material, or interfacial failure. All tested specimens in this research experienced interfacial failure. Welds were also created and examined under a microscope in order to validate a simulation model of the FBJ process. The simulation model predicted a similar weld shape and bond length with 5 percent accuracy. Joints made with external bits demonstrated comparable joint strength to internal bits in lap-shear tension and cross-tension testing. Only external bits were tested after lap-shear tension, because it was determined that external bits would perform comparably to internal bits. Joints made with external bits also exceeded the standard for failure during fatigue testing. Peel tested specimens did not meet the required strength for the automotive standard. Examining specimens under a microscope revealed micro-cracks in the weld. These defects have been shown to decrease joint strength. Joint strength, especially during peel testing, could be increased by reducing the presence of micro-cracks. The external bit design is an improvement from the internal bits for manufacturability and ability to be automated, because of the less-expensive processes used to form the bit heads and the design that lends to ease of alignment.


ABSTRACT Potato early dying (PED), also known as Verticillium wilt, caused by Verticillium dahliae, is a seasonal yield-limiting disease of potato worldwide, and PED-resistant cultivars currently represent only a small percentage of potato production. In this study, we developed a real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (Q-PCR) approach to detect and quantify V. dahliae. The efficiency of the designed primer pair VertBt-F/VertBt-R, derived from the sequence of the beta-tubulin gene, was greater than 95% in monoplex Q-PCR and duplex (using Plexor technology) procedures with primers PotAct-F/PotAct-R, obtained from the sequence of the actin gene, designed for potato. As few as 148 fg of V. dahliae DNA were detected and quantified, which is equivalent to five nuclei. Q-PCR detected V. dahliae in naturally infected air-dried potato stems and fresh stems of inoculated plants. Spearman correlations indicated a high correlation (upward of 80%) between V. dahliae quantifications using Q-PCR and the currently used plating assays. Moreover, Q-PCR substantially reduced the variability compared with that observed in the plating assay, and allowed for the detection of V. dahliae in 10% of stem samples found to be pathogen free on the culture medium. The described Q-PCR approach should provide breeders with a more sensitive and less variable alternative to time-consuming plating assays to distinguish response of breeding lines to colonization by V. dahliae.


Evoked potentials (EPs) are small phasic potentials that are elicited in conjunction with sensory, motor and cognitive events. EP variables have been assessed in patients with cirrhosis but in general, methods were inadequately standardized and study populations incompletely characterized, leading to some studies questioning the validity of EP's in diagnosing and monitoring hepatic encephalopathy, while other studies indicated that there is only a low positive yield with these investigations. Few studies have attempted tri-modal sensory and cognitive recordings. Recorded waveforms may demonstrate altered morphology while possessing broadly normal latencies. Since EP analysis is usually performed solely in the time domain, latency measurements do not therefore highlight morphological changes to the waveform and so abnormalities may go unreported. The aim of this study was twofold (i) to measure sensory and cognitive EPs in patients with cirrhosis in relation to their neuropsychiatric status and (ii) to address frequency content in relation to neuropsychiatric status by examining EPs with two spectral techniques, the Fourier Transform (FT) and the Power Spectral Density Estimate (PSD). Seventy patients with biopsy–proven cirrhosis were classified using clinical, psychometric and EEG criteria as unimpaired or as having minimal or overt hepatic encephalopathy (HE). Forty-eight healthy individuals served as controls. Visual (VEPs), brainstem auditory (BAEPs) somatosensory (SSEPs) and cognitive auditory (P300) EPs were recorded under standardized conditions. Significant latency differences were observed in sensory EPs between patients and controls with patient subgroups differences being less significant. The cognitive auditory P300 however, distinguished the patient subpopulations from one another. Frequency shifts are observed in all EP modalities with significant differences also occurring between patient groups. The sensitivity and specificity of the frequency-domain is comparable to that of the time-domain. Paired EP investigations analysed by latency indicate BAEP and P300 best discriminate any degree of encephalopathy; in the frequency domain it is the VEP combined with SEP and in the time-frequency domain it is the SEP. These findings suggest that EPs, when performed as a bank of multimodal tests and with spectral analysis, could provide a sensitive and specific method for the diagnosis and monitoring of hepatic encephalopathy.


Initiation is the first phase in protein synthesis, during which eukaryotic initiation factors assemble an 80S ribosome at an initiation codon of a messenger RNA (mRNA) such that this triplet is base-paired to the CAU anticodon of aminoacylated initiator methionyl-transfer RNA in the ribosomal peptidyl site. Initiation is followed by the elongation phase, in which the 80S ribosome moves along the mRNA, translating the open reading frame into protein.

Keywords:

eukaryotic translation initiation factor;
messenger ribonucleic acid;
ribosome;
transfer ribonucleic acid;
translation initiation


Over the years, a number of search algorithms have been proposed in AI literature, ranging from best-first to depth-first searches, from incomplete to optimal searches, from linear memory to unbounded memory searches; each having their strengths and weaknesses. The variability in performance of these algorithms makes algorithm selection a hard problem, especially for performance critical domains. Algorithm portfolios alleviate this problem by simultaneously running multiple algorithms to solve a given problem instance, exploiting their diversity. In general, the portfolio methods do not share information among candidate algorithms. Our work is based on the observation that if the algorithms within a portfolio can share information, it may significantly enhance the performance, as one algorithm can now utilize partial results computed by other algorithms. To this end, we introduce a new search framework, called Search Portfolio with Sharing (SP-S), which uses multiple algorithms to explore a given state-space in an integrated manner, seamlessly combining the partial solutions, while preserving the constraints/characteristics of the candidate algorithms. In addition, SP-S can be easily adopted to guarantee theoretical properties like completeness, bounded sub-optimality, and bounded re-expansions. We describe the basics of the SP-S framework and explain how different classes of search algorithms can be integrated in SP-S. We discuss its theoretical properties and present experimental results for multiple domains, demonstrating the utility of such a shared approach.


Extreme racial/ethnic disparities exist in children's access to "opportunity neighborhoods." These disparities arise from high levels of residential segregation and have implications for health and well-being in childhood and throughout the life course. The fact that health disparities are rooted in social factors, such as residential segregation and an unequal geography of opportunity, should not have a paralyzing effect on the public health community. However, we need to move beyond conventional public health and health care approaches to consider policies to improve access to opportunity-rich neighborhoods through enhanced housing mobility, and to increase the opportunities for healthy living in disadvantaged neighborhoods.


In the murine hair follicle (HF), the transcription factors LHX2 and SOX9 are implicated in epithelial hair follicle stem cell (eHFSC) self‐renewal and the maintenance of eHFSC niche characteristics. However, the exact expression patterns of LHX2 and SOX9 in the human HF are unclear. Therefore, we have quantitatively mapped the localisation of known human eHFSC markers keratin 15 (K15) and keratin 19 (K19) in the outer root sheath (ORS) of male occipital scalp anagen HFs and related this to the localisation of LHX2 and SOX9 protein expression. As expected, K15+ and K19+ cells represented two distinct progenitor cell populations in the bulge and in the proximal bulb ORS (pbORS). Interestingly, cell fluorescence for K19 was significantly stronger within the pbORS versus the bulge, and vice versa for K15, describing a hitherto unrecognised differential expression pattern. LHX2 and SOX9 expressing cells were distributed throughout the ORS, including the bulge, but were not restricted to it. SOX9 expression was most prominent in the ORS immediately below the human bulge, whereas LHX2+ cells were similarly distributed between the sub‐bulge and pbORS, that is compartments not enriched with quiescent eHFSCs. During catagen development, the intensity of LHX2 and SOX9 protein expression increased in the proximal HF epithelium. Double immunostaining showed that the majority of SOX9+ cells in the human anagen HF epithelium did not co‐express K15, K19 or LHX2. This expression profile suggests that LHX2 and SOX9 highlight distinct epithelial progenitor cell populations, in addition to K15+ or K19+ cells, that could play an important role in the maintenance of the human HF epithelium.


This project is a site specific based exploration into the boundaries between the domestic home and the navigation of the anxious corporeal body which dwells in the space. These connections open up ways of mapping anxiety brought on through intrusive thoughts surrounding contamination (in relation to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). The corporal navigation of the domestic is fuelled by the thoughts and their control over the notions of fear and anxiety surrounding the transferring of contaminated material from the external temporal world (dust and organic matter) into the internal sterile environment through movement or fissures in the fabric of the dwelling. The project explores the notions of the domestic space being formed into a container for the intrusive thoughts through physical acts of decontaminating, containment, sealing and expelling the elements of dirt; the body and the home become a hybrid entity alluding to the extreme control which forms and takes over the domestic space.


From 1933 to 1941, the eight existing Waldorf schools in Germany were forced to close. As an alternative system of education, they were considered a threat to National Socialism. Yet, they were not systematically nor uniformly brought into line with the Nazi state through the process of Gleichschaltung. Very few studies address the history of the Waldorf schools under National Socialism, and those that do are invariably written by members of the Waldorf school community. By examining correspondence between the Waldorf school administrators and Nazi officials, this study helps to fill the void. This investigation reveals that the personalities of both the local Nazi officials and the leadership of particular Waldorf schools played a large role in determining the fate of each school. The ambitions and attitudes of Nazi officials in each state determined the amount of pressure each school felt. In turn, each school was free to determine for itself how best to respond to this pressure. As a group, the schools were motivated by a desire to preserve the pedagogical philosophy Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the Waldorf schools. As such, they were initially eager to cooperate with the demands made of them by the Nazi administration and prove that they were not a threat to National Socialism. As Nazi demands encroached on the schools' freedom to practice Rudolf Steiner pedagogy, however, die schools' cooperation decreased. As each school reached its limits of compromise, they chose to close their doors rather than compromise Steiner's pedagogy. By investigating the eight German Waldorf schools, this study reveals that Gleichschaltung was not always an efficient and successful process and that local authorities heavily impacted the course of Nazi education policy. Moreover, it reveals that individuals did have some room to make choices in Nazi Germany; choices that did not always conform to Nazi wishes.


In the United States in 2009, 192,370 women are expected to be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, and 62,280 with in situ disease. About 70% of these cases are estrogen receptor positive (ER+). There are two isoforms of the ER, α and β, that differ somewhat in structure and action. ERβ expression plays a protective role in breast cancer, and selective targeting of this isoform would have many beneficial effects. Tamoxifen has long been the standard of care for patients with ER+ breast cancer. A major problem with tamoxifen is the development of drug resistance. One of the mechanisms proposed for the development of tamoxifen resistance involves the loss of ERβ expression. The first objective of this study was to screen a library of biphenyl C-cyclopropylalkylamides for their ability to function as ERβ-selective ligands. Two compounds were identified with modest selectivity for ERβ and anti-proliferative effects in breast cancer cells where they inhibited expression of c-Myc.The nuclear matrix (NM), the structural scaffolding of the nucleus, plays a major role in many fundamental processes of the cell. Using the ER+ breast cancer cell line MCF-7 and an antiestrogen resistant derivative, along with subtype selective ER ligands, alterations in the abundance of specific proteins present in the NM were identified using a mass spectrometry (MS)-based relative quantitative methodology. Some of the most interesting proteins with altered abundance are NuMA, serpin H1, hnRNP R, and dynein heavy chain 5. These proteins may represent putative biomarkers to customize treatment. The alterations also provide a mechanistic understanding of tamoxifen resistance. The NM was also investigated by MS in the earliest stage of breast cancer, ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), utilizing novel cell lines derived from normal (breast reduction), DCIS, and non-diseased contralateral breast surgical specimens. Two of the interesting proteins found to be altered in DCIS were HSP90 and EEF1D. These studies may provide biomarkers to aid in the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. In addition by understanding the mechanism behind the development of breast cancer, prevention becomes a possibility.


An electromechanical surface damping (EMSD) technique is proposed. This technique combines two surface damping methods, the shunted piezoelectric-ceramic damping with the viscoelastic constrained layer damping (CLD). The damping contribution of the shunted piezoelectric intends to enhance the effective frequency range of the CLD. Piezoelectric ceramics provide similar damping characteristics to viscoelastic material when they are shunted with resonant electrical networks. A resonant shunting circuit provides the opportunity of tuning (shifting) the effective damping range of the piezoelectric into an arbitrary frequency, enhancing the damping at the vicinity of such frequency. Also, the EMSD technique proposes the use of a multiple resonant network to shunt the piezoelectric ceramic. This concept enhances simultaneously the effective damping range at the vicinity of multiple and selected frequencies. This thesis assesses the dynamic behavior of a simple structure under EMSD treatment and it studies the effectiveness of multiple tuning also. A cantilever beam-like structure is adopted as a case study and a typical oscillator with two resonant networks has been selected to shunt the piezoelectric-ceramic. A viscoelastic material is attached on the structure and constrained by the piezoelectric ceramic. The EMSD is tuned to two natural frequencies of the main structure and its effectiveness in suppressing two vibration peaks simultaneously is evaluated. This study provides insight into the use of shunting networks of higher order. The constitutive equations of the EMSD differential element are developed and a finite element solution is obtained. Finally, the EMSD is optimized to find effective tuning parameters.


FCE 23884, a newly synthetized ergoline derivative, shows dopamine (DA) agonist or antagonist properties depending on the functional state of the biological substrate. The compound behaves as a full DA antagonist in normal animals, but shows full agonist properties in denervated models in the same dose range. In normal animals, FCE 23884 impairs Sidmans avoidance in rats, reduces spontaneous locomotion in mice and monkeys and antagonizes apomorphine-induced climbing behavior in mice, yawning in rats, emesis in dogs and amphetamine-induced toxicity in grouped mice. After experimental procedures resulting in severe DA depletion, FCE 23884 behaves as a powerful DA-agonist mainly at D-1 receptors. FCE 23884 induces contralateral turning behavior in 6-hydroxydopamine-lesioned rats and reverses 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine-induced akinesia in monkeys and reserpine-induced hypokinesia in mice. These results indicate that the antagonist or agonist activity of FCE 23884 is substrate-dependent and mostly related to the presence or absence of DA. This leads to the apparently paradoxical suggestion that the compound could be useful both in psychotic states and extrapyramidal diseases, i.e., in clinical conditions characterized by either excessive or impaired DAergic neurotransmission.


In the context of globalization and the importance of emerging markets, there is a need to study practical examples of product promotion in these markets. For Russia, the additional urgency is related to sanctions from the US and the EU, when the appeal to "friendly" developing countries is considered as the main (and in some cases- the only) export opportunity. Where to expand and how to proceed? What to look for marketing strategy? Where to find support? What barriers (risks) can be encountered on the export promotion path and how to circumvent them? These and other questions this work intends to answer. Its goal is to identify significant common factors and best practices for better product promotion in emerging markets. The research focuses on six emerging markets: China, Brazil, UAE, South Africa, Poland and Kazakhstan. The choice is due to the structural analysis of Russian exports for 2016, the preferences of expert analytics and, if possible, different geographical location (except for China and Kazakhstan) of the listed countries. The work is of practical value for companies seeking to bring their products to the emerging markets. The follow-up to this study can be a narrowing of the topic to specific types of products, taking into account the industry practices, detailed study of individual ways for product promotion or focusing on the characteristics of one market.


Static architectural conformance checking can be used to find architectural violations, cases where the implementation does not adhere to the architecture, and prevent architectural erosion. We implement a software service for automated conformance checking and investigate the effect this has on the number of architectural violations in software projects. The service is implemented using our heuristic-based approach to static architecture conformance checking of the Model-View-Controller pattern. The service is integrated in the source code management system of each project, so a report is generated every time the source code is modified. The service was evaluated in a field experiment that consisted of eight student projects. We found that the four projects that used the service produced significantly fewer violations compared to those that did not.


Hierarchical reinforcement learning has demonstrated significant success at solving difficult reinforcement learning (RL) tasks. Previous works have motivated the use of hierarchy by appealing to a number of intuitive benefits, including learning over temporally extended transitions, exploring over temporally extended periods, and training and exploring in a more semantically meaningful action space, among others. However, in fully observed, Markovian settings, it is not immediately clear why hierarchical RL should provide benefits over standard "shallow" RL architectures. In this work, we isolate and evaluate the claimed benefits of hierarchical RL on a suite of tasks encompassing locomotion, navigation, and manipulation. Surprisingly, we find that most of the observed benefits of hierarchy can be attributed to improved exploration, as opposed to easier policy learning or imposed hierarchical structures. Given this insight, we present exploration techniques inspired by hierarchy that achieve performance competitive with hierarchical RL while at the same time being much simpler to use and implement.


We introduce FigureQA, a visual reasoning corpus of over one million question-answer pairs grounded in over 100,000 images. The images are synthetic, scientific-style figures from five classes: line plots, dot-line plots, vertical and horizontal bar graphs, and pie charts. We formulate our reasoning task by generating questions from 15 templates; questions concern various relationships between plot elements and examine characteristics like the maximum, the minimum, area-under-the-curve, smoothness, and intersection. To resolve, such questions often require reference to multiple plot elements and synthesis of information distributed spatially throughout a figure. To facilitate the training of machine learning systems, the corpus also includes side data that can be used to formulate auxiliary objectives. In particular, we provide the numerical data used to generate each figure as well as bounding-box annotations for all plot elements. We study the proposed visual reasoning task by training several models, including the recently proposed Relation Network as a strong baseline. Preliminary results indicate that the task poses a significant machine learning challenge. We envision FigureQA as a first step towards developing models that can intuitively recognize patterns from visual representations of data.


In distributed open systems, such as multiagent systems, new interactions are constantly appearing and new agents are continuously joining or leaving. It is unrealistic to expect agents to automatically trust new interactions. It is also unrealistic to expect agents to refer to their users for help every time a new interaction is encountered. An agent should decide for itself whether a specific interaction with a given group of agents is suitable or not. This thesis presents a runtime verification mechanism for addressing this problem. Verifying multiagent systems has its challenges. It is hard to predict the reliability of interactions, in systems that are heavily influenced by autonomous agents, without having access to the agent specifications. Available verification mechanisms may roughly be divided into two categories: (1) those that verify interaction models independently of specific agents, and (2) those that verify agent models whose constraints shape the interactions. Interaction models are not sufficient when verifying dynamic properties that depend on the agents engaged in an interaction. On the other hand, verifying agent specifications, such as  models, is extremely inefficient. Specifications are usually not explicit enough, resulting in the verification of a massive number of permissible interactions. Furthermore, in open systems, an agent's internal specification is usually not accessible for many reasons, including security and privacy. This thesis proposes a model checker that verifies a combination of a global interaction model and local deontic models. The deontic model may be viewed as a list of agent constraints that are deemed necessary to share and verify, such as the inability of the buyer to pay by credit card. The result is a lightweight, efficient, and powerful model checker that is capable of verifying rich properties of multiagent systems without the need for accessing agents' internal specifications. Although the proposed model checker has potential for addressing a variety of problems, the trust domain receives special attention due to the critically of the trust issue in distributed open systems and the lack of reliable trust solutions. The thesis illustrates how a dynamic model checker, using deontic/trust models, can help agents decide whether the scenarios they wish to join are trustworthy or not. In summary, the main contribution of this research is in introducing interaction time verification for checking deontic and trust models multiagent interactions. When faced with new unexplored interactions, agents can verify whether joining a given interaction with a given set of collaborating agents would violate any of its constraints.


The influence of non-recent human activities on the structure and functioning of wetlands is frequently overlooked. The Hula wetland in northern Israel was exploited for a variety of resources over thousands of years prior to near-total destruction by drainage in the 1950s. These pre-drainage human impacts created a mosaic of anthropogenic habitats which should be considered in attempting to re-create and rehabilitate the wetlands. Here we take an environmental history approach, using the documentary record to identify the numerous ways in which the ecosystem was shaped by human activity. The major traditional activities in the wetland included reed-harvesting, fishing, animal husbandry and limited arable agriculture. The corpus of material examined illustrates that drainage of the wetlands has a longer history than is frequently supposed. Activities such as papyrus harvesting, buffalo husbandry and fishing shaped the ecosystem and their replication may be desirable to re-create lost anthropogenic niches in contemporary conservation management.


Twice in the past three years, the Supreme Court has granted certiorari in Fair Housing cases, and, each time, under pressure from civil rights leaders who feared that the Supreme Court might narrow current Fair Housing Act jurisprudence, the cases settled just weeks before oral argument. Settlements after the Supreme Court grants certiorari are extremely rare, and, in these cases, the settlements reflect a substantial fear among civil rights advocates that the Supreme Court's recent decisions in cases such as Shelby County v. Holder and Fisher v. University of Texas are working to dismantle many of the protections of the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s. The sole issue in both of the recently settled Fair Housing Act cases was whether disparate impact analysis – a type of analysis that some on the Supreme Court may view as requiring racial preferences – is valid under the Fair Housing Act. This article argues that in order to have a chance at achieving the goal of its sponsors – "to replace the ghettos [with] truly integrated and balanced living patterns," – the Fair Housing Act cannot just take aim at the aberrant individual who intentionally denies a person housing because of his or her race. Instead, the Fair Housing Act must recognize claims based on disparate impact analysis alone. This article argues that disparate impact analysis is especially needed to address urban redevelopment decisions because such decisions are often made through a multi-party protracted process, in which a discriminatory intent may be impossible to discern or entirely absent. Additionally, it is the outcome of large-scale urban redevelopment projects that will truly shape racial housing patterns in the twenty-first century.


An Electronic Customer Relationship Management system or eCRM helps organizations shift from mass marketing of goods and services to customized marketing of personalized of fers. As consumers are constantly getting more technologically savvy and sophisticated, eCRM systems allow businesses to tune-in to their customers' needs and design appropriate personal ized marketing campaigns. They not only allow more intelligent customer interactions and responses, but also do it in a cost effective manner. The primary purpose of this paper is to explain the eCRM concept and describe the major organizational benefits of eCRM.


This thesis describes novel developments in the fabrication and understanding of type IA fibre Bragg gratings, the uses of said gratings as optical sensors and the interrogation of optical sensors using tilted fibre Bragg gratings. This thesis presents the most detailed study of type IA gratings performed to date and provides the basis of a dual grating optical sensor capable of independently measuring strain and temperature. Until this work it was not known how to reliably fabricate type IA gratings or how they would react to high ambient temperatures, nor was it known what effect external parameters such as fibre type, dopant levels, inscription laser intensity, or hydrogenation levels would have on the physical properties of the grating. This comprehensive study has yielded answers to all of these unknowns and produced several unexpected uses for type IA gratings, such as the use of the previously unreported strong loss band at 1400nm to locally heat fibres by optical absorption and thereby fabricate optically tuneable gratings which do not affect directly adjacent standard gratings. Blazed fibre Bragg gratings have been studied in detail and used to produce several high quality prototype sensor interrogation systems yielding stability an accuracy values unsurpassed by similar devices reported in literature. An accurate distribution map of light radiated by blazed gratings is shown for the first time and has been studied in respect of polarisation state showing that for certain easily achievable conditions a blazed grating spectrometer may be deemed to be polarisation insensitive. In a novel implementation of the system, it is shown that the dynamic wavelength range of a blazed grating spectrometer may be at least doubled by superimposing blazed gratings.


The Internet is evolving to become a more ubiquitous network, driven
by the low prices of wireless routers and access points and by the
users' requirements of connectivity anytime and anywhere. For that
reason, a cloud of nodes connected by wireless technology is being
created at the edge of the Internet. We refer to this cloud as a
Fringe Stub (FS). It is expected that networking in the FS will be
highly unmanaged and ad-hoc, but at the same time will need to offer
excellent service availability. The NEMO Basic Support protocol could
be used to provide global reachability for a mobile access network
within the FS and the Tree-Discovery mechanism could be used to avoid
the formation of loops in this highly unmanaged structure. Since
Internet connectivity in mobile scenarios can be costly, limited or
unavailable, there is a need to enable local routing between the
Mobile Routers within a portion of the FS. This form of local routing
is useful for Route Optimization (RO) between Mobile Routers that are
communicating directly in a portion of the FS. Network In Node
Advertisement (NINA) is the second of a 2-passes routing protocol; a
first pass, Tree Discovery, builds a loop-less structure -- a tree --,
and the second pass, NINA, exposes the Mobile Network Prefixes (MNPs)
up the tree. The protocol operates as a multi-hop extension of
Neighbor Discovery (ND), to populate TD-based trees with prefixes, and
establish routes towards the MNPs down the tree, from the root-MR
towards the MR that owns the prefix, whereas the default route is
oriented towards the root-MR. The NINA protocol introduces a new
option in the ND Neighbor Advertisement (NA), the Network In Node
Option (NINO). An NA with NINO(s) is called a NINA (Network In Node
Advertisement). NINA is designed for a hierarchical model, and by
using this NA based approach it abstracts the embedded network of a
Mobile Router as a host to the upper level of network abstraction.
With NINA, a Mobile Router presents its sub-tree to its parent as an
embedded network and hides the inner topology and movements.


E-sports is a new and growing form of entertainment, where gamers at the peak level of their skill compete for prestige and prizes. The contracts these athletes have are evident of a problem within the legal field of the right of publicity: there are few, if any, protections for individuals who want to license their right of publicity. The growth of E-sports has shown us the caveat emptor approach taken by courts does not adequately protect the licensee from having their privacy intruded upon. Adopting a set of standards for licensing the right of publicity would protect the privacy of the licensee, and let them control their identity as they see fit.


The Paris Climate Change Conference was tasked to set the world on a path to address the greatest challenge to ever face humankind, by adopting a new climate agreement. The outlook for the conference was rather bleak. The laborious and increasingly frequent meetings of the body entrusted to draft the text of the Paris Agreement, the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP), had made limited progress. These negotiations had eloquently demonstrated the futility of technical negotiations, without political consensus on the core elements and features of the new agreement. Yet, to the surprise of many, the Paris Conference concluded on 12 December 2015, with the adoption of a new climate treaty. This article reflects on the Paris Conference and on its outcome. First, it collocates the conference in the history of the climate regime. Then, it explains what Parties were expected to deliver. Finally, it assesses the outcome of the conference against these expectations. The article concludes with a reflection on where the climate regime is likely to head next, and where the Paris Agreement leaves Parties in their efforts to tackle climate change.


Model studies of the impact of aircraft emissions on atmospheric ozone, and on the methane lifetime have been performed, using a global 3-D CTM (The Oslo CTMl). The calculated changes in the global distribution of ozone and methane have been used to calculate Radiative Forcing (RF) of the current and future fleets (2015 and 2050) of subsonic aircraft. The calculations show that ozone perturbation from aircraft emission occur predominantly in the Northern Hemisphere at mid and high latitudes. Maximum increase in ozone is found in the upper troposphere in the 10 to 12 km height region. The annual average future increases in the region of maximum increase, is estimated to be approximately 12 ppb in 2015. Scenarios for NOx emissions in 2050 are less certain, however; calculations give a near linear increase in global ozone perturbation for increasing NOx, in the future over the range of NOX, emissions assumed to be realistic until 2050. Calculations with NOx, emissions well beyond this range (50 % higher than the high NOx, emission) showed non-linear ozone response with less ozone increase per NOx increase than in the cases with lower NOx emission from aircraft. There is a reduction in the methane lifetime due to enhanced OH from NOx emissions. The change in the global methane lifetime is estimated to be -1.3 % in 1992 from aircraft emissions, increasing to -3.9 % in 2050. Estimates of RF from CH4 and O3 due to aircraft emissions are of opposite sign and of similar magnitude, which makes it difficult to give reliable estimates of the net impact. The regional patterns in RF for the two compounds are however highly different. It is therefore likely that the radiative impact from NOx, emissions could be larger than what can be obtained from global average RFs.


Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods represent a classical set of techniques to simulate a sequence of probability measures through a simple selection/mutation mechanism. However, the associated selection functions and mutation kernels usually depend on tuning parameters that are of first importance for the efficiency of the algorithm. A standard way to address this problem is to apply Adaptive Sequential Monte Carlo (ASMC) methods, which consist in exploiting the information given by the history of the sample to tune the parameters. This article is concerned with variance estimation in such ASMC methods. Specifically, we focus on the case where the asymptotic variance coincides with the one of the "limiting" Sequential Monte Carlo algorithm as defined by Beskos et al. (2016). We prove that, under natural assumptions, the estimator introduced by Lee and Whiteley (2018) in the nonadaptive case (i.e., SMC) is also a consistent estimator of the asymptotic variance for ASMC methods. To do this, we introduce a new estimator that is expressed in terms of coalescent tree-based measures, and explain its connection with the previous one. Our estimator is constructed by tracing the genealogy of the associated Interacting Particle System. The tools we use connect the study of Particle Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods and the variance estimation problem in SMC methods. As such, they may give some new insights when dealing with complex genealogy-involved problems of Interacting Particle Systems in more general scenarios.


Many studies document the disproportionately high attrition rate of women in science, especially at early points in their careers. This ethnographic and conversational analytical study of a university life sciences laboratory group goes beneath statistical findings to explore one reason often cited by women who have dropped out of science: a `bad lab experience'. A detailed analysis of the interactional patterns or culture of the laboratory group suggests that discursive practices reinforce a conflation of gender, culture, and authority creating a climate that may be experienced as `chilly', or even `hostile', by some female members.


In this paper, we introduce a novel direct maximum power point tracking (MPPT) approach that combines the backstepping controller (BC) and the super-twisting algorithm (STA). The direct backstepping super-twisting algorithm control (BSSTAC) MPPT was developed to extract the maximum power point (MPP) produced by a photovoltaic (PV) generator connected to the battery through a boost dc-dc converter. To reduce the number of sensors required for the BSSTAC implementation, a high gain observer (HGO) was proposed to estimate the value of the state of the PV storage system from measurements of the PV generator voltage and current. The suggested technique is based on the quadratic Lyapunov function and does not employ a standard MPPT algorithm. Results show that the suggested control scheme has good tracking performance with reduced overshoot, chattering, and settling time as compared to the prevalent MPPT tracking algorithms such as perturb and observe (P&O), conventional sliding mode control (CSMC), backstepping controller (BSC), and integral backstepping controller (IBSC). Finally, real-time findings using the dSPACE DS 1104 software indicate that the generator PV can accurately forecast the MPP, as well as the efficacy of the suggested MPPT technique. The provided approach's effectiveness has been validated by a comprehensive comparison with different methods, resulting in the greatest efficiency of 99.88% for BSSTAC.


Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are highly susceptible to ionizing radiation-mediated death via induction of ROS, DNA double-strand breaks, and apoptotic pathways. The development of therapeutics capable of mitigating ionizing radiation-induced hematopoietic toxicity could benefit both victims of acute radiation sickness and patients undergoing hematopoietic cell transplantation. Unfortunately, therapies capable of accelerating hematopoietic reconstitution following lethal radiation exposure have remained elusive. Here, we found that systemic administration of pleiotrophin (PTN), a protein that is secreted by BM-derived endothelial cells, substantially increased the survival of mice following radiation exposure and after myeloablative BM transplantation. In both models, PTN increased survival by accelerating the recovery of BM hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells in vivo. PTN treatment promoted HSC regeneration via activation of the RAS pathway in mice that expressed protein tyrosine phosphatase receptor-zeta (PTPRZ), whereas PTN treatment did not induce RAS signaling in PTPRZ-deficient mice, suggesting that PTN-mediated activation of RAS was dependent upon signaling through PTPRZ. PTN strongly inhibited HSC cycling following irradiation, whereas RAS inhibition abrogated PTN-mediated induction of HSC quiescence, blocked PTN-mediated recovery of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells, and abolished PTN-mediated survival of irradiated mice. These studies demonstrate the therapeutic potential of PTN to improve survival after myeloablation and suggest that PTN-mediated hematopoietic regeneration occurs in a RAS-dependent manner.


The classification at present applied in the study of fossil holothurian sclerites is briefly outlined, and a major difficulty in the selection of valid criteria for the "speciation" of such microfossils is discussed. Groups of morphologically similar sclerites (morphogroups) derived from the Recent holothurians Holothuria impatiens (Forskael) and Cucumaria saxicola Brady and Robertson are subjected to statistical analysis by standard univariate and bivariate techniques. The results are discussed in detail, and broad conclusions are drawn as to the application of statistical methods as an objective basis for the taxonomy (qua parataxonomy) of fossil morphogroups. A less rigid approach to the concept of the "type specimen" of the "species" is recommended.


Introduction: Spiradenocarcinomas (SCs) are rare and potentially aggressive skin adnexal tumors. Optimal treatment has not yet been established. Experiences with this carcinoma are mostly presented in case reports and few case series. Objective: To generate to a synopsis of published data on SC with regard to diagnostic procedures, treatment, and outcome. Results: Median patient age was 60 years and sex distribution was balanced. Tumor manifestations were evenly distributed within the sweat gland carrying skin. The most commonly reported symptom was accelerated growth of a longstanding indolent lesion, typically present for more than 2 years. Metastatic spread to the lung, bone, lymph nodes, liver, kidney, and breast has been documented. For staging computed tomography (CT) and positron emission tomography-CT are recommended, especially for detection of hematogenic metastases and lymph node involvement. Clear resection margins and tumor free regional lymph nodes reduce recurrence and carcinoma related death. Although low-grade SCs were reported over 3 times more often, high-grade carcinomas show a greater likelihood for recurrence and lethal outcome. Conclusion: Suspicion of an SC should lead to performance of a magnetic resonance imaging for defining tumor extent, and a fludeoxyglucose positron emission tomography-CT for detection of metastases. Radical tumor excision and resection of tumor involved regional lymph nodes are essential for a curative approach. Histopathological evaluation should involve determination of tumor differentiation grade, because high-grade carcinomas seem to have a much more aggressive behavior. Excision of distant metastases has no therapeutic value. Follow-up needs to be carried out in short intervals with frequent imaging.


This research outlines empirical findings on Customer Relationship Portfolio Management (CRPM). CRPM has been a persistent stream of research within the relationship management field. This theoretical concept emphasises a resource-based integrated approach to the management of an organisation's customer relationships and has been largely inspired by matrix-orientated portfolio models developed within other related management disciplines. However, it remains largely conceptual with comparatively little empirical support and lack of reporting from the field about the reality of relationship portfolio management (Leek et al. 2004; Terho and Halinen 2007). This stream of relationship management literature initially emphasised sales volume, revenue, segment profitability, individual customer profitability and subsequently made the transition to using relationship value as the dimension to understand value from customers, involving the implementation of action plans after factoring in the variability in behaviour of different customers. Though relationship value is considered to be more useful than the previously used dimensions, there has been very little empirical evidence of how it is used in reality by industrial marketers in managing customer relationship portfolios. Thus, this in depth case based research explores the role of 'expected' relationship value in a seller's customer relationship portfolio strategy. The seller in this case is a multi national oil company operating in the UK mature industrial market context. The researchers have formulated a multi-step data analysis technique to analyse the data collected. This investigation into how the organisation uses relationship value leads us to a non-matrix orientated approach to managing a portfolio of customer relationships.


Cells and tissues are mechanical as well as biochemical machines, and cellular response to mechanical cues can have as large an influence on structure and function as chemical signals. The mechanical properties of cells are largely determined by networks of semiflexible polymers forming the cytoskeleton, which has viscoelastic properties that differ in important ways from the viscoelasticity of common synthetic materials. Two such features are the high resistance to deformation achieved by a remarkably low volume fraction of protein, and the increase in stiffness that occurs when the cytoskeletal network is deformed. The actin filaments, microtubules and intermediate filaments that comprise the cytoskeleton of most cell types are linear polymers with some important similarities but also some fundamental differences. The stiffness of the individual polymer types is vastly different, with persistence lengths ranging from 1 mm for the 24 nm diameter microtubules to a few 100 nm for the 10-14 nm diameter intermediate filaments. The material properties of these biopolymer networks are proposed to function as part of the mechanosensing mechanism in cells, and the stiffness of cytoskeletal networks is similar to that of common extracellular protein networks such as those formed by collagen and fibrin in which many cell types function. Examples of the morphologic differences in fibroblasts and astrocytes grown on chemically identical surfaces overlying gels with elastic moduli spanning the range from 50 to 12,000 Pa illustrate the large effect of stiffness differences on cell structure and function.


The Heat Roadmap Europe (HRE) studies estimated a potential increase of the district heating (DH) share to 50% of the entire heat demand by 2050, with approximately 25–30% of it being supplied using large-scale electric heat pumps. This study builds on this potential and aims to document that such developments can begin now with technologies currently available. We present a database and the status of the technology and its ability of expansion to other European locations by reviewing experiences aimed at further research or application in the heating industry. This is based on a survey of the existing capacity of electric large-scale heat pumps with more than 1 MW thermal output, operating in European DH systems. The survey is the first database of its kind containing the technical characteristics of these heat pumps, and provides the basis for the analysis of this paper. By quantifying the heat sources, refrigerants, efficiency and types of operation of 149 units with 1580 MW of thermal output, the study further uses this data to analyze if the deployment of this technology on a large-scale is possible in other locations in Europe. It finally demonstrates that the technical level of the existing heat pumps is mature enough to make them suitable for replication in other locations in Europe.


Efforts to improve growth and employment in Latin America and the Caribbean must focus on women. The reason is simple but powerful: women are driving economic growth in the region. This is true at both the economy-wide (macro) and the household (micro) levels.


In the summer of 1839 Isaac Gansey, Peter Johnson, and Edward Smith, three African-American sailors from New York who worked aboard the schooner Robert Center, found themselves at the center of a dispute that reflected the growing controversy over the institution of slavery that would spark the Civil War some two decades hence. The incident began innocently enough when the ship arrived in Virginia in need of some repairs before continuing on to New York City. A ship's carpenter, a slave by the name of Isaac, was brought on board to do the work. As Isaac undertook his tasks, he spoke with Gansey, Johnson and Smith, who were the only three African-Americans sailors on the ship. In the course of their discussions, one of the three told Isaac that he was "foolish to remain in Virginia as he could get good wages in the north." (1) After the Robert Center departed, Isaac was nowhere to be found and his owner John G. Colley suspected that his slave was on board the ship. Colley therefore sent two men north by express, hoping to beat the schooner to New York. They succeeded and when the Robert Center arrived, a search of the ship revealed that Isaac was hiding in the cargo of oak timber. The slave was sent back to his master. Colley also insisted that the African-American sailors be arrested and extradited, back to Virginia for having stolen the slave. The Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, Henry L. Hopkins, complied with Colley's request to ask for extradition. The request for extradition subsequently made its way into the hands of New York's new Whig governor, William Henry Seward. Ultimately, Seward's refusal to cooperate in the matter touched off a "Virginia Controversy" that would not only run through the duration of his two terms as governor, but eventually allowed Seward to establish himself as one of the leading opponents of the peculiar institution. Seward's early relationship with the anti-slavery movement, however, was much more tense and uncertain than his later career in the United States Senate and as Secretary of State under President Abraham Lincoln would suggest. To be sure, neither Seward nor his political mentor and friend Thurlow Weed, the editor of the Albany Evening Journal, supported slavery, but during the uncertain political climate of the 1830s they had to calculate carefully the impact on their political prospects of too-close an association with abolition. Initially the two had been drawn into the anti-Masonic movement as a vehicle to challenge the dominance of Andrew Jackson's Democratic party. Seward enjoyed some success in this regard with his 1830 election to the New York State Senate, but four years later he was soundly defeated in the gubernatorial contest by the incumbent, William L. Marcy. With the anti-Masonic party wilting, "like a cabbage leaf in a warm summer day" (2) Seward and Weed opted to join the new Whig party. Similarly at this time, those opposed to slavery as well as those who viewed foreigners (especially Catholics) as a threat, also organized politically in the state; the fact that many Whigs also harbored abolitionist or nativist sentiments would continue to vex Seward during his four years as governor. Seward's problems with the abolitionists first surfaced shortly after he received the Whig gubernatorial nomination in September of 1838. Although estimates of the voting strength of the anti-slavery movement varied considerably, most observers assumed that the lion's share of abolitionists--perhaps as many as 90% of them--normally considered themselves to be Whig and that the loss of their support could well doom Seward's second effort to defeat Marcy. (3) At the same time, however, many viewed abolition as a radical fringe movement, and a close association with it could well be more damaging than helpful. For Seward then, prudence dictated caution, which in practice meant a largely passive stance on the issue in the expectation that the Democratic Party's association with the slave-holding South would naturally incline abolitionists to vote Whig. …


Nicole H. Gray, "The Sounds and Stages of Emerson's Social Reform" (pp. 208–232) This essay argues that Ralph Waldo Emerson's antislavery reform efforts in the 1850s depended on a theory of transformation and mediation that shares ground with his linguistic and philosophical experiments. I base this claim on a reading of the sounds and citations at work in one political address, delivered in 1854 as part of an extended public reaction to the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850. This essay takes up three different ways in which the structure of citation and revision ("recitation") function in relation to this address. First, I discuss recitation in terms of critics' conceptualization of Emerson's general approach to language. Second, I consider Emerson's recitation of a line from "La Marseillaise," a revolutionary tune that became the French national anthem, in his journals and his speech. Finally, I turn to Emerson's re-vision of his audience within this address, and in the space of his orations in general.


The upper ocean heat budget in the western equatorial Pacific warm pool is analyzed for a 3-month period from mid-September through mid-December 1992 using data from the Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) array enhanced for the Coupled Ocean Atmosphere Response Experiment. Surface heat and moisture fluxes were measured from a centrally located TAO current meter mooring at 0°, 156°E. Lateral heat advection was estimated using temperature data from moorings within 150-250 km of 0°, 156°E. Mixing was estimated as the residual of the heat balance and compared to estimates of mixing based on the Niiler-Kraus parameterization of entrainment mixing. The analysis shows that for the diurnal cycle and for daily to weekly timescale variations like those associated with westerly wind bursts, the sea surface temperature (SST) variability is to a large extent controlled by shortwave radiation and latent heat flux. However, three-dimensional processes can also be important. For example, in early October 1992, the SST at 0°, 156°E increased by nearly 1°C in 7 days due predominately to westward heat advection. Also, the dynamical response to a moderately strong wind burst in late October 1992 included a deepening of the pycnocline, which affected the rate of entrainment cooling, and a reversal of the surface current, which affected the zonal heat advection. The importance of three-dimensional processes (particularly heat advection) in the warm-pool heat balance during this 3-month study period is confirmed by comparing the observed temperature variability with that simulated by a one-dimensional mixed layer model.


In an interconnected world, national economic policies regularly lead to large international spillover effects, which frequently trigger calls for international policy cooperation. However, the premise of successful cooperation is that there is a Pareto inefficiency, i.e. that there is scope to make some nations better off without hurting others. This paper presents a first welfare theorem for open economies that defines an efficient benchmark and spells out the conditions that need to be violated to generate inefficiency and scope for cooperation. These are: (i) policymakers act competitively in the international market, (ii) policymakers have sufficient external policy instruments and (iii) international markets are free of imperfections. Our theorem holds even if each economy suffers from a wide range of domestic market imperfections and targeting problems. We provide examples of current account intervention, monetary policy, fiscal policy, macroprudential policy/capital controls, and exchange rate management and show that the resulting spillovers are Pareto efficient, as long as the three conditions are satisfied. Furthermore, we develop general guidelines for how policy cooperation can improve welfare when the conditions are violated. JEL Codes: F42, F13, F33, D61


How are the spatial patterns of spontaneous and evoked population responses related? We study the impact of connectivity on the spatial pattern of fluctuations in the input-generated response, by comparing the distribution of evoked and intrinsically generated activity across the different units of a neural network. We develop a complementary approach to principal component analysis in which separate high-variance directions are derived for each input condition. We analyze subspace angles to compute the difference between the shapes of trajectories corresponding to different network states, and the orientation of the low-dimensional subspaces that driven trajectories occupy within the full space of neuronal activity. In addition to revealing how the spatiotemporal structure of spontaneous activity affects input-evoked responses, these methods can be used to infer input selectivity induced by network dynamics from experimentally accessible measures of spontaneous activity (e.g. from voltage- or calcium-sensitive optical imaging experiments). We conclude that the absence of a detailed spatial map of afferent inputs and cortical connectivity does not limit our ability to design spatially extended stimuli that evoke strong responses.


Field intensity enhancements (FEs) produced by gold needle nanostructures, namely, standing upright sharp and sphere-terminated needles, fabricated on a gold substrate by femtosecond laser irradiation, are investigated and characterized using linear reflection spectroscopy, two-photon photoluminescence (TPL) scanning optical microscopy, and high-resolution confocal Raman microscopy. Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is observed using linearly polarized 532 nm excitation of Rhodamine 6G homogeneously adsorbed on the structures. The obtained high-resolution TPL and Raman images both indicate a relatively high FE level of ∼75 for the fabricated structures. We believe that the observed FE levels along with the special topography make these upright elongated structures particularly promising for SERS experiments with living cells.


In this article, the authors review pension fund investment returns in Chile, Peru, and Mexico with a long term perspective. They first analyze the historical returns of the private pension systems in these three countries, recorded most of the time only in one type of fund or portfolio. They then run Monte Carlo simulations to gain a glimpse into the future and evaluate potential returns from the new multi-fund schemes adopted by private pension systems, which are intended to allow investing in a number of regulated financial portfolios that vary according to different risk preferences and pension-saver age. The historical analyses finds that the financial crisis had a major effect on private pension funds—these funds experienced sharp drops in returns, particularly those with the highest proportions of equities. These effects were transient, however, and currently the historical returns of pension funds remain at positive levels, making them among the savings alternatives with the best returns in their respective countries. In this regard, private pension funds, with their diversified investment portfolios and provision of liquidity for different markets, companies, and productive projects, have proven to be a significant stabilizing factor for economies. Looking into the future with their simulations, the authors find that the multi-fund scheme has the potential to continue to offer attractive returns on average for pension-savers in the three countries. However, the authors warn that pension levels and replacement rates in the long term do not depend simply on returns, but rather densities of contribution and contribution rates are key factors, particularly for the countries analyzed. Indeed, the densities of contribution and contribution rates are perhaps the most important variables for increasing pension well-being in that they are not random in nature and therefore may be affected by public policies.


A new measurement technique for thermal conductivity which does not require knowledge of the sample heat capacity and which involves a weak temperature gradient inside the sample is presented. The apparatus is simple: the strip-shaped'sample is stuck between two metallic plates, the temperature of one of which is multifrequency modulated. The temperatures of both plates are measured. The ratio of these temperatures is called the transfer function of the sample. The phase of this function is sensitive to the diffusivity and the modulus is sensitive to the conductivity. These parameters can thus be identified by comparison between the measured and the calculated transfer functions. Experiments have been carried out at room temperature on a PVC sample. An exhaustive study of the causes of error has been carried out. The evaluated relative uncertainty on the thermal conductivity is less than 4%. The measured value is consistent with the values found in the literature.


This dissertation employed a psychological framework to investigate the saving behavior of older pre-retirees through three essays using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Understanding the connection between psychological characteristics and saving behavior is critical as this population attempts to bridge the retirement saving gap. Of these characteristics, financial self-efficacy beliefs (FSE) are theoretically vital to saving behavior. With the FSE beliefs of older adults weak and vulnerable to decline, more research is needed to understand how FSE beliefs affect saving behavior and how FSE beliefs can be supported. Essay one investigated the psychological characteristics associated with FSE beliefs according to the Meta-Theoretic Model of Motivation and Personality (3M). Using a sample of 2,070 pre-retirees aged 50 to 70, essay one revealed that FSE beliefs can be supported through the frequent experience of positive affect, reduced negative affect, a stronger perception of mastery, and a higher task orientation, holding all else constant. Essay two investigated the relationship between FSE beliefs and saving behavior (i.e., change in net worth from 2008 to 2012) through the Social Cognitive Theory of Self-Regulation. Using a sample of 844 pre-retirees aged 50 to 70, results revealed that FSE beliefs are significantly and positively related to saving behavior, after controlling for the financial ability and motivation to save. Essay three employed a structural equation model to investigate an integrated psychological approach to saving behavior based upon the 3M. Using a sample of 1,370 preretired and partially retired adults aged 50 to 70, essay three revealed that FSE beliefs facilitated the connection between elemental traits (i.e., openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism), compound traits (i.e., positive affect, negative affect, mastery, and task orientation), and saving behavior. Overall, significant evidence was generated supporting a psychological approach to the saving behavior of older pre-retirees. Financial and mental health professionals can utilize this framework to provide holistic retirement saving advice that acknowledges the psychological roots of behavior. Moreover, results established empirical support for the role FSE beliefs play in executing saving behavior. Lastly, results supported the importance of domain specific measurement for self-efficacy beliefs in future research. THREE ESSAYS ON FINANCIAL SELF-EFFICACY BELIEFS AND THE SAVING BEHAVIOR OF OLDER PRE-RETIREES


The "Fight for Fifteen and a Union" movement among fast-food workers and their allies has raised awareness about wage inequality in the United States. Rather than negotiating for better wages and working conditions with economically weak restaurant-level franchisees, the movement aims to affect the practices of what they view as the all-powerful brands — the franchisors. Few would dispute the notion that the franchisor brands, not their franchisees, set industry-wide standards and, thus, have the ability to offset rising wage inequality and improve working conditions. And yet, the movement has raised controversial law and policy questions about the legal responsibilities of these fast-food Goliaths under current labor and employment laws. Should fast-food brands, as franchisors, be legally responsible as "employers" for the wage-and-hour violations suffered by the individuals who serve us fast food in their franchised stores, pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)? Do they have a legal obligation, under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), to bargain with the labor unions representing fast-food workers in their franchised stores? This Article addresses these timely questions with original empirical research of forty-four contracts between top fifty fast-food franchisors and their franchisees in 2016. The contractual analysis reveals a new theory of joint employment via franchisor influence over franchisees' managers. Unlike prior foci on franchisor-franchisee relations, and franchisor-crew member relations, this Article brings a new party to light: franchisees' supervisorial managers. Jurisprudential analogy to the agricultural context, and case law regarding farm labor contractors as grower intermediaries, supports this proposed analytical lens. In sum, the theory developed from this rare dataset postulates why some of the Goliaths of fast food may indeed be "employers" with legal obligations to the workers in their franchised restaurants. Thus, courts, administrative agencies and legislators should be mindful of franchisor influence through intermediaries, as well as the complex relationships embedded in the franchise system that make disaggregating direct from indirect forms of influence difficult to impossible.