We simulated dynamic rupture propagation along various nonplanar fault models of the 1999 Izmit, Turkey, earthquake using a boundary integral equation method. These models were inferred from geological and geodetic observations. Based on these results, we modeled seismic-wave propagation around the fault system using a finite difference method. We focused on the effect of different fault geometries on the rupture process and seismic-wave propagation. Numerical simulation results imply a rapid and continuous rupture propagation from the Izmit–Sapanca Lake segment to the Sapanca–Akyazi segment. The rupture under Sapanca Lake appears to have propagated not on a disconnected fault segment but along a smooth fault structure with a bend of only a few degrees. The observational complexity of the surface breaks, however, can be best simulated by a highly segmented fault model. This infers that fault geometric characters observed in the field reflect near-surface structure and that seismological and geodetic features are controlled by global fault structure at depth.

Then we investigated the effect of frictional parameters and the initial stress field. In order to explain near-field seismograms at station SKR, located a distance of a few kilometers from the fault, we had to force the rupture to propagate at shallow depth close to the station. In order to obtain this, we had to introduce a finite cohesive force in the friction law that allows stress accumulation and release in the shallow crust. The external stress field had to be large enough for the rupture to propagate at very rapid speed. Our simulation results show that it is important to include detailed fault geometry in the numerical simulation, and to constrain frictional parameters and the initial stress field, for understanding of the full dynamic process of an earthquake.


Summary
A serological survey for leptospirosis in domestic animals was conducted in a coastal tropical area and an adjacent plateau and mountainous area located in the southwest sector of Guatemala. Sera from a total of 122 cattle, 120 swine, 86 horses, 77 dogs, 90 sheep and 20 goats were tested for the presence of agglutinins employing screening antigens of 18 different serotypes. The percentages of significant positive reactions in the various species were as follows: cattle, 41.8; swine, 27.5; horses, 4.6; dogs, 1.3; goats, 10.0. All of the sheep tested were negative. With few exceptions the reactions in cattle were elicited with screening antigens in the hebdomadis group, whereas most of the reactions in the other livestock species were obtained with pomona and/or autumnalis serotypes. The single positive dog had a titer against canicola serotype. Generally there was a higher prevalence of positive animals in the mountainous region than in the coastal region. Significant serological titers against serotype bataviae were also disclosed in two of 59 normal human beings in the study area who were engaged in agricultural work or in the handling of meat, and in one of 23 hospitalized patients with undiagnosed febrile diseases.
These findings not only provided unequivocal evidence of the presence of leptospirosis in Guatemala but of its widespread occurrence in cattle and swine. The difference in antibody types found in cattle and swine may reflect animal husbandry practices.


"Trivial Complaints" explores the historical relationship between privacy and domestic violence through an analysis of litigation and activism. The state has traditionally hesitated in responding to domestic violence, characterizing it as a "private" family matter. The discourse of privacy incorporates presumptions about race, class, and sexuality, and this volume examines the ramifications of such assumptions for victims and activists. Kirsten S. Rambo begins with an analysis of courts' and activists' responses to domestic violence during the late nineteenth century and continues through to the late twentieth century, when the modern battered women's movement emerged on the heels of the battle to secure abortion rights. Rambo explores the seemingly contradictory yet often complementary ways in which the discourse of privacy has been shaped by both movements seeking justice for women. She further examines concepts of privacy as applied to same-sex relationships and domestic violence, and ultimately considers alternative models of privacy that are egalitarian and rooted in empowerment.


Successful maintenance of water provision has as much to do with the ongoing governance of these systems as the technology that goes into building them. This governance generally occurs at the community level. Most water systems are small and located in areas where there is generally not the profitability necessary to entice private investment. Understanding how community management can improve is therefore essential to solving water provision problems around the world. This paper develops a three part framework for analyzing water projects through a focus on technology, management and governance. The framework draws on research on collective action and various forms of capital as they relate to technology (natural and physical capital), management (financial and human capital) and governance (social and political capital). We demonstrate the usefulness of the framework by studying AguaClara, a program that has helped seven Honduran communities build eight water treatment plants and set up functioning systems of governance.


Aims and Objectives: To compare the efficacy, safety, and rate of response of intravenous iron sucrose and intramuscular iron Sorbitol therapy for anemia during pregnancy. Material and Methods: 100 antenatal cases of gestational age 16-32 weeks were included in this prospective study. Cases were randomly divided into two groups. Group A, having 50 cases received intravenous iron sucrose, and 50cases in group B received intramuscular iron sorbitol. Response to therapy in both groups was studied and compared. Results: The mean pretherapy hemoglobin in group A was 6.49 g/dl and in group B was 6.48 g/dl. The rise in hemoglobin after 4 weeks of starting therapy was 3.52 g/dl in group A and 2.33 g/dl in group B The difference was Statistically significant (P 11 g/dl) was 6.37 weeks in group A and 9.04 weeks in group B. In group A, 8% (four) cases had grade I adverse effects. In group B, 24% (12) cases had grade I adverse effects. The difference was statistically significant (P=0.027). In both the groups no case discontinued the therapy. Conclusion: Intravenous iron sucrose is safe, convenient, more effective, and faster acting therapy than intramuscular iron sorbitol therapy for treating moderate to severe anemia during pregnancy.


What conditions lead to extensive and positive media coverage of protests? Research shows that violence and size increase media coverage, but past studies have not given much attention to the causes of intense coverage that is highly positive. To fill this gap, we run QCA analyses on 63 actions in the Portuguese wave of anti-austerity protests to consider three outcomes: visibility, resonance, and legitimacy. Our findings show that neither violence nor size are sufficient for any of these outcomes, and that other conditions help explain them. Extensive and supportive media coverage results when these factors are combined with conditions such as protest size, type of organizer, international context, violence, and action form.


With new or emerging fungal infections, human and animal fungal pathogens are a growing threat worldwide. Current diagnostic tools are slow, non-specific at the species and subspecies levels, and require specific morphological expertise to accurately identify pathogens from pure cultures. DNA barcodes are easily amplified, universal, short species-specific DNA sequences, which enable rapid identification by comparison with a well-curated reference sequence collection. The primary fungal DNA barcode, ITS region, was introduced in 2012 and is now routinely used in diagnostic laboratories. However, the ITS region only accurately identifies around 75% of all medically relevant fungal species, which has prompted the development of a secondary barcode to increase the resolution power and suitability of DNA barcoding for fungal disease diagnostics. The translational elongation factor 1α (TEF1α) was selected in 2015 as a secondary fungal DNA barcode, but it has not been implemented into practice, due to the absence of a reference database. Here, we have established a quality-controlled reference database for the secondary barcode that together with the ISHAM-ITS database, forms the ISHAM barcode database, available online at http://its.mycologylab.org/ . We encourage the mycology community for active contributions.


Optimising traffic signal timings for a multiple-junction road
network is a difficult but important problem. The essential difficulty
of this problem is that the traffic signals need to coordinate
their behaviours to achieve the common goal of optimising
overall network delay. This paper discusses a novel
approach towards the generation of optimal signalling strategies,
based on the use of a genetic algorithm (GA). This GA
optimises the set of signal timings for all junctions in network.
The different efficient red and green times for all the signals are
determined by genetic algorithm as well as the offset time for
each junction. Previous attempts to do this rely on a fixed cycle
time, whereas the algorithm described here attempts to optimise
cycle time for each junction as well as proportion of green
times. The fitness function is a measure of the overall delay of
the network. The resulting optimised signalling strategies were
compared against a well-known civil engineering technique,
and conclusions drawn


The first formal Homoeopathic education programme in South Africa introduced Technikon Natal (now the Durban Institute of Technology – DIT). The course had its first intake in 1989 and has since produced some 10 years of graduates. The programme affords the graduate a Master's Degree in Technology in Homoeopathy (Ross, 2006). Career paths regarding graduates of this programme have never been investigated. Such an investigation was deemed valuable to clarify areas of difficulty regarding the education provided and the profession as a whole, to ascertain the viability of Homoeopathy as a career. It also aimed to identify possible other career choices a graduate may have with the education received. The study was limited to DIT Homoeopathic graduates from 1994 to 2004. The study was designed to investigate the demographic composition of the group, as well as other aspects of their career since graduation.


When dealing with the separation of materials, the metal shearing process such as punching, is widely used in the industry due to its time efficient manner. There is however, a need to better understand the process in order to improve quality of the final product. Working with numerical simulations of the metal shearing process, there are two major difficulties. One being the extremely large deformation, the other being material failure. The combination of these two makes numerical modeling challenging and is the reason for this study. The problem was divided in to two main parts, one where material modeling was studied, the other part focused on numerical modeling and experiments of the punching process. A material model considering both plasticity and material failure was created for a boron steel material. Plasticity behavior of the material was modeled with an elasto-plastic model and a calibrated Modified Mohr-Coulomb (MMC) failure criterion to model the material failure. The resulting MMC-model agreed well with the experiments. Punching experiments with varying clearances were performed on the boron steel. Punch forces and displacements were continuously sampled throughout the process, and after the punching experiments were finished the punched edge profiles were studied. The multiphysics simulation software LS-DYNA was then utilized, and three dimensional simulations of the punching process using the Smoothed Particle Galerkin (SPG) method were performed. Results from the SPG-simulation corresponded very well with the results from punching experiments, and it can be concluded that the model was able to capture the material behavior of the sheet in a highly detailed level. When the punched edge profiles from the simulations were compared to the experiments, there was an almost exact match for all the cases studied. The force-displacement behavior of the punch from simulations was in great consistency with experimental results as well. It was also concluded that the combination of a stress state dependent failure criterion together with the SPG-method shows significant possibilities to cope with three dimensional problems where large deformations in combination with difficult material failure occurs. This study focuses on the punching process, but the generality of this novel modeling technique can be applied to many industrial cases and is a step towards a better and more reliable modeling of failure in combination with extremely large deformation.


Employment rates in Puerto Rico range from 55 to 65 percent of U.S. rates during the past thirty years. This huge employment shortfall holds for men and women, cuts across all education groups, and is deeper for persons without a college degree. The shortfall is concentrated in the private sector, especially labor-intensive industries that rely heavily on less educated workers. Motivated by these facts, we identify several factors that undermine employment growth and business development, including high minimum wage requirements, a history of tax incentives for capital-intensive activities, a host of regulatory entry barriers, and a business climate in which profitability and survival too often rest on the ability to secure favors from the government,. We pay close attention to the permitting process whereby the government oversees and regulates construction and real estate development projects, the commercial use of equipment and facilities, and the periodic renewal of various business licenses. Based on interviews with experts and participants in the permitting process, and supplemented by other sources, we compile evidence that the permitting process is excessively slow and costly, fraught with uncertainty, subject to capricious outcomes, susceptible to corruption, and prone to manipulation by business rivals and special interest groups.


The paper discusses a blended learning concept for a university teacher training course for prospective teachers of English. The concept aims at purposeful learning using different methods and activities, various traditional and electronic media, learning spaces covering contact and distance learning, and task-based learning modules that begin with multimedia-based case stories. The learning concept is based on theories of situated learning in multimedia-enhanced learning environments. The activities discussed include classroom recordings and multimedia-based case stories, an electronic interview with an expert who is an experienced grammar school teacher, and mini-practices, which implement micro teaching in a classroom setting. Case stories used as a didactic tool in teacher education are supposed to contribute to a closer and more reflective relationship between theory-driven and practically-oriented aspects of teacher education. The multimedia-based case stories are hypertexts designed as essential components of computer-based learning modules that support various ways and styles of learning. Students worked with the case story material either in guided or in self-regulated scenarios several times during the course. Three types of learners could be distinguished: students who mainly create and apply experiences, students who mainly study the theoretical resources, and students who create with focused selection of resources. The e-interview promotes an exchange between theory and practical teaching and experience with this format of e-learning at the same time. The mini-practice offers guided insights into analyzing teaching materials, hands-on experiences with lesson planning and the experience of acting as a teacher in an authentic teaching context. Furthermore, the mini-practice is meant to help the students broaden their perspectives on "English lessons at school" and change their perspective, that is, from a pupil's to a prospective teacher's. These activities combine contact learning and interactive e-learning. This combination is highly appreciated by our learners and represents our concept of integrated interactive e-learning and contact learning.


Sn-SnO2/C photocatalysts with visible light activity have been successfully synthesized by a simple heat-treating process using SnCl4 as precursor. The Sn-SnO2 heterojunction is built by depositing of metallic Sn on crystal lattice oxygen of as-formed SnO2, which obviously increase the amount of adsorbed oxygen on the surface of catalyst. The as-synthesized catalysts display higher photocatalytic activity than SnO2 and SnO2/C for degradation of reactive brilliant blue KN-R under visible light irradiation. The enhancement of photocatalytic performance of Sn-SnO2/C can be attributed to the formation of metallic Sn on the surface of catalysts. The metallic Sn and adsorbed oxygen as the sinks of photoinduced electron and electronic scavenges, respectively, hinder the recombination of photoexcitated electron-hole pairs, sequentially enhance the photocatalytic activity. Furthermore, a possible growth mechanism of the Sn-SnO2/C photocatalysts was proposed.


The last decades have seen considerable debate among theorists and historiographers about the extent to which historians resort to literary modes of representation and how far historical accounts owe their persuasiveness and explanatory power to narrative structures. As a result, the investigation of historical accounts using methods drawn from literary studies has become a highly diversified and rather confusing field. There is, of course, no reason to believe that the tendency to resort to particular narrative patterns has played an less important a role in the field of archaeology. Nevertheless, it is only recently that scholars have begun to apply narratological concepts in their investigations of the history of archaeology. A brief look at archaeological representations of human migrations demonstrates the usefulness of such approaches. Since these accounts usually cover long periods of time and encompass several historical actors and spaces, archaeologists have made use of certain narrative strategies in order to arrange their facts and to transform them into more or less coherent stories.


. Abstract Patients with extensive burns injuries are often given a poor prognosis. Those who survive after an initial early resuscitation phase often require extensive operative and critical care input, a prolonged hospital stay, and associated significant complications. The overwhelmingly high volume of patients already using the resource-stricken burns care service places extreme pressure on clinicians in respect of decisions they make about who should and should not be resuscitated. In this paper, we present the case of a young woman who sustained significant burn injuries, and discuss the ethical dilemmas encountered during the subsequent management of her care.


In this clinical paper, the author discusses criminal confessions from the point of view of the expert witness who may be asked to comment on the reliability of the statement and waiver of rights. From the time a suspect is in police custody, constitutional protections against self-incrimination and for due process are in place. The Supreme Court set the standard for these situations in the 1966 Miranda v. Arizona decision. Although it has long been criticized by law enforcement, the decision was upheld in the 2000 decision in Dickerson v. U.S. For a waiver of rights to be valid, it must be a knowing, intelligent, and voluntary decision. Voluntariness is an equation of objective and subjective variables. Treatment by police, physical conditions of interrogation, the suspect's experience and mental state can alter the reliability of a confession. Accordingly, the author has devised a mnemonic for the recognition of conditions that may give rise to expert testimony. The conditions are: Mental illness, Intoxication, Retardation, Acquiescence, Narcotic withdrawal, Deception, and Abuse. These are discussed, supported by examples from the author's practice.


New paleomagnetic results from sedimentary rock and basement of the Ninetyeast Ridge (Ocean Drilling Program Leg 121, Sites 756-758) detail the northward movement of the Indian plate for the past 80 m.y. Analysis of the combined paleolatitude-age profile indicates a distinct reduction in India9s northward movement rate at 55+ Ma, interpreted as completion of suturing of Greater India and Asia. India9s northward motion slowed from 18-19.5 cm/yr to 4.5 cm/yr for the location of Site 758. Comparison of this profile with paleomagnetic data from the wider Himalayan region indicates that initial contact between northwestern Greater India and southern Asia was already established by Cretaceous-Tertiary time. This supports a possible causal link between the India-Asia convergence and the Deccan Traps extrusion.


Native forb seed is needed to restore rangelands of the Intermountain West. Commercial seed production is necessary to provide the quantity of seed needed for restoration efforts. A major limitation to economically viable commercial production of native forb seed is weed competition. Weeds are adapted to growing in disturbed soil, and native forbs are not competitive with these weeds. There is a considerable body of knowledge about the relative efficacy of different herbicides to control target weeds, but few trials have tested the tolerance of native forbs to commercial herbicides. The results reported here deal with postemergence herbicide rates and mixtures.


This dissertation analyzes the ocean wave-induced response of seafloor deposits. The linear wave theory is introduced for determination of the wave-induced pressure at the mud line. The seafloor deposit is assumed to be a saturated porous medium modelled by a two-phase system. The theory of mixture is used to derive the coupled governing equations. A simple material constitutive model is proposed based on the generalized plasticity-bounding surface formulation. Some comparisons of the model tests with experimental results are made. The simple model is capable of simulating both loose and dense sand behavior under monotonic and cyclic loading, drained and undrained conditions. A nonlinear finite element analysis procedure is presented. A fictitious freedom technique is used to treat the different nodal degrees of freedom due to the composition of coupled fields. A non-symmetric frontal solver subroutine is developed to accommodate the asymmetry due to the non-associated plastic flow rule. A simple artificial boundary is suggested to deal with the unbounded domain, which is easy to implement in the finite element program and universal to apply to nonlinear analysis. One important conclusion obtained from the numerical analyses is the influence of the coefficient of permeability on the susceptibility of the sand mass to liquefaction; for high values of permeability even a loose sand mass need not liquefy. This is in direct contrast to the commonly held view that the liquefaction potential is a function of density only. Two example cases are studied in detail. The first example examines the seabed response to the wave train at a pipeline site in Lake Ontario (Christian et al., 1974; Nataraja and Gill, 1983), where the deposit was measured to be loose and medium dense. The second example investigates the seafloor behavior under a storm wave as the Ekofisk tank site in the North Sea (Lee and Focht, 1975; Nataraja and Gill, 1983). Here the deposit was reported to be dense. The numerical analyses predict the susceptibility of the two sites to liquefaction which reflects the real situations. It helps build confidence in the numerical procedure adopted in this study and lends it credibility.


This study investigates whether the risk adjusted returns of a global REIT portfolio would be enhanced by adopting a trend following strategy (which is an absolute concept), a momentum based strategy (which is a relative concept and requires individual country allocations), or indeed a combination of the two. We examine the results in terms of both a dedicated Global REIT exposure, and the impact on a multi-asset portfolio. We find that the main improvements arise when the broad index is replaced with one of the four trend following (TF) strategies. The portfolios deliver similar returns but volatility is reduced by up to a quarter to the 8-9% range, the Sharpe ratios increase by 0.1 to 0.5 with the main benefit being the reduction in the maximum drawdown to under 30% compared to 43% when the broad index was used. We thus find that a combined momentum and trend following Global REIT strategy can be beneficial for both a dedicated REIT portfolio and adding REITs to a multi-asset portfolio.


Background— When challenged with extracellular fluid shear stress, vascular endothelial cells are known to release nitric oxide, an important vasodilator. Here, we show that the ability of cultured endothelial cells to sense a low range of fluid shear depends on apical membrane organelles, called cilia, and that cilia are compartments required for proper localization and function of the mechanosensitive polycystin-1 molecule. Methods and Results— Cells with the Pkd1null/null or Tg737orpk/orpk mutation encoded for polycystin-1 or polaris, respectively, are unable to transmit extracellular shear stress into intracellular calcium signaling and biochemical nitric oxide synthesis. Cytosolic calcium and nitric oxide recordings further show that fluid shear sensing is a cilia-specific mechanism because other mechanical or pharmacological stimulation does not abolish calcium and nitric oxide signaling in polycystin-1 and polaris mutant endothelial cells. Polycystin-1 localized in the basal body of Tg737orpk/orpk endothelial cells is insufficient for a fluid shear stress response. Furthermore, the optimal shear stress to which the cells respond best does not alter the apical cilia structure but modifies the responsiveness of cells to higher shear stresses through proteolytic modification of polycystin-1. Conclusions— We demonstrate for the first time that polycystin-1 (required for cilia function) and polaris (required for cilia structure) are crucial mechanosensitive molecules in endothelial cells. We propose that a distinctive communication with the extracellular microenvironment depends on the proper localization and function of polycystin-1 in cilia.


During the last 40 years, a variety of informal names have been proposed for Upper Triassic
stratigraphic units in the Petrified Forest National Park (PFNP) and vicinity. We both simplify and formalize this stratigraphy. All Triassic exposures in the PFNP pertain to various units of the Chinle Group. We identify localized, topographically low exposures of siliciclastic redbeds and purple mudstones as the Bluewater Creek Formation, the oldest unit exposed in the park. The oldest widely exposed strata in the park belong to the overlying Blue Mesa Member of the Petrified Forest Formation. Within the Blue Mesa Member, we recognize one formal, sandstone-dominated unit of bed-level rank, the Newspaper Rock Bed. Sandstones and conglomerates of the Sonsela Member of the Petrified Forest Formation rest disconformably on Blue Mesa Member mudstones on an erosional surface (Tr-4 unconformity) that approximates the Carnian-Norian boundary. There is no separate "Rainbow Sandstone;" instead, beds previously assigned to this unit pertain to the basal Sonsela Member. The Sonsela Member is thus composed of three bed-level units in the park, units we designate as Rainbow Forest (basal sandstone and conglomerate), Jim Camp Wash (middle slope-forming, finer-grained interval) and Agate Bridge (upper sandstone and conglomerate) beds. The Sonsela Member is conformably overlain by the Painted Desert Member. In the southern portion of the park, the Painted Desert Member includes three sandstone-dominated units we formalize as Flattops beds 2-4 (ascending). North of 1-40, bed-level units cropping out in the Painted Desert include
the Lithodendron Wash Bed (formalized here) and the Black Forest Bed. In the extreme northern portion of the park, pedogenic limestones of the Owl Rock Formation conformably overlie the Painted
Desert Member. Locally, the Neogene Bidahochi Formation, including some interbedded lava flows,
overlies the Painted Desert Member or the Owl Rock Formation. The youngest lithostratigraphic units exposed in the park are a variety of unconsolidated Quaternary colluvial, fluvial and eolian deposits. Lithologic and tetrapod biostratigraphic evidence indicates that Chinle strata encompass a single significant unconformity at the base of the Sonsela Member, with strata below the Sonsela bearing tetrapod fossils of Adamanian (latest Carnian) age and the Sonsela and overlying units containing Revueltian (early-mid-Norian) tetrapod fossils.


Determining what experience to generate to best facilitate learning (i.e. exploration) is one of the distinguishing features and open challenges in reinforcement learning. The advent of distributed agents that interact with parallel instances of the environment has enabled larger scales and greater flexibility, but has not removed the need to tune exploration to the task, because the ideal data for the learning algorithm necessarily depends on its process of learning. We propose to dynamically adapt the data generation by using a non-stationary multi-armed bandit to optimize a proxy of the learning progress. The data distribution is controlled by modulating multiple parameters of the policy (such as stochasticity, consistency or optimism) without significant overhead. The adaptation speed of the bandit can be increased by exploiting the factored modulation structure. We demonstrate on a suite of Atari 2600 games how this unified approach produces results comparable to per-task tuning at a fraction of the cost.


We describe a new algorithm and R package for peak detection in genomic data sets using constrained changepoint algorithms. These detect changes from background to peak regions by imposing the constraint that the mean should alternately increase then decrease. An existing algorithm for this problem exists, and gives state-of-the-art accuracy results, but it is computationally expensive when the number of changes is large. We propose the GFPOP algorithm that jointly estimates the number of peaks and their locations by minimizing a cost function which consists of a data fitting term and a penalty for each changepoint. Empirically this algorithm has a cost that is $O(N \log(N))$ for analysing data of length $N$. We also propose a sequential search algorithm that finds the best solution with $K$ segments in $O(\log(K)N \log(N))$ time, which is much faster than the previous $O(KN \log(N))$ algorithm. We show that our disk-based implementation in the PeakSegDisk R package can be used to quickly compute constrained optimal models with many changepoints, which are needed to analyze typical genomic data sets that have tens of millions of observations.


oday the prevention of global challenges (from global security to the problems of poverty) relates to the institutional quality. Nowadays, the social standards or other "social rules" make the part of the market system, since they are built into the country's institutional structure. Neither social nor economic reforms can be implemented without the support through institutional mechanisms.
The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between social sector institutions and basic institutions, taking into account the economic development of countries and the way in which they are formed.
A number of empiric studies confirmed significant role of institutions to provide conditions for economic development. In order to define and assess the link between the basic institutions and the social sector institutions, we formed panel data that includes 20 countries for the period from 2007-2014. We assessed quality of the basic institutions using The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI). WGI methodology provides an evaluation of six dimensions of the institutional quality that enables to define the connection and the impact of every dimension on the institutional quality of the social sector.
The model additionally evaluates the impact of the incomes distribution inequality, general economic welfare on the institutional quality of the social sector. Among all dimensions of governance "Rule of Law" and "Regulatory Quality" the statistically significant direct impact on the institutional quality of the social sector has been revealed. It confirms the complementarity of basic institutions and institutions of the social sector.


Biophotovoltaic devices utilize photosynthetic organisms such as the model cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 (Synechocystis) to generate current for power or hydrogen production from light. These devices have been improved by both architecture engineering and genetic engineering of the phototrophic organism. However, genetic approaches are limited by lack of understanding of cellular mechanisms of electron transfer from internal metabolism to the cell exterior. Type IV pili have been implicated in extracellular electron transfer (EET) in some species of heterotrophic bacteria. Furthermore, conductive cell surface filaments have been reported for cyanobacteria, including Synechocystis. However, it remains unclear whether these filaments are type IV pili and whether they are involved in EET. Herein, a mediatorless electrochemical setup is used to compare the electrogenic output of wild-type Synechocystis to that of a ΔpilD mutant that cannot produce type IV pili. No differences in photocurrent, i.e., current in response to illumination, are detectable. Furthermore, measurements of individual pili using conductive atomic force microscopy indicate these structures are not conductive. These results suggest that pili are not required for EET by Synechocystis, supporting a role for shuttling of electrons via soluble redox mediators or direct interactions between the cell surface and extracellular substrates.


The oleogels of virgin olive oil with carnauba wax and monoglyceride were prepared to determine the most suitable spreadable product. The oil binding capacities of monoglyceride oleogels were higher than those of the carnauba wax oleogels. There was no true crystalline structure with carnauba wax at 3%. Although the highest solid fat content was in the 10% monoglyceride oleogel (9.38%), it was 12.15% in the commercial breakfast margarine at 20 °C. The peak melting temperature of the margarine was 47.11 °C, and among all oleogels, monoglyceride oleogel at 7% addition had the closest value (48.70 °C). The melting enthalpies of the oleogels ranged from 1.25 to 103.97 J·g −1 , while it was 94.19 J·g −1 for the margarine sample. The firmness and stickiness values were usually lower in the oleogel samples than those of the margarine sample. There was no significant change in the texture parameters during storage, indicating good structural stability. The polarized light microscopy pictures revealed rod-like crystals for carnauba wax and rosette-like aggregates for monoglyceride oleogels. X-ray diffraction patterns of the samples have revealed a β´-type polymorphic structure for the oleogels. These oleogels can be used in a spreadable, breakfast margarin-like product to promote new consumption habits for this healthy oil.


Cellobiose-pendant polymers were synthesized by radical polymerization and their affinity for a cellulose matrix was investigated by quartz crystal microbalance (QCM). A 2-(methacryloyloxy)ethylureido cellobiose (MOU-Cel) macromer was synthesized by coupling cellobiosylamine with 2-(methacryloyloxy)ethyl isocyanate followed by polymerization in an aqueous radical reaction system. The interaction of the resulting poly(MOU-Cel) with a pure cellulose matrix in water was evaluated by QCM analysis. Poly(MOU-Cel) was strongly adsorbed to the cellulose substrate, whereas neither cellobiose nor MOU-Cel macromer exhibited an attractive interaction with cellulose. This specific interaction was not inhibited by the presence of ionic contaminants, suggesting that multiple cellobiopyranose moieties in each polymer molecule might cooperatively enhance its affinity for cellulose. Moderate insertion of acrylamide units into the polymer backbone improved the affinity for cellulose, possibly due to an increased mobility of sugar side chains. Polymers such as these, with a high affinity for cellulose, have potential applications for the surface functionalization of cellulose-based materials, including paper products.


Bone diseases/injuries have been driving an urgent quest for bone substitutes for bone regeneration. Nanoscaled materials with bone-mimicking characteristics may create suitable microenvironments to guide effective bone regeneration. In this review, the natural hierarchical architecture of bone and its regeneration mechanisms are elucidated. Recent progress in the development of nanomaterials which can promote bone regeneration through bone-healing mimicry (e.g., compositional, nanocrystal formation, structural, and growth factor-related mimicking) is summarized. The nanoeffects of nanomaterials on the regulation of bone-related biological functions are highlighted. How to prepare nanomaterials with combinative bone-biomimicry features according to the bone healing process is prospected in order to achieve rapid bone regeneration in situ.


Interest in blockchain is growing rapidly and at a global scale. The potential to disrupt various industries is attributed to the emerging blockchain technology. Organizations and institutions have thus begun to examine the emerging the technology and its impact on their businesses. However, researchers and practitioners still lack a systematic approach to understand the potential of blockchain and to develop convincing use cases. We addressed this research gap by applying an action design research approach and situational method engineering to propose a method for the development of blockchain technology use cases. Following this approach, we iteratively evaluate and further develop the proposed method through application in four distinct industries. In a next research step, we now focus on a broader context and evaluate if our existing use case development method is applicable for other emerging technologies than blockchain. By doing so, we seek to broaden our evaluation, generalize our method, and support practitioners and researchers in better leveraging the opportunities of continuous digital transformation.


Using mixed methods this paper explores issue salience and the policy framing associated with the substantive representation of ethnic minorities. Its focus is party programmes in Westminster (1964–2010) and Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish elections (1998–2011). The analysis reveals a significant increase in issue salience driven by parties of the Left. This applies to both state-wide and meso-elections, thereby providing evidence of political reprioritisation in the wake of ethnic minority activism in the 1970s and 1980s. At the meso-level new political opportunity structures are shown to be leading to the territorialisation of policy. However, the analysis also reveals significant shortcomings, including parties' failure to adopt a systematic approach consistent with the post-1997 discourse on mainstreaming.


Thermoplastic natural rubbers (TPNR) blends consist of thermoplastics, such as low density polyethylene (LDPE), alloyed with natural rubber (NR) with different thermoplastic to NR ratios. The soft grade TPNR is produced by blends with compositions richer in rubber while the harder grades can contain up to about 30% NR. This study investigate the influence of new binder system containning of TPNR on injection parameter, density of injected molded specimen and changes during solvent extraction. Results shows that TPNR plays an important role as a good binder system and shortens the solvent extraction process.


While battery-integrated modular multilevel converters are a promising alternative to conventional inverters in applications such as automobiles, they often cause significant second-harmonic pulsating currents in the batteries, increasing their degradation rate and the system losses. In this paper, we propose a control scheme for the Modular Multilevel Series Parallel Converter (MMSPC) that reduces the pulsating current seen by the batteries. A harmonic voltage is injected into the controller output voltage, allowing the converter to significantly reduce the low frequency current pulsations by switching modules in parallel more often. This is combined with a simple balancing algorithm to determine the upcoming switching states. We have shown that-without the need of additional hardware-the second-harmonic pulsation can be reduced by over 40 % using voltage injection, by taking advantage of the fact that the MMSPC can parallelize battery-modules when the output voltage is low. This may allow battery degradation to be reduced and the range of an electric vehicle with an MMSPC-system to be increased.


This paper explores the possibilities of using monocular simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithms in systems with more than one camera. The idea is to combine in a single system the advantages of both monocular vision (bearings-only, infinite range observations but no 3-D instantaneous information) and stereovision (3-D information up to a limited range). Such a system should be able to instantaneously map nearby objects while still considering the bearing information provided by the observation of remote ones. We do this by considering each camera as an independent sensor rather than the entire set as a monolithic supersensor. The visual data are treated by monocular methods and fused by the SLAM filter. Several advantages naturally arise as interesting possibilities, such as the desynchronization of the firing of the sensors, the use of several unequal cameras, self-calibration, and cooperative SLAM with several independently moving cameras. We validate the approach with two different applications: a stereovision SLAM system with automatic self-calibration of the rig's main extrinsic parameters and a cooperative SLAM system with two independent free-moving cameras in an outdoor setting.


Abstract As of August 27, 2021, the ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2), has spread to over 220 countries, areas, and territories. Thus far, 214,468,601 confirmed cases, including 4,470,969 deaths, have been reported to the World Health Organization. To combat the COVID‐19 pandemic, multiomics‐based strategies, including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, have been used to study the diagnosis methods, pathogenesis, prognosis, and potential drug targets of COVID‐19. In order to help researchers and clinicians to keep up with the knowledge of COVID‐19, we summarized the most recent progresses reported in omics‐based research papers. This review discusses omics‐based approaches for studying COVID‐19, summarizing newly emerged SARS‐CoV‐2 variants as well as potential diagnostic methods, risk factors, and pathological features of COVID‐19. This review can help researchers and clinicians gain insight into COVID‐19 features, providing direction for future drug development and guidance for clinical treatment, so that patients can receive appropriate treatment as soon as possible to reduce the risk of disease progression.


In his groundbreaking book on the history of science, John Hedley Brooke argued that the best way to understand stories such as Galileo's supposed run-in with the church was to think of these narratives as "complex." Galileo's difficulties should not be reduced to a science versus religion controversy nor - a more likely but even more egregious case of misrepresentation - a story of progressives versus conservatives and reactionaries. Historians such as James Moore, Ronald Numbers, Jon Roberts, and David Livingstone have further argued that detail, nuance, and context are vital in order to understand better other history of science developments such as the reception of Charles Darwin's ideas, particularly among the Christian churches.2 These admonitions are particularly relevant in anniversary years. The two-hundredth anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species has been recognized and celebrated in academic conferences, exhibitions, new books, television documentaries, and even a feature film. The Times (London) had Darwin in a list of most influential people - not a surprise - and in the trendy London magazine The Short List, the stand-up comedian Robin Ince revealed "the boffins he really rates" and included Darwin as number seven on his list of inspirational scientists. Perhaps Ince's imprimatur is further proof that Darwin deserves his place as one of the faces of the British ten-pound note.J The British zoologist Julian Huxley described the end of the nineteenth century as "the eclipse of Darwinism" with regard to the history of the theory of evolution,6 but historians of the early twenty-first century may have to write about "the triumph of Darwinism." Given that more Darwin anniversaries are in the not-too-distant future - the 150th anniversary of the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Oxford during which Thomas Huxley had his supposed showdown with Bishop Samuel Wilberforce being the nearest - a reassessment of the reception of Darwin's ideas is a worthwhile exercise. Furthermore, taking the advice to search for complexity or detail, a closer examination of the thinking of the numerous men and women who constituted the first generations of readers of On the Origin of Species reveals something of the process by which a scientific idea such as Darwin's theory of evolution can become orthodoxy in the scientific community and then society at large. Following such a process is important because anniversaries can occlude rather than reveal. Admiration for the genius of Darwin can result in a forgetting of those scientists and popularizers who were principally responsible for the dissemination of Darwin's ideas. Or, more likely, the significance of Darwin's theory of evolution - best described as descent by modification through natural selection - results in less discussion of the weaknesses and difficulties of Darwin's theory. In fact, as Darwin was fully cognizant of the problems with his theory - and, naturally, did not believe them to be insurmountable - it seems sensible for his future readers to be aware of them also. If there is a reason why a modified version of Darwin's theory of evolution has become, in the twenty-first century, the explanation for the origin of life, there must also be a reason why that theory seemed to be in terminal decline at the end of the nineteenth. For students of the Church of England's history, the generation of Anglican priests, scientists, and literati who lived and worked in the last three decades of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth is, in one sense, more interesting than "Darwin's generation." First, to steal an idea from the Bible, they were the pharaohs "who knew not Joseph." They were alive during the tempest which surrounded the initial publication of On the Origin of Species but were too young to participate in it as central protagonists. …


The majority of South Africans are trapped in poverty and high unemployment levels. Some, particularly the poor, resort to operating survivalist enterprises to cater for day-to-day expenses or meet basic needs. The underlying problem confronting many survivalist enterprises is lack of finance to develop and sustain their enterprises which is associated with collateral constraints. As a result, survivalist enterprises use informal sources of finance as channels to access such finance. The objective of this article is to determine how informal finance can mitigate this problem and propose strategic finance principles that can be used to improve access to finance by survivalist enterprises. The research adopted a case study approach based on informal finance and how it is used as an instrument for developing survivalist enterprises in the Soshanguve township situated in the Gauteng Province in South Africa. A sampling technique was employed to conduct interviews with survivalist enterprises which were randomly selected. The research findings reveal that informal finance appears to be successful through its traditional norms and customs embedded in the informal financial arrangements which mitigate collateral problems and improve access to finance by survivalist enterprises. Based on these findings, recommendations were therefore formulated based on informal finance which can be used as the first point of reference for developing survivalist enterprises in South Africa.


This piece highlights the importance of civil society initiatives to fight impunity on the domestic level in African countries, drawing on my experiences working on international criminal justice issues at the Southern Africa Litigation Centre. International crimes cannot be the business of the International Criminal Court alone and in order for complementarity to be realised, domestic jurisdictions must pull their weight. Here I will focus on one crucial civil society accountability initiative, the ground-breaking universal jurisdiction case that set an important precedent in South Africa, and globally: Southern Africa Litigation Centre and Another v The National Director of Public Prosecutions and Others. I will set out the key aspects of the case that enabled SALC to require the South African authorities to investigate allegations of international crimes, and show how the case has Continental and global significance by breathing new life into the principle of universal jurisdiction.


I estimate the fuel retailer cartel damages in the south of Brazil using reduced and structural forms for supply and demand. Brazilian Competition Authority (CADE) documents help to characterize the ethanol and gasoline retailers involved in the collusion. The objective is to evaluate competition policy by comparing the amount of estimated damages with the amount of applied fines. This paper also adds an important result to gasoline substitution, as data shows ethanol is perceived as a perfect substitute and it is price inelastic. Results show an overcharge of 4.6% to 6.6% in the gasoline market and up to 12% in the ethanol market during collusion. Fines should consider the deterrence effect and, giving the low probability of detection, CADE's applied fines seemed to be in line with this objective.


type="main"> This study examines the impact of improvements in institutional oversight specifically for compliance with International Financial Reporting Standards on accrual quality in Europe. The sample comprises 9339 firm-year observations from a treatment sample of three European countries that had either non-existent or relatively weak institutional oversight systems at the start of the sample period 2006–2010 but improved oversight systems thereafter, and a benchmark sample of six other European countries that had institutional oversight systems from the start of this sample period. After controlling for legal system, rule of law and other variables, we find incremental improvement in accrual quality in the treatment sample relative to the benchmark sample from the pre-enforcement period 2006–2007 to the enforcement period 2008–2010. The results suggest that institutional oversight has an incrementally positive impact on accrual quality over and above that attributable to legal system, rule of law and other variables. The results are robust to different measures of accrual quality, alternative enforcement proxy and alternative samples.


During the summer and autumn 2015, El Nino conditions in the east and central Pacific have strengthened, disrupting weather patterns throughout the tropics and into the mid-latitudes. For example, rainfall during this summer's Indian monsoon was approximately 15% below normal. The continued strong El Nino conditions have the potential to trigger damaging impacts (e.g. droughts, famines, floods), particularly in less-developed tropical countries, which would require a swift and effective humanitarian response to mitigate damage to life and property (e.g. health, migration, infrastructure). This analysis uses key climatic variables (temperature, soil moisture and precipitation) as measures to monitor the ongoing risk of these potentially damaging impacts.

The previous 2015-2016 El Nino Impact Analysis was based on observations over the past 35 years and produced Impact Tables showing the likelihood and severity of the impacts on temperature and rainfall by season. The current report is an extension of this work providing information from observations and seasonal forecast models to give a more detailed outlook of the potential near-term impacts of the current El Nino conditions by region.

This information has been added to the Impact Tables in the form of an 'Observations and Outlook' row. This consists of observational information for the past seasons of JJA 2015 and SON 2015, a detailed monthly outlook from 5 modeling centres for Dec 2015 and then longer-term seasonal forecast information from 2 modeling centres for the future seasons of JF 2016 and MAM 2016. The seasonal outlook information is an indication of the average likely conditions for that coming month (or season) and region and is not a definite prediction of weather impacts.


Abstract The concept of emergence appears in various places within the literature on expertise and expert practice. Here, I examine some of these applications of emergence in the light of two prominent accounts of emergence from the philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. I evaluate these accounts with respect to several specific contexts in which emergence seems to be an appropriate way of characterizing expertise in groups. While it is sometimes assumed that emergent phenomena are in some way inexplicable, the two accounts of emergence I discuss highlight ways in which the concept of emergence relates to specific styles of explanation.


Sociolinguistic studies of 'minority languages' and bilingualism have increasingly moved away from a singular emphasis on issues of ethnicity that poses direct links between the use of a language and an ethnic or cultural identity towards exploring the construction of identities that are not firmly located in category-bound descriptions. In this paper, we draw on these latest insights to account for processes of identity construction in a bilingual (in Greek Cypriot and English) youth organization group based in North London. Our main data consist of the audio-recorded interactional data from a socialization outing after one of the group's meeting but we also bring in insights from the group's ethnographic study and a larger study of the North London Cypriot community that involved interviews and questionnaires. In the close analysis of our main data, we note a conventional association between the 'London Greek Cypriot' (henceforth LGC) variety that is switched to from English as the main interactional frame and a set of genres (in the sense of recurrent evolving responses to social practices) that are produced and taken up as humorous discourse: These include narrative jokes, ritual insults, hypothetical scenarios, and metalinguistic instances of mock Cypriot. We will suggest that the use of LGC demonstrates a relationship of ambivalence, a "partly ours partly theirs" status, with the participants carving out a different, third space for themselves that transcends macro-social categories (e.g. the Cypriots, the Greek-Cypriot community). At the same time, we will show how the discursive process of choosing language from a bi- or multi- lingual repertoire does not only create identities in the sense of socially and culturally derived positions but also identities (sic (dis)-identifications) in the sense of desiring and fantasizing personas.


It's highly desired to design and fabricate an effective Z-scheme photo-catalyst with excellent charge transfer and separation, and a more negative conduction band edge (ECB) than O2/$O2 ( 0.33 eV) and a more positive valence band edge (EVB) than $OH/OH (+2.27 eV) which provides high-energy redox radicals. Herein, we firstly designed and synthesized a core–shell-heterojunction-structured Z-scheme system BaTiO3@In2S3 (BT@IS, labelled as BTIS) through a hydrothermal method, where commercial BT was used as the core and In(NO3)3$xH2O together with thioacetamide as the precursor of IS was utilized as the shell material. In this system, the shell IS possesses a ECB of 0.76 eV and visible-light-response Eg of 1.92 eV, while the core BT possesses a EVB of 3.38 eV, which is well suited for a Z-scheme. It was found that the as-prepared BTIS possesses a higher photocatalytic degradation ability for methyl orange (MO) than commercial BT and the as-prepared IS fabricated by the same processing parameters as those of BTIS. Holes (h) and superoxide radicals ($O2 ) were found to be the dominant active species for BTIS. In this work, the core–shell structure has inhibited the production of $OH because the shell IS has shielded the OH from h. It is assumed that if the structure of BTIS is a composite, not a core–shell structure, $OH could be produced during photocatalysis, and therefore a higher photocatalytic efficiency would be obtained. This current work opens a new pathway for designing Z-scheme photocatalysts and offers new insight into the Z-scheme mechanism for applications in the field of photocatalysis.


summary
Repeat photography and tree ring analyses were used to investigate structural change, 1938–88, of an old growth and high elevation Picea abies (L.) Karst. forest in northern Sweden. The forest, initially moribund, senescent and top-broken, regenerated broken tops and apparently gained in vigour. Up to the 1930s this progressive change was pre-dated by an increase of annual increment growth, which subsequently declined until the 1980s, The tree-ring response concurs with the general course of summer temperature while canopy processes appear to lag behind. The study stresses the importance of phenotypic plasticity for Long-term behavior of marginal J spruce forest. It is also evident that canopy development is not a fully predictable ageing process, but to some extent dependent on climatic variability.


According to EU Directive 2015/849, all Member States must establish a central register of data on ultimate beneficial owners of corporate legal entities and also of trusts and legal arrangements similar to trusts. First of all, this requires identification of the latter arrangements in the individual Member States, which is not an easy task: the definition related to being 'similar to trusts' is quite vague. The main aim with the article was to determine the arrangements in Estonian private law that should be considered in implementation of the UBO-register rules. Therefore, a brief overview is provided of trusts and two types of arrangements used in civil-law systems for the same purposes – the Treuhand and fiducie . The piece then highlights the similarities between these and the trust, with the conclusion being drawn that being 'trust-like' in the context of the directive boils down to situations wherein from the outside the property has one person as an owner but there also exists an internal relationship that obliges the title-holder to observe certain duties and that may grant another person the economic benefit from the property. Next, the article turns to the Estonian legal scene. Under consideration are family- and succession-law devices (e.g., executorship of a will), various forms of shared ownership and communities (in particular, silent partnership and contractual investment funds), mandate and commission contracts, intermediated holding of securities, and fiduciary ownership for security purposes. The conclusion is that there indeed are arrangements in the Estonian legal system that fall into the category of trust-like arrangements under the directive but that the registration of UBO data for all of them would not be without difficulties. Finally, some criteria for registration of the relevant arrangements are proposed.


"Five Recommendations to Law Schools Offering Legal Instruction over the Internet," addresses the emerging market for legal distance education. The market is being driven by recent changes in ABA regulations, as well as specialization in the curriculum, and expanding costs of traditional education. We are seeing the emergence of legal distance education consortiums, which offer a platform for the trading or selling of courses and programs. However, much skepticism remains about the ability of distance education technology to offer law schools and law students a sufficiently interactive pedagogy. In the words of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg legal education is a "shared enterprise, a genuine interactive endeavor" that ". . . inevitably looses something vital when students learn in isolation, even if they can engage in virtual interaction with peers and teachers." This paper uses my experience as the Director of the University of Alabama's successful LL.M in Taxation Program to advise law schools how to expand into distance education, while avoiding common pedagogical limitations and administrative problems. The first of five recommendations addresses what to offer and the remaining four offer advice on how to offer distance learning: 1) Offer programs more generously than courses. 2) Collaborate with other schools in offering courses but not when offering programs. 3) Use synchronous delivery of information, like videoconferencing, for the primary mode of instruction. 4) Use asynchronous forms of delivery to increase the level of interaction and support the primary, synchronous form. 5) Use relational marketing to retain and recruit distance education students. In addressing the issue of whether the internet is appropriate for law school instruction, this article contributes to that debate by presenting a model of the right way to offer legal distance education. Until the technology catches up with the traditional classroom, asynchronous forms like web-based discussion boards and streaming video should only be used to supplement a more interactive and synchronous primary mode of instruction like videoconferencing. This article also explains how resolve the potential difficulties that may arise when offering a videoconferencing course or program. The University of Alabama's LL.M. in Tax is a good model for these propositions because it is the only program that I know of which uses over 10 remote classrooms and videoconferencing and asynchronous technologies to create face to face interactions with law students and professors from four different Southeastern states.


Chilli veinal mottle virus (CVMV) is a serious problem and has
become a major limiting factor in growing and production of chilli in
Malaysia. This virus is transmitted non-persistently by aphid, Aphis
gossypii. CVMV control efforts have been unsuccessful due to lack of
knowledge on the epidemiology of the virus.
S tudies on transmission and spread of CVMV to chilli using
nymphs and adults of A. gossypii were conducted in the laboratory and
glasshouse. Aphids and test plants (Capsicum annuumcv. Me 4) were A single A . gossypii was abl e to transmit and r e tain CVMV
regardless whether it was fed or starved. A. gossypii lost CVMV infectivity
more rapidly in serial transfer (when feeding) than in post- acquisition
starvation (when starving). Transmission level decreased as the period of
serial transfer (0-60 min) and post-acquisition starvation time (1-120 min)
increased, however, the level of transmission increased with aphid
density.
cultured and maintained in insect proof glasshouse.
Fifteen seconds and thirty seconds acquisition feeding time were
found to be the optimum time for A. gossypii to transmit CVMV. All
aphid forms were equally efficient in CVMV transmission.Colony establishment of A. gossypii was faster when aphids were
initially released on healthy plants than on CVMV infected plants.
Apterous vectors spread CVMV more efficiently than alate vectors.
However, CVMV s pread faster when A. gossypii was placed on the
inoculum source. Apterous adults released near the inoculum source
achieved the highest level of transmission compared with the alates. In the
beginning, CVMV spread occurred mostly near the inoculum source and
moved outward thereafter.


Figshare's annual report, The State of Open Data 2018, looks at global attitudes towards open data. It includes survey results of researchers and a collection of articles from industry experts, as well as a foreword from Ross Wilkinson, Director, Global Strategy at Australian Research Data Commons.The report is the third in the series and the survey results continue to show encouraging progress that open data is becoming more embedded in the research community.The key finding is that open data has become more embedded in the research community – 64% of survey respondents reveal they made their data openly available in 2018. However, a surprising number of respondents (60%) had never heard of the FAIR principles, a guideline to enhance the reusability of academic data.


One of the typical social consequences of the introduction of compulsory conscription and mass politics in nineteenth century Europe was the emergence of veterans organizations. This study examines the veterans' movement in the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary between 1867 and 1914. While in Europe and Imperial Austria the widespread military veterans' organizations were important actors in the relationship between the military and the civilian sphere and also in state policy, in Hungary their spread remained limited. However, their operation, specific ideology and also their reception in local society can provide important lessons about the impact of the military on society, and the forms and workings of loyalty and nationalism in Hungary. The study consists of two main parts. First, it examines the prevalence and main characteristics of the associations: where and when were they founded, for what purpose were they established, how the state treated them, what social groups did them consist of, and finally how did all this relate to the other half of the empire? The second part of the study presents the activities of veterans' associations in Hungarian society by drawing on the example of town of Szombathely and Vas County in western Transdanubia. It analyses what activities did they perform in everyday life, what ideologies did they follow, how did they get involved in the life of the local society, and what was their reception in local civil society and administration?


The FBI's two-decade-long dominance of the use of genetic surveillance for law enforcement purposes is ending. In its place, local police departments are creating DNA databases that operate outside of the FBI's national DNA database network. These local databases, which until now have remained unexamined, promise local law enforcement agencies freedom from the federal laws and regulations that govern the FBI's national network. This Article relies on original qualitative empirical research to describe why agencies created local databases and how these databases operate. It finds that while local DNA databases offer promise as a crime-solving tool, they generate harms that so far have been ignored. These harms include exacerbating racial inequities, threatening privacy and dignity interests, and undermining the legitimacy of the police. Because law enforcement agencies have not internalized these harms, the self-imposed regulations that currently restrain law enforcement's use of local DNA databases are insufficient. This Article proposes several modest, yet effective, reforms that will minimize the harms generated by local DNA databases, while at the same time preserving law enforcement's ability to wield this tool.


Recent studies on networking, social capital and elites have done much to expand academic knowledge in each of these topic areas. Elites are defined in several ways, including their attributes and their use of and access to power. However, far less research has been conducted on how those attributes and/or power are used by local political elites. A great deal of research has also been conducted on social capital, what it is and how it can benefit society, but less work has been done on the local politician's individual production and use of social capital. Despite the important role that networks and networking play in producing social capital, local elite networks thus remain largely unexplored. We know little of how their networks are constructed and used in the pursuance of status and less on how the elite adapt the use of their networks in response to socio-economic change. In focusing on the construction and use of social capital networks by the Borough Aldermen and Councillors in Northampton over the longue duree, this work redresses those shortcomings. The research uses a large number and variety of sources which provide a wealth of qualitative and quantitative data with which to explore elite networking and social capital in the town. The work contributes towards furthering academic knowledge on how elites gain maintain and propagate status. The research reveals that the elite use two different constructs of networks, each of which provides different benefits for the user. It is the symbiosis of these networks which enables the political elite to respond to socio-economic and political events. The research also finds that overlapping networks produce the largest exchange of social capital, which is translated into gaining and maintaining status. It is clear that, over the longue duree, the importance of business networks in producing social capital has drastically reduced, and has been replaced by the growing importance of political association membership. It is also evident in the research that the expansion of formal institutions in the business and political arenas has led to individual Councillors and Aldermen making strategic choices. Using a market mentality of returns, they decide which networks give greater social capital and are thus more valuable and useful in gaining and maintaining elite status.


Disulfide trapping studies have revealed that the pore-lining (P) segments of voltage-dependent sodium channels undergo sizable motions on a subsecond time scale. Such motions of the pore may be necessary for selective ion translocation. Although traditionally viewed as separable properties, gating and permeation are now known to interact extensively in various classes of channels. We have investigated the interaction of pore motions and voltage-dependent gating in μ1 sodium channels engineered to contain two cysteines within the P segments. Rates of catalyzed internal disulfide formation (kSS) were measured in K1237C+W1531C mutant channels expressed in oocytes. During repetitive voltage-clamp depolarizations, increasing the pulse duration had biphasic effects on the kSS, which first increased to a maximum at 200 msec and then decreased with longer depolarizations. This result suggested that occupancy of an intermediate inactivation state (IM) facilitates pore motions. Consistent with the known antagonism between alkali metals and a component of slow inactivation,kSS varied inversely with external [Na+]o. We examined the converse relationship, namely the effect of pore flexibility on gating, by measuring recovery from inactivation in Y401C+E758C (YC/EC) channels. Under oxidative conditions, recovery from inactivation was slower than in a reduced environment in which the spontaneous YC/EC cross-link is disrupted. The most prominent effects were slowing of a component with intermediate recovery kinetics, with diminution of its relative amplitude. We conclude that occupancy of an intermediate inactivation state facilitates motions of the P segments; conversely, flexibility of the P segments alters an intermediate component of inactivation.


The conventional wisdom is that aggressive networking requirements, such as high packet rates for small messages and μs-scale tail latency, are best addressed outside the kernel, in a user-level networking stack. In particular, dataplanes borrow design elements from network middleboxes to run tasks to completion in tight loops. In its basic form, the dataplane design leverages sweeping simplifications such as the elimination of any resource management and any task scheduling to improve throughput and lower latency. As a result, dataplanes perform best when the request rate is predictable (since there is no resource management) and the service time of each task has a low execution time and a low dispersion. On the other hand, they exhibit poor energy proportionality and workload consolidation, and suffer from head-of-line blocking. This thesis proposes the introduction of resource management to dataplanes. Current dataplanes decrease latency by constantly polling for incoming network packets. This approach trades energy usage for latency. We argue that it is possible to introduce a control plane, which manages the resources in the most optimal way in terms of power usage without affecting the performance of the dataplane. Additionally, this thesis proposes the introduction of scheduling to dataplanes. Current designs operate in a strict FIFO and run-to-completion manner. This method is effective only when the incoming request requires a minimal amount of processing in the order of a few microseconds. When the processing time of requests is (a) longer or (b) follows a distribution with higher dispersion, the transient load imbalances and head-of-line blocking deteriorate the performance of the dataplane. We claim that it is possible to introduce a scheduler to dataplanes, which routes requests to the appropriate core and effectively reduce the tail latency of the system while at the same time support a wider range of workloads.


The efficiency of transmission control of dispersion-managed solitons by means of in-line synchronous intensity modulation is numerically analyzed. We demonstrate that intensity modulation may lead to dramatic improvements in the transmission performance of 40-Gb/s dispersion-managed solitons. In particular, we identify the locations within the dispersion map where synchronous intensity modulation provides an efficient control of the pulse propagation. Namely, a stabilization of pulse energy fluctuations is achieved, with no need for additional in-line control by guiding filters. On the other hand, incorrectly placed intensity modulation may cause significant pulse instabilities.


(1) Background: Although resistance to pathogens and pests has been researched in many potato cultivars and breeding lines with DNA markers, there is scarce evidence as to the efficiency of the marker-assisted selection (MAS) for these traits when applied at the early stages of breeding. A goal of this study was to estimate the potential of affordable DNA markers to track Rpi disease resistance genes, that are effective against the pathogen Phytophthora infestans, as a practical breeding tool on a progeny of 68 clones derived from a cross between the cultivar Sudarynya and 13/11-09. (2) Methods: this population was studied for four years to elucidate the distribution of LB resistance and other agronomical desirable or simple to phenotype traits such as tuber and flower pigmentation, capacity and structure of yield. LB resistance was phenotypically determined through natural and artificial infection and the presence/absence of nine Rpi genes was assessed via 11 sequence-characterized amplified region (SCAR) markers. To aid this analysis, the profile of Rpi genes in the 13/11-09 parent was established using diagnostic resistance gene enrichment sequencing (dRenSeq) as a gold standard. (3) Results: at the early stages of a breeding program, MAS can halve the workload when screening the segregation of F1 offspring and selected SCAR markers for Rpi-genes provide useful tools.


Medical advances in transplantation techniques have driven an exponential increase in the demand for transplantable organs. Unfortunately, policy efforts to bolster the organ supply have been less than effective, failing to provide a stopgap for ever-increasing numbers of patients who await organ transplantation. The number of registrations on waiting lists exceeded 65,245 in early 1999, a 325% increase over the 20,000 that existed 11 years earlier in 1988. Regrettably, more than 4,000 patients die each year while awaiting transplantation.


BACKGROUND
Combined therapy involving cytoreductive surgery (CRS) and perioperative intraperitoneal chemotherapy has been shown to improve survival outcomes for patients with diffuse malignant peritoneal mesothelioma (DMPM). The present study aims to investigate gender as a potential prognostic factor on overall survival.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Over a period of two decades, 294 patients who underwent CRS and perioperative intraperitoneal chemotherapy were selected from a large multi-institutional registry to assess the prognostic significance of gender on overall survival.

RESULTS
Female patients were shown to have a significantly improved survival outcome than male patients (P < 0.001). Staging according to a recently proposed tumor-node-metastasis categorization system was significant in both genders. Older female patients had significantly worse survival than younger female patients (P = 0.019), a finding that was absent in male patients. Female patients with low-stage disease were found to have a very favorable long-term outcome after combined treatment.

CONCLUSIONS
Gender has demonstrated a significant impact on overall survival for patients with DMPM after CRS and perioperative intraperitoneal chemotherapy. An improved understanding of the role of estrogen in the pathogenesis of DMPM may improve the prognostication of patients and determine the role of adjuvant hormonal treatment in the future.


The capacity of the free-space optical channel is studied. A new recursive approach for bounding the capacity of the channel based on sphere-packing is proposed. This approach leads to new capacity upper bounds for a channel with a peak intensity constraint or an average intensity constraint. Under an average constraint only, the derived bound is tighter than an existing sphere-packing bound derived earlier by Farid and Hranilovic. The achievable rate of a truncated-Gaussian input distribution is also derived. It is shown that under both average and peak constraints, this achievable rate and the sphere-packing bounds are within a small gap at high SNR, leading to a simple high-SNR capacity approximation. Simple fitting functions that capture the best known achievable rate for the channel are provided. These functions can be of practical importance especially for the study of systems operating under atmospheric turbulence and misalignment conditions.


When is the best time to engage high school students in widening participation (WP) activities? With qualitative data from 46 university students at six Australian universities who are from low socioeconomic status (LSES) backgrounds, this study explored WP's timeliness. It was found that a) the timing of the decision to go to university can occur at any point in compulsory schooling; b) LSES students experienced the bulk of WP in senior high school, being the years after they have selected the university stream; c) students in the university stream were exposed to WP activities while those in the non-university stream were excluded; and d) participants recommended that WP should begin earlier and be concentrated in the lead up to the forced streaming decision that occurs in Year 10. Overall, earlier WP exposure that is synchronised with high school streaming processes would optimise WP activities aimed at increasing LSES university participation.


A so called Controlled Mixed-Mode Bending (CMMB) test is presented, which has been developed toinvestigate the fracture of crash-optimized, elastic-plastic adhesives loaded in mixed-mode. While mostcommon mixed-mode tests, like e.g. the MMB test, work fine with brittle adhesives, the controlled MMBtakes into account the large crack opening displacements at the crack tip and ensures a constant mode mixat the crack tip by the regulation of two actuators. Consequently, the definition of mode mixity is asignificant difference to state-of-the-art experiments, which define the mode mixity in terms of the ratio ofdissipated energy in the single modes and which are therefore based on analytical models or assumptionsconcerning the energy dissipation during the test. A further target of the presented CMMB test is to obtain information on the complete shape of the socalled traction separation law, which describes the relation between stress and displacement inside theadhesive layer. Such traction separation law is often used to define the failure behaviour of an adhesivejoint within a numerical analysis, using cohesive elements in a finite element code or similar approaches. Beside the theory and the idea of the CMMB test, experimental results for the adhesive SikaPower 498 arepresented and deeply discussed with respect to difficulties and limitations of the proposed method and therealized experimental setup.


Light-weight microlidar and water vapour measurements
were taken on-board a stratospheric balloon during
the HIBISCUS 2004 campaign, held in Bauru, Brazil
(49W, 22 S). Cirrus clouds were observed throughout the
flight between 12 and 15 km height with a high mesoscale
variability in optical and microphysical properties. It was
found that the cirrus clouds were composed of different layers
characterized by marked differences in height, thickness
and optical properties. Simultaneous water vapour observations
show that the different layers are characterized by
different values of the saturation with respect to ice. A
mesoscale simulation and a trajectory analysis clearly revealed
that the clouds had formed in the outflow of a large
and persistent convective region and that the observed variability
of the optical properties and of the cloud structure
is likely linked to the different residence times of the
convectively-processed air in the upper troposphere.


A substantial amount of work has recently gone into localizing BitTorrent traffic within an ISP in order to avoid excessive and often times unnecessary transit costs. Several architectures and systems have been proposed and the initial results from specific ISPs and a few torrents have been encouraging. In this work we attempt to deepen and scale our understanding of locality and its potential. Looking at specific ISPs, we consider tens of thousands of concurrent torrents, and thus capture ISP-wide implications that cannot be appreciated by looking at only a handful of torrents. Second, we go beyond individual case studies and present results for few thousands ISPs represented in our data set of up to 40K torrents involving more than 3.9M concurrent peers and more than 20M in the course of a day spread in 11K ASes. Finally, we develop scalable methodologies that allow us to process this huge data set and derive accurate traffic matrices of torrents. Using the previous methods we obtain the following main findings: i) Although there are a large number of very small ISPs without enough resources for localizing traffic, by analyzing the 100 largest ISPs we show that Locality policies are expected to significantly reduce the transit traffic with respect to the default random overlay construction method in these ISPs; ii) contrary to the popular belief, increasing the access speed of the clients of an ISP does not necessarily help to localize more traffic; iii) by studying several real ISPs, we have shown that soft speed-aware locality policies guarantee win-win situations for ISPs and end users. Furthermore, the maximum transit traffic savings that an ISP can achieve without limiting the number of inter-ISP overlay links is bounded by "unlocalizable" torrents with few local clients. The application of restrictions in the number of inter-ISP links leads to a higher transit traffic reduction but the QoS of clients downloading "unlocalizable" torrents would be severely harmed.


Background: Dental practitioners can be exposed to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B virus (HBV), and hepatitis C virus (HCV) during routine work. Objectives: In this study, the knowledge, attitude, and practice of the dentists in Zahedan were examined on patients with HIV, HBV, and HCV infections. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out on 100 dentists in Zahedan in 2013. A reliable and valid questionnaire on knowledge, attitude and performance of the dentists toward the infectious diseases of HIV, hepatitis B and C was distributed to all dentists who worked in Zahedan. Data were analyzed using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), independent sample t-test and Spearman rank correlation coefficient. Results: The mean score of the knowledge, attitude and practice of the dentists were 51.45 ± 3.16 out of 63, 20.22 ± 3.74 out of 39 and 64.41 ± 4.49 out of 72, respectively. Most of the participants (95%) believed that the fear and concern of the transmission of HIV, HBV and HCV infections are among the reasons of refusing the infected patients. The relationship between demographic variables and the level of knowledge, attitude, and practice of dentists was not statistically significant. Conclusions: Although the dentists had a proper knowledge in the field of transmission of HIV, HBV, and HCV infections, fear and concern of being infected make them to refuse these patients. Therefore, training dentists to improve their attitudes toward treatment of these patients is necessary.


Oxygen is indispensable for cellular activities and is important to maintain it at the proper level which is different for each human organ. Organ-on-a-chip systems are designed to simulate human tissue and organs. Their response are monitored by sensors, so that data can be measured in-situ and analyzed continuously in real-time. In the field of drug research, most of the focus is in simulation and prediction of human organs response to external stress and requests due to drug delivery. Animal models are often not enough similar to human beings in order to obtain an accurate identification of the side effect of drugs in human. This is why the research is always more focused in the development of Organ-on-a-chip systems, where bio-mimetic organ models are integrated with biosensors in order to obtain accurate analysis of human organs dynamic responses to drugs. This project describes the implementation of an automated closed-loop liver on chip system. The aim of the system is to provide a continuous oxygen control in organs on chips technology. This thesis work is mostly focused on the design and development of a mini-microscope based optical oxygen sensor, moreover on the integration of the whole system and on the realization of an user interface. The aim of the whole project is the development of a system constituted by an oxygen scavenger chip for decreasing oxygen concentration, an oxygen generator chip for increasing oxygen concentration, a bioreactor to mimic human tissue, a peristaltic pump to control the culture media flow rate and mini-microscope-based oxygen optical sensor for real-time oxygen monitoring. A MATLAB code is implemented in order to analyze the data obtained from the oxygen sensor. The whole system is automatized and integrated using an Arduino board, controlling the mini-microscope-based oxygen sensor and the peristaltic pump. The oxygen optical sensor is developed by using a mini-microscope with a dye indicator sensor integrated, sensible to oxygen molecules. A blue LED is used as excitation source for the optical sensor and is turned on every time the culture media shall be sampled. The mini-microscope-based optical oxygen sensor receives command from Arduino in order to take samples each time slice, defined by the costumer, in order to have a continuous and automatized monitoring of the oxygen percentage in cell culture media. The sample are then analyzed with a MATLAB code able to compute the culture media oxygen percentage by analyzing the luminous intensity of the taken pictures. The peristaltic pump receives commands from Arduino in order to control the scavenging solution flow rate related to the scavenger chip and, in this way, decrease the oxygen concentration of the culture media of the desired amount. A graphical interface is developed, in order to provide a clear and easy to use interface to the costumers.


Sargassum muticum is an invasive brown macroalga that originates from Japan. In the introduced range, thalli can grow in soft substratum habitats attached to embedded rock fragments and shells. Within Strangford Lough, Northern Ireland, S. muticum has rapidly colonised large areas of soft substrata, where dispersal by peripatetic or 'stone-walking' plants is very effective. Sediment cores were collected under and outside canopies of S. muticum in Strangford Lough (S. muticum first recorded there in 1995) and Langstone Harbour, English Channel (S. muticum first found there in 1974) to investigate modification of the infaunal assemblages. At both study sites, community analy- ses highlighted significant differences between the assemblages under the canopies and those in adjacent unvegetated areas. In Strangford Lough, the invertebrate community under the canopy con- tained a higher abundance of smaller, opportunistic, r-selected species than outside the canopy. By contrast, the communities under and outside the canopy at Langstone Harbour were similar in spe- cies composition, diversity and dominance, but overall faunal abundance was greater under the canopy. Sediment characteristics were not affected by S. muticum canopies, but the infaunal changes may be related to environmental modification; shading, flow suppression and temperature stratifica- tion were also investigated. The differences between these 2 sites indicate that localised conditions and/or the duration of colonisation of S. muticum are important in determining the nature of habitat modification.


A number of SAT-based analysis concepts and tools for software product lines exist, that extract code dependencies in propositional logic from the source code assets of the product line. On these extracted conditions, SAT-solvers are used to reason about the variability. However, in practice, a lot of software product lines use integer-based variability. The variability variables hold integer values, and integer operators are used in the conditions. Most existing analysis tools can not handle this kind of variability; they expect pure Boolean conditions. This paper introduces an approach to convert integer-based variability conditions to propositional logic. Running this approach as a preparation on an integer-based product line allows the existing SAT-based analyses to work without any modifications. The pure Boolean formulas, that our approach builds as a replacement for the integer-based conditions, are mostly equivalent to the original conditions with respect to satisfiability. Our approach was motivated by and implemented in the context of a real-world industrial case-study, where such a preparation was necessary to analyze the variability. Our contribution is an approach to convert conditions, that use integer variables, into propositional formulas, to enable easy usage of SAT-solvers on the result. It works well on restricted variables (i.e. variables with a small range of allowed values); unrestricted integer variables are handled less exact, but still retain useful variability information.


The Panel on Plant Health performed a group pest categorisation of non-EU Tephritidae, a large insect family containing well-studied and economically important fruit fly species and little studied species with scarce information regarding their hosts and species that do not feed on plants. Information was saught on the distribution of each species and their hosts. Tephritidae occur in all biogeographic regions except in extreme desert and polar areas, where their hosts are scarce or absent. NonEuropean Tephritidae are listed in 2000/29 EC as Annex 1/A1 pests whose introduction into the EU is prohibited. Non-EU Tephritidae are regularly intercepted in the EU. Interceptions mainly occur on fruits although there is potential for entry on other plant parts. Beginning with over 5,000 recognised species, factors relevant for pest categorisation were sequentially used to narrow down the list of species to create a list of Tephritidae not known to be established in the EU yet which occur in countries with some EU climate types and which feed on plants that occur in the EU. Following the introduction of pest species, impacts on cultivated host plants could result in yield and quality losses; harmful impacts on wild hosts are uncertain. Phytosanitary measures are available to prevent the entry of non-EU Tephritidae. Results are presented in a series of appendices listing species screened during the process. Of 4,765 species regarded as non-EU Tephritidae, 257 species satisfy the criteria assessed by EFSA such that they can be considered as potential quarantine pests for the EU. Lack of information of the distribution of hosts and/or impact on wild hosts means 1,087 species of non-EU Tephritidae do not satisfy all criteria to be considered as potential quarantine pests for the EU. Non-EU Tephritidae do not meet the criteria assessed by EFSA for consideration as regulated non-quarantine pests, as members of the group are not present in the EU and plants for planting are not the main means of spread. © 2020 European Food Safety Authority. EFSA Journal published by John Wiley and Sons Ltd on behalf of European Food Safety Authority.


Over the past 25 years of writing, producing and directing, my aspirations as a creative artist in film have shifted from a paradigm in which the scale and scope of financial and human resources shaped not only the creative intentions of a project, but the very definition of what made something 'cinematic', to a new paradigm in which poverty - both in terms of resources and, more philosophically, in terms of artistic expression - has become one of the defining features of my artistic aspiration and my understanding of a new cinema. This development has interacted with parallel developments in technologies of production, distribution and exhibition, of a kind and scale I never envisaged when first embarking on a career in film, and has, for me, led to a kind of creative liberation which I am only now beginning to fully understand. Traditionally, human and financial resources have been considered essential for the production of quality, creative narrative films. In this article, I shall reflect on my own practice to explore how poverty can enhance the creative engagement with the medium and lead to the development of new and innovative approaches to, amongst other things, narrative imagery and, in so doing, explore how poverty can introduce new and original approaches to cinematic story-telling.


When a vehicle travels through a corner it can experience a significant change in aerodynamic performance due to the curved path of its motion. The yaw angle of the flow will vary along its length and the relative velocity of the flow will increase with distance from the central axis of its rotation. Aerodynamic analysis of vehicles in the cornering condition is an important design parameter, particularly in motorsport. Most racing-cars are designed to produce downforce that will compromise straight-line speed to allow large gains to be made in the corners. Despite the cornering condition being important, aerodynamicists are restricted in their ability to replicate the condition experimentally. Whirling arms, rotary rigs, curved test sections and bent wind tunnel models are experimental techniques capable of replicating some aspects of the cornering condition, but are all compromised solutions. Numerical simulation is not limited in the same way and permits investigation into the condition. However, cornering introduces significant change to the flowfield and this must be accommodated for in several ways. Boundary conditions are required to be adapted to allow for the curved flow occurring within a non-inertial reference frame. In addition, drag begins to act in a curved path and variation in Re occurs within the domain. Results highlight the importance of using correct analysis techniques when evaluating aerodynamic performance for cornering vehicles.