Background: Many countries re-opened schools after national lockdown but little is known about the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and transmission in educational settings. Public Health England conducted six-month prospective surveillance in primary schools across England.

Methods: The COVID-19 Surveillance in School KIDs (sKIDs) study included two arms: weekly nasal swabs for ≥4 weeks following partial reopening during the summer half-term (June to mid-July 2020) and blood sampling with nasal and throat swabs at the beginning and end of the summer half-term, and, following full reopening in September 2020, at the end of the autumn term (end-November 2020).

Results: In round 1, 12,026 participants (59.1% students, 40.9% staff) in 131 schools had 43,091 swabs taken. Weekly SARS-CoV-2 infection rates were 3.9 (1/25,537; 95% CI, 0.10-21.8) and 11.3 (2/17,554; 95% CI, 1.4-41.2) per 100,000 students and staff. At recruitment, N-antibody positivity in 45 schools was 11.1% (91/817; 95%CI, 9.2-13.5%) in students and 15.1% (209/1381; 95%CI, 13.3-17.1%) in staff, similar to local community seroprevalence. Seropositivity was not associated with school attendance during lockdown or staff contact with students. Round 2 participation was 73.7% (1,619/2,198) and only five (4 students, 1 staff) seroconverted. In round 3, when 61.9% (1,361/2,198) of round 1 participants were re-tested, seroconversion rates were 3.4% (19/562; 95%CI, 2.0-5.2) in students and 3.9% (36/930; 95%CI, 2.7-5.3) in staff.

Conclusions: SARS-CoV-2 infection rates, assessed using nasal swabs for acute infection and serum antibodies for prior infection, were low following partial and full reopening of primary schools in England.

Funding: Department of Health


Common Sense: A Political History. By Sophia Rosenfeld. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Pp. 337. Cloth, $29.95.)Reviewed by Nathan Perl-RosenthalIs common sense revolutionary? Sophia Rosenfeld's rich intellectual history argues that it was in the eighteenth century and indeed may still be so. The career of the concept, as she presents it, also helps us understand one of the central dramas of early U.S. history: how a revolution led by a minority and marked by coercion and violence could so quickly become the basis for republican politics that eschewed internal violence and assumed that legitimacy flowed from the assent of the majority.Rosenfeld's story begins in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when common sense assumed two incommensurate meanings. In one version, advanced primarily by thinkers in Francophone Europe including Denis Diderot and the Baron d'Holbach, common sense referred to a practice of radical critical inquiry that entailed questioning all forms of received wisdom up to and including the sacrality of monarchy. Its proponents, aware that this skeptical stance was seditious and unpopular, framed critical common sense as primarily the province of the enlightened and initiated. Around the same time, a group of thinkers based in the Scottish provincial city of Aberdeen developed a very different account. For them, common sense meant that widely accepted propositions were virtually self-evident: Common sense thus actually affirmed the authority of kings, the existence of god, and many of the other ideas that were primary targets for the radicals. Seen in this way, of course, common sense was not only accessible to a wide public but actually derived from their shared beliefs.Thomas Paine, Rosenfeld argues, effected a brilliant fusion between these two seemingly opposed traditions. In Common Sense, he agreed with the Aberdonians that the essence of common sense was giving assent to universally accepted propositions. Yet in the manner of the radicals, he believed that these inherently true statements in fact called into question much that was common believed. The two most important targets of his pamphlet, Britain's rule over its North American colonies and the principle of monarchy, both fell before this logic. Monarchy made no sense because why should the descendant of a long-ago hero be especially suited to rule? And the seemingly self-evident principle that a small thing should never rule over a large thing, in his view, made American independence inevitable.In addition to contributing materially to the coming of American independence, this synthesis may also have marked an important step in the creation of modern politics. Rosenfeld argues that Paine's approach was original in the sense that it permitted anyone, not merely the educated and instructed, to use folk maxims and logic to attack British government. American independence may have been the program of a relatively small group of elite gentlemen in 1776, but Paine's argument grounded the decision to break away from Britain on principles and argumentation that were accessible to everyone. In this sense, the logic of Common Sense, by making political arguments subject to the judgment of all, may have opened one of the first theoretical paths toward the development of a modern, critical, and democratic public.The final two chapters of Rosenfeld's study briefly sketch the tragic history of common sense from the French Revolution through the twentieth century. Once the first steps had been taken away from the traditional order, she shows, the same searing appeal to first principles that revolutionaries had used so effectively to attack the old regime could be readily adapted into weapons of right-wing, counterrevolutionary, or conservative populism. Right-wing thinkers turned the folk logic of common sense against the revolutionaries themselves. That same critical, skeptical attitude could be used to attack the new "received wisdom" of kingless government and democratic politics. …


The popular and scientific literature has been discussing the advent of 'big data' with a measure of excitement and apprehension. For the first time in history, it seems, every breath we take, every move we make, someone's watching us. But beyond their unprecedented volumes and the anxieties they raise, new communication data have a less obvious aspect, in so far as they are (arguably) of a fundamentally different kind, compared to traditional network datasets.
Traditionally, social network data describe relationships between individuals; quasistatic social ties such as friendship, trust, kinship and employment relations. But when they are used to model digitally mediated communicative transactions, the connections are of a different nature. Instead of representing stable social ties, transactions (such as emails, text messages and phone calls) constitute sequences of shortlived events, with each transaction being a possible response to a preceding one and a potential stimulus to the next.
The point of departure of this dissertation is the distinction between the topology of the tie structure and the temporal structure of sequences of communicative transactions. Theoretically, the dissertation explores mechanisms of co-evolution between these two structures at three levels of aggregation: (i) the macro-level consisting of the network itself or substructures within it, the level of an organization or a community as a whole; (ii) the meso-level consisting of nodes and social ties; and (iii) the micro-level consisting of sequences of interrelated communicative transactions. On the one hand, networks, individuals and ties are seen as the backdrop against which sequences of transactions unfold. On the other hand, transactions are considered to have (cumulative) consequences on the evolving structure of social ties and the network at large.
Methodologically, the thesis uses a publicly available dataset consisting of email transactions within Enron, an American energy and services company, during the few months of its bankruptcy. Two methods are applied to identify and explore the mechanisms. First, the dataset is disaggregated into various types of email transactions, revealing how different transactions contribute to various structural properties of the network. Second, a multilevel analysis approach is used to reveal how structural and transactional mechanisms combine to elicit new communicative transactions on the part of email recipients.
The mechanisms identified in the empirical chapters challenge received wisdom about the nature of social networks and their link to the notion of social (trans)action while at the same time addressing practical problems faced by network modellers who need to construct networks out of digitally mediated transaction datasets. In addition, the findings raise general questions about new types of data and the consequences they may have, not only for the field of social networks, but also for popular ways of thinking about 'the social' and ways of intervening in its course.


Editor's note: Thierry Chopin is a professor of marine biology and director of the Seaweed and Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture Research Laboratory at the University of New Brunswick in Canada. He is also president of Chopin Coastal Health Solutions Inc. His research focuses on the ecophysiology/biochemistry/cultivation of seaweeds and the development of Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture (IMTA) for environmental sustainability, economic stability, and societal acceptability. The Skimmer: Can you tell us a little bit about what IMTA is? Chopin: With IMTA, farmers cultivate species from different trophic levels and with complementary ecosystem functions in proximity. They combine fed species (e.g., finfish that need to be provided with feed) with extractive species (e.g., seaweeds, aquatic plants, shellfish, and other invertebrates that extract their food from the environment) to take advantage of synergistic interactions among them. In these systems, biomitigation operates as part of a circular economy (i.e., nutrients are no longer considered wastes or by-products of one species, but instead are co-products for the other species).


Individuals with severe neurologic injuries often cannot participate in robotic rehabilitation because they do not retain sufficient residual motor control to initiate the robotic assistance. In these situations, brain- and body-computer interfaces have emerged as promising solutions to control robotic devices. In a previous experiment conducted with healthy subjects, we showed that detecting motor execution accurately was possible using only the autonomic nervous system (ANS) response. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of such a body-machine interface to detect motion intention by monitoring the ANS response in stroke survivors. Four physiological signals were measured (blood pressure, breathing rate, skin conductance response and heart rate) while participants executed and imagined a grasping task with their impaired hand. The physiological signals were then used to train a classifier based on hidden Markov models. We performed an experiment with four chronic stroke survivors to test the effectiveness of the classifier to detect rest, motor execution and motor imagery periods. We found that motion execution can be accurately classified based only on peripheral autonomic signals with an accuracy of 72.4%. The accuracy of classifying motion imagery was 62.4%. Therefore, attempting to move was a more effective strategy than imagining the movement. These results are encouraging to perform further research on the use of the ANS response in body-machine interfaces.


Air Training Command (ATC) at Vance Air Force Base (VAFB) is responsible for implementing the Installation Restoration Program (IRP) according to the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). The VAFB is a 1,829 acre, U.S. Department of Defense Facility operated by the U.S. Air Force. The base is located in Enid, Garfield County, Oklahoma. This paper presents the analyses of contaminated groundwater due to a leaking under-ground tank, UST No. 106. The results of quarterly samples collected are presented at the site over a two year period. Benzene was selected as a contaminant and its plume was tracked with time. The flow and fate/transport modeling was performed, using the two-dimensional model for flow and the method-of-characteristics model for fate/transport analysis of benzene plume. Simulations of plume migration were performed for 30 years. A pump and treat system consisting of pumping wells was introduced in the model to reduce the plume size in the aquifer. Five alternatives for groundwater remediation were considered in this paper including no action, hydraulic containment or well points, intercept trench or French drain, in-situ physical treatment system, and in-situ bioremediation. The pump-and-treat system was most suited for the site based on the economic analysis.


Games are interactive applications that require input devices in order to send messages for the interaction. Normally this input devices are mouse, keyboards and joysticks. Lately, this input has been done in different ways, such as voice, touch and movement with new input devices. One type of input that has not been very explored is the use of the brain waves as a input for the game. While in past these devices where expensive, nowadays Brain Computer Interface (BCI) have become accessible, cheap and can be acquired with nonintrusive top off-the-shelf products, which can create a new paradigm of interaction for games. This work presents a novel architecture and framework that can help the development of games with both BCI and traditional interfaces. As a proof of concept, this paper shows the experience in designing and developing a game prototype using the framework and EEG brainwaves as one of the players input. The game is an action slice game, similar to Fruit Ninja, called MindNinja. This game differ form most BCI game, since it is based on an action game, using touch input where the BCI is used as an auxiliary input to change the game behavior. This game was tested and evaluated with a group of person, showing promising results in the fun level, as well as increasing the attention level of subjects.


AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
The major aims of this study were to explore the differences in anxiety, depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation between high and low obsessive compulsive symptom groups, as well as predictors for suicidal ideation among outpatients with obsessive compulsive disorder.

BACKGROUND
Obsessive compulsive disorder is often accompanied by anxiety, depression and even suicidal ideation. However, there have been very few studies exploring the inter-relationships among anxiety, depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation for patients with obsessive compulsive disorder.

DESIGN
This study employed a cross-sectional comparative research design.

METHODS
A sample of 128 outpatients with obsessive compulsive disorder was recruited from a medical teaching hospital in Northern Taiwan. The major study instruments included the Beck Anxiety Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory II, Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) and the Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation. We divided outpatients into two groups: outpatients with Y-BOCS scores higher than 15 were placed in the high obsessive compulsive symptom group, while outpatients with Y-BOCS score lower than or equal to 15 were placed in the low obsessive compulsive symptom group. Statistical methods included Pearson's product-moment correlation, independent samples t-test, chi-square test and multiple regressions.

RESULTS
Results revealed that obsessive compulsive disorder outpatients with high Y-BOCS scores also had higher rates of being single and having an earlier onset age, poorer disease control, higher levels of anxiety, depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation. The predictors for suicidal ideation were anxiety and depressive symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS
Obsessive compulsive disorder patients with higher obsessive compulsive symptoms are at greater risk of higher levels of anxiety, depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation. In addition to depression, anxiety symptoms contribute significantly to suicidal ideation among patients with obsessive compulsive disorder.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE
Standard nursing care of patients with obsessive compulsive disorder should incorporate assessing levels of obsessive compulsive symptoms to identify the severity of anxiety, depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation more accurately.


Applying design patterns is considered a helpful technique for designing software systems. Patterns description, however, results not sufficiently precise providing a weak understanding and making it difficult to be certain when a pattern is being used correctly. We have formally specified a metamodel where properties of patterns and object-oriented design can be rigorously described. In the present work, our formal basis is used to build a component-based tool for verifying proper applications of object-oriented patterns. The usage of this tool is also focused on the learning process about patterns applications. Through a better understanding of patterns, the designer may certify when and how a pattern is being appropriately applied to solve a specific design problem. Furthermore, the whole design process could be improved by using a precise technique supported by an automatic tool for verification.


Abstract The natural way to use Answer Set Programming (ASP) to represent knowledge in Artificial Intelligence or to solve a combinatorial problem is to elaborate a first-order logic program with default negation. In a preliminary step, this program with variables is translated in an equivalent propositional one by a first tool: the grounder. Then, the propositional program is given to a second tool: the solver. This last one computes (if they exist) one or many answer sets (stable models) of the program, each answer set encoding one solution of the initial problem. Until today, almost all ASP systems apply this two steps computation. In this article, the project ASPeRiX. is presented as a first-order forward chaining approach for Answer Set Computing. This project was among the first to introduce an approach of answer set computing that escapes the preliminary phase of rule instantiation by integrating it in the search process. The methodology applies a forward chaining of first-order rules that are grounded on the fly by means of previously produced atoms. Theoretical foundations of the approach are presented, the main algorithms of the ASP solver ASPeRiX. are detailed and some experiments and comparisons with existing systems are provided.


We study the role of global media during the Greek debt crisis and relate it to the transmission of events on financial actors' expectations. To identify news coverage about the Greek debt crisis, we apply topic modeling to a newly compiled dataset of over 430,000 articles from The International New York Times and Financial Times from 2009 to 2015. We identify a Greek debt crisis topic and relate it to events concerning Greece during this time period. Our finding is that events are only relevant for financial markets when they are covered in the media, whereas events without media coverage have no effect. News coverage without immediate events is equally irrelevant for financial markets.


The paper proposes an original use of the Lagrangian particles concept for finite element computation of microstructure evolution in metal forming. The method amounts to distributing incomplete representations of the microstructure among the integration points of the mesh while a complete microstructure is associated with each Lagrangian particle. This decreases the computation time and enables the transport of microstructural variables when remeshing. While the method is presented for any kind of discretized microstructure, it is applied here to the prediction of mechanical anisotropy induced by crystallographic texture. In this specific case, the numerical predictions are validated against experiment by considering compression of a textured aluminium alloy (AA7175). The model accuracy is assessed with respect to mechanical anisotropy but texture evolution is also considered.


We analyze the political stability of capital funded social security. In particular, using a stylized theoretical framework we study the mechanisms behind governments capturing pension assets in order to lower current taxes. This is followed by an analysis of the analogous mechanisms in a fully-fledged overlapping generations model with intra-cohort heterogeneity. Funding is efficient in a Kaldor-Hicks sense. Individuals vote on capturing the accumulated pension assets and replacing the funded pension pillar with a pay-as-you-go scheme. We show that even if capturing assets reduces welfare in the long run, it always has sufficient political support from those alive at the moment of the vote.


A number of traverses have been undertaken across a ca. 45 km section of the north-south oriented eastern margin of the Tanzanian Craton between Dodoma and Mpwapwa, Central Tanzania. The boundary is a SE-dipping zone of high strain between about 1 and 2 km wide. The rocks of the eastern craton are uniformly composed of coarse-grained grey granodioritic, migmatised orthogneisses which are heterogeneous at outcrop scale, but are regionally homogeneous. The orthogneisses have no regionally consistent fabric and foliations are variably oriented at outcrop scale. However, there is a gradual increase in strain eastwards towards the edge of the craton, manifest as an increasingly strong, regionally consistent, SE-dipping foliation. This strain increase eventually leads to mylonitic and porphyroclastic planar fabrics and strong, uniformly SE-plunging, linear fabrics. The kinematics of the high-strain mylonites show a consistent top-to-the-NW sense of movement. The frontal thrust zone grades laterally into steep sinistral and dextral oblique strike-slip shear zones to the north and south respectively. The contact is a single wide thrust zone in the north and south section of the studied area, with an imbricate belt in the central part.
To the east, the cratonic rocks are in contact with a high-grade supracrustal succession, termed here the Mpwapwa Group in the light of uncertain regional correlations (= "Isimani Suite"?). It consists of a thick sequence of leucocratic quartzo-feldspathic gneisses and migmatites, semi-pelitic two mica-kyanite-garnet schists/gneisses, quartzites, marbles and calc-silicate rocks and abundant metabasic layers. There appears to be an east-west zonation of Mpwapwa Group lithological units, with most of the quartzites, calcareous rocks and pelitic schists/gneisses tending to occur close to the craton margin, with semi-pelitic gneiss/migmatite to the east, along with interlayered repetitions of bimodal acid, quartzo-feldspathic leucogneisses and mafic gneisses (amphibolite, mafic garnet amphibolite).
Mineral assemblages, as evidenced by garnet-kyanite in pelitic rocks, garnet-clinopyroxene in some metabasites suggest metamorphism under moderate to high pressure amphibolite facies, as might be expected at the base of a thrust stack and resulting crustal thickening. Possibly, therefore, the Mpwapwa Group was deposited in a rifted passive-margin setting at the edge of the Tanzanian Craton, with shallow marine environments at the immediate continental margin and bimodal volcanic rocks more distally. During collision orogeny, thrusting took place at this rifted margin, inverted the Mpwapwa Group basin and transported the supracrustal rocks over the craton margin, an event which telescoped, but did not obliterate the original depositional zonation. The group may thus be viewed as a parauthochthonous succession. The rocks were intruded by plutons of largely unfoliated biotite granite, two-pyroxene charnockite and tonalite, the ages of which are unknown. With the above hypothesis and uncertainties in mind, a suite of samples are undergoing U-Pb zircon dating in order to constrain the timing of these events.


A Study of Pollutant Formation from the Lean Premixed Combustion of Gaseous Fuel Alternatives to Natural Gas K.B. Fackler Co-Chairs of the Supervisory Committee: Professor P.C. Malte Department of Mechanical Engineering Professor J.C. Kramlich Department of Mechanical Engineering The goal of this research is to identify how nitrogen oxide (NOX) emissions and flame stability (blowout) are impacted by the use of fuels that are alternatives to typical pipeline natural gas. The research focuses on lean, premixed combustors that are typically used in state-of-the-art natural gas fueled systems. An idealized laboratory lean premixed combustor, specifically the jet-stirred reactor, is used for experimental data. A series of models, including those featuring detailed fluid dynamics and those focusing on detailed chemistry, are used to interpret the data and understand the underlying chemical kinetic reasons for differences in emissions between the various fuel blends. An ultimate goal is to use these data and interpretive tools to develop a way to predict the emission and stability impacts of changing fuels within practical combustors. All experimental results are obtained from a high intensity, single-jet stirred reactor (JSR). Five fuel categories are studied: (1) pure H2, (2) process and refinery gas, including combinations of H2, CH4, C2H6, and C3H8, (3) oxygen blown gasified coal/petcoke composed of H2, CO, and CO2, (4) landfill and digester gas composed of CH4, CO2, and N2, and (5) liquified natural gas (LNG)/shale/associated gases composed of CH4, C2H6, and C3H8. NOX measurements are taken at a nominal combustion temperature of 1800 K, atmospheric pressure, and a reactor residence time of 3 ms. This is done to focus the results on differences caused by fuel chemistry by comparing all fuels at a common temperature, pressure, and residence time. This is one of the few studies in the literature that attempts to remove these effects when studying fuels varying in composition. Additionally, the effects of changing temperature and residence time are investigated for selected fuels. At the nominal temperature and residence time, the experimental and modelling results show the following trends for NOX emissions as a function of fuel type: 1. NOX emissions decrease with increasing H2 fuel fraction for combustion of CH4/H2 blends. This appears to be caused by a reduction in the amount of NO made by the prompt pathway involving the reaction of N2 with hydrocarbon radicals as the CH4 is replaced by H2. 2. For category 2 (the process and refinery blend) and category 5 (the LNG, shale, and associated gases), NOX emissions increase with the addition of C2 and C3 hydrocarbons. This appears to be due to an increased production of free radicals resulting from increasing CO production when higher molecular weight hydrocarbons are broken down. 3. For category 3 (the O2 blown gasified coal/petcoke), NOX emissions increase with increasing CO fuel fraction. The reason for this is attributed to CO producing more radicals per unit heat release than H2. When CO replaces H2, an increase in NOX emissions is seen due to an increase in the productivity of the N2O and Zeldovich pathways. 4. For category 4 (the landfill gas) the addition of diluents such as CO2 and N2 at constant air flow produces more NOX per kg of CH4 consumed, and N2 is more effective than CO2 in increasing the NOX emission index. The increase in emission index appears to be due to an enhancement of the prompt NOX pathway as the diluents are added and the mixture moves towards stoichiometric. In addition, the presence of CO2 as a diluent catalyzes the loss of flame radicals, leading to less NOX formation than when an equivalent amount of N2 is used as a diluent. For a selected set of fuels, detailed spacial reactor probing is carried out. At the nominal temperature and residence time, the experimental results show the following trends for flame structure as a function of fuel type: 1. Pure H2 is far more reactive in comparison to CH4 and all other pure alkane fuels. This results in relatively flat NOX and temperature profiles; whereas, the alkane fuels drop in both temperature and NOX production in the jet, where more fresh reactor feed gases are present. 2. For category 2 (the Process and Refinery blends), H2 addition increases reactivity in the jet while decreasing overall NOX emissions. The increased reactivity is especially evident in the CO profiles where the fuels blended with C2H6 and H2 have CO peaks on jet centerline and CO for pure CH4 peaks slightly off centerline. 3. For category 3 (the O2 blown gasified coal/petcoke), the temperature profiles for the gasification blend and pure H2 are nearly identical, which is likely due to the high reactivity of H2 dominating the relatively low reactivity of CO. Despite a small temperature difference, the addition of CO causes an increase in NOX production. 4. For category 4 (the landfill gas), the temperature profiles are virtually indistinguishable. However, the addition of diluent decreases reactivity and spreads out the reaction zone with the CO concentration peaking at 2 mm off of centerline instead of 1 mm. Diluent addition increases NOX production in comparison to pure CH4 for reasons explained above. 5. For category 5 (the LNG, shale, and associated gases), the temperature profiles are all very similar. The increased reactivity of C2H6 is evident from looking at the CO profiles. Increased C2H6 promotes CO production on jet centerline which is indicative of the hydrocarbon material breaking down earlier in the jet. At temperatures and residence times other than the nominal conditions, the experimental results show the following trends: 1. The NOX emissions from LPM combustion of pure CH4, H2, C2H6, and C3H8 are shown to vary linearly with residence time and in an Arrhenius fashion with temperature. This occurs because (1) more reaction time leads to more NOX formation, and (2) NOX formation is a strong, non-linear function of temperature. 2. The addition of both H2 and C2H6 to a LPM CH4 flame is effective at extending its lean blowout limit. The results of both two and three dimensional CFD simulations are presented to illustrate the general flow, temperature, and species structure within the reactor. Since the two dimensional model is far more computationally efficient, it is employed to study various fuel mixtures with more sophisticated chemical mechanisms. The CFD results from the LPM combustion of H2, H2/CO, and CH4 with NOX formation are presented. A three dimensional CFD simulation is run for LPM CH4 combustion that uses a global CH4 oxidation mechanism. While this model does not predict intermediate radicals and NOX, the CO contours and flow field can be used as guidelines to develop a chemical reactor network (CRN), which can incorporate detailed chemistry. In addition, this model runs quickly enough that it is a good way to initialize the temperature and flow field for simulations that do incorporate more complex chemistry. The two dimensional model is used to illustrate the difference in combustion behavior between the various fuels tested. In particular, it illustrates the geometric locations of the super-equilibrium radical fields and shows where and through which pathways NOX is formed. The pathway breakdowns show good agreement with the CRN modeling results. The main goal of the CFD modeling is to use the results of each model to develop Chemical Reactor Networks, CRNs, that are customized for a particular burner. The CRN can then be used to estimate the impacts due to fuel variation.


Drought is a familiar occurrence that lacks the drama and immediacy of other natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes, but the economic repercussions can be equally devastating. The Reclamation States Drought Assistance Act of 1988 was passed in response to the widespread drought conditions that much of the United States experienced in 1987 and 1988. The act allowed individual states to seek assistance in the form of financial aid and resource management from the federal government for the purpose of mitigating the effects of drought. The Reclamation Drought Index (RDI) was developed for possible future use as a trigger in determining when a drought is severe enough for an area to receive emergency drought relief funds from the federal government. This paper presents an example of the usage of the RDI, and the guidelines that should be followed when calculating and applying the index.


Analyses of Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes have characterized multiple interbreeding events between archaic and modern human populations. While several studies have suggested the presence of deeply diverged lineages in present-day African populations, we lack methods to precisely characterize these introgression events without access to reference archaic genomes. We present a novel reference-free method that combines diverse population genetic summary statistics to identify segments of archaic ancestry in present-day individuals. Using this method, we find that 7.97 ±0.6% of the genetic ancestry from the West African Yoruba population traces its origin to an unidentified, archaic population (FDR ≤20%). We find several loci that harbor archaic ancestry at elevated frequencies and that the archaic ancestry in the Yoruba is reduced near selectively constrained regions of the genome suggesting that archaic admixture has had a systematic impact on the fitness of modern human populations both within and outside of Africa.


Preservice teachers articulate the need for more teaching experiences for developing their practices, however, extending beyond existing school arrangements may present difficulties. Thus, it is important to understand preservice teachers' development of pedagogical knowledge practices when in the university setting. This mixed-method study investigated 48 second-year preservice teachers' development of pedagogical knowledge practices as a result of co-teaching primary science to peers. Data were collected through a survey, video-recorded lessons, extended written responses and researcher observations. The study showed how these preservice teachers demonstrated 9 of 11 pedagogical knowledge practices within the co-teaching arrangement. However, research is needed to determine the level of development on each pedagogical knowledge practice and how these practices can be transferred into authentic primary classroom settings.


International remittances represent the second most important source of external funding for developing countries after foreign direct investment (FDI). We examine the impact of international remittances on poverty reduction using panel data for 10 Asian developing countries. In terms of the dependent variables, we set three poverty indicators: poverty headcount ratio, poverty gap ratio, and poverty severity ratio. Results show that international remittances have a statistically significant impact on the poverty gap ratio and poverty severity ratio under the random effect model of ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates. A 1% increase in international remittances as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) can lead to a 22.6% decline in the poverty gap ratio and a 16.0% decline in the poverty severity ratio in the sample of 10 Asian developing countries from 1981 to 2014. In addition, results show that per capita GDP increase and trade openness can decrease poverty measures, and higher inflation rates may be one of the causes of the poverty.


The trend of decreasing the size of top-down fabricated silicon based electronic devices led to an increasing interest in alternative concepts which allow overcoming physical but also economical limits. The concept of integrating functional molecules into electronic devices, referred to as molecular electronics, might be a concept to fabricate smaller and cheaper devices in the future. The goal of this thesis was the design and synthesis of new functional molecules for molecular junctions. To achieve molecular electronic devices, molecules need to perform functions. Among them the most appealing ones are rectification and switching. However, to enable the design of electronic functions on a molecular level, it is equally important to develop a thorough comprehension of the relationship between the molecule's structure and its transport properties. The contents of this thesis thus contribute to various aspects of molecular electronics.
A row of model compounds consisting of a non-varying oligo(phenylene ethynylene) (OPE) backbone was synthesized. As a reference molecule, an OPE with two terminal thiol anchor groups was inspected in a mechanical controllable break junction (MCBJ) on a single molecule level. Certain components were systematically varied to examine the role of contacts and intermolecular interactions in molecular junctions.
After the basic investigations the molecule's function was further enriched and molecular switches and molecule based rectifiers moved into the focus of interest. Two redox switches based on ferrocene were proposed. In both switches, the ferrocene was functionalized in the 1,1'-position with two linkers comprising thiol anchor groups. Whereas in the first model compound the linkers consist of rather poor conducting alkyl groups, the linkers of the second switch are conjugated vinyl groups to provide an efficient electronic coupling to the electrodes. The latter switch was electrochemically characterized and a fully reversible redox reaction was observed. It was possible to immobilize single molecules of the switch in an MCBJ setup. Combining the MCBJ setup with an electrochemical cell, the conductance of the immobilized molecule was investigated in relation to an applied potential with respect to a reference electrode. Indeed, a change in the conductance correlating with the oxidation state was observed, thus the molecular junction can be considered as a reversible single molecule redox switch.
Furthermore a new switching concept based on the interplay of electrode and molecule was proposed. Therefore, different pathways for electrons in a cruciform type structure consisting of two crossed rods were considered. One of the rods bears terminal sulphur groups, whereas the second transversal rod is functionalized terminally with pyridine subunits. In an electrochemically controllable MCBJ the coordination of the pyridine nitrogen is expected to bind to the gold surface in dependence of the surface potential of the electrodes. The synthesis and characterization of several cruciform model compounds were synthesized to investigate the proposed coordination induced switch. The model compounds were investigated on a single molecule level in a MCBJ setup. No switching behaviour was obtained yet, nevertheless, the obtained results revealed that the molecules are functional and that electron transport is possible through both of the crossed rods.
Further a molecular rectifier based on two meta-substituted benzene units, one functionalized with an electron donating group, the other with an electron withdrawing group was proposed. The synthesis was performed, but no integration experiments have yet been performed.
An additional signal from a molecule other than the electrical response would be very appealing to obtain information from integrated molecules. We propose to profit from electroluminescence (EL) of a molecule connected to two electrodes. EL as signal from molecules is very appealing as it indicates that molecules are bridging the electrodes and the emitted light is characteristic for the fluorophore. Three target structures possessing fluorophores were designed to bridge a 5 nm gap of two single-walled carbon nanotube electrodes. The synthesis and characterization of three target structures with a length of around 7.5 nm was described. The photophysical investigations in solution confirmed the possibility of tuning the absorption and emission bands. The integration into a single-walled carbon nanotube device was successfully performed and the nanotube-molecule-nanotube junction was characterized by its I/V-characteristics. Furthermore, the characteristic emission signal of integrated molecules was detected upon electrical excitation.
The main work of this thesis was from synthetic nature, but in collaboration with physicists, it was contributed to several aspects of molecular electronics.


This paper presents a simple, yet powerful method for simultaneously evaluating the high- and low-temperature performance of asphalt paving mixtures for the purpose of mixture design, evaluation, and forensic investigation. A performance-space diagram approach is described, with an emphasis on Hamburg-DC(T) plots presented in this paper. Specifically, a plot of Hamburg wheel tracking results, plotted in reverse order on the y-axis using an arithmetic scale, along with DC(T) fracture energy results, plotted on the x-axis, constitutes the Hamburg-DC(T) plot. Plotting candidate mixture designs, research results, and so on yields a surprising amount of insight into mixture variables that affect overall performance. For instance, substitution of one straight-run binder grade for another results in a clear, predictable trade-off in the Hamburg-DC(T) performance space. Polymer-modified grades, on the other hand, provide a more beneficial shift in the Hamburg-DC(T) space. The benefits of using this approach in the design of mixtures containing recycled asphalt mixture and recycled asphalt shingles is also presented. Effects of rejuvenators and the benefits of stone-mastic asphalt designs are also demonstrated. Finally, a broad look at a large database of mixtures recently designed in Illinois is presented.


In the quest to reduce global under- and malnutrition, which is particularly high among smallholder farmers, agriculture-nutrition linkages have received a lot of attention in recent years. Researchers have analysed the link between the quantity of food that farmers produce and nutritional outcomes and the link between farm diversity and consumption diversity. A third agriculture-nutrition link has been largely neglected in recent years: the impact of how food is produced on human energy requirements, and, consequently, nutritional outcomes. This neglect persists despite the fact that the majority of smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa rely on hand tools for farming, which implies heavy physical work and, thus, high energy requirements. To address this research gap, the present study compares the energy requirements of farm households in rural Zambia that are characterized by three different levels of mechanization: hand tools, animal draught power and tractors. Detailed time-use as well as food and nutrition data was collected from male and female adults and from children during different seasons: land preparation, weeding and harvesting/processing. Subjects recorded time-use themselves using an innovative picture-based smartphone app called "Timetracker". The time-use data served to calculate daily energy requirements using "Ainsworth's Compendium of Physical Activities". To analyse the link between mechanization and energy use as well as nutritional outcomes, linear mixed models and multiple linear regressions were used. The results show that during land preparation, individuals in non-mechanized households are, on the average, not able to meet their dietary energy requirements. In subsequent farming periods, results are more mixed. Gender differences are noteworthy throughout, with men mostly having higher physical activity levels and energy requirements compared to women The findings suggest that farm technologies affect nutritional outcomes substantially and that this neglected agriculture-nutrition linkage deserves more scientific and political attention in order to reduce the prevalence of both under- and malnutrition among smallholder farmers, while safeguarding against emerging double burden of nutrition.


Cutaneous leukocytoclastic angiitis is a small-vessel vasculitis presenting with palpable purpura and urticarial lesions which predate the purpuric lesions most frequently observed on the legs. Systemic symptoms including fever, cough, hemoptysis, sinusitis, arthralgia, arthritis, myalgia, abdominal pain, diarrhea, hematochezia, paresthesia, weakness, and hematuria may be observed. Skin biopsy reveals exudates rich in neutrophils, endothelial damage, fibrin deposition, and leukocytoclasis in postcapillary venules of small vessels. Cutaneous leukocytoclastic angiitis can be idiopathic (in up to 50% of cases) or secondary to infections, medications (such as antituberculosis medication), collagen vascular diseases, or neoplasms.


Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing human kind. Urgent policy action is needed. Climate change policies are mainly being discussed at international level by means of the United Nations Conventions and the Kyoto Protocol. However, the bulk of the impact will be felt at regional and local level. And these levels of governance hold many of the competences for implementing policy actions. Regional governments are important agents and should, therefore, be incorporated into the negotiation rounds so that their voices can be heard. This paper illustrates the important role of regions in climate policies and considers many of the policy instruments being designed and implemented. More than 20 major regions are showcased here. Finally, the case of Basque climate policy is described to shed some light as to what regions could do.


Methane oxidation using N2O was carried out with Fe–MFI zeolite catalysts at 300 °C. Methane conversion over Fe–ZSM-5, Fe–silicalite-1 and Fe–TS-1 indicates that Bronsted acidity is required to support the Fe-based alpha-oxygen active site for the important initial hydrogen abstraction step. Increasing the calcination temperature of Fe–ZSM-5 from 550 to 950 °C showed that the catalyst retained the MFI structure. However, at 950 °C the Bronsted and Lewis acid sites were altered significantly due to the migration of aluminium, which led to a significant decrease in catalytic performance. Over Fe–ZSM-5 the desired partial oxidation product, methanol was observed to undergo a reaction path similar to the methanol to olefin (MTO) process, which predominately produced ethene and subsequently produced coke. Methanol control experiments over Fe–silicalite-1, Fe–ZSM-5, Fe–TS-1 and H–ZSM-5 indicated that with the presence of Bronsted acidity the catalysts were more effective at forming ethene and subsequent aromatic species from DME, which resulted in an increased level of catalyst fouling. The implication of these observations is that the desorption of methanol is crucial to afford high mass balances and selectivity, however, Bronsted acid sites appear to slow this rate. These sites appear to effectively retain methanol and DME under reaction conditions, leading to low mass balances being observed. Our results confirm that to afford efficient and continuous methane oxidation by N2O, the catalytic active site must be Fe coordinated to Al.


Ternate, one of the oldest cities in Indonesia, has committed to establish a culture-based tourism through heritage city. This city needs to go through some approaches by conducting inventory of historical studies and mapping the existing historical assets. To achieve the goals above, the history of the city can provide distinctiveness on the theme of the city as heritage-based coastal and islands. This research aims to find out the efforts conducted by the local government to create the heritage city as part of culture-based tourism. The method used in this research is the mixed methods which combines qualitative and quantitative. The research is done by combining two forms of pre-existing research which emphasizes on the understanding of problems in social life based on reality on natural setting. The research has revealed some attempts from the local government to increase the value of assets heritage and also to restore the glory of Ternate in the future simultaneously. And these efforts, have gained full support from the local community.


Anopaea is a distinctive Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous inoceramid bivalve genus. Traditionally recognized by its elongate-pyriform outline and impressed antero-ventral sulcus, it is now apparent that it also has a distinctive hingeline. In each valve the thickened shell material of the hinge region terminates in a prominent fold, the anterior buttress; this often takes on the appearance of a small anterior 'ear'. Some fifteen taxa are now assigned to the genus and a further seven are probable members. The bulk of these forms fall within the Late Tithonian-Early Albian. A. callistoensis sp. nov., from the Late Tithonian-?Early Berriasian of the Antarctic Peninsula, and a probable new species from the Berriasian of the South Shetland Islands, are described. Inoceramus constrictus, from the Early Albian of Queensland Australia, can now be referred to the genus. It can be confirmed that, with only a very small number of exceptions, Anopaea was restricted to Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous extra-Tethyan localities. In this sense it may be regarded as a genuine bipolar taxon, although amphitropical is perhaps a more accurate term.


Do religious arguments have a public role in the post-9/11 world? Can we hold democracy together despite fractures over moral issues? Are there moral limits on the struggle against terror? Asking how the citizens of modern democracy can reason with one another, this book carves out a controversial position between those who view religious voices as an anathema to democracy and those who believe democratic society is a moral wasteland because such voices are not heard. Drawing inspiration from Whitman, Dewey, and Ellison, Jeffrey Stout sketches the proper role of religious discourse in a democracy. He discusses the fate of virtue, the legacy of racism, the moral issues implicated in the war on terrorism, and the objectivity of ethical norms. Against those who see no place for religious reasoning in the democratic arena, Stout champions a space for religious voices. But against increasingly vocal antiliberal thinkers, he argues that modern democracy can provide a moral vision and has made possible such moral achievements as civil rights precisely because it allows a multitude of claims to be heard. Stout's distinctive pragmatism reconfigures the disputed area where religious thought, political theory, and philosophy meet. Charting a path beyond the current impasse between secular liberalism and the new traditionalism, Democracy and Tradition asks whether we have the moral strength to continue as a democratic people as it invigorates us to retrieve our democratic virtues from very real threats to their practice.


A tour de force that underwrites and shifts the petrified image of Islam disseminated by mainstream media. Walter D. Mignolo, author of "The Darker Side of Western Modernity" Gives us an entirely different picture of Muslims in the Americas than can be found in the established literature. A complex glimpse of the rich diversity and historical depth of Muslim presence in the Caribbean and Latin America. Katherine Pratt Ewing, editor of "Being and Belonging: Muslim Communities in the United States since 9/11" Finally a broad-ranging comparative work exploring the roots of Islam in the Americas! Drawing upon fresh historical and ethnographic research, this book asks important questions about the politics of culture and globalization of religion in the modern world. Keith E. McNeal, author of "Trance and Modernity in the Southern Caribbean" In case studies that include the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States, the contributors to this interdisciplinary volume trace the establishment of Islam in the Americas over the past three centuries. They simultaneously explore Muslims lived experiences and examine the ways Islam has been shaped in the Muslim minority societies in the New World, including the Gilded Age s fascination with Orientalism, the gendered interpretations of doctrine among Muslim immigrants and local converts, the embrace of Islam by African American activist-intellectuals like Malcolm X, and the ways transnational hip hop artists re-create and reimagine Muslim identities. Together, these essays challenge the typical view of Islam as timeless, predictable, and opposed to Western worldviews and value systems, showing how this religious tradition continually engages with local and global issues of culture, gender, class, and race."


We study the problem of route planning on mobile devices. There are two current approaches to this problem. One option is to have all the routing data on the device, which can then compute routes by itself. This makes it hard to incorporate traffic updates, leading to suboptimal routes. An alternative approach outsources the route computation to a server, which then sends only the route to the device. The downside is that a user is lost when deviating from the proposed route in an area with limited connectivity. In this work, we present an approach that combines the best of both worlds. The server performs the route computation but, instead of sending only the route to the user, it sends a corridor that is robust against deviations. We define these corridors properly and show that their size can be theoretically bounded in road networks. We evaluate their quality experimentally in terms of size and robustness on a continental road network. Finally, we introduce several algorithms to compute corridors efficiently. Our experimental analysis shows that our corridors are small but very robust against deviations, and can be computed quickly on a standard server.


The study examined the profit efficiency and poultry waste management in Egba division of Ogun State, Nigeria. A sample of seventy-two (72) poultry farmers was randomly selected from the study area through structured questionnaires. The data analysis was based on complete responses from a cross - sectional survey of the respondents. The data were analyzed using frequency distribution and frontier profit function. Results showed that poultry production was dominated by males (84.7%) and majority (73.6%) was below 50 years of age. About 98.6% of the poultry farmers had minimum of primary education while 86.1% had less than 10 years of farming experience. 70.9% of the household had up to 6 members in their family while 29.1% had between 7-12 members. Statistics shows that 93.1% of the respondents collected their poultry waste manually using shovel and spade. Majority (76.39%) of the farmers did not treat their farm waste before or after disposal thereby polluting their environment. The poultry 'waste' was not considered useful by 63.9% of the farmers. However, the mean level of efficiency for poultry production in the area is 68.44 indicating that there is opportunity to still increase profit by 31.6% if technical, allocative and scale efficiencies are improved upon. Meanwhile, age, experience and sex significantly contributed to inefficiency in poultry farming in the area. It is therefore suggested that livestock farmers should be trained through workshops, conferences and extension services on the conversion and utilization of livestock waste or manure e.g. into organic fertilizers which can easily be made available to the numerous small scale crop farmers to augment the scarce and very expensive inorganic fertilizer. Effective monitoring services should be operated by government to sensitize poultry farmers to reduce environmental pollution and incidence of disease outbreak. Government should reduce import duties on poultry drugs so as to enhance increased production and profitability.


[Extract] Although it was not the first novel of Alex Miller's to be published, The Tivington Nott (1989) was completed before Watching the Climbers on the Mountain (1988). By the time that they appeared, the author was in his early fifties. There had been a long apprenticeship: writing poetry and plays, teaching creative writing, helping to found both the Anthill Theatre and the Melbourne Writers' theatre. Miller's career has been one of the most unobliged to fashion or expectation in Australian fiction of the last couple of decades. It has, in one reckoning, been a series of surprises, none more so than The Tivington Nott. This novel was as unlike its successors, of which there are presently five, as each of those would be from the others. The title refers to a stag without antlers, a rare animal feared and loathed by those who hunt deer because of what it might do if allowed to breed. Formally this is a novella, dealing with the relationship of intimate dependence between a youth and the stallion, Kabara, 'this entire with the strange Australian name', which he gets to exercise and finally to ride in the Winsford Hunt. The unnamed youth has come down from London, for reasons left obscure, to work on a farm at Exmoor in Somerset (much as Miller had done during his teenage years). His story, which Miller stops at the end of the hunt, looks at first like a conventional rite of passage, as the youth is splashed with the blood of a stag.


Low energy perturbations used in geophysical methods provide insightful information about constant-fabric soil properties and their spatial variability. There are causal links between soil type, index properties, elastic wave velocity, electromagnetic wave parameters and thermal properties. Soil type relates to the stress-dependent S-wave velocity, thermal and electrical conductivity and permittivity. The small strain stiffness reflects the state of stress, the extent of diagenetic cementation and/or freezing. Pore fluid chemistry, fluid phase and changes in either fluid chemistry or phase manifest through electromagnetic measurements. The volumetric water content measured with electromagnetic techniques is the best predictor of porosity if the water saturation is 100%. Changes in water saturation alter the P-wave velocity when Srà100%, the S-wave velocity at intermediate saturations, and the thermal conductivity when the saturation is low Srà0%. Finally, tabulated values suffice to estimate heat capacity and latent heat for engineering design, however thermal conductivity requires measurements under proper field conditions.


Presence of zinc (II) in drinking water beyond permissible limits is considered unsafe for human health. Many different anthropogenic activities including mining, burning of petroleum, industrialization, and urbanization cause a release of considerably higher amounts of zinc into the water bodies. A permissible limit of 5 mg/L is set by various environmental and pollution control authorities beyond which water may cause respiratory, liver, gonads, and brain disorders. Due to these health hazards, it is important to remove exceeding amounts of zinc from drinking water. Zinc enters drinking water from various sources such as corrosive pipelines, release of industrial effluents, and metal leaching. Different biological and physiochemical techniques are used to remove zinc involving chemical precipitation, ion exchange, adsorption, biosorbents, distillation, ozonation, and membrane filtration technology. Among these technologies, physical process of adsorption using low cost adsorbents is not only economical but abundant, efficient, and easily available. In present review different physiochemical and biological techniques are discussed for the removal of zinc from drinking water.


The morphologies of pyroclasts in basaltic and silicic ash deposits and tuffs in volcanic sequences have been used by previous authors to determine eruption processes in proximal settings commonly from modern eruption deposits. However, little research has been conducted on the finest tephra fraction, ash and fine-ash, in distal settings. The study of tephra in distal localities, >100 km from source, may provide important information regarding the dispersal of ash from highly explosive large-scale eruptions, for which proximal deposits are no longer present. The grain morphologies (blocky, bubble-wall, irregular and rod-like) and vesicularity of pyroclasts can be used to determine eruption processes and distinguish between 'dry' magmatic and 'wet' hydrovolcanic eruption-styles. This research is mainly concerned with the characteristics of pyroclasts in basaltic ash/tuff likely formed by highly explosive eruptions, and whether the explosivity of these eruptions was due to magma-water interactions and hydrovolcanism. This study includes a re-examination, and detailed petrographical analysis, of tuffs in the Early Eocene Balder Formation, North Sea Basin, and Harwich Formation, SE England, where the source of tephra produced by explosive volcanism and the extent of basaltic ash dispersal have been contested. Previously, these basaltic tuffs have been attributed to large-scale hydrovolcanic eruptions that occurred during initial sea-floor spreading in the NE Atlantic during the separation of Greenland from NW Europe. These tuffs are compared and contrasted with the basaltic Saksunarvatn Ash (10.3 ka BP) of Grimsvotn Volcano, Iceland, and various non-lava lithologies of the Miocene Columbia River Flood Basalt Province, USA.

The primary characteristics of pyroclasts may be modified by abrasion and alteration, particularly during additional transport and deposition. Therefore, the features created directly by the fragmentation and quenching of pyroclasts need to be distinguished from features created by the reworking of this material in the sedimentary environment. It is therefore essential to determine the characteristics of pyroclastic and volcaniclastic materials, which can be achieved by comparing data on the overall deposit characteristics, grain-types, grain-size distribution and grain-morphologies. For example, pyroclastic deposits of ash-grade are dominated by up to 100% igneous/volcanic grain-types, particularly glassy pyroclasts; in thin-section the pyroclasts have smooth-edges and may have undergone limited alteration in modern deposits. In contrast, volcaniclastic deposits may contain a wide range of clast-types, including a greater number of non-volcanic grains, and sedimentary structures such as cross-stratification; in thin-section, reworked pyroclasts of ash-grade (volcaniclastic grains) often have jagged-edges, and varying levels of alteration. This study builds upon the observations and naming schemes of previous authors and proposes a scheme applicable to distal deposits of ash and fine-ash, of both basaltic and silicic composition, including highly altered material.


Telemedicine has numerous potential applications in the medical field due to the significant progress of telecommunication and information technology in recent years. In any category of telemedicine, such as offline, remote monitoring, and interactive, medical data and personal information of an individual must be transmitted to the healthcare center. An unauthorized access to the data and information is unacceptable in a telemedicine application, because it may create unavoidable circumstances for a person's private and professional life. To avoid any potential threat of identity exposure in telemedicine, a zero-watermarking algorithm to protect the privacy of an individual is proposed in this paper. The proposed algorithm embeds the identity of a person without introducing any distortion in medical speech signals. Two measures, namely, Hurst exponent and zero-crossing, are computed to determine the suitable locations in the signal for insertion of identity. An analysis of the signals indicates that unvoiced speech frames are reliable in insertion and extraction of identity, as well as robust against a noise attack. In the proposed zero-watermarking algorithm, identity is inserted in a secret key instead of a signal by using a 1-D local binary operator. Therefore, imperceptibility is naturally achieved. Experiments are performed by using a publicly available voice disorder database, and experimental results are satisfactory and show that the proposed algorithm can be reliably used in telemedicine applications.


This paper presents an ongoing study on affective human-robot interaction. In our previous research, touch type is shown to be informative for communicated emotion. Here, a soft matrix array sensor is used to capture the tactile interaction between human and robot and 6 machine learning methods including CNN, RNN and C3D are implemented to classify different touch types, constituting a pre-stage to recognizing emotional tactile interaction. Results show an average recognition rate of 95% by C3D for classified touch types, which provide stable classification results for developing social touch technology.


A comprehensive study of supramolecular polymerization of ditopic zinc (2-pyridylethynyl)porphyrin dimer 1 in toluene and thin films was performed. A glass-forming porphyrin bearing 3,4,5-tri((S)-3,7-dimethyloctyloxy)phenyl groups, named "porphyrin glass", was introduced with the 2-pyridylethynyl group as a supramolecular organizing unit; two zinc (2-pyridylethynyl)porphyrins were held together by self-complementary pyridyl-to-zinc coordination bonds to form a slipped-cofacial stack. Then, ditopic zinc (2-pyridylethynyl)porphyrin could be extended to a linear supramolecular polymer. The small binding constant limited the degree of supramolecular polymerization of 1 in toluene solution. In spin-cast film, on the other hand, 1 adopted a form of supramolecular polymer of porphyrin glass, which was effective enough to display a large bathochromic shift of the absorption bands exceeding the narrowest limit of the optical band gap extrapolated from the electronic structures in solution. The supramolecularly pol...


Preferences over consumption and leisure play no role in the standard optimal tax model, which attributes all variation in earnings to differences in income-earning ability. We show how to incorporate these preferences, which like ability are publicly unobservable, into the standard model in a tractable way. In this more general model, the policy designer must guess at the relative importance of ability and preferences in explaining variation in earnings. We show that such preferences could, in principle, increase or decrease optimal redistribution. In the most plausible specifications of the model, however, the result is clear: greater variation in preferences lowers the optimal extent of redistribution. To generate more redistribution than in standard results, one must assume that the desire for income is inversely related to income earned. This result holds even when the conventional model accurately describes the average individual, and it suggests one potential resolution to the puzzle of why observed redistribution is in some cases weaker than conventional theory would suggest. We then establish a new empirical finding that confirms this model's central policy prediction across developed countries and U.S. states. In countries and states with more heterogeneous tastes for consumption relative to leisure, redistribution is statistically significantly lower.


Macau, a former Portuguese colony, is a small and crowded city, located at the south-east coast of China with population of 646,800 within 30.4 km2 and has the highest population density in the world, 21,100 people per km2. In 2014, it received over 31.5 million tourists. In theory, cultural heritage should be key drivers in the process of destination decision making due to Macau's rich history and diversity of cultures even before the success of inscription of the Historic Centre of Macau on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2005. However, the author found out from literature that the perceived destination image inclined to be "the place to gamble", so it is not necessarily true that visitors came for cultural heritage. In fact, in addition to the image created by Macau's world renowned gaming industry, which takes up almost two-third of its industrial structure, there are more obstacles against the effort to rejuvenate Macau's cultural tourism, e.g., decision making of coach itinerary driven by commission-based business model, information filter of tour guides when introducing sites, communication ineffectiveness at tourist centres, and limitation of visiting time. Even though Macau Government Tourist Office, the destination marketing organization of Macau, has been endeavouring to diverse Macau's image as a "World Centre of Tourism and Leisure", this notion is not generally perceived by either visitors or residents and it does not seem to be changing in the near future. As a tour guide in Macau, the author is concerned with not only the trivialization of cultural heritage brought by destination image, but also the "right to the city" of residents. Therefore, the author proposes ways such as the expansion of backpacker markets, improving web markers on travelling websites, and social media, raising local awareness of cultural heritage by holding activities, etc., to rejuvenate Macau's cultural tourism.


Does it have to be this way? Can't resist checking your smartphone or mobile device? Sure, all this connectivity keeps you in touch with your team and the office--but at what cost? In Sleeping with Your Smartphone, Harvard Business School professor Leslie Perlow reveals how you can disconnect and become more productive in the process. In fact, she shows that you can devote more time to your personal life and accomplish more at work. The good news is that this doesn't require a grand organizational makeover or buy-in from the CEO. All it takes is collaboration between you and your team--working together and making small, doable changes. What started as an experiment with a six-person team at The Boston Consulting Group--one of the world's elite management consulting firms--triggered a global initiative that eventually spanned more than nine hundred BCG teams in thirty countries across five continents. These teams confronted their nonstop workweeks and changed the way they worked, becoming more efficient and effective. The result? Employees were more satisfied with their work-life balance and with their work in general. And the firm was better able to recruit and retain employees. Clients also benefited--often in unexpected ways. In this engaging book, Perlow takes you inside BCG to witness the challenges and benefits of disconnecting. She provides a step-by-step guide to introducing change on your team--by establishing a collective goal, encouraging open dialogue, ensuring leadership support--and then spreading change to the rest of your firm. If you and your colleagues are grappling with the "always on" problem, it's time to disconnect--and start reading.


The growing popularity of online language learning means that both experienced language professionals and novices are developing and delivering all or part of their language classes online. This study set out to query practicing online language educators as to how they view themselves; that is, their professional vision of themselves and their craft. One hundred seventy-four online language educators responded to a survey, nine of whom also participated in a synchronous online interview. Responses to questions regarding professional vision varied by stance (teacher-, student-, content-, and medium-centric) with the majority of respondents reporting viewing themselves chiefly as student-centered in their work. Pervasive descriptors of professional vision—comprised of individual stances and qualities, along with how these are enacted in practice—paint a vibrant picture of professionalism in online language education. Respondents report valuing authentic and multimodal affordances, opportunities for tailored instruction/feedback, and highly productive interactions with students, interactions otherwise not feasible in live classrooms. Variations in professional vision are discussed along with implications for online language educator support and development.


In late 2017, the Chinese Communist Party proclaimed the "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era." Most observers interpreted this step as just another update of the party's ideological canon to accommodate Xi's ambition to increase his personal power, following in the footsteps of Mao Zedong. This contribution argues that we can achieve a better understanding of the claim about a "new era," if this claim is analysed diachronically as an ongoing process of constructing "chrono-ideological narratives" that link past and future, as well as synchronically in the larger context of recent constitutional and organisational changes. It finds that the "new era" discourse might, in the longer term, have ramifications not only for China's domestic politics but also for the country's self-image in the international arena too.


The summer of 2004 was one of the largest fire seasons on record for Alaska and western Canada. We construct a daily bottom-up fire emission inventory for that season, including consideration of peat burning and high-altitude (buoyant) injection, and evaluate it in a global chemical transport model (the GEOS-Chem CTM) simulation of CO through comparison with MOPITT satellite and ICARTT aircraft observations. The inventory is constructed by combining daily area burned reports and MODIS fire hot spots with estimates of fuel consumption and emission factors based on ecosystem type. We estimate the contribution from peat burning using drainage and peat distribution maps for Alaska and Canada; 17% of the reported 5.1 × 106 ha burned were located in peatlands in 2004. Our total estimate of North American fire emissions during the summer of 2004 is 30 Tg CO, including 11 Tg from peat. Including peat burning in the GEOS-Chem simulation improves agreement with MOPITT observations. The long-range transport of fire plumes observed by MOPITT suggests that the largest fires injected a significant fraction of their emissions in the upper troposphere.


The International Tennis Federation (ITF) is responsible for protecting the nature of tennis. The ITF uses computational models to predict how trends in equipment parameters could affect the games future. The current ball-racket impact model is limited to non-spinning, on-axis, normal ball impact simulations. The aim of this project was to develop a model of oblique, spinning, on- and off-axis ball-racket impacts.
Large scale test data (n > 1000) was collected using an impact rig and calibrated high-speed cameras. Impacts for a range of realistic velocities, spin rates and impact locations were collected, measured using automated image processing algorithms to digitise ball centroids. An established spin measurement method was improved to correct for perspective errors associated with the proximity of the cameras to the test volume. The automated algorithms were validated with experimental data and manual methods.
Multi-variate polynomial models to predict the lateral and vertical components of rebound velocities and rebound spin rate were trained and validated using a curve fitting toolbox and 'n-fold and leave one out cross-validation' method. Second order models best fit the training data, with the low predictive errors. Root-mean-squared errors were calculated using a test dataset, independent of the training data. These were 0.57 m·s-1 for the lateral rebound velocity model, 0.48 m·s-1 for the vertical rebound velocity model and 30.5 rad·s-1 for the rebound spin rate model. Variance was partially explained by experimentally established inherent variability of the ball and stringbed. Model output confidence was established by simulating small changes in model inputs. The simulated lateral and vertical components of rebound velocity, but not the simulated spin rate, were an order of magnitude greater than the measurement precision.
The new models were combined with ball aerodynamics and ball-to-surface impact models to simulate tennis court trajectories for oblique, spinning, on- and off-axis ball-racket impacts. Increasing stringbed stiffness or the lateral offset of impact location were found to decrease rebound velocity and increase rebound angle – markedly so for a 60 mm lateral offset. Increasing lateral offset also increased the rebound spin rate.


Drawing from a wide range of resources on ocean climate finance, this guide is intended to support practitioners, policy-makers and ocean advocates to understand the 'seascape' of ocean climate finance, and empower them to design and develop more successful ocean climate finance applications. It introduces the special characteristics of ocean-based mitigation and adaptation projects, explains the diffferent sources and types of finance available, and equips readers with a practical understanding of the priorities of different funding groups from both the public and private sectors.
The global ocean is a critically important component of the Earth's biosphere and climate system, but it faces tremendous threats from the impacts of climate change, including warming, acidification, pollution and development. While the global landscape of climate finance is growing quickly, funding for ocean-based climate mitigation and adaptation projects remains disproportionately small. In this context, the guide provides a clear and practical guide for project design and development, including best practices for securing finance and a wealth of tools and resources for those seeking funding for ocean-based initiatives. These include decision trees to identify the best funding match for your project; checklists for finance applications; and perhaps most importantly, a long-term, strategic approach to project development that is focused on building communities of practice and partnerships between governments, the private sector, public institutions, civil society organisations and communities.
It also includes summaries of funding sources and investment models, as well as case studies and examples of best practice. The guide encourages project proponents to pursue long-term planning for crosscutting projects that deliver multiple integrated goals, both environmental and social. Recognising and addressing the unique features and opportunities of ocean-based projects, and the barriers to them, can contribute to realistic and impactful project design. Furthermore, proactively building partnerships with the private sector allows project proponents to access the largest source of finance in the global economy as well as its associated skills and resources.


This paper discusses results from a field study in a small East-Norwegian catchment. The main object of the study was to separate the different runoff processes in a small catchment. Direct measurements of precipitation snowmelt, runoff and the saturated basin area were undertaken in the field together with chemical hydrograph separation. A functional relation between saturated area and runoff was established showing that the initial runoff being a good moisture indicator for a basin. Further the hydrograph of pure saturated overlandflow (produced from rain on the saturated area) may be separated from the rest of the runoff at any moment of time. This paper also discusses the results in view of existing methods to estimate soil moisture and to forecast runoff. One of the main conclusions is that the dynamic response area should be taken into consideration both in field investigations and in hydrological models, – specially in humid climate.


Chronic granulomatous disease (CGD) is a primary immunodeficiency characterized by recurrent infections and a dysregulated inflammatory response. Infection-triggered hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH), which manifests itself as pathologic hyperactive inflammation, has been observed in subjects with CGD. However, there have been no reports of HLH as the initial presentation with subsequent diagnosis of CGD. Furthermore, the primary therapeutic strategy for HLH focuses on immunosuppressive therapies, which limits immune-mediated tissue damage. With immunodeficiency, this therapeutic strategy may worsen the outcome. This article discusses an 8-week-old Hispanic male who presented with fever of unknown origin. The initial diagnostic evaluation demonstrated pathologic hyperactive inflammation, meeting the HLH-2004 diagnostic criteria without an identified infectious etiology. Immunosuppressive therapy was initiated, with subsequent disseminated candida septic shock and sepsis-induced multisystem organ failure. Additional evaluations ultimately established the diagnosis of CGD. We transitioned to an immune-enhancing strategy with granulocyte and immunoglobulin infusions, and intensified antifungal therapies. These interventions ultimately led to the clearance of the fungal infection and the resolution of the hyperactive inflammatory state. This case represents the first reported case of HLH as the presenting finding leading to the subsequent diagnosis of CGD. It serves as a reminder that both immunodeficiency and inflammatory disorders may share features of pathologic hyperactive inflammation and highlights the conundrum that clinicians face when treating HLH in the setting of an unresolved infection. In this case report, we demonstrate that immune-enhancing therapies may aid in the control and the clearance of the infection, thus paradoxically decreasing the pathologic hyperactive inflammatory response.


Dynamic software updating (DSU) is a technique for patching running programs, to fix bugs or add new features. DSU avoids the downtime of stop-and-restart updates, but creates new risks -- an incorrect or ill-timed dynamic update could result in a crash or misbehavior, defeating the whole purpose of DSU. To reduce such risks, dynamic updates should be carefully tested before they are deployed. This paper presents Tedsuto, a general testing framework for DSU, along with a concrete implementation of it for Rubah, a state-of-the-art Java-based DSU system. Tedsuto uses system-level tests developed for the old and new versions of the updateable software, and systematically tests whether a dynamic update might result in a test failure. Very often this process is fully automated, while in some cases (e.g., to test new-version functionality) some manual annotations are required. To evaluate Tedsuto's efficacy, we applied it to dynamic updates previously developed (and tested in an ad hoc manner) for the H2 SQL database server and the CrossFTP server -- two real-world, multithreaded systems. We used three large test suites, totalling 446 tests, and we found a variety of update-related bugs quickly, and at low cost.


Coal-based activated carbon (AC) was treated chemically with nitric acid, sodium hydroxide and ammonia, and its ability to adsorb bromate was investigated. Several techniques were used to characterize the physicochemical properties of these materials, including surface area, pHpzc, and Boehm titration. Results indicated that surface physical and chemical properties can influence the adsorption uptake of bromate on ACs simultaneously. Surface basicity and pHpzc were both found to influence the electrostatic interactions between the bromate ions and the surface of the carbon. A correlation was found between basic groups and the adsorption capacity for bromate. The adsorption capacity of the carbon was found to be linearly proportional to the amount of basic groups on the surface. The bromate adsorption data collected from all the samples were found to fit the Toth isotherm model, indicating that the bromate adsorption process could occur on heterogeneous surfaces.


The Advance Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) has finished its conceptual design stage, submitted a proposal for construction funding and is working towards a system level preliminary design review later this year. The current concept (including integrated adaptive optics and instrumentation) will be reviewed with concentration on solutions to the unique engineering challenges for a four meter solar telescope that have been previously presented. The overall status will be given with a concentration on near term milestones and impact on final completion targeted in 2012.


Abstract : The purpose of this document is to provide a general introduction to critiquing systems and to discuss their particularities as decision support tools. Critiquing systems (critics) are software programs that take the problem description and the user s partial or final result as inputs and provide a critique of the user-proposed solution as output. This specific type of human-computer interaction, and the fact that critics can operate with limited knowledge, makes these systems very appropriate for open-ended domains where it is impractical to embed complete knowledge or where users are unwilling to cede decision-making. This report provides definitions of critiquing and related concepts; describes the general mechanisms of critiquing systems; examines the adequacy of the critiquing approach with regard to the nature of user tasks and application domains; presents the different intervention strategies used by software critics as well as their user perception; discusses the user-adaptation of critiques and the joint use of critiques and explanation/argumentation; and finally identifies the distinctive features of critiquing systems in terms of cognitive support, which comprise transfer of decision control to the user, collaborative problem-solving, and detection and correction of errors and biases.


We give an extension of the commutator theorems of Jawerth, Rochberg and Weiss [9] for the real method of interpolation. The results are motivated by recentwork by Iwaniec and Sbordone [6] on generalized Hodge decompositions. The main estimates of these authors are based on a commutator theorem for a specific operator acting on $L^p$ spaces and through the use of the complex method of interpolation. In this note we give an extension of the Iwaniec-Sbordone theorem to general real interpolation scales.


A rapidly accumulating body of research has shown that species diversity consistently affects the functioning of ecosystems. The incorporation of trophic complexity and the extension of this research to larger scales and natural ranges in species diversity remain as important challenges for understanding the true magnitude of these effects in natural systems. Here, we test whether the diversity of prey communities affects the magnitude of aggregate consumer effects. We conducted a meta-analysis of 57 consumer removal field experiments from a range of intertidal and subtidal hard substrate marine communities. We found that the richness of the prey community was the strongest predictor of the magnitude of consumer effects while controlling for habitat type, taxonomic composition, and other variables. Consumer removal increased aggregate prey abundance on average by 1200% at the lower limit of prey diversity (two species), but only 200% at the upper limit of 37 species. Importantly, compositional change was substantial at both high and low prey diversity, suggesting predation intensity did not vary with prey richness. Rather diverse prey communities appear to be more capable of maintaining abundance via compensatory responses, by containing prey species that are resistant to (or tolerant of) predators. These results suggest that the effects of species diversity on trophic interactions may scale consistently from small-scale manipulations to cross-community comparisons.


A series of polyvinyl aromatic acetals was obtained from the condesation of commercially available polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and sustainable aromatic aldehydes: 4-hydroxybenzaldehyde, vanillin, syringaldehyde, ethylvanillin, ortho-vanillin, isovanillin, salicylaldehyde, ortho-anisaldehyde, para-anisaldehyde, benzaldehyde, cinnamaldehyde, cuminaldehyde, and hydroxymethylfurfural. The degree of acetalization was determined by 1H NMR and found to range from 54 to 75%, resulting in calculated number average molecular weights of 38 200 to 46 000 Da. The glass transition temperature (Tg) of PVA (75 °C) was increased to substantially excel over that of polystyrene (PS, 100 °C), with polyvinyl aromatic acetal Tg values ranging from 114 to 157 °C. Heterogeneous degradation studies of polyvinyl vanillin acetal at room temperature indicated nearly complete hydrolysis over 24 hours in acidic aqueous media. For example, at pH = 1, the initial acetalization of 54% dropped to 0.8%, generating benign aromatic small molecules and water-soluble, biodegradable PVA.


Freemans Bay is a vast and recovered industrial zone, encompassed by a petrol chemical storage facility and a tank farm. Major storm water outfall from the surrounding Freemans Bay catchment can cause contamination in the ground around the tank farm and the sea. The entire Freemans Bay catchment anticipated 244hactares, 72.7% of impervious surfaces (178hactares). The impervious surfaces are divided into 64hactares of building roofs and roads, 114hactares of driveways and footpaths. The remaining 27.3% or 66hactares of the catchment are pervious surfaces (parks, lawns and vegetated buffers which have been found to be the source of large amounts of storm water flowing through Wynyard Quarter at the bottom of the catchment), where storm water can penetrate through the ground layers as a filter for initial treatment before reaching the storm water network for discharge. However, most of the storm water is assembled and discharged via a four meter by three meter drainage pipe below Wynyard Quarter This study focuses on storm water issues identified within the Freemans Bay area. The purpose of the study is to find solutions to help manage land contamination, sea pollution and improve the storm water system within the area. A thorough investigation occurred throughout the entire catchment with the aid of Auckland GIS viewer. The findings include a design of a wetland storm water treatment system to treat the storm water produce by the 2 year storm event within the area before discharge, reduce the speed of run-off to prevent erosion and also to increase the aesthetic and recreational nature of the area.


Paradise of the Blind is an exquisite portrait of three Vietnamese women struggling to survive in a society where subservience to men is expected and Communist corruption crushes every dream. Through the eyes of Hang, a young woman in her twenties who has grown up amidst the slums and intermittent beauty of Hanoi, we come to know the tragedy of her family as land reform rips apart their village. When her uncle Chinh's political loyalties replace family devotion, Hang is torn between her mother's appalling self-sacrifice and the bitterness of her aunt who can avenge but not forgive. Only by freeing herself from the past will Hang be able to find dignity -- and a future.


Significance 22q11 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) is a chromosome disorder that frequently accompanies psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia. However, it remains elusive how the chromosomal microdeletion causes the mental manifestation. Here we show that a 22q11DS mouse model has deficits in the development of interneurons and hippocampal dentate gyrus and that DiGeorge syndrome critical region gene 8 (Dgcr8), a microprocessor of microRNA and one of the genes in 22q11, underlies these neurodevelopmental abnormalities. Dgcr8 regulates Chemokine receptor 4/Chemokine ligand 12 (Cxcr4/Cxcl12; Sdf1) signaling, which is indispensable for interneuron and dentate gyrus development. Finally, we observe decreased expression of CXCL12 in olfactory neurons from sporadic schizophrenia. Given the increased risk of 22q11DS in schizophrenia, the overall study suggests that CXCR4/CXCL12 signaling may represent a common downstream mediator in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. 22q11 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) frequently accompanies psychiatric conditions, some of which are classified as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in the current diagnostic categorization. However, it remains elusive how the chromosomal microdeletion leads to the mental manifestation at the mechanistic level. Here we show that a 22q11DS mouse model with a deletion of 18 orthologous genes of human 22q11 (Df1/+ mice) has deficits in migration of cortical interneurons and hippocampal dentate precursor cells. Furthermore, Df1/+ mice show functional defects in Chemokine receptor 4/Chemokine ligand 12 (Cxcr4/Cxcl12; Sdf1) signaling, which reportedly underlie interneuron migration. Notably, the defects in interneuron progenitors are rescued by ectopic expression of Dgcr8, one of the genes in 22q11 microdeletion. Furthermore, heterozygous knockout mice for Dgcr8 show similar neurodevelopmental abnormalities as Df1/+ mice. Thus, Dgcr8-mediated regulation of microRNA is likely to underlie Cxcr4/Cxcl12 signaling and associated neurodevelopmental defects. Finally, we observe that expression of CXCL12 is decreased in olfactory neurons from sporadic cases with schizophrenia compared with normal controls. Given the increased risk of 22q11DS in schizophrenia that frequently shows interneuron abnormalities, the overall study suggests that CXCR4/CXCL12 signaling may represent a common downstream mediator in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and related mental conditions.


Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women. Tamoxifen is the preferred drug for estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer treatment, yet many of these cancers are intrinsically resistant to tamoxifen or acquire resistance during treatment. Therefore, scientists are searching for breast cancer drugs that have different molecular targets. Previous work revealed that 8-mer and cyclic 9-mer peptides inhibit breast cancer in mouse and rat model systems, interacting with an unknown receptor, while peptides smaller than eight amino acids did not inhibit breast cancer. We have shown that the use of replica exchange molecular dynamics predicts structure and dynamics of active peptides, leading to the discovery of smaller peptides with full biological activity. These simulations identified smaller peptide analogs with a conserved turn, a β-turn formed in the larger peptides. These analogs inhibit estrogen-dependent cell growth in a mouse uterine growth assay, a test showing reliable correlation with human breast cancer inhibition. We outline the computational methods that were tried and used with the experimental information that led to the successful completion of this research. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2007


Most crustal rocks derive from preexisting crust, and so the composition of newly generated (juvenile) continental crust, and hence the tectonic settings of its formation, have remained difficult to determine, especially for the first billion years of Earth's evolution. Modern primitive mantle–derived magmas have distinct U/Pb ratios, depending on whether they are generated in intraplate (mean U/Pb = 0.37) or in subduction settings (mean U/Pb = 0.10). The U/Pb ratio can therefore be used as a proxy for the tectonic settings in which juvenile continental crust is generated. This paper presents a new way to see back to the U/Pb ratios of juvenile continental crust that formed hundreds to thousands of millions of years ago, based on ion probe analysis of Pb isotopes in alkali feldspar and plagioclase inclusions within well-dated zircons. Pb isotope data are used to calculate the time-integrated U/Pb ratios (i.e., 238U/204Pb = µ) for the period between the Hf model age and the U-Pb crystallization age of the zircons. These time-integrated ratios reflect the composition of the juvenile continental crust at the time it was extracted from the mantle, and so they can be used as a proxy for the tectonic setting of formation of that crust. Two test samples with Proterozoic Hf model ages and Paleozoic crystallization ages have feldspar inclusions with measured Pb isotope ratios that overlap within analytical error for each sample. Sample Z7.3.1 from Antarctica has Pb isotope ratios (mean 206Pb/204Pb = 16.88 ± 0.08, 1σ) that indicate it was derived from source rocks with low U/Pb ratios (∼0.11), similar to those found in subduction-related settings. Sample Temora 2 from Australia has more radiogenic Pb isotope ratios (mean 206Pb/204Pb = 19.11 ± 0.23, 1σ) indicative of a source with higher U/Pb ratios (∼0.36), similar to magmas generated in intraplate settings. Analysis of detrital populations with a range of Hf model ages (e.g., Hadean to Phanerozoic), and for which zircons and their inclusions represent the only archive of their parent magmas, should ultimately open new avenues to our understanding of the formation and the evolution of the continental crust through time.


Life expectancy in countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CCEE) is substantially
shorter than in Western Europe, and similar divide exists in self-rated health. The project
described in this thesis was set up to study the effects of socio-economic factors (such
as material deprivation, education and inequalities) and psychosocial factors (perceived
control, psychosocial work environment) on self-rated health (a predictor of mortality in
prospective studies).
Cross-sectional surveys were conducted in seven CCEE: Russia, Lithuania, Latvia,
Estonia, Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary. Data were collected by interviews in
randomly selected national samples in all seven countries (total 7,599 subjects), and by
questionnaires in random community samples in 4 countries (total 6,642 subjects). The
data included socio-economic and psychosocial factors, self-rated health (SRH) and
behavioural risk factors.
Overall, 17% of men and 23% of women rated their health as worse than average. In the
national samples, perceived control, material deprivation and education were strongly
related to poor SRH. In the pooled data, adjusted odds ratio (OR) of poor health for 1
standard deviation (SD) increase in perceived control was 0.59 (95% Cl 0.54-0.63). The
OR for 1 SD increase in the material deprivation score was 1.35 (95% Cl 1.26-1.46). The
ORs for vocational, secondary and university education, compared with primary education,
were 0.75,0.58 and 0.53, respectively. We also examined the ecological effects of income
inequality; the OR for the most versus the least unequal populations (using the Gini
coefficient of income inequality) was 1.88 (95% Cl 1.55-2.28). In multivariate analyses,
however, the effect of inequality was eliminated by adjustment for material deprivation and
perceived control. In the community samples, the results were similar. Among
psychosocial factors at work, the effort-reward imbalance appeared to be the strongest
predictor of self-rated health; work variety was also a predictor of self-rated health. Job
strain was not associated with SRH.
Our results suggest that (a) the prevalence of poor SRH in CCEE is high, and (b) socioeconomic
and psychosocial factors are strongly related to self-rated health in these
populations. The gradients were present in all populations, and were of the same direction
and similar magnitude as in the West. Prospective studies are needed to address the
problems of temporality and reporting bias, which are the major problems of these
results.