A class action is a mechanism whereby a single claimant may pursue an action on behalf of a class of persons with a common interest in the subject matter of the action. Every member of the class is then bound by the outcome of the action. While the South African Constitution expressly recognises class actions, it does so in the broadest of terms and there is little legislative or judicial guidance for practitioners on how best to approach these matters procedurally.


National scientific user facilities are becoming increasingly available to many different scientific communities in a number of countries. There is a growing use of these facilities by Earth and environmental scientists to study a broad range of materials and processes under realistic P-T and environmental conditions at unprecedented levels of energy and spatial resolution and elemental and isotopic sensitivity. The results of these studies are providing new insights into biogeochemical processes operating at Earth's surface as well as petrological, geochemical, and geophysical processes in Earth's interior. The availability of national user facilities is changing scientific approaches and is leading to multidisciplinary studies that were not possible a decade ago.


Agricultural land values and cash rental rates in South Dakota, by region and by state, are the primary topics of this report. The target audiences for this report are farmers and ranchers, landowners, agricultural professionals (lenders, rural appraisers, professional farm managers), and policy makers interested in agricultural land market trends. This report contains the results of the 2007 SDSU South Dakota Farm Real Estate Market Survey, the 17th annual SDSU survey developed to estimate agricultural land values and cash rental rates by land use in different regions of South Dakota.


Finite Element Models (FEM) are widely used in order to study and predict the dynamic properties of structures. Comparing dynamic experimental data and analytical results, respectively, of the real and modelled structure, shows that the prediction of the dynamic response can be obtained with much more accuracy in the case of a single component than in the case of assemblies. Generally speaking, as the number of components in the assembly increases the calculation quality declines because the connection mechanisms among components are not represented sufficiently. Specifically for aircrafts, it is quite common that Frequency Response Functions (FRF) obtained via Ground Vibration Test (GVT) show a certain degree of discrepancy from the FRF calculated with the FEM, particularly across the sections where joining is discontinued. When this happens it is necessary to tune up the values of the dynamic parameters of the joints, to allow the numerical FRF to match the results of the experimental FRF. From a modelling and computational point of view, these types of joints can be seen as localized sources of stiffness and damping and can be modelled as lumped spring/damper elements. In this paper this is done by formulating an optimization problem. The approach has been applied to a FEM that mimics the rear fuselage of a commercial aircraft and the numerical results shows that the procedure is very efficient and promising.


Inspired Sinewave is a novel technique to measure dead space, alveolar volume, and pulmonary blood flow noninvasively. In this paper, we describe a brief introduction to the principle of the technique, which involves forcing inspired concentrations to oscillate sinusoidally and measuring responding expired concentrations. Then, we give some updates to the recent developments of the device. These include accuracy and robustness studies of the device on bench lungs and volunteers, and study of lung volume change from sitting to supine. The success of these studies is a big step forward to make this novel device a useful clinical tool. The paper concludes with a description of future work.


This paper consists of three economic literature review essays that survey the Palestinian labor market during the last three decades. The first essay examines the economic return to schooling since 1981 until the recent period, taking into consideration the major shocks that the Palestinian economy experienced, such as the First and Second Palestinian Intifadas (1987–93 and 2000–5), respectively, and the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority in 1993. A special focus is laid on overcoming the potential endogeneity arising from the schooling coefficient. The second essay discusses the economic costs of several conflict measures (e.g., time and geographical variation in fatalities and other conflict incidents, days under curfews, checkpoints, movement restrictions, and substitution of foreigner workers for Palestinian labor) on the labor market and human capital. Earnings and unemployment are the main labor market indicators, while the human capital impact was assessed by educational attainment. The third essay sheds light on the wage differential in the Palestinian labor market due to geographical and employment sector factors.


In the issue of 23 October 2009, Science published a study by Lombardi et al. purporting to show that a retrovirus called XMRV (xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus) was present in the blood of 67% of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) compared with 3.7% of healthy controls. A number of studies published elsewhere have failed to replicate these findings. In conjunction with two new Reports that strongly support the growing view that the association between XMRV and CFS likely reflects contamination of laboratories and research reagents with the virus, Science is publishing an Editorial Expression of Concern about the Lombardi et al. Report.


Despite improvements in the clinical management of aneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage over the last decade, delayed cerebral ischaemia (DCI) remains the single most important cause of morbidity and mortality in those patients who survive the initial bleed. The pathological mechanisms underlying DCI are still unclear and the calcium channel blocker nimodipine remains the only therapeutic intervention proven to improve functional outcomes after SAH. The recent failure of the drug clazosentan to improve functional outcomes despite reducing vasoconstriction has moved the focus of research into DCI away from cerebral artery constriction towards a more multifactorial aetiology. Novel pathological mechanisms have been suggested, including damage to cerebral tissue in the first 72 h after aneurysm rupture ('early brain injury'), cortical spreading depression, and microthrombosis. A greater understanding of the significance of these pathophysiological mechanisms and potential genetic risk factors is required, if new approaches to the prophylaxis, diagnosis, and treatment of DCI are to be developed. Furthermore, objective and reliable biomarkers are needed for the diagnosis of DCI in poor grade SAH patients requiring sedation and to assess the efficacy of new therapeutic interventions. The purpose of this article is to appraise these recent advances in research into DCI, relate them to current clinical practice, and suggest potential novel avenues for future research.


Intervening in the multidisciplinary debate on emotion, "Tropes of Transport "offers a fresh analysis of Hegel s work that becomes an important resource for Pahl s cutting-edge theory of emotionality. If it is usually assumed that the sincerity of emotions and the force of affects depend on their immediacy, Pahl explores to what extent mediation and therefore a certain degree of manipulation but also of sympathy is constitutive of emotionality. Hegel serves as a particularly helpful interlocutor not only because he offers a sophisticated analysis of mediation, but also because, rather than locating emotion in the heart, he introduces impersonal tropes of transport, such as trembling, release, and shattering."


On October 30, 2006, the Chicago Fed will host a conference on higher education's role in economic growth. Speakers will include Richard Lester of MIT, Michael Luger of the University of North Carolina, Ned Hill of Cleveland State, Sean Safford of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, Larry Isaak of the Midwest Higher Education Compact, and Randy Eberts of the Upjohn Institute.


Living donor liver transplantation is now a common practice in countries in which the availability of cadaveric organs is limited. The preoperative preparation, intraoperative surgical technique, and postoperative care of donors and recipients have evolved in recent years. We retrospectively compared 67 donors with a remnant liver volume equal to or more than 30% (group 1) with 14 donors who had less than 30% remnant liver volume (group 2) for donor outcomes. All the complications in donors were systematically classified. Donors with less than 30% remnant liver volume showed significantly higher peak aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, international normalized ratio, and bilirubin levels. There were 6 complications in group 1 and 4 complications in group 2. The difference between the 2 groups in terms of donor complications did reach statistical significance (P = 0.043); donors with a remnant liver volume < 30% had a 4 times greater relative risk of morbidity. In conclusion, the use of donors with less than 30% remnant liver volume is highly debatable as donor safety should be of utmost importance in living donor liver transplantation. Liver Transpl 14:1174–1179, 2008. © 2008 AASLD.


PURPOSE
To profile certain demographic features of the low-vision population in Ontario, Canada.

METHODS
Sixty-six optometrists or optometry centers, 8 ophthalmologists, and 23 Canadian National Institute for the Blind rehabilitation worker teams were recruited to the study. They were required to report on their low-vision examinations during a 3-year period.

RESULTS
Reports from 4744 low-vision examinations were received. Of the patients examined, 71% were over age 65 (subsequently called seniors or elderly), and 55% were over age 75. Ninety percent of all the patients lived in households and 10% lived in institutions. Seniors made up 71% of the patients living in households and 88% of the patients living in institutions. Most of the seniors were women (65%), and 57% had functional limitations in addition to low vision, most commonly limitations in mobility, hearing, or agility. Age-related maculopathy was the primary diagnosis in 75% of seniors, and the most common secondary diagnosis was cataract (46%). The main objective for most elderly low-vision patients was to gain improvement in personal reading (75%).

CONCLUSIONS
The vast majority of low-vision patients were elderly, the largest number being 75 to 84 years old. When older senior low-vision patients (> or = 85 years) were compared with younger seniors (65 to 74 years), the older seniors were more likely to be women, more likely to have additional functional limitations, more likely to live in an institution, and more likely to have age-related maculopathy and cataract. Whether some elderly low-vision patients may be helped by cataract surgery needs to be determined.


The United States government is committed to spreading democracy throughout the world. This goal has become particularly urgent in recent years. To achieve success in this challenge requires the peaceful creation of the necessary conditions for, and attributes of, democracy within other countries, including legitimate and representative governments backed by laws and policies designed to support democratic ideals and values. The shaping of appropriate laws and policies to govern emerging and developing democracies abroad depends on lawmakers' and policymakers' hearing the pluralistic voices of their citizens. Foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) can be critical mediating actors in this endeavor, representing peoples' voices and contributing to the democratic formulation of their countries' laws and policies. But, the few success stories of foreign NGOs' crucial and effective participation in the democratizing legislative processes of their countries suggest that outside financial resources often are required.Political circumstances may militate against the U.S. government directly providing pecuniary support to the foreign NGOs. On the other hand, for many years, America's public charities and private foundations have been influential figures in promoting democracy abroad. It now is time for the U.S. government to encourage our philanthropic institutions to financially aid foreign NGOs that, through their own legislative activities, can be crucial in the development of the necessary conditions for, and attributes of, democracy in their respective countries. The current federal tax regime, however, deters America's philanthropies from making such financial commitments. That need not continue. The old justifications for the Internal Revenue Code (I.R.C.) lobbying restrictions were formed in the pre-globalization era. They do not advance the complex democratization processes in foreign countries transitioning from oppressive or repressive governments. Moreover, there are venerable theoretical and practical political notions of democracy that suggest, and justify in the specific circumstances of global grant-making addressed in this essay, liberalization of the relevant I.R.C. lobbying restrictions. This essay thus urges reform of the I.R.C. provisions so that our domestic tax policy will better support our foreign policy in the twenty-first century.


Slider scales and radio buttons scales were experimentally compared in horizontal and vertical orientation. Slider scales lead to statistically significantly higher break-off rates (odds ratio1⁄4 6.9) and substantially higher response times. Problems with slider scales were especially prevalent in participants with less than average education, suggesting the slider scale format is more challenging in terms of previous knowledge needed or cognitive load. An alternative explanation, technologydependent sampling (Buchanan & Reips, 2001), cannot fully account for the current results. The authors clearly advise against the use of Java-based slider scales and advocate low-tech solutions for the design of Web-based data collection. Orientation on screen had no observable effect on data quality or usability of rating scales. Implications of item format for Web-based surveys are discussed.


Context: Practice-based design research is becoming more widely recognized in academia, including at doctoral level, yet there are arguably limited options for dissemination beyond the traditional conference format of paper-based proceedings, possibly with an exhibition or "demonstrator" component that is often non-archival. Further, the opportunities afforded by the traditional-format paper presentations is at times at odds with practice-based methodologies being presented.
Purpose: We provide a first-hand descriptive account of developing and running a new international conference with an experimental format that aims to support more analogously the dissemination of practice-based design research.
Method: Our approach herein is broadly interpretative, phenomenological and critically reflective in orientation, to analyze our own experiential insights from the conference conception, through to the event itself and post-conference reflections, alongside the reflections fed back by conference delegates.
Results: We have found the roundtable format continues to function well for creating a discursive interactional context. However issues arose around the crucial nature of the session chair's role in enabling rich and multi-voiced discussion and how presenters', organizers' and delegates' voices were captured and documented, with implications for further developing the conference design. Looking forward, there are also questions raised about: balancing the stringency of a rigorous review process with provision of an encouraging platform for early-career researchers; and balancing the need for clear criteria and formatting standards (for assessing quality and rigor in submitted work) with the "openness" of the submission template and formatting guidelines (to encourage pioneering developments in visual argumentation.
Implications: The article provides a valuable resource for practice-based design researchers who are committed to generating research understanding through applied endeavors (making things) and/or writing. This includes designers who are new to research cultures. It should also appeal to those working in interdisciplinary research in collaboration with design practitioners (but who may not be practitioners themselves. The conference aims to foster and support a burgeoning "research through design" academic community and to provide a fitting dissemination platform for this community. We hope that the conference will encourage academic communities to give proper consideration to the concept of design as a knowledge-generating activity.
Constructivist content: Knowledge about design research is generated from meaningful interaction between people and artifacts as part of the unfolding conference experience. The organizational features of the conference aim to support knowledge dissemination through dialogical relations between people and things in particular contexts of interaction.


: This paper investigates vertical droplet jetting using circular surface acoustic wave (CSAW) devices with annular interdigitated transducers (AIDTs) fabricated on ZnO film coated silicon substrate. The surface vibration on the CSAW devices was simulated using finite element analysis and characterised using laser vibrometry. Results showed that focused wave patterns and compact nodal distributions of vibration were formed at the centre of ZnO/Si CSAW device, which is contrast to an anisotropic wave distribution patterns generated by the same pattern of AIDTs fabricated on 128 o Y-cut LiNbO 3 . Simulation of liquid jetting induced by the isotropically focused CSAW was performed using coupled Volume of Fluid and Level-Set method. Results showed that a sharp and cylindrical liquid column was generated from the ZnO/Si CSAW device induced by acoustic energy coming from all directions within the plane due to the in-plane isotropic nature of the ZnO thin films. The simulation enabled us to capture the different streaming/jetting processes induced by the anisotropic distributions of acoustic pressure generated by the AIDTs on the 128 o Y-cut LiNbO 3 CSAW device. The concentrated vertical droplet jetting behaviour from the ZnO/Si CSAW devices was investigated experimentally and supported the simulated results.


Going to the hospital has become less dangerous in the last few years. That's a big deal, although it also raises a big question: Who is responsible for the progress? Has it been the influence of government policies or innovation by the private sector?

The answer, most likely, is both. Therein lies a parable of how, with public-private cooperation, the United States might solve some of its other, vexing health care problems.

Most of us think of hospitals as places of healing, and usually they are. But hospitals are also places where people get sick or are injured, thanks to medical errors. Sometimes patients are given the wrong medication or contract an infection because an intravenous line was inserted improperly. These mistakes cost money because the complications are expensive to treat. They also cost lives. According to several credible estimates from independent researchers, every year hundreds of thousands of people die because of medical errors.1

Since 2010, however, those errors appear to have become significantly less common. Data that the Department of Health and Human Services released in December 2014 showed that the number of "hospital-acquired conditions" in the United States fell by 17% over 3 years. And while that's an average for many different medical errors, the declines occurred in virtually every subcategory. Bloodstream infections from intravenous lines were down by nearly 50%. Pressure ulcers, the bedsores that afflict disabled patients who aren't moved frequently enough, fell by 20%. Drug errors dropped by 19%. Those numbers are too big, and too widespread among categories of medical errors, to be a fluke.2

The time frame for these data, 2010 through 2013, is significant because it corresponds to the introduction of quality incentives associated with the Affordable Care Act. Researchers have been documenting the impact of medical errors, as well as promoting ways to avoid them, for more than a decade—going all the way back to 1999, when the Institute of Medicine published its landmark study of the topic: To Err Is Human, which warned that errors could be killing as many as 98,000 people a year. (Subsequent estimates suggested the number was much higher.) The challenge has always been getting hospitals to change their ways, something that was difficult as long as insurers, both public and private, paid by the procedure.

Simply put, hospitals had few financial incentives to reduce errors. If anything, costly medical errors meant that they could generate more revenue, since patients with complications needed more tests and treatments—giving doctors and hospitals opportunities to charge, and to collect, even more money. Although companies eager to cut employee benefit costs called for improved care, they rarely made it a big enough priority to effect real changes in hospital practices.

The architects of "Obamacare" introduced payment reforms designed to change the financial incentives. They introduced a program called the "Partnership for Patients," through which government provides funding for large hospitals that prioritize the reduction of errors. In all, 3,700 hospitals volunteered to be part of this program. In addition, the Affordable Care Act pushed through changes in Medicare payments, penalizing hospitals with high rates of readmission for certain conditions. In so doing, they were following the lead of the Bush administration, whose officials had begun introducing such incentives as part of their efforts to modernize Medicare.

The shift in readmission was discernible. At the end of 2010, the rate was above 19.5%, which is roughly where it had been stuck for several years. Then the rate started to drop—slowly and then, over time, more quickly. By early 2014, it had fallen to below 18%. The timing couldn't be a coincidence, most experts say; instead, hospitals were finding ways to reduce readmissions.

Anecdotal evidence backs this up. In 2010, Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City began employing workers to conduct follow-up visits with patients after they were discharged, to make sure they were following instructions and taking their prescribed medications, and also to alert doctors (or at least the hospital) to new complications. During the first 2 years of its pilot program, hospital officials said, they were able to cut readmissions by 43%.3

Not all the available evidence has suggested such a clear link between government reimbursement and improvement in health care quality. An article by Grace Lee and colleagues in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2012 found no correlation between the introduction of earlier penalties and a decline in infections associated with central catheters. Instead, Dr. Lee and colleagues found the number of infections had been falling even before those penalties started to take effect. According to their research, hospitals and their professionals were taking better care of patients and sparing more of them from painful, dangerous illness. They didn't appear just to be responding to government incentives.4

Lee and colleagues' study is one reason that most experts think it's a combination of factors—in both the public and private sectors—driving hospitals to take better care of patients, during and after admission. After all, there have always been forward-thinking hospitals that have put a high priority on patient care, and forward-thinking corporations eager to support those efforts. An example of the latter was the formation of the Leapfrog Group, an independent organization that publishes quality ratings of hospitals. The problem has been getting the rest of the hospital industry and the business community to take the issue of medical errors just as seriously. Changing the way that Medicare pays for services has helped solve that problem. As Michael Millenson, the veteran health care journalist and researcher, explained, "Leapfrog deserves credit for helping push the federal government in that direction, but it was the government that eventually led the way for reasons that made eminent economic sense. … The big 'leaps' in patient safety came from government pressure."5

This kind of cooperation can be a model for other health care initiatives. The Affordable Care Act has made health insurance more affordable for literally millions of poor and middle-class Americans. But the new availability of coverage does no good unless somebody persuades the uninsured to sign up for those plans. That's a job for which private-sector institutions, such as nonprofit advocacy groups, hospitals, doctors, and other professionals, are perfectly suited. Similarly, reducing the overall cost of health care—not simply by reducing errors but also by finding other ways to be more efficient—requires doctors and hospitals to reengineer their delivery systems. Some are bound to do so on their own initiative. But others won't unless there is real money on the line.

High costs, poor quality, limited access: solving these familiar problems in American health care may not be as daunting as it seems. It just might require a little more cooperation.


Electrophilic functionalization of vapour-grown carbon nanofibers (VGCNF) was accomplished via Friedel–Crafts acylation with 2,4,6-trimethylphenoxybenzoic acid in polyphosphoric acid using the improved conditions that we previously described. The progress of the reaction was conveniently monitored with FT-IR spectroscopy following the growth of the keto-carbonyl band at 1664 cm−1 associated with the product. In addition to scanning electron microscopic and UV-vis spectroscopic data, the combined results from the elemental analysis and thermogravimetric analysis further suggested that there were 3 arylcarbonyl groups covalently attached to the nanotube structure for every 100 carbon sites. Because of the presence of significant hydrogen content in the starting VGCNF, the covalent attachment of the arylcarbonyl groups most probably occurred at the sp2C–H sites.


Although events such as the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis sparked global fear of nuclear war, careful diplomacy between the United States and the Soviet Union led to the emergence of a stable nuclear balance. The 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty banned the possession of nuclear weapons for all but five recognized countries and was later amended to include the ultimate goal of nuclear disarmament. The 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty ensured that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union would construct missile defenses, relying instead on the logic of mutually assured destruction to maintain peace. Other initiatives followed to reduce nuclear stockpiles on both sides, and other countries agreed to relinquish nuclear status in anticipation of progress toward the global elimination of nuclear weapons. But the threat of nuclear war remains. A new nuclear culture has emerged in South Asia, one that reveres the bomb with almost religious intensity in the midst of bitter territorial conflict. New approaches to crisis intervention and nuclear control are needed, as well as a deeper understanding of the role of nuclear weapons in a region characterized by historic clashes, rapid technological gains, and impoverished populations. Recent conflicts between India and Pakistan are only the latest chapter in a history of tension that dates back to the 1947 division of British India into separate countries with Hindu and Muslim majorities. The current dispute has arisen primarily over the fertile and strategically important region of Kashmir, claimed as an Islamic territory by Pakistan and as a secular ethnic province by India. While the United States and the Soviet Union never directly fired on each other and were separated by approximately 30 minutes of missile flight time during the Cold War, India and Pakistan have already fought three wars, and a missile fired by one country can reach the other in three to five minutes. Furthermore, their hastily wrought nuclear doctrines, developed as rapidly as the weapons were constructed, heighten the risk of nuclear deployment in the face of escalating tension. Nuclear Origins Both India and Pakistan began their quest for nuclear technology shortly after gaining independence from Britain. They initially borrowed much from Western nuclear theory, using bomb materials constructed with Western techniques and justifying their claims to nuclear power by invoking Cold War motives. In 1948 Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, created the Indian Atomic Energy Commission and declared that nuclear energy would be used for "peaceful purposes," but that "if compelled ... to use it for other purposes, possibly no pious sentiments will stop the nation from using it that way." With aid from the United States, Canada, and other countries, India began constructing nuclear reactors and uranium mines. India's defeat in its 1962 conflict with China, during which China gained a portion of Indian Kashmir, as well as China's subsequent nuclear test in 1964, spurred Indian leaders to develop a nuclear program. Research in nuclear technology began, and in May 1974 India tested a plutonium bomb with an explosive yield of five to 12 kilotons. An immediate surge of public approval and patriotism ensued, and the bomb became an instant symbol of Indian nationalism. Western countries immediately denounced the 1974 test and formed the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a coalition aimed at restricting the flow of nuclear technology and materials to nations that had not yet signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, however, continued to support nuclear research. In 1983 the Indian Air Force considered a pre-emptive strike against Pakistan's nuclear facility at Kahuta, though Gandhi later decided against the measure for fear of retaliation. In the same year, however, India launched the Integrated Guided Missile Development Program to engineer ballistic missiles. …


In this paper, we present the results of a study on the perception of driver and passenger when cooperating in the car. An increased feeling of control when handing over responsibility for secondary tasks to the passengers might form a basis for the acceptance of future natural cooperative in-car information systems. Many studies have revealed the potential of involving accompanying passengers, but so far, their ability to support the driver has not been applied practically. We have developed a system to support driver-passenger cooperation and investigated the effect on perceived control and involvement. An application to search for points of interest (POI) was implemented and tested in a user study. Besides the POI task, the driver had to perform a distraction task to simulate a dual task load. We found that, depending on the person who is executing the task (driver or passenger), the respective person feels more involved in the situation. However, the level of control over the situation is increased significantly for both persons when the passenger is supporting the driver by performing the task. Overall, we provide a new design space for interaction areas in the car and highlight the potential passengers offer to reduce driver's load and thus increase driving safety.


In computer vision, stereoscopic image analysis is a well-known technique capable of extracting the third (vertical) dimension. Starting from this knowledge, the Remote Sensing (RS) community has spent increasing efforts on the exploitation of Ikonos one-meter resolution stereo imagery for high accuracy 3D surface modelling and elevation data extraction. In previous works our team investigated the potential of neural adaptive learning to solve the correspondence problem in the presence of occlusions. In this paper we present an experimental evaluation of an improved version of the neural based stereo matching method when applied to Ikonos one-meter resolution stereo images affected by occlusion problems. Disparity maps generated with the proposed approach are compared with those obtained by an alternative stereo matching algorithm implemented in a (non-)commercial image processing software toolbox. To compare competing disparity maps, quality metrics recommended by the evaluation methodology proposed by Scharstein and Szelinski (2002, IJCV, 47, 7-42) are adopted.


We establish a bridge between spectral clustering and Gromov-Wasserstein Learning (GWL), a recent optimal transport-based approach to graph partitioning. This connection both explains and improves upon the state-of-the-art performance of GWL. The Gromov-Wasserstein framework provides probabilistic correspondences between nodes of source and target graphs via a quadratic programming relaxation of the node matching problem. Our results utilize and connect the observations that the GW geometric structure remains valid for any rank-2 tensor, in particular the adjacency, distance, and various kernel matrices on graphs, and that the heat kernel outperforms the adjacency matrix in producing stable and informative node correspondences. Using the heat kernel in the GWL framework provides new multiscale graph comparisons without compromising theoretical guarantees, while immediately yielding improved empirical results. A key insight of the GWL framework toward graph partitioning was to compute GW correspondences from a source graph to a template graph with isolated, self-connected nodes. We show that when comparing against a two-node template graph using the heat kernel at the infinite time limit, the resulting partition agrees with the partition produced by the Fiedler vector. This in turn yields a new insight into the $k$-cut graph partitioning problem through the lens of optimal transport. Our experiments on a range of real-world networks achieve comparable results to, and in many cases outperform, the state-of-the-art achieved by GWL.


Objective: This systemic review was aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of PPI in the treatment of DM
type 1 patients and other related risk factors.
Method: The review specifically focused on studies fulfilled the eligibility criteria; published in between
2016-2019 and should be written in the English language only. Primarily literature search focused on
original research article reported the objective data on PPIs use among T1DM patients. Articles were
searched in PubMed, Cochrane, Springer, and Science Direct. The search was limited to the English
language only.
Results: The results showed that the PPIs in combination with insulin achieved better clinical outcomes
than insulin users alone manifested by most of the gastrin and HbA1c results were achieved within the
targeted therapeutic range. The findings also showed that to have lower levels of HbA1c, anti-diabetic
medications should be used together with PPIs. Disregarding the way that exactly as expected, without
getting true significance beside the sulfonylureas gathering (in mix with or without metformin just as
thiazolidinedione) that got an abatement in HbA1c of 1.4% respect those patients who didn't consume a
PPI.
Conclusion: It is found that long-term use of PPI developed somehow protection against diabetes than
patients who were not treated with PPI. It is suggested to have RCTs focused on the use of PPI to predict
HbA1c and FBS levels in patient with type 1 diabetes.


In 2003 a Cooperation Agreement, envisaging a grant of 360 Meuro in 10 years, was signed between Italy and Russia in the framework of the "so-called" Global Partnership Program. So far, in five years of concrete work, a total of 146 Meuro have been engaged through 33 contracts and 121 Meuro have been already paid. Together with other significant lines of activities the management of waste, presently located at Andreeva Bay site, is surely the most important one, not only for the amount of allocated funds (about the half of available ones) but also for the urgency to solve serious environmental problems linked to the actual unsafe conditions of these waste, both as regards possible incidents or malicious attacks from outside. Volume of Low Level and Intermediate Level (LL/IL) waste at Andreeva Bay site are 17000 tons and 3000 tons, respectively for solid and liquid; moreover is expected, during the next 15 years, the production of additional 33000 tons of liquid and 8000 tons of solid, due to the need of demolishing existing facilities and final closing of the site. As regards radwaste management facilities, the solution defined in OBIN (justification of investment) has been analyzed and critically reviewed. After the completion of a conceptual study, the construction of three facilities (solid and liquid treatment ones and a protective structure for storing on site temporarily conditioned waste) was decided and a contract was assigned in 2010 to Ansaldo Nucleare/AtomStroyExport for the detailed design of the above mentioned facilities, which is expected to be completed in 2012. Some important modifications to the initial time schedule have been taken into account and now the operation of the facilities is expected by 2015, two years before the previous estimate.© 2011 ASME


The law regulating the availability of abortion is problematic both legally and morally. It is dogmatic in its requirements of women and doctors and ignorant of would-be fathers. Practically, its usage is liberal - with s1(1)(a) Abortion Act 1967 treated as a 'catch all' ground - it allows abortion on demand. Yet this is not reflected in the 'law'. Against this outdated legislation I propose a model of autonomy which seeks to tether our moral concerns with a new legal approach to abortion. I do so by maintaining that a legal conception of autonomy is derivable from the categorical imperative resulting from Gewirth's argument to the Principle of Generic Consistency: Act in accordance with the generic rights of your recipients as well as of yourself. This model of Gewirthian Rational Autonomy, I suggest, provides a guide for both public and private notions of autonomy and how our autonomous interests can be balanced across social structures in order to legitimately empower choice. I claim, ultimately, that relevant rights in the context of abortion are derivable from this model.


We report here results from a deep tow magnetic survey over Middle Valley, Juan de Fuca Ridge. A series of track lines are combined to generate a high‐resolution map of the magnetic field anomaly within a 10 × 12 km region surrounding the Bent Hill massive sulfide (BHMS) deposit. A uniformly magnetized body (5 A/m) with a cross section approximating the body inferred from Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) drilling can account for the observed near‐bottom magnetic anomaly amplitude. Assuming this magnetization is entirely induced, the average susceptibility (0.11 SI) corresponds to ∼3.5% magnetite + pyrrhotite by volume, consistent with the abundance of these phases observed in drill core samples. However, this uniform magnetization model significantly underestimates the magnetic anomaly measured a few meters above the seafloor by submersible, indicating that the upper portion of the sulfide mound must have a significantly higher magnetization (∼10% magnetite + pyrrhotite) than at deeper levels. On a larger scale, the near‐bottom magnetic anomaly data show that basement magnetizations are not uniformly near zero, as had been inferred from analysis of the sea surface anomaly pattern. We interpret this heterogeneity as reflecting primarily differences in the degree of hydrothermal alteration. Our results highlight the potential of magnetic anomaly data for characterizing hydrothermal deposits where extensive drill core sampling is not available.


As the National Disability Insurance Scheme is being rolled out at several launch sites around the country, questions still remain about just how mental health services will be integrated into the system. Under the existing legislation, the scheme provides support for people who experience a psychosocial disability associated with a mental illness. Later today, those working in the mental health sector will meet in Melbourne to discuss what that decision means for the sector and for those living with mental illness.


In the talk, we shall discuss quality measures for hash functions used
in data structures and algorithms, and survey positive and negative
results. (This talk is not about cryptographic hash functions.)
For the analysis of algorithms involving hash functions, it is often
convenient to assume the hash functions used behave fully randomly; in
some cases there is no analysis known that avoids this assumption. In
practice, one needs to get by with weaker hash functions that can be
generated by randomized algorithms. A well-studied range of applications concern realizations of dynamic dictionaries (linear
probing, chained hashing, dynamic perfect hashing, cuckoo hashing and
its generalizations) or Bloom filters and their variants.

A particularly successful and useful means of classification are
Carter and Wegman's universal or k-wise independent classes,
introduced in 1977. A natural and widely used approach to analyzing
an algorithm involving hash functions is to show that it works if a
sufficiently strong universal class of hash functions is used, and to
substitute one of the known constructions of such classes. This
invites research into the question of just how much independence in
the hash functions is necessary for an algorithm to work. Some recent
analyses that gave impossibility results constructed rather artificial
classes that would not work; other results pointed out natural, widely
used hash classes that would not work in a particular application.
Only recently it was shown that under certain assumptions on some
entropy present in the set of keys even 2-wise independent hash
classes will lead to strong randomness properties in the hash values.
The negative results show that these results may not be taken as
justification for using weak hash classes indiscriminately, in
particular for key sets with structure.

When stronger independence properties are needed for a theoretical
analysis, one may resort to classic constructions. Only in 2003 it
was found out how full randomness can be simulated using only linear
space overhead (which is optimal). The "split-and-share" approach
can be used to justify the full randomness assumption in some
situations in which full randomness is needed for the analysis to go
through, like in many applications involving multiple hash functions
(e.g., generalized versions of cuckoo hashing with multiple hash
functions or larger bucket sizes, load balancing, Bloom filters and
variants, or minimal perfect hash function constructions).

For practice, efficiency considerations beyond constant factors are
important. It is not hard to construct very efficient 2-wise
independent classes. Using k-wise independent classes for constant k
bigger than 3 has become feasible in practice only by new
constructions involving tabulation. This goes together well with the
quite new result that linear probing works with 5-independent hash
functions.

Recent developments suggest that the classification of hash function
constructions by their degree of independence alone may not be
adequate in some cases. Thus, one may want to analyze the behavior of
specific hash classes in specific applications, circumventing the
concept of k-wise independence. Several such results were recently
achieved concerning hash functions that utilize tabulation. In
particular if the analysis of the application involves using
randomness properties in graphs and hypergraphs (generalized cuckoo
hashing, also in the version with a "stash", or load balancing), a
hash class combining k-wise independence with tabulation has turned
out to be very powerful.


1. The classification of fusobacteria into types, as suggested by Slanetz and Rettger on the basis of their cultural and biochemical characteristics, was confirmed. The following additional data are presented: the behavior of types I, II, and III in several previously untested carbohydrates; the final pH in 1 per cent glucose broth; the hydrolysis of starch; the failure to decompose sodium hippurate and citrates; the absence of pathogenicity for several types of experimental animals; and the absence of fibrinolysin and of proteolytic enzymes. 2. By the use of a technic described in the text, it was possible to grow the anaerobic fusobacteria in mass cultures. 3. With the methods of Heidelberger and Kendall, immunologically type specific proteins were extracted from fusobacteria types I, II, and III. This observation, which is in a sense an extension of the work of Lancefield on Streptococcus hemolyticus, group A, represents the second instance of a bacterial protein functioning as a determinant of bacterial types. 4. Preliminary data indicate that group specificity depends upon a carbohydrate which is extractable by the methods of Heidelberger and Avery.


This paper describes two approaches suitable for an FPGA implementation of Walsh-Hadamard transforms. These transforms are important in many signal processing applications including speech compression, filtering and coding. Two novel architectures for the fast Hadamard transforms using both systolic architecture and distributed arithmetic techniques are presented. The first approach uses the Baugh-Wooley multiplication algorithm for a systolic architecture implementation. The second approach is based on both distributed arithmetic ROM and accumulator structure, and a sparse matrix factorisation technique. Implementations of the algorithms on a Xilinx FPGA board are described. Distributed arithmetic approach exhibits better performances when compared with the systolic architecture approach.


The importance of data and evidence has increased considerably in policy planning, implementation, and evaluation. There is unprecedented availability of open and big data, and there are rapid developments in intelligence gathering and the application of analytical tools. While cultural heritage holds many tangible and intangible values for local communities and society in general, there is a knowledge gap regarding suitable methods and data sources to measure the impacts and develop data-driven policies of cultural tourism. In the tourism sector, rapid developments are particularly taking place around novel uses of mobile positioning data, web scraping, and open application programming interface (API) data, data on sharing, and collaborative economy and passenger data. Based on feedback from 15 European cultural tourism regions, recommendations are developed regarding the use of innovative tools and data sources in tourism management. In terms of potential analytical depth, it is especially advisable to explore the use of mobile positioning data. Yet, there are considerable barriers, especially in terms of privacy protection and ethics, in using such data. User-generated big data from social media, web searches, and website visits constitute another promising data source as it is often publicly available in real time and has low usage barriers. Due to the emergence of new platform-based business models in the travel and tourism sector, special attention should be paid to improving access and usage of data on sharing and collaborative economy.


Retinoic acid (RA) has pleiotropic functions during embryogenesis. In zebrafish, increasing or blocking RA signaling results in enlarged or reduced otic vesicles, respectively. Here we elucidate the mechanisms that underlie these changes and show that they have origins in different tissues. Excess RA leads to ectopic foxi1 expression throughout the entire preplacodal domain. Foxi1 provides competence to adopt an otic fate. Subsequently, pax8, the expression of which depends upon Foxi1 and Fgf, is also expressed throughout the preplacodal domain. By contrast, loss of RA signaling does not affect foxi1 expression or otic competence, but instead results in delayed onset of fgf3 expression and impaired otic induction. fgf8 mutants depleted of RA signaling produce few otic cells, and these cells fail to form a vesicle, indicating that Fgf8 is the primary factor responsible for otic induction in RA-depleted embryos. Otic induction is rescued by fgf8 overexpression in RA-depleted embryos, although otic vesicles never achieve a normal size, suggesting that an additional factor is required to maintain otic fate. fgf3;tcf2 double mutants form otic vesicles similar to RA-signaling-depleted embryos, suggesting a signal from rhombomere 5-6 may also be required for otic fate maintenance. We show that rhombomere 5 wnt8b expression is absent in both RA-signaling-depleted embryos and in fgf3;tcf2 double mutants, and inactivation of wnt8b in fgf3 mutants by morpholino injection results in small otic vesicles, similar to RA depletion in wild type. Thus, excess RA expands otic competence, whereas the loss of RA impairs the expression of fgf3 and wnt8b in the hindbrain, compromising the induction and maintenance of otic fate.


What leads to classically recognized patterns of biodiversity remains an open and contested question. It remains unknown if observed patterns are generated by biological or non-biological mechanisms, or if we should expect the patterns to emerge in non-biological systems. Here, we employ analogies between GNU/Linux operating systems (distros), a non-biological system, and biodiversity, and we look for a number of well-established ecological and evolutionary patterns in the Linux universe. We demonstrate that patterns of the Linux universe generally match macroecological patterns. Particularly, Linux distro commonness and rarity follow a skewed distribution with a clear excess of rare distros, we observed a power law mean-variance scaling of temporal fluctuation, but there is only a weak relationship between niche breadth (number of software packages) and commonness. The diversity in the Linux universe also follows general macroevolutionary patterns: the number of phylogenetic lineages increases linearly through time, with clear per-species diversification and extinction slowdowns, something that has been indirectly estimated, but not directly observed in biology. Moreover, the composition of functional traits (software packages) exhibits significant phylogenetic signal. The emergence of macroecological patterns across Linux suggests that the patterns are produced independently of system identity, which points to the possibility of non-biological drivers of fundamental biodiversity patterns. At the same time, our study provides a step towards using Linux as a model system for exploring macroecological and macroevolutionary patterns.


'Between grief and nothing I will take grief'. In New Orleans in 1937, a man and woman embark on a headlong flight into the wilderness of illicit passion, fleeing her husband and the temptations of respectability. In Mississippi ten years earlier, a convict sets forth across a flooded river, risking his one chance at freedom to rescue a pregnant woman. From these separate stories Faulkner composes a symphony of deliverance and damnation, survival and self-sacrifice, a novel in which elemental danger is juxtaposed with fatal injuries of the spirit.


Ultrasound RF signal, backscattered from an inhomogeneous parenchymal tissue has the character of a random signal. It is the random fluctuating nature of this signal that is responsible for the speckle pattern observed in the images. These random signals, nevertheless, bear information related to the random scattering structure of the medium. Statistical moments of the signal can serve as feature parameters that are related to mean scatterer spacing in the random structure. However, such a feature is biased because the statistical nature of the RF signal depends, not only on the random tissue scattering structure, but also on the resolution cell volume of the imaging system, which in turn depends on the center frequency fo and bandwidth df of the interrogating short pulse and beam pattern of the transducer. The major goal of this project was three fold. (1) To develop a 3 dimensional comprehensive model of the random tissue structure characterized by a mean scatterer spacing. The interscatterer spacing and scattering strengths were random variables with a defined probability density function. (2) To develop a procedure to simulate backscattered RF signal from the model in response to various interrogating ultrasound pulses. The simulation procedure takes into account the 3-D nature of the resolution cell volume and its effect on the RF signal. (3) To develop a procedure to extract statistical parameters from the signal as a function of resolution cell volume. A feature parameter that is extracted from the analysis is related to the mean scatterer spacing, and is independent of the imaging system's point spread function. The procedure was based on recent theoretical prediction by Sleefe et.al.[14] and therefore implicitly this work has attempted to verify the theoretical results.


All volumes of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek philosophy have won their due acclaim. The most striking merits of Guthrie's work are his mastery of a tremendous range of ancient literature and modern scholarship, his fairness and balance of judgement and the lucidity and precision of his English prose. He has achieved clarity and comprehensiveness.


This dissertation explores both the evolving nature of the public encounter—where state and citizen meet—and the virtual civic space in which the meeting occurs through an examination of selected state and federal web sites. The examination uses multiple qualitative measures and an architectural perspective to bridge the gap between traditional physical-space based government and the virtualspace of e-government. The research focuses on identifying salient e-government issues and explicating their implications for public encounters, public administration practitioners and scholars, and traditional government institutions. The implications of e-government on the exercise of administrative discretion, the digital divide, and policy making are explored. Select prescriptions are offered for public administration education, practitioners and scholars. E-government architecture is conceptualized along two dimensions: the normative and the aesthetic. The normative dimension refers to the extent to which certain key norms or values are fulfilled or emphasized in web site architecture while the aesthetic dimension refers to whether certain technical features of what is considered good message design or high message quality are present. The normative tradition of public administration in combination with prior e-government research is used to construct evaluation criteria for assessing latent public values contained in government web site features and content. Information architecture, information presentation, and instructional message design literature are used to construct aesthetic criteria for determining the message character of web sites. Focus groups and a survey questionnaire are used to both challenge and triangulate the web site data analysis. An argument is made for eliminating the distinction or dichotomy between the two modes of government action—traditional and that of e-government. A unification of the two is proposed as part of an overall strategy for addressing the restructuring and reorganization of extant institutional arrangements necessary to support an integrated approach to e-government and traditional service delivery. Caution is urged with respect to proposals for embedding government services and information within existing commercial and entertainment web sites lest democratic values be subordinated to financial interests.


Abstract. Winter (October to March) precipitation δ18OP and δDP values in central Europe correlate with the winter North Atlantic Oscillation index (wNAOi), but the causal mechanisms remain poorly understood. Here we analyse the relationships between precipitation-weighted δ18OP and δDP datasets (δ18Opw and δDpw) from European GNIP and ANIP stations and the wNAOi, with a focus on isotope gradients. We demonstrate that longitudinal δ18Opw and δDpw gradients across Europe ("continental effect") depend on the wNAOi state, with steeper gradients associated with more negative wNAOi states. Changing gradients reflect a combination of air temperature and variable amounts of precipitable water as a function of the wNAOi. The relationships between the wNAOi, δ18Opw and δDpw can provide additional information from palaeoclimate archives such as European speleothems that primarily record winter δ18Opw. Comparisons between present-day and past European longitudinal δ18O gradients inferred from Holocene speleothems suggest that atmospheric pressure configurations akin to negative wNAO modes dominated the early Holocene, whereas patterns resembling positive wNAO modes were more common in the late Holocene, possibly caused by persistent shifts in the relative locations of the Azores High and the Icelandic Low.


Distribution networks are operated in a radial configuration, but their topology, especially in urban areas, is normally meshed in order to improve reliability of supply. This makes it possible to configure the network after a power outage to restore the service to affected customers by alternative ways of supply. Distribution operation and planning decisions usually involve network reconfiguration studies. Network reconfiguration entails changing the state of network switches to redistribute loads among feeders in order to restore service or minimize losses or alleviate overloads or voltages out of limits. The switching operation is the basic control action in network reconfiguration. A switching operation consists of closing the switch in an opened branch and opening the switch in a closed one, keeping the network configuration radial. As a consequence, the computation of sensitivities of the state variables with respect to switching operations is a useful resource for predicting the changes in a network during a reconfiguration process. This paper presents a method for computing the sensitivities of the state variables with respect to switching operations and obtaining estimations of voltages and power flows in the network. The proposed method not only provides accurate estimations, but also implies low computation load. To illustrate the performance of the developed method, a 16 bus test system and a real scenario of the 15-kV Madrid distribution system were analyzed. For both cases, the bus voltages and the feeder power flows were estimated and compared with the power flow solution. In addition, an analysis of the computation load is presented.


background: Levonorgestrel (LNG), as a dedicated emergency contraception (EC) product, has been available over-the-counter in China for 10 years. Until now, only a small number of deliveries after LNG–EC failure have been documented. methods: This study was a prospective comparative cohort study. A group of 332 pregnant women who had used LNG–EC during the conception cycle was recruited, and matched to a group of 332 pregnant women without the exposure to LNG. Congenital malformations, perinatal complications and delivery circumstances were investigated in this study. results: There were 31 pregnant women in the study group and 28 in the comparison group miscarried within 14 weeks of gestation. In the study and comparison groups, four malformations were found in each group. In the study group, both birthweight (3416 versus 3345 g, P 1⁄4 0.040) and the sex ratio of birth (boys/girls, 1.14 versus 0.90, P 1⁄4 0.153) were higher than in the comparison group. There were no statistically significant differences in the incidence of miscarriage or malformation or in the neonatal outcome between the two groups. conclusions: There was no association between the use of LNG–EC pills and the risk of major congenital malformations, pregnancy complications or any other adverse pregnancy outcomes in our study.


The primary goal of graphic design as a form of "commercial art" is to create a stronger aesthetic impression on graphic product users. In order to achieve better aesthetic quality, designers use mathematical compositional rules such as golden ratio or symmetry. This paper contains extensive discussion of the possibilities offered by different types of symmetry in graphic design. Also, the results of the research conducted by the method of experimental aesthetics were provided in this paper and this research evaluated the opinions of the subjects about the aesthetic value of the mirror symmetric form. For this purpose, 4 original test samples were designed, which were ranked by the respondents using the Liekert scale, according to their own aesthetic value. Non-parametric Friedman's ANOVA and Wilcoxon tests were used to identify pairs of arithmetic means of ranks that statistically differ significantly (p <0.05). It was found that respondents considered that the highest quality test pattern was the one whose form was fully aligned with the mirror symmetry, thereby experimentally verifying the aesthetic value of the mirror symmetry.


England has very volatile house prices. We use pseudo-panel data spanning multiple house-price cycles over nearly forty years, to assess the extent to which house prices affect access to home ownership by age thirty, and whether differences in ownership rates persist. We find that ownership rates at age thirty have varied substantially, with this variation significantly related to prices. Measurement error problems - attenuation bias and other biases - complicate an analysis of the persistence of these differences in ownership. We use two methods - including one that develops the ideas of Deaton (1985) - to deal with this and find robust evidence that cohorts with low ownership rates at thirty close about 80% of the ownership gap by age forty.


This article discusses previously undocumented examples of music for the old Beneventan divine office in a manuscript housed in the Archivio Storico Diocesano in Naples (Cod. Misc. 1, fasc. VII). The breviary, which was copied at the scriptorium of Santa Sofia, Benevento, in 1161, transmits two unica —canticle antiphons for the feast of St. Mercurius—in Beneventan style. It also preserves a Beneventan-style antiphon for the Holy Twelve Brothers of Benevento that is not transmitted in previously published sources of Beneventan chant. The discovery of music in Beneventan style for St. Mercurius is of importance to the history of the old Beneventan rite, as it attests to the continued production of the distinctive formulaic style of the Beneventan rite into the later eighth century. The relics of Mercurius, a military saint of Byzantium, were enshrined at the altar of Santa Sofia at Benevento in 768, and Mercurius was adopted as patron of the court, the church of Santa Sofia, and the city of Benevento. Despite the establishment of the cult of St. Mercurius in the second half of the eighth century, until now no musical record has indicated the presence of old Beneventan music for this feast (there is no extant Beneventan mass proper for Mercurius, and the documented sources for the divine office preserve only Romano-Beneventan or neo-Gregorian-style music). I consider the St. Mercurius antiphons within the context of the musical style of the old Beneventan rite and argue that they should be included in the Beneventan canon on the basis of musical style. As pitch-specific exemplars of the distinctive formulaic style of the Beneventan chant, this source is of particular value to the study of Beneventan pitch and modality. Notated in fully heightened Beneventan neumes on a staff line, these antiphons are among the few surviving witnesses of the old Beneventan repertory that preserve the distinctive modal properties of the repertory in pitch-specific notation. I introduce the music of these antiphons and consider their importance as witnesses to the continued production and copying of Beneventan music from the late eighth to the twelfth centuries.


Purpose of the paper: This paper aims to demonstrate how a type of cultural heritage such an archival collection can be turned into a non-conventional museum, which would not be based upon the exhibition of objects, but on the transmission of knowledge using the mechanism of storytelling. Methodology : The paper analyses the case of the Historical Archives of the Banco di Napoli, which is part of the Foundation of the same name, and in particular on its museum project called ilCartastorie. Results : The paper allows a model to be made from this experience, with a transferable approach to cultural heritage contexts involving printed material (essentially archives and libraries), by delineating a conceptual and operative framework for the creation of historical museums which primarily use the technique of storytelling.  Research limitations: In light of the fact that this is the presentation of a single case study, the limitation of the research lies in the specificity of the subject matter of the research and its condition as a private holder of cultural heritage which is of interest to the public; from this point of view, the principles of transferability may clash with the regulatory and procedural limits found in the public sector, which holds a large part of the cultural heritage found in archives and libraries. Practical implications : From an operational point of view, this paper provides the essential coordinates to be applied to the promotional model, while adapting them to other contexts. Originality of the paper: Traditional archives very rarely and in completely different ways move towards an integrated project of promotion and, when applied, it is usually based on the mechanism of "exposition" of the archival documents and not on the narrative process of the content of those same documents. The originality of this paper lies essentially in the specificity of the subject matter of the research: an archival collection which uses storytelling for the transmission of knowledge.


Geostatistical methods are increasingly used in low-resource settings where disease registries are either non-existent or geographically incomplete. In this thesis, which is comprised of four papers, we address some of the common issues that arise from analysing disease prevalence data. In the first paper we consider the problem of combining data from multiple spatially referenced surveys so as to account for two main sources of variation: temporal variation, when surveys are repeated over time; data-quality variation, e.g. between randomised and non-randomised surveys. We then propose a multivariate binomial geostatistical model for the combined analysis of data from multiple surveys. We also show an application to malaria prevalence data from three surveys conducted in two consecutive years in Chikwawa District, Malawi, one of which used a more economical convenience sampling strategy. In the second paper, we analyse river-blindness prevalence data from a survey conducted in 20 African countries enrolled in the African Programme of Onchocerciasis Control (APOC). The main challenge of this analysis is computational, as a binomial geostatistical model has to be fitted to more than 14,000 village locations and predictions carried out on about 10 millions locations across Africa. To make the computation feasible and efficient, we then develop a low rank approximation based on a convolution-kernel representation which avoids matrix inversion. The third paper is a tutorial on the use of a new R package, namely "PrevMap", which provides functions for both likelihood-based and Bayesian analysis of spatially referenced prevalence data. In the fourth paper, we present some extensions of the standard geostatistical model for spatio-temporal analysis of prevalence data and modelling of spatially structured zero-inflation. We then describe three applications that have arisen through our collaborations with researchers and public health programmers in African countries.


Completely revised and updated to include more information on Internet marketing, tourism marketing, marketing technology, and international business, Hospitality Marketing Management, Fifth Edition is a comprehensive, core marketing text. This popular textbook explores marketing and themes unique to hospitality and tourism, with a focus on the practical applications of marketing rather than marketing theory. It provides readers with the tools they need to successfully execute marketing campaigns for a hospitality business, no matter what their specialty.


Since the normalization of Sino-Vietnamese relations in 1991, Vietnam's China policy has been shaped by a combination of approaches which can be best described as a multi-tiered, omni-directional hedging strategy. The article argues that hedging is the most rational and viable option for Vietnam to manage its relations with China given its historical experiences, domestic and bilateral conditions, as well as changes in Vietnam's external relations and the international strategic environment. The article examines the four major components of this strategy, namely economic pragmatism, direct engagement, hard balancing and soft balancing. The article goes on to assess the significance of each component and details how Vietnam has pursued its hedging strategy towards China since normalization.


With the development of Chinese economy, oversea Chinese education has been paid more and more attention. However, the overseas Chinese education resource is relatively lack because of historical reasons, which hindered further development . How to better share the Chinese education resources and provide intelligent personalized information service for overseas student is a key problem to be solved. In recent years, the rise of cloud computing provides us an opportunity to realize intelligent learning mode. Cloud computing offers some advantages by allowing users to use infrastructure, platforms and software . In this paper we proposed an intelligent cloud learning model based on cloud computing. The learning model can utilize network resources sufficiently to implement resource sharing according to the personal needs of students, and provide a good practicability for online overseas Chinese education.


The protein (PN), polysaccharide (PS), and extracellular DNA (eDNA) percent concentrations of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) of biofilms samples harvested from a pilot-scale nitrifying moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) were investigated at various operating temperatures and hydraulic retention times (HRTs). Chemically measured EPS PN/PS ratios were shown to correlate to Raman intensity ratios of amide III to carbohydrate at 362 rel. cm−1. The study also demonstrates that tertiary nitrifying MBBR systems may be optimized to operate at HRTs as low as 0.75 to 1.0 h as opposed to conventional HRTs of 2.0 to 6.0 h. The EPS of the nitrifying MBBR biofilm exhibited the lowest percent PN content and the highest percent PSs and eDNA content. In particular, the PN/PS ratios lower than 3 were indicative of non-optimal operation of the nitrifying MBBR systems; whereas PN/PS ratios with values significantly below 3 were observed for ammonia underloaded systems at high operating temperatures and hydraulically overloaded systems at low HRTs. This study demonstrates that the PN/PS ratio in EPS is a potential metric to identify non-optimal operation of nitrifying MBBR systems.


This thesis is an investigation of academic literacy practices on postgraduate English Studies programmes in two different national contexts in Europe, Hungary and Italy. It examines the transnational comparability of university qualifications in relation to the Bologna Declaration, which currently has forty-seven European signatory countries, and constitutes an agreement to create a higher education space in Europe with a common system of 'readable' and 'comparable' degrees. In the spirit of the Bologna Process, the thesis explores what a student would need to know and be able to do to complete written assignments on a postgraduate English Studies programme in a different European cultural and linguistic context. An 'ethnographic-style' approach was adopted to collect 'rich' data on graded written work from each programme at the end of the assessment period. The thesis focuses on six MA theses, which were treated as separate case studies. The dataset included interview transcripts and email communications with students, assessors and supervisors, thesis drafts, written feedback, programme and course documentation and journal writing. The case study data was analysed vertically, in relation to each individual case and horizontally across the case studies in an iterative process to identify themes and practices. The thesis demonstrates the value of an academic literacies approach to the investigation of language in contexts of use. The study reveals variation in practices of thesis making across the case studies with regard to originality, argument and analysis. Practices are shaped by disciplinary, epistemological, theoretical, methodological and ideological perspectives. Practices also index local responses to global and regional pressures and national policies. The findings enable a critical examination of the Bologna Process and argue for the creative potential of local practices and local collaborations to counter constrictive global hegemonies.


This study describes an application of Neural Networks for transmission errors identification and correction in binary messages. The network is used as a classifier of detected hydro-acoustic signals into one of a possible alphabet of symbols. The algorithm used is a Hamming-type Neural Networks classifier associated with the transmission of a Hamming code. This system can detect and correct all transmission errors if the number of errors is less than or equal to half the Hamming distance between transmitted symbols minus one. Symbols to be transmitted are chosen and associated to messages, assuring that bit to bit non similarities result on the prescribed Hamming distance. The autoassociative error correcting scheme can be used to generate a teaching signal to a supervised learning equalizer tracking the channel non-stationary characteristics. The proposed system is intended for in hydro-acoustic communication applications, and it is currently undergoing sea tests.


The subject matter of this article is the terminology which is used in contemporary law and sociological jurisprudence to denote changes in legal regulation. Among the most fashionable terms are those of globalization and pluralism. In the author's opinion, these two terms indicate diverse phenomena and have different tasks. Pluralism is a concept allowing the description and explication of various legal facts, institutions, relations which are not generally recognized in state-centered theory of law. Globalization is a common name for the distinctive characteristics which distinguish the present-day Western civilization from other civilizations. The amalgamation of these two different aspects into one set of methods and ideas inspired by the need to explain modernity does not lead to the formation of a new methodology or of a scientific conception. Rather globalization talks about plurality in contemporary law having another function – to describe the changing mentality, new ways of legal thinking which are growing in the Western world. These changes have repercussions in many fields of science, i.e. in a new understanding of such traditional concepts as sovereignty


Objective To assess the predictability of grayscale values in a CBCT scan to assess the level of maturation of midpalatal suture density using CBCT modality Materials and Methods: The 58 CBCT images of maxillary arch of subjects belonging to the age group 5-32 years were evaluated to assess morphologic stages of the midpalatal suture maturation stages A to E based on the Angeliere classification using the grayscale values. One-way ANOVA test was used to check the variation of grayscale in different groups of mid palatal suture classification. Pearson's correlation test was used to determine the correlation between the age of the subjects and grayscale values. An arithmetic calculation was done to convert the grayscale values into Hounsfield units to assess bone density according to the Misch's Classification. ResultsMean and standard deviation of the grayscale value corresponding to the palatal maturation stage were assessed and its Hounsfield units (HU) were obtained by using the mathematicalformula. There was a statistically significant difference among the stages. No significant difference was observed between stage D and E (p-value >0.05). There was a significant correlation between the age of the patient and the corresponding grayscale value (r =0.599, p=0.00). ConclusionA statistically significant difference between the ossification stages of the mid palatine suture and grayscale values was obtained from CBCT and can be hence used as an alternate method for checking bone density. There is an increase in grayscale value observed as the age of the subjects increases. European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine ISSN 2515-8260 Volume 08, Issue 03, 2021 593


It has been observed in a variety of contexts that gradient descent methods have great success in solving low-rank matrix factorization problems, despite the relevant problem formulation being non-convex. We tackle a particular instance of this scenario, where we seek the $d$-dimensional subspace spanned by a streaming data matrix. We apply the natural first order incremental gradient descent method, constraining the gradient method to the Grassmannian. In this paper, we propose an adaptive step size scheme that is greedy for the noiseless case, that maximizes the improvement of our metric of convergence at each data index $t$, and yields an expected improvement for the noisy case. We show that, with noise-free data, this method converges from any random initialization to the global minimum of the problem. For noisy data, we provide the expected convergence rate of the proposed algorithm per iteration.


| The purpose of this study was to compare six competing econometric models which depict the relationship between hardware characteristics and machine cost for the desktop computer market. The Box-Cox methodology and multiyear data were used to facilitate this comparison. The analysis validated that the Box-Cox methodology is a viable means for evaluating com peting model formulations within the field of information systems research. The results were consistent with past research that suggested a double natural log model formulation for representing the functional relationships among variables when modeling machine cost as a function of hardware attributes. Further, the more complex power transformation model formulations suggested by the Box-Cox methodology did not significantly outperform the more traditional and simpler double natural log model. More specifically, the results indicated that variables related to primary memory and microchip tedinology have the largest impact on machine cost. Additionally, variables related to madiine connectivity, machine expandability, and year of observation were also found to be significant explanatory variables for machine cost.


edited by Alan L. Berger, Harry J. Cargas, and Susan Nowak. Academic Studies in the History of Judaism. Binghamton: Global Publications, SUNY at Binghamton, 2002. 327 pp. $25.00. The aim of this anthology is to further dialogue between Jews and Christians, particularly between Polish Catholicism and Judaism, in light of the controversies over the establishment of the Carmelite convent and the appearances of religious symbols at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex. Although some of the issues were eventually resolved (the Carmelite nuns moved to a different building further away from the main camp and the Auschwitz Museum set a new policy in 1997 to remove all religious symbols from the grounds within the barbed wire fences), these events had severely strained the Jewish-Christians relations of the 1980s and still require our attention and some mending. Too many prejudices, religious polemics, insensitive comments, impulsive actions, and uncaring judgments had transpired during those years, poisoning the climate and escalating traditional misconceptions of the respective "Other." At the root of the problem, the editors of Continuing Agony maintain, lies the anti-Jewish legacy of Christianity. But insensitive portrayals of and generalization about Polish people have contributed their share and did not soothe the politically and religiously volatile situation. Whereas "on the Jewish side, there has been a tendency to view all Poles as murderers, as if they not the German Nazis had built the death camps," (p. 10) on the Christian side, there must be a commitment to identify and eliminate "antisemitic elements of Christian theologies" (p. 9). Berger, Cargas, and Nowak set themselves the task of countering the distorted views of the "Other" through unflinching analysis and a commitment to search for constructive theological alternatives. The idea behind the book is noble. In many ways, it recalls the fairly comprehensive volume on the same subject, Memory Offended: The Auschwitz Convent Controversy (edited by Carol Rittner and John K. Roth, 1991). Continuing Agony seems to have been conceived of as an augmentation and appendage rather than a revision or refutation of Rittner's and Roth's earlier work. Inevitably, it goes over some of the same grounds but benefits from looking at an additional ten years of continued public debates between and among theologians, church officials and the general populace, as well as Jewish thinkers and Polish clergy, intellectuals and journalists. The Continuing Agony is more of a collection of resources than a book with a cohesive intellectual, political, or theological agenda. Its strength is that it brings together a variety of voices and documents (a total of 26 entries), ranging from critical reflections by religious scholars known in the dialogue community in North America (like John Pawlikowski, Jacob Neusner, Harry James Cargas, and Eugene Fisher), to translated documents and letters from significant voices in Poland (Cardinal Josef Glemp, Archbishop Henryle Muszynski, and Stanislaw Musial, S.J.), and official statements, such as the Papal letter to the Carmelite nuns, the declaration of a dialogue committee of German Catholics, or the announcement by the National Polish American-Jewish Council concerning the placement of crosses at Auschwitz. The book's strength is also its major weakness. It is virtually impossible to read straight through because of its repetitiveness. …


For bilateral cochlear implant (BiCI) users, understanding a target talker in noisy situations is difficult. Current efforts for improving speech-in-noise understanding have focused on improving signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by multi-microphone techniques and signal processing, with only moderate improvement in performance. BiCI users typically report having a "better ear" for listening and recent data collected in our lab has shown that they have an asymmetry in speech unmasking performance. This work proposes a novel listening strategy for improving speech-in-noise understanding by combining: (1) a priori knowledge of a "better ear" and having a BiCI user selectively attend to a target talker in that ear; with (2) signal processing that delivers the target talker to the "better" ear and the noisy background to the opposite ear. We compared performance on a speech-in-noise test with and without this "better ear" strategy, using a virtual auditory space created from individualized head-related transfer func...


The industrial distiller's grains obtained from sorghum to ethanol have the characteristic of abundant nutrient and high cellulose composition, which make it suitable for resource utilization. This study is to use distiller's grains to produce lactic acid by simultaneous saccharification and fermentation(SSF), not only for finding the new way for the reclamation utilization of distiller's grains, but also for searching new low-cost raw materials for lactic acid production. The result showed that lactic acid can be produced from distiller's grains by SSF at 50°C. The reducing sugar consumption and lactic acid production were investigated. The results indicate that the lactic acid conversion rate was appropriately about 77.6%. The dissoluble solid increased after fermentation, which is about one time higher than the initial value. Then single factor test was used to optimize fermentation condition. Maximum concentration of lactic acid which was obtained with adjusting pH by ammonia to 6.0 for every 24h, and the 2.1% inoculum size of lactobacillus casei can reach to 32.8g/L.


The purpose of this research was to review possible benefit of information ecology concepts for information usage. Ecological change in information science is explained in line with other changes (cognitive, social, and contextual). The research expands an understanding of human information behaviour in the electronic environment with knowledge of information styles, relevance judgments, and academic repositories in the information ecology perspective.
Earlier empirical data based on users' surveys, interviews with PhD students and managers are synthesised. Information styles and relevance in traditional and electronic environments are compared. Concept mapping, with the use of CMaps, is applied to structure of topics in a textbook and in final theses. Ecological information usage, ecological relevance and ecological information literacy are determined. Ecological information usage represents concepts, visual thinking and implicit meanings. Two examples of concept maps as ecological tools for learning support and information literacy are mentioned. In conclusion implications for information literacy, learning, design of digital libraries, and personal information management are outlined.


Background: People who have been administrated radiopharmaceuticals could be a source of radiation to their relatives, medical nurses, and people who are in contact with them. The aim of this work was to estimate radiation dose received by nuclear medicine nurses. Materials and Methods: In this study, the dose rates at various distances of 5 – 100 cm from 70 patients, who were administered diagnostic amounts of 201 Tl-Chloride and 99m Tc-MIBI, were measured using an ionization chamber. For determination of external radiation dose to the nurses, three different time intervals were used for measurements. Results: The maximum values of external dose rates of 201 Tl and 99m Tc-MIBI were 11.2 µSv/h ±2.3 and 43.1µSv/h ±11.9 respectively, at 5cm from the patients. Significant exposure from patients after injection of 99m Tc-MIBI was limited to the day of administration. Departure dose rate of 201 Tl fell gradually; so, it became significant by 3 days after administration. Maximum and average absorbed dose of nuclear medicine staff from 201 Tl, was 4.6 and 2.7 µSv/h, and for 99m Tc-MIBI was 18.1 and 9.8 µSv/h in each scan. Conclusion: Significant exposure from the patients is limited to the few hours after administration, therefore patients should be recommended to urinate frequently before leaving the nuclear medicine department. Iran. J. Radiat. Res., 2004; 2 (2): 59-62


The goal of this study is to create an optimized Blalock-Taussig shunt used to temporarily repair pulmonary vascular blockages allowing a child time to grow so a more permanent surgical repair of the heart and vasculature can be performed. Blalock-Taussig or BT shunts are a surgical procedure performed on infants suffering from cyanosis or "Blue Baby Syndrome." A BT shunt is an artificial vessel placed between the right ventricle and the pulmonary artery to increase blood flow in the lung and blood oxygen saturation levels. In a study of 96 patients with currently in use modified BT shunts, 32 patients (21%) had greater than 50% stenosis caused by myofibroblastic proliferation at the shunt lumen due to shunt geometry [1]. A 2007 study by the cardiac surgery division of Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions found an operative mortality rate of 14% (227 of 1,574) with patients undergoing BT surgery [2].
 In this paper, the flow of blood through several different BT shunt configurations from actual patient data was analyzed using the commercial CFD software ANSYS Fluent. Results from each shunt's analysis were then compared to determine the shunt parameters with optimal flow dynamics for use in infants suffering from pulmonary vascular blockage. It was found that the entrance boundary of current BT shunts caused blood flow hindrances due to high wall shear values and flow separation. A newly designed shunt was proven to partially fix this problem; however, a superior model could be optimized by using characteristics from currently used shunts and CFD results. Many iterations and designs of BT shunts were made using Solidworks, a solid modeling computer-aided design program, and were tested using Fluent to create a shunt optimized by smoothening the transition between areas of high and low wall shear stress, lowering the overall maximum wall shear stress, reducing flow separation, and equalizing the flow to the left and right lung. All these factors contribute to the chance of thrombosis and morbidity within patients. The resultant model shunt showed drastic improvement in lowering the average wall shear stress by more than 85% at the initial boundary with over 20% drop in overall average wall shear. It also achieved a decline of the maximum wall shear stress by over 25% while negating the possibility of any flow separation and improving the equality in flow to the left and right lung by more than 60%.


We describe the design, realization and first sea trials of a small-sized Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) for environmental monitoring. The robot is being developed in the framework of the HydroNet European project [1] aiming at realizing a new multi-robot system for monitoring the quality of coastal waters, rivers and lagoons. One main innovation of the robot is the capability to measure heavy metals concentrations directly onboard using sensors ad hoc developed by the consortium. This enables the system to provide real-time measurements of heavy metals concentrations potentially changing the current water monitoring methodology in which the samples are collected by a dedicated boat and analyzed in laboratory. The robot is designed for long range missions and for lodging the onboard water analysis system. Some severe constraints imposed by the addressed scenarios are considered in the design: reduced length and limited weight for ease of transportability and deployment; low draft and protected propellers to enable the ASV to move safely in shallow waters with likely floating obstacles such as plastic bags.


The third branch of our federal government has traditionally been viewed as the least of the three in terms of the scope of its power and authority. This view finds validation when one considers the extensive authority that Congress has been permitted to exercise over the Federal Judiciary. From the beginning, Congress has understood itself to possess the authority to limit the jurisdiction of inferior federal courts. The Supreme Court has acquiesced to this understanding of congressional authority without much thought or explanation.It may be possible, however, to imagine a more robust vision of the Judicial Power through closer scrutiny of the history and text of Article III of the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution vests the Judicial Power of the United States exclusively in "one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." This Article reviews historical evidence that reveals that delegates to the Federal Convention considered and rejected language that would have given Congress express authority to manipulate the jurisdiction of inferior federal courts. This fact, coupled with repeated indications by the Framers and by the delegates to state ratifying conventions that the independence of the Judicial Branch from each of the other branches was of paramount importance, may give some weight to an understanding of the Judicial Power that challenges — or at least may moderate — our understanding of Congress's authority to withhold from the inferior federal courts some portion of the Judicial Power vested in them under Article III.


We describe a general axiomatic way to define functions of class $C^k$, $k\in \bold N \cup\{\infty \}$ on topological abelian groups. In the category of Banach spaces, this definition coincides with the usual one. The advantage of this axiomatic approach is that one can dispense with the notion of norms and limit procedures. The disadvantage is that one looses the derivative, which is replaced by a local linearizing factor. As an application we use this approach to define $C^\infty$ functions in the setting of graded/super manifolds.


The mass density of nanowires is determined using in situ resonance frequency experiments combined with quasi-static nanotensile tests. Our results reveal an average mass density of 7.36 g/cm3, which is below the theoretical density of bulk cobalt. The results are discussed in terms of the measurement accuracy and the microstructure of the nanowires.


We apply semi-supervised topic modeling techniques to detect health-related discussions in everyday telephone conversations, which has applications in large-scale epidemiological studies and for clinical interventions for older adults. The privacy requirements associated with utilizing everyday telephone conversations preclude manual annotations; hence, we explore semi-supervised methods in this task. We adopt a semi-supervised version of Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to guide the learning process. Within this framework, we investigate a strategy to discard irrelevant words in the topic distribution and demonstrate that this strategy improves the average F-score on the in-domain task and an out-of-domain task (Fisher corpus). Our results show that the increase in discussion of health related conversations is statistically associated with actual medical events obtained through weekly selfreports.


The Assess By Computer (ABC) project (Sargeant et al 2004) follows a Human-Computer Collaborative (HCC) approach to assessment. We focus on constructed answers such as text and diagrams rather than answers requiring mere selection between alternatives. The HCC assessment process is an active collaboration between humans and a software system, where the software does the routine work and the humans make the important judgements. Similar approaches in Artificial Intelligence research are developed in Englebart 1962, Grosz 2004, and Potter et al 2004, among others.
Our students, through their answers to questions, also implicitly collaborate in the development of resources. We can develop marking support tools which handle the nature and range of variation found in real exam data, and we can adapt marking judgements and feedback - even, in the longer term, our teaching material - in the light of what students really say.
In this paper we focus on the reality of student text answers. We present student data from on-line examinations showing a remarkably wide range of acceptable answers to even the most straightforward of questions. We show how the analysis of these examples is supported by the ABC tools, especially the Keyword Manager and answer clustering options.


We present a distance measurement method based on stereo vision system while guaranteeing accuracy and reliability. It has been considered as difficult problem to measure both long and short distance with a stereo vision system accurately due to sampling error and camera sensor error. To resolve these problems of the stereo vision system, we utilize an algorithm which is consisted of a modified sub-pixel displacement method to enhance the accuracy of disparity and strong tracking Kalman filter (STKF) to reduce the camera sensor errors. Our displacement method and the usefulness of STKF are verified as compared to other displacement methods and conventional Kalman filter (CKF) through simulating on the several distance ranges. The Monte-Carlo simulation results show that our algorithm is capable of measuring up to hundreds of meters while root mean square error (RMSE) maintains about 0.04 at all ranges, even though the target vehicle maneuvers or moves nonlinearly.