SUMMARY Focal mechanisms of seismic sources in anisotropic media are more complicated than in isotropic media. Planar shear faulting produces pure double-couple (DC) mechanism in isotropy, but generally non-double-couple (non-DC) mechanism in anisotropy. The non-DC mechanism can comprise both the isotropic (ISO) and compensated linear vector dipole (CLVD) components. The amount of the ISO and CLVD components depends on strength and symmetry of anisotropy and on the orientation of faulting. Shear faulting in anisotropy generates a pure DC mechanism, provided that faulting is situated in symmetry planes of orthorhombic or of higher anisotropy symmetries. The fault plane solution, i.e. the orientation of the fault normal and the slip direction, can be retrieved from the seismic moment tensor and from elastic parameters describing anisotropy at the source. Numerical modelling shows that shear faulting in anisotropic rocks present in the Earth crust, the Earth mantle or in the subduction zones can produce mostly mechanisms with the CLVD up to 30 per cent and with the ISO up to 15 per cent. The fault plane solutions calculated under the assumption of isotropy typically deviate from the true solutions by an angle of 5 ◦ to 10 ◦ .


The solution structure of the nonpalindromic dodecanucleotide homopyrimidine:homopurine, d(5'-TTTCTCCTTTCT):d(5'-AGAAAGGAGAAA), was determined by two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy combined with molecular simulation. The dodecamer sequence studied was found within the HIV-1 envelope sequence and had all four Gs substituted by A in two hypermutants. A set of low-energy B-DNA conformations satisfying the quantitative NOE data were obtained. These highly related structure had neither peculiar helical parameters for the base pairs nor axis curvature. Analysis of the dihedral angles (epsilon-zeta) suggests that the A stretches flanking the GpA dinucleotides were more flexible.


We investigate the fault tolerant control problem and propose an intelligent online sliding mode control strategy using artificial neural networks to handle the desired trajectories tracking problem for systems suffering from catastrophic faults or incipient failures. The approach is to continuously monitor the system performance and identify the system's current state by using a fault detection method based upon our best knowledge of the nominal system and nominal controller. Once a fault is detected, the proposed intelligent controller will adjust its control signal by adding a corrective sliding mode control signal to confine the system performance within a boundary layer. Meanwhile, an artificial neural network is initialized and compensates for the unknown fault dynamics online. When the online learning process converges, the control input is tuned again by using the output of the identification model and a new least upper bound for the remaining uncertainty is estimated to further reduce the tracking error.


In this letter, we prove that the dynamical model of a quadrotor subject to linear rotor drag effects is differentially flat in its position and heading. We use this property to compute feedforward control terms directly from a reference trajectory to be tracked. The obtained feedforward terms are then used in a cascaded, nonlinear feedback control law that enables accurate agile flight with quadrotors. Compared to the state-of-the-art control methods, which treat the rotor drag as an unknown disturbance, our method reduces the trajectory tracking error significantly. Finally, we present a method based on a gradient-free optimization to identify the rotor drag coefficients, which are required to compute the feedforward control terms. The new theoretical results are thoroughly validated trough extensive comparative experiments.


Abstract. Hydroxyl radicals play a central role in the troposphere as they control the lifetime of many trace gases. Measurement of OH reactivity (OH loss rate) is important to better constrain the OH budget and also to evaluate the completeness of measured VOC budget. Total atmospheric OH reactivity was measured for the first time in an European Megacity: Paris and its surrounding areas with 12 million inhabitants, during the MEGAPOLI winter campaign 2010. The method deployed was the Comparative Reactivity Method (CRM). The measured dataset contains both measured and calculated OH reactivity from CO, NOx and VOCs measured via PTR-MS, GC-FID and GC-MS instruments. The reactivities observed in Paris covered a range from 10 s−1 to 130 s−1, indicating a large loading of chemical reactants. The present study showed that, when clean marine air masses influenced Paris, the purely local OH reactivity (20 s−1) is well explained by the measured species. Nevertheless, when there is a continental import of air masses, high levels of OH reactivity were obtained (120–130 s−1) and the missing OH reactivity measured in this case jumped to 75%. Using covariations of the missing OH reactivity to secondary inorganic species in fine aerosols, we suggest that the missing OH reactants were most likely highly oxidized compounds issued from photochemically processed air masses of anthropogenic origin.


Abstract
 This study, the fifth in a series investigating palynological characters in angiosperms, aims to explore the distribution of states for 19 pollen characters on five early diverging orders of Superasteridae (Berberidopsidales, Caryophyllales, Cornales, Ericales, and Santalales) plus Dilleniales. To illustrate the character states found in the pollen of this group, we examined pollen grains of 15 species exemplifying 15 families across all studied orders using light, scanning, and transmission electron microscopy. We reconstructed the phylogeny of the early diverging Superasteridae and related taxa with eight genetic markers for 172 genera, using maximum likelihood (ML) analysis. Nineteen pollen characters were coded for the genera used in this phylogeny and compiled into two morphological matrices using two coding strategies. The characters were then optimized on the newly generated ML tree plus two constrained trees differing in the position of Dilleniales, using three methods of inference. Taxa in this grade show a striking diversity of pollen morphologies, particularly in certain characters such as size, tectum sculpture, and aperture number. The plesiomorphic condition for the early diverging Superasteridae is unambiguously and consistently inferred to comprise monad-dispersed, isopolar, spheroidal, circular in outline, equatorially arranged, tricolpate pollen grains with granular aperture membranes, a smooth tectum, and endexine present. We identify diagnostic character states and synapomorphies for several monophyletic groups, and explore the palynological evidence that may shed light on some unresolved relationships. For example, the hypothesis that Dilleniales is sister to Superrosidae is better supported than alternative hypotheses, being consistent with a number of shared palynological state changes including transitions to presence of costae, reticulate tectum, and columellar infratectum structure. Across this part of the angiosperm phylogeny, most state transitions occur repeatedly, and their frequency varies among both clades and characters. We discuss the impact of optimization method, tree topology, and coding strategy upon ancestral state reconstruction.


The chalcogenides of tin and lead (SnS, SnSe, SnTe, PbS, PbSe, and PbTe) have applications ranging from solar cells to thermoelectrics. Taking rocksalt structured PbTe(001) as the substrate, we explore the coherent (001)-oriented heteroepitaxy of the other five IV-VI semiconductors through first-principles electronic structure calculations. We investigate the effects of lattice strain and its relationship to the interface energy, as well as the electron redistribution, as a function of the epilayer thickness [from 1 to 5 monolayers (ML)] below the dislocation critical point. Analysis of the chemical bonding explains trends including work function shifts and surface rumpling. Among the five combinations studied SnTe/PbTe(001) has the smallest lattice mismatch, resulting in the most stable coherent interface and unique charge transfer behavior. Here, we perform orbital-resolved band structure calculations (with spin-orbit coupling effects) for the SnTe/PbTe(001) system, highlighting its potential use in topological spintronic thin-film devices.


Kiwifruit is considered a climacteric fruit since exogenous ethylene induces ripening-associated changes. However, we previously reported that low temperature modulated ripening in kiwifruit since ripening occurred faster during storage at 5°C compared to 20°C, in the absence of any detectable ethylene. It is therefore not clear which temperature is suitable for long-term storage of kiwifruit. The purpose of this study was to determine the optimum temperature for long-term storage, and analysis of ripening-related genes in 'Rainbow Red' kiwifruit. Kiwifruit were harvested at commercial maturity, and stored at either 0, 2, 5 or 22°C in ethylene-free chambers. During storage, incidence of fruit deterioration and changes in fruit firmness, soluble solids concentration (SSC) and titratable acidity (TA) were monitored at 4-week intervals. Real-time PCR was also conducted to analyze the changes in expression of selected ripening-related genes. Incidence of fruit fast senescence and deterioration was high at 22°C, so kiwifruit could only be stored for a maximum of 8 weeks. Nevertheless, healthy fruit at 22°C remained firm and maintained high TA for 8 weeks. The incidence of ethylene-producing fruit, and consequent fast senescence, was greatly reduced at 5°C, while it was completely suppressed at 0 and 2°C. Fruit at 5°C decreased in firmness and TA faster, attaining eating-ripe quality within 8 weeks. At 2°C, fruit decreased in firmness and TA gradually, achieving eating-ripe quality after 12 weeks. Conversely, fruit at 0°C maintained higher firmness and TA, and did not attain eating-ripe quality even after 12 weeks. SSC increased at all storage temperatures, although the lowest levels were observed in fruit at 0°C. Real-Time PCR analysis revealed that cell-wall-modifying genes (AcPG, AcPL2, AcEXP1 and AcXET2) and carbohydrate-metabolism-associated genes (Acβ-AMY1 and Acβ-AMY2) were markedly induced in fruit at 5°C. Overall, these results indicate that 0°C is the suitable temperature for long-term storage of kiwifruit, while 2°C is suitable for medium-term storage. For short-term storage, 5°C can be recommended.


The emergence of features plays a key role in any theory of phonological development that does not assume that they are innately available before the onset of speech. After reviewing Jakobson's claims for universal orders of emergence, we consider possible criteria for feature or segment acquisition, and then discuss data from nearly 50 children (10 languages including Estonian, Finnish, Japanese, and Welsh as well as several Germanic and Romance languages). Small early vocabularies and phonetic variability make minimal pairs rare in most children. While a few children show clear evidence of utilizing features or segments, others show none, and most fall between these extremes. Gradually increasing evidence of segmental structure and systematicity reflects the slow transition to a more orderly phonology. These data support an emergentist model of feature acquisition that has many possible routes to (re-)creating phonological organization within the individual child's mind.


Much contemporary legal scholarship on human rights sees the lapses between rhetoric and reality, symbol and substance, and rights-talk and rights-action, as human rights law's greatest deficiency. That approach, however, fails to acknowledge the power of the human rights vocabulary to change people's political commitments, and with them, especially in democratic states, the authority, meaning, and ultimately, effectiveness of human rights law. Yet the power of language cuts both way: it is both constitutive and distortive of rights. This chapter, which is part of an edited collection by Mike Hanne and Robert Weisberg, entitled Narrative and Metaphor in Law (forthcoming, 2017), explores how narrative and metaphor provide the literary, cognitive, and cultural frames for events and issues to be understood as part of human rights law. Metaphor, in particular, is understood not simply as an ornament to language, but as a fundamental scheme by which people conceptualize and organize their moral, social, and legal worlds.
With this contribution in mind, this paper examines a metaphor which frequently accompanies rights talk: the metaphor of "the queue". The queue, or waiting line or wait list, is ubiquitous in modern, especially urban, life. It distributes resources, usually on a first-come, first-served basis, in conditions of scarcity or where simultaneous provision is not possible. For example, surgery wait lists for health care or waiting lines in the emergency room, housing wait lists or the waiting lines for shelters, or visa entry wait lists for immigration, or for deportation, are all pivotal aspects of human rights law configured by a queue. The common experience of participating in other queues, in transport, recreation, or other contexts, helps to explain the metaphor's resonance.
And yet, the metaphor's connection with rights provokes disagreement around notions of entitlement. The queue institutionalizes, but also discredits, the political and social reordering compelled by human rights law. By using examples of "queue talk" around the constitutional right to housing in South Africa, the paper examines how the queue metaphor occupies the doctrinal vacuum of the obligation to "progressively realize" certain human rights, particularly economic and social rights, and particularly when positive obligations are at issue. Moreover, it explores how the metaphor exaggerates the state provision of a good or service, rather than the state's regulatory, or private law, levers of control. In each respect, the queue metaphor reveals severe limits on what human rights law makes possible.


We recently reported a new method for the direct dehydrogenative C-H silylation of heteroaromatics utilizing Earth-abundant potassium tert-butoxide. Herein we report a systematic experimental and computational mechanistic investigation of this transformation. Our experimental results are consistent with a radical chain mechanism. A trialkylsilyl radical may be initially generated by homolytic cleavage of a weakened Si-H bond of a hypercoordinated silicon species as detected by IR, or by traces of oxygen which can generate a reactive peroxide by reaction with [KOt-Bu]4 as indicated by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Radical clock and kinetic isotope experiments support a mechanism in which the C-Si bond is formed through silyl radical addition to the heterocycle followed by subsequent β-hydrogen scission. DFT calculations reveal a reasonable energy profile for a radical mechanism and support the experimentally observed regioselectivity. The silylation reaction is shown to be reversible, with an equilibrium favoring products due to the generation of H2 gas. In situ NMR experiments with deuterated substrates show that H2 is formed by a cross-dehydrogenative mechanism. The stereochemical course at the silicon center was investigated utilizing a 2H-labeled silolane probe; complete scrambling at the silicon center was observed, consistent with a number of possible radical intermediates or hypercoordinate silicates.


Much effort in life-history theory has been addressed to the dependence of life-history traits on age, especially the phenomenon of senescence and its evolution. Although senescent declines in survival are well documented in humans and in domestic and laboratory animals, evidence for their occurrence and importance in wild animal species remains limited and equivocal. Several recent papers have suggested that methodological issues may contribute to this problem, and have encouraged investigators to improve sampling designs and to analyse their data using recently developed approaches to modelling of capture-mark-recapture data. Here we report on a three-year, two-site, mark-recapture study of known-aged common terns (Sterna hirundo) in the north-eastern USA. The study was nested within a long-term ecological study in which large numbers of chicks had been banded in each year for > 25 years. We used a range of models to test the hypothesis of an influence of age on survival probability. We also tested for a possible influence of sex on survival. The cross-sectional design of the study (one year's parameter estimates) avoided the possible confounding of effects of age and time. The study was conducted at a time when one of the study sites was being colonized and numbers were increasing rapidly. We detected two-way movements between the sites and estimated movement probabilities in the year for which they could be modelled. We also obtained limited data on emigration from our study area to more distant sites. We found no evidence that survival depended on either sex or age, except that survival was lower among the youngest birds (ages 2-3 years). Despite the large number of birds included in the study (1599 known-aged birds, 2367 total), confidence limits on estimates of survival probability were wide, especially for the oldest age-classes, so that a slight decline in survival late in life could not have been detected. In addition, the cross-sectional design of this study meant that a decline in survival probability within individuals (actuarial senescence) could have been masked by heterogeneity in survival probability among individuals (mortality selection). This emphasizes the need for the development of modelling tools permitting separation of these two phenomena, valid under field conditions in which the recapture probabilities are less than one.


One answer to increase wood production is by increasing management intensity on existing timberland, especially in plantation forests. Another is to convert land currently in agriculture to timberland. Short-rotation woody crops can be used in both cases. But, what are the environmental consequences? Short-rotation woody crops can provide a net improvement in environmental quality at both local and global scales. Conversion of agricultural land to short-rotation woody crops can provide the most environmental quality enhancement by reducing erosion, improving soil quality, decreasing runoff, improving groundwater quality, and providing better wildlife habitat. Forest products companies can use increased production from intensively managed short-rotation woody crop systems to offset decreased yield from the portion of their timberland that is managed less intensively, e.g. streamside management zones and other ecologically sensitive or unique areas. At the global scale, use of short-rotation woody crops for bioenergy is part of the solution to reduce greenhouse gases produced by burning fossil fuels. Incorporating short-rotation woody crops into the agricultural landscape also increases storage of carbon in the soil, thus reducing atmospheric concentrations. In addition, use of wood instead of alternatives such as steel, concrete, and plastics generally consumes less energy and produces less greenhouse gases. Cooperative research can be used to achieve energy, fiber, and environmental goals. This paper will highlight several examples of ongoing cooperative research projects that seek to enhance the environmental aspects of short-rotation woody crop systems. Government, industry, and academia are conducting research to study soil quality, use of mill residuals, nutrients in runoff and groundwater, and wildlife use of short-rotation woody crop systems in order to assure the role of short-rotation crops as a sustainable way of meeting society`s needs.


In 1972 Italy: The New Domestic Landscape: Achievements and Problems of Italian Design opened at MoMA in New York. Curated by the Argentine architect Emilio Ambasz, the exhibition is seen as a landmark show; celebrated both as a survey of Italy's leadership in the post-war design marketplace and as an showcase of the growing critical approach that its architects were taking towards their increasingly commercial and industry-orientated profession. This was most evident in the "environments" section, the eleven specially commissioned visions for the future of domesticity designed by leading and emerging architects of the day, from Mario Bellini and Gae Aulenti to Gaetano Pesce and Ettore Sottsass.

This essay focuses on two of these visions; Joe Colombo's 'Total Furnishing Unit', the last design of a celebrated product designer who died a year before the exhibition opened and Superstudio's 'Life Without Objects', one of the most well known works of these key figures in Italy's Radical Architecture movement. These two environments could be seen to represent the two extremes of the utopianism that pervaded this model architecture: the bright yellow plastic blocks of the former, in which rooms could be moved according to the users' needs, affirmed a faith in technology; the other negates the ideas of rooms, and even houses, in preference of a neo-primitivist, nomadic lifestyle. Yet these differences mask shared concerns. Both were responses to a problematic society; for Colombo, it was the uncontrolled expansion of cities and the damage to both nature and man's environment and for Superstudio, it was the alienation inherent in Italy's consumerist society. Both Colombo and Superstudio advocated the need for a domestic architecture that went beyond superficial needs and which put man at its centre.

Taken altogether, the Italy: New Domestic Landscape environments not only represent the range of Italian avant-garde concepts of the domestic in the 1970s but also demonstrate how Italy's architects appropriated the domestic as a physical and conceptual site to comment on contemporary society; an understanding of the centrality of the home in a wider socio-economic and political context that could provide valuable lessons today.


Research in the psychology of music dealing with expression is often concerned with the discrete aspects of music performance, and mainly concentrates on the study of piano music (partly because of the ease with which piano music can be reduced to discrete note events). However, on other instruments, what happens during and in-between notes can be even more relevant then the realization of the note onsets and offsets, an issue not often addressed in music psychology. A noteworthy exception is the work of Seashore (1938) who pointed out the importance of continuous aspects in music performance. However, while the current availability of signal processing techniques makes the continuous modulation signals (of e.g. pitch or dynamics) easier to extract, their shape is still quite complex. It is difficult to analyze and model them directly. In this presentation we describe an approach in which these signals are modeled by a composition of idealized components using an analysis-by-synthesis method (Desain & Honing, 1996). This proposed decomposition can be formalized and verified using the notion of generalized time functions that was developed for the construction of control functions for sound synthesis (Desain & Honing, 1992). Once modeled, the continuous behavior for each note and each transition can be expressed again as a discrete set of parameters, whose evolution over a series of notes can be linked to structural descriptions of the music. In this way we can adapt the methods developed specifically for discrete expressive attributes to the study of continuous aspects of musical expression.


Rho GTPases are molecular switches controlling many aspects of cell behaviour,
including cell cycle progression, cell division, migration and morphology. The activity
of Rho proteins is regulated by conformational changes induced by binding of guanine
nucleotides, with GTP-bound Rho being active and GDP-bound Rho inactive. Families
of regulatory proteins have evolved to catalyse cycling between these states. Guanine
nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs) catalyse nucleotide exchange, allowing GDP to
dissociate and GTP to bind to Rho, thus activating it. GTPase activating proteins
(GAPs) enhance the intrinsic GTPase activity of Rho, leading to GTP hydrolysis and
inactivation of Rho. Active GTP-bound Rho can interact with and regulate a number of
effector proteins, through which cellular responses are elicited.
Epithelial cells are a specialized cell type that form selectively permeable barriers
between different compartments of a multicellular organism, and thus play an important
role in tissue organization and homeostasis. The formation of cell-cell junctions,
including tight junctions and adherens junctions, is critical for this function.
Experiments carried out in model organisms and in cell culture have shown that Rho
GTPases are important regulators of epithelial morphogenesis. I sought to identify
components of the signalling pathways through which Rho GTPases regulate junction
formation. RNAi screens were carried out with siRNA libraries targeting Rho GEFs,
GAPs and effectors, using tight junction formation in the human bronchial epithelial
cell line 16HBE as readout. This approach led to the identification of three Rho effector
proteins required for junction formation, namely PRK2, PAK4 and PAR6B.


This study examines monetary transmission mechanisms in ASEAN countries, namely Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, for the period 1970:1- 2002:4. Views diverge among economists on how monetary policy variable affects the economic activity. The traditional theory explains that money is more important. Via interest rate, money affects the economy. However, it has been challenged by some economists who believe that bank credit has a major role. In addition, in a highly internationalized economy and mobility of capital is rapid, changes in exchange rate have major impact on output and prices but the effects have always been left out. Using analysis of cointegration and vector error correction model (VECM), the study estimates both aggregate and sectoral output to examine the channels. The findings resolve the dispute. Money, bank credit, interest rate and exchange rate significantly affect economic activity and active channels. Further evidence finds that highly liquid money (M1) is more influential in Malaysia and the Philippines. Broad money (M2) is more superior in Indonesia and Thailand. Singapore's well-developed financial market exhibits the importance of bank lending channel. Exchange rate is important particularly in Singapore and Malaysia's manufacturing sector. The Asian financial crisis in mid-1997 had significant impact on Malaysia and Thailand. Indonesia is more affected by the early 1980s financial reforms. Oil price shock in 1979-1981 has significant impact on the economy of Thailand. Only estimates on Malaysian sectoral output gave satisfactory results and were discussed. The findings found strong evidence that all the channels are important. The evidence highlights highly liquid money (M1) has stronger effects on the output of agricultural and manufacturing sectors. Broad money (M2) has greater impact on services output and credit is the main transmission mechanism in construction output. Notable finding is rapid modern sophisticated technological banking facilities have resulted in a fundamental change in the behavior of M1. All the channels are crucial and it is money that matters most.


Web-based learning (WBL) of the asynchronous type provides great potential for today's managers and professionals to upgrade their knowledge and skills. Managers and professional staff, unlike full-time students, have to balance work, family and learning commitments. However, most research focuses on full-time students, with less concern for managers and professional staff. In this study, we adopt the ethnographic method to conduct a case study of the learning behavior and experience of managers and professional staff in an asynchronous Web-based Strategic Management course. Taking an interpretive stance, we reach several important findings: contingencies exist and influence learning behavior; deadlines play a significant but different role for different learners; learners spend more time and effort on an asynchronous Web-based course; learners adopt different strategies and build for themselves different combinations from the same set of teaching materials; and learners struggle to create for themselves a "classroom" where none in fact exists. These findings are substantial and contribute greatly to our understanding of how managers and professional staff learn in the asynchronous WBL environment.


The concept of democratic participation has been receiving wide attention over the past few years — both in Germany and at the European level. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for social and corporate praxis where practical implementation of the idea encounters ingrained resistance and reservations from different groups. On the one hand, the trades unions are afraid that forms of direct democratic involvement will act in competition to the institutionalized forms of in-company codetermination; on the other, many managers — having discovered that worker involvement is a good way to improve both productivity and quality — are simultaneously opposed to the transfer to the grass roots of any real responsibility or decision making rights. Nevertheless, the narrow use of employee participation as a mere management strategy should not obscure our view of the opportunities for self-organization, democratization and personal development that are inherent to democratic participation.


This text seeks to show how theory can be used to enrich the reading of texts; but it starts off with both and advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage is that the literary fantastic is automatically accepted as an interesting object of study. The (potential) disadvantage is that there is little consensus on what constitutes fantasy: romantic fiction?; science fiction?; children's anthromorphic books?; gothic horror?. This study demonstrates the sterility of that approach and focuses instead on the role of the fantastic as "an uncertain and ambiguous problematizing of the accepted conventions of normal reality". With that understanding, it becomes possible not only to look at work in the fantasy genre (however defined) but also at the use of fantasy as a "narrative strategy" in otherwise "straight fiction". Texts such as Lewis Carroll's "Alice" works and Doris Lessing's "Briefing for a Descent into Hell" and Iain Banks' "The Bridge" are discussed.


In this report we detail the activities and research insights of the funded project "Who represents the Arab world online? Using the case of Wikipedia to map and measure local knowledge production and representation in the Middle East and North Africa." We highlight the persistent information asymmetries between the MENA region and much of the developed world. We explore this through the use of data from Wikipedia and the Wikimedia foundation that has been extensively processed using a variety of tools from computer science. We augment this analysis with a series of qualitative insights discerned from two workshops with active Wikipedians in the MENA region. These workshops also served as forms of capacity building.In general, we believe that editing Wikipedia is an intensive task that is dominated by the global North and replete with a great deal of barriers to entry. It is nevertheless a key activity for future development of a stable information ecology within the MENA region. This is especially valid given how extensively Wikipedia is used across the web in sites such as Facebook and Google.We believe that capacity building among key Wikipedians can create greater understanding and offset much of the emotional labour required to sustain activity on the site in the face of intense arguments and ideological biases. However, we also believe that a distinct lack of sources both owning to a lack of legitimacy for MENA journalism and a paucity of open access government documents inhibit further growth in this area. Future work should be dedicated to these issues of support for active existing Wikipedians and knowledge sharing of Canada's best practices in information sharing to facilitate accelerated growth of geographic content in the MENA region. But the ultimate difference will come from increased diffusion of broadband internet technology as demonstrated through several statistical models. We articulate local exceptions to this rule, but remain committed to an overall strategy of capacity building and broadband diffusion.


Communicating data within the graphic processing unit (GPU) memory system and between the CPU and GPU are major bottlenecks in accelerating Krylov solvers on GPUs. Communication-avoiding techniques reduce the communication cost of Krylov subspace methods by computing several vectors of a Krylov subspace "at once," using a kernel called "matrix powers." The matrix powers kernel is implemented on a recent generation of NVIDIA GPUs and speedups of up to 5.7 times are reported for the communication-avoiding matrix powers kernel compared to the standards prase matrix vector multiplication (SpMV) implementation.


Range condition score or classification does not tell us, in a general sense, much of what managers and the public want to know about rangelands. Range condition is not a reliable indicator, across all rangelands, of biodiversity, erosion potential, nutrient cycling, value for wildlife species, or productivity. Succession, the basis for the current concept of range condition is not an adequate yardstick for evaluation of rangelands. The Society for Range Management (SRM) established the Task Group on Unity in Concepts and Terminology which has developed new concepts tor evaluation of the status of rangelands. These concepts are based on the premise that the most important and basic physical resource on each ecological site is the soil. If sufficient soil is lost from an ecological site, the potential of the site is changed. The Task Group made three recommendations, which were adopted by the SRM: 1) evaluations of rangelands should be made from the basis of the same land unit classification, ecological site; 2) plant communities likely to occur on a site should be evaluated for protection of that site against accelerated erosion (Site Conservation Rating, [SCR]); and 3) selection of a Desired Plant Community (DPC) for an ecological site should be made considering both SCR and management objectives for that site.


Scientists and their supporters often portray as exasperatingly irrational all those laypersons who refuse to accede to practical recommendations issued by expert scientists and 'science appliers' (e.g., public health authorities and regulators). After first considering the latter groups' standard explanations for such non-deference, which focus upon irrationalities besetting the laity, I will propose that a better explanation for at least some of the non-deference is that many laypersons are rationally electing to substitute their own judgments for those urged upon them by the scientific community.
Science-based recommendations, as I treat them, have the general form
In light of the science on X, if you seek outcome O, you ought to V.
Non-deferring laypersons deny the soundness or cogency of the V-supporting argumentation—though they are supposedly not competent to do so, given their gross epistemic inferiority to the scientific authorities who create and endorse the arguments. On account of thus being epistemically irrational, they end up being instrumentally irrational, pursuing courses of action that are poor choices for serving their own interests (as well as broader societal interests).
The non-deferring laypersons are thought to violate two mandates of rationality: for internal deference to the underlying science as true (or probable) enough to constitute an unproblematic background for decisionmaking, and for external deference to the practical application of that science to the concrete extra-scientific circumstances in question. I claim that rationality does not require categorical adherence to these mandates.
In any given case, non-deference by some laypersons might be warranted by one or more of four distinct rationales.
1. Value-ladenness: The science-based recommendation discernibly (to these laypersons) includes non-scientific (political, legal, moral, or prudential) value-choice or value-weighting assumptions. It embodies a certain prioritizing of the plurality of specific values packed within its O parameter (which is typically stated either generally, e.g. "health" or "safety," or not at all), and some laypersons may permissibly substitute their own.
2. Non-scientific-reasoning-ladenness: The science-based recommendation discernibly (to these laypersons) relies upon reasoning moves that are not distinctive to science, moves whose critical assessment demands no scientific expertise. Error-free reasoning is difficult to attain, and the laypersons may justifiably take themselves to have found weaknesses in the V-supporting argumentation that undermine the case for conformity to the recommendation.
3. Overgeneralization: The science-based recommendation discernibly (to these laypersons) is not adequately tailored to the specific situation of the laypersons in question.
4. Untrustworthy science: The science-based recommendation discernibly (to these laypersons) is based upon scientific research that is of doubtful quality.
The first three rationales cast doubt upon the External Deference Mandate, questioning not the existence of sound underlying research but the recommendation's judgments about how this research ought to be applied. The fourth is a challenge to the Internal Deference Mandate.


Abstract : This paper presents four short analyses performed by the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) for the National Commission on the Structure of the Air Force, which was established by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013. Each analysis addresses an issue raised by the Commission staff regarding possible changes to the use of Air Reserve Component (ARC) forces that could enhance the overall efficiency of the Air Force. Detailed papers on each issue follow this executive summary. The analyses address the following questions: What are the feasibility and cost implications of maintaining desired ARC strength levels with an ARC that is expected to be voluntarily activated one-sixth of the time? What are the cost implications of having a more Reserve-intensive F-16 force? What are the cost and availability implications of placing some Security Force assets in the ARC? What are the cost implications of using more ARC pilots to provide initial pilot training?


With the rapid development of technology, increasing amount of data has been produced from many fields of science, such as biology, neuroscience, and engineering. The inadequate sample is no longer a bottleneck of modern statistical research. More often, we are facing data of extremely high dimensionality or coming from remarkably different sources. How to effectively extract information from the large-scale and high-dimensional data or data with various types and formats poses new statistical challenges. In this thesis, I develop novel statistical method and theory to harness the various issues in analyzing the high-dimensional or multisource big data. More specifically, I propose a model-free variable screening method for high-dimensional data regression, a data level fusion method and a feature level fusion method to integrate multiple data sources for improved knowledge discovery. The consistency property in screening redundant variables and asymptotic property for the fused data are established respectively to provide theoretical underpinnings. The proposed methods are widely applied to many scientific investigations including genomic, epigenetic and metabolomic studies, and greatly help the scientific development in other disciplines. Index words: Big data analytics, variable screening, data fusion, bioinformatics. Dimension Reduction and Multisource Fusion for Big Data with Applications in Bioinformatics


This paper develops a model of distribution to analyze the effects of neoliberal globalization on labor in the developing countries. Distribution is determined via wage bargaining by workers, price setting by firms, and improvements in productivity. The full model has the nature of a Post-Keynesian conflicting claims model for an open economy under the pressure of globalization. The conflict inflation is extended to an open economy case with imported inputs, where the pass through effect of the depreciation of the local currency also becomes important. The variables that reflect the macroeconomic effects of globalization are modeled as parameters that affect the bargaining power of labor on two levels: the first group is related with the interaction with the global economy, i.e. international trade, and FDI. The second is about the domestic fiscal and monetary policy variables, which are particularly related to the specific form that globalization takes in the era of neoliberalism, i.e. government expenditures, and the interest rate. Then the model is solved for distribution of income, i.e. the wage share, thus a reduced form of the model is obtained, which is estimated in a companion paper to test whether the change in the international and domestic macroeconomic environment has affected the decline the labor's share.


Ranking of association rules is currently an interesting topic in data mining and bioinformatics. The huge number of evolved rules of items (or, genes) by association rule mining (ARM) algorithms makes confusion to the decision maker. In this article, we propose a weighted rule-mining technique (say, RANWAR or rank-based weighted association rule-mining) to rank the rules using two novel rule-interestingness measures, viz., rank-based weighted condensed support (wcs) and weighted condensed confidence (wcc) measures to bypass the problem. These measures are basically depended on the rank of items (genes). Using the rank, we assign weight to each item. RANWAR generates much less number of frequent itemsets than the state-of-the-art association rule mining algorithms. Thus, it saves time of execution of the algorithm. We run RANWAR on gene expression and methylation datasets. The genes of the top rules are biologically validated by Gene Ontologies (GOs) and KEGG pathway analyses. Many top ranked rules extracted from RANWAR that hold poor ranks in traditional Apriori, are highly biologically significant to the related diseases. Finally, the top rules evolved from RANWAR, that are not in Apriori, are reported.


This paper examines the architectural theory of 'planned communities' through a cross-disciplinary reading of Basil Spence's Claremont Court Housing Scheme (1959-1962) in Edinburgh. At the turn of the 1960s, Team X's theory of 'planned communities' echoed contemporary thinking in the social sciences about community design, by linking spatial arrangement and social behaviour. In particular, housing schemes' enclosed arrangements (such as the street, the square or the green) were believed to foster a sense of belonging to a community (Smithson and Smithson, 1962).

Drawing from the theory of 'planned communities', Claremont Court was designed as an inner-city development structured around two landscaped courtyards in order to foster a sense of community (Campbell et al., 2012). This original examination of the role of its communal spaces in nurturing community structures relates to a broader discourse on the linkages between architectural arrangement and social behaviour in post-war housing developments (Coleman, 1985; Newman, 1972). An initial stage of this work is based on Coleman's 'design variables' (e.g. type of corridors, position of the entrances, spatial organisation etc.), but its originality relies on a cross-disciplinary methodological approach. The research is qualitative in nature, and draws from various methods, including visual methods, open-ended interviews, and a participatory workshop with residents, in which the participants were asked to sketch their 'mental map' of the scheme, highlighting positive/negative aspect attached to these through simplified symbols.

A first analysis structured around Coleman's variables was followed by a second analysis of the data gathered through the participatory workshop. The findings of this examination allowed us to test the original intention of planning a community in the '60s with the current community life in Claremont Court. This work contributes to the still open debate on the idea of 'planned communities' (Moran 2012).


The main problems and priorities of regional social and economic development in Lithuania and other East – and Central European countries are described in the article. Innovation activities as the most important direction of regional development are analyzed too. The main priorities of regional development oriented policy are characterized as follows: • specialization of regional social, economic and technological development, • establishing and modernization of the networks and infrastructure of industrial enterpises and industrial knots, multiindustrial clusters, social oriented groups of factories as well as innovation centres, business incubators, science and technologies parks, investment and regional economic development agencies, • interregional and international cooperation with different regional economic and innovation systems, especially in EU. Idea of "oazis" policy in the regional development. Possibilities and necessity to prepare and realize regional development oriented national innovation policy are described in the article as well.


Highway geometric design has usually been considered in separate two-dimensional (2-D) projections of horizontal and vertical alignments. Such a practice was followed mainly because three-dimensional (3-D) analysis of combined highway alignments was expected to be difficult. As a result, the effect of ignoring the 3-D nature of the highway alignment could not be quantified. With the long-term objective of developing 3-D design practice, a framework for 3-D highway geometric design was developed and 3-D sight distance was extensively studied as the first design basis. The status of sight distance in current design policies and previous research is summarized, and mainly 2-D analysis was considered. The five main tasks performed to cover the 3-D highway sight distance are presented. (a) As a preliminary step, the 2-D sight distance on complex separate horizontal and vertical alignments was modeled, and the finite element method was used for the first time in the highway geometric design. (b) The 2-D models were then expanded to cover the daytime and nighttime sight distances on 3-D combined alignments. (c) The analytical models were coded into computer software that can determine the available sight distance on actual highway segments. (d) The models were applied in 3-D design of combined horizontal and vertical curves in cut-and-fill sections, and preliminary design aids were derived. (e) Finally, a new concept of red zones was suggested to mark the locations on alignments designed according to current practices where the available sight distance will drop below that required. A comprehensive work on 3-D sight distance analysis has been compiled that should be of great importance for highway researchers and professionals.


The relationship between the X-ray and optical variability in Seyfert galaxies by Elm´e Breedt Lategan Seyfert galaxies have been known to vary since shortly after their discovery, but the origin of the optical variability and its relationship to the X-rays, have not been well established. Presented here is a comprehensive comparison between the long term X-ray and optical emission in a sample of seven Seyfert galaxies, to determine the relationship between the X-ray and optical variations. It is shown that the observed optical variability is the sum of several independent mechanisms: the short time-scale variability is dominated by X-ray reprocessing, but variations intrinsic to the disc, such as propagating accretion rate fluctuations, add considerable variability power on long time-scales. Cross-correlation analysis reveal a statistically significant correlation between the X-ray and optical emission of all the galaxies under investigation, with the optical variations following the X-rays by 1–2 days. This time-scale is consistent with the expected light travel time from the central X-ray source to the optically emitting region of the accretion disc. Although this is a strong indicator of X-ray reprocessing by the disc, it is also clear that reprocessing cannot account for all the optical variations observed. At least one source displays clear long time-scale (years) variations in the optical with no apparent counterpart in the X-rays, and in others the long term optical amplitude exceed that of the X-rays. It is shown that these long time-scale optical variations must originate from an independent variability mechanism, possibly variations in the accretion rate or the geometry of the system. There is also evidence that there may be a significant contribution to the optical emission from as far out as the dust torus. Finally it is shown that there may be a dependence of the strength of the X-ray/optical correlation on the disc temperature and black hole mass.


Abstract Although cyber security has become widely recognized as a serious threat to our modern world, there are new threats to our security that combine cyber with other modes of "attack." This article explores the increasingly important theme in homeland and national security that future attacks will be multimodal, in particular including both a cyber and a physical component, where the cyber attack is intended to make it easier to succeed in the physical attack, and is not an end in itself. The article describes sample scenarios of combined cyber and physical attacks in two sectors where even just cyber security efforts have lagged behind: sports stadiums and the maritime transportation system. It presents an approach to comparing the risk of a combined cyber followed by physical attack and that of a "traditional" physical attack on the same target. It then analyzes the different stadium and maritime examples from the point of view of this risk assessment approach.


Experiments designed to separate the effect of atmospheric warming from the effect of shifts of the eddy‐driven jet on shortwave (SW) cloud feedback are performed with three global climate models (GCMs). In each model a warming simulation produces a robust SW cloud feedback dipole, with a negative (positive) feedback in the high‐latitudes (subtropics). The cloud brightening in high‐latitudes that characterizes warming simulations is not produced by jet shifts alone in any of the models, but is highly sensitive to perturbations of freezing temperature seen by the cloud microphysics scheme, indicating that thermodynamic mechanisms involving the phase of cloud condensate dominate the SW feedback at high‐latitudes. In one of the models a poleward jet shift causes significant cloud dimming throughout the midlatitudes, but in two models it does not. Differences in cloud response to jet shifts in two of the models are attributed to differences in the shallow convection parameterizations.


This guide describes the teaching resources available in Andersen Library and the K-12 Curriculum Collection. as well as how to locate them. In addition, it provides direction to locating online information such as article databases and useful websites.


How do artworks 'speak', and how do we 'listen' and respond? These questions underlie the investigation here of Roni Horn's Pair Object III: For Two Rooms, Emily Dickinson's later manuscripts, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Passages Paysages, Fiona Templeton's Cells of Release and Jenny Holzer's Lustmord. The tenets of critical performance, art-writing and site-writing inform the critical method used in Poetics and Place. Each chapter is dedicated to one of these five artworks, and is arranged in order to fulfill three main objectives: to understand how the artworks generate meaning through a material poetics in relation to place; to develop a critical methodology for engaging with them; and to investigate their ethical potential and political imperative. All of this, ultimately, facilitates the development of a triadic relation between theoretical concepts of sign, subjects and site at the crossover between poetry, art and spatial practices. This extends each artwork beyond the dyad of a critical encounter in order to offer - and allow others to grasp - an appreciation of how the artwork figures meaningfully, as well as configures meaning, in the wider world of objects and things. The book concludes with a discussion of the ethics of reading from the second person, opening up a debate concerning the role of empathy within contemporary, politically-engaged practices in art and poetry.


Russia has a longer Pacific coastline than any other Asian country, yet a Pacific identity has been difficult to assume in spite of over four hundred years of exploration. Russia expanded its Pacific coastline through a series of territorial acquisitions from China, which gave it the port of Vladivostok as its opening to the Pacific. However, this was interrupted by the Russian Revolution and the xenophobic Stalinist era which closed Vladivostok and Pacific Russia to the world until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Continental and maritime stances – inward and outward– can determine and express outcomes and identities. Russia's expansion to the Pacific was never based on a cultural preference to become Asian rather than European, preferring instead the term Eurasian to describe its huge longitudinal destiny.


The concept of waste minimization by reclamation and recycling is not new. However, it
requires thorough integration into the waste management practices of the construction
industry in the fast paced and expanding urban setting of Port Harcourt metropolis. The study
investigates waste generation on construction and demolition sites in Port Harcourt, their
market demand and recyclable potential, as a viable source of income for the informal sector,
integral to establishing an inclusive waste management system. Primary data was obtained
through the administration of structured questionnaires to construction companies and
private developers, interviews with buyers of recyclables, and site visits. The literature and
fieldwork reveals that there is a market demand in Port Harcourt for recycled construction
waste such as for filling of pot holes on roads, aluminium sheets for smelting into low-grade
cooking utensils, oxygenated wood to produce charcoal and firewood for road side sales of
roasted food and construction of temporary wooden structures (Bacha) for low income
earners. The response pattern also reveals that wastes are generated mostly for
cement/concrete, broken blocks, timber and metals. This represents a potentially steady
stream of sourcing for reclaimable and recyclable by-products, against the backdrop of the
high proportion of construction of new buildings. Furthermore, the findings reveal that, there
is no systematic medium of removal of construction wastes from their source, which often
occur in new developing upper class neighbourhoods, where such wastes are carted away
unsorted to open dumps or dumped in drains along roadways to low income neighborhoods
where the market demand is. Recognizing the health and safety implications of scavenging at
dumpsites, this study proposes the systematic integration of organized scavenging as a
lucrative outlet for construction waste utilization in Port Harcourt, specifically targeted at
direct sourcing and separation of materials generated on construction sites by certified
scavengers.


Infrared (IR) thermography determines the surface temperature of an object or human body using thermal IR measurement camera. It is an imaging technology which is contactless and completely non-invasive. These propertiesmake IR thermography a useful method of analysis that is used in various industrial applications to detect, monitor and predict irregularities in many fields from engineering to medical and biological observations. This paper presents a conceptual model of Medical 3D Thermography which introduces standardised 3D thermogram creation, representation and analysis concepts useful for variety of medical applications. The creation of 3D thermograms is possible through combining 3D scanning methods with thermal imaging.We describe development of a 3D thermography system integrating passive thermal imaging with 3D geometrical data from active 3D scanner.We outline the potential benefits of this system in medical applications. In particular, we emphasize the benefits of using this system for preventive detection of breast cancer.


Incubation centers have emerged as an important source of finance and support for new and nascent companies. In line with the worldwide trend, there has been a substantial increase in the number of incubation centers in India during the past 10 years. Using data from 159 incubators and a sample of 1,058 incubatees from 40 incubators, this article provides an analysis of the trends in incubation support in India. Universities play an important role in providing incubation support—67% of the incubators were based in universities. Not only are there more incubators functioning in universities, but they have also been functioning for longer. In addition, 57% of the incubators were in private organizations, and 43% were in public sector organizations. There are interesting variations between incubation support and venture capital and private equity (VCPE) investment in India. Most of the VCPE investments in India are seen in metro cities, whereas in the incubation, most of the incubation centers and incubatees are located in non-metro cities. VCPE investments are largely driven by the private sector, whereas the public sector plays an important role in incubation support and financing. Private sector incubators are more effective than public sector incubators, as measured by the activity indicator and graduation ratio.


Emotions convey significant information through means of natural language analysis, embodiment, and emotional signing. Machines equipped with the ability to experience and interpret emotions perform better in complex environments and share in the emotionally-rich social context. The Handbook of Research on Synthesizing Human Emotion in Intelligent Systems and Robotics presents a solid framework for taking human-robot interaction closer to its full potential. Presenting a close look at all the factors involved in modeling emotions and applying a thorough understanding of human emotional recognition to technology, this volume appeals to active researchers in the fields of artificial emotions, artificial intelligence, computing, robotics, philosophy, and psychology, as well as to students interested in the research of synthetic emotions.


This article extends current research by more closely examining children and young people's uses of the Internet for homework support within the familial context. In particular, it examines how young people find and deploy resources, how levels and quality of access influence use and the participation of other family members in homework support. It argues that whilst families view the Internet as a useful resource for homework, there are pitfalls which centre on the relatively high cost of home access in the UK. In some families, these costs may impact negatively on the affordances of the Internet for supporting homework and learning the functional skills and competencies needed to use the Internet autonomously.


Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is a popular cereal crop worldwide, but its future use is threatened by its limited genetic diversity because of the evolutionary bottleneck limiting its ability to combat abiotic and biotic stresses. However, synthetic hexaploid wheat (SHW) is known for its genetic diversity resulting from of the artificial crossing used to transfer elite genes from donors. SHW is therefore a potential source for genetic variations to combat stress. We studied two SHW lines from CYMMIT (cSHW339464 and cSHW339465) and a Korean bread wheat (cv. KeumKang) to determine their ability to tolerate heat stress and leaf rust infection. Our results showed that cSHW339464 could tolerate heat stress because of its maintained-green phenotype, high accumulation of anthocyanin, antioxidant activity (DPPH), proline content, and the response of heat-shock proteins after being challenged by heat stress. On the other hand, cSHW339465 is resistant to leaf rust and can inhibit the growth of pathogens on the leaf surface, owing to the induction of genes encoding β-1,3-glucanase and peroxidase and subsequent enzyme activities. In conclusion, these two SHW lines could prove good candidates contributing to the improvement of current wheat resources.


Clinical observations indicate that during critical care at the hospitals, a patient's sleep positioning and motion have a significant effect on recovery rate. Unfortunately, there is no formal medical protocol to record, quantify, and analyze motion of patients. There are very few clinical studies that use manual analysis of sleep poses and motion recordings to support medical benefits of patient positioning and motion monitoring. Manual processes do not scale, are prone to human errors, and put strain on an already taxed healthcare workforce. This study introduces multimodal, multiview motion analysis and summarization for healthcare (MASH). MASH is an autonomous system, which addresses these issues by monitoring healthcare environments and enabling the recording and analysis of patient sleep-pose patterns. MASH uses three RGB-D cameras to monitor patients in a medical intensive care unit (ICU) room. The proposed algorithms estimate pose direction at different temporal resolutions and use keyframes to efficiently represent pose transition dynamics. MASH combines deep features computed from the data with a modified version of hidden Markov model (HMM) to flexibly model pose duration and summarize patient motion. The performance is evaluated in ideal (BC: bright and clear/occlusion-free) and natural (DO: dark and occluded) scenarios at two motion resolutions and in two environments: a mock-up and a medical ICU. The usage of deep features is evaluated and their performance compared with engineered features. Experimental results using deep features in DO scenes increase performance from $\text{86.7}\%$ to  $\text{93.6}\%$, while matching the classification performance of engineered features in BC scenes. The performance of MASH is compared with HMM and C3D. The overall overtime tracing and summarization error rate across all methods increased when transitioning from the mock-up to the the medical ICU data. The proposed keyframe estimation helps achieve a  $\text{78}\%$ transition classification accuracy.


Patients suffering from severe to profound hearing loss, can be treated with a cochlea implant to restore hearing due to direct electrical stimulation of neurons. Hence, a silicone electrode carrier has to be implanted into the spiral-shaped organ of the cochlea (inner ear). The here presented fluid actuation by use of a compliant mechanism within the electrode carrier is designed to enable an active steering of the implant and its bending in order to achieve contactless insertion into the cochlea and a preset final position under a certain pressurization. An averaged small, middle and large spiral cochlea path has been defined based on the segmentation of 23 3D-datasets of human cochleae in order to enable the synthesis of individual implants. The fit of these implants within all three sizes of cochleae was adapted by variation of the pressure load which induces the bending of the implant.


[1] We investigate transient fluid flux through the seafloor recorded near the Costa Rica trench during the 2000 Costa Rica Seismogenic Zone Experiment using a 2-D fully coupled poroelastic finite element model. We demonstrate that the observed hydrologic anomalies are consistent with a model of propagating slow slip at the subduction interface between the frontal prism and downgoing plate. There are two sources of volumetric strain that drive fluid flux at the seafloor in response to fault slip at depth: (1) compression and dilation in the vicinity of the tips of a slipping patch and (2) extension and compression due to flexure of the seafloor. The superposition of these two effects results in distinctive spatial and temporal patterns of fluid flow through the seafloor. In a forward modeling approach, time series from shear ruptures with a range of fault length-to-depth ratios in a heterogeneous crust are generated and compared with flow rate observations. Assuming a constant propagation rate and an elliptical profile for the distribution of slip along the decollement, the set of model predictions enables us to infer the probable rupture location, extent, propagation velocity, and duration from a single flow rate time series. The best fit model suggests that the slow slip event initiated within the toe at a depth of less than 4 km and propagated bilaterally at an average rate of 0.5 km d−1. This interpretation implies that stress in the shallow subduction zone is relieved episodically. Furthermore, the Costa Rica data suggest that episodic slow slip events may initiate in the prism toe without being triggered by a seismic event further downdip.


In this paper, the effect of angle between predictor and corrector surfaces on the structural analysis is investigated. Two objective functions are formulated based on this angle and also the load factor. Optimizing these functions, and using the structural equilibrium path's geometry, lead to two new constraints for the nonlinear solver. Besides, one more formula is achieved, which was previously found by other researchers, via a different mathematical process. Several benchmark structures, which have geometric nonlinear behavior, are analyzed with the proposed methods. The finite element method is utilized to analyze these problems. The abilities of suggested schemes are evaluated in tracing the complex equilibrium paths. Moreover, comparison study for the required number of increments and iterations is performed. Results reflect the robustness of the authors' formulations.


In many application areas like e-science and data-warehousing detailed information about the origin of data is required. This kind of information is often referred to as data provenance or data lineage. The provenance of a data item includes information about the processes and source data items that lead to its creation and current representation. The diversity of data representation models and application domains has lead to a number of more or less formal definitions of provenance. Most of them are limited to a special application domain, data representation model or data processing facility. Not surprisingly, the associated implementations are also restricted to some application domain and depend on a special data model. In this paper we give a survey of data provenance models and prototypes, present a general categorization scheme for provenance models and use this categorization scheme to study the properties of the existing approaches. This categorization enables us to distinguish between different kinds of provenance information and could lead to a better understanding of provenance in general. Besides the categorization of provenance types, it is important to include the storage, transformation and query requirements for the different kinds of provenance information and application domains in our considerations. The analysis of existing approaches will assist us in revealing open research problems in the area of data provenance.


In 1786, when he was already the acknowledged leader of the Sturm und Drang literary movement, Goethe set out on a journey to Italy to fulfil a personal and artistic quest and to find relief from his responsibilities and the agonies of unrequited love. As he travelled to Venice, Rome, Naples and Sicily he wrote many letters, which he later used as the basis for the Italian Journey. A journal full of fascinating observations on art and history, and the plants, landscape and the character of the local people he encountered, this is also a moving account of the psychological crisis from which Goethe emerged newly inspired to write the great works of his mature years.


Love suicide was a situation lavishly employed by playwrights in early modern England. We generally regard as tragic heroes the dramatic star-crossed lovers who kill themselves onstage and we see their death as the sensationally pathetic climax of the play. On the other hand, in Elizabethan and early Stuart society, suicide, or, as it was called, 'self-slaughter' or 'self-murder', was considered both as a crime and as one of the most dreadful sins a Christian could possibly commit. I would suggest that the tension between these two conflicting views on suicide had a relevant emotional impact on the audiences to whom these plays were originally addressed. In order to prove this, I wish to analyse in particular domestic plays which stage the range of responses elicited within a community that has to cope with the suicide of one of its members.


The Chesapeake Bay, once one of the worlds most productive estuaries, has been severely impacted by human activity in the water and on the lands around it. Viewed as an ecosystem, the Bay is no longer able to support the variety and abundance of biota that it was historically able to. Several decades of research on the Chesapeake have pointed to human activities as being the principle reason for this decline. Of these detrimental activities, elevated inputs of Nitrogen and Phosphorus to the Bay were singled out as being the greatest cause of water quality deterioration. The state of Virginia is trying to reduce its annual load of Nitrogen, to the Potomac River, to 60% of what the load was estimated to be in 1985. Virginia would like to accomplish this goal at the lowest cost to its citizens. Therefore the state needs to determine the combination of nitrogen control efforts which will achieve the goal at the lowest cost. The state would also like to be able to maintain nitrogen loads at or below this cap level, indefinitely into the future. This study was undertaken with three primary objectives. The first was to project the level of annual nitrogen inputs to the Potomac River, from the state of Virginia, over the next 15 years. The second was to estimate the minimum annual costs necessary to achieve and maintain a 40% reduction in total nitrogen inputs, using the Virginia's estimated 1985 inputs as a baseline. The final objective was to assess the potential cost savings that may result from using one of two alternative development patterns within the rapidly urbanizing Northern Virginia portion of the Potomac Watershed. The first alternative is prohibiting low-density development within the Northern Virginia region, and the second is to restrict all new development to be within 5 miles of an existing urban area. Study results suggest that there has been no significant progress toward meeting the nitrogen reduction goal, due to the increase in population within the watershed, over the past 13 years. To attain the goal in 1998, a minimum of $27 million, above what is currently being spent annually, would be required. Under the current land use trend within Virginia's Potomac Basin, the annual cost for maintaining the goal is estimated to rise to $38 million annually, in 1998 dollars, by the year 2013. This is a 40% increase in cost. If the first alternative development pattern is adhered to over this 15-year period, then the annual cost will be $33 million, for an annual cost saving of approximately $5 million in 2013. The second alternative could achieve similar results if implemented, costing roughly $5 million less in 2013 than the annual cost per year under the current trend. These findings suggest that the use of alternative development patterns can help slow but not prevent the annual cost, of maintaining the cap, from rising. The study indicates that the reason for the continuous rise in annual cost, over this fifteenyear period, is due primarily to an increase in nitrogen loading to the Potomac that will result from the wastewater disposal needs of the growing population within the Basin. Furthermore, the state will eventually exhaust its lower cost options for reducing Nitrogen loadings, and at that point the annual cost for maintaining the Nitrogen Cap will begin to rise exponentially. Under current land use trends this rapid rise in cost is unlikely to occur within the next 15 years, and is more apt to occur sometime within the next 20 to 40 years. Once annual expenditures begin to rise exponentially it is unlikely that the state of Virginia would be able to maintain its 40% reduction goal. This work is dedicated to: my parents and my children for all their love and support; and most of all to my wife for finding within herself more patience than I deserved, and for providing me with more love and support than I could have ever wished for.


In 1887 Woodrow Wilson captured the challenge of public administration when he wrote, "It is getting to be harder to run a constitution than to frame one." While he was referencing the United States, the concept is not bounded geographically or by any one form of government. What prevails is that the role of public administration is as dynamic as the political and institutional landscapes in which it resides. Subsequently, public administrators face ongoing questions on the meaning and function of their job within differing worldviews and images of government. This means having to decide on ways to implement laws, policies, and programs within situational conditions that are sometimes routine, stable, and predictable and at other times fragmented, distorted, and unique. Thus, public administrators are never too far removed from the fundamental question of how administration should come to know and understand society when having to make difficult choices. Knowledge, after all, is a sine qua non to running a government.
 While the answer to this question often conjures up a methodological response, a deeper analysis suggests fundamental differences at play in terms of how knowledge, and subsequently reality, is formed. Constructivism is centered on the idea that all knowledge is subjective and socially constructed. So much so that even the hallmark of science—objectivity—cannot escape social construction, which makes absolute scientific understanding impossible. Therefore, constructivism rests on the premise that objectivity is never possible because there is no way to get fully outside of the experiences that preshape and prestructure what can be seen, thought, and analyzed.
 Language itself is a preconstructed way to communicate, and while simple words like dog and cat may have agreed-upon generalities, they have highly individualized meanings. This is not unlike scientific facts, such as gravity. Science can define gravity in general terms, but individuals experience it in their own way. To the constructivist, scientific facts are no more than the facts that matter and make situational sense at that moment. The meaning of facts can change along with the situational conditions as new understandings emerge or, like the pragmatist, until something better comes along to more fully explain a phenomenon.
 This creates a challenge for public administrators, who find themselves having to contend with varied situational interpretations emanating from preexisting experiences within a socially constructed world muddled with implicit bias, prejudices, and prejudgments. The profession is fraught with impeding political expectations, institutional and constitutional constraints, and unreconcilable public interests. Administrators are supposed to know what to do and how to do it. They are expected to be experts, but what justifies expertise in a socially constructed world if not knowledge and knowing? What constitutes knowledge is, therefore, a central concern to the profession and is always in question.
 Constructivism is a broad field that can be traced through pragmatism (knowledge as practical application), phenomenology (knowledge as experienced and situated), postmodernity (knowledge as power), and most recently transdisciplinarity (knowledge that transcends disciplinary frameworks). Within each of these, knowledge is hermeneutically refined.
 Scholars within public administration tend to adhere to particular schools of thought that often contrast constructivism and positivism as dichotomous modes of inquiry. This point of departure is not trivial, as it routinely presents a quandary on what basis to use when making effective decisions, shaping policy, understanding organizational goals, and implementing programs. These are ongoing challenges within public administration that remain unsettled. As a result, public administration is often referred to as a non- or preparadigmatic disintegrated field of study from which constructivism is as much contested as it is influential in shaping the meaning of the work and research.


Abstract:Giving fresh attention to Carrie Mae Weems's photography, this photo essay focuses on the artist's critical engagement with architecture through a series of black and white images in the Louisiana Project. We argue that by contrasting the built environment of Greek Revival houses with industrial and impoverished neighborhood spaces in and around New Orleans, Weems leverages a subtle and searing critique of entrenched systems of racism and racial oppression. The photographs, centered on a mysterious witness figure dressed in period clothing and portrayed by Weems herself, point out long-lasting effects of racial hierarchy expressed in architectural and preservationist practices. Weems's critical subjectivity evokes the colonized body trapped in a mythos that created and still, in the twenty-first century, sustains systemic racism in economic and social modalities, particularly in the southeastern United States. Our article interprets Weems's photography, here, as an indictment of and a protest against continuing patterns of racism.


"The Snows of Yesteryear (1989)" is Gregor von Rezzori's haunting evocation of his childhood in Czernowitz, in present-day Ukraine. Growing up after the First World War, Rezzori portrays a twilit world suspended between the dying ways of an imperial past and the terrors of the twentieth century. He recalls his volatile, boar-hunting father, his earthy nursemaid, his fragile, aristocratic mother, his adored governess and the tragic death of his beloved sister, in a luminous story of war, unrest, eccentricity, folk tales, dark forests, night flights, and what it is like to lose your home.


This study examines the role of technology in outsourcing practices in the oil and gas industry. The aim is to verify the association between technology and outsourcing and their relevance as solution enablers that organisations within oil and gas sector should employed to facilitate future growth. The study assesses how firms benefit from outsourcing practices as a growth strategy to achieve competitive advantage. The resource-based view (RBV) theory was adopted as the main organisational theory that underpins this study. The theory justify outsourcing and technology through resource-related advantages and capabilities. More so, the resource-based view supports the idea that firms can strengthen their internal operations to achieve superior performance by exploiting external outsourcing arrangements through access to new technologies. These enablers are considered as the main source of firm's sustainable competitive advantage when they are valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable and non- substitutable.

Comprehensive reviews were carried out on the evolution and current state of outsourcing practices, as well as new technologies to determine their impacts in driving performance within oil and gas industry. In attempt to answer the research questions, a self-administered questionnaire was adopted. A total of 200 administered questionnaires were sent to Nigerian oil and gas companies. Out of 200 questionnaires sent, 120 were returned which amount to 60% response rate. From the 120 questionnaires received, only 100 were considered valid for further analysis. Explorative interviews were conducted to validate the findings from the surveyed data. The interviews results also provided further clarity and understanding, in terms of operational frameworks, additional measures and contextual definitions, which the participants consider important beyond those obtained from the literature.

The outcomes of the survey clarify the impacts of outsourcing technology in oil and gas industry with a view to how this affected the long-term business performance of the organisations. The study identified that the most important drivers of outsourcing practices in oil and gas industry is access to new technologies. Additionally, a moderating construct that was linked to the deployed technologies and outsourcing drivers provided further enhanced performance measures. The evidence shown that in addition to performance advantage of having access to enabling technologies and outsourcing initiatives, organisations' competitive performance can be further enhanced through the trio of effective quality management, expertise best practices and modern infrastructure. The implication of this research may demonstrates that implementation of outsourcing initiatives and technology solutions will be a significant growth strategy, particularly to SMEs, and may also provide economic opportunities that are not sufficiently available in most developing oil and gas economies.


Peri-implantitis and periodontitis Experimental and clinical studies Olivier Carcuac Department of Periodontology, Institute of Odontology, the Sahlgrenska Academy at University of Gothenburg Peri-implantitis is an increasing problem in implant dentistry. The current series of studies employed a translational approach with the aim to compare peri-implantitis and periodontitis lesions and evaluate the influence of implant surface characteristics and the adjunctive use of systemic antibiotics/local antiseptics on healing following surgical treatment of peri-implantitis. Tissue reactions following ligature removal in experimental periodontitis and peri-implantitis were analyzed in a dog model (Study I). Histopathological characteristics in human peri-implantitis and periodontitis lesions were evaluated in 80 patients (Study II). Labrador dogs were used to analyze the effect of surgical treatment of experimental peri-implantitis at implants with different surface characteristics using different anti-infective procedures (Study III). 100 patients with severe periimplantitis were treated surgically with or without adjunctive systemic antibiotics or the local use of chlorhexidine for implant surface decontamination. Treatment outcomes were evaluated after 1 year. A binary logistic regression analysis was performed to identify factors influencing the probability of treatment success (Study IV). It was demonstrated that : the amount of bone loss that occurred during the period following ligature removal was significantly larger at implants with a modified surface than at implants with a non-modified surface and at teeth. The histological analysis revealed that peri-implantitis sites exhibited inflammatory cell infiltrates that were larger, extended closer to the bone crest and contained larger proportions of neutrophil granulocytes and osteoclasts than in periodontitis. (Study I) peri-implantitis lesions were more than twice as large and contained significantly larger area proportions, numbers, and densities of CD138-, CD68-, and MPO-positive cells than periodontitis lesions. (Study II) the local use of chlorhexidine has minor influence on resolution of peri-implantitis following surgical treatment. (Study III) treatment outcome was influenced by implant surface characteristics. (Study III and IV) the adjunctive use of systemic antibiotics increased the probability for treatment success at implants with modified surfaces but not at implants with a non-modified surface. (Study IV) Abstract


Sulphidic springs are a common feature of the Craven Basin and have long histories, indicating that they are natural phenomena, and not a result of recent anthropogenic contamination of groundwater. This study identified several extant sulphur springs and these were sampled and analysed for hydrochemistry and isotopic composition (δ34S of sulphate and sulphide, δ18O of sulphate and δ13C of total dissolved inorganic carbon (TDIC)). The springs are associated with limestone units and are located in anticlinal crests that are sometimes faulted. Sulphide concentrations at these 'sulphur springs' range from <0.5 to 96 mg l−1 and light sulphide isotopic compositions indicate that sulphide originates by microbial sulphate reduction. One site, 'Stinky Bottoms', with high sulphide concentration (46 mg l−1) also has very low δ13C-TDIC (–25.3‰ V-PDB) characteristic of a significant component of TDIC generation via methane oxidation. Other sites have δ13C-TDIC more typical of shallow groundwaters (−14.2 to −16.3‰ V-PDB) and two sites with highest Cl concentration and elevated Sr:Ca have heavier δ13C-TDIC (−11.3 and −6.8‰ V-PDB), indicative of a more evolved, long residence-time brine component. At Stinky Bottoms a strong case can be made that generation of sulphidic groundwater is related to subsurface methane. At other sites, sulphide generation may also be related to hydrocarbon or methane seeps (in some cases associated with a brine component) but the δ13C-TDIC values are more equivocal.


In Multiple-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), a good way to find the best alternative is to construct a value function that represents a Decision Maker's (DM) preferences. For multidimensional alternatives, an additive value function is easiest to work with because it assesses the alternatives in a simple and transparent manner. A DM's preferences over consequences on a subset of the set of criteria may or may not depend on consequences on the rest of the criteria. Preferences that are free from all such interdependence are said to be separable. The existence of an additive value function implies separability and, when consequences form a continuum in each dimension and preference is continuous, the converse is also true. But we concentrate on orderings of binary alternatives (only two possible consequences on each criterion), for which the converse is known to be false unless there are four or fewer criteria. On binary alternatives, the probability of a separable order arising at random decreases rapidly as the number of criteria increases. However, there are different degrees of non-separability; many combinations of separable and non-separable subsets of criteria are possible. Here, we introduce notions of partial separability and partial additivity, which could be appropriate if criteria can be grouped into two or more natural classes. We establish that partial additivity implies partial separability, but that the converse is true only when the number of criteria is less than or equal to three. We also show that, when the number of criteria is more than three, partial separability with respect to a singleton set of criteria implies partial additivity with respect to this same subset.


This Thesis explores the deposition techniques of magnetron sputtering and high velocity oxy-fuel (HVOF) spraying for Ti2AlC as a promising high-temperature material. Magnetron sputtering aims at producing thin (≤1 μm) Ti2AlC films of high crystal quality for use as a model system in understanding the material's basic properties. HVOF is a new method for deposition of thick (≥200 μm) coatings by spraying Ti2AlC powder, with the aim of transferring the good bulk properties to coatings. The oxidation behavior of Ti2AlC coatings has been investigated for temperatures up to 1200 °C in air. As-deposited Ti2AlC(0001) thin films decompose into TiC during vacuum annealing at 700 °C by out-diffusion of Al as shown by x-ray diffraction analysis. The release of Al starts already at 500 °C in ambient air as driven by aluminum oxide formation on the film surface where the oxide initially forms clusters as observed by electron microscopy. While sputtering from a Ti2AlC target is simpler than by using different elemental targets, the resulting film composition differs from the target stoichiometry. This is due to differences in energy and angular distribution of the sputtered species and evaporation of Al at substrate temperatures above 700 °C. The composition can be compensated for by adding Ti to bind the Al and obtain phase-pure Ti2AlC coatings. For HVOF, I demonstrate how the total gas flow of a H2/O2 mixture (441-953 liter/min) and the powder grain size (30-56 μm) determine the thickness, density, and microstructure of the coatings. High gas flow and small grain size yield thick coatings of 210 μm with a low porosity of 2-8 % and a tensile stress of ≥80 MPa. A fraction of the Ti2AlC powder decomposes during spraying into TiC, Ti3AlC2, and Ti-Al alloys. The coatings also contain as much as 25 at.% O since the powder partly oxidizes during the spraying process. Increasing the powder size and decreasing the total gas flow yield a higher amount of Ti2AlC, but produces thinner coatings with lower cohesion. Post-annealing of the coatings at 900 °C in vacuum increases the Ti2AlC content due to a reversible phase transformation of the as-sprayed material. The high oxygen content, however, hinders the coating to completely transform into Ti2AlC and deteriorates its oxidation resistance. The work thus offers insights to the key parameters for optimizing Ti2AlC coating processing.


We develop energy-balancing strategies for wireless ad-hoc networks energy resource allocation and deployment. The objective is to extend the network lifetime. We find the amount of energy storage that each node requires for having a balanced energy consumption throughout the network. For a limited set of energy resources in the deployment area, we determine an efficient deployment scenario in which messages are routed across the network while using the fastest delivery path. Two ad-hoc architectures are considered: first, where the network is peerto-peer and all the nodes have the same characteristics; and second, a base-station centric network where a base-station in the center collects the data from the ad-hoc nodes. We study synchronous and asynchronous communication paradigms for both architectures. To address the problems, we first determine the deployment scheme that results in the most comprehensive radio coverage. Next, we calculate the energy distribution for each network scenario. Then, the derived distributions are extended to randomly deployed networks. We present a thorough analysis and comparison for peer-to-peer and base-station architectures, for both synchronous and asynchronous paradigms. Our experimental evaluations show that the energy-balancing distributions extend the network's lifetime by more than 40% when compared to nonbalanced networks with no overhead on message routing delay.


Transcriptional control of the vast majority of genes involved in the inflammatory response requires the nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) family of transcription factors. Stimulation and termination of NF-κB activity are subject to stringent spatiotemporal control. According to the classical model of NF-κB regulation, both activation and termination mechanisms are centered on inhibitor of NF-κB (IκB) proteins. Whereas activation of NF-κB requires degradation of the IκBs, the main mechanism responsible for termination of NF-κB activity is the resynthesis of a specific IκB, IκBα, which sequesters NF-κB dimers in the nucleus and translocates them to the cytoplasm in an inactive form. Studies now show that an additional mechanism that is required to prevent the uncontrolled activity of NF-κB proteins is their nuclear degradation. At least two E3 ubiquitin ligases, one of which seems to be essential for control of nuclear NF-κB p65 (also known as RelA) in myeloid cells, have been identified. Moreover, additional evidence indicates that individual NF-κB dimers with particular activating or repressive properties may be differentially controlled by nuclear degradation, thus paving the way for the exploitation of NF-κB degradation pathways for therapeutic purposes.


This paper addresses whether credit rating downgrades feed back on the asset value of the downgraded companies, causing real losses. To investigate this issue we construct a structural credit risk model incorporating ratings and the feedback loss. To estimate the parameters of the model we develop a maximum likelihood estimator using time series of equity prices and credit ratings. Implementing the model on a sample of US public firms downgraded from investment grade to junk, we find strong support for the existence of feedback losses. First, estimated feedback losses are significant for a third of our sample with the cross-sectional averages of the feedback loss around 7 %. Second, the behavior of estimated asset volatilities around downgrades in real data is consistent with the predictions of our model. We observe a hump-shaped pattern of estimated asset volatilities when feedback is ignored. Using the feedback model, the hump-shaped pattern disappears. These findings suggest that ignoring feedback can lead to the appearance of changing asset volatility even when the real volatility is constant. Last, accounting for feedback helps in asset volatility prediction.


The problem of controlling a tandem of robotic manipulators composing a teleoperation system with force reflection is addressed in this paper. The final objective of this paper is twofold: 1) to design a robust control law capable of ensuring closed-loop stability for robots with uncertainties and 2) to use the so-obtained control law to improve the tracking of each robot to its corresponding reference model in comparison with previously existing controllers when the slave is interacting with the obstacle. In this way, a multiestimation-based adaptive controller is proposed. Thus, the master robot is able to follow more accurately the constrained motion defined by the slave when interacting with an obstacle than when a single-estimation-based controller is used, improving the transparency property of the teleoperation scheme. The closed-loop stability is guaranteed if a minimum residence time, which might be updated online when unknown, between different controller parameterizations is respected. Furthermore, the analysis of the teleoperation and stability capabilities of the overall scheme is carried out. Finally, some simulation examples showing the working of the multiestimation scheme complete this paper


Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) allows data to be transferred over a network directly from the memory of one computer to the memory of another computer without CPU intervention. There are two major types of RDMA hardware on the market today: InfiniBand, and RDMA over IP, also known as iWARP. This hardware is supported by open software that was developed by the OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA) and that is known as the OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) stack. This stack provides a common interface to both types of RDMA hardware, but does not itself provide a generalpurpose API that would be convenient to most network programmers. Rather, it supplies the tools by which such APIs can be constructed. The Extended Sockets API (ES-API) is a specification published by the Open Group that defines extensions to the traditional socket API which include two major new features necessary to exploit the advantages of RDMA hardware and the OFED stack: asynchronous I/O and memory registration. The UNH-EXS interface is a multi-threaded implementation of the ES-API plus additional extensions, which enables programmers to utilize RDMA hardware via the OFED stack in a convenient, relatively familiar manner. The UNH-EXS interface is implemented entirely in user space on the Linux operating system. This provides easy porting, modification and adoption of UNHEXS, since it requires no changes to existing Linux kernels. We present results on the performance of some benchmark applications using the UNH-EXS interface on both iWARP and InfiniBand hardware.