Retroperitoneal fibrosis (RPF) is an uncommon disorder that may cause ureteric obstruction with renal damage. Pergolide, a dopaminergic agonist used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease, has rarely been related to the development of RPF. We report on a 78-year-old woman with Parkinson's disease who presented with hydroureteronephrosis and developed RPF and serosal fibrosis during treatment with pergolide. Following discontinuation of pergolide therapy and placement of a double-J stent, her renal function improved. Inflammatory markers returned to normal limits within two months and the retroperitoneal fibrotic mass became smaller.


In this paper, we present the stochastic version of Maximal Covering Location Problem which optimizes both location and allocation decisions, concurrently. It's assumed that traveling time between customers and distribution centers (DCs) is uncertain and described by normal distribution function and if this time is less than coverage time, the customer can be allocated to DC. In classical models, traveling time between customers and facilities is assumed to be in a deterministic way and a customer is assumed to be covered completely if located within the critical coverage of the facility and not covered at all outside of the critical coverage. Indeed, solutions obtained are so sensitive to the determined traveling time. Therefore, we consider covering or not covering for customers in a probabilistic way and not certain which yields more flexibility and practicability for results and model. Considering this assumption, we maximize the total expected demand which is covered. To solve such a stochastic nonlinear model efficiently, simulation and genetic algorithm are integrated to produce a hybrid intelligent algorithm. Finally, some numerical examples are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.


In previous work it was shown that, at least in principle, an exemplar-based approach to noise robust ASR is possible. The method, sparse representation based classification (SC), works by modelling noisy speech as a sparse linear combination of speech and noise exemplars. After recovering the sparsest possible linear combination of labelled exemplars, noise robust posterior likelihoods are estimated by using the weights of the exemplars as evidence of the state labels underlying exemplars. Although promising recognition accuracies at low SNRs were obtained, the method was impractical due to its slow execution speed. Moreover, the performance was not as good on noisy speech corrupted by noise types not represented by the noise exemplars. The importance of sparsity was poorly understood, and the influence of the size of the exemplar-dictionary was unclear. In this paper we investigate all these issues, and we show for example that speedups of a factor 28 can be obtained by using modern GPUs, bringing its execution speed within range to practical applications.


Although the practices of animal experimentation and intensive rearing involve a considerable amount of animal suffering they continue to be supported. Why is the suffering of animals in these practices so often accepted? This paper will explore some of the reasons given in support of the use of animals for such practices. In particular I will focus on contractarianism as one of the many positions that argues that morally relevant differences between species justify animal experimentation and factory farming. These differences include rationality and moral agency. On this position non-humans are excluded from direct moral concern on the basis that they lack such qualities. I will argue that in order for contractarianism to be coherent it necessarily has to include non-humans in the contract. This has implications for the application of contractarianism to the ethics of factory farming and animal experimentation.


This study explores the nature of learning that transforms established frames of
reference for those who engage in it. It also explores the nature of pedagogy that
is likely to foster this transformative learning. It is based on the explorations of
the teacher-researcher as she reflects on the learning experiences of some of her
students and on her own teaching practice.
The teacher-researcher's reflections emanate from her experiences teaching high
school English to Years 10 and 11 students within a co-educational school in
Sydney. Through engaging in hermeneutic phenomenological research, the
teacher-researcher explores the types of learning contexts and pedagogical
approaches that may be effective in fostering transformative learning.
The literature review highlights the fact that explorations of the nature of
transformative learning and transformative pedagogy have occurred almost
exclusively within the domain of adult education and many researchers have
expressed the view that this is a uniquely adult phenomenon. In exploring the
transformative learning experiences of students between the ages of fifteen and
seventeen, this study calls into question the view that only adults may experience
transformative learning. It also raises awareness about the significance of
transformative pedagogy in a high school context. The study highlights a number of pedagogical practices that are potentially
transformative and concludes that transformative learning is most effectively
fostered through relational forms of knowing emerging in dialogical learning
contexts. Critical reflection is seen as being central to transformative learning and
the importance of both affective and cognitive dimensions in the process of
critical reflection is emphasised. Within a high school English context, the value
of introducing students to a range of texts that may expose them to alternative
ways of seeing is highlighted. The study demonstrates that integral to
transformative pedagogy is the importance of providing students with both
challenging learning experiences and with scaffolds designed to equip them to meet these challenges. The personally transformative nature of engaging in
teacher-research is also highlighted and this is seen to have implications for
models of staff professional development within schools.
Reference is made to the limitations of the study, including those associated with
being a teacher-researcher. As with other phenomenological studies, the findings
do not purport to have direct and specific relevance to other contexts, although
they may prove interesting to others interested in fostering transformative learning
through transformative pedagogy.


A hydrodynamic theory is developed for solutions of nonhomogeneous nematic liquid crystalline polymers (LCPs) of a variety of molecular configurations in proximity of spheroids, extending the Doi kinetic theory for rodlike molecules. The new theory accounts for the molecular aspect ratio as well as the finite range molecular interaction so that it is applicable to liquid crystals ranging from the rodlike liquid crystal at large aspect ratios to the discotic one at small aspect ratios. It also exhibits enhanced shape effects in the viscous stress and warrants a positive entropy production, thereby, the second law of thermodynamics. When restricted to uniaxial symmetry in the weak flow limit, the theory recovers the director equation of the Leslie–Eriksen (LE) theory, but the stress tensor contains excessive gradient terms in addition to the LE stress tensor. The theory predicts that the elastic moduli K1, K2, and K3 obey the ordering K3


A rapid increase in the number of elderly with chronic conditions has stressed the crumbling healthcare system worldwide. Accordingly, there is an urgent need for innovations to cater for the reduced workforce in this sector. Over a decade ago robots were introduced in health care to overcome these problems. Objectives Robots have numerous applications in healthcare ranging from initial diagnostics to surgeries, patient monitoring, social assistance and disability limitation. Considering their widespread applications, the current review aims to provide an overview of general applications of robotics in healthcare followed by studies that investigate the role of assistive robots in maintaining the health and well-being of the elderly. Data sources Databases like Pubmed, Google scholar and IEEE explore were searched and studies related to the applications of assistive robots in geriatric healthcare from Jan 2011 to April 2016 were retrieved. Study selection and data extraction A combination of keywords like assistive robots, robotics, elderly, geriatrics, healthcare, PARO and social robots were applied to search the relevant studies. About 28 studies reporting applications of assistive robots in elderly were included. Their salient features, results and conclusions were recorded. Results and conclusion The identified studies reported promising applications of assistive robots for social and daily healthcare of elderly. These results were mainly based on the experimental and observational studies as well as field trials involving elderly subjects and hence cannot be generalized for the populations worldwide. There is a need for well-designed multicenter large scale studies to reliably include robotics in geriatric healthcare.


When George Washington embarked on his presidential tours of 1789--91, the rudimentary inns and taverns of the day suddenly seemed dismally inadequate. But within a decade, Americans had built the first hotels--large and elegant structures that boasted private bedchambers and grand public ballrooms. This book recounts the enthralling history of the hotel in America--a saga in which politicians and prostitutes, tourists and tramps, conventioneers and confidence men, celebrities and salesmen all rub elbows. Hotel explores why the hotel was invented, how its architecture developed, and the many ways it influenced the course of United States history. The volume also presents a beautiful collection of more than 120 illustrations, many in full color, of hotel life in every era. Hotel explores these topics and more: * What it was like to sleep, eat, and socialize at a hotel in the mid-1800s * How hotelkeepers dealt with the illicit activities of adulterers, thieves, and violent guests * The stories behind America's greatest hotels, including the Waldorf-Astoria, the Plaza, the Willard, the Blackstone, and the Fairmont * Why Confederate spies plotted to burn down thirteen hotels in New York City during the Civil War * How the development of steamboats and locomotives helped create a nationwide network of hotels * How hotels became architectural models for apartment buildings * The pivotal role of hotels in the civil rights movement


Now available to an English-speaking audience, this book is a comprehensive grammar of classical Nahuatl, the literary language of the Aztecs. It offers students of Nahuatl a complete and clear treatment of the language's structure, grammar and vocabulary. It is divided into 35 chapters, beginning with basic syntax and progressing gradually to more complex structures. Each grammatical concept is illustrated clearly with examples, exercises and passages for translation. A key is provided to allow students to check their answers. By far the most approachable textbook of Nahuatl available, this book will be an excellent teaching tool both for classroom use and for readers pursuing independent study of the language. It will be an invaluable resource to anthropologists, ethnographers, historians, archaeologists and linguists alike.


The present study aims to characterize the change in the composition and structure of the bacterial and microzooplankton planktonic communities in relation to the phytoplankton community composition during a bloom. High‐throughput amplicon sequencing of regions of the 16S and 18S rRNA gene was undertaken on samples collected during a 20 day (d) mesocosm experiment incorporating two different nutrient addition treatments [Nitrate and Phosphate (NPc) and Nitrate, Phosphate and Silicate (NPSc)] as well as a control. This approach allowed us to discriminate the changes in species composition across a broad range of phylogenetic groups using a common taxonomic level. Diatoms dominated the bloom in the NPSc treatment while dinoflagellates were the dominant phytoplankton in the control and NPc treatment. Network correlations highlighted significant interactions between OTUs within each treatment including changes in the composition of Paraphysomonas OTUs when the dominant Chaetoceros OTU switched. The microzooplankton community composition responded to changes in the phytoplankton composition while the prokaryotic community responded more to changes in ammonia concentration.


Carbon arc-air gouging is a common technology when repairing defects in welded structures. Often this technique is applied in repeated cycles even on the same location of the joint. Due to the multiple heat input by gouging and subsequent re-welding, the residual stresses are strongly influenced. This can become crucial when microstructure and mechanical properties are adversely affected by multiple weld reparations. Knowledge about the relation of gouging and residual stresses is scarce but important when high strength steels, which are sensitive to residual stresses, are processed. The present study shows the effect of repair welding on a high strength steel structural element. The weld and the heat affected zone were subjected to multiple thermal cycles by gouging and subsequent repair welding. The residual stresses were determined by X-ray diffraction at different positions along the joint. The results showed that the residual stress level has increased by the repair cycles. This is most pronounced for the heat affected zone. Adapted welding procedures may prevent detrimental residual stress distributions.


In the standard use case of Algorithmic Fairness, the goal is to eliminate the relationship between a sensitive variable and a corresponding score. Throughout recent years, the scientific community has developed a host of definitions and tools to solve this task, which work well in many practical applications. However, the applicability and effectivity of these tools and definitions becomes less straightfoward in the case of multiple sensitive attributes. To tackle this issue, we propose a sequential framework, which allows to progressively achieve fairness across a set of sensitive features. We accomplish this by leveraging multi-marginal Wasserstein barycenters, which extends the standard notion of Strong Demographic Parity to the case with multiple sensitive characteristics. This method also provides a closed-form solution for the optimal, sequentially fair predictor, permitting a clear interpretation of inter-sensitive feature correlations. Our approach seamlessly extends to approximate fairness, enveloping a framework accommodating the trade-off between risk and unfairness. This extension permits a targeted prioritization of fairness improvements for a specific attribute within a set of sensitive attributes, allowing for a case specific adaptation. A data-driven estimation procedure for the derived solution is developed, and comprehensive numerical experiments are conducted on both synthetic and real datasets. Our empirical findings decisively underscore the practical efficacy of our post-processing approach in fostering fair decision-making.


Economic efficiency is a key issue for economic research and for policy design, and certainly for food security challenges. In the food system dynamics the understanding of changes and trends is crucial to improve our capacity in dealing with sustainable development and quality of life objectives. The links with food consumption behavior, mainly in less developed countries are main drivers to understand changes in the food system. Food system efficiency evaluation is necessary, in regard to production/consumption efficiency, market and government/governance – regulations and institutional efficiency, and efforts should be made to improve our capacity to deal with those methodological needs. In many situations, in the real world, data and measurements are difficult or even impossible in numeric/quantitative terms. Frequently, qualitative evaluation is the only way to proceed, but measurements and numeric references are still important, mainly when changes over time is the focal aspect of the research about real world conditions and respective changes. The actual paper follows a structural food system model (WFSE – World Food Security Equation) to show the important role of Markets and Institutions "vis a vis" regulation practices directed to improve economic efficiency subject to demand behavior in a country case study. Cape Verde is a very challenging country in regard to "food security status," with great success in global/macro terms in the last 10 years, where now the main problems are clearly at local level. The present research tries to highlight the global achievements and explores local assessment efforts on food consumption conditions. A specific region is studied, the island of Santo Antao, in a very important production region. Two different communities are analyzed, and three different production systems are considered to better understand the local dynamics and possible interactions among those factors and food consumption habits. The results deserve deeper discussions and further research, with evidences that food habits are very strong factors to be considered, sometimes "over passing" clearly the expectations in regard to income, and also in regard to direct influences between production systems and consumption. Several other studies were compared, providing a good overview about results obtained in several other regions, showing that food consumption at local level is also in reasonable good conditions, which means that solutions for improvements are complex and very dependent on social systems, somehow with a similar position with the problems of the industrialized economies.


. Random poly (vinyl chloride -co- butyl acrylate) and poly (vinyl chloride -co- 2-ethylhexyl acrylate copolymers obtained by single electron transfer-degenerative chain transfer living radical polymerization (SET- DTLRP) are investigated as potential candidates for 3D Printing. The analysis of the rheological implications of 3D Printing process allows establishing the basic viscoelastic conditions that the samples should fulfil to be printable, avoiding the 'trial and error' procedure. The effect of temperature and acrylates concentration on the rheological properties and 3D printing feasibility is contemplated. Eventually, thermal degradation is also considered. It is demonstrated that the copolymers which contain butyl acrylate comonomer, instead of 2-ethylhexyl acrylate, give raise to the best results. Although the study is carried out with PVC-acrylate copolymers and a 3D printing device that possesses set up characteristics, it shows a way to work out sound strategies with other polymers and 3D printing machines.


Tourism is a spatial phenomenon. Tourist behaviour on-site is not only dependent on the destination itself, but also on the situation in other places, tourists' spatial mobility and access to information. On the basis of this argument, the whole tourism system is taken into account in this thesis. The aim is to analyse the interplay between mobility, tourist behaviour and guidebooks. The focus lies on German tourists in Sweden. Due to the importance of guidebooks to this visitor group, the thesis concentrates particularly on guidebooks as source of information.In the first article, power relations that steer the selection of Swedish tourist sites in German guidebooks are analysed. The results show that the selection of tourist sites is dependent on personal, editorial, geographical, economic and tourism-sociological factors. The production of information is dependent on a complex web of power relations, the core of which is constituted by authors, publishers and readers.In the second article, the content in German guidebooks on Sweden is analysed. Besides Stockholm and Northern Lapland, the regions presented most frequently are usually located in the south of the country. It is found that guidebooks influence German tourists' choices of tourist sites in Sweden, and that this influence increases with the distance from Germany. The study also shows that guidebooks contribute to constructing tourism space and providing places with meaning.In the third article, it is shown that information and time availability influence tourist mobility. The existence of an individual travel rhythm is confirmed, which is defined as a travel pattern that is independent of the tourist sites that are visited. It includes, among other things, long travel distances the first and last days of the holiday, a short first stay-over, the longest stay in the region with the greatest distance from home, and a relation between the length of stay at one place and the distance covered when departing.In the last article, tourist behaviour is analysed. The results dispel the predominant impression in current tourism discourse that states that tourists are continually active during their holidays. It is found that the major difference between home and tourist behaviour is not constituted by the activities themselves, but by a difference in place, followed by a slower pace in which activities are performed and a limited time period. Spatial mobility, the characteristics of place and access to information all influence tourist behaviour on-site.In conclusion, it is found that tourist information, mobility and behaviour on the spot are closely connected. Tourists consume the tourism space created in guidebooks, and recreate this space when travelling, as they choose individually how to respond to the information provided. Actors, places and tourist structures all exist in relation to each other. For the resulting behaviour in place, this means that it is not only the supply at the destination that is important, but also the situation in tourists' home regions and along their travel routes.


Based on the sixth edition of Sternberg's Diagnostic Surgical Pathology, this multiple choice question and answer resource covers all aspects of Surgical Pathology and is an ideal review tool for board preparation, recertification exams, or just brushing up. Now significantly revised, it includes more than 1,000 questions and answers that emphasize differential diagnostic aspects of problem solving, accompanied by more than 600 full-color illustrations. Key Features: offers a systematic review of Surgical Pathology, including skin, soft tissue, bone, and joints; breast; central nervous system; endocrine system; hematopoietic and lymphatic systems; head and neck; intrathoracic organs and blood vessels; alimentary canal and associated organs; urinary tract and male genital system; and female reproductive system and peritoneum. Each question focuses on a specific disease entity or diagnostic problem as presented in Sternberg's Diagnostic Surgical Pathology, Sixth Edition; in this book questions are followed by answers and succinct explanations; features more than 600 full-color illustrations highlight key visual aspects of diagnosis Online Resources are housed in one robust, easy-to-access website. The Point provides flexible learning solutions and resources to practitioners using Sternberg's Diagnostic Surgical Pathology Review; test yourself with 1,000+ questions and answers that include explanations and 600+ full-color illustrations.


Abstract Aims and objectives To explore the experiences of mothers of extremely premature babies during their Neonatal Intensive Care Unit stay and transition home. Background Mothers of extremely preterm infants (28 weeks' gestation or less) experience a continuum of regular and repeated stressful and traumatic events, during the perinatal period, during the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit stay, and during transition home. Method An interpretive description method guided this study. Ten mothers of extremely premature infants who had been at home for less than six months were recruited via a Facebook invitation to participate in semi‐structured telephone interviews exploring their experiences in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and the transition home. The data were examined using a six‐phase thematic analysis approach. The COREQ checklist has been used. Results Two main themes emerged: (a) things got a bit dire; and (b) feeling a failure as a mother. Participants had a heightened risk of developing a mental disorder from exposure to multiple risk factors prior to and during birth, as well as during the postnatal period in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and their infant's transition to home. Mothers highlighted the minimal support for their mental health from healthcare professionals, despite their regular and repeated experience of traumatic events. Conclusion The mothers were at high risk of developing post‐traumatic stress symptoms and/or other mental health issues. Of note, study participants relived the trauma of witnessing their infant in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, demonstrated hypervigilance behaviour and identified lack of relevant support needed when their infant was at home. Relevance to Clinical Practice This study highlights the need for nurses to include a focus on the mothers' psychosocial needs. Supporting maternal mental health both improves maternal well‐being and enables mothers to be emotionally available and responsive to their extremely preterm infant.


American constitutional law scholars have long questioned whether courts can really drive social reform, and this position remains largely unchallenged even in the wake of recent landmark decisions affecting the LGBT community. In contrast, court watchers in India—spurred by developments in a special type of legal action developed in the late 1970s known as "public interest litigation," or "PIL"—have only recently begun questioning the judiciary's ability to promote progressive social change. Indian scholarship on this point has veered between despair that PIL cases no longer reliably produce good outcomes for India's most disadvantaged, and optimism that public interest litigation can be returned to its glory days of heroic judicial intervention. And no pair of cases so nicely captures this dichotomy as the 2009 decision in Naz Foundation, which decriminalized sodomy, and the 2012 decision in Suresh Kumar Koushal, which overruled Naz. This paper uses public interest litigation and India's recent sodomy cases to demonstrate that the relationship between state actors (like courts) and society is often far less stable than the democratic ideal of "citizen sovereignty" would suggest. I argue, first, that supporters of public interest litigation should neither give up on PIL suits as a means of effecting social reform nor imagine that PIL suits can ever reliably produce desirable outcomes. As a type of legal action, public interest litigation simply cannot be reverse engineered in this way. But second, I reinterpret the documented and widely critiqued shift in PIL cases from protecting fundamental rights during the 1970s and '80s to protecting the interests of advantaged litigants in the 1990s and 2000s. While earlier PIL cases reflect the Indian Constitution's commitment to government-led social reform and the sharing of sovereignty between citizens and the state, contemporary PIL cases reflect the Constitution's commitment to an agency theory of sovereignty whereby government merely acts on behalf of citizens. Because neither vision of sovereignty is paramount over the long run, shifts in public interest litigation reflect the productive and dynamic equilibrium between the two.


Simultaneous interpretation is among the most complex of human cognitive/linguistic activities. This study, which will interest practitioners and trainers as well as linguists, draws more on linguistics-based theories of cognition in communication (cognitive semantics and pragmatics) than on the traditional information-processing approaches of cognitive psychology, and shows SI to be a valuable source of data on language and cognition.Starting from semantic representations of input and output in samples of professional SI from Chinese and German into English, the analysis explains the classic phenomena – anticipation, restoration of the implicit-explicit balance, and communicative re-packaging ('re-ostension') of the discourse – in terms of an intermediate cognitive model in working memory, allowing a more unitary view of resource management in the SI task. Relevance-theoretic analysis of the input discourse reveals rich pragmatic information guiding the construction of the appropriate contexts and the speaker's underlying intentionalities. The course of meaning assembly is reconstructed in annotated synchronised transcripts.


Introduction "The bare name of educating the coloured people, scares our cruel oppressors ... ." This declaration in David Walker's Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, written in the nineteenth-century, represents one of the first, if not the first, Africancentric/Pan Africanist critique of White nationalism in the United States. The Appeal, published in 1830, by David Walker boldly attacked the institution of American slavery. Walker, as one of the precursors of Black nationalism, defiantly called for free and enslaved Africans to rise up against their European oppressors. Walker's prophetic and liberatory language was a forerunner of other nineteenth-century freedom fighters like Sojourner Truth, Henry Highland Garnet, and Frederick Douglass who also used their mastery of the English language to challenge the political and moral constructs of American slavery. These early figures in the African American intellectual tradition challenged Africans in the United States to use language as a weapon in the struggle for their liberation. It has been estimated that during the 400 years of the European Slave Trade, forty to one-hundred million Africans were captured and transported to the Americas (Rodney, 1974). This is perhaps a conservative figure. Richards (1980) and Ani (1994) suggest that understanding the maafa (Kiswahili word that describes a period of great disaster and tragedy) requires extensive study and analysis of the European world's global efforts to enslave, trade and exploit Africans in the Western Diaspora. In the United States, enslaved Africans, particularly in the South, lived in a cruel and inhumane society that sought to strip them of all elements of their African heritage, ethnic identity, and culture (family, kinships, languages, religions, traditions, and customs). These maafa experiences occurred across several centuries. During this period, the development of systemic methods of enslavement and exploitation, and legalization of slavery created a racist and oppressive American society. Van Sertima (1976) documented that Africans arrived in the Americas as explorers and traders centuries before Europeans. However, in English North America, the enslavement of Africans evolved out of the widely practiced indentured servitude system that covered immigrants from England (Rose, 1976). Thus, with the arrival of twenty Africans to Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, the beginnings of four centuries of European control over the lives and aspirations of Africans began. Today, the totality of the African maafa in the United States remains largely unknown to most Americans, including African Americans. Nonetheless, the enslaved African's struggle to acquire literacy, notably in the American South, is an important field of African American historiography. De-Africanization and Racial Domination in the United States Under American slavery, the slave holder's ideology shaped Southern life. Thus, owning "slaves" was the goal of every European male, rich or poor. Jacob and Landau (1971) suggest that historians generally categorize the personalities and behaviors of enslaved Africans into three types: 1) militant and rebellious, 2) docile, passive, and accepting, and 3) limited resistance due to constant terror of beatings, deprivation, and separation from families (p.100). Asante and Matteson (1992) found that the slaveholder's perceived need to control every aspect of the African life motivated their development of an interlocking system of exploitation and cultural domination. In this brutal, inhumane system, laws, statues and codes sanctioned chattel slavery. Ironically, the earliest statues punished Europeans for "immoral" relations with Africans. Then, in the 1640s, statues in the developing colonies singled-out Africans for distinct treatment, and by the end of the eighteenth-century, anti-African laws characterized the relationships between Europeans and Africans in the Southern colonies. …


Implementing a programming language means bridging the gap from the programmer's high-level thinking to the machine's zeros and ones. If this is done in an efficient and reliable way, programmers can concentrate on the actual problems they have to solve, rather than on the details of machines. But understanding the whole chain from languages to machines is still an essential part of the training of any serious programmer. It will result in a more competent programmer, who will moreover be able to develop new languages. A new language is often the best way to solve a problem, and less difficult than it may sound. This book follows a theory-based practical approach, where theoretical models serve as blueprint for actual coding. The reader is guided to build compilers and interpreters in a well-understood and scalable way. The solutions are moreover portable to different implementation languages. Much of the actual code is automatically generated from a grammar of the language, by using the BNF Converter tool. The rest can be written in Haskell or Java, for which the book gives detailed guidance, but with some adaptation also in C, C++, C#, or OCaml, which are supported by the BNF Converter. The main focus of the book is on standard imperative and functional languages: a subset of C++ and a subset of Haskell are the source languages, and Java Virtual Machine is the main target. Simple Intel x86 native code compilation is shown to complete the chain from language to machine. The last chapter leaves the standard paths and explores the space of language design ranging from minimal Turing-complete languages to human-computer interaction in natural language.


This paper presents the preliminary results of developing HAL for CALL, an artificial intelligence assistant for language instructor. The assistant consists of a chatbot, an avatar (a three-dimensional visualization of the chatbot), a voice (text-to-speech engine interface) and interfaces to external sources of language knowledge. Some techniques used in adapting freely available chatbot for the need of a language learning system are presented. Integration of HAL with Second Life virtual world is proposed. We will discuss technical challenges and possible future work directions


This paper develops a scale for the impact of adaptive structuration on Web technology structures and user structures. An earlier scale of "reinvention" required comparison against "ultimate functionality" of the technology. This is not practical with a website that is continuously under development. The new scale has, in order of increasing impact on the structure, four key points: refine, extend, redesign and transform. When considering a possible change, the change should be placed independently on the impact scale for each relevant structure. Whether the changes emerge or are planned, placing each change on the scale will give an early indication of the potential impact of that change.


This experiment was carried out to determine the genotypic variation among rice (Oryza sativa) accessions using simple sequence repeats (SSR) markers. In the present study, a total of 12 SSR markers were used across 87 rice accessions from six countries. NTSYS-pc and PowerMarker software were used for data analysis. Six primers out of these 12 primers showed DNA amplification and polymorphism among the 87 rice accessions. The number of alleles detected by these six primers ranged from 2 to 9 with an average of 6.83 while polymorphism information content (PIC) ranged from 0.34 to 0.79 with an average of 0.55. The unweighted pair group method with arithmetic averages (UPGMA) cluster dendrogram generated based on the six SSR markers grouped the accessions into 4 clusters with 41% similarity coefficient. Accessions from these four clusters have late maturity, green basal leaf sheath colour, no awn and fewer tillers, respectively. This experiment has proven that even a small number of SSR markers are effective in assessing genetic diversity in rice. The genetic diversity revealed by the SSR markers in this study would be very important to select potentially good genotypes for future rice improvement programmes.

 Key words: Dendrogram, genetic diversity, molecular markers, rice.


Nowadays, the increasing demand of water resources has become one of the most relevant issues when water supply must be guaranteed as in the case of irrigation comunities. It becomes difficult to provide the predictive optimal behavior of regulation structures when the regime of the flow is changing in time and, moreover, when this regulation modifies the hydraulic conditions of the structure. One of the most widely used solution for control is PID. The disadvantages of PID control are the difficulties in the presence of non-linearities as well as the PID parameters tuning. Taking into account previous works about sluice gate formulation and its hydraulics, an equivalent formulation is going to be applied to obtain the control signal for the gate. This will make possible to build a system that allows the optimal control of the gate in order to obtain, for instance, a desired volume of water in the least time possible with the minimum water loss. In this work, a reformulation of the problem is analyzed and then, an equivalent the control is applied to sluice gate flow to obtain a simulation based control system and a near real-time solution is explored using adjoint variable formulation.


This thesis aims to identify mechanisms underlying the impact of negative utility on probability estimates (Harris, Corner, & Hahn, 2009). In particular, we investigated evidence for arousal misattribution (Vosgerau, 2010) by examining a moderation by interoceptive ability. Furthermore, we investigated an account of loss function asymmetry (e.g., Weber, 1994) by examining the role of decision-control. Important to the current aims, social power is related to both interoception and control. Power increases interoceptive awareness (Moeini-Jazani, Knopferle, de Moliere, Gatti & Warlop, 2014) and one's personal sense of control (Fast, Gruenfeld, Sivanathan, & Galinsky, 2009). Thus, we examined whether power moderates the relationship of negative utility and probability estimates. Furthermore, we aimed to observe whether this potential moderation by social power occurs due to the powerful's greater interoceptive awareness, or due to their greater sense of control, supporting an account of arousal misattribution and loss function asymmetries, respectively. Chapter 2 provides some preliminary evidence that self-reported interoception moderates the impact of negative utility on probability across 2 experiments. However, when measuring interoceptive awareness objectively, no evidence for a moderating role was found. Furthermore, assessing arousal by means of galvanic skin responses provided also no evidence for arousal misattribution as a mechanism. Next, in Chapter 3 we examined Vosgerau's (2010) original findings demonstrating arousal misattribution. Across 4 experiments, we are unable to replicate Vosgerau's (2010) results. Subsequently, we investigated the role of loss function asymmetries in Chapter 4. Across 4 studies we provide evidence for the notion that powerful, but not powerless individuals assign higher probabilities to negative events. Manipulating the controllability of the event, we provide evidence for loss function asymmetries as a mechanism underlying the impact of social power on the relationship of negative utility and probability estimates. Having demonstrated that powerful individuals can be more sensitive to negative information, Chapter 5 shows across 3 experiments that the powerful act more on affordances of negative affective states. The powerful, who have been shown to be more approach oriented than the powerless (Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003) become more avoidant under negative affective states than the powerless. In sum, this thesis provides evidence for loss function asymmetries underlying the interdependence of utility and probability, and demonstrates that power can lead to heightened sensitivity for negative (affective) information.


Environmental models constructed with a spatial domain require choices about the representation of space. Decisions in the adaptation of a spatial data model can have significant consequences on the ability to predict environmental function as a result of changes to levels of aggregation of input parameters and scaling issues in the processes being modelled. In some cases, it is possible to construct a systematic framework to evaluate the uncertainty in predictions using different spatial models; in other cases, the realm of possibilities plus the complexity of the environmental model in question may inhibit numeric uncertainty estimates. We demonstrate a range of potential spatial data models to parameterize a landscape‐level hydroecological model (RHESSys). The effects of data model choice are illustrated, both in terms of input parameter distributions and resulting ecophysiological predictions. Predicted productivity varied widely, as a function of both the number of modelling units, and of arbitrary decisions such as the origin of a raster grid. It is therefore important to use as much information about the modelled environment as possible. Combinations of adaptive methods to evaluate distributions of input data, plus knowledge of dominant controls of ecosystem processes, can help evaluate potential representations. In this case, variance‐based delineation of vegetation patches is shown to improve the ability to intelligently choose a patch distribution that minimizes the number of patches, while maintaining a degree of aggregation that does not overly bias the predictions.


The escalation of learner indiscipline cases in schools suggests failure by teachers to institute adequate alternative disciplinary measures after corporal punishment was outlawed in South African schools. We sought to address the following two research questions: (a) How do educators view their disciplinary capabilities in the post-corporal punishment period? and (b) How do educators view the usefulness of alternative disciplinary measures? The study adopted a qualitative approach. A case study of three purposively selected practising junior secondary school educators was used. Data were collected through interviews. We found that educators generally feel disempowered in their ability to institute discipline in schools in the absence of corporal punishment. Educators revealed that learners do not fear or respect educators because they know that nothing will happen to them. Although educators are aware of alternative disciplinary measures, they view them as ineffective and time consuming. Keywords: corporal punishment; educator capacity; indiscipline; schools; South Africa


Decision making for value-based design in Value Management (VM) is very complicated due to the involvement of many parties. In such situation where the designer, project manager, facility manager and others are involved in choosing a single alternative from a set of solutions, a negotiation support is required to evaluate and rank the solution before engaging into negotiation. This paper presents a conceptual model of negotiation support for VM. It consists of developing the appropriate research approach, methodology of negotiation and agent-based negotiation in VM. The research objectives are to find a theoretical basis and research approach for negotiation support methodology on VM, to develop a decision model for technical solution options in a satisfying function/cost preferences, to investigate negotiation style and outcome and analyze the correlation between them for the basis of scenarios on the agent system, to develop a model for agreement options and coalition algorithms on value-based decision, to validate the coalition algorithms and introduce an initial model of Negotiation Support for Value Management (NSVM). A triangulation methodology has been used to fulfill the objectives. It combines simultaneous triangulation by using case studies and survey methods and sequential triangulation in which results of one method are essential in planning the next method (theoretical mapping, survey research, focus group, case study and conceptual modeling). The methodology is based on a theoretical approach which consists of value-based decision nature in construction VM, multicriteria group decision making, game theory, negotiation theory, and agent-based development. This methodology combines value analysis method using Function Analysis System Technique (FAST); Life Cycle Cost analysis, group decision analysis method based on Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), and Game theory-based agent system to develop a negotiation support. The negotiation support bridges theoretical gap between automated design in construction domain and automated negotiation in information technology domain by providing a structured methodology which can lead to systematic support system and automated negotiation for VM process. It will contribute to the Value Management body of knowledge as an advanced method for creativity and analysis phase, since the practice of this knowledge is teamwork based.


Prior to the evolution of flow computers being commonly used in the measurement of hydrocarbons, most telemetry systems were used to collect control information and real time data and provide control commands to a Remote Terminal Unit at major pump and compressor stations. Most of the local metering was being handled by chart recorders and local data collection by operations. These charts and reports were sent to a central facility where the information was used to provide custody transfer reports and or operations reports. Most of the commonly used chart recorders used the standard circular chart format and were mostly pneumatic devices. The collection of the circular charts and the processing of the information to provide billing information was a cumbersome and costly task. The measurement departments often had to deal with discrepancies in data and information that was often months old. There was a strong need for collecting real time information for metering and custody transfer. Although there were telemetry systems in place, collecting real time information and getting this information to a central office was not easily accomplished with the types of SCADA systems in place. Most of the early RTU/SCADA systems were used for control purposes, such as start/stop, open/close and alarm reporting. Some units did have analog signal capabilities, and could be used to download remote setpoints and collect valve positions etc.


This paper gives an overview on crowdsourcing and co-curation practices in virtual museums. Engaged nonprofessionals and specialists support curators in creating digital 2D or 3D exhibits, exhibitions and tour planning and in the enhancement of metadata using the Virtual Museum and Cultural Object Exchange Format (ViMCOX). ViMCOX is based on international Lightweight Information Describing Objects (LIDO) v1.0 metadata standard, provides the semantic structure of exhibitions and complete museums and includes new features, such as room and outdoor design, interactions with artwork, path planning and dissemination. Various application examples show the impact of crowdsourcing, co-creation and cocuration on the digitalization of expositions in classical museums and on the creation of virtual museums. The case studies are devoted to restoring lost or damaged artwork by the GermanJewish sculptor Leopold Fleischhacker, high-quality 3D shapes and Armenian cross stones. Finally, the paper reports on an evaluation in the field of usability, user interfaces and the crowd's willingness to undertake various co-curation subtasks.


Engineering is typically plagued with lower graduation rates and larger achievement gaps compared to other majors; the projected demand for its future graduates lends to the urgency in reversing these trends. Holding a growth mindset, or a belief that intelligence is mutable, and a feeling of belongingness are keys to persisting in and graduating from college. In prior research, improvements in retention and graduation rates have been found following minor interventions, particularly among some underrepresented populations of students. The current study explored whether similar interventions could be effective in increasing retention and graduation rates among underrepresented populations of engineering and technology majors. It was conducted in an engineering college in a large, comprehensive, Hispanic-Serving, public university with a sizeable Asian population (40%), and 10-20% gap in the graduation rates of underrepresented and non-underrepresented minorities. The engineering college has a low percentage of women undergraduates (15%) and graduations rates for women are 5-10% higher than those of men. The results of this study may be applicable to other engineering schools with similar characteristics. Following IRB approval, a control assignment or interventions designed to elicit a growth mindset and/or a belongingness mindset were administered in 25 sections of a required Introduction to Engineering course (441 students total), typically taken in the freshman year of all engineering-named and technology programs. Block randomization was used to distribute, as evenly as possible, the gender, ethnic background, and section instructor composition across conditions. Preand post-course surveys measured happiness, health, belonging, self-efficacy, and growth mindset, and student grades were collected at the end of the academic term. One year into a 6-year study in which students will be tracked through graduation, preliminary results suggest that the interventions can aid performance. Overall, students who received the belongingness intervention had higher average class grades than those in the control and growth mindset condition, controlling for instructor, HS GPA, and SAT math scores. Further analyses revealed that the interventions had different effects on different demographic groups. First, among women, the growth mindset intervention resulted in lower course performance compared to the control and belongingness groups. Second, among men, the belongingness intervention resulted in higher course performance than in the growth and control. Third, the interventions did not differentially affect course performance among under-represented minorities (URMs). Finally, among non-URMs, the belongingness intervention led to improved course performance compared to the growth mindset and control conditions. Interestingly, prior to the interventions, underrepresented minority students exhibited higher growth mindset scores (effect size = 0.32) than non-underrepresented minority students and women exhibited higher feelings of belonging (effect size = 0.21) than men.


Power system emergencies are typically characterized by line overloads and/or voltage violations, Since human operators controlling these emergencies usually adopt a one-problem-at-a-time approach in correcting the violations, an emergency control algorithm designed to help the operator must also decide which problem should be pursued first. The discussion of the prioritization problem in current emergency control algorithms is incomplete-the criteria for selecting between voltage violations and overloads are simplistic, and most often based simply on the amount of violation. This paper analyzes how the fundamental difference in the nature of overloads and voltage violations problems makes prioritization difficult to resolve. Further, it shows how the problem falls naturally into the domain of fuzzy set theory, where overloads and voltage violations can be compared based on the same index. After discussions with utility operators/engineers, the prioritization algorithm is tested on a 1200-bus power system.


ABSTRACT Terrigenous material, faunal assemblages, and abrasion of skeletal material in limestone units of the Coffeyville and Hogshooter Formations (Missourian) in northeastern Oklahoma, support the genetic interpretations suggested by Folk (1959). Sparry calcite cement and micrite-bearing units are closely associated in this sequence. In the sparry calcite-cemented units, large percentages of coarse terrigenous material, severely abraded skeletal material, and a crinoidal-algal-molluscan faunal assemblage suggest that these units were deposited in high-energy environments. The micrite-bearing units contain less and finer terrigenous material. A predominance of unabraded skeletal material and a brachiopod-bryozoan-foraminiferal faunal assemblage indicate these units were deposited in lower en rgy environments. By applying Folk's (1959) genetic interpretations to several units in the Coffeyville-Hogshooter sequence, different origins for these units are formulated than have been previously proposed. The Canville and Lost City limestone units (formerly considered to represent the lower portion of the Hogshooter Formation) have characteristics suggesting that they are facies of the highly terrigenous Coffeyville Formation. These accumulations are similar to those described by Ginsburg and Lowenstam (1958) in Florida Bay. The lithologies of the Canville and Lost City suggest deposition in areas baffled by primitive plants (possibly algae) while highly terrigenous units were being deposited contemporaneously in adjacent un-baffled high-energy environments. The stratigraphic sequence around a ree in the Hogshooter Formation near Ramona, Oklahoma, suggests development in a relatively high-energy environment. The reef cores are composed of micritic material, whereas adjacent stratified beds are dominated by sparry calcite-cemented beds become less abundant. A few miles from the cores, the stratigraphic sequence is dominated by micrite-bearing units. This gradation from sparry calcite cement to micrite suggests a decrease in the energy in the depositional environment away from the reef cores. The micritic cores were probably preserved in the high-energy environment by the baffling effect of algae and bryozoans.


Biogeochemical orientation surveys were undertaken at low sulphidation epithermal Au–Ag occurrences in the Hauraki Goldfield–Coromandel Volcanic Zone and the Taupo Volcanic Zone, and at the Waiotapu active geothermal area in the Taupo Volcanic Zone. Several plant species were sampled, including the foliage of tree ferns and tea trees. The ferns – silver fern (ponga), rough tree fern (wheki) and black tree fern (mamaku) – were ubiquitous and were the easiest species to sample, although tea tree was the dominant genus at Waiotapu. At the Waiotapu geothermal area, significantly higher concentrations of Ag, Au, Sb, As, Cs and Rb were present in samples close to Champagne Pool than elsewhere, confirming its location as the main outflow source of Au, Ag and their pathfinder elements. The fern survey areas at Luck at Last mine, Pine Sinter and Ohui in the Coromandel Volcanic Zone each exhibited biogeochemical anomalies, which successfully highlighted most of the known quartz veins and provided additional anomalies for further investigation. Rough tree fern was the most common species at Goldmine Hill, Puhipuhi (Taupo Volcanic Zone). Although this species absorbs lower concentrations of many elements than the silver fern, the spatial distribution of elements is of greater significance than their absolute concentrations. The highest Au, Ag, As and Al concentrations occurred in samples from a ridge extending WNW from Goldmine Hill. Sb and Bi were at anomalous levels in an area peripheral to the precious metal anomalies, indicating the potential zonation of elements distal from the Au and Ag deposits. Supplementary material: The full datasets on the fern and tea tree chemistry, including quality assurance/quality control and multi-element plots, are available free of charge through the GNS Science website (search for Dunn) at http://shop.gns.cri.nz/publications/science-reports/.


Abstract Drawing on a video ethnography at a pediatric unit at a Swedish children's hospital, this study presents analyses of "How are you" (HAY) routines and problem elicitations. Such conversational openings are ambiguous in that they can either be read as casual greetings, or as genuine questions about the patient's health. Moreover, there is a double ambiguity in that the doctor, at times, employs third person pronouns (e.g., "How is Elinor?") or second person plurals (e.g., "So how are you doing?") which means that there is a second type of ambiguity, an ambiguity around who is addressed: the child and/or the parent(s). This study also shows that there is a great variation in conversational openings according to the age of the child in that the odds that the doctor might invite the child as a conversational partner increase with the child's age. The preschool children almost never respond to the doctor's HAY, and it does not matter if it is an ambiguous or unambiguous question. If they answer, it is in the form of a minimal uptake or after a whole series of questions. In contrast, the schoolchildren always respond to the doctors' HAY and offer quite elaborate and detailed responses.


The usual interpretation of a flux transfer event (FTE) at the magnetopause, in terms of time-dependent and possibly patchy reconnection, demands that it generate an ionospheric signature. Recent ground-based observations have revealed that auroral transients in the cusp/cleft region have all the characteristics required of FTE effects. However, signatures in the major available dataset, namely that from low-altitude polar-orbiting satellites, have not yet been identified. In this paper, we consider a cusp pass of the DE-2 spacecraft during strongly southward IMF. The particle detectors show magnetosheath ion injection signatures. However, the satellite motion and convection are opposed, and we discuss how the observed falling energy dispersion of the precipitating ions can have arisen from a static, moving or growing source. The spatial scale of the source is typical of an FTE. A simple model of the ionospheric signature of an FTE reproduces the observed electric and magnetic field perturbations. Precipitating electrons of peak energy ∼100eV are found to lie on the predicted boundary of the newly-opened tube, very similar to those found on the edges of FTEs at the magnetopause. The injected ions are within this boundary and their dispersion is consistent with its growth as reconnection proceeds. The reconnection potential and the potential of the induced ionospheric motion are found to be the same (≃25kV). The scanning imager on DE-1 shows a localised transient auroral feature around DE-2 at this time, similar to the recent optical/radar observations of FTEs.


This study aims to suggest ways of improving the effectiveness of translated tourism promotional materials (TPMs). It investigates the root causes behind the failure of translated texts to reach the target audience and the challenges involved in producing effective TPM translations. Research on the translation of TPMs has concentrated mainly on individual case studies and has generally not taken account of the overall context, that is, the entire process of promoting tourism across cultures. This study attempts to fill this gap by focusing on the relationship between the cultural context of tourism promotion in the commercial world and the language of tourism promotion as employed in TPMs. This is accomplished by investigating published Malay translations of Australian TPMs to assess whether the function of the Malay translations is appropriate for its cultural context. The application of the functionalist approach to translation and the investigation into the cultural context of the translated TPMs highlight key cultural inconsistencies. I address this cross-cultural challenge by proposing a translation model - the cultural-conceptual translation model (CCT) - which identifies effective strategies for the translation of TPMs. It is a given that the creation of an effective translated TPM is also contingent on a successful negotiation between the translator and the commissioner who assigns the task to the individual translator. Therefore, the translator-commissioner relationship forms an integral part of this study. In other words, this study combines both theoretical and practical aspects. The theoretical aspect is represented by the CCT model, while the practical aspect is represented by the application of the CCT model in a translation project conducted in a simulated commercial-world setting, with the commissioner-translator interaction being a key feature. The combination of both theory and practice works towards the mapping of possible best practices in TPM translation.


Increasingly, the United Kingdom Government is looking towards the social economy to deliver welfare services. The social economy, and specifically social enterprises, are envisaged by New Labour as having the ability to train and employ those disadvantaged in the labour market; engage individuals and communities in service provision and urban renewal; and, provide a model for future forms of welfare service provision. This research investigates the links between the social enterprise and the welfare reforms initiated by New Labour. In addition, the research considers the implications of an expanded role for social enterprises in welfare from the perspective of social enterprise practitioners. Using a grounded theory research design, and qualitative research methodologies, those running social enterprises in the cities of London and Bristol were interviewed (during the summer of 2001). This data, alongside policy documents, ministerial speeches, newspaper articles, think tank publications, and interviews with policy-makers and advocates for the social enterprise sector, provide the evidence presented here. The research develops a definition of the social enterprise as an organisation that uses a commercial venture as a tool to achieve social change. It is shown that the term 'social enterprise' refers to a diverse range of organisations that differ in legal and organisational structure and social mission, but which are linked by the common purpose of service delivery. The research reveals a subtle but important difference between social enterprise activity, and social enterprise as a business model. In spite of their diversity, it is demonstrated that a typology of social enterprises can be constructed by using the attributes identified by those running such organisations. This typology takes into account a diverse range of attributes that coalesce to form this hybrid social institution, instead of considering their organisational structure or social mission as defining features, as has been the case in the past. Using discourse analysis, social enterprises are shown to be significant within welfare reform because they embody the attributes that advocates for reform wish to promote. Social enterprises are shown to embody the postmodern attributes of'empowerment' and tailored localised service provision, alongside the politically attractive attributes of'enterprise', 'effectiveness', and 'efficiency'. These attributes offer 'challenges' to existing forms of public and third sector welfare provision. Through these challenges, the discourse of social enterprise is instrumental in current changes in welfare, not only in changing the practices of service delivery, but more significantly, in changing the culture and the way in which 'solutions' in welfare are sought. The thesis demonstrates how the notion of social enterprise is intertwined with broader academic debates concerning the scale and scope of the emerging postmodern welfare state, and the social enterprise is shown to be emblematic of those changes in welfare at a theoretical level. At a practical level, the social enterprise appears to be unlikely to have significant impact on the mainstay of the welfare state. However, it is suggested here that policy-makers need to take greater consideration of the 'appropriateness' of applying the social enterprise model in welfare than is the case at present.


The demand for organic fresh fruits and vegetable continues to grow at a rate far higher than the rest of the produce industry. The cost of meeting organic certification standards, however, has meant that supply has been slow to adjust. With limited supply, the authors hypothesize that organic suppliers enjoy more market power in bargaining over their share of the retail-production cost margin for fresh apples. We test this hypothesis using random parameters, generalized extreme value demand model (mixed logit) combined with a structural model of retail and wholesale pricing that allows conduct to vary by product attributes (organic or nonorganic) and time. They apply this model to data on wholesale prices of organic and nonorganic apples from Washington State, and retail data from five major metropolitan markets. They find that organic growers do indeed earn a larger share of the total margin than nonorganic growers, but this vertical market power is eroding over time as market supply adjusts. [EconLit citations: C35; D12; D43; L13; L41; Q13]. (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


Anaplastic large cell lymphomas are peripheral T-cell lymphomas that are characterized by a proliferation of large anaplastic blasts expressing CD30. In children, systemic anaplastic large cell lymphomas often present at advanced clinical stage and harbor translocations involving the anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene leading to the expression of chimeric anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-fusion proteins. Primary cutaneous anaplastic large cell lymphoma is regarded as an ALK-negative variant confined to the skin and is part of the spectrum of primary cutaneous CD30-positive T-cell lymphoproliferative disorders. Thirty-three of 487 pediatric patients registered within the Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma-99 trial (1999 to 2006) presented with a skin limited CD30-positive lympho-proliferative disorder. In 23 of the 33 patients, material for international histopathological review was available, and the cases were studied for histopathological, immunophenotypical and clinical features as well as for breaks within the ALK gene. Five of 23 cases and one additional case (identified after closure of the trial) expressed ALK-protein. Complete staging excluded any other organ involvement in all children. Expression of ALK proteins was demonstrated by immunohistochemistry in all cases and the presence of breaks of the ALK gene was genetically confirmed in 5 evaluable cases. The histopathological and clinical picture of these skin-restricted ALK-positive lymphomas was indistinguishable from that of cutaneous anaplastic large cell lymphoma. Five children presented with a single skin lesion that was completely resected in 4 and incompletely resected in one. Three of these patients received no further therapy, 2 additional local radiotherapy, and one chemotherapy. All children remain in complete remission with a median follow up of seven years (range 1–8 years). We present 6 pediatric cases of ALK-positive primary cutaneous anaplastic large cell lymphomas. After thorough exclusion of systemic involvement, therapy confined to local measures seems to be sufficient to induce cure.


An analysis of bar formation under breaking waves was carried out in a small-scale wave tank. Although the 1/100 size scale of the tank was unusual for sediment transport study, the results were in agreement with field studies concerning wave breaking criteria and the direction of sand transport. This size permitted accurate simultaneous measurement of the spatial and temporal variations of both the wave height and the bathymetric profile. This study is the extension of a previous one concerned with non-breaking conditions. The role of the nonlinear wave-wave interactions, reinforced under breaking waves, was displayed in the bar formation. Finally, it was suggested that a more realistic modeling of the mean flows distribution in the bottom boundary layer (difference in direction and intensity between the upper and the lower parts) owing to the superposition of the undertow and nonlinearity effects, will improve the modeling of bar formation.


AbstractIn the Abu Madi Formation of the Nile Delta Basin, false bright spots may be misinterpreted as being indicative of hydrocarbons due to mixed clastics and carbonates. However, rock-physics analysis of well logs in a particular prospect area where such ambiguity exists suggests that attributes derived using extended elastic impedance (EEI) inversion may help identify hydrocarbons because they better show anomalous behavior in particular directions that are readily related to pore fluids and lithology. The EEI attributes calculated from well logs correlate extremely well to lithology and fluid properties, thereby differentiating amplitude anomalies caused by gas-bearing sandstones encased in shale from similar amplitudes caused by juxtaposition of high-impedance carbonates over lower impedance water-filled sandstones. Comparing seismically derived EEI attributes to well logs from a productive well and a nonproductive well indicates that seismic inversion can successfully identify lithologies such as ...


Rockall Bank is a large undersea bank situated in the north-east Atlantic. The region features steep bathymetry with the depth of Rockall Trough reaching 3000 m, rising to the surface at Rockall rock itself. Winter convective mixing in this area is strong and can reach 600 m or more. As this is deeper than a significant proportion of the bank, the water column above the bank becomes cooler than in the surrounding area, and a "cold water patch" forms. This water has been observed moving off the slope as a dense water cascade, a process that is important for shelf-ocean exchange and ventilation and which is also biologically important. This research contributes to knowledge of the dense water formation over Rockall Bank by analysing remotely-sensed data as well as numerical model results. Within this study: i) satellite sea surface temperature data were obtained for a ten year time series and the presence and properties of the surface cold water patch were investigated, and ii) the POLCOMS numerical model was adapted to simulate the Rockall Bank under different climatological conditions. It was demonstrated that a surface cold patch could be seen regularly in the satellite SST data, though more often there is a cold front associated with the Bank with no distinct cold patch. The duration of the cold patch and the duration of the front are inversely linked, and the cold patch is seen for longer in winters with a greater winter temperature difference across the Bank. The model successfully simulated the formation of the dense water in three test years, and the results show that the Bank greatly amplifies the effect of changing meteorological conditions. Dense water formation is very sensitive to changes in the winter air temperature, with a 2°C temperature decrease leading to a three-fold increase in the density difference between the water over the Bank and the surrounding area. The model results show a limited amount of cascading during the cooler years, but no cascading at all in the warmer year. Such large changes in the dense water formation caused by a relatively small change in air temperature suggests that climate change will have a significant impact on this system.


Every discipline has its own history of colorful characters who are sure to capture students' attention. The authors recount how this insight transformed a high school French class. OBSERVERS of secondary classrooms report that many students simply put in their time, listening passively, scarcely taking notes, and seldom contributing to discussions. Understandably, teachers thirst for ideas that will capture the imagination of these apathetic students and engage them actively in the learning process. Here we describe a successful solution that originated in a high school French class and makes use of the intriguing characters and unusual events that interest people in the French language, literature, and culture. Every subject has its rogues, its heroes, and its oddities. Van Gogh's removal of a large portion of his own ear following an argument with Gauguin is a classic example of eccentric, but intriguing, behavior. Students who recall little of van Gogh's work unfailingly remember this strange episode. Indeed, it was students' fascination with and long-term recall of van Gogh's self-mutilation that led us to consider whether other heroes, rascals, and rogues might also arouse student interest. Thus was born La Boite aux Mysteres. La Boite aux Mysteres was a bright red box, about one cubic foot in size. On the outside were images of Vincent van Gogh and his detached ear, as well as the words La Boite aux Mysteres. Inside were questions about French language, history, culture, and other personalities who, like van Gogh, exhibited unusual behaviors. The opening in the lid was large enough to permit students to reach in and draw a Mysteres card, but not so large that they could read and choose a specific card. When students entered the French classroom and saw La Boite for the first time, their curiosity was intense, and questions came quickly. What is it? What's inside? How does it work? Why feature a Dutch painter in a French class? (Students later learned that van Gogh spent portions of his life in France, a revelation that led to a discussion of expatriates and their reasons for emigrating.) La Boite quickly proved successful in countering student apathy. What's Inside the Box? Van Gogh's unusual behavior served as the "hook" for learner interest. However, La Boite made use of a range of questions and exercises that correlated with the beginning French curriculum. Questions challenged the learners and reinforced course objectives. Many questions were open-ended, requiring oral responses or board work. For example, one question card read: "Conjugate etre, avoir, and aller on the board in present tense, s'il vous plait." Others asked students to count aloud in French or to translate passages. Higher-order questions were prepared for the various units and topics on French culture and customs. For example, when students discussed the Louvre, questions pertaining to its collections, hours, admission prices, and public transportation became Mysteres cards in La Boite. Characters, quotations, locations, and events from works of French literature and history were the basis for other questions. In addition to van Gogh, character cards included such personalities as Napoleon and Josephine, Marie Antoinette, Robespierre, and Louis Guillotin. When relevant, questions were added to the box that dealt with current events and topics such as festivals, currency, pharmacies, hotels, airlines, train and auto rental reservations, customs, passports, emergencies, and other aspects of everyday life. Our guide to deciding what to include were the questions "What am I trying to accomplish?" and "What learning outcomes am I trying to achieve?" In addition to content questions, "chance cards" were included in La Boite. Elements of chance and the possibility of drawing a character card added to the anticipation and excitement. Chance cards included such possibilities as "Draw another card," "Tag another student to choose a card," and "No homework tonight. …


To what extent do Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) monitor global value chains? While NGOs regularly denounce the behavior of multinational corporations throughout the world, their motivations for choosing campaign targets remain largely unknown. Using a new dataset on activists' campaigns toward multinational firms, we estimate a triadic gravity equation for campaigns, involving the NGO, firm, and action countries. Our results point to a strong proximity bias in NGO activity: Distance, national borders, and lack of a common language all contribute to impede the intensity of campaigns. We estimate the distance elasticity of campaigns to be −0.2 and further document that NGOs strongly bias their actions toward home firms or foreign firms with home actions. A domestic firm is 3.45 times more likely to be attacked than a foreign one. Foreign firms headquartered in common language countries draw 1.63 times more campaigns. Overall, campaigns seem to be designed so as to include at least one element of proximity drawing the attention of consumers. This pattern questions the role of NGOs in the monitoring of multinational production operated in remote, unfamiliar locations.


During the second half of the 20th century, in response to the growing pressure from environmental movements and organisations, European countries began to abandon rearing laying hens in battery cages, which were so far considered the most efficient husbandry system. Council Directive 1999/74/ЕC has banned housing laying hens in conventional cages effective from 1 January 2012, and only housing in enriched cages is allowed. Enriched cages are often called furnished or modified. They combine the main advantages of battery cage systems as intensity, maintenance of better hygienic parameters, restricted contact among birds and between birds and manure, better production indices, more efficient use of electrical energy, litter and veterinary medications. On the other side, furnished cages provide a larger living area for the bird, as well as perches, nests and other "enrichments" for satisfying the natural biological needs of poultry ensures the humane aspect of cage husbandry systems for laying hens. In some EC countries (Austria, Belgium), a trend to complete ban on battery cage rearing during the next decade is observed. In Switzerland, cage systems for laying hens, both in conventional and enriched cages, are completely prohibited.


Data management plans (DMPs) have increasingly been encouraged as a key component of institutional and funding body policy. Although DMPs necessarily place administrative burden on researchers, proponents claim that DMPs have myriad benefits, including enhanced research data quality, increased rates of data sharing, and institutional planning and compliance benefits. In this manuscript, we explore the international history of DMPs and describe institutional and funding body DMP policy. We find that economic and societal benefits from presumed increased rates of data sharing was the original driver of mandating DMPs by funding bodies. Today, 86% of UK Research Councils and 63% of US funding bodies require submission of a DMP with funding applications. Given that no major Australian funding bodies require DMP submission, it is of note that 37% of Australian universities have taken the initiative to internally mandate DMPs. Institutions both within Australia and internationally frequently promote the professional benefits of DMP use, and endorse DMPs as 'best practice'. We analyse one such typical DMP implementation at a major Australian institution, finding that DMPs have low levels of apparent translational value. Indeed, an extensive literature review suggests there is very limited published systematic evidence that DMP use has any tangible benefit for researchers, institutions or funding bodies. We are therefore led to question why DMPs have become the go-to tool for research data professionals and advocates of good data practice. By delineating multiple use-cases and highlighting the need for DMPs to be fit for intended purpose, we question the view that a good DMP is necessarily that which encompasses the entire data lifecycle of a project. Finally, we summarise recent developments in the DMP landscape, and note a positive shift towards evidence-based research management through more researcher-centric, educative, and integrated DMP services.


Pultruded glass fiber‐reinforced polymer (GFRP) bridge decks distribute punctual vehicular loads to the underlying superstructure and can also act as the upper chord of hybrid main girders. The deck's structural performance in both cases is influenced by its transverse behavior. The static bending behavior in the transverse‐to‐pultrusion direction of two GFRP bridge deck systems with trapezoidal (DS) and triangular (AS) cell cross‐sectional geometry was experimentally studied. Different load transfer mechanisms were found in DS (frame‐dominated) and AS (truss‐governed) depending on the cell geometry. The DS deck exhibited a lower apparent bending stiffness and degree of composite action between the face sheets than the AS deck, which was attributed to the lower transverse in‐plane shear stiffness provided by the trapezoidal core than by the triangular core. The system in‐plane shear moduli were estimated from the experimental deflection results.


A National Academy of Sciences Panel recently made a number of recommendations to the BLS for improving the Consumer Price Index, while also suggesting some cautions to be observed when considering the adoption of new concepts and techniques. This paper discusses the Panel's analyses in four areas: Should a cost-of-living index be the measurement objective of the CPI? Should the index attempt to capture the effect on living costs from changes in "environmental" conditions? How can hedonic techniques be best applied for measuring quality changes? Should the BLS attempt to measure the consumer surpluses accompanying the introduction of new goods?


In the last two decades, technological progress towards the miniaturisation of products and components has increased significantly. This trend has also been driven by demands for the manufacture of devices with functional features on the nanoscale. One of the nanofabrication processes, which has been proposed by researchers to meet such needs, relies on the mechanical machining of the surface of a workpiece with the tip of an atomic force microscope (AFM) probe. In this case, the AFM probe is utilised as a cutting tool as it enables the direct contact between its sharp tip, which is fixed on a flexible micro cantilever, and the workpiece surface. A relatively large numbers of studies have been reported in the field of AFM tip-based nanomachining since the invention of the AFM instrument itself just over thirty years ago. However, such studies have typically neglected the fact that AFM probes should be considered as flexible tools when investigating this process. Thus, this shortcoming constitutes the main motivation behind this PhD research.
Following a review of the literature, the work reported in this Thesis starts by a study of the bending orientation of cantilevers during AFM tip-based nanomachining operations along different processing directions. To achieve this, an advanced experimental set-up is developed first in order to monitor a number of output signals, which characterise the motions of both the fixed and the free ends of the cantilever together with the displacements of the AFM stage. A refined theoretical analysis is also presented to express the bending orientation of an AFM probe cantilever at its free end as a function of the forces acting on the tip when machining in a direction pointing away from the probe. This refined model shows that the bending orientation depends on both geometric parameters of the cantilever and on the cutting forces. Complementary experiments, which are designed to determine the quasi-static bending behaviour of cantilevers in practice, show that, contrary to assumed knowledge, both concave and convex bending orientations could take place when machining along this direction. The occurrence of a change of the cantilever deflected shape from convex to concave bending during machining can principally change the depth and width of grooves produced. For instance, the depth of grooves machined on a single crystal copper specimen may increase up to 70% following this phenomenon.
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Following this, another refined model is also developed to measure the normal force acting on the tip when the AFM stage is static by taking in account the cantilever geometry and its inclination angle with respect to the sample surface. This work leads to the introduction of a correction factor that should be applied when using the conventional equation for determining the normal load in this configuration. Results obtained when implementing this model based on the dimensions of typical commercial AFM probes show that the conventional approach always leads to an underestimation of the normal applied force. In addition, it is demonstrated, both theoretically and experimentally, that the conventional method for determining the applied normal load during AFM tip-based nanomachining, i.e. when the stage is not static, is wrong.
Based on this shortcoming, a novel procedure is proposed to estimate all three force components (i.e. thrust, axial, and lateral forces) acting on the tip during AFM tip-based nanomachining. To achieve this, two novel methods are also developed to assess the actual value of normal force during machining, which in this case is referred to as the thrust force. Based on experimental data, a good agreement is found between both methods for different physical quantities evaluated. Another refined theoretical model, based on the classical beam theory, is also employed in this procedure to determine the axial force acting on the tip and subsequently, the lateral force. Using this novel procedure to estimate the cutting forces, it is also shown that even if the deflection angle at free end of probe is constant, this does not mean that the associated cantilever vertical deflection is constant between the configurations when the AFM stage is static (i.e. for nanoindentation) and when it is moving (i.e. during an actual cutting operation).
Finally, in order to gain further insights into the material removal mechanisms that influence the process, a series of post-machining investigations on the topography of produced grooves is reported for different applied loads and processing directions. This particular experimental study takes advantage of the prior knowledge established in this Thesis. Indeed, the understanding of the cantilever deflected shape and the accurate assessment of cutting forces provide key inputs when the groove formation process is analysed.


A volcanic eruption occurs when a magma-filled fracture propagates from its source to the surface. Analysing and understanding the conditions that allow this to happen constitute a major part of the scientific field of volcanotectonics. This new volume introduces this cutting-edge and interdisciplinary topic in volcanological research, which incorporates principles and methods from structural geology, tectonics, volcano-deformation studies, physical volcanology, seismology, and physics. It explains and illustrates the physical processes that operate inside volcanoes and which control the frequencies, locations, durations, and sizes of volcanic eruptions. Featuring a clear theoretical framework and helpful summary descriptions of various volcanic structures and products, as well as many worked examples and exercises, this book is an ideal resource for students, researchers and practitioners seeking an understanding of the processes that give rise to volcanic deformation, earthquakes, and eruptions.


Significance The secular rise in intelligence across birth cohorts is one of the most widely documented facts in psychology. This finding is important because intelligence is a key predictor of many outcomes such as education, occupation, and income. Although noncognitive skills may be equally important, there is little evidence on the long-term trends in noncognitive skills due to lack of data on consistently measured noncognitive skills of representative populations of successive cohorts. Using test score data based on an unchanged test taken by the population of Finnish military conscripts, we find steady positive trends in personality traits that are associated with high income. These trends are similar in magnitude and economic importance to the simultaneous rise in intelligence. Although trends in many physical characteristics and cognitive capabilities of modern humans are well-documented, less is known about how personality traits have evolved over time. We analyze data from a standardized personality test administered to 79% of Finnish men born between 1962 and 1976 (n = 419,523) and find steady increases in personality traits that predict higher income in later life. The magnitudes of these trends are similar to the simultaneous increase in cognitive abilities, at 0.2–0.6 SD during the 15-y window. When anchored to earnings, the change in personality traits amounts to a 12% increase. Both personality and cognitive ability have consistent associations with family background, but the trends are similar across groups defined by parental income, parental education, number of siblings, and rural/urban status. Nevertheless, much of the trends in test scores can be attributed to changes in the family background composition, namely 33% for personality and 64% for cognitive ability. These composition effects are mostly due to improvements in parents' education. We conclude that there is a "Flynn effect" for personality that mirrors the original Flynn effect for cognitive ability in magnitude and practical significance but is less driven by compositional changes in family background.


The sociological imagination and the artistic imagination have been historically intertwined, at once reciprocal and conflicting, complementary and tensional. This connection is nowhere more apparent than in the work of Zygmunt Bauman. His conception and practice of sociology were always infused with a literary and artistic sensibility. He wrote extensively on the relationship between sociology and the arts, and especially on sociology and literature; he frequently drew on literary writers in his exploration and elucidation of sociological problems; and he was an avid and passionate consumer and practitioner of art, especially film and photography. This volume brings together hitherto unknown or rare pieces by Bauman on the themes of culture and art, including previously unpublished material from the Bauman Archive at the University of Leeds. A substantial introduction by the editors provides readers with a lucid guide through this material and develops connections to Bauman's other works. The first volume in a series of books that will make available the lesser-known writings of one of the most influential social thinkers of our time, Culture and Art will be of interest to students and scholars across the arts, humanities and social sciences, and to a wider readership.


This paper studies the performance of latency insensitive systems with limited queue size, in contrast with previous studies that assumed unlimited queue size. We obtain a tight theoretical performance upper bound of such systems. This paper also proposes an efficient implementation of latency insensitive systems. Experimental results show that our implementation can always reach the theoretical performance upper bound. The results also validate the claim that the upper bound acquired through our performance analysis is tight.


The potential for commonly used anesthetics and sedatives to cause neuroapoptosis and other neurodegenerative changes in the developing mammalian brain has become evident in animal studies over the past 15 years. This concern has led to a number of retrospective studies in human infants and young children, and some of these studies observed an association between exposure to general anesthesia as an infant, and later neurobehavioral problems in childhood. This association is particularly evident for prolonged or repeated exposures. Because of the significant growth of fetal interventions requiring sedation and analgesia for the fetus, or because of maternal anesthetic effects, this concern about anesthetic neurotoxicity is relevant for the fetus. The potential for anesthetic neurotoxicity is the most important clinical and research problem in the field of pediatric anesthesiology. This review will first briefly summarize the rapid brain growth and development in the fetus and neonate. Next, animal model data of anesthetic neurotoxicity in the fetus and neonate will be presented, followed by a review of recent human clinical anesthetic neurotoxicity trials. Finally, the rationale for studying dexmedetomidine as a potential neuroprotectant agent in anesthetic neurotoxicity will be reviewed along with study design for two human clinical trials involving dexmedetomidine.


Water resources in Egypt have become stressed due to changes in climate patterns. Egypt is characterized by two seasons, a mild, wet winter and a hot, dry summer. In recent years, many areas have become vulnerable to the impact of extreme climate events. The impact of these events on water supplies have become more pronounced. This study states that there is a tangible impact of extreme climate events upon both water resources quality and water supplies. The Nile river water turbidity was investigated as an operational indicator for the water treatment plants (WTPs). The results illustrated that an unprecedented increase in average turbidity of raw water in Upper Egypt (from 4 up to 110 NTU) led to a cut in water supplies for up to 100 hours in some areas. While in Alexandria the turbidity did affect WTP operation efficiency, safe water could still be produced. Cuts in water supply would have an impact on hygiene and make people prone to use unsafe water sources. These consequences stimulate water supply bodies to develop action plans to mitigate and/or avoid such potential impacts on public health. This study suggests proposed steps to develop an appropriate plan to face such extreme events.


Over the last several decades, it has become increasingly accepted that the term xenobiotic relates to environmental impact, since environmental xenobiotics are understood to be substances foreign to a biological system, which did not exist in nature before their synthesis by humans. In this context, xenobiotics are persistent pollutants such as dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls, as well as plastics and pesticides. Dangerous and unstable situations can result from the presence of environmental xenobiotics since their harmful effects on humans and ecosystems are often unpredictable. For instance, the immune system is extremely vulnerable and sensitive to modulation by environmental xenobitics. Various experimental assays could be performed to ascertain the immunotoxic potential of environmental xenobiotics, taking into account genetic factors, the route of xenobiotic penetration, and the amount and duration of exposure, as well as the wave shape of the xenobiotic. In this paper, we propose an approach for the analysis of xenobiotic metabolism using mathematical models and corresponding methods. This study focuses on a pattern depicting mathematically modeled processes of resonant absorption of a xenobiotic harmonic oscillation by an organism modulated as an absorbing oscillator structure. We represent the xenobiotic concentration degree through a spatial concentration vector, and we model and simulate the oscillating regime of environmental xenobiotic absorption. It is anticipated that the results could be used to facilitate the assessment of the processes of environmental xenobiotic absorption, distribution, biotransformation and removal within the framework of compartmental analysis, by establishing appropriate mathematical models and simulations.


In the light of new and relevant scientific information regarding the increased risk of association of OTA hazard with food commodities such as meat and organs, on one hand and considering the documented update available through the scientific data freshness indicating the appropriateness of HPLC for increased performance in OTA testing in such food commodities, on the other hand, we assessed the need of re-validation and re-verification of OTA control measures in two example food products. The results of this assessment indicated that re-validation and rethinking of verification are strongly needed from the perspective of FBOs responsibility in guaranteeing the safety of their final products The results of re-validation and re-verification processes for "toba" meat product and for generic pork ham, as dried cured meat product, as presented in verification charts and discussed, were proven appropriate for the considered case study.