We develop a model explaining how criminal organizations strategically use pre-electoral violence as a way of influencing electoral results and politicians' behaviour. We then characterize the incentives to use such violence under different levels of electoral competition and different electoral rules. Our theory is consistent with the empirical evidence within Sicily and across Italian regions. Specifically, the presence of organized crime is associated with abnormal spikes in violence against politicians before elections—particularly when the electoral outcome is more uncertain—which in turn reduces voting for parties opposed by criminal organizations. Using a very large data set of parliamentary debates, we also show that violence by the Sicilian Mafia reduces anti-Mafia efforts by members of parliament appointed in Sicily, particularly from the parties that traditionally oppose the Mafia.


The results of prospective study on the growth and diets, estimated from 7-day weighed food intake records, of 20 life vegan children (aged 5.8–12.8 years) are presented. The growth and development of the children were normal but they tended to be lighter in weight and exceptionally lean compared with standards. Heights were around the median of the Tanner-Whitehouse standards but were lower than the medians recently proposed by the Department of Health. Energy intakes were similar to those reported in children of the same age in the general population, but dietary fibre intakes were very high which may have influenced the digestible energy. Sugar provided an average 15.6% of the dietary energy and this was supplied mainly by fruit and fruit juice. Mean fat intakes were close to the dietary reference values. Daily intakes of essential nutrients generally met the amounts recommended, with the exceptions of calcium and vitamin B12. Many children received supplementary sources of vitamin B12 and only two children had intakes below the lower recommended nutrient intake. Intakes of saturated fatty acids were low and those of linoleic acid were high. The ratio of linoleic/α-linolenic acid was high. As docosahexaenoic acid is absent from vegan diets, it is suggested that vegans should use oils with a lower ratio of linoleic/α-linolenic acid. Future studies should also consider the influence of a vegan diet on retinal function. None of the children was immunized against whooping cough and 11 had not been immunized against polio: 16 of the children had suffered from whooping cough. Future studies need to take into account factors other than diet when assessing the health of vegans. The results of this study show that children can be successfully reared on a vegan diet providing sufficient care is taken to avoid the known pitfalls of a bulky diet and vitamin B12 deficiency.


The polar regions have experienced some remarkable environmental changes in recent decades, such as the Antarctic ozone hole, the loss of large amounts of sea ice from the Arctic Ocean and major warming on the Antarctic Peninsula. The polar regions are also predicted to warm more than any other region on Earth over the next century if greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise. Yet trying to separate natural climate variability from anthropogenic factors still presents many problems. This book presents a thorough review of how the polar climates have changed over the last million years and sets recent changes within a long term perspective. The approach taken is highly cross-disciplinary and the close links between the atmosphere, ocean and ice at high latitudes are stressed. The volume will be invaluable for researchers and advanced students in polar science, climatology, global change, meteorology, oceanography and glaciology.


The analysis of multiple linear regressions (MLR) is investigated in the current study. MLR is applied frequently in different field of applied studies. In the current study simulation technique is used to evaluate the approach of "The Approach of Collaboration of Statistical Methods in Selecting the Correct Regressions (ACSMSCR)" by AL-Marshadi, (2014) with its two options in terms of its ability to identify the right regression model under some model assumptions violations with two different sample sizes. The evaluation is in terms of the percentage of number of times of success in identifying the right model. The simulation results indicate that the approach of (ACSMSCR) provided very good choice to select the right model even under the considered model assumptions violations where the second option provided the best performance for both the sample sizes. The main result of the current study is that we suggest using the approach of (ACSMSCR) with the second option as a reliable procedure to select the right model even under the considered model assumptions violations.


A study investigated the relationship between reading and the writings of gifted secondary school writers, especially their developmental reading interests, leisure reading selections, and the influence of others on their literary choices. Subjects, 79 students from rural and urban Arkansas schools were participating in a gifted writers' conference for which they had been selected by their teachers. Representing schools with differing patterns of grade level arrangement, they all came from grades 7-12. Subjects were surveyed as to the age they began reading, favorite books, books read during the last 12 months, number of books read, and how they learned about the books they wanted to read. Teachers were also surveyed about how they recommended books to students and asked to estimate how many books the students read. Survey responses indicated that students identified as gifted writers had a wide range of reading interests and that family and friends most frequently influenced their reading choices. Many students reported reading before school entrance. Dr. Seuss books were early reading choices; Newbery Medal books were cited as favorites during intermediate grades. By the time of secondary education, however, they read a wide range of genres, citing Stephen King as their favorite author, and Shel Silverstein and Edgar Allan Poe as favorite poets. Many books read would be considered adult selections, with horror fiction a popular choice. Advice of teachers and librarians was usually not sought, raising questions about guidance given to secondary students regarding contemporary literature. (NKA) ***********************.*********************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ***********************************************************************


I refine here the classical evolutionary model from law and economics by modifying it to accommodate three related concepts, one from chaos theory, another of path dependence, and a final one of politically-induced punctuated equilibrium from modern evolutionary theory itself. Although economic evolution selects out for extinction very inefficient results, and efficient results tend to survive, the evolutionary metaphor is by itself not rich enough to explain enough of what we see surviving, nor is it rich enough to explain fully how what survives survived. Within the looseness of acceptable efficiency, what survives depends not just on efficiency but on the initial, often accidental conditions (chaos theory) that establish an institutional structure inside which the economic players evolve. What survives also depends on the history of what problems had to be solved in the past -- problems that may be irrelevant today (path dependence); solutions to what later become irrelevant problems can be embedded in slowly-changing institutional structures. Although institutions cannot be too inefficient if they have survived, evolution toward efficiency constrains but does not fully determine the institutions we observe.


This study aims to propose an effective and practical paradigm for a brain-computer interface (BCI)-based 2-D virtual wheelchair control. The paradigm was based on the multi-class discrimination of spatiotemporally distinguishable phenomenon of event-related desynchronization/synchronization (ERD/ERS) in electroencephalogram signals associated with motor execution/imagery of right/left hand movement. Comparing with traditional method using ERD only, where bilateral ERDs appear during left/right hand mental tasks, the 2-D control exhibited high accuracy within a short time, as incorporating ERS into the paradigm hypothetically enhanced the spatiotemporal feature contrast of ERS versus ERD. We also expected users to experience ease of control by including a noncontrol state. In this study, the control command was sent discretely whereas the virtual wheelchair was moving continuously. We tested five healthy subjects in a single visit with two sessions, i.e., motor execution and motor imagery. Each session included a 20 min calibration and two sets of games that were less than 30 min. Average target hit rate was as high as 98.4% with motor imagery. Every subject achieved 100% hit rate in the second set of wheelchair control games. The average time to hit a target 10 m away was about 59 s, with 39 s for the best set. The superior control performance in subjects without intensive BCI training suggested a practical wheelchair control paradigm for BCI users.


Dairy goats have been imported into Tanzania since the 1960s to improve the milk production of Small East African (SEA) goats through crossbreeding. The SEA goats have poor genetic potential for milk. Although crossbreeding programmes started in the early 1980s, most were abandoned or failed for a number of reasons, including lack of performance records, which were important for the design and management of breeding programmes for dairy goats. This study was designed to evaluate growth, lactation, and manure yield in Norwegian Landrace (NL) goats in one rural community of Tanzania. Growth was evaluated in 211 goats by birth weight (BW), weaning weight (WW), weight at six (W6M) and nine months (W9M), and average daily gain (ADG). Lactation performance involved lactation milk yield (LMY), lactation length (LL), and dry off days in 251 does. Twenty four additional goats were confined to determine manure production and chemical composition in a different on-station study. The general linear model (GLM) of Statistical Analysis System (SAS) was used in data analysis. Averages for BW, WW, and adult weight (W9M) were 3.27 ± 0.04, 12.79 ± 0.09, and 28.33 ± 0.19 kg, respectively. Average LMY of 322 litres, LL 214.5 days and dry off days of 84 were obtained. Animals with ≥75% NL genetic make-up produced more milk and showed longer LL and higher ADG than those with 50%. For example, BW was 3.38 ± 0.12 kg in 75% NL animals compared with 2.56 ± 0.12 kg in 50%, whereas LMY was 324.09 ± 16.22 and 248.67 ± 16.20, respectively. The amount of manure was 311.8 g and 218 g per day for mature and grower goats, respectively. Nitrogen was the major content, comprising 1.98% of all nutrients in manure. Compared with the early years of introducing NL goats, growth and productivity of milk have increased several fold, indicating that the development of NL goats in Mgeta is positive at the moment. Keywords: Exotic goats, goat kids, Mgeta, productivity, smallholder


Primary sarcoma of the lung is a rare malignancy. We now report the first case of a pediatric patient with a pulmonary primary sarcoma and left atrial involvement treated by combined resection. The patient was an 11-year-old boy admitted for right hemiplegia who was found to have a mass localized to the right superior lobe of the lung with thrombosis in the right superior pulmonary vein extending into the left atrium. Combined resection was performed under extracorporeal circulation and further treatment included chemotherapy and autologous bone marrow transplantation. Pathology of the tumor revealed a high-grade undifferentiated sarcoma and the definitive staging was T4 N0 M0. The patient did well postoperatively but developed extsathoracic metastases and died 24 months later of progressive disease. Combined resection of tumor in the lung and left atria can be safely performed in a pediatric patient with pulmonary sarcoma. However, new chemotherapy protocols may be necessary to extend the survival of patients with this rare agressive disease.


A wide range of tools is now available to enable teaching practitioners to create web‐based educational materials from PowerPoint presentations, adding a variety of different digital media, such as audio and animation. The pilot study described in this paper compared three different systems for producing multimedia presentations from existing PowerPoint files. The resulting resources were tested by a group of disabled students and a group of non‐disabled students. Our findings show that there were statistically significant differences between the two groups in relation to their interaction with the resources. In particular, the students with disabilities were significantly more active in using the available controls to customise the running of the presentations. The data suggest that future work on why students with accessibility issues made different uses of these resources could encourage practitioners' deployment of multimedia resources for the benefit of all learners.


Manipulation of the mosquito gut microbiota can lay the foundations for novel methods for disease transmission control. Mosquito blood feeding triggers a significant, transient increase of the gut microbiota, but little is known about the mechanisms by which the mosquito controls this bacterial growth whilst limiting inflammation of the gut epithelium. Here, we investigate the gut epithelial response to the changing microbiota load upon blood feeding in the malaria vector Anopheles coluzzii. We show that the synthesis and integrity of the peritrophic matrix, which physically separates the gut epithelium from its luminal contents, is microbiota dependent. We reveal that the peritrophic matrix limits the growth and persistence of Enterobacteriaceae within the gut, whilst preventing seeding of a systemic infection. Our results demonstrate that the peritrophic matrix is a key regulator of mosquito gut homeostasis and establish functional analogies between this and the mucus layers of the mammalian gastrointestinal tract.


Abstract. Planetary boundary layer (PBL) processes are important for weather, climate, and tracer transport and concentration. One measure of the strength of these processes is the PBL depth. However, no single PBL depth definition exists and several studies have found that the estimated depth can vary substantially based on the definition used. In the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS-5) atmospheric general circulation model, the PBL depth is particularly important because it is used to calculate the turbulent length scale that is used in the estimation of turbulent mixing. This study analyzes the impact of using three different PBL depth definitions in this calculation. Two definitions are based on the scalar eddy diffusion coefficient and the third is based on the bulk Richardson number. Over land, the bulk Richardson number definition estimates shallower nocturnal PBLs than the other estimates while over water this definition generally produces deeper PBLs. The near-surface wind velocity, temperature, and specific humidity responses to the change in turbulence are spatially and temporally heterogeneous, resulting in changes to tracer transport and concentrations. Near-surface wind speed increases in the bulk Richardson number experiment cause Saharan dust increases on the order of 1 × 10−4 kg m−2 downwind over the Atlantic Ocean. Carbon monoxide (CO) surface concentrations are modified over Africa during boreal summer, producing differences on the order of 20 ppb, due to the model's treatment of emissions from biomass burning. While differences in carbon dioxide (CO2) are small in the time mean, instantaneous differences are on the order of 10 ppm and these are especially prevalent at high latitude during boreal winter. Understanding the sensitivity of trace gas and aerosol concentration estimates to PBL depth is important for studies seeking to calculate surface fluxes based on near-surface concentrations and for studies projecting future concentrations.


The unraveling of communist regimes in Europe since 1989 raised hopes for a brighter future of freedom and peace in those countries and around the world. This work combines in-depth analysis of individual countries with essays offering the perspectives of participants in the transitions. It conceptualizes and provides an overview of four different patterns of political development which have followed the end of communist rule. The studies provide new insights into the ongoing struggles among three competing political currents: those seeking democracy and market-oriented economies; former elements of the communist power structure including some in the communist party, the upper echelons of government and economic managers, the secret police, and the military who seek to retain or expand their power; and ultranationalist or ethnic extremists advocating the dominance of their particular group. Countries covered are Russia, Poland, Hungary, Czech and Slovak Federative Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Albania. Contributors: Jozsef Antall, Vadim Bakatin, Thomas G. Baker, Eniko Bollobas, Peter A. Clark, Emil Constantinescu, Miles Costich, Petre Datculescu, Carl Gershman, Frone Golem, Alexander Henderson, Robert Hutchings, Oleg Kalugin, Phyllis Kaminsky, Rita Klimova, Andrei Kolosovskiy, Maciej Kozlowski, Eugenio Lari, Constantine C. Menges, Mihajlo Mihajlov, Thomas Niles, Ernest Petric, John Robson, James M. Sheehan, Viktor Sheinis, John Sullivan, Pal Tar, Gyorgy Tokay, Dorin Tudoran, Vernon A. Walters, Sharon Wolchik, and Irena Zikova. Co-published with the Program on Transitions to Democracy.


Capital structure optimization is a key aspect to ensure the success of infrastructure financing. Interest in capital structure optimization in infrastructure projects has been growing rapidly because of the prevalence of public-private partnerships in the U.S. and private finance initiative in the United Kingdom. Even though it is recognized that there are three types of financial sources (i.e., equity, mezzanine, and debt capital) in funding an infrastructure project, the traditional capital structure optimization method either did not consider the existence of mezzanine finance or treat it to be debt or equity instruments. This assumption is not valid in the new era when more and more inflows of capital into infrastructure development projects are from all kinds of institutional investors and multilateral development finance institutions through private equity-style funds. These new equity investors are willing to take advantage of mezzanine financial instruments and common shares as a vehicle to invest in infrastructure assets, which makes a huge difference with traditional equity providers. The frequent implementation of convertible security as one kind of mezzanine financial instrument makes the prediction of the evolution of capital structure impossible due to the dynamic stopping time of the contingent claim embedded in convertible security. Thus, the traditional method for capital structure optimization in the new era is not tenable any more. The principal objective of this article is to present a new model from the perspective of project promoters, which considers convertible security in infrastructure financing and identifies optimal mix of equity, debt, mezzanine capital by incorporating stochastic dynamic programming into the traditional approach.


Background: Many individuals in the community are prescribed psychoactive drugs with sedative effects. These drugs may affect their daily functions, of which automobile driving is a major component. Objective: To examine the association of three classes of commonly used psychoactive drugs (viz. benzodiazepines and newer non-benzodiazepine hypnotics, antidepressants and opioids) with (i) the risk of traffic accidents (as indexed by epidemiological indicators of risk); and (ii) driving performance (as indexed by experimental measures of driving performance). Methods: A literature search for material published in the English language between January 1966 and January 2010 in PubMed and EMBASE databases was combined with a search for other relevant material referenced in the retrieved articles. Retrieved articles were systematically reviewed, carrying out meta-analyses where possible. Twenty-one epidemiological studies (13 case-control and 8 cohort studies) fulfilled the inclusion criteria by estimating the accident risk associated with drug exposure (ascertained by blood/urine analysis or prescription records). Sixty-nine experimental studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria by testing actual or simulated driving performance after administering a single dose or multiple doses.


Variation in the carbon isotopic composition of ecosystem respiration (δ 13 C R) was studied for 3 years along a precipitation gradient in western Oregon, USA, using the Keeling plot approach. Study sites included six coniferous forests, dominated by Picea sitchensis, Tsuga heterophylla, Pseudotsuga menziesii, Pinus ponderosa, and Juniperus occidentalis, and ranged in location from the Pacific coast to the eastern side of the Cascade Mountains (a 250-km transect). Mean annual precipitation across these sites ranged from 227 to 2,760 mm. Overall δ 13 C R varied from –23.1 to –33.1‰, and within a single forest, it varied in magnitude by 3.5–8.5‰. Mean annual δ 13 C R differed significantly in the forests and was strongly correlated with mean annual precipitation. The carbon isotope ratio of carbon stocks (leaves, fine roots, litter, and soil organic matter) varied similarly with mean precipitation (more positive at the drier sites). There was a strong link between δ 13 C R and the vapor saturation deficit of air (vpd) 5–10 days earlier, both across and within sites. This relationship is consistent with stomatal regulation of gas exchange and associated changes in photosynthetic carbon isotope discrimination. Recent freeze events caused significant deviation from the δ 13 C R versus vpd relationship, resulting in higher than expected δ 13 C R values.


Quality control of piezoelectric micropumps is presented through design, fabrication process, operation, and characterization. The presented study resulted in the extraction of a minimal set of monitored parameters, which is a prerequisite for reliable and stable micropump operation. Micropump fabrication process steps, especially bonding process quality, in correlation with quality control of micropump constituent components (housing, elastomer, and piezoelectric actuator) provided an explanation for deterioration of common micropump characteristics, such as flow vs. backpressure, suction pressure, and excitation signal. These characteristics also manifested in deterioration of other important micropump properties, such as self-priming ability, bubble tolerance, long-term stability, heat dissipation, and temperature operating range. Besides air and DI water pumping, chemical compatibility of constituent materials was confirmed during successful long-term testing of micropumps by pumping media with different viscosity and aggressive media with low pH value. The extracted set of parameters defines input control for micropump fabrication process while at the same time establishes safe operating area of fabricated micropumps. The presented set of parameters provides quality control guidelines and enables a direct comparison from pump-to-pump or run-to-run variations and extraction of influencing design or fabrication parameters.


We report a workflow and the output of a natural language processing (NLP)-based procedure to mine the extant metal-organic framework (MOF) literature describing structurally characterized MOFs and their solvent removal and thermal stabilities. We obtain over 2,000 solvent removal stability measures from text mining and 3,000 thermal decomposition temperatures from thermogravimetric analysis data. We assess the validity of our NLP methods and the accuracy of our extracted data by comparing to a hand-labeled subset. Machine learning (ML, i.e. artificial neural network) models trained on this data using graph- and pore-geometry-based representations enable prediction of stability on new MOFs with quantified uncertainty. Our web interface, MOFSimplify, provides users access to our curated data and enables them to harness that data for predictions on new MOFs. MOFSimplify also encourages community feedback on existing data and on ML model predictions for community-based active learning for improved MOF stability models.


This paper examines tax evasion in the context of the diesel fuel market and the response of evaders to regulatory innovation. Diesel fuel used for on-road purposes is taxed, while other uses are untaxed, creating an incentive for firms and individuals to evade on-road diesel taxes by purchasing untaxed diesel fuel and then using or reselling it for on-road use. We examine the effects of a federal regulatory innovation in October 1993, the addition of red dye to untaxed diesel fuel at the point of distribution, which significantly lowered the cost of regulatory enforcement. We propose a model of the evasion decision that predicts that evasion increases as taxes rise and monitoring costs fall. Testing the predictions of the model, we find that sales of diesel fuel rose 26 percent following the regulatory change while sales of heating oil, which is an untaxed perfect substitute, fell by a similar amount. The effect on sales was higher in states with higher tax rates and in states likely to have higher audit costs. Heating oil sales are also found to be much less responsive to demand factors such as temperature and season prior to the dye program, indicating that a significant fraction of sales prior to dyeing was illegitimate. In addition, we find evidence that tax evaders found new methods of evading fuel dye regulations. We find that sales of kerosene and jet fuel, two undyed alternatives to untaxed diesel fuel, rose following the introduction of fuel dye. Furthermore, we find a pattern of price and tax elasticities consistent with innovation in new evasion techniques subsequent to the regulatory change. Finally, we examine the extent to which tax increases are incorporated into tax revenues, using the estimated tax and price elasticities to describe how this is affected by evasion. We estimate that the elasticity of tax revenues with respect to the tax rate was 0.60 prior to the dye program, yet would have been 0.85 in the absence of evasion.


Abstract: Very preterm birth (<32 weeks of gestation) heightens the risk for developmental and behavioral problems, but individual outcomes vary greatly. We evaluated whether mother–toddler dyadic interaction quality, assessed longitudinally at 14, 20, and 30 months (corrected), could account for unique variance in very preterm and full-term children's mental, motor, and behavioral outcomes on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development at 30 months. Participants included 70 mother–toddler dyads (44 with male children, 38 full term and 32 very preterm) followed prospectively from birth to 30 months. In hierarchical regressions controlling for socioeconomic status, dyadic interaction quality at 20 and 30 months explained unique variance in toddlers' 30-month mental scores and was the sole predictor of orientation/engagement and emotion regulation scores. In contrast, very preterm status was the primary predictor of 30-month motor and movement quality scores. Dyadic interaction quality also mediated the association between very preterm status and specific 30-month outcomes. Implications for interventions are discussed.


Though most widely known for the novella The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald gained a major source of income as a professional writer from the sale of short stories. Over the course of his career, Fitzgerald published more than 160 stories in the period's most popular magazines. His second short fiction collection, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922), includes two masterpieces as well as several other stories from his earlier career. One, "May Day," depicts a party at a popular club in New York that becomes a night of revelry during which former soldiers and an affluent group of young people start an anti-Bolshevik demonstration that results in an attack on a leftist newspaper office. "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" is a fantastic satire of the selfishness endemic to the wealthy and their undying pursuit to preserve that way of life. All of these stories, like his best novels, meld Fitzgerald's fascination with wealth with an awareness of a larger world, creating a subtle social critique. With his discerning eye, Fitzgerald elucidates the interactions of the young people of post-World War I America who, cut off from traditions, sought their place in the modern world amid the general hysteria of the period that inaugurated the age of jazz. This new edition reproduces in full the original collection, stories that represent a clear movement in theme and character development toward what would become The Great Gatsby. In introducing each story, Fitzgerald offers accounts of its textual history, revealing decisions about which stories to include.


Conversational AI can be simply defined as humancomputer interaction through natural conversations. This may be through a chatbot on a website or any social messaging app, a voice assistant or any other interactive messaging-enabled interfaces. This system will allow people to ask queries, get opinions or recommendations, execute needed transactions, find support or otherwise achieve a goal through conversations. Chatbots are basically online human-computer dialog system with natural language. Currently, advancements in natural language processing and machine learning mechanism have improved chatbot technology. More commercial and social media platforms are now employing this technology in their services. Organisations demands artificial intelligence based improvements in chatbot adoption and thus it became one of the hot research. In this work, a task-oriented retrieval based chatbot has been proposed on a bus ticket booking domain which is built using a Deep Neural Network. The sequence of questions that are being asked by multiple users with different kinds of personas are taken as the input for the system. And accordingly the retrieval based system produces meaningful responses. The generated responses are evaluated manually. The results show that the generated answers are meaningful in most of the cases.


From Indian vultures to Chinese bees, Nature provides the 'natural services' that keep the economy going. From the recycling miracles in the soil; an army of predators ridding us of unwanted pests; an abundance of life creating a genetic codebook that underpins our food, pharmaceutical industries and much more, it has been estimated that these and other services are each year worth about double global GDP. Yet we take most of Nature's services for granted, imagining them free and limitless ...until they suddenly switch off. This is a book full of immediate, impactful stories, containing both warnings (such as in the tale of India's vultures, killed off by drugs given to cattle, leading to an epidemic of rabies) but also the positive (how birds protect fruit harvests, coral reefs protect coasts from storms and how the rainforests absorb billions of tonnes of carbon released from cars and power stations). Tony Juniper's book will change whole way you think about life, the planet and the economy. (publisher's text, from Amazon.com)


Flexible incorporation of both geographical patterning and risk effects in cancer survival models is becoming increasingly important, due in part to the recent availability of large cancer registries. The analysis of spatial survival data is challenged by the presence of spatial dependence and censoring for survival times. Accurately modeling the risk factors and geographical pattern that explain the differences in survival is particularly of interest. Within this dissertation, the first chapter reviews commonlyused baseline priors, semiparametric and nonparametric Bayesian survival models and recent approaches for accommodating spatial dependence, both conditional and marginal. The last three chapters contribute three flexible survival models: (1) a proportional hazards model with areal-level covariate-adjusted frailties with application to county-level breast cancer survival data, (2) a marginal Bayesian nonparametric model for time to disease arrival of threatened amphibian populations, and (3) a generalized accelerated failure time model with spatial intrinsic conditionally autoregressive frailties with application to county-level prostate cancer data. An R package spBayesSurv is developed to examine all the proposed models along with some traditional spatial survival models.


Abstract. Calculating a multi-model mean, a commonly used method for ensemble averaging, assumes model independence and equal model skill. Sharing of model components amongst families of models and research centres, conflated by growing ensemble size, means model independence cannot be assumed and is hard to quantify.
We present a methodology to produce a weighted-model ensemble projection, accounting for model performance and model independence. Model weights are calculated by comparing model hindcasts to a selection of metrics chosen for their physical relevance to the process or phenomena of interest. This weighting methodology is applied to the Chemistry–Climate Model Initiative (CCMI) ensemble to investigate Antarctic ozone depletion and subsequent recovery. The weighted mean projects an ozone recovery to 1980 levels, by 2056 with a 95 % confidence interval (2052–2060), 4 years earlier than the most recent study. Perfect-model testing and out-of-sample testing validate the results and show a greater projective skill than a standard multi-model mean. Interestingly, the construction of a weighted mean also provides insight into model performance and dependence between the models.
This weighting methodology is robust to both model and metric choices and therefore has potential applications throughout the climate and chemistry–climate modelling communities.


Background: Anxiety is a common medical issue in Saudi Arabia, particularly among medical students. Therefore, the present study aimed to assess the association between anxiety and sociodemographic characteristics among medical students in Saudi Arabia. Materials and Methods: In this descriptive cross-sectional study, 350 questionnaires were distributed among medical students to investigate the presence of anxiety disorders among them and the associated demographic factors. The study included medical students of different education years at the Faculty of Medicine, Al-Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University. A questionnaire formed of 35 questions was distributed electronically among the students by the help of the leader of each educational year. The level of anxiety of each student was determined according to the score of questionnaire answers and the Beck Anxiety Inventory; where the score of 0–21 = no or low anxiety, score of 22–35 = moderate anxiety, score of 36 and above = severe or potentially concerning levels of anxiety. Results: Three hundred and sixteen medical students completed the questionnaire with a response rate 90%. Anxiety was identified in 201/316 (63.6%) students; 98/201 (48.7%) students were with moderate anxiety, and 103/201 (51.3%) with severe anxiety. Out of the 236 males, 136/236 (57.6%) were found to have anxiety, whereas, of the 80 females, 65/80 (81.3%) were found to have anxiety. About 51.3% of the females were found to have severe anxiety compared to only 26.3% of the males. Conclusion: Anxiety is a common problem among medical students of Al-Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Saudi Arabia with more prevalence among female medical students compared to males. Furthermore, there was a significant association between satisfaction to study medicine and decreased anxiety development. However, there was no significant association between anxiety and the other studied sociodemographic factors.


This article contributes to debates on transnational television comedy audiences through analysis of Eastern European audiences' engagement with British television comedy. Using questionnaire and focus group data, it examines the extent and nature of British television comedy engagement by Romanian audiences and the limits of broadcasting British television comedy to Romanian audiences. The research reveals Romanian audiences' high involvement with television comedy. More than half of the participants watch British television comedy. Three themes regarding Romanian audiences' engagement with British television comedy are identified: (1) transnational television comedy aesthetics; (2) transnational television comedy as intellectual comedy; and (3) ethical limits of transnational television comedy. These themes highlight the complex contours of transnational television comedy engagement.


Research works on the causes of business failure as well as tools on the predictability of business failure has received considerable attention in finance literature due to the 2007 recession. In 2009, the UK insolvency rate hit a record high of 270,000 i.e. 11.9% death rate. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) reports that, this is the first time business deaths have outnumbered business births since the year 2000. Across industries, the construction industry in 2009 recorded the highest number of business deaths in a single year with over 44,000
company bankruptcies. The aim of this research is to develop a model that gives construction companies in distress a likelihood of success at recovery. Based on a literature review, 52 factors were found to be the causes of business failure in the construction industry. However, the Input and Output model suggests that, while some factors are determinants, others are indicators or symptoms of business failure. It was found that the top seven determinants of business failure in the construction industry are; "Management Incompetence", "Insufficient Capital", "Lack of Business Knowledge", "Fraud", "Industry Weakness", "Poor Technical and Technological Capacity", and "Poor Relations with Clients and Government", while,"Inadequate Profit" and "Inadequate Sales" are the top two indicators of business failure in construction companies. A transition by implication involves change. It was found that economic down-turn does not necessarily cause business failure but combined with company flaws and bad practice, produces a rough tide for companies to ride on. Most do not survive.
Leadership was also found to be, arguably, the most valuable resource at the stage of company turn-around. Therefore, the conceptual framework was designed with the view that leadership drive the transition process. It is hoped that this model will aid managers of companies in distress narrow their focus on the likely determinants of their company problems. To easily and quickly identify the problem, return to the board, address the problem and turn-around performance towards success.


Exercise-induced asthma (EIA) is a common condition that is frequently unrecognised, especially in school children and competitive athletes. Confirmation of EIA requires the use of an exercise test. Diagnosis cannot rely on selfreported symptoms alone. Cooling and drying of the airways play prominent roles in the mechanism of EIA. Inflammatory mediators also play a role. Both non-pharmacological and pharmacological approaches are often necessary to minimise the effects of EIA. Non-pharmacological approaches to treatment include warming up before exercise, nasal breathing, wearing a mask in cold environments, and avoidance of triggers. Dietary salt restriction and fish oil supplementation may also play a role in reducing the severity of EIA. Inhaled corticosteroids are the most effective drugs for managing asthma and preventing EIA. Short-acting s agonists are the most commonly used prophylactic agents for EIA. Long-acting s agonists and leukotriene receptor antagonists are also now used in the management of EIA. Pharmacists are well positioned to advise patients about proper medication use and proper inhaler technique. They can also educate patients about the non-pharmacological measures that can reduce or prevent EIA.


The amount of data produced in the world every day implies a huge challenge in understanding and extracting knowledge from it. Much of this data is of relational nature, such as social networks, metabolic pathways, or links between software components. Traditionally, those networks are represented as node-link diagrams or matrix representations. They help us to understand the structure (topology) of the relational data. However in many real world data sets, additional (often multidimensional) attributes are attached to the network elements. One challenge is to show these attributes in context of the underlying network topology in order to support the user in further analyses. In this paper, we present a novel approach that extends traditional force-based graph layouts to create an attribute-driven layout. In addition, our prototype implementation supports interactive exploration by introducing clustering and multidimensional scaling into the analysis process.


Prior works on self-supervised pre-training focus on the joint training scenario, where massive unlabeled data are assumed to be given as input all at once, and only then is a learner trained. Unfortunately, such a problem setting is often impractical if not infeasible since many real-world tasks rely on sequential learning, e.g., data are decentralized or collected in a streaming fashion. In this paper, we conduct the first thorough and dedicated investigation on self-supervised pretraining with streaming data, aiming to shed light on the model behavior under this overlooked setup. Specifically, we pre-train over 500 models on four categories of pre-training streaming data from ImageNet and DomainNet and evaluate them on three types of downstream tasks and 12 different downstream datasets. Our studies show that, somehow beyond our expectation, with simple data replay or parameter regularization, sequential self-supervised pre-training turns out to be an efficient alternative for joint pre-training, as the performances of the former are mostly on par with those of the latter. Moreover, catastrophic forgetting, a common issue in sequential supervised learning, is much alleviated in sequential self-supervised learning (SSL), which is well justified through our comprehensive empirical analysis on representations and the sharpness of minima in the loss landscape. Our findings, therefore, suggest that, in practice, for SSL, the cumbersome joint training can be replaced mainly by sequential learning, which in turn enables a much broader spectrum of potential application scenarios.


Everyone is talking about climate change. Scientific studies confirm an increase in concentration of greenhouse gases (GHG). The largest growth of GHG emissions between 1970 and 2004 has come from energy supply, transport and industry, while residential and commercial buildings, forestry and deforestation and agricultural sectors have been growing at a lower rate. South Africa is among the top 20 international per capita emitters of GHG, making up 1.6% of the global total. South Africa is vulnerable to the impact of climate change and, as a signatory to both the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol, has begun implementing mitigation measures to reduce GHG emissions.


If two centrally presented visual stimuli occur within approximately half a second of each other, the second target often fails to be reported correctly. This effect, called the attentional blink (AB; Raymond, J. E., Shapiro, K. L., & Arnell, K. M. Temporary suppression of visual processing in an RSVP task: An attentional blink? Journal of Experimental Psychology, Human Perception and Performance, 18, 849–860, 1992], has been attributed to a resource "bottleneck," likely arising as a failure of attention during encoding into or retrieval from visual working memory (WM). Here we present participants with a hybrid WM–AB study while they undergo fMRI to provide insight into the neural underpinnings of this bottleneck. Consistent with a WM-based bottleneck account, fronto-parietal brain areas exhibited a WM load-dependent modulation of neural responses during the AB task. These results are consistent with the view that WM and attention share a capacity-limited resource and provide insight into the neural structures that underlie resource allocation in tasks requiring joint use of WM and attention.


A commitment to reconstruction and development poses serious challenges to theological education in Africa. This article addresses some key issues of curriculum design for a Theology and Development programme. It does so around three headings: the politics behind the design, the preferences within the design, and the praxis throughout the design. Drawing on experiences in the Theology and Development Programme at the School of Theology, Pietermaritzburg, it raises questions rather than provide answers.


With reference to Paul Ricoeur's essays Time and Narrative I–III (1983–1985) and Oneself as Another (1990), this paper discusses the Jewish element in some of the works of Marguerite Duras, especially in AbahnSabana David (1970). Using some of Ricoeur's concepts such as sameness (idem) and selfhood (ipse) together with his model of a triple mimesis, the author argues that Duras' strong engagement for justice for minority groups and especially for the Jewish cause, has its roots in theprefiguration influenced by her upbringing in a French colony and by experiences in her close family during and after World War II. Her various uses of narrative silences characterize her style of writing, together with a deliberate confusion of identity marks in the presentation of her fictional characters.


In Puerto Rico, an island in the West Indies, large areas of primary forest have been cut and converted to farmland or to secondary forest; subsequently the farmlands declined in fertility and were abandoned. Various tree species were planted in order to restore the degraded land and to provide timber. Teak is a species with great restoration potential in Puerto Rico especially for low altitude areas with deep, well drained soils, and in the past 50 years, teak plantations have been established in such areas. Teak was planted in the subtropical wet forest at Rio Abajo in central Puerto Rico in the 1940s and 1960s and at Sabana during the 1960s. We conducted a dendrochronological study of the species at Rio Abajo and at Sabana in order to investigate patterns of growth and to determine the effect of climate on the growth of teak. We compared the growth of teak and that of mahoe (Hibiscus elatus Sw. (Malvaceae)), a tree species used in the manufacture of fine furniture, native to Cuba and Jamaica, which had also been planted at Rio Abajo. The best predictors of growth of teak at Rio Abajo are July and November temperatures. The tree ring chronology shows decreased growth during several hurricane years, followed by increased growth the following year. Both species are growing well, but teak growth is better than that of mahoe, a native species of nearby islands, suggesting that it is a good choice for these and similar areas in the subtropical wet forest life zone of Puerto Rico.


The Alpine Rhône illustrates how global warming could influence river flow, not only through changes in precipitation patterns but also through the effect on snow and glaciers, essential elements of the hydrological cycle in mountain regions such as the Alps. Projections of future climates, based on simulations by regional climate models, suggest an increase in winter precipitation, a sharp decrease in summer rainfall, a significantly reduced volume of snow, and a sharp decline in most alpine glaciers. As a result, by the end of the 21st century, flows are expected to be strongly influenced by these changes, with an increase in winter flows due to early snowmelt and increased precipitation, but a reduction in flows during the rest of the year. Seasonal changes imposed by a warmer climate will require a transformation of current water governance to allow for equitable sharing for the economic sectors concerned.


The diffraction of Gaussian beams on intracavity Bragg gratings is analyzed theoretically. For reasonable waists the associated beam divergence does not significantly influence the diffraction efficiency of such devices. Nevertheless, the tilt angle of the incident beam, imposed by the Bragg resonance condition, strongly reduces the diffraction efficiency at short grating periods. However, the angular selectivity can be maintained if the Fabry-Perot cavity is tuned to the incident beam direction, which allows the use of small-volume holograms together with a dense angular multiplex. This theoretical analysis can be applied to the optimization of the diffraction properties of Gaussian beams on any intracavity Bragg grating, which could then be used for free-space parallel signal processing.


Viewed with a dispassionate but slightly skeptical eye, transfers to asset protection trusts are fraudulent conveyances pure and simple. I think so and the evidence points that way.
The asset protection trust is a simulacrum of the well-known and thoroughly conventional mode of holding assets for a "beneficiary" by a "trustee" under the terms of an elaborate document. Trusts, of course, are widely used in estate planning and elsewhere in circumstances where one person, the settlor, wishes to make assets available to another on the settlor's terms; a parent might use a trust to put aside assets for a minor child or for several grandchildren to share for their education. Typically the settlor wishes to direct or limit the beneficiary's use of the principal and income because of the beneficiary's tender age or because the settlor fears that the beneficiary will waste the assets or otherwise use them for a purpose contrary to the settlor's wishes.
The prototypical asset protection trust is different. In it the settlor and the beneficiary are the same person. When he is also the beneficiary, the settlor has the direct right to enjoy the assets; even when he is not the beneficiary, the settlor frequently has the indirect right to enjoy the assets by retaining the power to remove any trustee who does not honor the settlor's requests. Invariably these trusts have "spendthrift" terms that purport to remove the trust assets from the reach of the settlor's creditors.
Seventeen states have adopted statutes that authorize asset protection trusts. All of these statutes change the law that prevailed before their enactment. Prior to the adoption of these statutes, the law in all of the states invalidated self-settled spendthrift trusts under a common law principle that found all such provisions to be a violation of public policy or because they were found to be fraudulent conveyances. As elaborated below, these statutes wipe out the contrary common law in the states where they are enacted and they modify the state fraudulent conveyance law to make a creditor's fraudulent conveyance path more difficult.


Remote patient monitoring (RPM)—like home teleheath and telemonitoring—can help improve coordination, improve patients' experience of care, and reduce hospital admissions and costs. Such technologies remotely collect, track, and transmit health data from a patient's home to a health care provider and can facilitate communication and help engage patients in the management of their own care. This synthesis brief offers findings from case studies of three early RPM adopters: the Veterans Health Administration, Partners HealthCare, and Centura Health at Home. Each of the programs started as a pilot with the support of a small group of advocates who believed in the technology's potential for offering improved care for a targeted population. Early lessons include promoting a culture of openness and preparedness; using a multidisciplinary team-based approach; establishing leadership support; minimizing barriers to patient enrollment, like cost; and including nonstandard measures, like patient experience and staff satisfaction, in program evaluations.


Combined Sewers are designed in such a way that when their design capacity is exceeded excess water from the sewers is diverted to the rivers and streams resulting in combined sewer overflow (CSO). Now, with increased Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) monitoring and stringent new river water standards, the City of Pittsburgh finds itself having to come up with measures to combat the CSO problem. One approach investigated in this research is to capture the CSO water, treat it using polymeric microfiltration membranes, send the permeate to the nearby rivers and streams while the concentrated retentate is directed back to the Wastewater Treatment Plant. Seven polymeric microfiltration membranes ranging in size from 0.2 μm to 0.8 μm were obtained from membrane manufacturers (e.g Osmonic, PALL and Millipore) and were tested for their effectiveness in treating the combined sewer overflow. Primary effluent wastewater from Allegheny County Sanitation Authority (ALCOSAN) Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) with COD values of less than 100 mg/l was assumed to resemble combined sewer overflow pretreated by a swirl separator and was used in the filtration runs. A particular membrane's effectiveness to treat CSO was measured for its ability to reduce fecal coliforms, Escherichia Coli and enterococci bacteria to levels recommended by EPA. Reduction of chemical oxygen demand and flux rate for different membranes were also investigated. Effect of membrane surface chemistry on the flux rate and on the permeate quality were investigated. The results show that flux is proportional to pore size for membranes of the same surface chemistry. Hydrophilic membranes gave higher initial flux rate than hydrophobic membranes of the same pore sizes. The steady state flux rates were about the same at all pressures and pore sizes, indicating that at steady state fouling becomes the only variable that controls flux. The membranes with pore size 0.45 μm and below were able to reduce the bacteria levels to low detection limits except for the one membrane with pore size of 0.3 μm. The AC+0.2 membrane gave at least 57% removal of COD, which was the highest removal, while the AC+0.45 and AC+0.8 membrane gave some of the lowest removals at 23%. The results show that polymeric microfiltration membranes can be used to treat combined sewer overflow.


The thesis is concerned with the development and testing of a mathematical model of a distillation process in which the components react chemically. The formaldehyde-methanol-water system was selected and only the reversible reactions between formaldehyde and water giving methylene glycol and between formaldehyde and methanol producing hemiformal were assumed to occur under the distillation conditions. Accordingly the system has been treated as a five component system. The vapour-liquid equilibrium calculations were performed by solving iteratively the thermodynamic relationships expressing the phase equilibria with the stoichiometric equations expressing the chemical equilibria. Using optimisation techniques, the Wilson single parameters and Henry's constants were calculated for binary systems containing formaldehyde which was assumed to be a supercritical component whilst Wilson binary parameters were calculated for the remaining binary systems. Thus the phase equilibria for the formaldehyde system could be calculated using these parameters and good accuracy was obtained when calculated values were compared with experimental values. The distillation process was modelled using the mass and energy balance equations together with the phase equilibria calculations. The plate efficiencies were obtained from a modified A.I.Ch.E. Bubble Tray method. The resulting equations were solved by an iterative plate to plate calculation based on the Newton Raphson method. Experiments were carried out in a 76mm I.D., eight sieve plate distillation column and the results were compared with the mathematical model calculations. Overall, good agreement was obtained but some discrepancies were observed in the concentration profiles and these may have been caused by the effect of limited physical property data and a limited understanding of the reactions mechanism. The model equations were solved in the form of modular computer programs. Although they were written to describe the steady state distillation with simultaneous chemical reaction of the formaldehyde system, the approach used may be of wider application.


The research aims to determine effect of tricho compos made from corn waste combined with urea on the growth and production of kailan (Brassica oleracea var. alboglabra). This research was conducted on April 2015 until May 2015 in the experimental garden in Agriculture faculty of University of Riau, Panam, Pekanbaru. Research was conducted experimentally using Randomized Block Design (RBD) factorial. Each treatment was repeated 3 times to obtain 36 experimental units. Each experimental unit consisted of 10 plants and five plants was taken as a sample plants. The first factor consists of 3 levels, were: tricho compos 1 kg/plot, tricho compos 2 kg/plot and tricho compos 3 kg/plot. The second factor is Urea fertilizer consists of 4 levels, were: 0 g/plot, 5 g/plot, 7,5 g/plot and 10 g/plot. Oberserved parameters were the plant height, leafes number, and fresh plant weight. Data were analyzed by ANOVA and further tested using Duncan`s New Multiple Range Test (DNMRT) at the level of 5%. The results shows giving tricho compos of corn waste and urea influenced on the plant height and fresh plant weight. Giving tricho compos of corn waste with dose of   2 kg/plot and urea 5 g/plot is the best dose in enhancing growth and production of kailan Keywords: trichokompos , kailan , urea


In this paper, we consider computational super-resolution inverse diffraction phase retrieval. The optical setup is lensless, with a spatial light modulator for aperture phase coding. The paper is focused on experimental tests of the super-resolution sparse phase amplitude retrieval algorithm. We start from simulations and proceed to physical experiments. Both simulation tests and experiments demonstrate good-quality imaging for super-resolution with a factor of 4 and a serious advantage over diffraction-limited resolution as defined by Abbe's criterion.


The museum has now been recognized as a powerful resource for local development, both from an economic and a social point of view. Museums can support local economic development through their backing of creative economic activities, in addition, their creation of job opportunities. The role of museums has also been emphasized in dimensions such as education, the creation of social capital and, recently, wellbeing and health. This does not mean that museums have to change their mission in favour of an extrinsic function, but rather that they must be aware of their intrinsic power, respecting the nature of the institution while also developing behaviours to catalyze the emergence of such effects. The knowledge of their potential impacts helps museums themselves to avoid being exploited by governmental organizations, which would move them away from their core values and mission. That is why we need to study the relationship between museums and their impacts. Contrary to what is happening within education and visitor studies, the museum as an environment related to well-being is not recognized around the world. Even with the growing interest in the relation between culture and health, the attention paid to the rapport between museum experience and the subjective well-being of visitors remains limited. The majority of existing studies are focused on measuring the wellbeing outcomes of museum activities that are specifically designed for people in care in a clinical setting. Furthermore, they are almost all conducted in the United Kingdom, while the Mediterranean region is neglected. This thesis aims to expand our understanding of the relation between museum experience and the psychological well-being of museum-goers in the Mediterranean region by focusing on two basic questions: 1) is there a relation between museum experience and the psychological well-being of museum users? 2) if there is, how can the museum foster it? This research is composed of two different papers on two different case studies carried out in the Mediterranean region. The museums where I conducted the studies differ from one to another in context, museology and activities offered. In the first study, I analyse the rapport of a participatory museology experience and the psychological well-being of museum users in a rural area. In the second one, I explore the relationship between museum experience and the subjective psychological well-being of visitors in an urban context. The studies develop a theoretical framework explaining three elements of the phenomenon: the user's characteristics and background, the museum experience, and the determinants of psychological well-being, from a comprehensive perspective that integrates the well-being approach in visitor studies. The two empirical studies are conducted on the basis of this theoretical development, with conclusions drawn from surveys and statistical approaches. On the one hand, both the studies reveal that there is indeed a relation between the museum experience and the subjective perception of museum-goers' psychological well-being. On the other hand, each study underlines different relevant aspects in this relationship, which in turn depend on the context, the particular museology and the audience. These conclusions have important implications for the academic studies, the museum sector, as well as for policy development in relation to culture and health.


Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by a bacillus called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It can lead to death in untreated and inappropriately treated patients particularly in countries with low income. Therefore, early diagnosis of the disease not only increases treatment success, but also reduces death rates. Today, due to high classification and diagnosis rates, specialist systems have become an important tool in diagnosis of the disease. In this study, support vector machines (SVM), which is a machine learning technique was used for preliminary diagnosis of tuberculosis disease for the first time. A recognition system that was developed with the properties included in patient reports obtained from a local hospital was tested for its performance. The results indicated performance of the designed system was quite successful and that it could be used in diagnosis of the disease. Obtained diagnostic results were compared with similar studies using different specialist systems on this disease, and it was observed that our results were better.


Copper(I) catalysed azide-alkyne cycloaddition reactions (CuAAC) occur smoothly in liquid ammonia (LNH(3)) at room temperature to give exclusively 1,4-substituted 1,2,3-triazoles with excellent yields (up to 99%). The CuAAC reactions in liquid ammonia require relatively small amounts of copper(I) catalyst (0.5 mole%) compared with that in conventional solvents. The product can be obtained conveniently by simply evaporation of ammonia, indicating its potential application in industry. The rate of the CuAAC reaction in liquid ammonia shows a second order dependence on the copper(I) concentration and the reaction occurs only with terminal alkynes. Deuterium exchange experiments with phenyl acetylene-d(1) show that the acidity of the alkyne is increased at least 1000-fold with catalytic amounts of copper(I) in liquid ammonia. The mechanism of the CuAAC reaction in liquid ammonia is discussed.


ABSTRACT This article is a response to Muslim students reporting that they had been silenced by fear of the PREVENT Counter-Terrorism Strategy. By adopting a Critical Realist stance, real generative mechanisms of this actual phenomenon are investigated and theorised. Recognition of changing definitions of both 'radicalisation' and 'extremism' in different versions of PREVENT results in the discursive aspect of these real generative mechanisms being investigated using critical discourse analysis (CDA). This analysis identifies the emergence of a violent discourse of 'radicalisation' and 'extremism' (RadEx) that it is theorised has the capacity to promote rather than prevent violence. Finally, a process by which this production of violence in the classroom might have been avoided is explored and this indicates that critique of government efforts to counter 'radicalisation' and 'extremism' is a vital aspect of pedagogy in the context of PREVENT and the War on Terror.


The three-dimensional VMEC equilibrium solver has been adapted to numerically investigate the approximate toroidal rotation model we have derived. We concentrate our applications on the simulation of JET snakes and MAST long-lived modes under free boundary conditions. Helical core solutions are triggered when 〈β〉 exceeds a threshold value, typically 2.7% in JET-like plasmas. A large plasma current and edge bootstrap current can drive helical core formations at arbitrarily small 〈β〉 in which the ideal saturated internal kink coexists with an ideal saturated external kink structure of opposite phase. The centrifugal force linked with the rotation has the effect of displacing the plasma column away from the major axis, but does not alter significantly the magnitude of the edge corrugation of the plasma. Error field correction coil currents in JET-like configurations increase the outer midplane distortions by 2 cm. The edge bootstrap current enhances the edge modulation of the plasma driven by the core snake deformations in MAST.


The present Humanitarian Implementation Plan (HIP) was prepared on the basis of financing decision ECHO/WWD/BUD/2022/01000 (Worldwide Decision) and the related General Guidelines for Operational Priorities on Humanitarian Aid (Operational Priorities). The purpose of the HIP and its annexes is to serve as a communication tool for DG ECHO's partners and to assist in the preparation of their proposals. The provisions of the Worldwide Decision and the General Conditions of the Agreement with the European Commission shall take precedence over the provisions in this document.


Thermophilie bacterial culture capable of producing extracellular beta-amylase was isolated and identified as Bacillus polymyxa PCSIR-90. The productivity of the enzyme was improved by using UV-irradiation and alkylating at 30oC with 6 percent bacterial inoculums. The production of bacterial enzyme was significantly enganed with liquefied starches of sweet potato and wheat. Among the nitrogen sources examined, ammonium dehydrogenates phosphate, yeast extract, or peptone was found to be suitable for the enzyme formation. The maximum enzymic activity was obtained with corn steep liquor, sunflower meal or corn meal as agricultural by-products. Enzyme synthesis was stimulated the addition of Ca2 + at the level of 5x10-5 M in the culture medium. The ideal cultural conditions in solid state fermentation were wheat bran as best substrate, acetate buffer as a diluents, fermentation time 48 hour at 30oC and finally 1.8cm depth of bran with 68 percent moisture level. Supplementation of wheat bran with soluble starch and dominium hydrogen phosphate slightly enhanced the enzymic yield. However, partial replacement of wheat bran with soluble starch and diammonium hydrogen phosphate slightly enhanced the enzymic yield. However, partial replacement of wheat bran with corn meal in ratio of 1 :1 (w/w), increased the synthesis of bacterial beta-amylase. The culture filtrate was also examined for the detection of maltose by the aid of paper chromatography in order to confirm the presence of beta-amylase. Scale-up studies were carried out in 2 L glass jar fomenters the production of Bacillus polymyxa beta-amylase. It was used along with amyloglucosidase in order to improve the efficiency of starch conversion to maltose. The enzyme was found to be most active and stable in pH range 6.5 to 7.0 and 5.5 to 9.0 respectively. Beta-amylase was stable at 60oC for 60 minutes at pH 6.2 in the presence of 5 percent starch. The activity of the enzyme was enhanced by the addition of 5 mM Ca2+.


BACKGROUND
Several studies demonstrated that mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) reverse acute kidney injury (AKI) by a paracrine mechanism rather than by MSC transdifferentiation. We recently demonstrated that microvesicles (MVs) released from MSCs may account for this paracrine mechanism by a horizontal transfer of messenger RNA and microRNA.

METHODS
MVs isolated from MSCs were injected intravenously in rats (30 μg/rat) immediately after monolateral nephrectomy and renal artery and vein occlusion for 45 min. To evaluate the MV effects on AKI induced by ischaemia-reperfusion injury (IRI), the animals were divided into different groups: normal rats (n = 4), sham-operated rats (n = 6), IRI rats (n = 6), IRI + MV rats (n = 6), and IRI + RNase-MV rats (n = 6), and all animals were sacrificed at Day 2 after the operation. To evaluate the chronic kidney damage consequent to IRI, the rats were divided into different groups: sham-operated rats (n = 6) and IRI rats (n = 6), IRI + MV rats (n = 6), and all animal were sacrificed 6 months after the operation.

RESULTS
We found that a single administration of MVs, immediately after IRI, protects rats from AKI by inhibiting apoptosis and stimulating tubular epithelial cell proliferation. The MVs also significantly reduced the impairment of renal function. Pretreatment of MVs with RNase to inactivate their RNA cargo abrogated these protective effects. Moreover, MVs by reducing the acute injury also protected from later chronic kidney disease.

CONCLUSION
MVs released from MSCs protect from AKI induced by ischaemia reperfusion injury and from subsequent chronic renal damage. This suggest that MVs could be exploited as a potential new therapeutic approach.


Estrogen-related receptor alpha (ERR1) is an orphan nuclear receptor that can bind transcriptional co-activators constitutively. ERR1 expression correlates with poor patient outcomes in breast cancer, heightening interest in this nuclear receptor as a therapeutic target. Because ERR1 has no known regulatory ligand, a major challenge in targeting its activity is to find cellular or synthetic modulators of its function. We identified an interaction between ERR1 and KIF17, a kinesin-2 family microtubule motor, in a yeast-2-hybrid screen. We confirmed the interaction using in vitro biochemical assays and determined that binding is mediated by the ERR1 ligand-binding/AF2 domain and the KIF17 C-terminal tail. Expression of KIF17 tail domain in either ER-negative or ER-positive breast cancer epithelial cells attenuated nuclear accumulation of newly synthesized ERR1 and inhibited ERR1 transcriptional activity. Conversely, ERR1 transcriptional activity was elevated significantly in KIF17 knock-out cells. Sequence analysis of the KIF17 tail domain revealed it contains a nuclear receptor box with a conserved LXXLL motif found in transcriptional co-activators. Expression of a 12 amino-acid peptide containing this motif was sufficient to inhibit ERR1 transcriptional activity and cell invasion, while deletion of this region from the KIF17 tail resulted in increased ERR1 activity. Together, these data suggest KIF17 modifies ERR1 function by two possible, non-exclusive mechanisms: (i) by regulating nuclear-cytoplasmic distribution or (ii) by competing with transcriptional co-activators for binding to ERR1. Thus targeting the ERR1-KIF17 interaction has potential as a novel strategy for treating breast cancer.


With the advance and prevalence of low-cost, low-power computing devices it is becoming increasingly clear that we are going to work and live in intelligent environments in the very near future. An intelligent environment is a physical space, e.g. an office, a hospital, a home or a car, wherein miniature computing devices perceive, monitor, and interact with the environments and human users within them. This insight and vision has provoked considerable research leading to a number of emerging research areas, such as mobile computing, ubiquitous/pervasive computing, sensor network and ambient intelligence. There has also been substantial progress on the conceptualization and design of innovative application scenarios, technological infrastructure and system prototypes. For example, a compelling real-world intelligent environment is "Smart Homes" -- an augmented home environment within which the daily activities of its inhabitants, usually the elderly or disabled, are monitored and analysed so that personalized context-aware assistances can be provided.
 A central research issue about the applications of intelligent environments is activity recognition, i.e. to identify what users perform based on the sensor observations of the environment. Only when users' activities are recognised, can application systems or devices support the users to accomplish their intended activities in an optimal way, e.g. to predict next actions, to suggest required resources, to explain the situation or to help users by taking actions through actuators. As such, activity recognition has attracted increasing attention from a diversity of research communities, and numerous methods have been studied and experimented, notably the data-centred data mining approach using probabilistic analysis and machine learning.
 This tutorial aims to introduce an ontology-based approach to activity recognition. It will first have a brief look at current methods and practices on activity recognition. Then it will analyse the nature and characteristics of intelligent environments and user behaviours. Based on this analysis the tutorial will argue the necessity of an ontology based approach, in particular, the benefits of exploiting domain knowledge for activity modelling and reasoning. Following this we shall discuss the core components and enabling technologies that underpin the approach, and a system architecture for its realisation. To demonstrate the approach, the tutorial will be accompanied with examples and screenshots from our work on modelling and assisting activities of daily living in Smart Homes.


The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) has been extensively studied over the last twenty years, because it is an abstraction of many real-life logistics problems. In its multiple-depot variant (MDVRP), the routes of vehicles located at various depots must be optimized to serve a number of customers. In this paper, we investigate how to protect the privacy of delivery companies, when each depot is owned by a different company with a limited view of the overall problem. Companies then need to exchange messages with each other to coordinate the assignment of customers to depots. We show how Distributed Constraint Optimization (DCOP) can be used to solve the assignment problem using distributed computation, and we study the guarantees that can be provided with respect to the protection of each company's knowledge about the problem.


This research project was to evaluate the different variables in photogrammetric practice, which include targeting, film and development process, camera platform and achievable accuracy. Design criteria and standards have been established, which include the manufacturing of camera suspensions for helicopter from both a theoretical and practical point of view. The testing of these standards and design criteria includes a large number of data. Thus, they have a high statistical probability of being correct. The project has proved that an all-time photography is possible with the proper selection of camera platfrom, and that the use of very low flight photography will enable the Highway Department to extend the use of photogrammetric measurement.


Large-scale change at the institutional level is built on four major foundations: change theory, institutional theory, organizational culture and leadership, and contextual discourse and rhetorical persuasion. Thomas Paine's writings, a provocative stimulus for the new United States of America during its revolutionary crisis, employed all four of these in creating the nation's new "story." In this case, the institution is the pre-Revolutionary concept of governance and the change, driven by multiple forces, is the breaking away of the 13 colonies from England. Paine's powerful pamphlet, "Common Sense", as well as his other writings, reflected his rhetorical expertise and served as a cognitive foundation upon which the fledgling nation could build its new script and create new processes of institutional governance. As any good storyteller does, Paine engaged his readers in a conversation that allowed them to construct an organizational reality that articulated their collective identity. He was the change agent whose interventions helped with the birth of a new nation. One Paine biographer (Kaye, 2005) argues that Paine's "rhetorical patterns" helped to create the "vision of America as a nation gifted with a special mission" and are still quoted by Republicans, Democrats  and Libertarians alike without apology (Ferguson,  2000).


While research has consistently found strong positive earnings returns to the bachelor's degree, recent evidence also highlights heterogeneity in post-college outcomes. Combined with increases in the proportions of students borrowing to enroll, heterogeneity in college outcomes introduces the risk that some students with college degrees may experience financial hardship after graduation. Using nationally representative data on baccalaureate recipients in 1993 and 2008, this paper jointly examines labor market and debt outcomes four years after students graduate, with a focus on exploring heterogeneity by institution type and major field of study, as well as trends over time. Results confirm that the typical graduate fares well after college, both in terms of earnings and debt management. Borrowing rates and debt loads have increased substantially over time, but these substantially higher levels of debt are nonetheless manageable for the vast majority of graduates. Within this context of positive outcomes, stratification by institution type, for both earnings and debt outcomes, appears to be increasing. Similarly, while the top-earning majors have remained quite stable over time, the magnitude of the advantage of engineering, math/computer science, and business graduates has grown notably. Examining debt alongside earnings only reinforces the patterns by major: higher earning fields also have lower debt-to-earnings ratios. Overall, these patterns offer reassurance regarding the typical returns to bachelors' degrees, even for those graduating into the Great Recession, and even in light of growing debt loads. But the results also provide evidence that students' choices about where to attend and what to study have only become more consequential over time.


Although the Supreme Court has yet to define precisely how far Congress may go in conferring protective jurisdiction on the federal courts, recent decisions cast some doubt on the viability of this expansive conception of federal jurisdiction. At the same time, Congress has shown a renewed interest in the use of minimal diversity jurisdiction as a tool of jurisdictional expansion. Both in the Multi-party, Multiforum Trial Jurisdiction Act of 2002 and in the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, Congress treated the existence of any minimal diversity of citizenship between opposing plaintiffs and defendants as a jurisdictional predicate for shifting complex, multi-party litigation into the federal court system. Most observers presume that the Court will uphold the constitutionality of these expansive uses of minimal diversity, based on such decisions as State Farm v. Tashire, 386 U.S. 523 (1967). This Article identifies a tension between the Court's reluctance to embrace protective jurisdiction and its presumptive willingness to approve the use of jurisdiction on the basis of minimal diversity. While the two jurisdictional constructs differ in theory, they can produce quite similar results in practice - they shift multi-party claims to federal court for resolution in accordance with state law. Thus, the Article shows that many of the testing cases of protective jurisdiction would easily satisfy a broad conception of minimal diversity and would thus challenge the notion that Article III imposes some sort of limit on how far Congress can go in expanding federal jurisdiction. The Article explores ways of reducing the tension, suggesting that the Court might revive limits on the breadth of minimal diversity or re-think its apparent hostility to protective jurisdiction.


The abundance and strength of disk components in elliptical galaxies are investigated by studying the photometric properties of models containing a spheroidal r exp 1/4-law bulge and a weak exponential disk. Pointed isophotes are observed in a substantial fraction of elliptical galaxies. If these isophote distortions are interpreted in the framework of the present models, then the statistics of observed samples suggest that almost all radio-weak ellipticals could have disks containing roughly 20 percent of the light. It is shown that the E5 galaxy NGC 4660 has the photometric signatures of a disk containing a third of the light. 30 refs.


Colloidal nanocrystals or quantum dots (QDs) have attained immense scientific interest as light sensitive materials due to band gap tunability by size control, ease of preparation, multiple exciton generation and low cost. In the last decade, although reasonably high power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of 5% have been realized in quantum dot sensitized solar cells (QDSSCs), the efficiencies of QDSSCs continue to lag behind that of dye sensitized solar cells or DSSCs. To address the issue of improving overall PCE values in QDSSCs, new strategies such as Forster resonance energy transfer or FRET, plasmonic effects, and blending the photosensitizer dots with carbon nanostructures etc., were implemented in this thesis.
Since photovoltaic performance parameters are closely linked to the energetics of the components which, in turn dictates electron transfer dynamics, in this work, we fabricated hitherto unexplored photoanode architectures and charge transfer and transport mechanisms were studied by detailed fluorescence quenching, and lifetime analyses. The effect of a carbon nanostructure, ionic liquid functionalized graphene oxide (FGO) and metal nanoparticles (Au) in promoting electron transport in a QDSSC with TiO2/CdSe as the photoactive electrode was studied and a PCE of ~1% (under 1 sun) was realized for this assembly relative to other configurations. Taking this further, the effect of another carbon nanostructure, C60 nanowhiskers, on a CdS QD solar cell performance was discerned by comparing the charge propagation dynamics of CdS/C60 nanowhiskers with that of an assembly containing conventional C60 clusters (i.e., CdS/C60) and the advantage of the whiskers was clearly brought out. Apart from the use of carbon nanostructures, another concept, FRET, was also exploited in this work to realize improved efficiencies in QDSSCs. An electrode tethered QD assembly of ZnS/CdS/ZnS was used as the donor and copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) molecules dissolved in the electrolyte were used as the acceptors. Luminescent and conductive carbon dots or C-dots were also included in this cell to improve electron transfer and transport. Incident photon to current conversion efficiency or IPCE measurements revealed an optimal coverage of the visible spectrum due to FRET. A quasi-solid state FRET enabled QDSSC was demonstrated. Extending this further, another FRET cell was fabricated, with reversed roles, wherein CdS/CdSe QDs served as acceptors and a Lucifer yellow dye dissolved in electrolyte functioned as the donor. Vis-a-vis FRET, an enhanced solar cell performance and a PCE of 1.8% was obtained. Further, the hole transporting ability of the conventional Sn2-/S2- layer was also improved by use of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) microfibers. Plasmonic effects were tapped for improving solar cell responses, by integrating Au microfibers with CdS/TiO2 electrodes. This work was further extended by combining this plasmonic photoanode with an electrical double layer capacitor based on multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). A new design for a solar powered supercapacitor was implemented wherein the photocurrent generated by the plasmonic electrode was channelized to charge the MWCNT supercapacitor. The benefit of plasmonics in improving solar cell parameters was also demonstrated by using Au encapsulated C-dots in a ZnO based DSSC and a PCE of 4.1% was achieved. Another practical application was illustrated by using electrochromic MoO3 as a counter electrode in the ZnO/Dye/Au@C-dots based cell and photoelectrochromism was shown.
Overall, in this thesis, the charge transport mechanisms that prevail in QDSSCs and how they control photovoltaic parameters is demonstrated.


Female sex workers have become marked as women in transgression, viewed as bad or fallen, depending on the discourse applied to the wider institution of prostitution. Bad women, if motivated to sell sexual services by self-interest, and fallen women, if prey to malicious male violence and abuse. Be they agents or victims, the construction of female sex workers in the public imagination is enmeshed with historical, political and social anxiety related to women's transgression from appropriate norms of femininity, sexuality and good citizenship. Female sex workers are distinguished from "virtuous women" by the associated stigma of being a "whore". Furthermore, political functions of the whore stigma serve to render female sex workers as "othered" and thus, they face oppression globally, yet disavow governance responsibilities for the injustices they face. In the advanced capitalist society, a whole range of liberties can be seen to be rendered as incompatible with female legitimacy.

This thesis examines how the historical, social and political meanings attached to prostitution/sex work affect the practices of governance in this area, inquiring into their implications for sex work policy, and their effects on sex working women's lives in the comparative legal settings of Scotland and New Zealand. The overarching research aim driving this thesis is: to compare ways in which sex work laws, policies and frameworks in Scotland and New Zealand enable or constrain sex workers' access to justice. This thesis adopts a participatory feminist methodological approach that centers women's voices and experiences in addressing the research aims, in the endeavor to engage with social justice as both a task and a process.

Tasked with the desire to facilitate subjective accounts of women's experiences, an overall qualitative approach to collating and analysing data was taken, with in- depth narrative style interviews and ethnographic-informed fieldwork observations being utilised to seek women's own understandings of their lived experiences. To gain additional context to these experiences, semi-structured interviews were also conducted with key informants, identified as being people whose everyday work involved a translation of policy to practice and an operalisation in some sense of the laws and policies on sex work in each context. Fieldwork took place over a twelve-month period between the comparative contexts of New Zealand (mainly Wellington and Auckland) and Scotland (mainly Edinburgh and Glasgow). No fixed geographical boundaries were put in place in the research in acknowledgement of the transient and often mobile nature of women's work in the sex industry. Sampling strategies were tailored to each research context, with the intention to reach women who were involved or in contact with local services and collectives and also women who were not in contact with such possible gatekeeping organisations. Thus, a sampling through gatekeepers alongside a snowball sampling technique arose in both contexts, with the later proving more effective in Scotland where a quasi-criminalised legal framework was found to make female sex workers work in more hidden and clandestine ways.

Over the five months spent in New Zealand, thirteen interviews with sex workers were conducted (with four repeated during follow up interviews), two interviews with managers and three interviews with those involved in the provision of service to sex workers. Additionally, over 150 hours of observation was collected in field notes, which ranged from time spent in the base of the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective (NZPC), time spent accompanying NZPC workers to outreach, collecting litter, such as used prevention commodities and their packaging, from the street, meeting with other agencies and organisations, and spending time in a sex working premise with sex workers and management. In Scotland, twelve sex workers were interviewed, of which three were interviewed for a second time. Six sex workers were approached through the national Charity, SCOT-PEP, and three were approached through the social media advertisement of other sex workers who were involved in the formation of Umbrella Lane. Three sex working women were recruited through charity outreach to a sex working premise, and around 150 hours of ethnographic- informed observational field notes were recorded from online forums, during face-to-face sex worker meetings, in organizing spaces, and in a sex work premise.

The material effects of the comparative laws and policies on sex work on women's lived experiences in Scotland and New Zealand were explored through thematic analysis of the data collated. Emergent themes of agency, risk, engagement, stigma and violence allowed for these experiences to form the basis of a critical analysis of structural forces at play. This impacted on women's entry into sex work, occupational health and safety, sex workers engagement with health and other support services, experiences of stigma, and recourse to justice in cases of violence. Whilst the legal frameworks were not the only structural factor at play, decriminalization was experienced to enhance women's agency and autonomy in their choosing of how to do sex work, with a prioritisation of their safety being supported by occupational health and safety (OHS) frameworks in place. These OHS frameworks also enabled the New Zealand based participants to minimize perceived risks to their safety, and further provisions in the Prostitution Reform Act allowed sex workers to access justice in cases where their rights were violated concretely through exploitation, abuse or violence, and more subtely in their development of resilience and resistance to stigma. Furthermore, women in New Zealand felt empowered to access essential support services extending beyond basic harm reduction services. In Scotland, under a somewhat paradoxical setting whereby the legal framework criminalises the way sex workers work, alongside a policy context that pivots on an understanding of prostitution as commercial sexual exploitation, women experienced less agency than their New Zealand counterparts in choosing how and where to work, increasing their risk to exploitative working conditions and violence, as their priotisation of avoiding state attention and criminalisation was experienced to override their safety concerns and yet felt comparatively more stigmatised and marginalised from services, including health, social and justice based service provision.

By reading empirical research with comparative policy, law and theory, this thesis contributes to the development of an 'agenda for change' for sex workers (McGarry and Fitzgerald, 2018). Such an agenda promotes a paradigm shift in rethinking the relationship between knowledge, discourse, and legal and policy governance, to explore women's lived experiences in relation to social justice. By making visible the injustices enacted and perpetuated towards women, in this study, and assessing the role of the legal and policy frameworks in supporting, subverting or interrupting injustice and oppression of female sex workers, a politics of justice is envisaged in conclusions that make pertinent three points.
Firstly, the urgent need for engagement with the New Zealand Model of decriminalisation of sex work as a task of promoting a politics of recognition to enable female sex workers the institutional rights necessary to minimise their occupational health and safety risks and enhance their access to formal justice in cases of exploitation, abuse and violence. Secondly, the required task for the development of a politics of redistribution in both comparative contexts that renders visible the structural injustices faced by female sex workers by prioritising the facilitation of sex working women's' voices and experiences, in such justice claims, to avoid misrepresentation and misframing of these economic injustice concerns, which appear to dominate current redistribution justice understandings in the Scottish context. And finally, a renewed commitment of status equality to sex working women in policy frameworks that allows for social justice concerns. The exploration of women's economic, political and social vulnerability to influence discourse, and subsequent policy objectives that are not causing further harm, marginalisation and exclusion of sex workers from vital support services and legal recourse to justice as further evidenced in the Scottish context.


This article explores the potential human rights impacts of the 'extreme energy' process, specifically focussing on the production of shale gas, coal-bed methane (CBM) and 'tight oil', known colloquially as 'fracking'. The article locates the discussion within a broader context of resource depletion, the 'limits to growth' and the process of extreme energy itself. Utilising recent secondary data from the United States and Australia, combined with the preliminary findings of our ethnographic fieldwork in the United Kingdom, the article outlines a prima facie case for investigating 'fracking' development through a human rights lens. Indeed, based on considerable emerging evidence we argue that 'fracking' development poses a significant risk to a range of key human rights and should thus form the subject of a multitude of comprehensive, interdisciplinary human rights impact assessments (HRIAs) as a matter of urgency. Finally, given the close relationships between government and extractive industries, we argue that these impact assessments must do more than bolster corporate social responsibility (CSR) statements and should be truly independent of either government or industry influence.


Abstract The reality of human-forced rapid climate change presents an unprecedented challenge to the conservation of biodiversity in Australia. In this paper we consider the role of Australia's current protected area network in mitigating biodiversity loss across the continent. We do this by first examining the evolutionary history of Australia's extant fauna and flora and, specifically, the reasons why species have persisted through major changes in climate during repeated glacial cycles, and through the massive climatic changes that occurred during the Miocene and Pliocene climate change events. We then review the current major threats to Australian native species, including inappropriate fire regimes, feral mammalian predators and herbivores, invasive plants, and habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation by land use activities (especially commercial logging, water impoundment and diversion, agricultural expansion, and the intensification of pastoralism). We argue that these current threats are interfering with the natural responses to climate change that native species have relied upon in the past, thereby undermining their resilience in the face of current, human-forced climate change. We predict that the current approach to conservation planning based on accumulating small amounts of protected lands across the continent, using a set of arbitrary conservation 'targets', will not be effective in mitigating the impacts of human-forced climate change on Australia's biodiversity. We argue that an Australia-wide conservation strategy is needed that incorporates a larger adaptation agenda- one that recognizes the importance of protecting and restoring those natural processes and responses that have enabled species to persist through past environmental change. The following key elements are a crucial component of an effective conservation plan: identifying and protecting important climate refugia (both ecological and evolutionary); conserving the large-scale migration and connectivity corridors that operate at continent scales (including regional networks of habitat patches and habitat 'stepping stones'); maintaining viable populations of all extant species to maximize intra-species genetic diversity and thus options for local adaptation; reducing all current threatening processes at the landscape scale across the continent; and protecting and restoring key large scale ecological processes (especially hydro-ecology and ecological fire regimes). Finally, underpinning climatic adaptation responses must be a thorough understanding of the special role Australia's extensive intact landscapes will play in the future protection of Australia's native biodiversity.