X-ray emission from stars in the cool half of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is generally attributed to the presence of a magnetic corona that contains plasma at temperatures exceeding 1 million K. Coronae are ubiquitous among these stars, yet many fundamental mechanisms operating in their magnetic fields still elude an interpretation through a detailed physical description. Stellar X-ray astronomy is therefore contributing toward a deeper understanding of the generation of magnetic fields in mag-netohydrodynamic dynamos, the release of energy in tenuous astrophysical plasmas through various plasma-physical processes, and the interactions of high-energy radiation with the stellar environment. Stellar X-ray emission also provides important di-agnostics to study the structure and evolution of stellar magnetic fields from the first days of a protostellar life to the latest stages of stellar evolution among giants and su-pergiants. The discipline of stellar coronal X-ray astronomy has now reached a level of sophistication that makes tests of advanced theories in stellar physics possible. This development is based on the rapidly advancing instrumental possibilities that today allow us to obtain images with sub-arcsecond resolution and spectra with resolving powers exceeding 1000. High-resolution X-ray spectroscopy has, in fact, opened new windows into astrophysical sources, and has played a fundamental role in coronal research. The present article reviews the development and current status of various topics in the X-ray astronomy of stellar coronae, focusing on observational results and on theoretical aspects relevant to our understanding of coronal magnetic structure and evolution. For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream. ⋆ This article is dedicated to the late Rolf Mewe, a prominent astrophysicist who contributed major work to the field of stellar X-ray astronomy and spectroscopy. He died on May 4, 2004. 2 Manuel Güdel


In many developed countries around the world residential care interventions for children and adolescents have come under increasing scrutiny. Against this background an international summit was organised in England (spring 2016) with experts from 13 countries to reflect on therapeutic residential care (TRC). The following working definition of TRC was leading: "Therapeutic residential care involves the planful use of a purposefully constructed, multi-dimensional living environment designed to enhance or provide treatment, education, socialization, support, and protection to children and youth with identified mental health or behavioural needs in partnership with their families and in collaboration with a full spectrum of community based formal and informal helping resources". The meeting was characterised by exchange of information and evidence, and by preparing an international research agenda. In addition, the outlines of a consensus statement on TRC were discussed. This statement, originally published in English and now reproduced in a Hebrew translation, comprises inter alia five basic principles of care that according to the Work Group on Therapeutic Residential Care should be guiding for residential youth care provided at any time.


During my PhD, I focused on metabolic rates of litter- and soil-dwelling invertebrates, parameters
that exert influence on them or are influenced by metabolism. I started with consumption experi-
ments, comparing the estimated amounts of energy taken up with the energetic demand estimated
via metabolic-rate measurements. These experiments showed that, generally, ingestion as well
as metabolic rates increase for beetle and spider species with increasing temperature. However,
while ingestion increased only slightly with increasing temperature, metabolic demand increased
strongly thus reducing the ingestion efficiency with increasing temperature (Chapter 3). This might
have strong effects on the whole food web in a natural system. Populations might depict a higher
stability but on the other hand, due to the lowered ingestion efficiencies, predators might become
more prone to starvation and even extinction (Chapter 3). In the next study again metabolic rates
and consumption rates (functional responses) were compared across a temperature range, but with
a different focus. Here, ground beetles in combination with a more resident and a mobile prey type
were used to examine the different effects of temperature on these predator-prey pairs (Chapter 4).
Generally, increasing temperature led to an increase in metabolic rate, a decrease in energetic ef-
ficiency and a decrease in handling time. However, the effect of increased temperature on attack
rate differed for the two prey types. For mobile prey the attack rate increased with temperature,
while it was not affected for the more resident prey. This implies that an increase in temperature
might stabilize population dynamics. Since the first two studies had shown that the metabolic rate
of different organisms is differently affected by body mass and temperature, I focused on the ef-
fects of body mass and temperature on metabolic rates for my next study. Therefore, I compiled a
large dataset on metabolic rates of mainly soil-dwelling invertebrates by performing measurements
of respiration and by literature research (Chapter 5). With this dataset I tested a very prominent
theory (Metabolic Theory of Ecology) on how metabolism depends on body mass and temperature.
As this theory uses a fixed three-quarter allometric exponent (fixed body-mass dependence), which
the results of chapter 3 and 4 proved not to be useful, I also used a relaxed version (unrestricted
body-mass and temperature dependence). Finally, I tested a model, similar to the relaxed one but
incorporating phylogenetic information, thus each phylogenetic group would be fit independently.
This phylogenetic model obtained the highest quality thus emphasizing the importance of account-
ing for the phylogenetic affiliation of an organism (Chapter 5). Thus, the results of this study allow
a conservative energy-demand estimation for different terrestrial invertebrate species.
 Having seen that metabolic rates of organisms as well as their consumption rates increase with
temperature, the question remains how the assimilation efficiencies change. The effect of tempera-
ture on the assimilation efficiencies of different consumer types (carnivore, detritivore, herbivore)
had not been studied yet. For filling this gap, a database on assimilation efficiencies for different
consumer types was used and the database on metabolic rates (Chapter 5). Metabolic rates in-
creased with temperature for all consumer types while the assimilation efficiency only increased
for herbivores and was independent of temperature for the other two consumer types (Chapter 6).
From this it follows that maintenance consumption rates increase with temperature, however the
amount of increase differs between the consumer types. For carnivores the metabolic rates in-
creased stronger with increasing temperature than did their consumption rates, which might lead
to starvation. Accelerated consumption rates of detritivores could lead to increased turnover rates
and might result in increasing biomass of the populations (Chapter 6).
 Aside from using the metabolic-rate data with other laboratory data, it may also provide informa-
tion on the energy distribution in natural systems while its direct measurement is not possible. For
testing the Structured Resource Theory of Sexual Reproduction (SRTS) abundance and body-mass
data on oribatid mites in differently used habitats were used to estimate the metabolic demand of
the oribatid community (Chapter 7). The SRTS suggests that limited resources favor sexually re-
producing consumers while ample resources would be superiorly exploited by parthenogenetically
reproducing species. Abundance and metabolic demand served as a surrogate for resource supply.
The data supported the predictions of the SRTS as in habitats with a high amount of resources
(as indicated by high population densities or high metabolic rates) parthenogenetic reproduction
occurred in a higher proportion (Chapter 7). Finally, I used the metabolic parameters to estimate
the energetic demand of soil-invertebrate communities in differently used forests. Abundances and
body masses (via body lengths) were obtained by field sampling. Based on these data I calculated
the metabolic demand, the population energy use (PEU) and the biomass of the different species
present (Chapter 8). Thus, this dataset allowed testing different patterns that have been described
to apply to energy or biomass distribution in a community. The energetic equivalence is observed if
populations of small and large organisms use the same amount of energy. The biomass equivalence
on the other hand states that the biomasses are independent of body mass. I compared the results
with these patterns. Generally, metabolic rates increased with body mass of the species and abun-
dances declined independently of phylogenetic group, land-use type or feeding type. Biomasses
increased in all cases thus clearly rejecting the biomass-equivalence hypothesis. Population en-
ergy use mostly increased with body mass. Furthermore, a more detailed analysis (phylogenetic
groups separately in each land-use type) showed that the energetic equivalence is sometimes met
and sometimes not. However, the data support predictions of the resource-thinning hypothesis,
which states that abundances should decrease with trophic level, and mostly the allometric-degree
hypothesis stating that PEU should increase with increasing body mass. Thus, predictions from
food-web theory regarding the structure of natural communities are met and further integration of
metabolic and food-web theory might help to explain the natural community structures.


Fiber reinforced polymers (FRP) are often used to strengthen RC structures. Despite intense research, durability of reinforced concrete (RC) retrofitted with FRP remains insufficiently known. Long time behavior of the bond laminate-concrete, in flexural strengthening, under environmental action is not well known, conditioning Codes and engineers. An experimental program that subjected RC beams, externally reinforced with Glass FRP (GFRP) strips, to temperature and salt water cycles, for up to 10000h is reported. At selected intermediate times, the RC beams were loaded to failure in bending. Rupture took place, normally, by tensile failure of concrete at a short distance from the interface with GFRP. The results showed that freeze-thaw cycles were the most severe of the environmental conditions. The study also generated also non-linear bond-slip relationships from the experimental data. Numerical modeling has been undertaken, based on a commercial code. The model is based on smeared cracking. Parameters needed for the characterization, namely cohesion and friction angle, were obtained from shear tests conceived for the effect.


The study of the origin(s) of life on Earth and the search for life on other planets are closely linked. Prebiotic chemical scenarios can help priori-tize target planets for the search for life (as we know it) and can provide informative prior probabilities to help us assess the likelihood that particular spectroscopic features are evidence of life. The prerequisites for origins scenarios themselves predict characteristic spectral signatures. The interplay between origins research and the search for extraterrestrial life starts with laboratory work to guide exploration within our own Solar System, which will then inform future exoplanet observations and laboratory research. Exoplanet research will, in turn, provide statistical context to conclusions about the nature and origins of life.


This invaluable sourcebook intervenes in contemporary debates about Britain's heritage by illuminating the remarkable, yet still overlooked, impact that South Asians had on shaping the nature of British culture, politics and national identity during the period 1870−1950.

The first anthology of primary material interdisciplinary devoted to the study of the history of the South Asian presence in Britain over the period, it selects a wide range of official and non-official archival sources. It identifies four key areas of South Asian impact – minority rights, war, culture and reception, and representation. Highlighting the current relevance of South Asian engagement, it projects contemporary national concerns back into the past and offers alternative ways of conceiving of the making of modern Britain.


Formation, Functionalization, Characterization, and Applications of a Mixed-Mode, Carbon/Diamond-Based, Core-Shell Phase for High Performance Liquid Chromatography Landon Andrew Wiest Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, BYU Doctor of Philosophy My work has focused on a variety of different types of diamond-based, core-shell particles. These particles are formed with inert cores and poly(allylamine)/nanodiamond shells. Their intended purpose is to form an LC stationary phase that is stable from pH 1 – 14 and at elevated temperatures. At the beginning of my studies, the particles that had been made in the Linford laboratory were pH stable, but irregular and had poor mechanical stability. Since that time, I have worked to improve the particles by using more spherical zirconia and carbon cores, and I have improved their mechanical stability via chemical crosslinking with epoxides. I have performed van Deemter and van't Hoff analyses to understand the properties of these columns. Efficiencies greater than 100,000 N/m are routinely achieved with these carbon/nanodiamondbased phases. In addition I contributed to two patents that show innovations in diamond functionalization. My contributions involved reduction of an oxidized diamond surface with LiAlH4 prior to functionalization with isocyanates. I also wrote some application notes for the Flare mixed-mode column, which was recently introduced to the market and contains particles comprised of a carbon core and a polymer/nanodiamond shell. These application notes show the gradient separations of four essential oils (lavender, melaleuca, peppermint and eucalyptus), and the isocratic separations of various triazine herbicides and a mixture of β2-agonists and amphetamines. This dissertation contains the following sections. Chapter 1 is a review of liquid chromatographic history and theory. It also includes a history of the use of diamonds in liquid chromatography. Chapter 2 is a study on a glassy carbon core polymer/nanodiamond shell particle made in our laboratory. Stability studies at pH 11.3 and 13 were performed and different analytes were retained and/or separated on the column. Chapter 3 is a study performed on the Flare mixed-mode column. Separations of tricyclic antidepressants, β2-andrenergic receptor agonists, and linear chain alkylbenzenes were demonstrated with this phase. Van Deemter and van't Hoff studies were also performed to probe the efficiency and selectivity of this column with different classes of analytes. Chapter 4 chronicles, via SEM and van Deemter analysis, the improvements that have taken place in our column after many iterations of improved synthetic methods and new materials. These include better particle uniformity, particle stability, and column efficiency. Three different carbon cores were analyzed, each better than the previous one. Appendices 1 – 6 are application notes published by Diamond Analytics of β2-andrenergic receptor agonists and amphetamines, triazine herbicides, and lavender, melaleuca, eucalyptus and peppermint essential oils. Appendices 7 and 8 are patents that contain ideas and research contributed by the author.


Assessment of hazard characteristics, exposure, vulnerability, resilience and risk at a local scale is an important tool for identifying the capacities of households and local communities to adapt with climate change induced flood. Repeated floods with different magnitudes under variable climatic conditions are great catastrophe for the people living in flood prone regions specifically in Islands. People, infrastructure and economy are highly exposed to flood and that results in devastating flood disaster. In the Padma river Islands frequent flooding makes the life and livelihoods of people vulnerable and this vulnerability is conditioned by different factors such as people's physical, social, economic and environmental condition. The higher is the level of vulnerability the higher is the level of flood risk. Hence, people's resilience can minimize the negative impacts of flood disaster. A composite risk index (related to the probability of occurrence of the event, magnitude of the event, quantity and cost of the element at risk, vulnerability and resilience) was prepared to realize the climate change induced flood disaster risk. Some adaptive strategies are explored to adapt with climate change induced flood risk. Finally, Local Scale Disaster Risk Model (LSDR) was proposed to present the framework of climate change induced flood disaster risk and adaption at a local scale. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jles.v8i0.20138 J. Life Earth Sci., Vol. 8: 41-48, 2013


This thesis is a user study within library and information science on participatory practices of a professional group in work activity. This has been investigated only to a minor extent in previous library and information science research. The qualitative empirical focus alternates between physicians" engagements in work practice and workplace learning within patient care. The overall research problem was to learn how people in workplaces interacted with information that was embedded, intricately intertwined, and tightly bound to the ongoing routines of their everyday work. This thesis aims at understanding information practices of professionals in occupational settings as exemplified by a team of physicians in a Nigerian teaching hospital. In this thesis, the focus was on the collective work activity, and the specific goals identified include how physicians interact and make meaning in the context of the social activities in the workplace, how professionals individually or collectively gather, understand, produce, share and use information, and how workplace learning influences information practices. Information practices are viewed as sociocultural practices that occur inside other practices. The thesis focuses on a nuanced, contextualized understanding of the interplay between the participating actors in activity, the activity per se, and the intermediary role of tools and artefacts. The epistemological point of departure is the sociocultural perspective that emphasizes the dynamic interdependence of the individual with the social and collective development focusing on mediation through tools and artefacts in cultural, institutional, and historical situations. I have chosen cultural-historical activity theory and the practice theories to analyse the dynamic processes in the context of patient care. Their underlying principles guided the empirical study, facilitating extrapolations and illustrations in the analysis. The cultural-historical activity theory was used to understand contextual issues that influence information practices in work activity: the object and subject of activity, division of labour, rules and norms, community, tools and artefacts, as well as the activity system itself and the hierarchical structure of the activity. Theories and concepts employed from a practice perspective on learning were considered useful for understanding the participatory modes in workplace and the influence of social learning communities on diverse information processes. In so doing, the study strives to provide a holistic understanding of information practices, workplace learning, and the relationships between them.The empirical data was gathered through a qualitative case study that lasted over a period of two years. Direct observation was the dominant data collection technique 5 used throughout the preliminary and main empirical studies to capture physicians" information practices and experiences. The observation focused on the Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (CPT) team"s encounters with patients; the interactions they had amongst themselves, and events and situations surrounding patient care. During the main study, other data collection techniques were employed alongside the observation method. In-depth open-ended interviews were conducted with 17 physicians and 9 non-physicians who were selected to provide rich and varied descriptions of the phenomena under study. The interview time totalled at 1,535 minutes. Physical artefacts were another data collection technique employed: 30 patients" medical records were assessed during the empirical study. Finally, informal interactions in the research setting were an additional data collection technique used continuously throughout the two empirical periods. The results were analyzed through a combination of inductive and deductive methods of analysis. There are four parts to the empirical results in this thesis. In the first, contextual elements that showed how work environment can be an influencing factor in the information practices of a professional group are described from the perspective of cultural historical activity theory. In the second part, the nature of information access in the real-world information environment was portrayed. It was found that information sources and strategies contributed to the overarching goal of restoring patient health to normalcy. The information sources and strategies were also found useful for mediating the information environment both subjectively and intersubjectively. An equally important result concerns the authority issues related to information sources and strategies. In the third part, available tools and artefacts were presented as useful information aids that also played a mediating role. Tools were categorised into physical tools and language. Language was categorized according to the social situations or classes of speakers. The case notes were seen as useful artefact and occupied a central niche in the studied work activity. These tools and artefacts enabled affordances around which social practices were built on in the work activities. In the last part of the results, various information practices that mirror the participatory practices rather than those of isolated individuals are highlighted. Six dimensions made up and covered the most vital spectrum of the information processing: information gathering, meaning making, information sharing, information use, reading, and documentation. Furthermore, the study revealed that learning took place simultaneously with the work activity and that it influenced information practices at the same time.


Accurate scanning of a color image, which is absolutely essential for good color reproduction, can ensure that all relevant information about the color stimulus of a signal is obtained. The set of scanning filters is hence an important component of a color reproduction system. In this paper we introduce a measure of the goodness of a set of color-scanning filters. This measure relates the space spanned by the scanning filters to the human visual subspace. The q factor of a single color-scanning filter is shown to be a particular case of the measure. Experimental results are presented to justify the appropriateness of the measure.


INTRODUCTION
This study aimed to determine the stratified normative data by age and education for a modified version of the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) test from a large sample of community-dwelling Chinese older adults in Singapore, and to examine the MMSE's value in detecting early cognitive impairment.

METHODS
We studied 1,763 Chinese older adults with normal cognitive function and 121 Chinese older adults with early cognitive impairment (Clinical Dementia Rating global score 0.5). Normative MMSE values were derived for each of the 15 strata classified by age (three groups) and education level (five groups). Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis was conducted for the whole sample and each of the three education subgroups (no education, primary, secondary and above).

RESULTS
Education level and age significantly influenced the normative values of MMSE total scores in Chinese older adults with normal cognitive function. For the purpose of detecting early cognitive impairment, an optimal balance between sensitivity (Se) and specificity (Sp) was obtained at a cutoff score of 25, 27 and 29 for each of the three education groups, respectively. For the whole sample, the optimal cutoff point was 26 (Se 0.61, Sp 0.84, area under curve 0.78).

CONCLUSION
Age and education level must be taken into account in the interpretation of optimal cutoffs for the MMSE. Although widely used, the MMSE has limited value in detecting early cognitive impairment; tests with better performance should be considered in clinical practice.


Background: Self-rated oral health is a useful and essential indicator of overall oral health status which has an impact on general well-being and quality of life. No study on the perception of oral health has been conducted among young adults in Port Harcourt. Thus, this study investigated whether sociodemographic factors and oral health practices were associated with self-reported oral health status in a young population in Port Harcourt. Methods: A cross-sectional survey conducted among young undergraduate students in the University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State. Data were collected using pre-tested self-administered questionnaires and analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 21.0. Results: There were 120 respondents, all within 16–34 years old, with the mean age of 21.7 ± 3.8 years. More females 61 (50.8%) than males 59 (49.2%). A total of 5 (4.2%) are married and 66 (55%) were in health sciences. Out of 42 (35.0%) of the respondents that had utilised dental service in the past; complaints of a toothache accounted for 52.4%. The percentages of participants that rated their oral health as excellent, good, fair and poor were 20.8%, 58.4%, 16.7% and 4.2%, respectively. Sociodemographics factors, such as age, gender, course of study, level of study and monthly allowance were significantly associated with self-rated oral health (P < 0.05). Oral health practices for example, previous dental visit, type of toothbrush used and frequency of tooth brushing were also significantly associated with perceived oral health. Conclusions: The perceived high oral health status of participants was influenced by sociodemographic factors and oral health practices. However, there is poor utilisation of dental services among the students.


According to the base BGP specification, a BGP speaker that receives
an UPDATE message containing a malformed attribute is required to
reset the session over which the offending attribute was received.
This behavior is undesirable because a session reset would impact not
only routes with the offending attribute but also other valid routes
exchanged over the session. This document partially revises the error
handling for UPDATE messages and provides guidelines for the authors
of documents defining new attributes. Finally, it revises the error
handling procedures for a number of existing attributes. This
document updates error handling for RFCs 1997, 4271, 4360, 4456, 4760,
5543, 5701, and 6368.


This work was produced in the context of the Leaning Out of Windows project, where artists, scholars and physicists are placed in collaborative dialogue in the development of new artistic works. One of the overlaps between experimental particle physics and my own work is the deconstruction of material in order to inspect the nature of objects and their constituents. The source material for this work is a set of photographs of the experimental apparatus of the TRIUMF particle accelerator. The emphasis of the photographs is the beam-lines that facilitate the transport of various particles in the apparatus, which resembles a industrial factory. The various exotic particles are made through acceleration, filtering and collision. I often work with photographic imagery and machine learning methods to question the relations between objects and contexts, reality and imagination, and realism and abstraction. This image is composed from 130,000 image fragments extracted from 100 photographs taken at TRIUMF. Image fragments are constructed by the algorithmic selection of areas of somewhat uniform colour. The edges of these fragments are an emergent result of the interaction of a segmentation algorithm and the photograph. The image is constructed by collaging these fragments where placement is determined by grouping fragments, according to colour and orientation, using a self-organizing machine learning algorithm. The macro-structure is then also an emergent result, this time following from the interaction between the self-organizing algorithm and the set of photographic fragments. While I have used this fragmentation process in other works, it was my exposure to Karen Barad's concept of "cutting together/apart," that solidified by thinking on objects as resulting from the creation of boundaries through (inter)intraaction. This conception aligns very closely to what I've been thinking about as Machine Subjectivity that is enabled by imagination as boundary-making and a critique of classification.


variety of hindered phenol and hindered piperidine antioxidants containing vinyl or vinylidine functional groups have been synthesised and some of these were successfully bound to Polypropylene backbone during processing operations in presence of a radical generator. Up to 20% concentrates were prepared using this technique. Commercially acceptable concentrates (MASTERBATCHES) can only be prepared with antioxidants that are only weakly chain breaking such as hindered piperidines. One of the antioxidants, AATP was found to polymrise as well as bind to Polypropylene. Bound antioxidants were found to be resistant to such channels of physical loss as solvent extraction. Temperature and concentration of the additive and radical generator were found to be important parameters in the preparation of the concentrates. The stabilising efficiences of the diluted bound antioxidants alone, and in combination (synergistic) with other antioxidants have been evaluated. Results of both thermal and photo-oxidative stabilities of the bound samples in Polypropylene show that the restriction on free mobility of the bound antioxidants in the polymer has virtually no effect on its stabilising efficiency. Bound AATP was found to generate nitroxyl radicals during the course of its stabilising activities, and in combination with a small amount of Irganox 1076, it was shown to be highly synergistic thermally. A mechanism of catalytic phenol regeneration by the resultant piperidine hydroxylamine was proposed. Although the mechanical properties of the masterbatches were affected by the transformation, this was not found to be carried over to the diluted samples. This work has shown that bound concentrates can be effectively prepared in saturated polymers for subsequent dilution to normal concentrates used in commercial stabilisation.


The nucleotide sequence of the env gp85-coding domain from two avian sarcoma and leukosis retrovirus isolates was determined to identify host range and antigenic determinants. The predicted amino acid sequence of gp85 from a subgroup D virus isolate of the Schmidt-Ruppin strain of Rous sarcoma virus was compared with the previously reported sequences of subgroup A, B, C, and E avian sarcoma and leukosis retroviruses. Subgroup D viruses are closely related to the subgroup B viruses but have an extended host range that includes the ability to penetrate certain mammalian cells. There are 27 amino acid differences shared between the subgroup D sequence and three subgroup B sequences. At 16 of these sites, the subgroup D sequence is identical to the sequence of one or more of the other subgroup viruses (A, C, and E). The remaining 11 sites are specific to subgroup D and show some clustering in the two large variable regions that are thought to be major determinants of host range. Biological analysis of recombinant viruses containing a dominant selectable marker confirmed the role of the gp85-coding domain in determining the host range of the subgroup D virus in the infection of mammalian cells. We also compared the sequence of the gp85-coding domain from two subgroup A viruses, Rous-associated virus type 1 and a subgroup A virus of the Schmidt-Ruppin strain of Rous sarcoma virus. The comparison revealed 24 nonconservative amino acid changes, of which 6 result in changes in potential glycosylation sites. The positions of 10 amino acid differences are coincident with the positions of 10 differences found between two subgroup B virus env gene sequences. These 10 sites identify seven domains in the sequence which may constitute determinants of type-specific antigenicity. Using a molecular recombinant, we demonstrated that type-specific neutralization of two subgroup A viruses was associated with the gp85-coding domain of the virus.


When making creep tensile tests on butt fusion joints in PE pipes almost all failures emerge from the outside of the pipe. Results indicate an influence from the outside surface on the long term behaviour of butt fusion joints. It is a well established practice to scrape the outside surface of PE pipes when making electro-fusion joints. This study stress the question if scraping or bead removal is a positive thing also when making butt fusion joints. Using PE100 pipes butt fusion joints were made using different levels of surface scraping before the butt fusion and with and without removing the weld beads before testing. PE-pipes with an outside PP or PE-skin were also included with and without the skin. Tensile test pieces were cut parallel to the pipe axis centered over the butt fusion joint. The long term strength evaluation were made using a standard accelerated test procedure with the test pieces exposed to a 5 MPa tensile loading immersed in 80 °C water with 2 % Arkopal N100 surfactant. With outside weld beads left intact failure times 200 h to 400 h are normal. Leaving the inner beads but removing the outer beads increase failure times to 1000 h to 2000 h. Failure times for test pieces without weld beads approach 10000 h. Scraping of the pipe surface to a depth of 0.2 mm did not substantially change the failure-time above that for an unscraped surface. Removing 0.7 mm from the pipe surfaceincrease failure times to 2000 h to 3000 h. Outside weld beads and outside pipe surface clearly interact to lower the time to failure in accelerated creep tensile tests. Weld bead removal and scraping of outside pipe surface significantly increase failure times. The exact mechanism is not clear and the implication on butt fusion joint performance in service is not demonstrated but the results indicate possible ways to enhance safety margins when making butt fusion joints. The topic will be given further attention in coming studies.


We present a new active learning algorithm that adaptively partitions the input space into a finite number of regions, and subsequently seeks a distinct predictor for each region, both phases actively requesting labels. We prove theoretical guarantees for both the generalization error and the label complexity of our algorithm, and analyze the number of regions defined by the algorithm under some mild assumptions. We also report the results of an extensive suite of experiments on several real-world datasets demonstrating substantial empirical benefits over existing single-region and non-adaptive region-based active learning baselines.


Rich in personality, action, confrontation and deception, "Atomic" is the first fully realised popular account of the race to build humankind's most destructive weapon. The book draws on declassified material, such as MI6's FarmHall transcripts, coded Soviet messages cracked by American cryptographers in the Venona project, and interpretations by Russian scholars of documents from the Soviet archives. Jim Baggott weaves these threads into a monumental book that spans ten historic years, from the discovery of nuclear fission in 1939 to the aftermath of 'Joe-1', August 1949's first Soviet atomic bomb test.Why did physicists persist in developing the atomic bomb, despite the devastation that it could bring? Why, despite having a clear head start, did Hitler's physicists fail? Could the Soviets have developed the bomb without spies like Klaus Fuchs or Donald Maclean? Did the Allies really plot to assassinate a key member of the German bomb programme? Did the physicists knowingly inspire the arms race? "Atomic" is an epic story of science and technology at the very limits of human understanding; a tale barely believable as fiction, which just happens to be historical fact.


Abstract : This study aims at formulating a model of the profile of teachers professionalism of excellent Islamic Primary School (IPS). The source of data of this research is obtained from six excelence IPS in South Jakarta that achieve score of accreditation A.This research is a non experimental research that uses survey method. The population of this research is all teachers in 15 Excelence IPS with the sample as much as 40% of the teachers. as many as 100 teachers. As for the sampling technique used in this research is simple random sampling with descriptive statistics. The result of this research shows that firstly the profile of professionalism of the teachers of excellent IPS in South Jakarta is indicated by adequate teachers competency in personality, pedagogy, professionalism, and social aspect. Secondly, at the dimension of learning community teachers have not fully showed self development as a part of learning community. Thirdly, at the financial dimension it is know that the teachers of especially State Islamic Primary Schools are willing to accept all the policy of reward system set by the goverment and their schools headmasters. Fourtly, the linearity of educational background with the teaching profession. Fifthly, there is no difference in average scores the characteristics of profile of teachers professionalism between Private Islamic Primary Schools and the State ones. DOI:  10.15408/tjems.v1i1.1110


Standard video frame interpolation methods first estimate optical flow between input frames and then synthe-size an intermediate frame guided by motion. Recent approaches merge these two steps into a single convolution process by convolving input frames with spatially adaptive kernels that account for motion and re-sampling simultaneously. These methods require large kernels to handle large motion, which limits the number of pixels whose kernels can be estimated at once due to the large memory demand. To address this problem, this paper formulates frame interpolation as local separable convolution over input frames us-ing pairs of 1D kernels. Compared to regular 2D kernels, the 1D kernels require significantly fewer parameters to be estimated. Our method develops a deep fully convolutional neural network that takes two input frames and estimates pairs of 1D kernels for all pixels simultaneously. Since our method is able to estimate kernels and synthesizes the whole video frame at once, it allows for the incorporation of perceptual loss to train the neural network to produce visually pleasing frames. This deep neural network is trained end-to-end using widely available video data without any human annotation. Both qualitative and quantitative experiments show that our method provides a practical solution to high-quality video frame interpolation.


A system is proposed for packaging material samples on a remote planet (especially Mars) in sealed sample tubes in preparation for later return to Earth. The sample tubes (Figure 1) would comprise (1) tubes initially having open tops and closed bottoms; (2) small, bellows-like collapsible bodies inside the tubes at their bottoms; and (3) plugs to be eventually used to close the tops of the tubes. The top inner surface of each tube would be coated with solder. The side of each plug, which would fit snugly into a tube, would feature a solder-filled ring groove. The system would include equipment for storing, manipulating, filling, and sealing the tubes. The containerization system (see Figure 2) will be organized in stations and will include: the storage station, the loading station, and the heating station. These stations can be structured in circular or linear pattern to minimize the manipulator complexity, allowing for compact design and mass efficiency. The manipulation of the sample tube between stations is done by a simple manipulator arm. The storage station contains the unloaded sample tubes and the plugs before sealing as well as the sealed sample tubes with samples after loading and sealing. The chambers at the storage station also allow for plug insertion into the sample tube. At the loading station the sample is poured or inserted into the sample tube and then the tube is topped off. At the heating station the plug is heated so the solder ring melts and seals the plug to the sample tube. The process is performed as follows: Each tube is filled or slightly overfilled with sample material and the excess sample material is wiped off the top. Then, the plug is inserted into the top section of the tube packing the sample material against the collapsible bellowslike body allowing the accommodation of the sample volume. The plug and the top of the tube are heated momentarily to melt the solder in order to seal the tube.


The article analyzes section VI B («The Spirit in Self-Estrangement») within absolute knowing. The main focus is Hegel's speculative analysis of the formal structure of absolute knowing, starting from infinite judgement («the thing is ego»), to its conclusion with the definition of utility as preisgegebnes Sein fur anderes (a being at the mercy of an «other», in Baillie's translation). The article does not examine the phenomenological process of culture development, but focuses on the formal structure of pure insight (the most important result of culture), comparing the self which constitutes the insight with the one which manifests itself as self-knowing spirit in absolute knowing. Here the inexorable Aufhebung of insight, as purest incarnation of modern reason, comes to light: Hegel emphasizes rationality and therefore he criticizes its abstract form which downgrades pure insight from reason to raisonnements of Understanding.


This report provides insight into four aspects of modeling indirect land use caused by expanded biofuels production. The report was motivated by the National Biodiesel Board's interest in better understanding how the California Air Resources Board (CARB) estimated an indirect land-use factor for soybean-based biodiesel of 66 gCO2e/MJ, which is more than three times greater than the direct emissions from the fuel. Four aspects of CARB's modeling approach were examined: (1) why CARB estimates that more U.S. forest than pasture will be converted to cropland; (2) whether CARB's predicted land-use changes are consistent with observed U.S. land-use changes in the past decade; (3) how CARB could account for double cropping; and (4) whether CARB's assumption that land brought into production has lower yields than land that was already in production. Results indicate that (1) much of the predicted U.S. forestland conversion is likely due to restrictions on cross-price elasticities imposed by use of the Constant Elasticity of Transformation supply function; (2) a stock of idled cropland could have accommodated the increase in U.S. cropland in 2007 and 2008; (3) the soybean yield elasticity with respect to price can be adjusted to account for double-cropped acres; and (4) there is no empirical support for the assumption that yields in Brazil on new land are lower than yields on old land. The analysis shows how much work needs to be done in this area if the models used to estimate indirect land use are to become widely accepted.


At a bustling university town in the Netherlands, dozens of future nurses obsessively track their sleep, nutrition and exercise using the latest wearable health trackers.

These students are enrolled at Hanze University of Applied Sciences, which is based in Groningen, a city in the north of Netherlands. They are some of the first nurses in the world to receive a comprehensive education in the "Quantified Self" movement.
During the course of the program, the students perform a self-experiment, such as tracking how a physical activity affects stress levels. They can choose from dozens of tracking devices from a drawer stuffed full of options. The students will then learn how to analyze the data they collect and present their research to the group.
The program is taught by Martijn de Groot, a research director at the Groningen-based Quantified Self Institute. Yesterday, at the Quantified Self Conference in San Francisco, de Groot urged other medical educators to follow suit.


The biennial FIDSSA congress is always an eagerly anticipated event, which delivers more than the sum of its parts. By bringing together doctors, nurses, laboratory staff, scientists and students with diverse interests in adult and paediatric infectious diseases, clinical microbiology, infection control, travel medicine and sexually transmitted infections, the FIDSSA congress provides an unparalleled learning opportunity in our field. It is a time for continuing professional development, networking, advocacy, and, dare one say, enjoyment.


Title of Document: AN INVESTIGATION OF STATE-LEVEL CHILD FIND AND PUBLIC AWARENESS CAMPAIGNS TO PROMOTE EARLY INTERVENTION TO THE MEDICAL COMMUNITY Jody Lynn Fulton, Ph.D., 2006 Directed By: Professor Joan Lieber, Department of Special Education The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act requires States, through their Child Find Program, to locate, evaluate, and provide services to all children with delays. The purpose of this research was to investigate what the States are doing to promote Child Find to the medical community, how they evaluate the effectiveness of their efforts, and what, if any barriers prohibit these efforts. Three data collection methods were used: 1) an analysis of each State's policy as it relates to Child Find and the medical community, 2) an analysis of public awareness plans as they relate to Child Find and the medical community, and 3) a survey sent to each of the Part C lead agency coordinators in each State and US territory investigating Child Find efforts to the medical community. The results of this research reveal that most States have vague or ambiguous objectives in their policies related to Child Find and public awareness to the medical community. However, States' public awareness plans contain more detail about these objectives. The majority of States are working in collaboration with the medical community, as 85% had a member of the medical community serving on the State Interagency Coordinating Council. Ninety-one percent of the respondents reported their State collects data on how many referrals to early intervention they receive each year, and 100% of the people who responded reported collecting data on where these referrals come from. Only 56% collect referral data from the NICUs; however 94% collect data on referrals from other medical related institutions. Seventy percent have a public awareness plan and 53% routinely collaborate with the Local Education Agencies (LEA) on the effectiveness of this plan. In spite of plans, policies, and collaborative efforts, the States are still experiencing barriers in their efforts to reach out to the medical community. Lack of staff, lack of time, and difficult accessing the medical community were the three most frequently cited barriers. Limitations of this research, as well as suggestions for future research and practice are presented. AN INVESTIGATION OF STATE-LEVEL CHILD FIND AND PUBLIC AWARENESS CAMPAIGNS TO PROMOTE EARLY INTERVENTION TO THE MEDICAL COMMUNITY


The last step of a condition based maintenance (CBM) program is maintenance decision-making. This step is the most important and the most critical stage of maintenance for executive personnel and management whom work on taking maintenance actions. This decision making would be done according to certain criteria such as risk, cost, reliability and availability. This paper considered a dynamic programming model to optimization of the threshold for the preventive maintenance actions in a condition-based maintenance program. The basis of this modeling is the average cost of maintenance actions, failures and exchanges. In this paper, we improved the memory of the deterioration of the model with a coefficient (α ). We compute the optimal point to exchange the machine. We connived at the time value of money to simplify.


Aims To compare the visual performances and patient satisfactions of conventional monovision, which corrects the dominant eye for distance vision, and crossed monovision, which corrects the non-dominant eye for distance vision in patients with pseudophakia. Methods This prospective randomised study was conducted in 59 patients who underwent implantation of different targets of monofocal intraocular lens for each eye at Konkuk University Medical Center between November 2009 and August 2012. The following were examined before bilateral cataract surgery and 2 months after the surgery: refractive error, binocular uncorrected distance visual acuity (UCDVA), uncorrected near visual acuity (UCNVA), best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) and stereopsis. Questionnaires to evaluate postoperative spectacle dependence and patient satisfaction were completed by all patients. Results The conventional monovision group and the crossed monovision group were composed of 28 and 31 patients, respectively. There were no significant differences in postoperative UCDVA, UCNVA, BCVA and stereopsis between the two groups. In addition, patient satisfaction with near and distant vision and spectacle dependence were not significantly different in the two groups. Conclusions The clinical results of the crossed monovision were not significantly different from the results of conventional monovision. Therefore, crossed monovision can also be a valuable option for correcting postoperative presbyopia in patients considering bilateral cataract surgery. Trial registration number KCT0001065


Abstract. In recent years coastal oceanographers have suggested using the "Strouhal" number or its inverse, the "Stokes" number, to describe the effect of bottom boundary layer turbulence on the vertical structure of both density and currents. These are defined as the ratios of the frictional depth (δ) to the water column depth (h) or vice versa. Although many researchers have mentioned that the effects of the earth's rotation should be important, they have tended to omit it. Rotation may have an important influence on tidal currents, as the frictional depth from a fully cyclonic to a fully anticyclonic tidal ellipse can vary by up to an order of magnitude at mid latitudes. The Stokes number might appear smaller for cyclonic current ellipses (larger for anticyclonic) than it is without rotation, resulting in frictional effects being underestimated (overestimated). Here, a way to calculate a Stokes number is proposed, in which the effect of the earth's rotation is taken into account. The standard Stokes and the rotational Stokes numbers are used as predictors for the position of the tidal mixing fronts in the Irish Sea. Results show that use of the rotational number improves the predictions of fronts in shallow cyclonic areas of the eastern Irish Sea. This suggests that the effect of rotation on the water column structure will be more important in shallow shelf seas and estuaries with strong rotational currents.


One of the biggest problem in OSCE election observation methodology concerns the selection of polling stations where the observation is conducted: in practice, polling stations that are visited by observers are disproportionally urban and located in or around the national capital and in regional centers. Because visited polling stations are not representative of all polling stations, the observation mission risks getting an unbalanced picture of the shortcomings in the election. In this article, we present findings from original research that shed light on the scope of the problem of distortion in the selection of polling stations, and discuss potential ways to overcome the problem.


I. INTRODUCTION II. BACKGROUND A. History of the Standards for Nonprofit Hospitals 1. The Charity Care Standard 2. The Community Benefit Standard 3. Criticisms of the Community Benefit Standard 4. Criticisms of Nonprofit Hospitals B. Recent Action by the Senate Finance Committee 1. The Committee Staff's Proposals 2. Reactions to the Prospect of New Legislation C. Recent Action by the Internal Revenue Service 1. Reporting Requirements for Tax-Exempt Hospitals 2. The IRS's "Hospital Compliance Project" 3. The IRS's Recent Amendments to Form 990 III. ANALYSIS A. Analyzing the Senate Finance Committee's Actions 1. Quantitative Measure of Community Benefit 2. Defining "Charity Care" 3. Accountability and Transparency 4. Sanctions B. Analyzing the IRS's Actions IV. RECOMMENDATION A. Congress Should Enact Legislation to Replace Revenue Ruling 69-545 1. Charity Care Policy 2. Joint Ventures 3. Community Needs Assessments 4. Calculating Charges 5. Board of Directors 6. Quantitative Standards 7. Reporting Requirements 8. Sanctions B. Congress Should Define All Critical Terminology C. The IRS Should Refine and Enforce Redesigned Form 990 V. CONCLUSION I. INTRODUCTION According to Senator Charles Grassley, (1) we are at a "critical crossroads for nonprofit hospitals." (2) Many qualified nonprofit hospitals have received great financial benefits from tax exemption. (3) For example, in 2002, qualified nonprofit hospitals reportedly saved $2.5 billion in income taxes and $1.8 billion through the use of tax-exempt bonds. (4) Whether they deserve these exemptions is questionable. A 1990 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) showed that "57 percent of the nonprofit hospitals provided less charitable care than the value of the tax exemption they received." (5) This conflicts with the rationale for tax exemptions: that the benefits nonprofit hospitals provide to society outweigh the benefits that the government would receive from taxing the organizations. (6) Despite congressional proposals in 1991 for stricter standards, (7) the community benefit standard remains in effect. (8) The debate over deservedness has recently reignited, and nonprofit hospitals have been under great scrutiny for the tax exemptions they receive. (9) A study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that nonprofit hospitals still provide only a mean of 4.7% uncompensated care as a share of total hospital operating expenses. (10) A small number of hospitals, where the majority of charity care is concentrated, significantly influence this average. (11) This suggests that a substantial number of nonprofit hospitals are not earning-but are still receiving-the same tax exemptions. Since nonprofit hospitals are important to the community, (12) and because it is unfair to allow undeserved tax exemptions, this issue demands serious attention from Congress, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and hospital directors. Part II describes the history of tax exemption for [section] 501(c)(3) hospitals, from the historical "charity care" tax exemption standard to the current "community benefit" standard. Part II also discusses the criticisms of the current standard and the action the government has taken to improve it. Namely, Part II addresses the discussion draft released by staff members of the Senate Finance Committee (the Committee staff) in July 2007 with proposals for improving the community benefit standard. Part II also discusses the IRS's redesign of Form 990, the tax form that [section] 501(c)(3) hospitals must file with the IRS each year. (13) Part III examines the Committee staff's proposals and subsequent reactions by interested persons, including hospitals and scholars. It also examines the changes and reactions to the redesigned Form 990. …


Background: It is hypothesized that inflammation may mediate the relationship between obesity and endometrial cancer risk. We examined the associations of three inflammation markers, C-reactive protein (CRP), interleukin (IL)-6 and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, with risk of endometrial cancer. Methods: A case-cohort study was nested within the Women's Health Initiative, a cohort of postmenopausal women. Baseline plasma samples of 151 incident endometrial cancer cases and 301 subcohort subjects not using hormones were assayed. Results: CRP, but not IL-6 or TNF-α, was positively associated with endometrial cancer risk after adjusting for age and BMI [HR comparing extreme quartiles (HR q4-q1) = 2.29; 95% CI = 1.13–4.65; Ptrend = 0.012). After additional adjustment for estradiol and insulin, this association was attenuated (HRq4-q1 = 1.70; 95% CI = 0.78–3.68; Ptrend = 0.127). Obesity (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2) was associated with endometrial cancer risk in an age-adjusted model. The obesity effect was reduced by 48%, 67%, and 77% when either estradiol, CRP, or insulin, respectively, was included in the model, and it became null when all three factors were adjusted for simultaneously. Conclusions: The association between inflammation, as indicated by a relatively high level of CRP, and endometrial cancer risk may partially be explained by hyperinsulinemia and elevated estradiol. Nevertheless, all three factors contribute to and mediate the link between obesity and endometrial cancer in postmenopausal women not using hormones. Impact: The association between obesity and endometrial cancer risk in postmenopausal women may be attributed to inflammation, insulin resistance, and elevated estrogen. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 20(5); 971–7. ©2011 AACR.


This paper investigates the disclosure quality of governance issues in annual reports of Malaysian PLCs. In recent years, the issue of corporate governance (CG) has received more attention than it would ordinarily have as a result of a series of corporate failures. Corporate collapses like Enron Corporation (US), Barings Empire (UK) and in Malaysia cases such as Perwaja and Pan Electric Inc. are all rooted in the lack of a proper governance system. As a result, the Finance Committee on Corporate Governance was established in 1998 to undertake a review of the legal and regulatory infrastructure, specifically to evaluate its effectiveness in promoting sound CG standards in Malaysia. Following this development, a few guidelines on CG have been released, particularly addressing the principles and best practices such as the Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance (the Code), the Capital Market Master Plan, and the Financial Sector Master Plan. The main purpose of these guidelines is to strengthen CG standards and practices in Malaysia by focusing on the role and responsibilities of various CG participants, mainly the management, board of directors, audit committee (AC), external and internal auditors. Secondary data is used in this study. A disclosure index is established following the Bursa Malaysia Governance Model, the Code's guidelines and Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) guidelines. This study also aims to examine factors that possibly affect both the quality and quantity of disclosure. In general, it may be concluded that Malaysian companies have complied with the standards requirements. Only three factors under observation namely leverage, size and type of industry were found to have relationship with the quality of disclosure relates to governance issues.


Health Information Systems (HISs) are implemented to support individuals,organizations, and society, making work processes integrated andcontributing to increase service quality and patient safety. However, theoutcomes of many HIS implementations in both primary care and hospitalsettings have either not met yet all the expectations decision-makersidentified or have failed in their implementation. There is, therefore, agrowing interest in increasing knowledge about prerequisites to be fulfilledin order to make the implementation and adoption of HIS more effective andto improve collaboration between healthcare providers. The general purpose of the work presented in this thesis is to explore issuesrelated to the implementation, use, and adoption of HISs and its contributionfor improving inter- and intra-organizational collaboration in a healthcarecontext. The studies included have, however, different research objectivesand consequently used different research methods such as case study,literature review, meta-analysis, and surveys. The selection of the researchmethodology has thus depended on the aim of the studies and their expectedresults. In the first study performed we showed that there is no standard frameworkto evaluate effects and outputs of implementation and use of ICT-basedapplications in the healthcare setting, which makes the comparison ofinternational results not possible yet. Critical issues, such as techniques employed to teach the staff when usingintegrated system, involvement of the users in the implementation process,and the efficiency of the human computer interface were particularlyreported in the second study included in this thesis. The results of this studyalso indicated that the development of evidence-based implementation processes should be considered in order to diminish unexpected outputs thataffect users, patients and stakeholders. We learned in the third study, that merely implementing of a HIS will notautomatically increase organizational efficiency. Strategic, tactical, andoperational actions have to be taken into consideration, includingmanagement involvement, integration in healthcare workflow, establishingcompatibility between software and hardware, user involvement, andeducation and training. When using an Integrated Electronic Prescribing System (IEPS), pharmaciesstaff declared expedited the processing of prescriptions, increased patientsafety, and reduced the risk for prescription errors, as well as the handingover of erroneous medications to patients. However, they stated also that thesystem does not avoid all mistakes or errors and medication errors stilloccur. We documented, however, in general, positive opinions about theIEPS system in the fifth article. The results in this article indicated thatsafety of the system compared to a paper-based one has increased. Theresults showed also an impact on customer relations with the pharmacy; andprevention of errors. However, besides finding an adoption of the IEPS, weidentified a series of undesired and non planned outputs that affect theefficiency and efficacy of use of the system. Finally, we captured in the sixth study indications for non-optimality in thecomputer provider entry system. This is because; the system was not adaptedto the three-quarters of physicians and one-half of nurses' specificprofessional practice. Respondents pointed out also human-computerinteraction constrains when using the system. They indicated also the factthat the system could lead to adverse drug events in some circumstances. The work presented in this thesis contributes to increase knowledge in thearea of health informatics on how ICT supports inter- and intraorganizationalcollaborative work in a healthcare context and to identifyfactors and prerequisites needed to be taken into consideration whenimplementing new generations of HIS.


OBJECTIVE
Oxytocin is one of the most frequently used drugs in labour and there are many different dosage regimens. The aim of this study was to examine the use of oxytocin by obstetricians in South Africa.

METHODS
A specially designed questionnaire was drawn up and distributed to specialists according to an address list obtained from the South African Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

RESULTS
Three hundred and fifty questionnaires were distributed, with 174 processed for analysis. The majority of obstetricians (70.3%) reported that they would not use oxytocin for induction of labour in a patient with a previous lower-segment caesarean section, and 63.7% said that they would not consider the use of oxytocin in a patient with a multifetal pregnancy. Most respondents used oxytocin for induction of labour in multigravid patients and 91.9% also used oxytocin for augmentation in these patients. However, clinicians would not use oxytocin if the patient was a grand multipara.

CONCLUSIONS
Most clinicians adhere to accepted protocols practised internationally, with a few exceptions. The use of oxytocin for both induction and augmentation of labour in women with one previous caesarean section is not practised in South Africa, despite evidence suggesting its safety.


Nonperturbative effects are crucial to fully understand the dynamics of quantum field theories including important topics such as confinement or black hole evaporation. In this thesis we investigate two systems where nonperturbative effects are of paramount importance. In the first part we study the dynamics of non-abelian gauge theories, while in the second part we try to shed light on mysterious properties of black holes using a model proposed earlier by Dvali and Gomez.\\
Non-abelian gauge theories are the central element in the standard model of particle physics and many dynamical aspects remain elusive. $\mathcal{N}=1$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories with $SU(N_C)$ allows for domain walls with several curious properties. They are expected to have gauge fields with a Chern-Simons (CS) term living on their worldvolume, while in the 't Hooft limit of a large number of colors many of their properties seem reminiscent of string theoretic D-Branes. Similar domain walls were also conjectured to be present in non supersymmetric Yang Mills theories. In our work, we investigate this problem from several points of view. We construct a toy model of how to localize a gauge field with a CS term on a domain wall extending earlier work by Dvali and Shifman. We then derive the peculiar properties of CS terms in terms of effects of the underlying microscopic dynamics. Then we look at the actual theory of interest. Here the main novelty is the focus on the topological part of the Yang-Mills theory allowing us to make robust statements despite working in a strongly coupled theory. We construct the low energy effective action of both the non-supersymmetric as well as the supersymmetric Yang Mills theory, which due to the presence of a mass gap is a topological field theory. This topological field theory encodes the Aharanov-Bohm phases in the theory as well as phases due to intersection of flux tubes. In this topological field theory we see that the worldvolume theory of domain walls contains a level $N_C$ CS term. The presence of this term was already conjectured in ealier works based on string theoretic constructions. Here we give its first purely field theoretical construction. Within this construction we also illuminate differences between domain walls in the supersymmetric and non-supersymmetric case.\\
Lastly we try to relate the effects observed to similar effects in critical string theories and we also speculate on whether the behaviour of these domain walls is due to an analog of the fractional quantum hall effect.\\
In the second part of this thesis we investigate non-perturbative aspects of black hole physics. Here we consider a model for a low energy description of black holes due to Dvali and Gomez, where black holes are described in terms of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of weakly interacting gravitons near a quantum critical point. We focus on nonperturbative properties of a system of attractively self-interacting non-relativistic bosons, which was proposed as a toy model for graviton BECs by Dvali and Gomez. In this thesis we investigate this system mostly relying on a fully non-perturbative approach called exact diagonalization. We first investigate entanglement properties of the ground state of the system, showing that the ground state becomes strongly entangled as one approaches the quantum critical point. In order to make this notion precise we introduce the notion of fluctuation entanglement. We then compute it in a Bogoliubov analysis and extract it from the exact diagonlization procedure as well. We also consider the real time evolution of the system. Here we are interested in finding an analog of the conjectured fast scrambling property of black holes originally introduced by Hayden and Preskill. We only consider the weaker notion of quantum breaking and show that the toy model has a quantum break time consistent with the fast scrambling time scale conjectured in the black hole context. We then conclude by pointing out several possible extensions of these results.


Dolphins and African apes are distantly related mammalian taxa that exhibit striking convergences in their socioecology. In both cetaceans and African apes, two or more closely related species sometimes occur in sympatry. However, detailed reviews of the ways in which sympatric associations of dolphins and apes are similar have not been done. As fi eld studies of dolphins and apes have accumulated, comparisons of how the two groups avoid direct food competition when in sympatry have become possible. In this paper we review sympatric ecology among dolphins and African apes, and examine convergences in species-associations in each taxa. We review evidence for hypotheses that seek to explain avoidance of food competition, and consider whether ape-dolphin similarities in this area may be related to the way in which social groups in both taxa optimally exploit their food resources.


Metal complexes are increasingly explored as imaging probes in amyloid peptide related pathologies. We report the first detailed study on the mechanism of interaction between a metal complex and both the monomer and the aggregated form of Aβ1-40 peptide. We have studied lanthanide(III) chelates of two PiB-derivative ligands (PiB=Pittsburgh compound B), L(1) and L(2), differing in the length of the spacer between the metal-complexing DO3A macrocycle (DO3A=1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclododecane-1,4,7-triacetic acid) and the peptide-recognition PiB moiety. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and saturation transfer difference (STD) NMR spectroscopy revealed that they both bind to aggregated Aβ1-40 (KD =67-160 μM), primarily through the benzothiazole unit. HSQC NMR spectroscopy on the (15) N-labeled, monomer Aβ1-40 peptide indicates nonsignificant interaction with monomeric Aβ. Time-dependent circular dichroism (CD), dynamic light scattering (DLS), and TEM investigations of the secondary structure and of the aggregation of Aβ1-40 in the presence of increasing amounts of the metal complexes provide coherent data showing that, despite their structural similarity, the two complexes affect Aβ fibril formation distinctly. Whereas GdL(1), at higher concentrations, stabilizes β-sheets, GdL(2) prevents aggregation by promoting α-helical structures. These results give insight into the behavior of amyloid-targeted metal complexes in general and contribute to a more rational design of metal-based diagnostic and therapeutic agents for amyloid- associated pathologies.


This paper presents the results of a pilot scale investigation of coagulation using aluminium based coagulants (polyaluminium chloride sulphate (PACL1) and polyaluminium chloride (PACL2)), combined with pre-ozonation and pH adjustment, on natural organic matter (NOM) removal from groundwater. Tests were conducted at a semi-industrial pilot plant, using groundwater with a high content of NOM (5.1 ± 0.8 mg C/L dissolved organic carbon (DOC); 0.211 ± 0.007 cm−1 UV absorbance at 254 nm (UV254)) and trihalomethane formation potential (THMFP (273 ± 73 μg/L)). It was determined that both coagulants showed similar efficacy in reducing DOC (∼50%), UV254 (∼60%) and THMFP (∼65%). Application of pre-ozonation enhanced total coagulation efficiency (up to 61% and 80% for DOC and UV254, respectively), probably due to its microflocculation effect. THMFP in the treated water fluctuated depending on ozone dose, coagulant type and pH. The pre-treatment resulted in NOM oxidation to lower molecular weight hydrophilic organic substances. PACL1 coagulation did not efficiently remove these new THM precursors, whereas PACL2 was able to reduce THMFP to 77 μg/L at a low ozone dose of 0.4 mg O3/mg DOC, suggesting differences in the coagulation mechanism for the two coagulants. This difference confirms the necessity of optimizing the combined treatment depending upon the choice of coagulant applied.


ABSTRACT Lower Permian strata have been extensively cored in the subsurface of the Bravo Dome field, northeastern New Mexico. Analysis of core indicates that these strata consist of conglomeratic and sandy fluvial deposits and volumetrically significant eolian silt (loessite). Fluvial facies dominate the lower half of the study interval and include matrix-supported, massive conglomeratic debris-flow units and laminated arkosic sandstone, whereas loessite dominates the upper half of the study section and consists of massive, well-sorted quartzose siltstone that locally reaches thicknesses as much as 120 m in the greater study region. Paleosols are present throughout the study interval and consist of protosols and dolosols, commonly exhibiting vertic features. Dolomite that is interpreted to be of pedogenic origin is an unusual but volumetrically significant component in these paleosols. Paleogeographic reconstructions and paleomagnetic data indicate that these strata accumulated at equatorial (3-8°) latitudes, but depositional and pedogenic evidence both suggest seasonally wet to markedly arid conditions from early Wolfcampian to early Leonardian time. The loessite covers a substantial area (> 6000 km2), making this the largest pre-Cenozoic loess accumulation yet documented. This is significant, because loess generally suggests arid to semiarid conditions. Intercalated paleosols in the loessite section record repeated cessation of silt influx coupled with landscape stability, which we relate to high-frequency oscillation between dry and slightly wetter conditions, possibly attributable to glacial-interglacial climatic conditions that prevailed at low latitudes. At a lower frequency, the evolution from a predominance of fluvial to primarily eolian strata, in tandem with changes in pedogenic character, reflect a long-term aridification for the study interval. These data corroborate independent inferences of monsoon-induced equatorial aridity in western Pangea and help constrain the timing of the zonal-to-monsoonal transition to earliest Permian time.


A Hindley-Milner type system such as ML's seems to prohibit typeindexed values, i.e., functions that map a family of types to a family of values. Such functions generally perform case analysis on the input types and return values of possibly different types. The goal of our work is to demonstrate how to program with type-indexed values within a Hindley-Milner type system. Our first approach is to interpret an input type as its corresponding value, recursively. This solution is type-safe, in the sense that the ML type system statically prevents any mismatch between the input type and function arguments that depend on this type. Such specific type interpretations, however, prevent us from combining different type-indexed values that share the same type. To meet this objection, we focus on finding a value-independent type encoding that can be shared by different functions. We propose and compare two solutions. One requires first-class and higher-order polymorphism, and, thus, is not implementable in the core language of ML, but it can be programmed using higher-order functors in Standard ML of New Jersey. Its usage, however, is clumsy. The other approach uses embedding/projection functions. It appears to be more practical. We demonstrate the usefulness of type-indexed values through examples including type-directed partial evaluation, C printf-like formatting, and subtype coercions. Finally, we discuss the tradeoffs between our approach and some other solutions based on more expressive typing disciplines.


This article mobilizes the capabilities approach to offer a new and empirically grounded critical perspective on how cultural policy should promote citizenship to audiences. The capabilities approach posits that public policies should be designed and measured in terms of what they actually enable subjects to do or be. Focusing on the case of Norway, we operationalize the capabilities approach in two steps. First, based on survey data, we highlight systematic relationships between social background, cultural consumption, and citizenship. Based on extensive interview data, the article thereafter offers insight into how people engage with culture and whether this engagement enables them to function as citizens. In contrast to common assessments of cultural policy, we argue that the merit of this approach is that it focuses attention on how different measures actually empower different groups of citizens and fail to empower others, thus providing a basis for more effective and just policy measures.


This article looks at one of the potential for the establishment of a right to delete personal data. It asks whether a right to delete would be an appropriate, effective and proportionate tool in the context of personal data and if so what form should it take and what kind of an impact might it have. One version of the idea of a right to delete, the 'right to be forgotten', is of particular current interest: its mooted inclusion in the forthcoming revision of the Data Protection Directive has produced much debate and comment, some of it extremely negative, some emotional and some displaying both ignorance and misunderstanding. This article will argue that the right to be forgotten needs to be renamed and recast in order to address these negative reactions and the real concerns that underlie them. The article further argues that a qualified 'right to delete' should reflect a paradigm shift in attitudes to personal data on the internet: that the default should be that data can be deleted, and that those holding the data should need to justify why they hold it. This could help to shape a more privacy-friendly future for the internet, one that could provide a better balance between the needs to individuals for privacy, businesses for financial success and governments for security than currently exists.


DRS Sensors & Targeting Systems, supported by detector materials supplier Lawrence Semiconductor Research Laboratory, is developing far-infrared detectors jointly with NASA Langley under the Far-IR Detector Technology Advancement Partnership (FIDTAP). The detectors are intended for spectral characterization of the Earth's energy budget from space. During the first year of this effort we have designed, fabricated, and evaluated pilot Blocked Impurity Band (BIB) detectors in both silicon and germanium, utilizing pre-existing customized detector materials and photolithographic masks. A second-year effort has prepared improved silicon materials, fabricated custom photolithographic masks for detector process, and begun detector processing. We report the characterization results from the pilot detectors and other progress.


Overview: This report to the Mitchell Institute presents the outcomes of modelling the potential costs of an income contingent loan (ICL) that would form a core element of a tertiary education entitlement, as proposed in the February 2015 Mitchell Institute paper Financing tertiary education in Australia – the reform imperative and rethinking student entitlements by Mitchell Professorial Fellow Peter Noonan and Mitchell Policy Analyst Sarah Pilcher. This report, Feasibility and design of a tertiary education entitlement in Australia: Modelling and costing a universal income contingent loan, models the costs of a single income contingent loans scheme for higher education and vocational education and training (VET) students. It seeks to quantify the largely hidden subsidies involved in income contingent loans through unpaid debt and the difference between the rate at which debt is indexed and the costs to government of borrowing to finance student debt.  Feasibility and design of a tertiary education entitlement in Australia: Modelling and costing a universal income contingent loan has been prepared by Dr Timothy Higgins and Professor Bruce Chapman, two of Australia's leading experts on the design of income contingent loans. Background Feasibility and design of a tertiary education entitlement in Australia presents the outcomes of various financial modelling of the potential costs of applying an income contingent loan scheme to include all tertiary education students in Australia. The modelling maps students' projected incomes by qualification level, finding significant variation in lifetime incomes across VET and higher education qualifications. At present, there are a range of different income contingent loan schemes operating in Australia's higher education and VET sectors. Under such schemes, students are not required to pay the upfront cost of their course. Instead, they are able to take out a loan with the government and repay the loan through the taxation system once they enter the workforce and their incomes reach a certain threshold. But these loans are not available to all students. In the VET system, those studying for Certificate III and most Certificate IV VET courses, for example, early childhood education, aged care, and hospitality, do not have access to an income contingent loan. These students must pay the cost of their course upfront – a potential barrier as fees for many of these courses are increasing. The Mitchell Institute will draw on the Higgins and Chapman report to finalise its proposal for an integrated tertiary education funding system in Australia.


Apes have rich gestural communication systems. But do monkeys? If so, what forms and functions do monkey gestures have, and how does the relationship between form and function originate developmentally? This chapter reports intensive observations aimed at answering these questions in the largest of all monkeys, the mandrill ( Mandrillus sphinx ). Nearly thirty captive mandrill groups distributed across three continents were studied over the course of a decade, some groups for three consecutive generations. Mandrills performed three visual gestures: slap ground, hand extension, and eye covering. While slap ground was distributed uniformly across individuals and groups, hand extension and eye covering – the two focal gestures of this chapter – showed restricted distributions that were consistent with their being learned rather than instinctive. Contrasting hand extension against eye covering for fifteen different signal parameters revealed that these two gestures had antithetical forms and functions but had similar developmental histories. Within each gesture the close correspondence between form and function suggested that ontogenetic ritualization contributed to both hand extension's and eye covering's origin. Furthermore, for eye covering the clustering of all known performers within a single group suggested this gesture was culturally transmitted. Broadly, these results suggest that multiple interacting factors, including instinct, learning, and culture may contribute to the emergence of monkey gestures. Follow-up experiments, however, remain critical for rigorously testing the developmental origins and potential cultural transmission of non-human gestures. Keywords: development; gestural acquisition; ontogenetic ritualization; cultural transmission; monkeys


Up to one third of the total cost of energy from offshore wind generation is contributed by operation and maintenance (O&M). Compared to its onshore counterpart, this fraction is significantly higher. Costs are not only caused by spareparts and repair actions, but also by production losses due to downtime. The accessibility of a turbine in case of a failure is one main aspect affecting downtime. Therefore, a tool has been developed and implemented in MATLAB to simulate the operating phase of a wind farm with special emphasis toward the modeling of failures and repair. As an example application, a site at the UK east coast was chosen, and a few distinct scenarios were considered. Results include how sensitive availability changes with respect to changes in maintenance fleet and maintenance scheduling strategy. A quantification of potential cost savings due to an increase in availability is also stated. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.


Providing false testimony under oath unmistakably constitutes perjury; however, providing false testimony in domestic violence cases is complicated. Very little scholarship has addressed the issue of perjury, much less in the context of domestic violence cases. Although some scholars have acknowledged the epidemic of recanting in domestic violence cases, none have dealt with the fact that many recantations occur under oath. The response to perjury in domestic violence cases is to turn a blind eye and ignore it. Perjured testimony poses a significant threat to the court system. Indeed, one of the goals of a trial is to find the truth. False statements in domestic violence cases harm the criminal justice system and leads to apathetic attitudes towards victims. The Supreme Court's recent decision in Giles v. California and other cases involving the Confrontation Clause may lead to increased opportunities for perjury in domestic violence cases. Since there is no current rule or standard involving perjury in domestic violence cases individual prosecutor offices get to make their own rules, leading to arbitrary decisions. The purpose of this article is to give scholars and practitioners a starting point on what to do with the perjurer in the domestic violence case. I intend for this article to fill a void in the literature, and challenge the presumption that perjury should be ignored based on one's status as a victim. This article explores the unique relationship between domestic violence victims and the criminal justice system; the motivations behind false statements by victims; and the collateral consequences of false statements in domestic violence cases. Ultimately, the article proposes legislation to address the particular issues which confront domestic violence victims and would protect victims under limited circumstances.


We present a complete two-telescope version of a fiber-linked coherent array that is meant to be used for mounting on the dish of a radio telescope. This was built with 20-cm amateur telescopes and includes three different servo subsystems for guiding, nulling of the air path difference, and fiber length control. Laboratory tests of the fully integrated system in front of a star simulator are described.


This new collection from Cathy Caruth features interviews with a diverse group of leaders in the theorization of, and response to, traumatic experience in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Crossing the boundaries of discipline and profession, Caruth's subjects include literary theorists and critics, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, psychologists, political activists, filmmakers, public intellectuals, institutional leaders, and researchers. Exploring the intertwining of the intellectual and personal dimensions of experience, each interview is accompanied by Caruth's intimate photographic portrait of its subject. Caruth chose her subjects because of their impact on her thinking as well as their significant role as witnesses to the collective and cultural significance of trauma. The individuals profiled here are innovators in the theory of trauma (Part I), in the clinical, activist, or testimonial interventions in trauma (Part II), or in the creation or modification of institutions that provide therapeutic, artistic, or legal responses to traumatic events (Part III). Two of the interviews first appeared in Caruth's landmark 1995 work, Trauma: Explorations in Memory. The rest were conducted between 2011 and 2013 after the field of trauma studies expanded significantly. Representing both the foundation of trauma research and cutting-edge approaches to the topic, this collection will be useful to practitioners with an interest in post-traumatic stress disorder as well as scholars exploring the multiple dimensions of profound human experience. A portion of the proceeds from sales of this book will go to the Grady Nia Project for abused, suicidal, and low-income African American women.


This study proposes a fault detection algorithm based on the analysis of the theoretical curves which describe the behaviour of an existing grid-connected photovoltaic (GCPV) system. For a given set of working conditions, a number of attributes such as voltage ratio (VR) and power ratio (PR) are simulated using virtual instrumentation LabVIEW software. Furthermore, a third-order polynomial function is used to generate two detection limits (high and low limits) for the VR and PR ratios. The high and low detection limits are compared with real-time long-term data measurements from a 1.1 kWp GCPV system installed at the University of Huddersfield, United Kingdom. Furthermore, samples that lie out of the detecting limits are processed by a fuzzy logic classification system which consists of two inputs (VR and PR) and one output membership function. The obtained results show that the fault detection algorithm accurately detects different faults occurring in the PV system. The maximum detection accuracy (DA) of the proposed algorithm before considering the fuzzy logic system is equal to 95.27%; however, the fault DA is increased up to a minimum value of 98.8% after considering the fuzzy logic system.


We consider the classical setting of optimizing a nonsmooth Lipschitz continuous convex function over a convex constraint set, when having access to a (stochastic) first-order oracle (FO) for the function and a projection oracle (PO) for the constraint set. It is well known that to achieve $\epsilon$-suboptimality in high-dimensions, $\Theta(\epsilon^{-2})$ FO calls are necessary. This is achieved by the projected subgradient method (PGD). However, PGD also entails $O(\epsilon^{-2})$ PO calls, which may be computationally costlier than FO calls (e.g. nuclear norm constraints). Improving this PO calls complexity of PGD is largely unexplored, despite the fundamental nature of this problem and extensive literature. We present first such improvement. This only requires a mild assumption that the objective function, when extended to a slightly larger neighborhood of the constraint set, still remains Lipschitz and accessible via FO. In particular, we introduce MOPES method, which carefully combines Moreau-Yosida smoothing and accelerated first-order schemes. This is guaranteed to find a feasible $\epsilon$-suboptimal solution using only $O(\epsilon^{-1})$ PO calls and optimal $O(\epsilon^{-2})$ FO calls. Further, instead of a PO if we only have a linear minimization oracle (LMO, a la Frank-Wolfe) to access the constraint set, an extension of our method, MOLES, finds a feasible $\epsilon$-suboptimal solution using $O(\epsilon^{-2})$ LMO calls and FO calls---both match known lower bounds, resolving a question left open since White (1993). Our experiments confirm that these methods achieve significant speedups over the state-of-the-art, for a problem with costly PO and LMO calls.


Aims: To examine the hypothesis that people with benign pleural disease or asbestosis have an increased risk of malignant mesothelioma beyond that attributable to their degree of asbestos exposure. Methods: Former workers and residents of the crocidolite mining and milling town of Wittenoom are participating in a cancer prevention programme (n = 1988). The first plain chest radiograph taken at the time of recruitment into the cancer prevention programme was read for evidence of benign pleural disease and asbestosis, using the UICC classification. Crocidolite exposure of former workers was derived from employment records and records of dust measurements performed during the operation of the asbestos mine and mill between 1943 and 1966. Based on fibre counts, exposure for former residents was determined using duration of residence and period of residence (before and after a new mill was commissioned in 1957) and interpolation from periodic hygienic measures undertaken from personal monitors between 1966 and 1992. Cox proportional hazards modelling was used to relate benign pleural disease, asbestosis, asbestos exposure, and mesothelioma. Results: Between 1990 and 2002, there were 76 cases of mesothelioma (56 of the pleura and 20 of the peritoneum). Cases had more radiographic evidence of (all) benign pleural disease, pleural thickening, blunt/obliterated costophrenic angle, and asbestosis than non-cases. Adjusting for time since first exposure (log years), cumulative exposure (log f/ml-years), and age at the start of the programme, pleural thickening (OR = 3.1, 95% CI 1.2 to 7.6) and asbestosis (OR = 3.3, 95% CI 1.3 to 8.6) were associated with an increased risk of peritoneal mesothelioma. There was no increased risk for pleural mesothelioma. Conclusion: The presence of benign pleural disease, in particular pleural thickening, and asbestosis appears to increase the risk of mesothelioma of the peritoneum, but not of the pleura beyond that attributable to indices of asbestos exposure in this cohort of subjects exposed to crocidolite.


Although government searches generally must be supported by warrant and probable cause, the Supreme Court rarely has applied this requirement in penal contexts such as prison, probation, and parole. In order to justify the government's broad search authority in those contexts, the Court has created a patchwork of categorical rules and skewed balancing tests based on search targets' diminished expectations of privacy. This Note argues that the Court's current approach is unsound: Broad government search authority is justified in certain penal settings, but only because those settings create compelling government needs, not because the search targets have diminished privacy interests. Penal searches should therefore be analyzed under the "special needs" doctrine, which was designed for just this type of situation--where the government has compelling interests above and beyond those found in typical law enforcement contexts. A special needs analysis would allow courts to address the government's unique interests without devaluing the strong privacy interests at stake. Most importantly, it would impose an additional safeguard to cabin discretion and protect against harassment: Warrantless penal searches could be performed only with individualized suspicion of wrongdoing or through a neutral, nondiscretionary plan.


We report new geochemical data for marine sediments sampled in the frontal prism associated with the Costa Rica subduction zone during Leg 205 of the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP). We describe variation in sediment geochemistry with depth as the decollement zone, the interface between overriding and downgoing tectonic plates, is approached. This variation can be explained by three-component mixing of ash, lower plate sediments (LPS), and frontal prism or upper plate sediments (UPS). We detect in-mixing of LPS in localized sediment intervals, amounting to tens of vertical meters of LPS incorporation; no persuasive evidence of LPS transfer into the prism has been shown until this contribution. This inference of fine structure in the prism provides new insight into how tectonic kneading of sediments occurs in decollement zones.


This thesis describes the design and implementation of a speech enhancement system that uses 4-channel microphone array beam forming and speech enhancement algorithms applied to a speech signal in a multiple source environment. To locate the accurate Direction of Arrival (DOA) from the source, it is necessary to design a suitable microphone array system with more efficient localization algorithm. The goal of the system is to improve the quality of the primary speech signal. A filter bank is a signal processing tool that can facilitate manipulation of signals in the frequency domain. The WOLA (Weighted Overlap and Add) filter is an efficient method used to implement a uniformly distributed multi-channel filter bank. The WOLA is generally used in applications that demand high quality filters in term of stop band rejection and filter shape. Beamformers work by means of steering an array of microphones towards a desired look direction through utilizing signal information rather than physically moving the array. In this research, Wiener beam former is examined the input signals are first split into frequency bands so that Wiener beam forming techniques can be used. There are many algorithms developed for estimating the number of sources and locating the DOA, such as Bayesian algorithm, kalman filtering, Generalized Cross Correlation (GCC) and Steered Response Power (SRP) algorithm. But SRP algorithm with its steered beam forming technique for speaker localization is more robust using microphone array. The Phase Alignment Transform (PHAT) has gained a lot of attention in the recent research for its quite robust response in low noise, but reverberant environment. So combining SRP-PHAT will become the robust localizer in reverberant environment. Experiments were done on recorded data of human talkers. The algorithm gives accurate DOA from the dominant speaker. In addition to these, listener opinion testing is performed.