The status of crime victims is unsatisfactory in Lithunia. The criminal procedure is turning away from the victim and giving the majority attention to a criminal. Because of this the rights of victim are much more narrow than the criminal"s ones. There is no effective mechanism for the victim to ensure the possibility to use his rights. Besides, the institution of harm made by crime, is not sufficiently regulated in the frames of valid law, the conception of it is too narrow. Because of that part of the harm made by crime is not listed and in this way the rights of the victim are unsatisfactory limited, in the first place there is a right to insist on making up for the made harm. Nowdays the harm made by crime is made up by the help of restitution in Lithuania. The mechanism that is used may be effective only when the crime is exposed and the criminal has some property or income. Besides the majority of criminals has no income source or have very little one. Even if the criminal has income, he usually hides it. So the majority of criminals will not be prosecuted. The legal system is being reformed in Lithuania, the country is getting ready to join European Union, the main new codes are being prepared, there are auspicious conditions for making life of the victims of crime better. While achieving this it is necessary that standart deeds of the country would satisfy the standarts that regulate the status of victim, would foresight the regulated status of respecting rights of the victim, understanding one"s interests and ensuring one"s necessery help. The criminal procedure in Lithuania more and more turns to the victim of crime.


Abstract : The detection and tracking of special nuclear material (SNM) is vitally important in order to know where these materials are and prevent them from being used in a harmful manner. Active neutron interrogation is a sought after method for this since the resulting high energy gamma rays produced by inelastic scattering and neutron capture reactions can pass through denser shielding than natural decay gammas, and their energy spectra are unique to each isotope. Using Monte Carlo N Particle (MCNP) simulations, this research investigated the characterization of gamma ray sources created by active neutron interrogation. Ring detector and mesh tallies within MCNP provide the energy and spatial distributions of gamma rays and neutrons associated with the induced background produced by a 14 MeV D-T neutron generator operated for 10 seconds at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) Technical Evaluation Assessment Monitor Site (TEAMS) at Kirtland AFB, NM. Iron, lead, polyethylene, and uranium were simulated as the target isotopes. Analysis of their corresponding neutron and gamma ray energy spectra provide the target source term. The resulting signal-to-noise ratios for each target demonstrated that while each were distinguishable from the neutron induced background radiation, the same size of Pb-207 and U-238 and 1.5 kg of U-235 were not. Therefore, a reduction in the induced background radiation is necessary to accurately identify materials at these sizes or smaller, based upon the simulation.


In January 1839 a young Scottish couple – Dr. Robert Menzies and his recent bride Margaret (nee Tindell) arrived in Sydney aboard the Earl Durham. Like so many other free immigrants of the time, they had journeyed to New South Wales with the intention of settling on a farm and making a future for themselves and their family there. They had high hopes of perhaps even acquiring a small fortune within a decade or so, selling up at a profit, and retiring to their beloved family and friends back home in Scotland. However, such was not to be the fate of the Menzies', and their residence of a mere two decades in the Colony was to end in tragedy, despite an initial period of adventure and promise of a prosperous future. Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Social and Behavioral Sciences Publication Details Michael Organ and Arthur Cousins, The Menzies Family of Minamurra House, Jamberoo, Illawarra Historical Publications, 1994, 55p. This book is available at Research Online: http://ro.uow.edu.au/asdpapers/423


In this paper we consider the problem of semi-supervised kernel function learning. We first propose a general regularized framework for learning a kernel matrix, and then demonstrate an equivalence between our proposed kernel matrix learning framework and a general linear transformation learning problem. Our result shows that the learned kernel matrices parameterize a linear transformation kernel function and can be applied inductively to new data points. Furthermore, our result gives a constructive method for kernelizing most existing Mahalanobis metric learning formulations. To make our results practical for large-scale data, we modify our framework to limit the number of parameters in the optimization process. We also consider the problem of kernelized inductive dimensionality reduction in the semi-supervised setting. To this end, we introduce a novel method for this problem by considering a special case of our general kernel learning framework where we select the trace norm function as the regularizer. We empirically demonstrate that our framework learns useful kernel functions, improving the k-NN classification accuracy significantly in a variety of domains. Furthermore, our kernelized dimensionality reduction technique significantly reduces the dimensionality of the feature space while achieving competitive classification accuracies.


In this paper we present a development tool for testing dialogue systems. Testing software through the specification is important for software development in general and should be as automated as possible. For dialogue systems, the corpus can be seen as one part of the specification and the dialogue system should be tested on available corpora on each new build. The testing tool is inspired from work on agile software development methods, test driven development and unit testing, and can be used in two modes and during various phases of development.


Background: Hamstring autograft is a common graft choice when performing ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction (UCLR). Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of this study was to survey Major League Baseball (MLB) team physicians and determine whether these physicians harvest the hamstring (semitendinosus or gracilis) from the drive leg (ipsilateral to surgical site) or landing leg (contralateral to surgical site) when performing UCLR on elite-level pitchers. The hypothesis was that the majority of surgeons harvest the hamstring from the drive leg when performing a UCLR. Study Design: Descriptive epidemiology study. Methods: Overall, 52 MLB team orthopaedic surgeons were sent the 5-question online survey. The survey assessed surgeon UCLR volume, surgical technique, which leg the hamstring graft was harvested from, the reasoning for choosing that particular leg, and whether the surgeon would change their practice if evidence showed the hamstring from one of the legs was more important than the other. The survey was sent out 5 separate times to maximize the response rate. Results: Forty (77%) MLB team physicians completed the survey. The largest number of surgeons (n = 16; 40%) performed between 5 and 14 UCLRs annually, while 6 (15%) performed more than 50 UCLRs annually. Most surgeons (n = 23; 57.5%) used the docking technique. Significantly more surgeons harvested the hamstring from the landing leg (n = 29; 72.5%) compared with the drive leg (n = 11; 27.5%) (P = .007). More surgeons cited the reason for their choice of leg as a belief that the hamstring they harvested plays less of a role in the ability of a pitcher to generate a forceful pitch (n = 25; 62.5%) than for logistical reasons in the operating room (n = 15; 37.5%); this difference was not statistically significant. Significantly more surgeons would change their practice (n = 35; 87.5%) if evidence showed the hamstrings from a specific (drive or landing) leg to be more active in the throwing motion compared with those who would not (P < .001). Conclusion: When performing a UCLR using hamstring autograft, the majority of MLB team physicians harvest the hamstring from the landing leg as opposed to the drive leg, as they believe the hamstring from the landing leg plays less of a role in generating a forceful pitch than that from the drive leg.


Modern planktonic foraminifera collected with a sediment trap, and subfossil assemblages from surface sediments from the Galway Mound in the Porcupine Seabight off southwestern Ireland, (northeastern Atlantic), were studied in order to investigate recent assemblage variations. The sediment trap operated from April to August 2004 with a sampling interval of eight days and covered the spring bloom and early summer. Ten different species were recorded. Globorotalia hirsuta, Turborotalita quinqueloba and Globigerinita glutinata appeared predominately in spring. Neogloboquadrina incompta, Globigerina bulloides and Globorotalia inflata were abundant in spring and summer. Highest foraminiferal tests flux occurred in June. The faunal composition was similar to subfossil assemblages from surface sediments, but the species proportions were different. This contrast was mainly driven by the subtropical species G. hirsuta, which was frequent in 2004 but rare in surface sediment samples and in earlier plankton collections obtained from the southern Porcupine Seabight during the 1990s. The individual weight of deposited foraminifera is mainly influenced by the spring bloom, as indicated by sea-surface chlorophyll-a data. The top three-ranked species, G. hirsuta, N. incompta and G. bulloides, contributed 87 % to the foraminiferal carbonate flux at Galway Mound.


Internet shopbots compare prices and service levels at competing retailers, creating a laboratory for analyzing consumer choice. We analyze 20,268 shopbot consumers who select various books from 33 retailers over 69 days for a total of 1,512,856 observed offers. Although each retailer offers a homogeneous product, we find that brand is an important determinant of consumer choice. Consumers use brand as a proxy for retailer credibility in non-contractible aspects of the product and service bundle, such as shipping reliability. Our results also suggest that consumers are sensitive to how total price is allocated between the item price, shipping price, and tax.


Preparation of hydrogels with solely variable mechanical properties is greatly desired in the study of cell-matrix interactions in situ as well as cellular behaviors. Here, we fabricated a supramolecular polypeptide–DNA hydrogel, via the DNA self-assembly strategy, which possesses identical cross-linking point density but distinctive rheological properties. Keeping the cross-linking density constant, the rheological properties of the hydrogel can be adjusted by tailoring the stability of the DNA cross-linkers via easy programming of the DNA sequences. Through elongating and shortening the length of the DNA linker or inserting mismatch sites, the hydrogel can be strengthened, softened, or even fluidized, respectively. In addition, the mechanical properties can also be modulated by a pH-triggered conformation transition of the polypeptide backbone. Combining rapid physiological gelation and reversible thermal responsiveness, these supramolecular polypeptide–DNA hydrogels with solely tuned mechanical strength will promote studies on mechanical induced cell differentiation in situ, and have great potential in tissue engineering.


Deficiency of copper (Cu) causes low fertility in many plant species, but the molecular mechanisms underlying distribution of Cu to the floral organs are poorly understood. Here, we found that a member of yellow-stripe like (YSL) family, YSL16 encoding the Cu-nicotianamine (Cu-NA) transporter, was highly expressed in the rachilla, with less expression in the palea and lemma of rice (Oryza sativa). β-Glucuronidase (GUS) staining of transgenic rice carrying the OsYSL16 promoter-GUS showed that OsYSL16 was mainly expressed in vascular bundles of the rachilla as well as the palea and lemma. Knockout of OsYSL16 resulted in decreased Cu distribution to the stamens, but increased distribution to the palea and lemma. A short-term (24 h) 65Cu labeling experiment confirmed increased Cu concentration of palea and lemma in the mutant. Furthermore, we found that redistribution of Cu from the palea and lemma was impaired in the osysl16 mutant after exposure to Cu-free solution. The osysl16 mutant showed low pollen germination, but this was rescued by addition of Cu in the medium. Our results indicate that OsYSL16 expressed in the vascular bundles of the rachilla is important for preferential distribution of Cu to the stamens, while OsYSL16 in vascular bundles of the palea and lemma is involved in Cu redistribution under Cu-limited conditions in rice.


Many works are today subject to piracy and are likely to be under produced without some form of legal protection. Notwithstanding the recent Supreme Court decisions in Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co. and Bonito Boats, Inc. v. Thunder Craft Boats, which widen the piracy crack into which valuable works can fall, notions of misappropriation or piracy can, do, and should play an important role in copyright interpretation. Antimisappropriation of authorial skill and effort is an implicit part of all forms of copyright protection, even where protection extends broadly to the intellectually creative and expressive content of the finished product. Protection of authorial skill, effort, and judgment in the making of the product is all that is protected, however, where the content of the finished product falls outside copyright protection. This article argues that misappropriation's role should be more explicit in copyright interpretation, both so that appropriate protection is extended to desirable works otherwise vulnerable to piracy and so that countervailing policies, such as limited protection of ideas, factual information, and function, can be more carefully weighed in the balance. Feist would make misappropriation essentially an irrelevant factor for factual compilations, and language unnecessary to the actual decision potentially extends its denial of protection much further. This paper assumes, however, that Feist did not really intend to open the piracy door so widely, and offers a framework for copyright analysis that accepts misappropriation as a legitimate copyright concern, albeit only one of several, and inquires into the role that misappropriation notions should play in the analysis. This approach, not strictly prohibited by Feist's actual holding, leads to better results when measured against the applicable social policies underlying copyright.


OBJECTIVE: Operative mortality after left ventricular aneurysmectomy is close to 15%. Specifically for this procedure, forms of myocardial protection have been little discussed. The purpose of this study was to evaluate immediate results of left anterior ventricular aneurysmectomy using the beating heart approach. METHOD: We performed a retrospective analysis of 34 patients who underwent a left anterior ventricular aneurysmectomy, both with and without revascularization, from January 1997 to May 2005. The series consisted of 20 males and 14 females with a mean age of 52 years-old (range: 28 to 76). All of them were operated on cardiopulmonary bypass with normothermia, aortic cross-clamping was used but the open-beating heart was. We evaluated the perioperative mortality, thromboembolic events, duration of cardiopulmonary bypass, the length of stay in intensive care unit and the use of invasive ventilatory assistance. RESULTS: There were no perioperative mortalities or thromboembolic events. The cardiopulmonary bypass time was 85 minutes (range: 25-150 minutes). Invasive ventilatory assistance was used on average for 18 hours (range: 8-96 hours) and the mean stay in intensive unit care was 3.1 days (range: 2-14 days). CONCLUSION: The beating heart approach constitutes a safe and efficient cardioprotective method for anterior left ventricular aneurysmectomy procedures.


Radial glia are present early in development and help guide neuronal migration in the developing brain, which is essential for normal brain function. In the cerebellum, the formation of radial glia depends on contact with neurons and involves Notch1 and ErbB signaling. The mechanisms whereby neuronal contact initiates radial glial development, however, and the relationship between these two pathways are unclear. Patten et al. used cocultures to show that cerebellar granule cells stimulated Notch-dependent activation of a gene reporter expressed in cerebellar glia, as well as development of radial glial morphology. Glial expression of a constitutively active form of Notch1 also promoted radial morphology, as did coculture with fibroblasts expressing the Notch ligand Jagged1 or exposure to the ErbB ligand neuregulin (NRG). Expression in glia of dominant-negative forms of Notch1 or the ErbB receptor blocked the ability of granule cells to stimulate radial morphology, whereas a dominant-negative form of the Notch signal transducer Suppressor of Hairless (SuH) did not. Experiments involving various dominant-negatives and gene reporters indicated that Notch1 signaling was upstream of ErbB signaling and that granule cell (and Notch1)-dependent transcriptional activation of brain lipid-binding protein (BLBP, a protein expressed by radial glia)--but not of Erb2--depended on SuH. This suggests that Notch1 promotes radial glial differentiation through at least two distinct signaling pathways. The authors propose a model in which sequential activation of Notch1 and ErbB signaling pathways are required for radial glial development and suggest that they may also act in tandem in other developmental events. B. A. Patten, J. M. Peyrin, G. Weinmaster, G. Corfas, Sequential signaling through Notch1 and ErbB receptors mediates radial glia differentiation. J. Neurosci. 23, 6132-6140 (2003). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Distributed Brillouin sensing of strain and temperature works by making spatially resolved measurements of the position of the measurand-dependent extremum of the resonance curve associated with the scattering process in the weakly nonlinear regime. Typically, measurements of backscattered Stokes intensity (the dependent variable) are made at a number of predetermined fixed frequencies covering the design measurand range of the apparatus and combined to yield an estimate of the position of the extremum. The measurand can then be found because its relationship to the position of the extremum is assumed known. We present analytical expressions relating the relative error in the extremum position to experimental errors in the dependent variable. This is done for two cases: (i) a simple non-parametric estimate of the mean based on moments and (ii) the case in which a least squares technique is used to fit a Lorentzian to the data. The question of statistical bias in the estimates is discussed and in the second case we go further and present for the first time a general method by which the probability density function (PDF) of errors in the fitted parameters can be obtained in closed form in terms of the PDFs of the errors in the noisy data.


In discussing relations between post-Soviet countries, interdependence, and dependence on Russia in particular, is often portrayed as a natural inevitability. What this ignores, however, is that interdependence can be created and perpetuated by policy itself. It is the outcome of a political game where a range of interests is involved, resulting in a set of governance arrangements or regimes. Understanding this dynamic has important implications for the effectiveness of the European Union's engagement in the region. This paper examines what regimes interdependence between Russia and its neighbours (Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine) are embedded in, but also how these arrangements affect interdependence in their own right. The focus here is on formal international agreements between these countries, but also on less institutionalized interactions and transactional dealings governing relations across four sectors of notable interdependence: trade, migration, energy and security. The sectoral analysis is based on a number of key theoretical propositions we formulate in the beginning of the paper about how the nature and characteristics of governing regimes affect interdependence or that is, the countries' sensitivity and vulnerability to Russia's actions as per Keohane and Nye's framework. Importantly, we examine regimes not in isolation but note that certain subject matters are often regulated by a set of overlapping bilateral, regional or international agreements. Similarly, we note that interdependence is affected by interactions between regimes across sectors, reflecting a propensity for issue linkage. We find that, despite variations in nature and design, formal regimes developed post-USSR provide few constraints on Russia's unilateral actions and have thus served to perpetuate the neighbours' sensitivity. Overlaps with regional frameworks have been important particularly with regard to Belarus, but have produced similar effects. International regimes, such as the World Trade Organization and international arbitration, have the potential to induce a rule-based dynamics. However, the reduction of vulnerability is ultimately conditional on the progress of domestic reform. The implications for the European Union, which relies on sophisticated, rulebased regimes in marked contrast with Russia's reliance on weak and non-transparent arrangements, are many and deserve further exploration. They all, however, point to the argument that the European Union should offer not only rule-dense regimes to the Eastern partners, but frameworks offering actual policy alternatives and allowing the prioritization of key domestic reforms. 4 | EU-STRAT Working Paper No. 8 | March 2018


The aim of caring is to promote health. The global trend is that people are living longer, but in many cases, there is no support system for the care of older people, leading to major challenges in ensuring their health and well-being. The proportion of older people is expected to increase globally, and skilled healthcare professionals will be required to care for them. There is a risk that older people as suffering and vulnerable human beings will be forgotten due to the increasingly effective and technical care worldwide. A caring culture and relationship should be prioritised and developed to promote participation, well-being and dignity for older people in order to fulfil their care needs and ensure quality healthcare. It is important that research focusing on universal health coverage identifies the benefits of increased investment in service quality. To contribute to the improvement of this output, we propose the application of Eriksson's caritative theory. The aim of this theoretical chapter is to provide examples of how the dignity and well-being of older people can be promoted, at no additional cost to the person, by means of Eriksson's caritative theory, which can strengthen healthcare for universal health coverage.


In the last decades, urbanization has increased and it has shown to be an irreversible process. The negative impacts of urban growth make to sustainable actions necessary. One of the cities that have national relevance in its economic, social and demographic aspects is Campinas, in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. The objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of urban mobility and offer sustainable alternatives for the improvement of urban mobility in this city. A quali-quantitative survey was carried out with 234 citizens in Campinas, in three public squares and one municipal park. The results showed that the majority of the interviewed citizens were female, aged between 21 and 30 years old, undergraduate and employed with an income of 1 to 2 minimum wages. Their monthly expense on urban mobility represents, on average, 5% to 10% of the family income. The car was the main means of transportation. The main difficulty in transportation reported was traffic. Most of the interviewed individuals spend 10 to 20 minutes to commute to work or university. Among the main suggestions pointed out by the interviewees for the improvement of urban mobility are newer and more modern buses. Train or subway can be options to diminish the traffic and air pollution and were also suggested by the interviewees. Constant evaluation and monitoring of urban mobility are necessary to understand the real needs of the population and carry out the necessary actions. Keywords: urban mobility; sustainability; Campinas city; vehicles, urban landscape.


Making an error elicits activity from brain regions that monitor performance, especially the medial frontal cortex (MFC). However, uncertainty exists about whether the posterior or anterior/rostral MFC processes errors and to what degree affective responses to errors are mediated in the MFC, specifically the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC). To test the hypothesis that rACC mediates a type of affective response, we conceptualized affect in response to an error as a reaction to loss and amplified this response with a monetary penalty. While subjects performed a cognitive interference task during functional magnetic resonance imaging, hemodynamic activity in the rACC was significantly greater when subjects lost money as a result of an error compared with errors that did not lead to monetary loss. A significant interaction between the incentive conditions and error events demonstrated that the effect was not merely attributable to working harder to win (or not lose) money, although an effect of motivation was noted in the mid-MFC. Activation foci also occurred in similar regions of the posterior MFC for error and interference processing, which were not modulated by the incentive conditions. However, at the level of the individual subject, substantial functional variability occurred along the MFC during error processing, including foci in the rostral/anterior extent of the MFC not appearing in the group analysis. The findings support the hypothesis that the rostral extent of the MFC (rACC) processes loss-related responses to errors, and individual differences may account for some of the reported variation of error-related foci in the MFC.


PAPER BY LaDonna Pavetti, Michelle K. Derr, Jacquelyn Anderson, Carole Trippe, and Sidnee Paschal COMMENTARY BY Kathryn Edin and Rebecca Joyce Kissane PAPER BY Howard Chernick and Cordelia Reimers COMMENTARY BY Gary Burtless CHANGING THE CULTURE OF THE WELFARE OFFICE: THE ROLE OF INTERMEDIARIES IN LINKING TANF RECIPIENTS WITH JOBS LaDonna Pavetti, Michelle K. Derr, Jacquelyn Anderson, Carole Trippe, and Sidnee Paschal INTRODUCTION The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), enacted in August 1996, brought sweeping changes to the country's welfare system. Through the elimination of the sixty-one-year-old Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program and the creation of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant, the new law shifted the emphasis of the welfare system from providing ongoing cash assistance to placing welfare recipients in jobs. Local welfare offices have relied on a number of different strategies to shift to a more work-oriented assistance system. Some have expanded the role of former income maintenance (eligibility) workers to include more tasks related to helping welfare recipients find employment, or they have hired additional staff to perform these functions. Others have created closer alliances with, or transferred primary responsibility for employment-related activities to, the local workforce development system. Nearly all have increased their use of "intermediaries": private or public organizations that act as brokers between the welfare system and employers. Because states have been given so much flexibility to decide how to structure their TANF programs, there has been considerable emphasis on understanding the variation in states' policy choices. However, there has been far less emphasis on trying to understand how states and local welfare offices have reorganized to provide the services TANF recipients need in order to make the transition from welfare to work. Clearly, a state's policy choices are important; these choices set the parameters that define what is expected of clients, what consequences they will face if they do not meet those expectations, and what benefits will be provided to them and under what circumstances. But a state or local TANF office's employment service delivery system is an equally important piece of the new social contract we have imposed upon families who turn to the government for support. It is through this service delivery system that TANF clients receive or do not receive the assistance they need to do what is expected of them, which in most states is finding work as quickly as possible. In an effort to increase our understanding of the design and structure of this new service delivery system, this study examines the characteristics of intermediary organizations and explores the role they play in linking welfare recipients with jobs. The study was undertaken because there was widespread belief--but limited systematic evidence--that many welfare offices transferred to intermediaries significant responsibility for helping welfare recipients find jobs. Time limits on the receipt of benefits and full family sanctions for noncompliance with work requirements have increased the importance of providing TANF recipients with the assistance they need to find employment quickly and to maintain it over the long term. To the extent that intermediaries are able to link clients who would be unable to find employment on their own with employers who are willing to hire them, they will contribute to the success of welfare reform. However, if the intermediaries are unable to help clients make these linkages, they could contribute to the failure of welfare reform and increase the risk of clients being adversely affected by new policies such as time limits. Consequently, even though some states historically may have used intermediary organizations to help welfare recipients find employment, the increased emphasis on work increases the importance of understanding their role and what influence, if any, these organizations may have on the success or failure of welfare reform. …


Metal enhanced fluorescence (MEF) is a physical effect through which the near-field interaction of fluorophores with metallic nanoparticles can lead to large fluorescence enhancement. MEF can be exploited in many fluorescence-based biomedical applications, with potentially significant improvement in detection sensitivity and contrast enhancement. Offering lower autofluorescence and minimal photoinduced damage, the development of effective and multifunctional MEF platforms in the near-infrared (NIR) region, is particularly desirable. In this work, the enhancement of NIR fluorescence caused by interaction with regular arrays of cylindrical gold (Au) nanoparticles (nanodiscs), fabricated through nanosphere lithography, is reported. Significant MEF of up to 235 times is obtained, with tuneable enhancement factors. The effect of array structure on fluorescence enhancement is investigated by semi-quantitatively de-convoluting excitation enhancement from emission enhancement, and modelling the local electric field enhancement. By considering arrays of Au nanodiscs with the same extinction maximum, it is shown that the excitation enhancement, due to increased electric field, is not significantly different for the particle sizes and separation distances considered. Rather, it is seen that the emission from the fluorophore is strongly enhanced, and is dependent on the topography, in particular particle size. The results show that the structural characteristics of Au nanodisc arrays can be manipulated to tune their enhancement factor, and hence their sensitivity.


The Saccharomyces cerevisiae CDC42 gene product, a member of the ras superfamily of low-molecular-weight GTP-binding proteins, is involved in the control of cell polarity. We have analyzed the effects of three CDC42 mutations (Gly to Val-12, Gln to Leu-61, and Asp to Ala-118) in the putative GTP-binding and hydrolysis domains and one mutation (Cys to Ser-188) in the putative isoprenylation site. The first three mutations resulted in either a dominant-lethal or dose-dependent dominant-lethal phenotype when present on plasmids in haploid cdc42-1ts or wild-type strains. Both wild-type and cdc42-1ts cells carrying plasmids (pGAL) with either the CDC42Val-12 or CDC42Leu-61 alleles under the control of a GAL promoter were arrested with a novel phenotype of large cells with elongated or multiple buds. Cells carrying pGAL-CDC42Ala-118 were arrested as large, round, unbudded cells reminiscent of cdc42-1ts arrested cells. The different phenotype of the CDC42Ala-118 mutant versus the CDC42Val-12 and CDC42Leu-61 mutants was unexpected since the phenotypes of all three analogous ras mutants were similar to each other. This suggests that aspects of the biochemical properties of the Cdc42 protein differ from those of the Ras protein. The cdc42Ser-188 mutant gene was incapable of complementing the cdc42-1ts mutation and was recessive to both wild-type and cdc42-1ts. In double-mutant alleles, the cdc42Ser-188 mutation was capable of suppressing the dominant lethality associated with the three putative GTP-binding and hydrolysis mutations, suggesting that isoprenylation is necessary for the activity of the wild-type and mutant proteins.


The immobilization of biotin on transducer surfaces is a very important step for the fabrication of biosensors for many applications (immunoassay, DNA-hybridization assays, targeted imaging). Biotinylated polypyrroles have been studied and tested but gave rise to problems of polymerization and stability due to the intrinsic properties of pyrrole. As an alternative, biotinylated pyrroles were often used in a copolymerization with pyrrole or with an amphiphilic pyrrole derivative in a copolymerization to reduce the problems due to the pyrrole substitution. To find a new strategy, this paper presents the homopolymerization, instead of the use of a copolymerization, by replacing pyrrole by 3,4-ethylenedioxypyrrole bearing biotinylated substituent. We report the synthesis, characterization and electrochemical properties of two biotinylated 3,4-ethylenedioxypyrroles differing by the length of the alkyl spacer (ethyl or dodecyl) as well as the characterization of the corresponding polymer films. We successfully show, by cyclic voltammetry, that these monomers polymerize perfectly and give relatively stable polymer films. The increase of the alkyl spacer improves the polymerization and increases the polymer stability. For the first time, we also studied the surface morphology of an electrodeposited biotinylated polymer. The electrodeposition of these biotinylated derivatives gave rise to the ability to modulate the surface microstructuration, which consists of microspheres or cauliflower-like microstructures according to the length of the alkyl spacer.


This paper develops a new methodology that decomposes shocks into homoscedastic and heteroscedastic components. This specification implies there exist linear combinations of heteroscedastic variables that eliminate heteroscedasticity. That is, these linear combinations are homoscedastic; a property we call co-heteroscedasticity. The heteroscedastic part of the model uses a multivariate stochastic volatility inverse Wishart process. The resulting model is invariant to the ordering of the variables, which we show is important for impulse response analysis but is generally important for, e.g., volatility estimation and variance decompositions. The specification allows estimation in moderately high-dimensions. The computational strategy uses a novel particle filter algorithm, a reparameterization that substantially improves algorithmic convergence and an alternating-order particle Gibbs that reduces the amount of particles needed for accurate estimation. We provide two empirical applications; one to exchange rate data and another to a large Vector Autoregression (VAR) of US macroeconomic variables. We find strong evidence for co-heteroscedasticity and, in the second application, estimate the impact of monetary policy on the homoscedastic and heteroscedastic components of macroeconomic variables.


Abstract. Remote sensing image classification is a method for labeling pixels to show the Land cover types. The ambiguity in the classification process can be reduced if the spatial dependencies, which exist among the adjacent pixels, are intelligently incorporated into the feature extraction process. One of the methods for spatial feature extraction is applying morphological filters. The basic idea of the morphological filters is comparison of structures within the image with a reference form called structural element. Four types of important morphological filters are included (dilation, erosion, opening, and closing) in this work. Opening morphological filter is used to extract spatial features where this filter is implemented by applying two successive sequences dilation and erosion operators. This filter removes the light areas smaller than the structural element in binary images; and in the gray level images, the areas smaller than the structural element and brighter than the neighboring regions are removed. Differential morphology filters are other important morphological filters, which are also used in this work. In the proposed method, the principal component analysis is used to reduce the data dimensions and an SVM classifier is applied to classify the hyperspectral data. The proposed method provides better classification results than the conventional morphological profile about 2%-5% for the University of Pavia and Pavia Center datasets. The results represent the good performance of the proposed method by using a small number of training samples.


In this paper we report on the numerical analysis of a time-resolved terahertz (THz) spectroscopy experiment using a modified finite-difference time-domain method. Using this method, we show that ultrafast carrier dynamics can be extracted with a time resolution smaller than the duration of the THz probe pulse and can be determined solely by the pump pulse duration. Our method is found to reproduce complicated two-dimensional transient conductivity maps exceedingly well, demonstrating the power of the time-domain numerical method for extracting ultrafast and dynamic transport parameters from time-resolved THz spectroscopy experiments. The numerical implementation is available online.


OBJECTIVE
To describe the magnetic resonance (MRI) imaging findings of the feet in patients with early rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and to compare MRI appearance of the feet with that of the hands.

METHODS
Thirty consecutive patients (18 women, 12 men; age range 19-64 yrs) with early RA underwent MRI of hands and feet. Axial fat suppressed gadolinium enhanced T1 weighted spin-echo and gadolinium enhanced 3-dimensional gradient-echo (FLASH) images were obtained.

RESULTS
In the hands, MRI findings suggested active synovitis of the wrist and metacarpophalangeal (MCP) joints in 28 (93%) and 27 (90%) patients, respectively. In the feet, active synovitis was observed in 29 (97%) patients. Bone erosions were seen in the wrist joints in 24 (80%) patients. Observers found as many bony changes in the MCP as in the metatarsophalangeal joints [23 (77%) patients]. MRI detected tenosynovitis in 16 (53%) patients in the hands, and in 18 (60%) patients in the feet. Bursitis located between or beneath the metatarsal heads was a common MRI finding [19 (63%) patients].

CONCLUSION
Additional MRI of the feet may be useful when evaluation of the hands does not help identify early RA.


The proliferation of youth gangs since 1980 has fueled the public's fear and magnified possible misconceptions about youth gangs. To address the mounting concern about youth gangs, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's (OJJDP's) Youth Gang Series delves into many of the key issues related to youth gangs. The series considers issues such as gang migration, gang growth, female involvement with gangs, homicide, drugs and violence, and the needs of communities and youth who live in the presence of youth gangs.


While water markets have long been advocated as a tool for both enhancing water use efficiency and enabling conservation purchases, their interaction with water rights and licenses has been little studied. It is shown that when water rights are not tradable, using spot markets to secure conservation needs may harm some water users. Ironically, while a spot market enhances the efficiency of water use, it may also increase the cost of conservation purchases. Further, a self-funding conservation program, where volumetric license carrying charges pay for conservation purchases, creates a transfer from junior water users to senior water users. (JEL Q25, Q28)


ABSTRACT Central banks can play an important role in the transition towards a climate-neutral economy. This paper discusses different green monetary policy instruments along the dimensions of feasibility of implementation and impact on the transition process. We identify the inclusion of 'brown' collateral haircuts into a central bank's collateralized lending framework as the most promising conduit of green monetary policy. The impact of such interventions on the real economy is then formally explored by extending a general equilibrium transition model to include a simple banking sector with central bank lending facilities and collateral adjustments. We find that both 'brown' collateral haircuts and 'green hairgrowth' increase carbon neutral investment while decreasing carbon intensive investment and emissions. Consequently, in addition to decreasing the exposure of the central bank balance sheet to climate-related risks, climate-based collateral adjustments have the potential of increasing the political feasibility of a timely transition to a carbon neutral economy by affecting emission levels. Despite 'green hairgrowth' having a stronger effect on investment and emissions, 'brown' collateral haircuts remain the recommended policy as the former is not necessarily 'market neutral' and thus cannot be broadly applied across central banks. Key policy insights 'Brown' collateral constraints as green monetary policy is a feasible instrument that can be broadly implemented across different central bank frameworks and mandates. 'Brown' collateral haircuts increase the financing costs and decrease the volume of carbon intensive investments. 'Green hairgrowth' has a similar effect but is in conflict with market neutrality and, therefore, not as broadly implementable. The synergy of a price instrument and 'brown' collateral constraints results in a significantly lower and potentially politically more feasible carbon tax.


Academic learning has always been a serious issue for students with emotional and behavioural disorders (EBD) and their teachers. However, teaching academic skills could be an important protective and curative factor for the problem behaviour of these students. The current review was conducted to study the effect of interventions developed to teach academic skills, on the behaviour of students with EBD. Thirty studies were included in this analysis, which was undertaken between 2000 and 2012. The studies which varied considerably in terms of design and implementation did not present a conclusive answer, indicating that systematic research on the effect of teaching academic skills on the behaviour of students with EBD is still in its infancy. However, the combination of findings in this review provides some support for the conceptual premise that teachers, confronted with problem behaviour, would do well to reconsider their curriculum instead of focusing only on the behaviour of these students. More systematic research is necessary to verify if teaching academic skills could be a key approach to reducing both behavioural problems as well as increasing the academic progress of students with EBD.


We report an action research investigating ways of using communication strategies to help abandoned adolescents living in a shelter in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to be reaffiliated with society. A team of researchers, psychiatry in-training students, and municipal caretakers worked with teens who decided to engaged in theater production. Adolescent mothers and fathers, pregnant girls, and boys participated in the collaborative writing of a theater play, its performances, and collective debates. Data were analyzed, during the process, around the notions of affiliation, disaffiliation, and reaffiliation to feed the action research. The article discusses how vulnerable Afro-Brazilian adolescents are affected by negative globalization, suggesting that the theater process can lead them to resignify their lives and to reaffiliate with society.


Whether indirectly from governmental and non-governmental organizations or directly from higher education institutions, students receive messages that they should study abroad. Studying in a foreign country is considered essential if students are to be marketable to future employers and prepared to lead the U.S. into a new era. Despite the presence of such messages, the understanding of what it means to be absent from the undergraduate student population willing and able to study in a foreign country is severely limited. Importantly, what are the perceptions and experiences of students who repeatedly hear the value of study abroad and who, at the same time, are not willing and/or able to participate? The purpose of this critical qualitative study was to seek answers to this question by exploring the perceptions and experiences of a population that continues to experience low rates of study abroad participation: Latina/o undergraduate students.


The mission of the Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT) Program is to provide information from a nationwide network of integrated health and environmental data that drive actions to improve the health of communities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is leading the initiative to build a national tracking network by drawing on expertise from Federal, State, and local agencies. CDC is collaborating with various environmental agencies to make environmental data accessible to users through the tracking network. Ground water is a focus area for tracking health and source-water quality and in the states funded for tracking by the CDC, the total number of people served by domestic supplies is in the millions. Drinking water supplied by domestic wells is inconsistently regulated and overall quality is not well characterized. Hence it is important to understand the distribution of ground water contaminants, especially in areas with high domestic-well water use. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is one of the primary data sources for domestic-well water data. Over the past 2 years CDC and USGS have worked together to identify priority contaminants in the States funded by the CDC and to describe USGS contaminant databases that could be helpful to EPHT. On the basis of national summaries of detection frequencies and concentrations relative to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) human-health benchmarks, 11 contaminants were selected for summarization of water-quality data in the 16 EPHT States. The 11 contaminants selected are arsenic, atrazine, benzene, deethylatrazine, manganese, nitrate, perchloroethene (PCE), radon, strontium, trichloroethene (TCE), and uranium. This paper provides a summary of data products obtained through collaboration with USGS for the 16 EPHT States and an overview of the efforts undertaken by the tracking network in areas related to ground water. Data products that will be publicly accessible to users through the EPHT website include: (1) Water-quality data on the 11 contaminants from the USGS National Water Information System(NWIS) database; (2) USGS water-use information by county and land use for each of the EPHT States; and (3) a summary report that provides USGS water-quality data for each state and discusses contaminant occurrence relative to other ancillary geospatial and water-use data.


TRL was commissioned by the DETR to assess the suitability of models and databases to estimate traffic emissions through traffic management schemes and to develop a methodology to update heavy-duty vehicle emission factors for use in an appropriate model. A wide variety of models were reviewed and assessed, these included those which are used for estimating vehicle emissions over an entire region to those that estimate emissions from specific types of vehicles using a pre-defined speed cycle and road layout. A few models were identified which may be suitable for estimating heavy vehicle emission levels through traffic calming schemes, but would need supplementing with 'representative' emission data before they could be used. In a separate project a range of vehicles will be instrumented to measure key engine parameters whilst they are driven through a selection of traffic management schemes. It is proposed that the engine speed and load measurements are then reproduced on a chassis or engine dynamometer using a variety of engines of an equivalent size or power rating that are in common use. In this manner the emissions produced by vehicles passing through traffic management schemes can be directly estimated and used as a database for use in emission prediction models. (A)


Science as an ultimate essence encircles theoretical and applied findings and discoveries that can only contribute to forming a trivial core. The most crucial are, however, insightful moral surroundings. The upper tree of science glorified with blooming branches of knowledge is predicted to undergo progressive declines in the strength of its education foundations unless the lower tree receives most-deserving mentorship contemplations. Mentoring rather than teaching of science will be a frontier for quality creative lives. Postmodern Mentors will create and designate definitive shapes from discoveries and findings to grant human life with ongoing peace and ultimate satisfaction. Mentors are expected to welcome and manage challenges from mentees. Challenges play crucial roles in granting mentees with creative pathways of scientific development. Science education policies are to pursue arts as a model to reach and maintain harmony. Finest harmonies are accomplished by assimilating a multitude of creative sciences as is rousing a piece of music by composing manifold melodies. Human brain communicates with arts in ways that determine various future choices of life. Artistic science education requires creative educators who can perceive, perform and analyze arts. Governments are increasingly responsible for making new policies that will allow creative public education and refined education programs. Governments should foster creative education policies at governors, educators, and learners levels. In the post-modern time, mentors and trainers themselves require frequent timely education to remain most up-to-date and creatively functional. Constant education of educators faces more practical challenges than education of learners. Effectual education of governments and policy makers on 'science education policies' will be a turning point in enabling continual improvements in global science and creative life qualities. Sciences educated artistically will make and shape most yielding policies in creative science education of the new resourceful millennium.


Sufi oral discourse in Senegal is overwhelmingly dominated by stories about past and current shaykhs. An important corpus of oral narratives about Sufi clerics is not only (re)told by Sufi speakers throughout Senegal but also in the Senegalese diasporas in the Americas, Asia, and Europe. These accounts are interwoven by multiple speakers among followers of Senegalese Sufi brotherhoods and passed down from generation to generation in Senegal and its diasporas. The weaving together and spreading of such texts themselves are part of the Sufi praxis. These oral texts, deeply rooted in their context of production, which dictates their form and functions, are still generally unknown to scholars of Islam in Senegal and West Africa. By filling this gap, this book contributes to the discourse of religions in general and Sufi Islam in particular.


Cooperation is a still unsolved and ever-controversial topic in evolutionary biology. Why do organisms engage in activities with long-term communal benefits but short-term individual cost? A general answer remains elusive, suggesting many important factors must still be examined and better understood. Here we study cooperation based on the secretion of a public good molecule using Aevol, a digital platform inspired by microbial cooperation systems. Specifically, we focus on the environmental and physical properties of the public good itself, its mobility, durability, and cost. The intensity of cooperation that evolves in our digital populations, as measured by the amount of the public good molecule organisms secrete, strongly depends on the properties of such a molecule. Specifically, and somewhat counter intuitively, digital organisms evolve to secrete more when public good degrades or diffuses quickly. The evolution of secretion also depends on the interactions between the population structure and public good properties, not just their individual values. Environmental factors affecting population diversity have been extensively studied in the past, but here we show that physical aspects of the cooperation mechanism itself may be equally if not more important. Given the wide range of substrates and environments that support microbial cooperation in nature, our results highlight the need for careful consideration of public good properties when studying the evolution of cooperation in bacterial or computational models.


The study of cognitive development hinges, largely, on the analysis of infant looking. But analyses of eye gaze data require the adoption of linking hypotheses: assumptions about the relationship between observed eye movements and underlying cognitive processes. We develop a general framework for constructing, testing, and comparing these hypotheses, and thus for producing new insights into early cognitive development. We first introduce the general framework – applicable to any infant gaze experiment – and then demonstrate its utility by analyzing data from a set of experiments investigating the role of attentional cues in infant learning. The new analysis uncovers significantly more structure in these data, finding evidence of learning that was not found in standard analyses and showing an unexpected relationship between cue use and learning rate. Finally, we discuss general implications for the construction and testing of quantitative linking hypotheses. MATLAB code for sample linking hypotheses can be found on the first author's website.


The implementation of adequate urban development and measures systems against tsunami impact in coastal communities is improved by understanding damage probability among building structures. Within the framework of the project Enhancement of Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster Mitigation Technology in Peru (JST-JICA SATREPS), the authors analyze the damage probability of building structures due to tsunami impact in the Callao region of Peru. Two different tsunami hazard scenarios are assumed in assessing building damage probability. The first tsunami scenario represents the worse-case scenario of tsunami inundation that calculates the envelop of maximum inundation depth and flow velocity values from 12 probabilistic megathrust earthquake scenarios for central Peru. The second tsunami scenario corresponds to a historical tsunami event in this region. We apply a methodology for evaluating different levels of building damage by combining tsunami numerical results and tsunami fragility functions. Damage probability was analyzed in detail on a single building scale in the La Punta district. For the rest of Callao region, analysis was performed on a block-unit scale. Our results suggest that approximately 30% of submerged building may be washed away by tsunami inundation in the probabilistic hazard scenario and approximately 60% in the historical hazard scenario.


In high demand among collectors worldwide, the art of expressionist painter Edvard Munch has been the object of numerous criminal incidents. This article examines to what extent these crimes have had any regulatory effect on contemporary trade in Munch's work and what precautionary measures Norwegian dealers take to prevent illicit art from entering the market. Consistent with a grey market paradigm, interviews with art dealers indicate that the trade in Munch has become tainted with risk due to the presence of many unprovenanced works in the market, yet most art dealers have narrow, preconceived ideas of the 'typical' art crime offender. Interested parties would not expect questions of provenance to be answered, so they do not ask, and social relationships are used to excuse a lack of due diligence, conveniently allowing the industry to thrive.


A moving and beautiful novel of the transformation of rural England. Taking its title from the strangely frozen picture by surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico, the Enigma of Arrival is the story of a young Indian from the Crown Colony of Trinidad who arrives in post-imperial England and consciously, over many years, finds himself as a writer. As he does so, he also observes the gradual but profound and permanent changes wrought on the English landscape by the march of "progress", as an old world is lost to the relentless drift of people and things over the face of the earth. But while this is a novel of dignity, compassion and candour it is also, perhaps surprisingly, a work of celebration.


ABSTRACT Objective: Patient education is important in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), but its effects on outcomes have not been studied extensively. Methods: Patients were enrolled and prospectively divided into an interventional and usual care group. Both received standard of care, but the former additionally received video-assisted patient education. Self-administered questionnaires IBS-quality of life (QOL), Beck Anxiety-Depression Inventory II (BAI, BDI), and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) were administered at baseline, 3 months, and 6 months. Compliance was defined as drug intake of >80% of the prescribed dose. COI included prospective, prevalence-based, societal perspective. Results: Of the 107 patients included, 84 [78.5%; male = 66 (78.57%); median age = 44 (range 20–77 years)] completed the follow up. While the median (inter-quartile range; IQR) QOL scores decreased significantly in both the groups (p < 0.001 for either group), the final scores were significantly better in the interventional group [49 (44–52.5) versus 80 (76–103), respectively; p < 0.005]. There was a significant improvement in the BDI; p < 0.001]. However, the rest did not achieve statistical significance. At 6 months, total median (IQR) semi-annual cost per patient was INR 14,639 (8253–17,909) [US $240 (135–294]. Conclusion: Video-assisted patient education should be a part of the treatment of IBS since it improves the QOL and depression scores.


This paper examines the choice of exchange rate regime in Central and Eastern European countries during the process of accession to the European Monetary Union. In the presence of real exchange rate appreciation due to the Balassa-Samuelson effect, accession countries face a trade-off between trend appreciation of the nominal exchange rate and high inflation rates. In a general equilibrium model of an emerging market economy, we show that under a fixed or heavily managed exchange rate the BalassaSamuelson effect can prevent compliance with the Maastricht inflation criterion. We then discuss how the real exchange rate appreciation shifts the output gap/inflation variance trade-off, increasing the cost of managing or fixing the exchange rate. As a consequence, the requirement of membership in the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERMII) and the Maastricht inflation criterion constrain the policy choice while providing no additional benefit to countries credibly committed to joining the Euro. Finally, we show that relaxing either the exchange rate requirement or the inflation criterion has sharply different business cycle implications for the accession countries. JEL Classification Numbers: E52; E31; F02; F41.


In recent decades, solar energy has been shown as a viable, clean, and abundant alternative to fossil fuels. Many methods of solar energy collection are being researched, with solar thermal electrochemistry being one of the most promising. Solar thermal electrochemistry uses sunlight to heat a furnace to temperatures nearing 2000 K. At these temperatures, metallic oxides can be decomposed to metals and oxygen with minimal electrical work. Achieving these high temperatures requires a solar furnace that consists of a heliostat to track and reflect the sun's rays into a concentrator, which then focuses the sunlight to a single point in a solar thermal chemical reactor. A system of louvers regulates the amount of sunlight entering the system. Our research focuses on the design and development of the solar furnace components; specifically, the design and construction of the heliostat structure, the heliostat control system, and the concentrator.


Cerebral palsy will affect nearly 10% of the 60 000 very low-birth-weight infants born in the United States in the next year, and an even greater percentage will display some form of permanent neurological impairment resulting from injury to the preterm brain. The 2008 Neurobiology of Disease in Children Symposium, held in conjunction with the 37th annual meeting of the Child Neurology Society, aimed to define current knowledge and to develop specific aims for future clinical, translational, and fundamental science. A complex interplay of both destructive and developmental forces is responsible for injury to the preterm brain. Advances in imaging and histology have implicated a variety of cell types, though preoligodendrocyte injury remains the focus. Research into different mechanisms of injury is facilitating new neuroprotective and rehabilitative interventions. A cooperative effort is necessary to translate basic research findings into clinically effective therapies and better care for these children.


This book reveals how art and sex promoted the desire for the genetically perfect body. Its eight chapters demonstrate that before eugenics was stigmatized by the Holocaust and Western histories were sanitized of its prevalence, a vast array of Western politicians, physicians, eugenic societies, family leagues, health associations, laboratories and museums advocated, through verbal and visual cultures, the breeding of 'the master race'. Each chapter illustrates the uncanny resemblances between models of sexual management and the perfect eugenic body in America, Britain, France, Communist Russia and Nazi Germany both before and after the Second World War.

Traced back to the eighteenth-century anatomy lesson, the perfect eugenic body is revealed as athletic, hygienic, 'pure-blooded' and sexually potent. This paradigm is shown to have persisted as much during the Bolshevik sexual revolution, as in democratic nations and fascist regimes. Consistently posed naked, these images were unashamedly exhibitionist and voyeuristic. Despite stringent legislation against obscenity, not only were these images commended for soliciting the spectator's gaze but also for motivating the spectator to act out their desire. An examination of the counter-archives of Maori and African Americans also exposes how biologically racist eugenics could be equally challenged by art.

Ultimately this book establishes that art inculcated procreative sex with the Corpus Delecti – the delectable body, healthy, wholesome and sanctioned by eugenicists for improving the Western race.


Peer advising in education, which involves students providing fellow students with course advice, can be important in online student communities and can provide insights into potential course improvements. We examine reviews from a course review web site for online graduate programs. We develop a coding scheme to analyze the free text portion of the reviews and integrate those findings with students' quantitative ratings of each course's overall score, difficulty, and workload. While reviews focus on subjective evaluation of courses, students also provide feedback for instructors, personal context, advice for other students, and objective course descriptions. Additionally, the average review varies by course overall score, difficulty, and workload. Our research examines the importance of student communities in online education and peer advising at scale.


A serious game for learning the social skills required for effective police interviewing is a challenging idea. Building artificial conversational characters that play the role of a suspect in a police interrogation game requires computational models of police interviews as well as of the internal psychological mechanisms that determine the behaviour of suspects in this special type of dialogues. Leary{\textquoteright}s interactional circumplex is used in police interview training as a theoretical framework to understand how suspects take stance during an interview and how this is related to the stance and the strategy that the interviewer takes. Interactional stance is a fuzzy notion. The question that we consider here is whether different observers of police interviews agree on the type of stance that suspect and policemen take and express in a face-to-face interview. We analyzed police interviews and report about a stance annotation exercise. We conclude that although inter- annotator agreement on stance labeling on the level of speech segments is low, a majority voting {\textquotedblleft}meta-annotator{\textquotedblright} is able to reveal the important dynamics in stance taking in a police interview. Then we explore the relation between the stance taken by the suspect and turn-taking behaviour, overlaps, interruptions, pauses and silences. Our findings contribute to building computational models of non-player characters that allow more natural turn-taking behaviour in serious games instead of the one-at-a-time regime in interview training games.


A backscattering LIDAR system, the first of this kind in Brazil, has been set-up in a suburban area in the city of Sao Paulo (23o33' S, 46o44' W) to provide the vertical profile of the aerosol backscatter coefficient at 532 nm up to an altitude of 4-6 km above sea level (asl). The measurements have been carried out during the second half of the so-called Brazilian dry season, September and October 2001 and during the first half of the dry season in August and September 2002. The LIDAR data are presented and analysed in synergy with aerosol optical thickness (AOT) measurements obtained by a CIMEL sun-tracking photometer in the visible spectral region and with satellite measurements obtained by the MODIS sensor. This synergetic approach has been used, not only to validate the LIDAR data, but also to derive a typical value (45 sr) of the so-called extinction-to-backscatter ratio (LIDAR ratio) during the dry season. The satellite data analysis offers additional information on the spatial distribution of aerosols over Brazil including the determination of aerosol source regions over the country. The LIDAR data were also used to retrieve the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) height, aerosol layering and the structure of the lower troposphere over the city of Sao Paulo. These first LIDAR measurements over the city of Sao Paulo during the dry season showed a significant variability of the AOT in the lower troposphere (0.5-5 km) at 532 nm. It was also found that the aerosol load is maximized in the 1-3 km height region, although up to 3 km thick aerosol layers were also detected in the 2.5-5.5 km region in certain cases. Three-dimensional 96-hours air mass back-trajectory analysis was also performed in selected cases to determine the source regions of aerosols around Sao Paulo during the dry season.


On July 4 1997, the landing of NASA's Pathnder probe and its rover Sojourner marked the beginning of a new era in space exploration; robots with the ability to move have made up the vanguard of human extraterrestrial exploration ever since. With Sojourners landing, for the rst time, a ground traversing robot was at a distance too far from earth to make direct human control practical. This has given rise to the development of autonomous systems to improve the e?ciency of these robots,in both their ability to move,and their ability to make decisions regarding their environment. Computer Vision comprises a large part of these autonomous systems, and in the course of performing these tasks a large number of images are taken for the purpose of navigation. The limited nature of the current Deep Space Network means that a majority of these images are never seen by human eyes. This work explores the possibility of using these images to target certain features by using a combination of three AdaBoost algorithms and established image feature approaches to help prioritize interesting subjects from an ever growing data set of imaging data.


Advanced oxidation processes driven by solar energy can be an efficient method in removing organochlorine compounds from river water especially in tropical environments like the Caribbean region. The feasibility of solar photocatalytic degradation of an organochlorine compound, namely trichloroethanoic acid (TCA), which is commonly used in the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago, was separately assessed using titanium dioxide and zinc oxide as photocatalysts in suspended solution. Overall the prototype solar photoreactor operated and performed efficiently for the photodegradation of TCA. This study showed that a basic photocatalytic oxidation method for treating water using solar energy as the primary driver gives enhanced decomposition rates of the organochlorine compound when coupled to the additional application of the two separate semiconductor photocatalysts. The results further showed that for varying concentrations of TCA and photocatalysts alike, the organochlorine compound could be completely photocatalytically degraded using short exposure times under the applied influx of solar radiation. This means that this process could be optimised by judicious use of sensors so that dosage rates of the photocatalyst could be altered with variations in influent contamination levels, and the exposure time in the reactor could be altered according to daily variations in solar radiation intensity.


In this paper, a generalized buck-boost Z-H converter based on switched inductors is proposed. This structure consists of a set of series connected switched-inductor cells. The voltage conversion ratio of the proposed structure is adjusted by changing the number of cells and the duty cycle. Like the conventional Z-H converter, the shoot-through switching state and the diode before LC network are eliminated. The proposed converter can provide high voltage gain in low duty cycles. Considering different values for duty cycle, the proposed structure works in two operating zones. In the first operating zone, it works as a buck-boost converter and in the second operating zone, it works as a boost converter. In this paper, a complete analysis of the proposed converter is presented. In order to confirm the accuracy of mathematic calculations, the simulations results by using PSCAD/EMTDC software are given.


Whether spatial variation occurs in the life-history traits of chondrichthyan species is important to fisheries modelling and assessments. A study on the reproductive parameters of Urolophus paucimaculatus from four separate regions across south-eastern Australia found regional differences in maximum total length (TL), size-at-maturity, size-at-maternity and litter sizes. Inshore embayments (Port Phillip Bay (PPB) and Corner Inlet (CI)) appear to allow for larger TLs (females and males) than do offshore areas (Lakes Entrance (LE) and Western Bass Strait (WBS)). Size-at-maturity and size-at-maternity decreased across longitude from west (PPB) to east (LE) and seasonality of parturition and ovulation occurred earlier in PPB (August–October) than in LE (September–December). Maximum litter size correlated with maximum TL (six in PPB, five in each of CI and LE, and four in WBS). There was uncertainty in classifying females for maternal condition because the reproductive cycle appears to range from a continuous annual cycle to a non-continuous biennial cycle. Much of the uncertainty arises from the ambiguity of observation of non-pregnant mature females, which have either aborted through capture and handling, or are in a 'resting year' between pregnancies. Most likely, the majority are reproducing annually with an unknown proportion of females non-continuous and resting between pregnancies.


Gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) plays a pivotal role in fertility and reproduction in mammals. It induces the release of luteinising hormone (LH) en follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) from the pituitary. These hormones are responsible for gonadal steroid production and indirectly for gametogenesis.
In this thesis, studies are presented which described the development of a highly immunogenic GnRH antigen, as well as the evaluation of this antigen in vaccines in target species. The native GnRH peptide was enlarged to a GnRH-tandem peptide and immunogenicity was further increased by dimerization of the peptide and introduction of foreign amino acids (G6k-GnRH-tandem-dimer). This modified peptide construct was conjugated to ovalbumine. It appeared to be highly effective in immunosterilization, i.e. blocking testosterone production, in male piglets.
The role of the individual amino acids of the G6k-GnRH-tandem-dimer on immunosterilization efficacy was established, using alanine replacements. All amino acids, except amino acids at position 2 and 3, could be individually replaced by alanine without affecting efficacy of the vaccine. Peptides with alanine replacements at position 1 or 4 did induce antibodies that were specific for GnRH and did not cross-react with other GnRH-isoforms present in mammals.
Immunosterilization by vaccination against GnRH could be a suitable alternative for surgical castration in male piglets. Surgical castration prevents boar taint, but is an animal unfriendly practice, as it is performed without anaesthesia. Immunosterilization may also be beneficial for growth performance. Effects of the time of onset of effective immunosterilization on growth performance were studied. Effective immunosterilization early during the fattening period resulted in a growth performance similar to surgical castrates. In contrast, when immunosterilization was initiated late during the fattening period, growth performance was improved over surgical castrates and carcass quality appeared to be similar to intact male pigs. In addition, immunosterilized pigs of both groups could easily be distinguished from intact male pigs by the size of their testes.
Two vaccines with the G6k-GnRH-tandem-dimer antigen in CoVaccine and Carbopol adjuvant were evaluated in sexually mature male ponies. The CoVaccine-treated stallions showed a high antibody response after the second vaccination, subsequently leading to undetectable testosterone levels and affected testis function, while effects in the Carbopol group were only present in one of the four stallions treated.
In humane medicine, GnRH vaccination could be an alternative for hormone therapy in prostate cancer patients. Two potential vaccines with the antigen in ISA 51 and in CoVaccine adjuvant were studied in pigs. The latter vaccine appeared to be more effective. It reduced testosterone levels, weights of testes and accessory sex glands in all treated animals. Both vaccines can be considered as non-toxic; no chronic abnormalities were observed in blood, urine, organs or tissues.
In conclusion, this vaccine could be a suitable alternative for surgical castration in pigs, eventually leading to a ban on this animal unfriendly practice in the EU. In human medicine, GnRH vaccination could replace hormone therapy in diseases driven by gonadal steroids. In prostate cancer for instance, GnRH vaccination may be a long term effective, cheap and safe alternative.


Understanding and predicting complex biological systems are best accomplished through the synthesis and integration of information across relevant spatial, temporal and thematic scales. We propose that mechanistic transport models, which integrate atmospheric turbulence with information on relevant biological attributes, can effectively incorporate key elements of aerial transport processes at scales ranging from a few centimetres and fractions of seconds, to hundreds of kilometres and decades. This capability of mechanistic models is critically important for modelling the flow of organisms through the atmosphere because diverse aerial transport processes — such as pathogen spread, seed dispersal, spider ballooning and bird migration — are sensitive to the details of small‐scale short‐term turbulent deviations from the mean airflow. At the same time, all these processes are strongly influenced by the typical larger‐scale variation in landscape structure, through its effects on wind flow patterns. We therefore highlight the useful coupling of detailed atmospheric models such as large eddy simulations (LES), which can provide a high‐resolution description of turbulent airflow, with regional atmospheric models, which can capture the effects of landscape heterogeneity at various scales. Further progress in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) will enable rigorous exploration of transport processes in heterogeneous landscapes.


The region south of South Africa, encompassing the Agulhas Current and Retroflection, and part of the Southern Ocean, is known for its severe meteorological conditions. Because of these conditions, in-situ observations are rare. Consequently, remote-sensing satellite observations and high-resolution regional weather forecasts at the ocean surface are difficult to assess. However, atmospheric data collected in the southern hemisphere summer of 2008 during the International Polar Year-BONUS-GoodHope campaign were used to validate two satellite data sets: the twice daily QuikSCAT winds and the daily OAflux data set of latent and sensible heat fluxes. The surface winds and heat fluxes forecasts produced by a regional atmospheric model were also assessed along the ship track. In this study, we have shown that the two data sets exhibited a very good accordance with daily in-situ observations. During the campaign, the correlation coefficients for wind speed and direction were 0.97 and 0.91, respectively, and those for latent and sensible heat fluxes were 0.92 and 0.90, respectively. The QuikSCAT wind speed was underestimated by 1.37 m/s relative to in-situ data, south of the Subtropical Front. Large differences in heat fluxes in both OAflux and the atmospheric model were observed when crossing the Subtropical Front and a warm eddy, as well as during a storm, when gale force winds reached more than 20 m/s. The two data sets were then used to assess the regional model forecasts over a larger area south of South Africa, not limited to the ship track. Most of the model errors were located in a region north of the Subtropical Front, where the sea surface temperature used by the model was not accurate enough to reproduce the relevant mesoscale oceanic features driving the spatial variability of the surface winds and heat fluxes. Finally, compared to in-situ and remote sensing observations, the numerical modelling weather forecast produced realistic atmospheric conditions over the sea south of the Subtropical Front.


In May 1998 India surprised the world by testing five nuclear weapons, and despite the pleas of the international community, Pakistan followed suit a few days later. The global effort to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons in South Asia never recovered. The recent United States–India nuclear deal is a wise accommodation to reality but puts no constraints on the nuclear arms race in South Asia. Meanwhile, Pakistan is unlikely to conclude such a deal, especially given the A.Q. Khan affair. In the last decade the two neighbours have fought a small war and mobilised for a much larger one, and cross–border terrorism could provoke another crisis at any time. The danger of a nuclear confrontation remains serious and should be addressed by creative diplomacy to deal with the underlying issues that have divided the subcontinent since partition in 1947, most notably Kashmir.


In this study, the effect of using phase change materials on the air-conditioning system energy consumption of a typical room in a multi-floor building has been studied using EnergyPlus software. As the melting point of PCMs has an important impact on their effectiveness, as a part of this research, the effect of Iran climatic conditions on the appropriate melting point of the PCM has been investigated in 4 cities: Tabriz as a cold, Tehran as a moderate, Yazd a dry-hot and Bandar-e-Abbas a humid-hot climate. Based on the results, the proper temperature of PCM melting temperature is between 21 to 27°C and the saving varies from 1.6 to 13.2%. The results of this incestigation are useful in getting better understanding of the effect of PCMs on reducing the HVAC system energy consumption and in determining the PCM appropriate specifications.


The importance of renewable energy technologies has become increasingly evident in the public mind in recent times. This has arisen during instances of energy shortage and oil price shocks, coupled with emerging concerns as a result of climate change effects. The attraction of renewable, natural energy sources such as wind, solar, hydro, geo-thermal and biomass, compared to the detrimental environmental impact of existing resources is obvious. The promise of renewable energy technology has provided hope to society's need for sustainable energy, as well as the survival of human kind in the future.

However, in the transition from fossil-fuel based technologies to renewable energy technologies, obstacles to change arise from the incumbency of vested interests. Thus, there is a pressing need to demonstrate to the public that renewable energy resources are practicable. Buddhist monasteries can be instrumental in this task. In countries, such as, Thailand, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka, monasteries play a social role as public centres for their communities. Not only do they deliver Dharma from the Lord Buddha, but they also model and teach their adherents how to conduct their lives in harmony with nature and the environment.

In this paper, two aspects of energy have been discussed in relation to their application to Buddhist monasteries, including the importance of energy efficiency and the significance of renewable technology. The Bodhiyana Buddhist monastery in Serpentine, was used as a site for a case study to examine both issues. The case study contains energy audits and renewable energy resource assessments which play a vital role in each of the issues. Subsequently, the paper explores the 'Noble Eightfold Path' of Buddhist doctrine by demonstrating the bridge to renewable energy technology. The terms 'Right Livelihood' and 'Appropriate Technology' are used in relationship between these two elements.


The formal analogy between Hamiltonian classical mechanics and quantum mechanics on the one hand and geometrical optics and physical optics on the other hand is systematically presented. When the time is replaced by the axial coordinate of a cylindrically uniform optical system and Hamilton's principle replaced by Fermat's principle, classical particle trajectories correspond to rays and quantum-mechanical wave functions to physical-optics fields. The operator formalism of quantum mechanics then provides elegant solutions for problems associated with propagation of beams in a gradient-index multimode optical slab guide.


In this paper, plate-like NiO nanoparticles were prepared by one-pot solid-state thermal decomposition of nickel (II) Schiff base complex as new precursor. First, the nickel (II) Schiff base precursor was prepared by solid-state grinding using nickel (II) nitrate hexahydrate, Ni(NO3)2∙6H2O, and the Schiff base ligand N,N′-bis-(salicylidene) benzene-1,4-diamine) for 30 min without using any solvent, catalyst, template or surfactant. It was characterized by Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and elemental analysis (CHN). The resultant solid was subsequently annealed in the electrical furnace at 450 °C for 3 h in air atmosphere. Nanoparticles of NiO were produced and characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) at 2θ degree 0-140°, FT-IR spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The XRD and FT-IR results showed that the product is pure and has good crystallinity with cubic structure because no characteristic peaks of impurity were observed, while the SEM and TEM results showed that the obtained product is tiny, aggregated with plate-like shape, narrow size distribution with an average size between 10-40 nm. Results show that the solid state thermal decomposition method is simple, environmentally friendly, safe and suitable for preparation of NiO nanoparticles. This method can also be used to synthesize nanoparticles of other metal oxides.


After the devastating catastrophe of the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, a veritable flood of donations reached the relief organisations in Europe. Arguably, the compassion of western donors with the tsunami victims went deep. It seems a paradox, then, that relief in tsunami affected localities has often created resentment. This article argues that the geographies of compassion that result from donations are potentially problematic for two reasons: first, compassion is unevenly distributed towards human suffering depending on the discursively constructed perceptions of a disaster through media coverage. Second, compassion is translated into charity through intermediaries, i.e. relief agencies. These intermediaries close the spatial gap between donors and recipients, but in
the process of doing so, they tend to reproduce the asymmetries of the donor-recipient relationship.


BACKGROUND
Exposure to the bronchoconstricting agent methacholine is a potential hazard to technical staff during methacholine challenge testing, which remains a useful and frequently performed test. There are several methods of performing the test. One of the 2 methods listed in the American Thoracic Society's guidelines is the 2-min tidal-breathing method. The methacholine can be inhaled using one of several methods. The loosely-fitting-mask method is likely to produce more contamination of the local environment than a filtered exhalation system.

METHODS
We tested 2 variations of the tidal-breathing method of measuring the methacholine provocational concentration (PC(20), the dose that produces a 20% decrease in forced expiratory volume in the first second). One involved use of the open-mask technique and the other a T-piece-and-filter system that precluded the release of methacholine-containing droplets into the environment. We performed duplicate methacholine challenge tests with 10 subjects who had a wide range of PC(20). The tests were done in random order, and each subject performed one test using the mask and one using the T-piece/filter system.

RESULTS
With the mask system the geometric mean PC(20) was 4.7 mg/mL, versus 5.1 mg/mL with the T-piece-filter system (p = 0.36). These values are very close and would not be substantially different clinically.

CONCLUSION
The 2 methods are equivalent, and the low cost of the products used in the T-piece/filter method makes it suitable for reducing technician exposure to methacholine, using potentially completely disposable components.


This essay outlines the big-picture aspects of capitalism and socialism, and uses this overview to discuss human liberty and economic liberty in each system. Additionally, I note that some have argued that capitalism is unfair or immoral and so I consider three specific and common moral standards in this regard. They are: (i) "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs;" (ii) "People should get what they earn;" and (iii) "'Agreement without conformity' or 'conformity without agreement.'" Capitalism is centered on individual rights and private ownership, while socialism awards decision-making powers to government. The former is consistent with human and economic liberty while the latter is not. Moreover, socialism fares poorly in comparison to capitalism regarding the three moral standards.


Abstract. In developing countries, and particularly in West Africa, the role of Climate Services (CS) for sustainable development is growing thanks to wide spreading collaboration among European institutions, including National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHS) research centers, universities, and homologue local institutions. Operationally, the
implementation of CSs in developing countries is mainly pivoted on NMHS,
which, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), are
dramatically affected by unmet learning demand. The global scale of learning needs for co-development of CSs calls for
innovative solutions and a range of flexible modalities to reach learners in
a variety of ways, and for sharing resources and successful strategies
within the global education and training community. In order to harmonize
expected learning outcomes, WMO defined a competency framework (CF) for CSs
to be used in the implementation of training initiatives and knowledge
sharing tools. This paper presents the strategic and methodological approach adopted in the
implementation of the TOPaCS, a new knowledge-based distance learning
initiative, aiming to provide a flexible learning environment within the CSs CF of WMO ensuring coherence with other WMO education initiatives (Global Campus, other RTCs, etc.). The methodological approach adopted is based on the competency-based approach to training, where competencies are composed by elements of
knowledge and skill. TOPaCS integrates the WMO CF for CSs into a taxonomy
co-designed with stakeholders at different levels, and allows the definition
of learning paths, which are a further interactive opportunity for
co-development of CSs within the TOPaCS learning ecosystem. Indeed, the
approach aims also to guide further instructional strategies and assessments
and becomes a starting point to build a common language enabling a better
cooperation and exchange between the different CSs training initiatives.


Registration of land title in recorded history came up with the wars and conquest of land. The need to ensure these conquest territories and boundaries are well captured necessitates registration of these territories. 1703 was the year that the first known Land Deeds Registry was opened. Modernity and technological advancement further brought about proper recording of these registries. This paper would examine land registration laws, globally and in Nigeria with particular reference to Lagos state. It would further provide insight into the need to sustain the desired effect and produce a satisfactory result without wasting time on registration formalities.


Contemporary scenography often consists of video-projected motion graphics. The field is lacking in academic methods and rigour: descriptions and models relevant for the creation as well as in the analysis of existing works. In order to understand the phenomenon of motion graphics in a scenographic context, I have been conducting a practice-led research project. Central to the project is construction of a design model describing sets of procedures, concepts and terminology relevant for design and studies of motion graphics in spatial contexts. The focus of this paper is the role of model construction as a support to working systematically practice-led research project. The design model is being developed through design laboratories and workshops with students and professionals who provide feedback that lead to incremental improvements. Working with this model construction-as-method reveals aspects of the tension between theory and praxis.


Bedload fluctuations over time in steep rivers with wide grain size distributions have been observed, even under constant sediment feeding and water discharge. Observed bedload pulses are periodical and a consequence of grain sorting. Along with bedload, flow velocity and bed morphology fluctuate in time as well. The presence of large relatively immobile boulders, such as erratic stones often present in mountain streams, have an impact on flow conditions. Their influence on these bedload fluctuations has not been studied yet, namely in what concerns the frequency and amplitude of bedload fluctuations. The influence of boulders on sediment transport and flow conditions is herein investigated by means of laboratory experiments carried out in a 8 m long and 0.25 m wide tilting flume. The detailed analysis of one set of measurements obtained during a 12.8 hours (774 minutes) test is presented in this paper. For this experiment 12 boulders of diameter D=0.075 m were randomly placed in the flume, corresponding to 3% of the flume surface initially occupied by boulders. The flume slope was set to 6.7%. Input sediment discharge was constant and equal to qs,in=0.0563 x10-3 m2/s and the liquid discharge was fixed at q=1.68 x10-2 m2/s. Sediment transport and boulder protrusion are measured regularly during the experiment. Furthermore, bulk mean flow velocities are measured every 15 minutes. Periodical bedload pulses are clearly visible on this long duration experiment. Bulk velocity and boulder protrusion are linked with the fluctuations of the bedload transport as demonstrated by correlational analysis. The period and the phase of the fluctuations are similar for all the measured variables. Observations indicate that the detected periodical fluctuations correspond to different bed states. Grain size distribution through the channel, varying in time and space, is clearly influencing these bedload pulses. During low sediment discharges, coarse stable riffles are formed. On the other hand, in high sediment fluxes the destruction of riffles followed by bed fining is observed. A detailed description of the experimental observations and an analysis of amplitude and frequency of fluctuations for this long duration test are presented in this article.


In recent years there has been a rapid increase in the number of wireless devices for both commercial and defense applications. Such unprecedented demand has increased device cost and complexity and also added a strain on the spectrum utilization of wireless communication systems. This thesis addresses these issues, from an antenna system perspective, by developing new techniques to dynamically optimize adaptive beamforming arrays for improved anti-jamming and reliability. Available frequency spectrum is a scarce resource, and therefore increased interference will occur as the wireless spectrum saturates. To mitigate unintentional interference, or intentional interference from a jamming source, antenna arrays are used to focus electromagnetic energy on a signal of interest while simultaneously minimizing radio frequency energy in directions of interfering signals. The reliability of such arrays, especially in commercial satellite and defense applications, can be addressed by hardware redundancy, but at the expense of increased volume, mass as well as component and design cost. This thesis proposes the development of new models and optimization algorithms to dynamically adapt beamforming arrays to mitigate interference and increase hardware reliability. The contributions of this research are as follows. First, analytical models are developed and experimental results show that small antenna arrays can thwart interference using dynamically applied stochastic algorithms. This type of insitu optimization, with an algorithm dynamically optimizing a beamformer to thwart interference sources with unknown positions, inside of an anechoic chamber has not been done before to our knowledge. Second, it is shown that these algorithms can recover from hardware failures and localized faults in the array. Experiments were performed with a proof-of-concept four-antenna array. This is the first hardware demonstration showing an antenna array with live hardware fault recovery that is adapted by stochastic algorithms in an anechoic chamber. We also compare multiple stochastic algorithms in performing both anti-jamming and hardware fault recovery. Third, we show that stochastic algorithms can be used to continuously track and mitigate interfering signals that continuously move in an additive white Gaussian noise wireless channel.


Rail accidents represent an important safety concern for the transportation industry in many countries. In the 11 years from 2001 to 2012, the U.S. had more than 40 000 rail accidents that cost more than $45 million. While most of the accidents during this period had very little cost, about 5200 had damages in excess of $141 500. To better understand the contributors to these extreme accidents, the Federal Railroad Administration has required the railroads involved in accidents to submit reports that contain both fixed field entries and narratives that describe the characteristics of the accident. While a number of studies have looked at the fixed fields, none have done an extensive analysis of the narratives. This paper describes the use of text mining with a combination of techniques to automatically discover accident characteristics that can inform a better understanding of the contributors to the accidents. The study evaluates the efficacy of text mining of accident narratives by assessing predictive performance for the costs of extreme accidents. The results show that predictive accuracy for accident costs significantly improves through the use of features found by text mining and predictive accuracy further improves through the use of modern ensemble methods. Importantly, this study also shows through case examples how the findings from text mining of the narratives can improve understanding of the contributors to rail accidents in ways not possible through only fixed field analysis of the accident reports.