The Brahmaputra-Jamuna River, Bangladesh, is one of the world's great rivers, ranking in the top three in terms of both sediment and water discharge. The high water and sediment discharges are generated by the monsoon-dominated floods and the tectonic setting, which provides abundant sediment from Himalayan uplift into the subsiding Bay of Bengal. Structural, climatic and autocyclic fluvial processes have produced a large multi-channel river in Bangladesh with individual channels up to 5 km wide that can scour down to 50 m. The Brahmaputra-Jamuna has experienced large-scale avulsion at the end of the 18th century, recent widening and westerly migration and exhibits rapid bank erosion in response to large floods, the most notable being during the recent floods in 1987, 1988, 1998 and 2004. This chapter presents a synthesis of: i) the broad setting of the Brahmaputra-Jamuna River in Bangladesh, ii) channel morphology and its recent historical change, iii) the major bedforms and their dynamics, iv) the nature and importance of channel bifurcations, offtakes and confluences, v) floodplain sedimentation, vi) the sedimentology of the Jamuna River, and vii) examples of applied geomorphology and engineering within some of the largest and most dynamic channels. Data and discussion are drawn both from published papers and recent multi-national studies on the Brahmaputra-Jamuna that have allowed the most detailed study ever conducted on this mighty river. This chapter concludes with an outline for future areas of research needed to understand better and manage one of the world's most majestic and strategically important large rivers. 1. Background Bangladesh is dominated by three great rivers - the Brahmaputra-Jamuna, Ganges and Meghna - that combine to feed sediment into one of the world's largest deltas in the Bay of Bengal (Fig. 1). Bangladesh has been shaped by, and is dependent upon, its rivers, which provide fertilie soils and a diverse flora and aquaculture but also bring significant flood hazard and risk to infrastructure for a large and growing population. The people of Bangladesh have adapted their lifestyle for centuries to live with river flooding - frequently moving their temporary bankside homes, planting on newly emergent river bars, and sometimes raising their homesteads above water level in flood periods (Paul, 1997). However, a growing population, coupled with the expansion of infrastructure and economic development, has resulted in an increase in the intensity of flood damage (FPCO, 1995; Paul, 1997; CPD, 2004). The lives of many millions of Bangladeshi citizens is thus reliant on these rivers, with up to 600,000 people living on the riverine islands and bars alone (Sarker et al., 2003). Bangladesh's rural economy relies upon annual 'normal' floods to bring moisture and fresh sediments to the floodplain soils (Paul, 1997): for instance, two of the three rice varieties (aus and aman) cannot survive without floodwater and the fish caught both on the floodplain during flood season and from the many floodplain ponds ('beels') provide the main source of protein for many rural populations (Chowdhury, 1994; Paul, 1997; de Graff, 2003; Shankar et al., 2004). However, the effect of 'abnormal' floods can be devastating and result in appreciable damage to crops and houses, severe bank erosion with consequent loss of homesteads, schools and land, and loss of human lives, livestock and fisheries (BDER, 2004; Shankar et al., 2004). For example, in the 1998 flood, over 70% of the land area of Bangladesh was inundated, affecting 31 million people and 1 million homesteads (Chowdhury, 2000). The 1998 flood, which had an unusually long duration from July to September, claimed 918 human lives and was responsible for damaging 16000 and 6000 km of roads and embankments respectively, and affecting 6000 km2 of standing crops (Chowdhury, 2000). In the recent 2004 floods over 25% of the population of Bangladesh, or 36 million people, was affected by the floods; 800 lives were lost; 952,000 houses were destroyed and 1.4 million badly damaged; 24,000 educational institutions were affected, including the destruction of 1200 primary schools; 2 million government and private tubewells were affected, and over 3 million latrines were damaged or washed away, this increasing the risks of diarrhoea, cholera and other waterborne diseases; 1.1 M ha. of rice crop was submerged and lost before it could be harvested, with 7% of the yearly aus (early season) rice crop lost; 270,000 ha. of grazing land was affected, 5600 livestock perished together with 254,000 poultry and 63 MT of lost fish production (BDER, 2004; CPD, 2004). In the districts that are dominated by the Jamuna River, the 2004 flood damage to infrastructure (homes, roads, culverts), tubewells and latrines, with ensuing unemployment of many of the population, were some of the areas of critical impact. Hence, due to the nature of these devastating floods, and their recent occurrence in 1987, 1988, 1998 and 2004, the possible influences on catastrophic flooding, such as the role of Himalayan deforestation (Kattelman, 1990; Mirza et al., 2001), the type of intervention and infrastructural response to flooding (e.g. the Brahmaputra Right Embankment (BRE) from the Teesta to Hurasagar confluences, see Fig. 1) and the nature, scope and need for the Flood Action Plan (e.g. Haggart et al., 1994; Paul, 1997) have thus received much attention and debate over recent years (see for instance, Boyce, 1990; Hossain, 1993, Haggart et al., 1994; Reavill and Rahman, 1995; Paul, 1997; Islan, 2001). Additionally, political debates concerning water usage and construction of dams have become a major issue for Bangladesh (e.g. Patel, 1996; Wood, 1999; Mirza, 2004), since over 90% of the catchments of these three great rivers lies outside the boundaries of the country. The Jamuna and Ganges rivers combine to form the Padma River, which carries the third greatest water discharge of all the world's rivers but is often ranked the highest in terms of sediment discharge (Schumm and Winkley, 1994). The Jamuna is the local name given to the river for its entire length in Bangladesh to the Ganges junction (Fig. 1). The Brahmaputra-Jamuna has one principal tributary input, the Teesta River in the north-west, and two major offtakes on the left bank that are the Old Brahmaputra (see below) and the Dhaleswari (Fig. 1). The Brahmaputra/Jamuna River contributes ~51% of the water discharge and 38% of the sediment yield to the Padma (Schumm and Winkley, 1994), with the sediment yield being estimated at 590 MT yr-1 and the sand fraction contributing 34% of this total (Sarker, 1996). The Jamuna can have a braidplain width up to 15 km in flood and scour depths of up to 40 m have been recorded (Klaassen and Vermeer, 1988). Thus, by any definition, the Brahmaputra-Jamuna is one of the world's truly great rivers, and has a direct and daily influence on the prosperity of its population and the country's economic growth and political stability. Since the seminal work of Coleman (1969), much research has been conducted on these rivers, especially in the last fifteen years as part of the Bangladesh Flood Action Plan (e.g. Thorne and Thiagarajah, 1994; Haggart et al., 1994; FAP24, 1996a-h; Paul, 1997), together with work from organisations such as the Center for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) and Water Resources Planning Organization (WARPO) in Bangladesh, and this has allowed a dramatic increase in our knowledge of the behaviour of the Brahmaputra-Jamuna River. This work, aided by major advances in monitoring techniques, such as frequent, all-year satellite imagery and whole-flow depth monitoring within the main channels at even the highest discharges, has resulted in the river being characterised in more detail than ever before. Recent attempts to predict morphological change have also met with some success (EGIS, 2002; CEGIS, 2003; Mosselman, in press), and together with numerical modelling (Jagers, 2003) offer some hope to both understand and predict river channel movement, and establishing management plans for such change. Additionally, development of large-scale infrastructure within Bangladesh, such as construction of the Bangabandhu Multipurpose Bridge across the Jamuna, and numerous bank-protection works (Mosselman, in press), has demanded an increased quantification of the alluvial channel processes and prediction of future channel change. This chapter seeks to provide a synthesis on aspects of the geomorphology and sedimentology of the Brahmaputra-Jamuna River within Bangladesh, between the northern Bangladesh border and its junction with the Ganges some 240 km to the south (Fig. 1), and examines issues of applied geomorphology in response to the flooding and migration of this huge and largely untamed river. Details of the Brahmaputra River upstream of the Bangladesh border are given by Singh et al. (chapter X , this volume), and a recent synthesis on the water resources of the Brahmaputra basin in India is provided by Singh et al. (2004), including a chapter on fluvial geomorphology by Bora (2004).


Many reef coral diseases have been described affecting corals in the wild, several of which have been associated with causal agents based on experimental inoculation and testing of Koch's postulates. In the aquarium industry, many coral diseases and pathologies are known from the grey literature but as yet these have not been systematically described and the relationship to known diseases in the wild is difficult to determine. There is therefore scope to aid the maintenance and husbandry of corals in aquaria by informing the field of the scientifically described wild diseases, if these can be reliably related. Conversely, since the main driver to identifying coral diseases in aquaria is to select an effective treatment, the lessons learnt by aquarists on which treatments work with particular syndromes provides invaluable evidence for determining the causal agents. Such treatments are not commonly sought by scientists working in the natural environment due the cost and potential environmental impacts of the treatments. Here we review both wild and aquarium diseases and attempt to relate the two. Many important aquarium diseases could not be reconciled to those in the wild. In one case, however, namely that of the ciliate Helicostoma sp. as a causal agent of brown jelly syndrome in aquarium corals, there may be similarities with pathogenic agents of the wild coral diseases, such as white syndrome and brown band syndrome. We propose that Helicostoma is actually a misnomer, but improved understanding of this pathogen and others could benefit both fields. Improved practices in aquarium maintenance and husbandry would also benefit natural environments by reducing the scale of wild harvest and improving the potential for coral culture, both for the aquarium industry and for rehabilitation programmes.


Everyone has known the feeling of being present. Babies and toddlers live there almost constantly. Great performers work in this state. Great athletes win in it. Great teachers teach in it. Every great communicator speaks from this place. It is when fully present that we do our best work and make our deepest impression on others. In her years as an acting coach, Patsy Rodenburg has discovered the secrets to that elusive quality actors call 'it'. There are three basic ways human energy moves between people and you can be in any one of the 'three circles' in any situation. In the first, your focus is purely inward, in the third, all your energy is moving outward. In the second you are focused, you give energy out and you receive it. You communicate spontaneously and listen well, you are generous and people are generous in return. And by working on your breath, posture, voice, language, listening skills, focus, courage and trust you can access the second circle on a daily basis. Your work, relationships, spirituality and passions will all benefit.


In this report, the problem of broadcast scheduling in Push broadcast systems is studied. We introduce an optimization approach that leads to well justified policies for Push broadcast systems with generalized cost functions. In particular, we apply our results to a Push broadcast system with different deadlines associated to the files while allowing the files to have unequal demand rates and lengths. We will show that our proposed policy covers some of the previously investigated Push systems as special cases and is applicable to a wide range of cost functions assigned to the files. We also calculate the optimal average cost for our experimental settings and show, through extensive simulation studies, that our results closely match that value for each experiment.


High energy collisions at the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (LHC) produce a large number of particles along the beam collision axis, outside of the acceptance of existing LHC experiments. The proposed Forward Physics Facility (FPF), to be located several hundred meters from the ATLAS interaction point and shielded by concrete and rock, will host a suite of experiments to probe standard model (SM) processes and search for physics beyond the standard model (BSM). In this report, we review the status of the civil engineering plans and the experiments to explore the diverse physics signals that can be uniquely probed in the forward region. FPF experiments will be sensitive to a broad range of BSM physics through searches for new particle scattering or decay signatures and deviations from SM expectations in high statistics analyses with TeV neutrinos in this low-background environment. High statistics neutrino detection will also provide valuable data for fundamental topics in perturbative and non-perturbative QCD and in weak interactions. Experiments at the FPF will enable synergies between forward particle production at the LHC and astroparticle physics to be exploited. We report here on these physics topics, on infrastructure, detector, and simulation studies, and on future directions to realize the FPF's physics potential.


The tourism industry is important to the Kenyan economy as well as many other
economies the world over. In Kenya, the industry accounts for l3.3% of Gross Domestic
Product (GDP), 14.7% of foreign exchange earnings and generates 138 000 jobs;directly
and 360, 000 indirectly (www.kenyatourism.org). Tourism earnings trend has been rising
with the sector earning 25.8, 39.2 and 48.9 billion shillings in 2003, 2004 and 2005
respectively. This shows that this industry is important and a
lot should be done to promote it. Tourist hotels should strive to improve their
performance through performance appraisal among other activities. The researcher
therefore intended to analyse the factors that affected effective performance appraisal.
This study set out to identify those factors that affect employee performance appraisal
exercise, analysed them and made recommendations as to how best the exercise should
be carried out for maximum benefits. Primary data was collected using open ended and
closed ended questionnaires. Two sets of questionnaire were prepared: one for the
employee and another for the human resource manager and any other person who was in
charge of the performance appraisal exercise. Interviews were also used to collect the data. Secondary information from books, magazines, newspapers and the electronic media was also used. The data collected was analysed using descriptive statistics and recommendations made. Research fmdings indicate that performance appraisal is an important exercise and that it
is carried out in all the organisations that were covered by the research. The fmdings also
indicate that some managers do not involve their employees in setting targets to be
achieved. This explains why some of the employees do not find the exercise beneficial.
There are factors that were found to affect the performance appraisal exercise among
them the method used, top management support, personal goals, organisational yolitics
and employee perception of the process. Based on the findings, the researcher has
suggested that the employee and the supervisor/manager should collaborate in the setting
of targets and that performance should be used as the main consideration during the
performance appraisal exercise.


Latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) systems using phase change material (PCM) could have lower heat transfer rates during charging/discharging processes due to its low inherence of the thermal conductivity. In this study, heat transfer enhancement using internal longitudinal fins employing PCM first and nanoPCM secondly in a large triplex tube heat exchanger (TTHX) was investigated by Fluent 15 software numerically. The results showed the thermal conductivity of pure PCM (0.2 W/m.K) could be enhanced to 25% by dispersing 10% alumina (Al2O3) as a nanoparticle. However, the melting time is reduced to 12% as compared with the PCM only therefore, a longitudinal fins-nanoPCM technique achieved a complete PCM melting shortly (218 minutes). Consequently, the simulation results have been validated and illustrated a good agreement with the PCM and nanoPCM experimentally.


We study the far infrared (60–500 μm) colours of late-type galaxies in the Herschel Reference Survey, a K-band selected, volume limited sample of nearby galaxies. The far infrared colours are correlated with each other, with tighter correlations for the indices that are closer in wavelength. We also compare the different colour indices to various tracers of the physical properties of the target galaxies, such as the surface brightness of the ionising and non-ionising stellar radiation, the dust attenuation and the metallicity. The emission properties of the cold dust dominating the far infrared spectral domain are regulated by the properties of the interstellar radiation field. Consistent with that observed in nearby, resolved galaxies, our analysis shows that the ionising and the non-ionising stellar radiation, including that emitted by the most evolved, cold stars, both contribute to the heating of the cold dust component. This work also shows that metallicity is another key parameter characterising the cold dust emission of normal, late-type galaxies. A single modified black body with a grain emissivity index β = 1.5 better fits the observed SPIRE flux density ratios S250/S350 vs. S350/S500 than β = 2, although values of β ≃ 2 are possible in metal rich, high surface brightness galaxies. Values of β ≲ 1.5 better represent metal poor, lowsurface brightness objects. This observational evidence provides strong constraints for dust emission models of normal, late type galaxies.


OBJECTIVE
To compare in vivo the efficacy of enamel microabrasion alone or in combination with vital tooth bleaching for the management of tooth discoloration caused by fluorosis.

METHODS
A total of 118 maxillary and mandibular fluorosed incisors and canines in 10 patients, scored from 1 to 7 according to the Tooth Surface Index of Fluorosis, were included in this study. All of the teeth were initially treated with enamel microabrasion (Opalustre, Ultradent Products Inc, South Jordan, UT, USA), and after 24 hours, an in-office bleaching technique (Opalescence Boost, Ultradent) was utilized (n=118). Standardized images of the teeth were taken using a digital camera prior to treatment and 24 hours after the enamel microabrasion and after the in-office bleaching therapy. The study groups were assigned according to evaluation time: a) after enamel microabrasion (Group 1) and b) after the combined approach (enamel microabrasion and in-office bleaching) (Group 2). Two calibrated and blinded examiners scored Group 1 and Group 2 images by comparing each with baseline images for "improvement in appearance," "changes in brown stains," and "changes in white opaque areas" using the visual analogue scales (VAS) that range from 1 to 7. "Patient satisfaction," "tooth sensitivity," and "gingival problems" were also recorded. The data were analyzed using two sample paired Wilcoxon signed-rank, Kruskal-Wallis, and Mann-Whitney U-tests (α=0.05).

RESULTS
The combined therapy revealed significantly higher scores than the enamel microabrasion procedure in terms of all of the evaluated criteria (p<0.001). Enamel microabrasion provoked less tooth sensitivity but led to lower patient satisfaction scores than the combined therapy (p<0.001); however, in terms of gingival problems, no differences were found between both groups.

CONCLUSION
The combined therapy, including enamel microabrasion and in-office bleaching, was more effective than enamel microabrasion alone in the esthetic management of fluorosed teeth.


Despite the widespread use of mediation and other dispute resolution processes in the United States today, many members of the bench and bar - including those responsible for the drafting, interpretation and implementation of consensual dispute resolution provisions still lack a fundamental grasp of the process choices available to contracting parties. More often than not, their information is fragmentary, their perceptions framed by anecdote and hearsay in lieu of personal experience. Transactional lawyers, those in the best position to offer advice and counsel in the structuring of contractual conflict management options, tend to be less well informed than colleagues in what are traditionally know as litigation departments. Opportunities may be squandered or abused, and clients and third parties ill-served. Venturing into a complex and changing landscape of evolving statutory and case law, moreover, even sophisticated scriveners may face unwelcome surprises when their hothouse variety ADR provisions are unveiled in court. Lacking a clear road map, courts often rely on the tools at hand. This frequently means resorting to the relatively well-trodden highways and byways of federal and state arbitration law, perhaps without thoughtful consideration of the nature and purposes of the statute and the inherent differences between binding arbitration - the intended focus of such legislation - and other intervention strategies now enshrined in contract. This article is intended to help legal practitioners, judges and contracts scholars to better understand these alternatives, especially arrangements involving third party "interveners" - mediators, arbitrators, and others assigned to help manage or resolve issues or disputes. An important subtext of the discussion is the abiding tension between the need for judicial intervention and the desire for party autonomy implicit in private conflict resolution provisions. Special attention is given to the growing universe of agreements that implicate significant disparities in bargaining power, and the particular concerns associated with private justice under adhesion contracts.


Background Although observational evidence has suggested that the measurement of coronary artery calcium (CAC) may improve risk stratification for cardiovascular events and thus help guide the use of lipid-lowering therapy, this contention has not been evaluated within the context of a randomized trial. The Value of Imaging in Enhancing the Wellness of Your Heart (VIEW) trial is proposed as a randomized study in participants at low intermediate risk of future coronary heart disease (CHD) events to evaluate whether CAC testing leads to improved patient outcomes. Purpose To describe the challenges encountered in designing a prototypical screening trial and to examine the impact of uncertainty on power. Methods The VIEW trial was designed as an effectiveness clinical trial to examine the benefit of CAC testing to guide therapy on a primary outcome consisting of a composite of nonfatal myocardial infarction, probable or definite angina with revascularization, resuscitated cardiac arrest, nonfatal stroke (not transient ischemic attack (TIA)), CHD death, stroke death, other atherosclerotic death, or other cardiovascular disease (CVD) death. Many critical choices were faced in designing the trial, including (1) the choice of primary outcome, (2) the choice of therapy, (3) the target population with corresponding ethical issues, (4) specifications of assumptions for sample size calculations, and (5) impact of uncertainty in these assumptions on power/sample size determination. Results We have proposed a sample size of 30,000 (800 events), which provides 92.7% power. Alternatively, sample sizes of 20,228 (539 events), 23,138 (617 events), and 27,078 (722 events) provide 80%, 85%, and 90% power. We have also allowed for uncertainty in our assumptions by computing average power integrated over specified prior distributions. This relaxation of specificity indicates a reduction in power, dropping to 89.9% (95% confidence interval (CI): 89.8–89.9) for a sample size of 30,000. Samples sizes of 20,228, 23,138, and 27,078 provide power of 78.0% (77.9–78.0), 82.5% (82.5–82.6), and 87.2% (87.2–87.3), respectively. Limitations These power estimates are dependent on form and parameters of the prior distributions. Conclusions Despite the pressing need for a randomized trial to evaluate the utility of CAC testing, conduct of such a trial requires recruiting a large patient population, making efficiency of critical importance. The large sample size is primarily due to targeting a study population at relatively low risk of a CVD event. Our calculations also illustrate the importance of formally considering uncertainty in power calculations of large trials as standard power calculations may tend to overestimate power.


The paper examines the unconventional monetary policy programs and measures, implemented by the European Central Bank (ECB). The research is focused on covering their effects on the non-Euro Area Member States of the European Union (EU). The main purpose of the paper is to conduct an econometric study on the effects of the ECB's non-standard measures on the government bond yields of the countries, part of the EU, but outside the Eurozone, through the interest rate channel of the monetary policy transmission mechanism. The study is dedicated to the empirical study on the dynamics and the relations between the key interest rates and the government bond yields of Bulgaria, Denmark, United Kingdom, Poland, Romania, Croatia, Czech Republic and Sweden. The observed period spreads from January 2010 to December 2016, with the use of monthly data. The aggregated results from the constructed econometric models for the non-Euro area EU Member States show that between 95% and 98,5% of the changes in the government bond yield can be explained by the changes in the levels of the Euro Over Night Index Average(EONIA) - an interest rate factor, and by the time – the second factor in the model. The results also show that at EONIA fixed rates the yield on the long-term government bonds can vary from -0,025 percentage points to -0,068 percentage points monthly. Conclusions and proposals are made, concerning the interest rates in the Eurozone and in the EU, in the context of the unconventional monetary policy, conducted by the ECB – one of the world's major central banks.


Micronutrients are vital for plant growth and human health. Soil and foliar applications are the most prevalent methods of micronutrient addition but the cost involved and difficulty in obtaining high quality micronutrient fertilizers are ma- jor concerns with these in developing countries. Micronutrient seed treatments, which include seed priming and seed coating, are an attractive and easy alternative. Here in this review, we discuss the potential of micronutrient seed treatments for improving crop growth and grain nutrient enrichment. Micronutrient application through seed treatments improves the stand establishment, advances phenological events, and increases yield and micronutrient grain contents in most cases. In some instances, seed treatments are not beneficial; however, the negative effects are rare. In most cases, micronutrient application through seed treatment performed better or similar to other application methods. Being an easy and cost effective method of micronutrient application, seed treatments offer an attractive option for resource- poor farmers.


The advent of the smart grid promises to usher in an era that will bring intelligence, efficiency, and optimality to the power grid. Most of these changes will occur as an Internet-like communications network is superimposed on top of the current power grid using wireless mesh network technologies with the 802.15.4, 802.11, and WiMAX standards. Each of these will expose the power grid to cybersecurity threats. In order to address this issue, this work proposes a distributed intrusion detection system for smart grids (SGDIDS) by developing and deploying an intelligent module, the analyzing module (AM), in multiple layers of the smart grid. Multiple AMs will be embedded at each level of the smart grid-the home area networks (HANs), neighborhood area networks (NANs), and wide area networks (WANs)-where they will use the support vector machine (SVM) and artificial immune system (AIS) to detect and classify malicious data and possible cyberattacks. AMs at each level are trained using data that is relevant to their level and will also be able to communicate in order to improve detection. Simulation results demonstrate that this is a promising methodology for supporting the optimal communication routing and improving system security through the identification of malicious network traffic.


From the Publisher:
This compact and comprehensive book systematically unveils what resolute users of the new Windows XP operating system will find interesting and useful, with little-known details, utility programs, and configuration settings all captured in a consistent reference format. A hands-on guide, Windows XP in a Nutshell cuts through the hype and gives practical details you can use every day. It's written by David A. Karp, the best-selling author whose no-nonsense "Annoyances" books and web site (Annoyances.org) have helped thousands of users solve problems and improve their experience with Windows®. The co-author is none other than Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly & Associates, whose books have revolutionized computer book publishing with their commonsense approach and depth of detail. At the heart of the book is a 200-plus-page reference section titled "Windows XP Applications and Tools," containing:
Detailed information on most of the commands and utilities available with Windows XP, including Start Menu accessories, command prompt tools, hidden system administration utilities such as the Registry Editor, Microsoft Management Console, and TweakUI.
A comprehensive "Where to Find It?" section designed to give Windows 9x/Me and Windows NT/2000 users a guide to the XP counterparts to previously familiar features, plus information on installing and upgrading.
The Task and Setting Index, which provides users with quick access to locations of the hundreds of settings in Windows XP, organized alphabetically.
A complete reference to the command prompt— not only covering the basics of the commandline and the different ways to use it, but also the advanced commands and scripting features at Windows XP's disposal.

Packed with numerous tips and tricks, while warning of potential pitfalls, Windows XP in a Nutshell enables anyone to get the most out of all the resources available in XP.


Autonomous systems represent a significant leap forward in the ongoing technological evolution of dependable and safety-related systems, integrating features such as artificial intelligence, high-performance computing devices, General Purpose Operating Systems (GPOS) (e.g., GNU/Linux) and security requirements. Nonetheless, traditionally employed safety techniques and measures were not defined for safety-related systems with such features. Consequently, the need to research new methods and measures emerges in order to be able to achieve appropriate safety assurance. In this manuscript, we explore the limitations of traditional test coverage techniques, and we provide two complementary methods to pave the way towards the testing of Linux-based complex safety-related systems. The methods, which are based on statistical analyses, are presented and applied to a Linux-based Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) case study, specifically focusing on the kernel execution path test coverage.


Money laundering is a silent crime. Its goal is to cover up the source of large sums of money that criminals often gather from their criminal activities. This paper will analyze the situation of money laundering in narcotics as it applies in Saudi Arabia. To achieve this end, the paper will first define important terms such as money laundering and narcotics. It will then explain the relationship between money laundering, narcotics trade, and terrorism activities. This background information will form the base for analyzing the various efforts that the Saudi Arabia nation has in place for countering money laundering in narcotics trade. The paper will then explain the challenges facing these efforts, and the future of money laundering in Saudi Arabia. The largest criminal activity associated with money laundering is terrorism financing. The several terror attacks associated with Saudi Arabia's terror groups like Al-Qaida have made the government realize the importance of curbing money laundering in an effort to counter terrorism. Thus, anti-money laundering strategies are set in place to address all the avenues of money laundering.


In today's world, fashion designers help create billions of dresses, suits, shoes, and other clothing and accessories purchased every year by customers around the world. They study fashion trends, sketch designs of clothing and accessories, select colors and fabrics, and oversee the final production of their designs. With the advent of computers and low storage costs, designers rely on the use of mass computer storage to help them store and manage their designs for future retrievals. The stored designs will be retrieved from time to time so that designers could retrieve them for stimulation of new ideas in their new designs. When the number of stored images grows, searching for a desired piece of design work is likely to be time-consuming and painstaking. Without proper computer-assisted search mechanism, such a search will not be definitely easy. Thus, a huge collection of images containing different designs pattern and textures of certain fashion designs demands for efficient search system. Of all the visual contents identifiable from a design, texture is considered to be the commonest visual attribute that aids in image retrieval. Common approaches for texture-based image retrievals are largely centered around frequency-based models, which are notably suffered from the problem of poor retrieval accuracy. In this paper, a novel approach for texture-based image retrieval has been proposed. This approach, known as Spectral Density Analysis, or SDA for short, is based on the idea of dividing an image into nine equally sized partitions where the spectral density of each partition is computed to be used to aid in the image retrieval process. Benchmarked using the popular performance measurement technique, Recall and Precision, adopting the SDA technique for retrieving images based on their texture contents has produced remarkable retrieval accuracy, almost three times more accurate over any other frequency-based models.


The all-optical poling technique permits polar orientation of molecules. For efficient poling of thin films the relative phases, amplitudes, and polarizations of the two interfering beams must be controlled. We present an original stable one-arm interferometer that is specific to the recording of two-color interference. It relies on the index dispersion of optical glasses. This interference technique permits true real-time nonperturbative monitoring of the polar orientation process and easy all-optical poling of thin-film materials without the need for phase control. This new configuration opens the door to the realization of customized phase-matched wave-guided frequency-conversion devices for the near infrared.


ABSTRACT Test anxiety (TA) is a situation-specific form of anxiety relating to the anticipation and experience of academic evaluation. We hypothesized that, for college students, social support would buffer the effects of test anxiety experienced just prior to exams. As such, the effects of TA and social support on a physiological index of stress (cortisol) were examined in a 'naturalistic' setting (i.e., the everyday lives of 49 students over a three-month period constituting a full academic semester). Our hypothesis was confirmed, but in an unexpected manner that indicates the complexity of the interplay between anxiety subtypes, social relationships, and stress responses: not only did social support exert a dampening effect among persons with high levels of test anxiety, but low levels of social support led to elevated cortisol in these individuals. Among participants with low test anxiety, cortisol levels were consistently moderate and unrelated to social support. Theories pertaining to anxiety and enhanced sensitivity to both damaging and protective influences are discussed. KEYWORDS: anxiety sensitivity, cortisol, social support, test anxiety. INTRODUCTION Test anxiety is a multifaceted response to examination situations, comprising a complex interplay of cognitive, behavioral, emotional, and physiological elements. Anxiety pertaining specifically to the anticipation and experience of academic examinations was first flagged as an important aspect of stress research by Sarason and others in the 1950s (Mandler & Sarason, 1952; Sarason, 1959). Since then, numerous measures of test anxiety have been developed, and theories of mechanisms of effect and other associations have been studied. It is widely accepted that test anxiety consists of at least two distinct components - worry and emotionality (Everson, Millsap, & Rodriguez, 1991; Schwarzer, 1984; Spielberger, Gonzalez, Taylor, Algaze, & Anton, 1978; Ware, Galassi, Michie, & Drew, 1990), with interference and lack of confidence as additional defining aspect of the experience (Hodapp & Benson, 1997; Stober, 2004). Undergraduate university students are frequently used as convenient, nonclinical samples in psychological surveys and experiments. In the context of their general experiences of anxiety, it can be assumed that test anxiety is particularly pertinent to this population: students typically undergo multiple sittings of timepressured, intensive examinations yearly, in combination with continuously assessed coursework throughout each academic semester; their daily environment is, by nature, assessment-focused. Students tend to consistently cite exam and grade-related worries, financial concerns, and relationship problems (with families, friends, or romantic partners) as their greatest sources of anxiety (Furr, Westefield, McConnell, & Jenkins, 2001). It is reasonable to suggest that situation-specific anxiety such as test anxiety, co-occurs with other experiences of life stress, as well as dispositional tendencies towards anxiousness that are independent of environmental influences. As such, the experience of test anxiety might be better examined and understood by looking at a more comprehensive overall stress profile, rather than considering it in isolation. Test anxiety and anxiety-related dispositions Test anxiety is a facet of broader personality traits, and interacts significantly with other anxiety-related dispositions. A significant correlation between test anxiety and intelligence has been observed (Sarason & Irwin, 1959), as has an association between neuroticism and intelligence, which was found to be mediated by test anxiety: a significant correlation between these variables appears to present itself only in persons who are high in state anxiety, and this is not the case for those at the lower bounds of the state anxiety spectrum (Moutafi, Furnham, & Tsaousis, 2006). Neuroticism and test anxiety are closely correlated - a logical assumption, given that neuroticism and negative affect are seen as interchangeable, and test anxiety has been shown to have a distinct emotionality component. …


Laser scanning, a widely used technology, has been highly developed and adopted in various industrial applications. The methodologies used for scanner date processing are mostly point based. In this thesis, a new approach is presented to analyze spatial data obtained from a 3-D laser scanner for shape error inspection. Different from traditional methodologies, the method proposed in this research is frequency based. The method utilizes the Fourier transform to decompose a 2-D curve or 3-D shape into its spatial components by applying two 1-D FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) on 2-D curves or two 2-D FFT on 3-D shapes. The spatial components including frequency, amplitude, and phase are defined as shape characteristics to represent the shape under inspection. By relating spatial components with GD&T (Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing) standards using proper analysis techniques, such as frequency spectrum and cross correlation, shape errors can be detected and characterized. One of the applications of this method is automated inspection. In this research, the spatial data method is applied to MIG (Metal Inert Gas) weld inspection. Experiments are carried out to analyze the 2-D curve of a projection weld data, and the 3-D scanning data directly. A MIG weld inspection system is also developed for production use.


With commanding skill, Thomas R. Martin tells the remarkable and dramatic story of how a tiny, poor and threatened settlement grew to become, during its height, the dominant power in the Mediterranean world for five hundred years. Encompassing the period from Rome's founding in the eighth century B.C. through Justinian's rule in the sixth century A.D., he offers a distinctive perspective on the Romans and their civilization by employing fundamental Roman values as a lens through which to view both their rise and spectacular fall. Interweaving social, political, religious and cultural history, Martin interprets the successes and failures of the Romans in war, political organization, quest for personal status, and in the integration of religious beliefs and practices with government. He focuses on the central role of social and moral values in determining individual conduct as well as decisions of state, from monarchy to republic to empire. Striving to reconstruct ancient history from the ground up, he includes frequent references to ancient texts and authors, encouraging readers to return to the primary sources. Comprehensive, concise and accessible, this masterful account provides a unique window into Rome and its changing fortune.


The author has set out to build on the analysis established in the first two volumes, but to break the time barrier, to make this a fairly complete summation of the state of the industry in the late '80s, and at the true end of the 'epoch' of 10BA funding. To this end, the two lengthy four-chapter studies by Elizabeth Jacka serve to update, the analysis from previous publications of the nature of the financial and institutional constraints and desires of the film industry since 1984/85, and also studies of the pattern of cinema that corresponds and contributes to them.


This report (RE-331) presents an evaluation of the Inter-American Development Bank's program of engagement with Guyana for the 2002-2006 period, from its intent expressed mainly in the Country Strategy with Guyana (GN-2228) and other Bank documents, to the actual delivery of the program. The document includes a description of the background, a discussion on the Bank's performance, a comparison the program and the delivery, and a presentation of program results. The quest for a new sustainable force that can effectively produce growth is the major economic challenge faced by Guyana and its development partners. A further challenge comes from the negative effect on foreign and domestic investment flows over the period, resulting from the perception of an adverse business climate.


The objective is to ground and develop a methodology of special physical preparation of high schoolers for performing parkour elements, and to experimentally verify its effectiveness. Materials and methods: Kharkiv secondary school No. 84 served as the grounds for the study. The participants in the study were boys aged 15-17: 10 persons – in the reference group, and 10 persons – in the experimental group. The methods of the study: theoretical analysis and collation of scientific and methodological literature; pedagogical observation; video recording; biomechanical analysis; talks with experts; pedagogical experiment; mathematical and statistical methods of research materials processing. Results: The experimental group showed positive improvement in the balancing technique from 3.5 points before the experiment to 6.3 after the experiment (p < 0.05); a considerable increase in points in the jumping technique, including jumps onto the wall bars hand-gripping its edge, jumps into landing with a roll, and jumps over obstacle – from 2.9, 4.2 and 4.6 points respectively at the beginning of the experiment to 5.9, 6.7 and 7.8 points respectively after the experiment (p < 0.05); positive significant improvement in the wall bars running results – from 3.2 points at the beginning of the experiment to 6.7 after the experiment (p < 0.05). Conclusions: special sets of exercises have been designed to develop and improve these abilities in parkour, and the effectiveness of the designed methodology has been experimentally verified. The study has proved that, when used in physical training of high schoolers, the special sets of exercises intended to develop parkourists' speed, strength and coordination abilities contribute to a significant increase in the level of the technique of execution of the main parkour elements.


Nanoparticles are potentially used for early cancer detection, accurate diagnosis, and cancer treatment. Due to their small direct band gap and large excitation Bohr radius, lead sulphide quantum dots are important semiconductor material. The red shifted emission band, coupled with the small particle size, is facilitating clearance of imaging. Lead sulphide quantum dots bio-conjugates are promising candidates for targeted infrared molecular imaging and future infrared tissue imaging applications. Because of these many characters, in this paper, we tagged cancer cells with quantum dots for better imaging in IR region. We synthesized lead sulphide quantum dots using Hines and Scholes method. Surface modification of quantum dots is carried out using L-cysteine. Surface modification makes semiconductor quantum dots water soluble. The amino groups present in L-cysteine will bind to the cancer cells and the thiol group will bind to the quantum dots. Confocal Raman spectroscopy is used to image the cancer cells tagged with modified lead sulphide quantum dots.


Thesis (MPhil (Information Science)) – University of Stellenbosch, 2009.%%%%We are in the final stages of a transition from the industrial era to the information era.
Some may argue that we are already there. The impact of this transition is felt in all
spheres of everyday life, it is present in shifting paradigms and it fuels constant waves
of change. In attempting to master this changing world of the last few decades,
academics and practitioners focused their attention on the management of knowledge
in organisations.
The concept of knowledge has been an elusive one for two thousand years and
introducing the ideas of management and organisation to this already blurred notion
brings about more distortion. This elusiveness is ever-present when organisational
knowledge management is written about, presented or discussed. There always seems
to be a duality in its nature – on the one end of the spectrum, the manageability of
knowledge itemised as "thing" and on the other end the unmanageability of "flows"
creating knowledge. There is a distinct discourse equating knowledge to information.
These concepts are used interchangeably and there is a strong focus on the use of
technology to manage knowledge stocks. In other treatises, we are constantly
reminded about the inherent complexities of knowledge, humans, relationships and
how people, individually and collectively, create meaning.
This thesis sets out to determine whether knowledge should be seen as a manageable
item or whether it is more complex, a flow, that might be guided and nurtured but
never "managed"; or whether, it is in fact, both a "thing" and a "flow".
With neither theory testing nor theory development in mind, the thesis is a journey
into the existing epistemological literature, investigating various views on and
typologies of knowledge, aiming to add value through interpretation. As a
comparative study, the thesis discusses the views of authors on knowledge
management and sense making. Following the comparison of "thing" and "flow", the
thesis concludes by likening the research question to a similar paradox of light –
knowledge should always be managed as a "thing" and a "flow" similar to light being
both a particle and a wave.


Rising costs of public employee pension plans have caused fiscal stress in many cities and states and have led to calls for reform. To assess the economic consequences of plan changes, it is important to have reliable statistical models of employee retirement behavior. The authors estimate a structural model of teacher retirement using Missouri administrative panel data. A Stock-Wise option value model provides a good fit to the data and predicts well out-of-sample on the effects of pension enhancements during the 1990s. The structural model is used to simulate the effect of alternatives to the current defined benefit plan.


We develop an over-ocean rainfall retrieval algorithm for the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) based on the Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMaP) microwave radiometer algorithm. This algorithm combines an emission-based estimate from brightness temperature (Tb) at 23 GHz and a scattering-based estimate from Tb at 89 GHz, depending on a scattering index (SI) computed from Tb at both 89 and 150 GHz. Precipitation inhomogeneities are also taken into account. The GSMaP-retrieved rainfall from the AMSU (GSMaP_AMSU) is compared with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) standard algorithm (NOAA_AMSU)-retrieved data using Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) data as a reference. Rain rates retrieved by GSMaP_AMSU have better agreement with TRMM estimates over midlatitudes during winter. Better estimates over multitudes over winter are given by the use of Tb at 23 GHz in the GSMaP_AMSU algorithm. It was also shown that GSMaP_AMSU has higher rain detection than NOAA_AMSU.


The trend in facial biometrics has been to use ever increasing image resolution, with the purpose of increasing the recognition performance by exploiting the added information. One category of biometric systems expected to benefit from the increased image resolution consists of systems based on second-order statistics (SOS) estimates, such as those based on principle component analysis (PCA). Increasing the image resolution without sufficiently increasing the number of training samples has several effects on the SOS estimates, such as a bias in the eigenvalue estimates and errors in the eigenvector estimates.
We analyze how the increasing ratio of the dimensionality over the number of samples affects biometric systems, in particular those based on second-order statistics in combination with a – theoretically optimal – log-likelihood ratio classifier. We show that the classical solution to the singularity problem, PCA dimensionality reduction, is far from optimal and fails completely for very high dimensionalities and we present several solutions to adjust the SOS estimates in order to achieve close to optimal performance, such as the eigenwise correction using fixed-point eigenvalue correction, and the variance correction.
Although the presented solutions are clearly superior if synthetic data is used, for real facial data they turned out to be outperformed by PCA dimensionality reduction. We found that this can be explained by the assumed underlying model of fixed position intensity sources, which cannot efficiently describe variations occurring in faces caused by moving features. We show that if facial data contains such moving features, then traditional solution to the singularity problem by dimensionality reduction based on PCA reduces the disruptive effect of these moving features on verification rates while our proposed bias correction methods actually increase this effect. This provides an explanation why PCA dimensionality outperforms the correction methods if real facial data is used.


High-temperature latent heat thermal energy storage with metallic alloy phase change materials (PCMs) utilize the high latent heat and high thermal conductivity to gain a competitive edge over existing sensible and latent storage technologies. Novel macroporous latent heat storage units can be used to enhance the limiting convective heat transfer between the heat transfer fluid and the PCM to attain higher power density while maintaining high energy density. 3D monolithic percolating macroporous latent heat storage unit cells with random and ordered substructure topology were created using synthetic tomography data. Full 3D thermal computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations with phase change modeling was performed on 1000+ such structures using effective heat capacity method and temperature- and phase-dependent thermophysical properties. Design parameters, including transient thermal and flow characteristics, phase change time and pressure drop, were extracted as output scalars from the simulated charging process. As such structures cannot be parametrized meaningfully, a mesh-based Geodesic Convolutional Neural Network (GCNN) designed to perform direct convolutions on the surface and volume meshes of the macroporous structures was trained to predict the output scalars along with pressure, temperature, velocity distributions in the volume, and surface distributions of heat flux and shear stress. An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) using macroscopic properties—porosity, surface area, and two-point surface-void correlation functions—of the structures as inputs was used as a standard regressor for comparison. The GCNN exhibited high prediction accuracy of the scalars, outperforming the ANN and linear/exponential fits, owing to the disentangling property of GCNNs where predictions were improved by the introduction of correlated surface and volume fields. The trained GCNN behaves as a coupled CFD-heat transfer emulator predicting the volumetric distribution of temperature, pressure, velocity fields, and heat flux and shear stress distributions at the PCM–HTF interface. This deep learning based methodology offers a unique, generalized, and computationally competitive way to quickly predict phase change behavior of high power density macroporous structures in a few seconds and has the potential to optimize the percolating macroporous unit cells to application specific requirements.


Respiration is a brain function on which our lives essentially depend. Control of respiration ensures that the frequency and depth of breathing adapt continuously to metabolic needs. In addition, the respiratory control network of the brain has to organize muscular synergies that integrate ventilation with posture and body movement. Finally, respiration is coupled to cardiovascular function and emotion. Here, we argue that the brain can handle this all by integrating a brainstem central pattern generator circuit in a larger network that also comprises the cerebellum. Although currently not generally recognized as a respiratory control center, the cerebellum is well known for its coordinating and modulating role in motor behavior, as well as for its role in the autonomic nervous system. In this review, we discuss the role of brain regions involved in the control of respiration, and their anatomical and functional interactions. We discuss how sensory feedback can result in adaptation of respiration, and how these mechanisms can be compromised by various neurological and psychological disorders. Finally, we demonstrate how the respiratory pattern generators are part of a larger and integrated network of respiratory brain regions.


Abstract The EU Speakers' Conference has experienced a 'second youth' after the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon by playing a 'quasi-constitutional' role in inter-parliamentary cooperation, and in particular by trying to exercise a rule-making function over the many inter-parliamentary venues of the EU's system of government. The fulfilment of such a function has certainly not been made any easier as a consequence of the constitutional constraints surrounding the positions of the Speakers and Presidents of the European and Member States' (MS) Parliaments, with a considerable variety in terms of powers and decision-making capacity among the MS and the EU. Despite these limitations, the 'quasi-constitutional' role of the EU Speakers' Conference has mainly consisted of approving guidelines, if not directly rules of procedure, for other inter-parliamentary venues. It has also been argued that the coordinating function of the EU Speakers' Conference can be much more effective when looking at its 'quasi-constitutional' role, and also in its function of joint parliamentary scrutiny in the EU, if it is aimed at enhancing the rational organisation of inter-parliamentary activities in terms of timing, agendas and ex-post supervision of the results, in the absence of any other possible alternative to the Speakers' leadership.


A decade and a half on from Lord Taylor's promise that "there will be more [female judges]… and they will not all be the sisters of the Lord Chancellor!", this paper assesses the changes to the composition of the higher judiciary over this period, in terms of gender and educational, professional and socio-economic background. Descriptive statistics are presented on how these characteristics have changed over the period, for members of the High Court, Court of Appeal and House of Lords. These show only slight improvement in the representation of women and little change to the proportion educated other than at Oxbridge and public schools. Obituaries and other sources are used to illustrate the high socio-economic class, often with legal connections, into which many judges were born. To show that this is not solely, at least in respect of educational background, a result of the pool from which such judges are recruited, this paper contrasts these statistics with those of QCs appointed since 1965. It also uses event history analysis to see how these diversity characteristics have affected propensity to be appointed to the High Court and subsequently promoted during this period. Finally, to assess the potential for future increases in judicial diversity, this paper contrasts the gender and educational background of the solicitors and barristers profession and the speed of change thereto in recent years – showing both a greater diversity and rate of change with solicitors. The significantly lower rate of solicitor applicants appointed in selection exercises to the High Court is noted. The paper concludes by suggesting a reappraisal of the appointment criteria to increase the representation of solicitors and so facilitate improved judicial diversity.


Thermal energy can be better harvested and stored by integrating thermal diodes with thermal energy storage systems. Among different types of thermal diodes, jumping-droplet thermal diodes exploiting superhydrophilic and superhydrophobic surfaces yield greater thermal rectification performance (i.e. diodicity) due to high latent heat. However, the condensation heat transfer and coalescing-jumping droplets are restricted by the ability of water to nucleate on the superhydrophobic surface, leading to a limited maximum jumping height, finally resulting in degradation of diodicity of the thermal diode. To solve this problem, we propose coating hydrophilic bumps on the superhydrophobic surface which can provide preferable nucleation sites, forming a new type of nanostructured surface, called biphilic surface. This work aims to investigate coalescence-induced jumping droplets on biphilic surfaces to enhance diodicity of phase change thermal diodes. Our experimental results show that the jumping height and jumping volumetric flux of the coalescence-induced jumping droplets on a biphilic surface are enhanced by 42% and 254% compared to those on a superhydrophobic surface, respectively. Based on the jumping droplet results, a mathematical model for diodicity is built. 244% improvement can be achieved in the thermal diode with an optimized biphilic surface as compared to that with a superhydrophobic surface, which provides an effective strategy to improve the diodicity of a phase change thermal diode and an alternative approach to enhance the energy harvesting and storage capability in thermal energy storage systems.


We study the effects of competition on loan rates and portfolio-at-risk in microcredit markets using a new database from rating agencies, covering 379 microbanks located in 67 countries between 2002 and 2008. Our study reveals different competitive effects in nonprofit and for-profit microbanks. We find that for-profit microbanks charge significantly lower rates and exhibit improved portfolio-at-risk in less concentrated markets. In particular, the effect of concentration on loan rates is nearly three times the one reported in previous studies in banking. In contrast, nonprofit microbanks are relatively insensitive to changes in concentration. We control for interest rate ceilings, which very significantly reduce rates in for-profit microbanks. However, our study also uncovers a competitive interplay between for-profit and nonprofit microbanks. In particular, the PAR of nonprofit microbanks deteriorates when the proportion of profit-oriented microbanks increases. Finally, we find evidence consistent with dispersion of borrower-specific information among competing microbanks in the for-profit sector, even after controlling for the presence of credit registries.


This essay examines the history of visits made to Hungary by a group of fi rst generation 1956 refugees. The members of the group attended middle school together in Austria. Some of the refugees, who were teenagers at the time, were put into schools by the Austrian authorities in 1957. Temporary schools were established with Hungarian as the language of instruction, and the refugees were able to complete their secondary school studies without even as much as a year's delay while also learning German. Some of these students went on to seek livelihoods elsewhere, but many of them settled permanently in Austria. In the fi rst section of the essay the author offers a survey of the statistical features of emigration from Hungary following the suppression of the 1956 revolution. This is followed by an examination from the perspective of the social sciences of the reception of the wave of 1956 emigrants. Then, on the basis of interviews, the essay analyzes how the identities of the emigrants changed, the social situations in which these changes were palpable, and how their images of Hungary changed in the wake of their visits to their homeland.


Immigration is remaking the United States. In New York, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, and Chicago, the multiethnic society of tomorrow is already in place. Yet today's urban centers appear unlikely to provide newcomers with the same opportunities their predecessors found at the turn of the last century. Using the latest sources of information, this hard-hitting volume of original essays looks at the nexus between urban realities and immigrant destinies in these American cities. Strangers at the Gates tells the real story of immigrants' prospects for success today and delineates the conditions that will hinder or aid the newest Americans in their quest to get ahead. This book stresses the crucial importance of understanding that immigration today is fundamentally urban and the equally important fact that immigrants are now flocking to places where low-skilled workers--regardless of ethnic background--are in particular trouble. These two themes are at the heart of this book, which also covers a range of provocative topics, often with surprising findings. Among the essayists, Nelson Lim enters the controversy over whether and how immigrants affect the employment prospects for African Americans; Mark Ellis investigates whether low immigrant wages depress other workers' salaries; William A.V. Clark contends that immigrants seem to be experiencing downward mobility; and Min Zhou asserts that trends among second-generation immigrants are decidedly more optimistic. These well-integrated and well-organized essays sit squarely at the intersection of sociology and economics, and along the way they point out both the strengths and the weaknesses of these two disciplines in understanding immigration. Providing a theoretically and empirically comprehensive overview of the economic fate of immigrants in major American cities, this book will make a major contribution to debates over immigration and the American future.


The conventional wisdom holds that American patents have always been grants of special monopoly privileges lacking any justification in natural rights philosophy, a belief based in oft-repeated citations to Thomas Jefferson's writings on patents. Using 'privilege' as a fulcrum in its analysis, this Article reveals that the history of early American patent law has been widely misunderstood and misused. In canvassing primary historical sources, including political and legal treatises, Founders' writings, congressional reports, and long-forgotten court decisions, it explains how patent rights were defined and enforced under the social contract doctrine and labor theory of property of natural rights philosophy. In the antebellum years, patents were civil rights securing important property rights -- what natural-rights-influenced politicians and jurists called 'privileges.' This intellectual history situates the Copyright and Patent Clause, the early patent statutes, and nineteenth-century patent case law within their appropriate political and constitutional context. In so doing, it resolves many conundrums arising from misinterpretation of the historical patent privilege. Doctrinally, it explains why Congress and courts in the early nineteenth century expansively and liberally construed patent rights, and did not limit patents in the same way they narrowly construed commercial monopoly grants, such as bridge franchises. It also exposes the near-universal misuse of history by lawyers and scholars today, who rely on Jefferson as undisputed historical authority in critiquing expansive intellectual property protections today. Ultimately, the conventional wisdom is a historical myth that obscures the early development of American patent law under the meaningful guidance of natural rights philosophy.


Rationale: Various types of viable stem cells have been reported to result in modest improvement in cardiac function after acute myocardial infarction. The mechanisms for improvement from different stem cell populations remain unknown. Objective: To determine whether irradiated (nonviable) embryonic stem cells (iESCs) improve postischemic cardiac function without adverse consequences. Methods and Results: After coronary artery ligation-induced cardiac infarction, either conditioned media or male murine or male human iESCs were injected into the penumbra of ischemic myocardial tissue of female mice or female rhesus macaque monkeys, respectively. Murine and human iESCs, despite irradiation doses that prevented proliferation and induced cell death, significantly improved cardiac function and decreased infarct size compared with untreated or media-treated controls. Fluorescent in situ hybridization of the Y chromosome revealed disappearance of iESCs within the myocardium, whereas 5-bromo-2′-deoxyuridine assays revealed de novo in vivo cardiomyocyte DNA synthesis. Microarray gene expression profiling demonstrated an early increase in metabolism, DNA proliferation, and chromatin remodeling pathways, and a decrease in fibrosis and inflammatory gene expression compared with media-treated controls. Conclusions: As a result of irradiation before injection, ex vivo and in vivo iESC existence is transient, yet iESCs provide a significant improvement in cardiac function after acute myocardial infarction. The mechanism(s) of action of iESCs seems to be related to cell-cell exchange, paracrine factors, and a scaffolding effect between iESCs and neighboring host cardiomyocytes.


Abstract—The major concern in the aviation industry is the flight safety. Although great effort has been put onto the development of material and system reliability, the failure cases of fatal accidents still occur nowadays. Due to the complexity of the aviation system, and the interaction among the failure components, the failure analysis of the related equipment is a little difficult. This study focuses on surveying the failure cases in aviation, which are extracted from failure analysis journals, including Engineering Failure Analysis and Case studies in Engineering Failure Analysis, in order to obtain the failure sensitive factors or failure sensitive parts. The analytical results show that, among the failure cases, fatigue failure is the largest in number of occurrence. The most failed components are the disk, blade, landing gear, bearing, and fastener. The frequently failed materials consist of steel, aluminum alloy, superalloy, and titanium alloy. Therefore, in order to assure the safety in aviation, more attention should be paid to the fatigue failures.


In their practice every dentist is brought into a situation to treat patients with grossly impaired kidney function. Kidney diseases, whether acute or acquired, imply a number of body dysfunctions such as prolonged bleeding, high blood pressure, infection tendency etc. which, in turn, pose a threat involving serious complications in cases of dental interventions in these patients. The aim of this article is to provide a review of current dental practice in patients with kidney disease. This implies dental intervention and preparations of patients with chronic renal disease, nephritic syndrome, patients on dialysis, and patients with kidney transplants. Certainly, cooperation between the dentist and nephrologist is an imperative for the appropriate dental treatment of patients with grossly impaired renal function.


This article investigates the ways in which we might use the UCREL Semantic Annotation System (USAS) to explore pragmatic phenomena relating to verbal aggression within Old Bailey trial texts dating from the late eighteenth century. Specifically, I demonstrate how this automated system can be used to identify potential leads into what I have called an aggression space, by way of the words, phrases and multi-word units captured by six USAS semantic-field tags: speech acts (Q2.2), im/politeness (S1.2.4+/-), (lack of) respect (S7.2+/-) and violence/anger (E3-). As these semtags, as they are known, have been designed with modern data in mind, I also discuss the problems which arise when using the tool to explore historical courtroom proceedings, and outline some potential solutions to these problems.


Project management is becoming an important key process in industrial engineering in order to choose suitable and profitable projects for the companies. We have focused our interest from the manager point of view that needs quality data to make decisions about which kind of projects are more suitable for the company. But nowadays the suitability of the projects don't depend only on quantitative and monetary profits other profits are more and more relevant in the decision for choosing a project such as subjective ones (group satisfaction, cohesiveness of the group, etc.). The managers have a database with data referred to past projects but usually this database has a huge amount of data that overload the manager in order to study and detect the information he/she needs. Therefore, in this paper we propose a Data Mining process able to deal with quantitative and qualitative features using fuzzy logic (Fuzzy SQL language) to discover the knowledge that the manager needs to make decisions about the more suitable projects for the company. The Data Mining process proposed will obtain Fuzzy Functional Dependencies and Fuzzy Gradual Dependencies by using a flexible query language as the Fuzzy SQL (FSQL), which will provide the information that will support project managers decisions about which type of projects are more suitable for the company based on the projects already done and on objective and subjective features.


Analysis of two-wave coupling in cubic crystal classes 23 and 4¯3m is presented for arbitrary orientation of the grating vector and the applied electric field. We show that the most efficient two-wave coupling is achieved when both the grating vector and the external electric field are parallel to the 〈111〉 axis in the (110) crystal cut. However, beam coupling is asymmetric in this geometry: The enhancement coefficient may differ by orders of magnitude whether interacting beams propagate in the 〈110〉 direction or backwards. Because of this asymmetry, the far-field fanning patterns of photorefractive Bi12TiO20 crystals strongly depend on the direction of the pump-beam propagation. A theoretical model is able to explain main features of the observed fanning patterns if the piezoelectric and photoelastic effects are incorporated into the system of vectorial coupled-wave equations.


Evaluation in empirical computer science is essential to show progress and assess technologies developed. Several research domains such as information retrieval have long relied on systematic evaluation to measure progress: here, the Cranfield paradigm of creating shared test collections, defining search tasks, and collecting ground truth for these tasks has persisted up until now. In recent years, however, several new challenges have emerged that do not fit this paradigm very well: extremely large data sets, confidential data sets as found in the medical domain, and rapidly changing data sets as often encountered in industry. Also, crowdsourcing has changed the way that industry approaches problem-solving with companies now organizing challenges and handing out monetary awards to incentivize people to work on their challenges, particularly in the field of machine learning.
This white paper is based on discussions at a workshop on Evaluation-as-a-Service (EaaS). EaaS is the paradigm of not providing data sets to participants and have them work on the data locally, but keeping the data central and allowing access via Application Programming Interfaces (API), Virtual Machines (VM) or other possibilities to ship executables. The objective of this white paper are to summarize and compare the current approaches and consolidate the experiences of these approaches to outline the next steps of EaaS, particularly towards sustainable research infrastructures.
This white paper summarizes several existing approaches to EaaS and analyzes their usage scenarios and also the advantages and disadvantages. The many factors influencing EaaS are overviewed, and the environment in terms of motivations for the various stakeholders, from funding agencies to challenge organizers, researchers and participants, to industry interested in supplying real-world problems for which they require solutions.


The maximum clique in an undirected graph is the largest subset of  a set of graph's vertices where each pair of elements in the subset is connected. In this paper I would like to propose an algorithm for quantum computers that finds a maximum clique in an arbitrary undirected graph. An algorithm has O(|V|2 |V|/2 ) worst case time complexity and O(2 |V|/2 ) best case time complexity. Algorithm's space complexity for each case is O(|V|). An algorithm is based on a version of Grover's  quantum algorithm for finding element in an unsorted list in which there can be an unknown number of solutions.


Morphological Variability within Dictyoneurum californicum and Dictyoneurum reticulatum along a wave exposure gradient on the Monterey Peninsula by Elizabeth G. Ramsay Master of Science in Marine Science California State University Monterey Bay, 2019 The ability of kelps to change the physical characteristics of their thallus in response to their environment can be both functionally and ecologically important to the individual and their local surroundings, especially relative to variability in wave exposure. For decades, Dictyoneurum reticulatum and Dictyoneurum californicum have been studied independently along the Monterey Peninsula, where there is a well-studied wave exposure gradient. Recent genetic work has shown that these two species are genetically indistinct from one another. However, there is a deficit in the knowledge and understanding of the morphological variety within Dictyoneurum and role that wave exposure may play in determining characteristics used to distinguish species. This study tested for morphological variability within the Dictyoneurum genus to document the range of morphological traits and to determine whether or not the morphological traits were genetically fixed or plastic. Year-long observational surveys were conducted in tandem with common garden experiments along a well-established wave exposure gradient on the Monterey Peninsula. I found that depth and wave exposure determined the presence of the characteristic midrib trait, where individuals with midribs were significantly more likely to be found at sheltered sites or only at deeper depths at the exposed sites. Individuals that grew in clumps were also significantly more likely to lack a midrib and split completely through the lamina versus individuals that grew solitarily, that more likely had a midrib and did not split at all. The results based on midrib and splitting presence were most significant at the intermediate sites, whereas the two extreme sites did not show that much diversity in morphological traits. There was no significant difference in growth or morphological characteristics throughout the common garden experiment, suggesting that the morphological characteristics of the midrib and splitting were not genetically fixed. The results of my study suggest that the morphological characteristic of the midrib that is currently used to distinguish between D. californicum and D. reticulatum is plastic and therefore, should no longer be used for species identification for this genus.


Pure Vitis vinifera cultivars do not grow well in the midwestern United States. The expanding wine industry in this region relies on European hybrid grapes or on native grapes and hybrids such as Norton and Cynthiana. Very little is known regarding the content of beneficial phytochemicals in these hybrids. Such compounds include monomeric flavan-3-ols (e.g., (+)-catechin) and oligomeric and polymeric compounds derived therefrom, which are concentrated in the seeds; grape seed extracts are therefore used as antioxidant dietary supplements. Eight European hybrid grapes and Norton grapes, all grown at the same location in eastern Missouri, were screened for seed (+)-catechin, (−)-epicatechin, and gallic acid content. A broad range of variation was observed; the best-yielding hybrid cultivar, XI 1-86, contained 6.12 mg/g dry defatted seed weight (+)-catechin and 5.48 mg/g (−)-epicatechin, significantly more than found in Chardonnay seed using similar methods. Use of cultivars that display superior phytochemical content in a given region may increase the opportunity to supply raw materials to the dietary supplement industry.


Until recently, learners with intellectual disability were legislatively marginalised from participation in mainstream education in South Africa. Since the advent of democracy in South Africa in 1994, legislation has been passed and education policy developed which supports the inclusion of learners with intellectual disability in mainstream secondary schools. This research was prompted by a problem situation which occurred in the Western Cape of South Africa when it became apparent that many learners described as having mild intellectual disability could not be accommodated within the School of Skills (previously a Special Secondary School) to which they had applied. The purpose of the research has been to evaluate the implementation of a programme of support developed collaboratively between various stakeholders to allow for the inclusion of these learners within six urban mainstream secondary schools. Through its guiding transformative theoretical framework and its evolving design, the evaluation of the programme has attempted to be as inclusive as possible. It has used qualitative research methods in order to seek out the views and encourage the participation of diverse stakeholders; from the learners whose social and academic wellbeing and advancement have been the central focus of this study, to individuals representing various systems surrounding these learners. In order to do justice to the complexity of the programme implementation and evaluation process and to identify and accurately represent common themes and categories which emerged over time, data transformation has been emphasised in three different ways; namely a description, an analysis and an interpretation. The observations and themes which have emerged from this evaluation have highlighted various factors which were seen to advance or impede the inclusion of learners with mild intellectual disability in the six secondary schools; the extent to which the learners' social and academic wellbeing had been advanced by the programme; and the degree to which problem solving was evident in the participating secondary schools and the local education authority. Prolonged and sustained engagement in a process of programme development, implementation and evaluation suggests that positive educational and social transformation is enabled when stakeholders are given the time and space to reflect upon their intentions and practice.


In this Article, we highlight for the first time some of the significant but hitherto unrecognized behavioral effects of copyright law on individuals' incentives to create and then examine the implications of our findings for the constitutional analysis of Eldred v. Ashcroft. We show that behavioral biases - namely, individuals' optimistic bias regarding their future longevity and their subadditive judgments in circumstances resembling the extant rule of copyright duration - explain the otherwise puzzling lifetime-plus-years basis for copyright protection given to individual authors, and reveal how this regime provides superior incentives to create. Thus, insofar as the provision of increased incentives to individual authors is socially desirable, a lifetime-plus-years rule is a more effective legal means of accomplishing this goal than a rule based on a fixed term of years of a comparable expected duration. We also find, however, that the behavioral efficacy of a lifetime-plus-years regime does not apply to the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), which merely extends the "years" component of an already existing lifetime-plus-years rule. Drawing on empirical findings on intertemporal choice, as well as our preceding analysis of the lifetime-plus-years regime and our own experimental tests, we determine that the CTEA's prospective extension provides negligible additional incentives to individual authors. We conclude the extension is unjustified on incentive-provision grounds, a finding of relevance to the Court's determination in Eldred v. Ashcroft of the constitutionality of the CTEA under the Copyright Clause.


To examine the role of the laryngeal reflex in modulating cardiorespiratory function, we stimulated the superior laryngeal nerves (SLN) bilaterally in unanesthetized, chronically instrumented piglets (n = 10, age 5-14 days). The SLN were placed in cuff electrodes and wires were exteriorized in the neck for stimulation. A cannula placed in the aorta was used for blood pressure recording and arterial blood sampling. During each experiment, 1-2 days after surgery, ventilation was recorded using whole-body plethysmography, and electroencephalogram and electrocardiogram were recorded after acute subcutaneous electrode placement. After base-line recordings, the SLN were electrically stimulated for 1 h. During this period, mean respiratory frequency decreased by 40-75% and apneas of 10-15 s were regularly interspersed between single breaths or clusters of breaths. Periods of breathing were always associated with opening of the eyes and generally with head and body movements, an awakening that occurred every 10-15 s. At 1 h into the stimulus period, minute ventilation had decreased by 57 +/- 7% (mean +/- SE), arterial partial pressure of O2 (PaO2) by 68 +/- 3 Torr, and arterial partial pressure of CO2 (PaCO2) had increased by 19 +/- 2 Torr. Throughout the entire stimulus period, mean blood pressure and average heart rate were maintained within 12% of base line. We suggest that: low-threshold SLN afferents exert primarily respiratory effects and only minor cardiovascular effects; breathing during laryngeal reflex activation is sustained by an arousal system; and the laryngeal reflex does not pose an imminent threat to the unanesthetized, awake, young animal.


This edition publishes for the first time a little-known work on improving England's economy, written around 1706 and presented to Queen Anne on the eve of the parliamentary Union of England and Scotland. As such it contributed to a growing body of writing about managing the economy in Britain. That the work has often been overlooked is partly because its author, Nehemiah Grew, is best known as a botanist and as a medic. But his distinctive voice and decided views warrant wider appreciation. In part his unusual contribution to economic literature arose from his involvement in the early Royal Society, founded in 1660, informing as it did his view of England's material potential and how it might best be exploited. But he was also suspicious of people's motivations and was certain that the state had to regulate lives to a significant degree if society was to be as productive as possible. If Grew's religious beliefs were important here, it is also clear that he had read amongst contemporary writings on economic matters. Certainly, his work ranges widely, from natural resources to human capital, agriculture to industry, internal trade to overseas commerce. Sir William Petty was an especially important influence upon him, though he eschewed Petty's methodological emphasis upon 'political arithmetic'. Indeed, Grew's assumptions and conclusions prove very questionable when their statistical implications are worked through. Nonetheless, the work reminds us of the importance of blind alleys and false dawns in the history of early 'political economy'.


Introduction The Internet has evolved into the most used of all communication media. Increasing numbers of Americans use the Internet for research and communication (Pew, 2005). Accordingly, publishers and libraries increasingly make information available electronically via the Internet to users. A common example of such development is the electronic book, also known as an e-book. To read an e-book, the user needs a computer or a handheld display device. E-books have the following advantages: they can be distributed globally via the Internet; they are cheap to publish and share; and they do not need storage space. Gall (2005) reported from a 2002 consumer survey on e-books that "67 percent of respondents wanted to read an e-book, and 62 percent wanted that access to be from a library." Peek (2005) reported that new technologies would support and enhance the use of e-books. For these reasons, many believe that e-books have the potential to replace traditional books in the future (Emke, 2005). Even as e-book usage appears to be on the rise, there are reports about their limitations. Safley (2006) discusses that the acceptance of electronic publications depends on the immediacy of information need. For example, electronic reference books and journals provide an easy way to find quick answers for users, but users experience discomfort reading an entire electronic monograph. Thus the usage of electronic reference books is significantly high, but that of electronic monographs is substantially low in academic settings (Anuradha & Usha, 2006). Accordingly, academic libraries have been increasingly providing access to electronic reference books. Like many academic libraries, Kansas State University (K-State) Libraries have provided access to a considerable number of e-books over the past several years. The e-book reference collection includes encyclopedias, directories, dictionaries, and so on. Vendors such as netLibrary, Dekker, Gale, and ABC-Clio offer electronic reference books as part of electronic book packages. Because reference e books are accessed electronically, K-State librarians refer to these books as e-Reference books or eReference resources. Problem Promoting e-Reference collections is an important issue for libraries. K-State Libraries has been acquiring an increasing number of e-books, including resources that were previously available only in print. K-State Libraries' e-Reference resources were going largely undiscovered because the titles were listed individually in the Libraries' Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) but were not visible on a shelf in the reference collection like their traditional print counterparts. User feedback received at reference services points indicated that although e-Reference titles could be found by searching the library's catalog, only skilled searchers had the ability to discover them and there was no easy method for browsing the Libraries' e-Reference collection. Reference librarians were adamant that the hidden eReference resources had to be brought to the limelight. K-State Libraries needed to find a way to make electronic reference books more accessible and visible to patrons. Method In the past, static lists of available reference books were created using HTML and published on the library's website. However, the idea of maintaining static HTML lists for e-Reference books was strongly rejected because creating and updating such lists would be cumbersome, inefficient, and time intensive. Therefore, K-State librarians decided to create a dynamic e-Reference web page to facilitate easy browsing of the collections. Inspired by Steve Shadle's presentation at the 1999 Annual Conference of the North American Serials Interest Group, K-State librarians developed a dynamic search to pull e-Reference lists via the Voyager OPAC. Unlike the methodology employed at the University of Washington by Shadle and his colleagues, K-State Libraries' implementation does not require the use of programmers to create template-based web pages from sophisticated SQL queries. …


A. S. Byatt's Possession: A Romance (1990) is centrally concerned with etiology. The narrative traces the adventures of two present-day literary scholars, Roland and Maud, in their joint quest for the story about the relationship of two fictional nineteenth-century poets, R. H. Ash and Christabel LaMotte. A series of remarkable discoveries reveals that Ash and LaMotte corresponded, had a brief affair, and conceived a child. At the climactic moment Maud discovers that she herself is directly descended from their daughter. Another character observes, "'How strange for you, Maud, to turn out to be descended from both how strangely appropriate to have been exploring all along the myth--no, the truth--of your own origins'" (547). On one level the novel is the story of a woman's unwitting search for her origins; intricately woven throughout the text, however, in the fictional documents, both contemporary and Victorian, that fill it, is a pervasive attention to the myths--or truths--of the origins of humanity, of myth, and of poetry. In the poetry and letters of Ash and LaMotte and in the "real life" experiences of Roland and Maud, the tropes of garden, man, woman, tree, fruit, and serpent appear and reappear with original as well as familiar meanings. (1) Byatt's book also reflects a major concern with the activity of reading, including professional reading institutionalized as literary scholarship. In fact, Byatt has described Possession as being "about the relations between readers and writers" ("Reader as Writer" 10). Her characters, often representing various schools of criticism, continuously negotiate their relationships with prior texts. As she ventriloquizes their poetry, private writings, and literary criticism, Byatt imagines her characters in dialogue with their literary forbears. The novel's inter- and intra-textuality, frequently remarked on by critics, give rise to an elaborate system of allusion that evokes many, if not most, of the major poets in English. Given this dual preoccupation with literary history and with myths of origin, it is unsurprising that Byatt makes John Milton, the preeminent poet of cosmogony in English, a major figure in the imaginations of her characters. (2) I argue that Byatt gives significant attention in her novel to a conscious reinscription of Milton, in that several key characters refer specifically and often to Milton as a way of positioning themselves theologically and artistically. In effect, Milton comes to stand in for Christian orthodoxy in the novel, and the nineteenth-century characters' ways of reading Milton allow Byatt to explore various Victorian modes of responding to the challenges to Christianity posed by nineteenth-century developments in science and culture. Byatt's disposition toward these responses further parallels her own use of mythic tropes to suggest a deliberate revision of the Genesis narrative, a revision in which transgression brings not death but life. In this manner she privileges Enlightenment humanism in contrast to Christian dogma and morality; however, the modernist orientation of this project is to some extent qualified by the postmodern reading performed by her characters. Ultimately, Byatt's multifaceted engagement with Milton's poetry and poetics reveals how modern and postmodern norms exist in tension within her novel. The novel's three central nineteenth-century characters each record obliquely their reactions to Milton and the orthodoxy he represents: R. H. Ash, a popular poet and formidable intellectual; his conventional, timid wife Ellen Ash; and the reclusive but fiercely independent poet Christabel LaMotte. The reader meets each of them through the documents they leave behind--their correspondence, poetry, and journals, all of course ventriloquized by Byatt. Each character becomes a paradigmatic case of a different type of Victorian response to scientific and historical challenges to Christianity. Ash, the omnivorous intellectual well read in contemporary science as well as literature and philosophy, dismisses the truth claims of orthodox Christian doctrine in a Comptean view of history. …


Pattern recognition and machine learning techniques are also used in adversarial settings, like biometric authentication, network intrusion detection, and spam filtering, in which intelligent and adaptive adversaries may manipulate data to undermine their operation. This behaviour raises three main open problems: (i) understanding potential vulnerabilities of pattern recognition techniques; (ii) evaluating their security, namely, the performance degradation under the corresponding attacks; and (iii) developing pattern recognition systems robust to attacks. In this work we summarize our contributions to the field, in particular, to the security evaluation of classifiers in adversarial settings. We shortly discuss the main aspects of a framework which we have recently proposed to address this issue, and present three examples in the above mentioned applications. Further, we briefly discuss our experimental findings related to the security of multimodal biometric systems, where fake biometric traits can be used to mislead user verification. These results were obtained in the context of the FP 7 European Project "Tabula Rasa", in which our research group is involved.