We analyze the socio-economic determinants of youth decision to internally migrate in Senegal. Young people undertake mostly rural-to-rural and urban-to-urban migrations and over half of them are temporary migrants. Using multinomial logit models, we estimate the role of household and community characteristics during childhood in later youth migration decisions. We find that these determinants are heterogeneous by gender and destination. The higher the fathers' education the more (less) likely are their daughters to move to urban (rural) areas. Young individuals, who spend their childhood in better off households, are more likely to move to urban areas. Also, the presence of younger siblings increases the propensity of moving to rural areas. Access to primary schools during childhood decreases the likelihood of migrating to urban areas for both men and women.


In this paper we define the method used to merge high resolution multi-sensor chlorophyll-a data on the Ireland-Biscay-Iberia Regional Ocean Observing System (IBI-ROOS) area at a resolution of 0.015°. The method is based on geostatistics and is known as kriging. The merged variable is the anomaly of chlorophyll-a, the anomaly being defined for a day as the difference between the daily image and the mean historical field for that day. The used chlorophyll-a dataset is derived from the daily level-2 water leaving radiances of the Sea-viewing Wide Field of View Sensor (SeaWiFS) of the Orbview platform, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) of the Aqua platform and the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer Instrument (MERIS) of the ENVISAR platform are obtained using specific algorithm developed by Ifremer, known as OC5 products. Before merging, each satellite-derived chlorophyll-a data have been compared to in situ data and validated using a matchup dataset. After this validation against in situ data, inter-comparisons between the satellite datasets have been performed. As the chlorophyll-a anomaly is not stationary on the whole area, local space-time semi-variograms have been calculated. These semi-variograms are defined by their nugget effect (noise), range (maximum distance for a non null covariance between the anomalies) and sill (maximum variance). The ranges of the semi-variograms have been approximated using local estimations on a regular grid. The nuggets and the sills have been deduced from the square of the mean of the chlorophyll-a concentration (the historical mean reference) as there is a classical proportionality effect between the square of the chlorophyll-a mean, the variance of the distribution and the parameters of the semi-variograms. Compared to each original product, the analysis shows a complete coverage and equivalent uncertainties in the retrieved variables and offers number of applications for environmental monitoring such as the application of the Water Framework Directive.


The American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) is joining forces with the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) in establishing a pilot program for Recognition of Focused Practice (RFP) in hospital medicine. This pilot was approved by the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) Board of Directors on September 23, 2009.

Recognition of Focused Practice (RFP) in hospital medicine will utilize the current maintenance of certification framework and would be the first customized maintenance of certification (MOC) pathway that draws heavily on practice-based learning as its foundation. The pilot would engage hospitalists in uniquely designed Part II, Part III, and Part IV tools that will be developed by the ABFM and ABIM.

Recent statistics indicate rapid growth and development in the field of hospital medicine, with about 20,000 hospitalists in the United States. "Given the significant number of family physicians working exclusively in the hospital setting, our board of directors felt it important to participate fully in this pilot with the ABIM," said James C. Puffer, MD, President and CEO of the ABFM. "We envision working together closely to develop the special tools used by our diplomates in this customized MOC pathway."

In order to attain hospital medicine recognition, ABFM Diplomates must complete residency training in family medicine, be certified in family medicine, and participate in a practice that focuses primarily on hospital medicine for a minimum of 3 years. Diplomates interested in pursuing RFP may apply to the program in 2010. Approval for the program requires an attestation by the Diplomate and a senior hospital officer that the Diplomate meets thresholds for family medicine practice in the hospital setting and professional commitment to hospital medicine.

Program requirements for ABFM Recognition of Focused Practice in Hospital Medicine will include the following:

Certification by the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM)—Diplomates must be in good standing and must maintain their primary certification in family medicine by the ABFM

Currently valid, full, and unrestricted license to practice medicine in the United States or Canada

ACLS certification

Minimum of 3 years of hospital medicine experience

Attestation by the Diplomate and a senior hospital officer that the Diplomate meets thresholds for family medicine practice in the hospital setting and professional commitment to hospital medicine

Maintenance of certification activity comprised of self-assessment of medical knowledge and practice performance relevant to hospital medicine

Passing an ABFM MOC examination in hospital medicine

Completion of the program would identify Diplomates as certified in family medicine with focused practice in hospital medicine. The pilot program will begin in the fall of 2010.


This article traces the developments within history textbook research as presented at the 2009 conference of the International Society for History Didactics (ISHD), held in cooperation with the Georg Eckert Institute for International Text- book Research in Braunschweig, Germany. The article claims that signifi cant devel- opments reveal school historiography to be a challenged area for history didactics. Key concepts and theoretical frames require further discussion in order to develop history didactics not only as an area for social and political responsibilities but also as a theoretical discipline. Keywordshistory didactics, history education, history textbooks, methodology, multimodal text, school historiography, school narrative, textbook research


Christian apologists, like Willian Lane Craig and Stephen T. Davis, argue that belief in Jesus' resurrection is reasonable because it provides the best explanation of the available evidence. In this article, I refute that thesis. To do so, I lay out how the logic of inference to the best explanation (IBE) operates, including what good explanations must be and do by definition, and then apply IBE to the issue at hand. Multiple explanations—including (what I will call) The Resurrection Hypothesis, The Lie Hypothesis, The Coma Hypothesis, The Imposter Hypothesis, and The Legend Hypothesis—will be considered. While I will not attempt to rank them all from worst to best, what I will reveal is how and why The Legend Hypothesis is unquestionably the best explanation, and The Resurrection Hypothesis is undeniably the worst. Consequently, not only is Craig and Davis' conclusion mistaken, but belief in the literal resurrection of Jesus is irrational. In presenting this argument, I do not take myself to be breaking new ground; Robert Cavin and Carlos Colombetti have already presented a Bayesian refutation of Craig and Davis' arguments. But I do take myself to be presenting an argument that the average person (and philosopher) can follow. It is my goal for the average person (and philosopher) to be able to clearly understand how and why the hypothesis "God supernaturally raised Jesus from the dead" fails utterly as an explanation of the evidence that Christian apologist cite for Jesus' resurrection.


The global drive to provide universal access to sustainable and modern energy by 2030 is creating numerous opportunities for energy users and suppliers. However, men and women do not benefit equally from these opportunities. As users, they have different energy needs linked to their different gender roles. Gender blindness in the sector has led to women's needs often being ignored. As suppliers, the energy sector has traditionally been male dominated. Despite stark gender differences in the energy sector, there has been a lack of evidence to inform more equitable policymaking. This issue of the IDS Bulletin aims to fill some of these evidence gaps through five original papers, part of ENERGIA's Gender and Energy Research Programme. The issue pays particular attention to women's involvement in the supply chain as energy entrepreneurs, an emerging area of research in the gender and energy space.


Originally developed for military flight simulators in the 1990s, the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ) has been widely adopted to quantify sickness elicited by modern virtual reality systems. We illustrate the inherent challenges of applying the SSQ in virtual reality research and highlight large differences that can be found in related work. Based on our observations, we conclude by providing suggestions on how to improve the expressiveness of SSQ results in future studies and encourage researchers to consider simpler measurement methods if their research questions allow.


Machine learning with application to questions in the physical sciences has become a widely used tool, successfully applied to classification, regression and optimization tasks in many areas. Research focus mostly lies in improving the accuracy of the machine learning models in numerical predictions, while scientific understanding is still almost exclusively generated by human researchers analysing numerical results and drawing conclusions. In this work, we shift the focus on the insights and the knowledge obtained by the machine learning models themselves. In particular, we study how it can be extracted and used to inspire human scientists to increase their intuitions and understanding of natural systems. We apply gradient boosting in decision trees to extract human-interpretable insights from big data sets from chemistry and physics. In chemistry, we not only rediscover widely know rules of thumb but also find new interesting motifs that tell us how to control solubility and energy levels of organic molecules. At the same time, in quantum physics, we gain new understanding on experiments for quantum entanglement. The ability to go beyond numerics and to enter the realm of scientific insight and hypothesis generation opens the door to use machine learning to accelerate the discovery of conceptual understanding in some of the most challenging domains of science.


In focus is the emic perspective on cause/s of tuberculosis. The ethnographic data is from two major studies in one and the same community in the Hill district of Pyuthan, in the Mid-Western Development Region. The findings show a pooling of old and new influences with a dazzling plurality of thoughts and ideas within a framework of great uncertainty. Moreover, changes in perceptions over the last decade and an half are quite marginal. For health workers to function efficiently the perceived causes of patients and their communities need to be understood and taken into account. Himalayan Journal of Sociology & Anthropology - Vol. VII (2016), Page: 175-197


In order to define the complex interactions between external stimuli and nonlinear physiological systems, a technique (the frequency-tracking locus, FTL) was devised that describes the cycle-by-cycle changes in phase angle and amplitude between 2 signals. Qualitative assessment of the nature of interactions between the signals can be made by examining the FTL Quantitation of the extent of entrainment of the spontaneous physiological rhythm is possible after deriving a numerical index (the path-length index, PLI) describing the departure of the system from a fully entrained state. The FTL was applied to the study of interactions between spontaneous respiratory effort and mechanical inflation in preterm newborn babies undergoing mechanical ventilation. Stable and unstable states of 1:1 interaction were noted while integer-ratio relationships were seen at low rates of mechanical ventilation. Stable states of entrainment corresponded to a PLI value near unity, and the value of PLI increased rapidly as interaction became unstable. The FTL may be used to describe complex interactions in physiological systems, and may be used as a guide to baby-ventilator matching during mechanical ventilation of the newborn.


Ultrafast X-ray absorption near edge spectroscopy has been carried out for photo excited iron pentacarbonyl in ethanol with 2 picosecond resolution. A temporal resolution limited dissociation process was observed, followed by the formation of the mono-substituted complex Fe(CO)(4)EtOH within a few tens of picoseconds. The measurements have been carried out with a newly developed X-ray absorption instrument at station 7 ID-C of the Advanced Photon Source. The results show that single picosecond temporal resolution can be achieved at a synchrotron beam line.


Allan H. Meltzer's critically acclaimed history of the Federal Reserve is the most ambitious, most intensive, and most revealing investigation of the subject ever conducted. Its first volume, published to widespread critical acclaim in 2003, spanned the period from the institution's founding in 1913 to the restoration of its independence in 1951. This two-part second volume of the history chronicles the evolution and development of this institution from the Treasury–Federal Reserve accord in 1951 to the mid-1980s, when the great inflation ended. It reveals the inner workings of the Fed during a period of rapid and extensive change. An epilogue discusses the role of the Fed in resolving our current economic crisis and the needed reforms of the financial system. In rich detail, drawing on the Federal Reserve's own documents, Meltzer traces the relation between its decisions and economic and monetary theory, its experience as an institution independent of politics, and its role in tempering inflation. He explains, for example, how the Federal Reserve's independence was often compromised by the active policy-making roles of Congress, the Treasury Department, different presidents, and even White House staff, who often pressured the bank to take a short-term view of its responsibilities. With an eye on the present, Meltzer also offers solutions for improving the Federal Reserve, arguing that as a regulator of financial firms and lender of last resort, it should focus more attention on incentives for reform, medium-term consequences, and rule-like behavior for mitigating financial crises. Less attention should be paid, he contends, to command and control of the markets and the noise of quarterly data. At a time when the United States finds itself in an unprecedented financial crisis, Meltzer's fascinating history will be the source of record for scholars and policy makers navigating an uncertain economic future.


This chapter looks at the work of a team of remote workers and how they have developed into a Community of Practice (CoP). It explores the roles that technology and communication methods have on the formation and development of the community. In telling the story of the progression from a team of individuals to a CoP, the chapter provides a practical guide to others wishing to do the same. Two aspects of the work of the team are considered in depth: 1) Building Communication Systems across a Distributed CoP 2) Building commitment, ownership, engagement and focus in a Distributed CoP The team and community on which the chapter is based is one of some 20 people working remotely for Ultralab, a learning, technology and research centre in Chelmsford UK. The work of the team is online facilitation for the National College of School Leadership (NCSL). The team meet together approximately four times a year, using an online community space, the Facilitators' Forum, as their day-to-day working space.


The paper analyzes the situation of clusters in Romania and their areas of activity and innovation in entrepreneurship Romanian state. It is made also a territorial distribution of clusters on the eight regions. The findings lead to the conclusion that there are some clusters that have the vocation to become poles of competitiveness in areas such as renewable energy, automotive, electronics, health, biotechnology, mechatronics or ICT (Information and Communication Technology) which represent the resources for future of the Romanian economy. Regarding the degree of innovation of Romanian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), the level is relatively modest, 30.8% of all enterprises being innovative. If we were to answer the question the title suggests, we would say "yes" to both since the innovative cluster as well as the competitiveness pole promotes par excellence, innovation through study, research and stimulation of creativity. And this is more than enough to support economic growth of Romania and maintain the competitiveness worldwide.


Partly on the strength of their apparent success in insurgencies such as Malaya and Northern Ireland, the British armed forces have long been perceived as world class, if not world-beating. However, their recent performance in Iraq and Afghanistan is widely seen as - at best - disappointing; under British control, Basra degenerated into a lawless city riven with internecine violence, while tactical mistakes and strategic incompetence in Helmand province resulted in heavy civilian and military casualties and a climate of violence and insecurity. In both cases the British were eventually and humiliatingly bailed out by the US army. In this thoughtful and compellingly readable book, Frank Ledwidge examines the British involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking how and why it went so wrong. With the aid of copious research, interviews with senior officers and his own personal experiences, he looks in detail at the failures of strategic thinking and culture that led to defeat in Britain's latest 'small wars'. This is an eye-opening analysis of the causes of military failure, and its enormous costs.


Recent findings suggest that posterior parietal cortex (PPC) represents information retrieved from long-term and short-term memory. However, the nature and quality of parietal memory representations remain largely unknown. Here, we tested whether exemplar-level details of perceived and remembered stimuli are represented in PPC, using a recently developed method that allows for individual face images to be reconstructed from fMRI activity patterns (Cowen, Chun, & Kuhl, 2014). The experiment consisted of two phases: perception and working memory. During the perception phase, participants viewed hundreds of faces while performing a continuous recognition task, where they judged whether each image was repeated within a block or not. For the working memory phase, we employed a retro-cue paradigm (Harrison & Tong, 2009) in which two faces were presented in rapid succession followed by a cue to maintain one of the two faces. We first tested whether individual faces can be reconstructed from PPC activity patterns elicited during perception. We estimated a regression model that mapped face components to multi-voxel activity patterns using a set of training faces. Reconstructions were then generated for a distinct set of test faces by taking linear combinations of the predicted component weights. Reconstructions created from PPC were more similar to the actually viewed face than other test faces, indicating that PPC distinguishes individual face images. We further explored whether we could reconstruct faces retrieved from working memory. We trained the model on the perception phase data and applied it to the patterns obtained during the working memory delay period. Reconstructions generated from the delay period activity in PPC exhibited above-chance similarity to the original face, suggesting that the contents of memory can be reconstructed from PPC activity patterns. Together, these findings indicate that PPC activity patterns reflect exemplar-level details of visual stimuli during perception and retrieval from memory. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


What is politics? Is it a universal feature of all human societies, past and present? Is it tied to specific institutional arenas? Or is it found in all groups and organizations, large or small, formal or informal? This new textbook seeks to provide answers to these important questions. Starting with what it means to 'think politically', the book goes on to explore a wide range of meanings attributed to the concept of politics from a variety of perspectives and theoretical traditions. It offers succinct and coherent overviews by some of the foremost scholars in the field, and each invites the reader to see the activity of politics in a distinctive way. Topics covered include politics as a form of rule, feminist approaches to politics, Marxism and politics, the politics of human behaviour, environmental politics, politics as collective choice, and Islam and politics. Written with the new student in mind, this concise introduction to the study and activity of politics is essential reading for all those coming to the discipline for the first time.


Purpose: This study aims at analyzing the role of empowerment of Green IT in SMEs and social capital of the creativity and innovation of creative SMEs in Bantul, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Design/methodology/approach: A statistical technique used in the present study was Partial Least Square . The primary data of the present research were obtained from questionnaires and interviews with some respondents. While secondary data were gained through the records and publications of related instancies. Findings: The research concluded that the empowerment of Green IT provides a significant role in creativity and innovation as well as social capital, and at the same time it also supplies a significant role in innovation. Research limitations/implications: . This study is proposed to fill the research gap and at the same time to emphasize the importance of the creative empowerment of SMEs in Indonesia in adopting Green IT and that they are not only ready to make use of Green IT. Green IT empowerment and social capital in the creative SMEs play an important function ingenerating of creativity and innovation in the Yogyakarta's creative SMEs. Creative industries which capitalize creative ideas and skills are expected to positively contribute to support the national economy. Practical implications: Creative SMEs grow and develop rapidly here and form clusters of creative industries in accordance with the resources of each cluster. Originality/value: This paper is a first attempt to overlook the significant role of green IT empowerment in SMEs' rapid development in Yogyakarta, a growing province in economic sector in Indonesia. The result of the study is expected to lead other similar research which in the future will craft out the role of economic development and the use of environmental friendly material of production.


Published by the Princeton University Press in 2014, this book 'GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History' written by Diane Coyle is a seminal work that helps understand how GDP has played a pivotal role throughout the last century in reorganizing the global economic and political relations. Cognizant of the multidimensional implications of taking GDP as the sole measure of development, the author broadens readers' horizon on the idea of growth, development and social welfare. The book gains its authenticity not only by providing a consciousness on the discursive power of GDP, but also through historicising the GDP with its subjective and context dependent nature against universalising GDP as the ultimate measure of social welfare.


In South Africa women are discharged from maternity wards 24 hours after normal deliveries. The result is that postnatal care is provided by family members and grandmothers who are often assisted by traditional birth attendants and traditional healers. The purpose of this study was to explore, describe and document the indigenous practices regarding postnatal care. A qualitative, exploratory, descriptive and contextual research approach was used. Study results revealed that traditional birth attendants were concerned about the wellbeing of postnatal women, prevention of complications, maintenance of good nutrition, enhanced wellbeing, exclusion of evil spirits and the resumption of sexual relations. It is recommended that there should be enhanced collaboration between traditional birth attendants and midwives.


Light is unsurpassed in its ability to modulate biological interactions. Since their discovery, chemists have been fascinated by photosensitive molecules capable of switching between isomeric forms, known as photoswitches. Photoswitchable peptides have been recognized for many years; however, their functional implementation in biological systems has only recently been achieved. Peptides are now acknowledged as excellent protein-protein interaction modulators and have been important in the emergence of photopharmacology. In this review, we briefly explain the different classes of photoswitches and summarize structural studies when they are incorporated into peptides. Importantly, we provide a detailed overview of the rapidly increasing number of examples, where biological modulation is driven by the structural changes. Furthermore, we discuss some of the remaining challenges faced in this field. These exciting proof-of-principle studies highlight the tremendous potential of photocontrollable peptides as optochemical tools for chemical biology and biomedicine.


Despite the rise of medical interventions to address behavioral issues in childhood, the social determinants of their use remain poorly understood. By analyzing a dataset that includes the majority of prescriptions written for stimulants in the United States, we find a substantial effect of schooling on stimulant use. In middle and high school, adolescents are roughly 30 percent more likely to have a stimulant prescription filled during the school year than during the summer. Socioeconomically advantaged children are more likely than their less advantaged peers to selectively use stimulants only during the academic year. These differences persist when we compare higher and lower socioeconomic status children seeing the same doctors. We link these responses to academic pressure by exploiting variation between states in educational accountability system stringency. We find the largest differences in school year versus summer stimulant use in states with more accountability pressure. School-based selective stimulant use is most common among economically advantaged children living in states with strict accountability policies. Our study uncovers a new pathway through which medical interventions may act as a resource for higher socioeconomic status families to transmit educational advantages to their children, either intentionally or unwittingly.


To develop gas hydrates as a potential energy source, geophysical surveys and geological studies of gas hydrates in the Ulleung Basin, East Sea off the east coast of Korea have been carried out since 1997. Bottom-simulating reflector (BSR), initially used indicator for the potential presence of gas hydrates was first identified on seismic data acquired in 1998. Based on the early results of preliminary R&D project, 12367 km of 2D multichannel reflection seismic lines, 38 piston cores, and multi-beam echo-sounder data were collected from 2000 to 2004. The cores showed high amounts of total organic carbon and high residual hydrocarbon gas levels. Gas composition and isotope ratios define it as of primarily biogenic origin. In addition to the BSRs that are widespread across the basin, numerous chimney structures were found in seismic data. These features indicate a high potential of the Ulleung Basin to host significant amounts of gas hydrate. Dedicated geophysical surveys, geological and experimental studies were carried out culminating in two deep drilling expeditions, completed in 2007 and 2010. Sediment coring (including pressure coring), and a comprehensive well log program complements the regional studies and were used for a resource assessment. Two targets for a future test-production are currently proposed: pore-filling gas hydrate in sand-dominated sediments and massive occurrences of gas hydrate within chimney-like structures. An environmental impact study has been launched to evaluate any potential risks to production. Article history: Received 6 February 2017 Revised 14 September 2017 Accepted 21 October 2017


Title of Dissertation: NANOPATTERNED BLOCK COPOLYMERS FOR USE AS VASCULAR BIOMATERIALS Joshua S. Silverstein, Doctor of Philosophy, 2012 Directed By: Professor Peter Kofinas Fischell Department of Bioengineering Manipulation of surface topography or chemistry has been a growing trend in efforts to enhance the properties of medical devices. Understanding the interactions of biomolecules with nanoengineered surfaces is vital to assess the safety and efficacy of devices that incorporate these structures. In this dissertation, a model block copolymer (BCP) system based on poly(styrene)-block-poly(1,2-butadiene) was systematically modified using photochemical thiol-ene chemistry. Poly(1,2butadiene) molecular weight and thiol-ene ratios were systematically varied based on a model monomer, boc-cysteamine, to determine the efficiency of the reaction. The results demonstrate the polydispersity index of modified BCPs significantly increased when low thiol-ene ratios were employed and sometimes induced gelation of the reacted polymers. Using a tenfold excess of thiol, functionalizations between 60-90% were obtained for an acid, amine, amide, and a pharmaceutical with a pendant thiol. Calorimetry showed a 30-60 °C increase in the glass transition temperature of the daughter polymers. Subsequently, films were cast from solvents found suitable to forming self-assembled BCP thin films. The synthetic and processing approach allows for the formation of nanopatterned block copolymer films with controlled chemistries from a single source material. The BCPs were further characterized using water contact angle measurements and atomic force microscopy in liquid. Significantly decreased contact angles were caused by selective swelling of charged BCP domains. Protein (fibrinogen, albumin, cytochrome C, immunoglobulin G) adsorption experiments were conducted under static and dynamic conditions with a quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation. The results indicate that nanopatterned chemistry and experimental conditions strongly impact adsorption dynamics. Adsorption behavior was dependent both on protein structure and the characteristics of the surface. Depending on the structural stability of the protein, polyelectrolyte surfaces significantly increased adsorption over uncharged controls. NANOPATTERNED BLOCK COPOLYMERS FOR USE AS VASCULAR BIOMATERIALS


This paper is the result of research carried out as a SAMReN research fellow in Bangladesh between June and November 2005. It attempts to describe a relatively new migration flow from Bangladesh that has not attracted much academic study before. It attempts to analyse the geopolitical developments in both the source and destination countries that have led to this flow. It attempts to analyse the reasons behind the emergence of this migration pattern, the nature of the often clandestine migration routes and the people behind them. This research builds on research carried out in Madrid in 2004 and extends it on the basis of interviews with migrants, return migrants and experts in Bangladesh and extensive literature, internet and press research. Migrants from Bangladesh to Italy and Spain appear from previous studies in Madrid and Rome to come from a distinct socio-economic group; they are relatively well educated and relatively affluent. Here, this finding is tested in Bangladesh. The results appear to confirm that there is a 'socio-economic segregation' of migrants from Bangladesh, although the mixture of factors that motivate migration flows means that it is not a simple causal relationship. This group come from an emerging demographic in Bangladesh that can be loosely described as the 'middle class'. They have distinct ambitions and resources at their command and distinct migration patterns. In this sense they defy definition within the existing understandings of migration from Bangladesh. This paper hopes to identify and understand this group and their migration behaviour in order to include them in the literature of migration from Bangladesh.


In this communication, we would like to discuss the advantages of adaptive mutation simulated annealing (AMSA) over standard simulated annealing (SA) in studying the Coulombic explosion of (CO2)n2+ clusters for n = 20-68, where 'n' is the size of the cluster. We have demonstrated how AMSA itself can overcome the predicaments which can arise in conventional SA and carry out the search for better results by adapting the parameters (only when needed) dynamically during the simulations so that the search process can come out of high energy basins and not go astray for better exploration and convergence, respectively. This technique also has in-built properties for getting more than one minimum in a single run. For a (CO2)n2+ cluster system we have found the critical limit to be n = 43, above which the attractive forces between individual units become greater in value than that of the large repulsive forces and the clusters stay intact as the energetically favoured isomers. This result is in good concurrence with earlier studies. Moreover, we have studied the fragmentation patterns for the entire size range and we have found fission type fragmentation as the favoured mechanism nearly for all sizes.


During the XXth century, women's movement and civil society fought for the recognition of gender equality and reproductive rights. This led to relevant resolutions and to the approval of important laws both at a national and international level. Among them the first laws recognizing abortion as legal were adopted. Nowadays, at the beginning of the XXI century, these rights are undermined as are progressively becoming threatened: women are considered human beings only because of their ability to procreate. This is seen as the only possible realization for their identity. However, the reasons of this throwback were already concealed in the principles which inspired abortion laws. In these legislations, we can read the impossibility to act a real separation from the culture that sees in women's natural irrationality the reason of their inferiority.


The average length of time water remains within the boundaries of an aquatic system is a key parameter controlling the system's biogeochemical behavior. This timescale, generally referred to as the hydraulic residence time, provides a first‐order description of multiple and complex processes that drive transport. The procedures to estimate these transport timescales are reviewed and, through the analysis of numerical simulations, the links between residence timescales and the underlying hydrodynamic processes in a canonical freshwater embayment, Little Sodus Bay (LSB), are explored. LSB has negligible through‐flow and is connected permanently to Lake Ontario (LO) through a narrow and shallow channel. Exchange in the channel is the result of a multiple balance where spatial thermal variations (baroclinic forcing), oscillations in water level (barotropic forcing), frictional mixing, wind, and the effects of unsteadiness are all important. The simulations indicate that baroclinic processes are the dominant exchange and mixing mechanisms in embayments like LSB. The largest density gradients across the channel are caused by episodic upwelling events in LO during the stratified season, when exchange rates increase by at least an order of magnitude. The mean residence timescales undergo dramatic variations in time and space and, in general, are comparable to the timescales of the systems' variability itself. The simulations reveal that temporal variations of mean residence timescales occur at interannual, seasonal, and down to synoptic timescales, and are closely related to the occurrence and frequency of upwelling events.


Feature attributions are a popular tool for explaining the behavior of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), but have recently been shown to be vulnerable to attacks that produce divergent explanations for nearby inputs. This lack of robustness is especially problematic in high-stakes applications where adversarially-manipulated explanations could impair safety and trustworthiness. Building on a geometric understanding of these attacks presented in recent work, we identify Lipschitz continuity conditions on models' gradient that lead to robust gradient-based attributions, and observe that smoothness may also be related to the ability of an attack to transfer across multiple attribution methods. To mitigate these attacks in practice, we propose an inexpensive regularization method that promotes these conditions in DNNs, as well as a stochastic smoothing technique that does not require re-training. Our experiments on a range of image models demonstrate that both of these mitigations consistently improve attribution robustness, and confirm the role that smooth geometry plays in these attacks on real, large-scale models.


How have national parties adapted their strategies of competition and behaviour to use, handle, and manage the European issue in domestic political competition? This article outlines the principal elements of continuity and change in the ways national party organisations have strategically adapted to the increasing significance of European integration in West European party systems over the last twenty years. It contests the arguments of a gradual europeanisation and rising progress of euroscepticism. It shows that the likelihood of politicisation over European matters occurring has been very dependent on the arena and the context considered. Few changes have occurred regarding the consensual and relatively positive treatment of the European Union (EU) in national newspapers, the very limited saliency of EU-related debates in national electoral campaigns and the tendency of mainstream parties to converge rather than diverge on the ways they frame the EU. Conflicts over EU matters are not typical, nor are they inherently on the increase: they remain the exception rather than the rule.


Background: In this study, we sought to evaluate the influence of sociodemographic factors, ie, age, sex, socioeconomic status, maternal education, and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) status, on cognitive performance in school-aged HIV-infected Nigerian children. Methods: Sixty-nine HIV-positive children aged 6–15 years were matched with 69 HIV-negative control children for age and sex. The children were subdivided for the purpose of analysis into two cognitive developmental stages using Piaget's staging, ie, the concrete operational stage (6–11 years) and the formal operational stage (12–15 years). All participants underwent cognitive assessment using Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices (RPM). Sociodemographic data for the study participants, ie, age, sex, socioeconomic status, and level of maternal education, were obtained using a study proforma. Logistic regression analyses were used to determine associations of HIV status and sociodemographic characteristics with RPM cognitive scores. Results: The overall mean RPM score for the HIV-positive children was 18.2 ± 9.8 (range 8.0–47.0) which was significantly lower than the score of 27.2 ± 13.8 (range 8.0–52.0) for the HIV-negative children ( P , 0.001). On RPM grading, 56.5% of the HIV-positive children had cognitive performance at below average to intellectually defective range. Below average RPM scores were found to be significantly associated with younger age (6–11 years), positive HIV status, lower socioeconomic status, and low level of maternal education. Conclusion: Younger age, poor socioeconomic status, and low level of maternal education were factors apart from HIV infection that were significantly associated with low cognitive function in school-aged HIV-infected Nigerian children.


Chronic stress has been associated with severe stress-related symptoms not only among adults but also among adolescents. The aim of the study was to investigate if chronic stress has implications for adolescents' academic achievement. 270 high school students answered a questionnaire on stress symptoms on two occasions, at the beginning and at the end of high school. Those who perceived severe stress symptoms at both time points finished high school with significantly worse final grades than those who reported experiencing stress at only one or none of the time points. The risk for chronic stress was increased among adolescents with low global self-esteem, who perceived high demands and reported their self-rated health to be poor and their sleep duration to be insufficient. The results suggest that the early prevention of chronic stress is critical since, if left untreated, it can have serious consequences on young people's future health and career possibilities.


A Review of:
Schwegler, R. A., and Shamoon, L. K. (1982). The aims and process of the research paper. College English, 44(8), 817-824.

Objectives – This classic article discusses research-based writing assignments. Schwegler and Shamoon sought to identify differences between college students' and college instructors' conceptions of research and research paper assignments, particularly in terms of their purpose and process. The authors also sought to identify common features of academic research writing that could inform writing instruction about research writing.

Design – Qualitative interviews with college instructors and students about their views of the research process and about forms of research writing. Instructors were also interviewed about evaluation standards for academic research papers.
Setting – Unspecified, though the description suggests a college or university in the United States.

Subjects – College instructors and college students. (Number of subjects unspecified.)

Methods – The authors, a university writing program director and a writing program instructor, conducted one-on-one interviews with college instructors and students about their views of research and the research paper. Questions focused on conceptions of the research process, the purposes of research, and the forms that research writing takes. Instructors were also asked about standards for effective evaluation of research papers.

The limited description of the research methods and interview questions employed in this study hinder the ability to critically assess its validity and reliability. Potential limitations of the study, such as selection bias or unclear wording of interview questions, cannot be adequately assessed based on the provided information. The authors also do not identify limitations of their study. As is discussed in more detail in this review's commentary, the study does not conform to the conventions of most research studies from the behavioral, health, physical, and social sciences. The authors' methods, however, may be better understood in light of particular disciplinary approaches and debates in Composition Studies.

Main Results – Interviewees' responses illustrated notable differences between college instructors' and college students' conceptions of the process, purpose, forms, and audiences of research paper assignments. While instructors understood the research paper to be argumentative, analytical, and interpretive, students generally described it as informative and factual. Students, when asked why research papers are assigned, identified purposes such as learning more about a topic, demonstrating one's knowledge, or learning to use the library. Instructors indicated that the purpose of the research paper includes testing a theory, building on previous research, and exploring a problem that has been presented by other research or events (p. 819). At the same time, most instructors described research as an ongoing pursuit of "an elusive truth" (p. 819), rather than as primarily factual in nature. According to Schwegler and Shamoon, instructors also indicated during interviews that research and writing involve a clear though complex pattern that is evident in the structure and conventions of research papers. For example, the research process usually begins with activities like reading, note-taking, identifying problems with and gaps in current research, and conversing with colleagues. These instructors also reported that writing conventions which are implicitly understood in their fields are used by other scholars to evaluate their peers' work.

Reflecting on these interview responses, Schwegler and Shamoon suggest that pedagogical approaches to writing instruction can be informed both by acknowledging disparities in students' and instructors' conceptions of research and by identifying shared characteristics of academic writing. The authors therefore make several general observations about the nature of professional research papers and describe the structure and conventions of academic research papers. They conclude that the structure of scholarly research papers across the disciplines reflects the research process. Such a paper opens with identification of a research problem and a review of current knowledge and is followed by a variation of four possible patterns: 1) Review of research, 2) Application or implementation of a theory, 3) Refute, refine, or replicate prior research, and 4) Testing a hypothesis ( pp. 822-823). Schwegler and Shamoon indicate that the key features of scholars' writings are also apparent in student research papers which instructors evaluate as highly-ranked and absent in lower-ranked papers. Furthermore, they provide an appendix that outlines the essential textual features of a research paper (Appendix A) (p. 822). It is unclear, however, if these descriptions of scholarly research writing are based on the instructor interviews or on other sources, such as previous analytical studies or an analysis of academic research papers from various disciplines. The researchers do not articulate the specific methods used to arrive at their generalizations.

Conclusion – The authors conclude that students' and instructors' differing conceptions of the research process and the research paper have important implications for writing instruction. Many of the interviewed instructors described research as involving methods that are quite different from those needed for most research paper assignments. The discrepancies between class assignments and academics' approaches to research suggests that differences in instructors' and students' views of research often are not addressed in the design of research paper assignments. Instructors who teach the research paper should ensure that the purpose, structure, and style of assignments reflect what content-area instructors will expect from students. Schwegler and Shamoon argue that because the basic conventions of the research paper generally apply across disciplines, instruction about those conventions can be integrated into composition courses and lower-level undergraduate courses. Such an approach can assist students in better understanding and approaching research writing as would a scholar in the given discipline.


Abstract Working in the humanitarian sector as an aid worker has become a dangerous endeavour, with attacks against humanitarian workers becoming more common. In this personal story by a former head of office at an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) surgical hospital, a short, violent encounter leads to a long journey of recovery. There is an important role for the community in supporting the healing process; the author suggests that an integral and collaborative involvement by organizations like the ICRC is effective in addressing the impact of violence directed towards humanitarian aid workers.


A synthetic driving simulation environment requires a fleet of intelligent vehicles which can perform manoeuvring decisions in real-time and mingle orderly to form mixed traffic environments. The development of a driving simulator was part of a bigger project that evaluated a prototype Head-Up Display (HUD) interface. We therefore opted for a custom simulator that could effectively adapt to the needs of the given experiment. This paper presents the challenges we encountered during the implementation of realistic artificial intelligence (AI) in the traffic vehicles, which produced the analogous complexity driving events. A discussion follows regarding the design and modelling challenges of the robot drivers involved in the simulated accident scenarios. The paper discusses the outcomes of the user trials, suggests solutions to intriguing problems that derived from the experiment and reveals the phasma of our future work.


There are many forms of uncertainty, each usually again having more than one theoretical model. Therefore, a very flexible kind of uncertainty-valued Horn clauses is introduced in RELFUN in section 1. They have a head, several premises and an uncertainty factor, which represents the uncertainty of the clause. The premises are all "functional" in the sense that their returned value is again an uncertainty value. These premises and the uncertainty factor of an uncertainty rule become embedded into the arguments of a combination function when translating uncertainty clauses into footed clauses (non-ground, non-deterministic functions in RELFUN, which can then be compiled as usual). The combination function can be modified by the user. It may be a built-in or a user-defined function, either of which may be computed as the value of a higher-order function. In section 2, an application of uncertainty clauses to the uncertain concept of a "pet holder", according to German law, is described. This and another example are then fully demonstrated in appendix A. Finally, appendix B gives a listing of the complete uncertainty translator in LISP.


The major purpose of this study was to develop a survey to measure elementary school teachers' self-efficacy for web-based professional development. Based on interviews with eight elementary school teachers, three scales of web-based professional development self-efficacy (WPDSE) were formed, namely, general self-efficacy (measuring teachers' general capabilities of using Internet tools or completing basic web-based tasks), interaction self-efficacy (assessing teachers' perceived abilities of engaging in interactions in online professional development activities), and applying self-efficacy (evaluating teachers' confidence level of applying what they have learned in web-based professional development to their future teaching). The results of Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) indicated that the three scales of WPDSE arising from the interviews and the Cronbach alpha values, ranging from 0.92 to 0.85, were acceptable. Subsequently, a large-scale survey was conducted to examine the relationships between teachers' self-efficacy and attitudes toward web-based professional development with a sample of 214 elementary school teachers in Taiwan using a questionnaire that included WPDSE and an established scale for measuring attitudes toward web-based professional development (AWPD). The results indicated that teachers' self-efficacy played a positive role in their attitudes towards web-based professional development. The results also indicated that teachers' confidence in their interaction self-efficacy and in their applying self-efficacy was more important than their confidence in their general self-efficacy in predicting their attitudes toward web-based professional development. Implications of the study findings were also discussed.


Two of the most important variables that can be determined in any geologic study are the timing and conditions of formation. Although the discovery of radioactivity and isotopes at the beginning of this century revolutionized our understanding of the age and formation conditions of rocks and minerals, the isotope geochemistry of certain mineral groups such as the zeolites has remained elusive and poorly understood. To date fewer than 40 papers have been published on the isotope geochemistry of zeolites. This dearth of isotopic data is due to technical difficulties rather than lack of interest. Recently, however, great strides have been made in understanding the isotope geochemistry of zeolites as a result of a better understanding of their crystal structures, coupled with the increased popularity of isotope geochemistry and a rapid growth in the number of isotope laboratories. This chapter reviews the current status of our knowledge of isotopes in natural zeolites, including the methods used to prepare samples and measure isotopic abundances and ratios, some of the problems associated with these measurements, and some of the implications of the results obtained. Because the reader may not be familiar with isotope geochemistry, the fundamentals of the behavior of isotopes will also be reviewed briefly. It should be pointed out that a vast literature exists on the behavior and characteristics of isotopes in synthetic zeolites and on isotopic studies related to industrial applications (see e.g. Chang et al. 1995). This material is, however, outside the scope of this chapter and will only be mentioned when it has a direct bearing on the geochemistry of zeolites.

The earliest published report on isotopes in zeolites may have been that of Taylor and Urey (1938) who determined fractionation of stable Li, K, and N isotopes by an unspecified "zeolite" species. At Columbia University, Taylor and …


The Masjed Daghi mineralization is located 30 km southeast of Jolfa city at the bank of Araxes River, northwest Iran. This area is situated in the Alborz-Azarbaijan structural zone of Iran. The most widespread rocks in the mineralization area are andesite and trachyandesite, while there are rock units of latite tuff, andesitic agglomerate, and hornblende porphyry basalt in eastern hills and Eocene flysch in the southern part of the area. Several intrusive bodies are present in the study area, from which the dominant intrusive rock hosting the mineralization is diorite porphyry. The mineralized rock units of the area are cut by different diorite ad mafic dikes. The most prevalent texture of mineralization is dissemination, while open space filling textures including veins and veinlets, are common as well. Diverse types of alteration including potassic, phyllic, argillic, silicification, and a little of carbonatization were recognized in the field and microscopic observations as well as by XRD. In addition to thick silica veins and stockwork zones, some silica, barite, sulfide, and calcite veins and veinlets have occurred in the Masjed Daghi mineralization area. In this research, 26 doubly polished thin sections (wafers) were prepared and investigated. Four samples were taken from surface veins, while 22 samples were chosen from core samples (of 6 boreholes) of white and grey-white silica, and silica-barite veins. The fluid inclusion studies on 105 primary fluid inclusions indicated five phases for inclusions including: 1) liquid or gas, 2) liquid and gas, 3) liquid, gas, and solid, 4) liquid, gas, halite, and solid, and 5) liquid, gas, halite, and two types of solids. The data gained from fluid inclusions approved two mineralization fluids which caused porphyry and epithermal mineralizations. The porphyry fluid inclusions were homogenized in temperatures of 122°C to 550°C with a maximum of 700°C and average salinity of 55 wt% NaCl equivalent, while the epithermal inclusions indicated an average homogenization temperature of 186°C with an average salinity of 6.23 wt% NaCl equivalent.


Vegetable production in Viet Nam plays an important role in the country's economic development. The industry provides a significant source of income for rural populations, particularly women, and creates further employment in marketing, distribution, processing and retail. The Government set an ambitious national target for vegetable exports to reach US$690 million per annum by 2010. One of the critical constraints to achieving this target was inadequate capacity to assure the safety and quality of produce across the value chain.


In this paper a new method is presented for structural damage identification. First, the damaged structure is excited by short duration impact acceleration and then, the recorded structural displacement time history responses under free vibration conditions are analyzed by Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT) and Wavelet Residual Force (WRF) is calculated. Finally, an effective damage-sensitive index is proposed to localize structural damage with a high level of accuracy. The presented method is applied to three numerical examples, namely a fifteen-story shear frame, a concrete cantilever beam and a four-story, two-bay plane steel frame, under different damage patterns, to detect structural damage either in free noise or noisy states. In addition, some comparative studies are carried out to compare the presented index with other relative indices. Obtained results, not only illustrate the good performance of the presented approach for damage identification in engineering structures, but also introduce it as a stable and viable strategy especially when the input data are contaminated with different levels of random noises.


The vast majority of deaths from cervical cancer occur in the developing world, with India bearing an astonishing 27% of the mortality from the disease, according to a report published in the American Cancer Society's journal for clinicians, CA. The report, Global Cancer Statistics, charts worldwide cancer incidence and mortality. As with many health conditions, gaping disparities in the burden of cancer exist between wealthy and poor nations, and this is revealed in even a quick look at the cervical cancer data revealed in the report:-Globally, cervical cancer ranks fourth as the cause of death from cancer in women-Approximately 85% of mortality from the disease occurs in developing nations. The highest rates of cervical cancer deaths are in Africa, South-Central Asia, and South America. The authors say the dramatic burden of cervical cancer in these regions stems from the lack of widespread screening programs (such as Pap tests) that have so dramatically reduced rates of the disease in the U.S. and much of the developed world. The advent of cervical cancer vaccines is a potential bright spot on the horizon, but here too the authors caution that cost is a prime factor in whether or not the vaccines are delivered to those who need them most.


Neural networks dominate the modern machine learning landscape, but their training and success still suffer from sensitivity to empirical choices of hyperparameters such as model architecture, loss function, and optimisation algorithm. In this work we present \emph{Population Based Training (PBT)}, a simple asynchronous optimisation algorithm which effectively utilises a fixed computational budget to jointly optimise a population of models and their hyperparameters to maximise performance. Importantly, PBT discovers a schedule of hyperparameter settings rather than following the generally sub-optimal strategy of trying to find a single fixed set to use for the whole course of training. With just a small modification to a typical distributed hyperparameter training framework, our method allows robust and reliable training of models. We demonstrate the effectiveness of PBT on deep reinforcement learning problems, showing faster wall-clock convergence and higher final performance of agents by optimising over a suite of hyperparameters. In addition, we show the same method can be applied to supervised learning for machine translation, where PBT is used to maximise the BLEU score directly, and also to training of Generative Adversarial Networks to maximise the Inception score of generated images. In all cases PBT results in the automatic discovery of hyperparameter schedules and model selection which results in stable training and better final performance.


A substantial subset of patent opinions from the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals function in a wholly different manner from ordinary judicial opinions: they have strong retroactive effects with weak prospective effects. All Federal Circuit opinions have strong retroactive effects because issued patents and pending applications rarely can be modified. The Federal Circuit decisions apply in full to these patents and applications, even though they were prepared without the benefit of the rulings. In contrast, many of these opinions have almost no prospective effects. Patent law provides tremendous linguistic flexibility to patent drafters, which can be used to avoid the holdings of many (but not all) opinions. Patent drafters can freely choose any words to describe and claim the invention in the patent application. Patentees carefully draft new applications, aware of the decisions, to avoid their holdings. If the Federal Circuit holds that a certain phrase necessitates a bad result, patent lawyers substitute equivalent uncontaminated language in its place in future applications. The prospective effects of these opinions are muted because of the linguistic flexibility in drafting applications. Issued patents cannot be effectively modified; consequently, they are strongly affected by Federal Circuit decisions.There are substantial costs to the Federal Circuit's actions. First, patent prosecutors are excessively cautious and spend extra time drafting claims and patent specifications to lower the risk of future changes in the law. This increases costs while still not substantially eliminating the problem. More troubling, the retroactive opinions weaken the incentive to innovate because the added uncertainty in the procurement process makes patent rights insecure. It thereby diminishes the value of patents. As their value decreases, patents cannot fully advance technological progress, as the Constitutional urges. A counterintuitive solution – reducing the use of precedential opinions – can mitigate the retroactivity problem.


BACKGROUND
Swallowing disorders are common and serious problems post stroke. Physical signs and ingestion test consist of main approaches of bedside screening of aspiration.

AIM
To assess the composability of these approaches.

DESIGN
A pilot study to develop a combined schema; secondly a validation study of this schema.

SETTING
Inpatient of Neurology Department and of Rehabilitation Department.

POPULATION
Forty-one patients post acute stroke included in the pilot study; 107 patients of subacute stroke for validation study.

METHODS
In pilot study, patients were assessed using Clinical Predicative Scale of Aspiration (CPSA) and 3-ounce Water swallow Test (3oz WT). Videofluoroscopic examination (VFSE) was performed as gold standard when the results of screening were discordant. In validation study, swallowing disorders were assessed systematically using CPSA, 3 oz WT and VFSE.

RESULTS
The combined screening schema, Practical Aspiration Screening Scheme (PASS), consisted of a 3oz WT to enhance results of the uncertain range of CPSA. Validation study showed that sensitivity and specificity of the 3oz WT were 87.3% and 42.3% respectively; those of CPSA were 50.1% and 50.0%, with a range of uncertainty in 42.6% of patients. The sensitivity of PASS was 89.1%, comparable to that of the 3oz WT, while the specificity of PASS was 80.8%, significantly higher than that of single tests. PASS also reduced systematic recourse to VFSE with a substantial agreement with it (kappa=0.7).

CONCLUSION
Physical signs and ingestion test are complementary in the screening of aspiration.

CLINICAL REHABILITATION IMPACT
Combined schema enhances the efficiency of bedside screening of aspiration.


Obesity has been recognised as a risk factor for non-communicable diseases, with more than one billion adults worldwide who are overweight, of which approximately 300 million are obese. Obesity puts an individual in danger of a shorter life expectancy and at risk for developing chronic diseases of life style, which includediabetes, cardio vascular disease and musculoskeletal disorders such as arthritis and back pain. Wide spread negative attitudes towards obese people have been observed which are equally prevalent among health care professionals.  This study was based on the need to determine the knowledge and attitudes towards obese people among physiotherapy students, as they are well suited to address theintricacies of obesity and its related conditions. One hundred and seventy five students from a university in the Western Cape, South Africa, completed a structured, self-administered questionnaire that was adopted from the Obesity Risk Knowledge and Fat Phobia Scale. The study sample demonstrated average levels of knowledge regarding obesity with scores ranging from 3 to 9 on a scale of 10 with a mean score of 6.05. A n overwhelming majority of the participants(> 80%) viewed obesity as largely a behavioural problem while nearly all the participants (97.6%) characterised obese people as lazy, unattractive, insecure and with lower self-esteem. This study has reinforced the need for a morefocussed approach to the education of physiotherapy students around obesity and obesity-related conditions, as well asthe management thereof.


In the West, it is a well-established legal notion that non-human animals are classified as the personal property of humans. This classification allows humans to use non-human animals as a resource. A non-human animals' property status means they have no legal capacity or standing to sue and thus cannot protect their interests in court. This thesis argues that non-human animals are sentient beings who deserve equal consideration of their interests, hence they should not be treated like inanimate objects or mere property. In order for this to occur, the legal status of non-human animals must change from a classification of 'property' to a classification that more closely resembles 'personhood.' As legal 'persons,' non-human animals would be extended the same rights as humans, particularly the fundamental right not to be treated as the resource of another. This thesis reviews both primary and secondary sources, particularly those from Western countries outside of Australia, such as the United States, to determine how non-human animals may make this transition from within a legal context. This thesis identifies that an important first step is to abolish the property status of non-human animals. Due to the significance of such a change, removing the property status of animals can only be realistically achieved through incremental steps. Expanding the standing doctrine to include non-human animals so that they may sue in their own right is also a necessary legal change. In addition, non-human animals' rights, or 'dignity,' must be given constitutional force and the resulting legislation must recognise their interests, minus any exemptions or exclusions that might diminish those interests. The judiciary, rather than being precedent bound, ought to embrace the flexibility of the common law and make decisions which incorporate modern science and changing societal values towards animals. Adopting these legal reforms will assist non-human animals' transition from 'property' to 'persons' under law.


Quantiles provide a comprehensive description of the properties of a variable and tracking changes in quantiles over time using signal extraction methods can be informative. It is shown here how stationarity tests can be generalized to test the null hypothesis that a particular quantile is constant over time by using weighted indicators. Corresponding tests based on expectiles are also proposed; these might be expected to be more powerful for distributions that are not heavy-tailed. Tests for changing dispersion and asymmetry may be based on contrasts between particular quantiles or expectiles. We report Monte Carlo experiments investigating the e¤ectiveness of the proposed tests and then move on to consider how to test for relative time invariance, based on residuals from fitting a time-varying level or trend. Empirical examples, using stock returns and U.S. inflation, provide an indication of the practical importance of the tests.


This paper analyses the species-area relationship in the Aegean tenebrionids in order to discrim- inate between relict and dynamic models. Using different statistical approaches, the following eco-geographic variables were tested as predictors of the tenebrionid richness on 32 Aegean Islands: latitude, longitude, area, maximum elevation, distance to the mainland, and distance to the nearest island. Area was identified as an important predictor, while neither distance to the mainland nor distance to the nearest island was identified as of any statistical importance in affecting tenebrionid richness. Thus, as proposed for other very sedentary ani- mals inhabiting this archipelago such as land snails, a relict model is postulated. As most tenebrionids have extremely limited ability to actively disperse over the sea, ancestral species have probably colonised the Aegean Islands by means of land-bridges during Pleistocene falls in the sea level.


Postoperative intestinal adhesions are common and serious complications after surgery that can cause pain and potential mortality. Our previous study confirmed that silkworm pupae carboxymethyl chitosan (SP-carboxymethyl chitosan) reduced postoperative adhesion in vivo. Here, we elucidated the inhibitory effects of SP-carboxymethyl chitosan on mouse L929 fibroblasts. Cells were exposed to SP-carboxymethyl chitosan for 72 h, then the inhibitory effects were assessed via transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1)/Smads, plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 (PAI-1), and tissue-type plasminogen activator (t-PA) signaling. The results showed that SP-carboxymethyl chitosan suppressed cell hyperplasia and significantly attenuated the gene and protein expressions of the TGF-β1/Smads signaling pathways. We also confirmed that t-PA/PAI-1 greatly increased for all SP-carboxymethyl chitosan-treated groups compared to the control. These findings suggest that SP-carboxymethyl chitosan may affect L929 cell proliferation through the TGF-β1/Smads signaling pathway to prevent adhesion after an operation.


ABSTRACT
Samples of the fine and coarse fractions of airborne particulate matter (PM) were collected using a 'Gent' stacked filter unit in a semi-residential area of Dhaka, Bangladesh from December 1996 through September 2015. The site is located at the Atomic Energy Centre, Dhaka University Campus that is a relatively low traffic area. Many policies have been implemented during this period to clean the air of Dhaka. Among them, bans on leaded-gasoline and two-stroke engines were implemented, and a policy regarding green technology for brick burning is in progress. To observe the effects of the policy implementations, analyses were performed on this long-term (December 1996 to September 2015) data set of PM10, PM2.5, black carbon (BC), and lead (Pb). Annual average concentrations of PM10, PM2.5, BC, and Pb were computed. These long-term data show that the air quality of Dhaka has been stable over the past decade even though economic activity and the number of sources including passenger cars and brick kilns, are increasing.


The purpose of this paper is to consider how the legal regulation of marriage impacts upon religious liberty, and vice versa, and how to reconcile conflicts between religious liberty and state marriage regulations. It is an area of increasing conflicts in a growing number of nations. Using comparative law, this article presents the range and complexity of state-versus-religion conflicts and of systemic legal approaches concerning the regulation of marriage that exist in the world today, focusing specifically on two issues: the formation/celebration of marriage generally, and the legalization of same-sex marriage. Having shown the scope of the conflicts between religious and political communities regarding the regulation of marriage, this article argues that the body of law known as "conflict of laws" provides a valuable model for the resolution of church-state disputes regarding the regulation of marriage. This paper focuses on two communities that claim sovereignty over individuals: the State and religion. Conflicts between religions and states concerning their respective regulatory policies may create internal cognitive dissonance for religious communities and for states. Thus, there would seem to be internal harmony incentives to find a solution to avoid disputes. However, these incentives may be offset, neutralized, or overcome if there are communities within the state that wish to harm or reduce the influence of the religious community.


Previously, we proposed the hypothesis that similarities in the inflammatory response observed in acne vulgaris and degenerative disc disease (DDD), especially the central role of interleukin (IL)-1β, may be further evidence of the role of the anaerobic bacterium Cutibacterium (previously Propionibacterium) acnes in the underlying aetiology of disc degeneration. To investigate this, we examined the upregulation of IL-1β, and other known IL-1β-induced inflammatory markers and neurotrophic factors, from nucleus-pulposus-derived disc cells infected in vitro with C. acnes for up to 48 h. Upon infection, significant upregulation of IL-1β, alongside IL-6, IL-8, chemokine (C-C motif) ligand 3 (CCL3), chemokine (C-C motif) ligand 4 (CCL4), nerve growth factor (NGF) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), was observed with cells isolated from the degenerative discs of eight patients versus non-infected controls. Expression levels did, however, depend on gene target, multiplicity and period of infection and, notably, donor response. Pre-treatment of cells with clindamycin prior to infection significantly reduced the production of pro-inflammatory mediators. This study confirms that C. acnes can stimulate the expression of IL-1β and other host molecules previously associated with pathological changes in disc tissue, including neo-innervation. While still controversial, the role of C. acnes in DDD remains biologically credible, and its ability to cause disease likely reflects a combination of factors, particularly individualised response to infection.


Background Neuromuscular training programs have shown to decrease injury rates in sport specific domains; however, there is limited research in non-sport populations. Objective Examine the effectiveness of reducing sport injury through a high intensity, neuromuscular training program aimed at school youth. Design Pilot, randomised controlled trial. Participants were randomised by school, to either intervention or control programs in year one. Year two, the intervention program was implemented in the control school. Setting Physical education (PE) classes. Participants 725 (year one) and 314 (year two) consenting participants aged 11–15. Intervention Intervention group completed a 15 min, high intensity, neuromuscular training warm-up, three times per week for 12 weeks. The control group warm-up was the same duration, with standard of care components. Main outcome measurements Sport injury, defined as any sport injury that required medical attention, and/or cessation of the activity, and/or time loss from sport. Secondary outcomes; aerobic fitness (VO2 maximum (ml/kg/min), vertical jump (cm) and balance (s). Results Incidence rate ratios (IRR), adjusted for clustering by class, previous injury and exposure hours, estimated the intervention program was protective of all sport injury (IRR=0.29 (95% CI 0.18 to 0.46)), lower extremity injury (IRR=0.30 (95% CI 0.17 to 0.53)), and time loss injury (IRR=0.43 (95% CI 0.20 to 0.94)). The intervention group showed greater improvement in aerobic fitness (2.14 ml/kg/min (95% CI 1.17 to 2.59)) (t=-3.86, p=0.0001) and vertical jump (4.16 cm (95% CI 3.65 to 4.66)) (t=-3.67, p=0.0003) compared to the control group. No statistical differences were detected in balance measures. Conclusions A neuromuscular training program implemented in PE classes was protective of all sport injury, lower extremity injury and time loss injury. Results pertaining to year two will be determined and presented.


Data is increasingly recognised as a valuable product of research and a number of international initiatives are underway to ensure it is better managed, connected, published, discovered, cited and reused. Within this context, data citation is an emergent practice rather than a norm of scholarly attribution. In 2012, a data citation project at Griffith University funded by the Australian National Data Service (ANDS) commenced that aimed to: enhance existing infrastructure for data citation at the University; test methodologies for tracking impact; and provide targeted outreach to researchers about the benefits of data citation. The project extended previous collaboration between Griffith and ANDS that built infrastructure at the University to assign DOI names (Digital Object Identifiers) to research data produced by Griffith's researchers. This article reports on the findings of the project and provides a case study of what can be achieved at the institutional level to support data citation.


Since the terror attacks on 11 September 2001 in the USA, the world has suffered 11 major terror attacks with suspected links to al-Qaeda, resulting in over 1045 dead and about 6000 persons injured. These attacks were targeted against nightclubs, tourist hotels, social clubs, luxury apartments, mosques, UN and Red Cross Headquarters abroad, a military compound, banks, offices of political parties, commuter trains and public transport (Steinhausler, 2005). In this period no serious terrorist attack has been carried out against a nuclear power plant or other component of the nuclear fuel cycle. However, this should not lead to a false sense of security. Dr El Baradei from the IAEA warned within days of the 9/11 attacks that from now on nuclear installations need to review their security procedures.


Purpose: The article aims to identify Poland's financial cycle and verify whether it affects the business cycle. Moreover, the analysis will concern whether these cycles are synchronized and whether the financial cycle led to a crisis or vice versa. Design/Methodology/Approach: Considering Poland's case, we use Beveridge-Nelson multivariate decomposition to estimate the impact of financial cycles on Poland's business cycle during the period 1992:1-2018:4. The data are collected from BIS. Findings: Our research confirms the existence of the financial cycle in Poland. Financial cycles in Poland last on average, 14.1 quarters compare to normal business cycle which is 12.6 quarters. The paper's empirical results show that financial cycles significantly impact Poland's business cycle, influencing long-term growth. Practical Implications: To achieve long-term and sustainable economic growth, policymakers should monitor financial cycles and revise fiscal and monetary policy accordingly. The results should help policymakers and financial practitioners build and maintain a sound financial policy to avoid future financial national and global crises. Originality/Value: This paper is among the first the use a set of econometric filtering techniques to identify financial cycles in Poland and its link to business cycles.


Relationships are formed to meet individual goals, and one consequence of this joint effort towards mutual goal fulfillment will be a level of relationship harmony achieved between the interaction partners. The present study investigated the personality correlates associated with the achievement of relationship harmony in a group setting and its consequences for group performance. Students from a social psychology course formed groups for completing task assignments. After a 3-month collaboration, each student evaluated his or her level of relationship harmony attained with each of his or her other group members. It was found that a member's agreeableness positively predicted his or her achievement of relationship harmony in the group, but that conscientiousness and openness to experience had detrimental effects on the relationship harmony achieved with other group members. A group whose members attained higher relationship harmony performed better on its group assignments, suggesting that relationship harmony among members of a group might have beneficial effects on group processes like performance focus and shared exchange at least in a collectivist, Chinese culture.


The online adult industry is among the most profitable business branches on the Internet, and its web sites attract large amounts of visitors and traffic. Nevertheless, no study has yet characterized the industry's economical and securityrelated structure. As cyber-criminals are motivated by financial incentives, a deeper understanding and identification of the economic actors and interdependencies in the online adult business is important for analyzing securityrelated aspects of this industry. In this paper, we provide a survey of the different economic roles that adult web sites assume, and highlight their economic and technical features. We provide insights into security flaws and potential points of interest for cybercriminals. We achieve this by applying a combination of automatic and manual analysis techniques to investigate the economic structure of the online adult industry and its business cases. Furthermore, we also performed several experiments to gain a better understanding of the flow of visitors to these sites and the related cash flow, and report on the lessons learned while operating adult web sites on our own.


Will economic integration lead to skilled citizens being drawn to the larger, richer economic partner? In 1983, Australia and New Zealand signed the Closer Economic Relations Agreement to ensure free trade in goods and services. Was this a modern equivalent of Horace Greeley's famous advice "Go West, young man, go West"? The evidence presented in this paper suggests that Greeley was right; many have indeed gone westward. However, a common labour market has not led to a brain drain. Paradoxically, the effect has been to increase the numbers of lower-skilled migrants from New Zealand and those with higher skills who are older or are not within the approved occupational groupings. The Trans-Tasman picture is further complicated by migration to New Zealand from third countries sufficient to offset the outflow of New Zealand citizens. The imbalance in net migration from New Zealand toward Australia has led to policy tensions. These are discussed briefly.


In Southeast Asia, bats of the genus Tylonycteris Peters, 1872 have traditionally been classified into two wide-ranging species, T. pachypus (Temminck, 1840) and T. robustula Thomas, 1915. Our comparative phylogeographic analyses based on two mitochondrial and seven nuclear genes, combined with our multivariate morphological analyses, show that these species actually represent cryptic species complexes that share a similar biogeographic history in three major regions, i.e., Sundaland, southern Indochina, and northern Indochina. Our molecular dating estimates suggest that Pleistocene climatic oscillations and sea level changes have repeatedly isolated ancestral populations of Tylonycteris spp. in distant bamboo forest refugia. The analyses indicate, however, that populations of the T. pachypus complex were less affected by forest fragmentation in mainland Southeast Asia than those of the T. robustula complex. Accordingly, we propose several taxonomic changes within the genus Tylonycteris : the species T. fulvida and T. malayana are revalidated, and a new species, T. tonkinensis Tu, Csorba, Ruedi & Hassanin sp. nov., endemic to northern Indochina, is described.


We report on high-power continuous-wave operations of an Er:YAG ceramic laser in-band pumped by a cladding-pumped Er,Yb fiber laser at 1532 nm. With an output coupler of 10% transmission, the ceramic laser yielded 16.7 W of continuous-wave output at 1645 nm for 28.8 W of incident pump power, corresponding to a slope efficiency of 61.0% with respect to the incident pump power. The lasing wavelength switched to 1617 nm when output couplers of > 20% transmission were used. Up to 16.2 W of 1617 nm output was generated for 33.0 W of incident pump power, corresponding to a slope efficiency of 51.8%. Graphene Q-switched operation of Er:YAG cermic laser at 1645 nm was also demonstrated with stable pulses of 30-74 kHz repetition rates and 1.5-6.4 μs pulse widths.


Little is known about the influence of genetic diversity on stroke recovery. One exception is the polymorphism in brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a critical neurotrophin for brain repair and plasticity. Humans have a high-frequency single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the prodomain of the BDNF gene. Previous studies show that the BDNF Val66Met variant negatively affects motor learning and severity of acute stroke. To investigate the impact of this common BDNF SNP on stroke recovery, we used a mouse model that contains the human BDNF Val66Met variant in both alleles (BDNFM/M). Male BDNF+/+ and BDNFM/M littermates received sham or transient middle cerebral artery occlusion. We assessed motor function regularly for 6 months after stroke and then performed anatomical analyses. Despite reported negative association of the SNP with motor learning and acute deficits, we unexpectedly found that BDNFM/M mice displayed significantly enhanced motor/kinematic performance in the chronic phase of motor recovery, especially in ipsilesional hindlimb. The enhanced recovery was associated with significant increases in striatum volume, dendritic arbor, and elevated excitatory synaptic markers in the contralesional striatum. Transient inactivation of the contralateral striatum during recovery transiently abolished the enhanced function. This study showed an unexpected benefit of the BDNFVal66Met carriers for functional recovery, involving structural and molecular plasticity in the nonstroked hemisphere. Clinically, this study suggests a role for BDNF genotype in predicting stroke recovery and identifies a novel systems-level mechanism for enhanced motor recovery.


The trajectory tracking problem of a closed-chain five-bar robot is studied in this paper. Based on an error transformation function and the backstepping technique, an approximation-based tracking algorithm is proposed, which can guarantee the control performance of the robotic system in both the stable and transient phases. In particular, the overshoot, settling time, and final tracking error of the robotic system can be all adjusted by properly setting the parameters in the error transformation function. The radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) is used to compensate the complicated nonlinear terms in the closed-loop dynamics of the robotic system. The approximation error of the RBFNN is only required to be bounded, which simplifies the initial "trail-and-error" configuration of the neural network. Illustrative examples are given to verify the theoretical analysis and illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. Finally, it is also shown that the proposed approximation-based controller can be simplified by a smart mechanical design of the closed-chain robot, which demonstrates the promise of the integrated design and control philosophy.


In this paper an evaluation of smart socioeconomic, physical and environmental characteristics of Bloemfontein city of South Africa was done to understand the current scenario of the city and evolve perspective indicative planning guidelines for transforming the city into a smart city. The evaluation was done based on 74 smart indicators, and 30 factors under six characteristics, such as, smart economy, smart people, smart governance, smart mobility, smart environment and smart living. For this purpose, survey research methodology with analysis of primary and secondary data and review of the current Integrated Development Plan of the city was followed. The investigation of the various indicators revealed that although the city is lagging behind in most of the characteristics, yet provides ample opportunity to develop it as a smart city, if smart city concept and smart growth principles are employed in city development process.


Abstract Design and evaluation of sampling plans by attributes and by variables are important aspects in the area of acceptance sampling research. Various procedures for the selection of conventional single sampling by attributes have been developed and are available in the literature. This paper presents a design methodology and tables for the selection of parameters of single sampling plans for specified requirements (strengths) under the conditions of a gamma prior and Poisson sampling distribution. The relative efficiency of gamma-Poisson single sampling plans over conventional plans is discussed through empirical illustrations.


Is mental illness defined by psychiatry really "disease?" Is its existence biomedically validated or derived from environmental factors? Since the 1960s, this has been the subject of heated debate between those who are for and those who are against psychiatry. Against a background of the continuing debate, my article reviews a significant approach in the study of mental illness advocated by a group of sociologists, anthropologists, psychiatrists, and suchlike. Their efforts to promote cross-cultural and interdisciplinary research cooperation and communication merit appreciation. The article consists of four parts. The first two parts on the development of mindless psychiatry and the anti-psychiatry approach that brackets off the essence of disease examine the evolution of the divided camps of pro- and anti-psychiatry. The third part positions the collective contribution of the cross-cultural and interdisciplinary research approach led by Arthur Kleinman and his colleagues in terms of its ontology, methodology, knowledge building, and social engagement. Focusing on their research findings, theorizing achievement, and pragmatic orientation and pointing out the importance of critiquing the professional power of modern medicine, changing global political economy, and transforming phenomena of mental illness, the forth part analyzes the limitations of this approach. I conclude with a recommendation for a way forward involving a movement from a cross-cultural psychiatry to a trans-cultural psychiatry that is vital in the era of globalization.


We present measurements of the size of the quasar proximity zone (Rp) for 11 low-luminosity ( ) quasars at z ∼ 6, discovered by the Subaru High-z Exploration of Low-Luminosity Quasars project. Our faint quasar sample expands the Rp measurement down to mag, where more common quasar populations dominate at the epoch. We restrict the sample to quasars whose systemic redshifts have been precisely measured by [C ii] 158 μm or Mg ii λ2798 emission lines. We also update the Rp measurements for 26 luminous quasars presented in Eilers et al. by using the latest systemic redshift results. The luminosity dependence on Rp is found to be consistent with the theoretical prediction assuming a highly ionized intergalactic medium. We find a shallow redshift evolution of the luminosity-corrected Rp, ( ) over . This trend is steeper than that of Eilers et al., but significantly shallower than those of the earlier studies. Our results suggest that Rp,corr is insensitive to the neutral fraction of the universe at z ∼ 6. Four quasars show exceptionally small ( proper Mpc), which could be the result of their young age (<104 yr) in the reionization epoch, though statistics on this are still scarce.


Despite the tremendous progress made toward the realization of wider application for forward osmosis (FO) technologies, lack of suitable draw solutes that provide high water flux, low reverse solute flux, and facile recovery has hindered commercial development. An extensive variety of osmotic agents have been investigated during the past decade, and while simple inorganic salts remain the most widely used, organic-coated magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) offer exploitable properties that hold great promise. In addition to size-mitigated reverse flux and low-cost recovery via magnetic separation, devitalized MNPs provide enhanced osmotic performance when compared to that of the ungrafted coating material at similar concentration levels, a consequence of greater nonideal solution behavior. This nonideality has been assessed using a simple, semiempirical model and is largely attributable to the increased solvent-accessible surface area and enhanced hydration. When attached to MNPs, polymers appear to behave osmotically as much smaller molecules, providing higher osmotic pressures and improved FO performance.


With the world population becoming predominantly urban at the beginning of the twenty-first century, various interests and needs of society demand the planning and execution of public policies that go beyond the established political-administrative limits, imposing the need for institutional channels that can make the proper reading from the physical-territorial reality. The metropolitan planning institutes are essential agents in this process for an adequate analysis of the territory, which will establish the parameters for the discussions and deliberations of the society involved. In Brazil, many institutions still need to be consolidated, and the absence of metropolitan planning institutes in various parts of the country contributes to the absence of proposals and referral of projects to meet the diverse needs of the population on the scale of metropolitan regions. In this sense, the study intends to identify several aspects in which the metropolitan planning becomes essential for the adequate ordering of the territory.


Calderbank and McGuire discovered 2 remarkable Z/sub 4/-linear codes (see Des. Codes Cryptography, vol.10, no.2, Feb. 1997 and IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol.42, no.1, p.217-26, Jan.1996). The binary Gray images of these codes have respective parameters (64,2/sup 37/,12) and (64,2/sup 32/,14) and thus have 2 (resp. 4) times as many codewords as the best known linear codes of the same length and minimum distance. A decoding algorithm for the 5-error-correcting code is given by C. Rong et al. (see IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol.45, no.5, p.1423-34, July 1999). The approach there (following the ideas of the pioneers of Z/sub 4/-codes) is to split the study into several cases according to the Lee type of the error vector. Then the Galois ring algebra is used to decide, whether the syndromes are compatible with an error vector of the prescribed type. Unfortunately, it seems to be very difficult to apply this method to the case of the six-error-correcting code. A different approach to that of C. Rong et al. is required. Using the ideas presented here it is easy to also develop a list decoding algorithm for the 5-error-correcting code. The author discusses this possibility.


Head Lice Description Head lice (Pediculus capitis) are small, wingless, egg laying insects found on the human head. They grow to about 3.5mm (the size of a sesame seed or pin head). Head lice live on the hair and feed by sucking blood from the scalp. They are pale grey in colour before feeding and reddish brown after feeding. Live eggs (sometimes called nits) are glued to the hair shaft within a distance of 1.5 cm from the scalp. They hatch in 7-10 days as young lice (nymphs). It takes up to ten days for the nymphs to become mature lice and begin laying eggs. Adults are larger than nymphs and a mature female lays up to eight eggs per day.


Hydroxyapatite (HA), the main mineral phase of mammalian tooth enamel and bone, originates in body fluids from amorphous calcium phosphate (ACP). ACP presents short-range order in the form of small domains with size of 0.9 nm and chemical formula Ca9(PO4)6, known as Posner's clusters. In this study, the aggregation and clustering of calcium and phosphate ions in water has been investigated by means of shell-model molecular dynamics simulations. Calcium phosphate aggregates form in solution with compositions and Ca coordination that are similar to those found in Posner's cluster, but the stoichiometry of these species is dependent on the ionic composition of the solution: calcium-deficient clusters in solutions with low Ca : P ratio; cluster containing protonated phosphate groups in neutral solutions; sodium ions partially substituting calcium in solutions containing a mixture of sodium and calcium ions. These Posner-like clusters can be connected by phosphate groups, which act as a bridge between their central calcium ions. The simulations of the aggregation in solution of calcium phosphate clusters are an unbiased and unequivocal validation of Posner's model, and reveal for the first time the structure and composition of the species that form during the early stages of ACP nucleation at a scale still inaccessible to experiment.


the competitiveness of 500 cities around the world. This one-of-a-kind annual resource draws on a wealth of data sources, all of which are described and assessed. Using a sophisticated methodology and a team of 100 researchers from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the book not only ranks these cities but also presents a treasury of information with regard to the strengths and weaknesses of each city in relation to each other. The book includes a full discussion of the factors that create urban competitiveness and what sorts or categories of cities are most competitive, and comments on the policies and initiatives that are adopted by the most competitive cities.