Most major infertility problems are complex and several factors can cause failure to pro‐ duce offspring. In the last few years, much of the efforts of practitioners and researchers working in equine breeding industry have been directed to individuate the pathophysio‐ logical mechanisms underlying poor reproductive performances in mares. Endometritis is on the talk in much of the recent research as the most frequent cause of subfertility in mares that cycle normally but do not conceive and in mares that cycle normally and con‐ ceive but then suffer early embryonic death. Post-breeding persistent endometritis, bacte‐ rial and other infective endometritis and poor uterine clearance have all been discussed in an attempt to define risk factors and a diagnostic algorithm. The aim of this chapter is to perform a thorough review of recent literature about endometritis. The diagnostic al‐ gorithms are carefully examined, highlighting pros as well as pitfalls of each diagnostic aid. Suggested therapeutic protocols are examined in the effort to detect what is actually recommended and what would better benefit from further corroboration. The idea that a better etiopathogenetical understanding of the endometritis remains the key to access to a correct diagnostic protocol and to a successful therapeutic plan will inspire this chapter.


The focus of this paper is the efficient computation of counterparty credit risk exposure on portfolio level. Here, the large number of risk factors rules out traditional PDE-based techniques and allows only a relatively small number of paths for nested Monte Carlo simulations, resulting in large variances of estimators in practice. We propose a novel approach based on Kolmogorov forward and backward PDEs, where we counter the high dimensionality by a generalization of anchored-ANOVA decompositions. By computing only the most significant terms in the decomposition, the dimensionality is reduced effectively, such that a significant computational speed-up arises from the high accuracy of PDE schemes in low dimensions compared to Monte Carlo estimation. Moreover, we show how this truncated decomposition can be used as control variate for the full high-dimensional model, such that any approximation errors can be corrected while a substantial variance reduction is achieved compared to the standard simulation approach. We investigate the accuracy for a realistic portfolio of exchange options, interest rate and cross-currency swaps under a fully calibrated 10-factor model.


Existing studies report on the importance of instilling environmental literacy among students from an early stage of schooling to enable them to adopt more pro-environmental behaviors in the near future. This quasi-experimental study was designed to compare the level of environmental literacy among two groups of students: the experimental group (N = 120) was taught using science writing heuristics embedded in a green chemistry curriculum (SWH-GC) and the comparison group (N = 90) was taught using a green chemistry curriculum. For the purpose of this study an environmental literacy model that consisted of pro-environmental attitudes, beliefs, knowledge and behavior was employed. ANCOVA with the pre-test as the covariate showed statistically significant differences in all four of the constructs that constitute environmental literacy, with the experimental group taught using SWH-GC exhibiting higher mean values. Interview findings with randomly selected students from both groups further reinforced the quantitative findings. Both quantitative and qualitative findings suggest that after the treatment, the experimental group students were keen to read about the environment, believed their actions would bring changes, were more knowledgeable regarding how to keep streams and lakes clean, and were more engaged in recycling activities. The implications are finally discussed.


UNICOR, the trade name for Federal Prison Industries, Inc. (FPI), is a government-owned corporation that employs offenders incarcerated in correctional facilities under the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). UNICOR manufactures products and provides services that are sold to executive agencies in the federal government. FPI was created to serve as a means for managing, training, and rehabilitating inmates in the federal prison system through employment in one of its industries. The question of whether UNICOR is unfairly competing with private businesses, particularly small businesses, in the federal market has been and continues to be an issue of debate. The debate has been affected by tensions between competing interests that represent two social goods — the employment and rehabilitation of offenders and the need to protect jobs of law abiding citizens. At the core of the debate is UNICOR's preferential treatment over the private sector. UNICOR's enabling legislation and the Federal Acquisition Regulation require federal agencies, with the exception of the Department of Defense (DOD), to procure products offered by UNICOR, unless authorized by UNICOR to solicit bids from the private sector. While federal agencies are not required to procure services provided by UNICOR they are encouraged to do so. It is this "mandatory source clause" that has drawn controversy over the years and is the subject of current legislation. Of the eligible inmates held in federal prisons, 19,720 or 18% are employed by UNICOR. By statute, UNICOR must be economically self-sustaining, thus it does not receive funding through congressional appropriations. In FY2005, FPI generated $765 million in sales. UNICOR uses the revenue it generates to purchase raw material and equipment; pay wages to inmates and staff; and invest in expansion of its facilities. Of the revenues generated by FPI's products and services, approximately 74% go toward the purchase of raw material and equipment; 20% go toward staff salaries; and 6% go toward inmate salaries. In recent years, the Administration has made several efforts to mitigate the competitive advantage UNICOR has over the private sector. Going beyond the Administration's efforts, Congress has taken legislative action to lessen the adverse impact FPI has caused on small businesses. For example, in 2002, 2003, and 2004, Congress passed legislation that modified FPI's mandatory source clause with respect to procurements made by the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); in 2004, Congress passed legislation limiting funds appropriated for FY2004 to be used by federal agencies for the purchase of products or services manufactured by FPI under certain circumstances. Legislation introduced in the 110th Congress would address many of the same issues as legislation in the 109th Congress. Like legislation in the 109th Congress, legislation introduced in the 110th Congress, S. 1407, S. 1547, and S. 1548, would eliminate the requirement that some or all executive agencies purchase products or services from FPI in most cases. This report will be updated as warranted.


Turbulent boundary layer pressure fluctuations can be reduced by filtering of its wave‐number response with either a finite hydrophone or a hydrophone array, or by filtering the wave‐number response through a layer (layers) of elastomer. The elastomer layer is frequently called an outer decoupler and the multilayered structure is a generalized outer decoupler. In general practice, hydrophone arrays are embedded within the outer decoupler to reduce the turbulent boundary layer pressure fluctuations and then mounted to an elastic structure. The analysis of a multilayered structure is presented here to evaluate the transfer function, which is a measure of wave‐number filtering through an outer decoupler. The front of the first layer is exposed to turbulent flow and the back of the last layer is in contact with static air. The results presented here are the numerically calculated transfer functions and noise reductions achieved by various layers of elastomer mounted on a steel plate.


Thirty years after the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Terry v. Ohio! and almost seven-times-thirty years after the adoption of the Fourth Amendment, many lawyers, scholars, and judges still fail to grasp the basic insights of the case and the first principles of the Amendment. Chief Justice Warren's opinion for the Court in Terry must bear some of the blame for the current confusion. Even as the great Chief of the great Court pointed forward to a more sensible understanding of the Amendment, he gestured backward to contradictory language from earlier cases. Such is the unsteady path of common law evolution, of course, but three decades of confusion are enough. To the extent that there were in effect two inconsistent Terry opinions, we must choose which Terry to follow. I urge that we follow what I shall call the good Terry, not simply because it was more sensible and more truly progressive, but also because that opinion within the opinion was more consistent with constitutional text, history, and structure. Moreover, in the three decades since the case was decided, much of the Court's case law has built on the foundation of the good Terry. Thus, three decades after Terry and two centuries after the Fourth Amendment, we can, if we are wise, affirm insights that are not only forwardlooking in the best sense (workable and progressive) but also backward-looking in an attractive sense (faithful to original intent and consistent with a good deal of precedent). In short, Terry can help us grasp Fourth Amendment first principles, and


1. The effect of hyperketonaemia on counter-regulatory hormone responses to hypoglycaemia has been examined in six healthy subjects. 2. A controlled, step-wise reduction in blood glucose concentration was achieved by adjusting the rate of glucose infusion during a primed-continuous infusion of soluble insulin (1.5 m-units min-1 kg-1 body weight, plasma insulin concentration approximately 90 m-units/l). Simultaneous infusion of either saline or beta-hydroxybutyrate (3 mg min-1 kg-1 body weight) was administered in a single-blind fashion, in random order. Despite a need for 40% more glucose during the ketone infusion, an identical fall in blood glucose concentration was achieved in each study. 3. The glycaemic threshold for stimulating an adrenaline response of 0.41 nmol/l was reduced from 3.1 to 2.8 mmol/l (P less than 0.05) during ketone infusion, and that for stimulating a response of more than 50% of basal from 3.6 to 3.1 mmol/l (P less than 0.001). The peak adrenaline response fell from 7.97 to 2.6 nmol/l (P less than 0.04). Peak noradrenaline, cortisol and growth hormone responses were also significantly lower during ketone infusion (P = 0.04, 0.001 and 0.006, respectively). Glucagon responses alone were unaffected by hyperketonaemia. 4. The provision of an alternate metabolic fuel thus produced immediate changes in the neurohumoral responses to hypoglycaemia. This is consistent with the hypothesis that human nervous tissue can metabolize ketones acutely.


Summary

To suppress weeds in an apple (Malus sp.) orchard, we placed spruce (Picea spp.) bark mulch and cocoa (Theobroma cacao) husk mulch for 3 months in thicknesses of 0, 2.5, 5, 10 and 15 cm. To assess the development of weed cover, an innovative use of log-logistic dose–response models was applied, with mulch thickness as the independent variable. Weed cover was measured by non-destructive image analysis by estimating the relationship between the number of green pixels and the total number of pixels in each experimental plot. The thickness of mulch layer required to attain a 50 and 90% weed suppression (ED50 and ED90) differed significantly within and between mulch types. In all except one instance, the cocoa mulch was superior in suppressing weeds. This method was useful for the evaluation, but further research is needed to give a more general conclusion about the suppression ability of the two mulches under other climatic and growing conditions.


I Heart Design is a collection of "favorite" designs as selected by 80 prominent graphic designers, typographers, teachers, scholars, writers and design impresarios. Designers have preferences, like modern over postmodern, serif over sans serif, decorative over minimal, but designers could not be engaged in design practice if they did not love design. The reasons for such a charged emotion varies from individual to individual, but there are certain commonalities regarding form, function, outcome, and more. Design triggers something in all of us that may be solely aesthetic or decidedly content-driven, but in the final analysis, we are drawn to it through the heart.

Designs featured include the iconic CBS eye, the stark Kodak identity, the Coca-Cola bottle, and, of course, The Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers album cover.


Current analyses and predictions of spatially explicit patterns and processes in ecology most often rely on climate data interpolated from standardized weather stations. This interpolated climate data represents long‐term average thermal conditions at coarse spatial resolutions only. Hence, many climate‐forcing factors that operate at fine spatiotemporal resolutions are overlooked. This is particularly important in relation to effects of observation height (e.g. vegetation, snow and soil characteristics) and in habitats varying in their exposure to radiation, moisture and wind (e.g. topography, radiative forcing or cold‐air pooling). Since organisms living close to the ground relate more strongly to these microclimatic conditions than to free‐air temperatures, microclimatic ground and near‐surface data are needed to provide realistic forecasts of the fate of such organisms under anthropogenic climate change, as well as of the functioning of the ecosystems they live in. To fill this critical gap, we highlight a call for temperature time series submissions to SoilTemp, a geospatial database initiative compiling soil and near‐surface temperature data from all over the world. Currently, this database contains time series from 7,538 temperature sensors from 51 countries across all key biomes. The database will pave the way toward an improved global understanding of microclimate and bridge the gap between the available climate data and the climate at fine spatiotemporal resolutions relevant to most organisms and ecosystem processes.


We use a bang-bang optimal control model to derive a rule of thumb for an optimal management of invasive weeds, in terms of the marginal benefits and costs of various control actions. Instead of determining the size of infestation under an optimal surveillance measure, the rule specifies the types of land where an invasive weed should be first prevented from establishment, and under what conditions control should be initiated. The types of land are modeled via the heterogeneous vulnerability of land to the weed and likely infestation. This easy-to-use rule is applied to determine how hawkweed should be controlled in Australia, across three potential control strategies: containment, eradication and no action. We investigate this rule-of-thumb in both deterministic and stochastic settings. With uncertainty, when calculating the threshold of when and how to act, we take into account the fact that delaying a control action will incur not only larger damage and a potentially larger spread but also a higher cost from uncertainty in the spread of the weed itself. The land value threshold is thus given by the unit cost of keeping a weed off a parcel of land times the difference between the interest rate and the current weed spread rate plus the effect of uncertainty. An application to hawkweed in Australia is provided. The rule specifies that hawkweed should be immediately eradicated in all types of agricultural lands they currently occupy where the potential damage is larger than 15AUD/ha/year. This generates a full eradication strategy under broad parameter values. Though the cost of removing hawkweeds is significant, it is overwhelmed by the damage if Hawkweeds spread to higher value agricultural land.


This paper examines the current status, strengths and weaknesses of media communication curricula at 95 South Korean universities. It aims to find out whether the communication departments at South Korean universities reflect the global trend towards an integrated curriculum in the communication discipline as the literature suggests. This means a curriculum that integrates the theory, practice, and inter-disciplinary philosophies of Communication Studies, Journalism, Mass Communication, Advertising, Public Relations and Digital Media. The analysis shows that overall the current curricula in South Korean universities, which lean towards liberal-professional education, are relatively lacking in inter-disciplinarity. Most lacking is in the theory and practice of Communication Studies, particularly in Speech Communication and Public/Business Speaking. This study concludes with a proposed model for an integrated liberal, practical, and inter-disciplinary communication curriculum.


We use the Cosmic Assembly Near-Infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS) GOODS-S multi-wavelength catalog to identify counterparts for 20 Lyα emitting (LAE) galaxies at z = 2.1. We build several types of stacked spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of these objects. We combine photometry to form average and median flux-stacked SEDs, and postage-stamp images to form average and median image-stacked SEDs. We also introduce scaled flux stacks that eliminate the influence of variation in overall brightness. We use the SED fitting code SpeedyMC to constrain the physical properties of individual objects and stacks. Our LAEs at z = 2.1 have stellar masses ranging from 2 × 107 M☉ to 8 × 109 M☉ (median = 3 × 108 M☉), ages ranging from 4 Myr to 500 Myr (median = 100 Myr), and E(B − V) between 0.02 and 0.24 (median = 0.12). Although still low, this represents significantly more dust reddening than has been reported for LAEs at higher redshifts. We do not observe strong correlations between Lyα equivalent width (EW) and age or E(B − V). The Lyα radiative transfer (q) factors of our sample are predominantly close to one and do not correlate strongly with EW or E(B − V). The absence of strong correlations with EW or q implies that Lyα radiative transfer is highly anisotropic and/or prevents Lyα photons from scattering in dusty regions. The SED parameters of the flux stacks match the average and median values of the individual objects, with the flux-scaled median SED performing best with uncertainties reduced by a factor of two. Median image-stacked SEDs provide a poor representation of the median individual object, and none of the stacking methods capture the large dispersion of LAE properties.


Harvesting of vibration energy from the ambient environment, such as vibrations experienced by bridges due to vehicle movements, wind, earthquakes, has become an essential area of study by many scientists aiming to design new systems which can improve self-powered network sensors in wireless sensor networks (WSN), thus providing a more efficient system that does not require the human involvement. One of the essential components of WSN systems is the sensor node. It is used to continuously send/receive information to monitor a certain behavior targeted by the application; for example, to monitor bridge infrastructure's health. Sometimes, sensors are programmed and adjusted to send useful data for monitoring 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This configuration harms the sensors' batteries and shortens their lives, since sending/receiving data consumes power and leads to the reduction of the batteries' voltage levels. Due to this fact, energy harvesting is critical to maintaining long-term batteries that can recharge themselves from the available ambient harvested energy and eliminate the need for human involvement in replacing or recharging them in their specified locations in the network. Recent structural health monitoring systems (SHM), in civil infrastructure environments, have focused heavily on the use of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) due to their efficient use of wireless sensor nodes. Such nodes can be fixed onto any part of the infrastructure, such as bridges, to collect data remotely for monitoring and further processing. However, the drawback of using such sensor networks relies mainly on the finite life-time of their batteries. Due to this problem, the concept of harvesting energy from the ambient environment became more important. Ensuring efficient battery usage would have a great benefit in maximizing overall systems functionality time and ensures efficient use of natural energy resources like solar, wind and vibration energies. This work aims to study the feasibility of using a piezoelectric vibration energy harvester to extend overall battery life using a single, external, super-capacitor component which is serving as a storage unit for the harvested energy. The methodology followed in this work states the general direction of the flow of energy in a sensor node which can be summarized into the following: 1 Piezoelectric Vibration Energy Harvester: This module was used to convert mechanical energy of the vibrations from the ambient environment to electrical energy. 2 Energy Harvesting Circuit: This circuit is responsible for the power conditioning, enabling the circuit to output energy to the sensors under certain threshold criteria. 3 Energy Storage: This the super-capacitor served to store harvested energy. 4 Energy Management Scheme: The scheme proposed by this work under the energy requirements and constraints of the sensor nodes in order to conserve batteries voltage level to extend sensors' batteries lives. 5 Wireless Sensors Nodes: Each sensor node type has specific energy requirements that must be recognized so that it can be adequately powered and turned on using the harvested energy. The main contribution of this work is a proposal of an energy management scheme which ensures that the harvested energy being provided to the harvester circuit must be greater than the energy output that is going to be consumed by the sensor. This proposed scheme has proved the feasibility of using impact vibrations for efficient energy harvesting and subsequently increase the battery life time needed to turn on the wireless sensor nodes. Furthermore, as a future direction of work, to increase the amount of harvested energy, hybrid power sources can be explored by combining more than one energy source from the ambient environment, such as solar and vibration energy.


Molecular dynamics simulations have proven to be a breakthrough approach in providing molecular structure and function details of biological macromolecules. The fact that molecular simulations can provide details of individual particle motions as a function of time, opens infinite possibilities of answering specific questions about a model system with atomistic and molecular precision, often more easily than experiments on the actual system. Instead of relying solely on experiments, molecular dynamics systems are based on empirical force fields that mimic molecular interactions over time. There has been increasing interest in utilizing the multiscale molecular dynamics (MD) approach to simulate the properties of biological macromolecules for meaningful applications in areas of nanotoxicity, nanotherapy, and nanomedicine. Recent advances in nanomedicine have led to the great development of several drug-delivery platforms for targeted delivery. Polymeric drug delivery systems are designed and applied to ameliorate undesirable properties of the drug agents such as hydrophobicity, poor targeting ability, and broad scale toxicity. However, rational structural design of polymeric nanocarrier is only based on theoretical investigation, that restraint by absence of real molecular-level details. So, MD approach is used to provide those desirable details which not feasible in experiments. In our work, models of three generations of anticancer nanocarriers polymer were developed and characterized using multiscale MD simulations. The results were compared to in vitro experimental results. Observations were analyzed and found to be in good agreement with experiments results on size and morphology changes. Details shown by our systems helped us discover the reasons for the different nanocarriers' performances. Our results show the in silico methods that can be used to contribute to drug nanocarrier design optimization work. Claudins, are critical components in building tight junctions (TJs) which could form paracellular channels or barriers for physiological functions. Recently, 27 types of claudins have been classified based on different functions and characteristics, and they are becoming potential points in developing drug delivery systems and pathological studies. However, the architecture of claudin strand in TJs is still unclear thus impeding further study and applications. So, we use MD simulation approach to replicate self-assembly process and try to find out the potential construction models. In our work, claudin-1, -2, -5, and -15 monomer models were built by homology modeling and validated. Self-assembly processes of non-mutated and mutated claudins were conducted to reproduce the construction of claudin macromolecular strands. Four classified dimer models predicted by existing research were found to be reproduced in our molecular dynamics systems, and their number distributions were calculated. Our results first time showed the potential models for TJ architectures that can be a guidance for understanding TJs. UNDERSTANDING SOFT MOLECULAR INTERFACES USING MULTISCALE MOLECULAR DYNAMICS


recollection comes with the hindsight of an established position after almost 50 years. However, in 1967 she was behind schedule with her thesis, having provisionally abandoned it in favor of political activism, which was for her a fairly typical trajectory of on and off and on again within the arc of her studies during these days with Adorno in Frankfurt and then Paris. Bridging these two was her developing interest in militant surrealism upon joining the movement soon after arriving in Paris in 1962. She was by now attending meetings and had become one of André Breton's trusted associates, sharing his opposition to French colonial rule and the war in Algeria. She soon changed her thesis to a topic that took in the social pointers of surrealism and in particular the lead given to it by its charismatic founder. As her supervisor, Adorno raised no objections, either to the shift in location or subject matter, which was now removed from his more immediate frame of reference. Nor did he seem to object to the level of militant activity she engaged with in spite of its effect on her academic progress. Maybe it was not in his power, perhaps even his nature, to intervene, and so it is a moot point as to whose shadow bore more influentially on Lenk's intellectual purpose at this time—his own in Frankfurt or André Breton's in Paris. The significant pages dealing with Adorno's influence in The Challenge of Surrealism: The Correspondence of Theodor W. Adorno and Elisabeth Lenk demonstrate a close relationship between student and supervisor and much common ground between them. As might be expected from the title, the letters occupy the central and longest section of the book, on either side of which is a selection of essays establishing the links between critical theory and surrealism, although an early essay by Walter Benjamin, written in 1929, predates the emergence of the Frankfurt School as an influential force in this area. The remaining contributions by Adorno, Rita Bischoff and Lenk herself were written from the mid-fifties onward and provide a view of how the two movements might be seen to run in tandem. After the central section of correspondence come two substantial essays also by Lenk. The first is the 1969 accompaniment to the German-language translation of Louis Aragon's Paris Peasant, and the B O O K S


It is difficult and high-cost to detect flame fronts by laser-sheet diagnostics under microgravity (micro-g), thus image processing is critical to obtain valuable information from the raw data. In the present study, premixed V-flames were detected under micro-g by OH planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) and an effective method based on active contour model (ACM) is presented for automatic detecting and tracking flame fronts in the PLIF images. ACM can effectively detect the flame front in the images with low contrast and noises. Compared with other methods of flame front detection, the advantage of this method is that the image smoothing and image enhancement are not necessary for the correct detection of flame fronts in raw PLIF images.


Intracellular pathogens including the apicomplexan and opportunistic parasite Toxoplasma gondii profoundly modify their host cells in order to establish infection. We have shown previously that intracellular T. gondii inhibit up-regulation of regulatory and effector functions in murine macrophages (MΦ) stimulated with interferon (IFN)-γ, which is the cytokine crucial for controlling the parasites' replication. Using genome-wide transcriptome analysis we show herein that infection with T. gondii leads to global unresponsiveness of murine macrophages to IFN-γ. More than 61% and 89% of the transcripts, which were induced or repressed by IFN-γ in non-infected MΦ, respectively, were not altered after stimulation of T. gondii-infected cells with IFN-γ. These genes are involved in a variety of biological processes, which are mostly but not exclusively related to immune responses. Analyses of the underlying mechanisms revealed that IFN-γ-triggered nuclear translocation of STAT1 still occurred in Toxoplasma-infected MΦ. However, STAT1 bound aberrantly to oligonucleotides containing the IFN-γ-responsive gamma-activated site (GAS) consensus sequence. Conversely, IFN-γ did not induce formation of active GAS-STAT1 complexes in nuclear extracts from infected MΦ. Mass spectrometry of protein complexes bound to GAS oligonucleotides showed that T. gondii-infected MΦ are unable to recruit non-muscle actin to IFN-γ-responsive DNA sequences, which appeared to be independent of stimulation with IFN-γ and of STAT1 binding. IFN-γ-induced recruitment of BRG-1 and acetylation of core histones at the IFN-γ-regulated CIITA promoter IV, but not β-actin was diminished by >90% in Toxoplasma-infected MΦ as compared to non-infected control cells. Remarkably, treatment with histone deacetylase inhibitors restored the ability of infected macrophages to express the IFN-γ regulated genes H2-A/E and CIITA. Taken together, these results indicate that Toxoplasma-infected MΦ are unable to respond to IFN-γ due to disturbed chromatin remodelling, but can be rescued using histone deacetylase inhibitors.


Abstract Some enzyme supplement products claim benefits for healthy dogs to compensate for alleged suboptimal production of endogenous enzymes and the loss of enzymes in commercial pet foods secondary to processing. The objective of the current study was to determine macronutrient and energy digestibility by healthy adult dogs fed a commercial maintenance diet with or without supplementation with plant- and animal-origin enzyme products at the dosage recommended by their respective manufacturers. A group of fourteen healthy neutered adult Beagle dogs (average age 8 years) was divided into two equal groups and fed the basal diet alone and then with either the plant- or animal-origin enzyme supplement in three consecutive 10-d periods; the treatment groups received the opposite enzyme supplement in the third period. Digestibility in each period was performed by the total faecal collection method. Serum trypsin-like immunoreactivity (TLI) was measured at the end of each trial. Data were analysed by repeated measures and the α level of significance was set at 0·05. There were no differences in energy and nutrient digestibility between enzyme treatments. When comparing basal with enzyme supplementation, fat digestibility was higher for the basal diet compared with the animal-origin enzyme treatment, which could be a period effect and was not biologically significant (94·7 v. 93·5 %). Serum TLI was not affected by supplementation with either enzyme product. Exogenous enzyme supplementation did not significantly increase digestibility of a typical commercial dry diet in healthy adult dogs and routine use of such products is not recommended.


The main features and principle of operation of an electromagnetic inductance tomography system are described. The system can image the distribution of electrically conducting and/or magnetically permeable materials and is analogous to the other electrical tomography systems which measure capacitance or resistance. The paper presents a nonintrusive system with a rotatable parallel uniform excitation magnetic field which improves the detectability at the centre of the object space with respect to that near the periphery. The sensor construction, electronics design and image reconstruction are described. A novel electronic compensation scheme is used to condition the output signals from the sensor. This scheme subtracts the empty space background field measurements and consequently increases the overall dynamic range of the data acquisition system. An image reconstruction technique based on a correlation method is described and some images are presented.


Drainage ditches are the result of a large-scale anthropogenic transformation of the hydrographical network in the agrarian landscapes of European lowlands. These drainage ditches are readily occupied and transformed by beavers for their own needs, due to the paucity of remaining intact natural watercourses. The geomorphic consequences of beaver activities in inhabited streams are quite well documented in mountain environments of North America, especially for various aspects of sedimentation. There is, however, a lack of knowledge concerning other geomorphic effects resulting from beaver activities in the drainage ditches within agrarian lowlands. To assess these geomorphic effects, an investigation was conducted in the anthropogenically transformed landscape of the Middle Lithuanian Lowland to: (1) quantify the geomorphic effects, and (2) predict the shifts in the magnitude of total geomorphic effect as the size of beaver population changes. Two methods, aerial photographs and global positioning system, were used to map all ditches in selected sites and all available beaver-created visible structures therein. On the drainage ditch network scale, the quantitative geomorphic effect of beaver activities resulting from construction of dams, burrowing into the ditch slopes, and digging of lateral canals, as well as the development of scours where the beaver dams abut the drainage ditch slopes, was estimated to average about 35 m3 km–1 of relocated substances. However, on the local scale, within one beaver-site, the total geomorphic effect was much greater, up to about 176 m3. On the catchment scale of the whole hydrographical network, an increase in either the length of dammed drainage ditches by 10%, or the density of beaver-sites by 0.1 ps.km–2, resulted in the potential growth of the total geomorphic effect by about 15 and 11 m3 km–2 respectively. These quantities should be enhanced by about 6.5 times if the estimate of total geomorphic effect includes sedimentation in beaver ponds.


Objective: The study aimed to obtain the perspective and teaching practice of novice lecturers serving at the training institutions, Ministry of Health Malayisa (MOH). Method: A qualitative research was conducted on four novice lecturers at the  Medical Assistant College, Seremban. Data were obtained from interview and observation on their teaching in the lecture rooms.  The data analysis was performed by using Nvivio 9 software. Result: In the aspect of the teaching perspective, the finding showed that there were two main themes; teaching concept and the teaching method. As far as the teaching concept concerned, respondents perceived  that lecturers were the source of knowledge and those who transfered the knowledge to the students.  Meanwhile, the second perspective relateed to the teaching approach in which lecturers need to use their experiences, they need to be knowledgeable and creative in their teaching. The integration of the themes  formed the main perspective, which was the lecturer-centered teaching.  In turn, in the teaching practice, it was consistent with their perspective whereby the approach of teaching is lecturer-centered. Conclusion: This study showed that new lecturers would employ the lecturer-centered approach.   Apart from that, they were also lacking of the skills in terms of class control and value inculcation.   The deficiency in both these aspects needs to be overcome as it can affect the effectiveness of the teaching, also the quality of the graduates produced


Elections unleash strong political views on Twitter, but what do people really think about politics? Opinion and trend mining on micro blogs dealing with politics has recently attracted researchers in several fields including Information Retrieval and Machine Learning (ML). Since the performance of ML and Natural Language Processing (NLP) approaches are limited by the amount and quality of data available, one promising alternative for some tasks is the automatic propagation of expert annotations. This paper intends to develop a so-called active learning process for automatically annotating French language tweets that deal with the image (i.e., representation, web reputation) of politicians. Our main focus is on the methodology followed to build an original annotated dataset expressing opinion from two French politicians over time. We therefore review state of the art NLP-based ML algorithms to automatically annotate tweets using a manual initiation step as bootstrap. This paper focuses on key issues about active learning while building a large annotated data set from noise. This will be introduced by human annotators, abundance of data and the label distribution across data and entities. In turn, we show that Twitter characteristics such as the author's name or hashtags can be considered as the bearing point to not only improve automatic systems for Opinion Mining (OM) and Topic Classification but also to reduce noise in human annotations. However, a later thorough analysis shows that reducing noise might induce the loss of crucial information.


The influence of shaping and toroidicity on the ideal MHD stability of the reversed field pinch(RFP) is investigated with respect to current driven and pressure driven modes. It is found that triangularity and X-point shaping does not significantly modify the operational limits of RFPs, while ellipticity and D shaping is destabilizing. A simple relation for the stability of current driven modes is also given.


Scalable video coding is a promising solution for efficient video content distribution to users having heterogeneous network and terminal capabilities. Thanks to its inherent multidimensional adaptability, a scalable bit stream can be used to simultaneously transmit multiple video sequences having different bit rates to corresponding target users, without necessity of re-encoding or transcoding. In order to exploit such an advantage effectively, it is crucial to understand the effects of multidimensional scalability options on the perceived quality and the trade-off between the scalability dimensions through subjective quality assessment. This paper reviews existing studies aiming at achieving this goal in order to summarize their results and common findings.


In this paper we characterise the  structural transition in random mappings with in-degree restrictions. Specifically, for integers $0~\!\!\leq~\!\!r\leq~\!\!n$, we  consider a random mapping model $\hat{T}_n^r$ from $[n]=\{1,2, \ldots , n\}$ into $[n]$ such that $\hat{G}_n^r$, the directed graph on $n$ labelled vertices which represents the mapping $\hat{T}_n^r$, has $r$ vertices that are constrained to have in-degree at most $1$ and the remaining vertices have in-degree at most 2. When $r=n$, $\hat{T}_n^r$ is a uniform random permutation and when $r<n$, we can view $\hat{T}_n^r$ as a 'corrupted' permutation. We investigate structural transition in $\hat{G}_n^r$ as we vary the integer parameter $r$ relative to the total number of vertices $n$. We obtain  exact and asymptotic distributions for the number of cyclic vertices, the number of components,  and the size of the typical component in $\hat{G}_n^r$, and we characterise the dependence of the limiting distributions  of these variables on the relationship between the parameters $n$ and $r$ as $n\to\infty$. We show that the number of cyclic vertices in $\hat{G}_n^r$ is $\Theta({n\over\sqrt{a}})$ and the number of components is $\Theta(\log({n\over \sqrt{a}}))$ where $a=n-r$. In contrast, provided only that $a=n-r\to\infty$, we show that the asymptotic distribution of the order statistics of the normalised component sizes of $\hat{G}_n^r$ is always the  Poisson-Dirichlet(1/2) distribution as in the case of uniform random mappings with no in-degree restrictions.


Dicom (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) files stores the personal data of patients in file headers. The personal data of patients can be obtained illegally while archiving and transmitting Dicom files. Therefore, the personal rights of patients can also be invaded. It can be also changed the treatment of disease. This study proposes a new fuzzy logic-based steganography method for the security of medical images. It provides to select randomly the least significant bits (LSB) of image pixels. The message which combined of personal data and comment of doctor, are compressed and encrypted to prevent the attacks.


Near-resonant optical pumping is applied for encoding the anisotropy of third-order susceptibility χ(3) in a Disperse Red 1 poly (methyl methacrylate) polymer thin film. The encoding process involves one- or two-photon excitation that results in trans–cis isomerization of azo molecules. Third-harmonic generation from the sample is used to probe the χ(3) anisotropy. We demonstrate large reversible variations of the third-harmonic generation (several times in intensity) in a sample pumped by the second harmonic of a Nd:YAG laser or a cw He–Cd laser. A microscopic model, which includes mechanisms for angular hole burning and molecular reorientation, is presented. The model is in good qualitative agreement with the experimental results.


Congress has recently authorized military commissions to try individuals for domestic-law offenses — such as providing material support to terrorism, and conspiring to commit law-of-war offenses — in addition to offenses against the international laws of war. Such military tribunals lack the civilian jury and independent judge that Article III of the Constitution guarantees. The constitutionality of such an abrogation of Article III's criminal-trial guarantees has been debated in many of the Nation's wars, without clear resolution. The Article III question is now the subject of a potentially landmark case, al Bahlul v. United States, that the Supreme Court may consider as early as this Term. In the rare cases where the Court has recognized exceptions to Article III's criminal trial protections, it has typically invoked functional and normative justifications; as this Article explains, however, the government has not offered any such justifications that would be sufficient to justify denial of the independent judge and jury that Article III guarantees when adjudicating domestic-law offenses, even in wartime. The government and judicial defenders of military tribunals thus must rely almost exclusively upon historical claims to defend the constitutionality of using commissions. This Article addresses one of the government's central historical claims — namely, that the Constitution should be understood to have preserved, rather than to have modified, the federal government's power to "carry[] on war as it had been carried on during the Revolution." According to this argument, the Constitution was ratified against, and should be presumed not to have called into question, a purported "backdrop" of military criminal adjudication of offenses that were not violations of the international laws of war: court-martial proceedings, authorized by the Second Continental Congress and approved by General George Washington, against both spies and disloyal civilians who provided aid to the British. The Article provides the first comprehensive account of those Revolutionary War precedents, how they were understood in the decades just after the Constitution was ratified, and the ways in which they have been invoked as authority, and mischaracterized, in later wars. It demonstrates that the received wisdom about those precedents is almost entirely mistaken, and that they do not offer a basis for recognizing a new Article III exception for military adjudication of war-related domestic-law offenses. The pre-constitutional history does, however, include one conspicuous aberration — a 1778 congressional resolution authorizing the trial by court-martial of civilians who provided a particular kind of aid to the British, which General Washington relied upon in 1780 as authority to convene a court-martial to try Joshua Hett Smith for assisting Benedict Arnold in the plot to capture West Point. In the Article, I argue that the Smith case — a striking deviation from Washington's otherwise consistent conduct — should not be accorded much, if any, weight in interpreting Article III or in crafting exceptions to its criminal trial guarantees. More broadly, this Article — together with another article that examines the government's alternative reliance upon a series of military tribunal precedents in the Civil War and World War II (most importantly, the 1865 trial of the individuals accused of conspiring with John Wilkes Booth to kill Abraham Lincoln) — illustrates how a complex history can be misunderstood, and distorted, in the course of constitutional interpretation, particularly on questions of war powers.


This paper examines whether it is possible to establish a relationship between the lexical denotation of the deverbal Russian noun with the morphological and lexical aspect of its base verb. We have classified and analyzed deverbal nouns in relation with their corresponding verbs to understand more deeply what is inherited from the verb by the nominalization. Keywords: deverbal nominalization; aspect; Russian


Microparticles (MPs) are submicron vesicles shed from various cell types upon activation, stimulation, and death. Activated platelets are an important source of circulating MPs in subjects with inflammatory diseases, including Crohn's disease (CD). Angiogenesis is a hallmark of inflammation in CD and plays an active role in sustaining disease progression, while targeting angiogenesis may be an effective approach to block colitis. In this study, we analyzed the angiogenic content of the MPs produced by activated platelets in subjects with CD. We also evaluated whether the angiogenic signal carried by these MPs was functionally active, or able to induce angiogenesis. We found that, in subjects with CD, MPs produced by activated platelets contain significantly higher levels of angiogenic mRNAs, such as epidermal growth factor (EGF), platelet-derived growth factor-α (PDGFα), fibroblast growth factor (FGF-2), and angiopoietin-1 (ANGPT1), compared to MPs isolated from control subjects. They also contain significantly higher levels of prototypical angiogenic proteins, including vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), angiopoietin-1, endoglin, endothelin-1, pentraxin 3, platelet factor-4, plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1), tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases-1 (TIMP-1), and thrombospondin 1. The protein content of these MPs is functionally active, since it has the ability to induce a robust angiogenic process in an endothelial cell/interstitial cell co-culture in vitro assay. Our results reveal a potential novel mechanism through which the angiogenic signal is delivered in subjects with CD, with potentially important clinical and therapeutic implications.


Responding to claims of Anthropocene geoscience that humans are now geological agents, social scientists are calling for renewed attention to the social, cultural, political and historical differentiation of the Anthropos. But does this leave critical social thought's own key concepts and categories unperturbed by the Anthropocene provocation to think through dynamic earth processes? Can we 'socialize the Anthropocene' without also opening 'the social' to climate, geology and earth system change? Revisiting the earth science behind the Anthropocene thesis and drawing on social research that is using climatology and earth systems thinking to help understand socio-historical change, this article explores some of the possibilities for 'geologizing' social thought. While critical social thought's attention to justice and exclusion remains vital, it suggests that responding to Anthropocene conditions also calls for a kind of 'geo-social' thinking that relates human diversity and social difference to the potentiality and multiplicity of the earth itself.


This history of the concept of fact reveals that the fact-oriented practices of German physicists and historians derived from common origins. The concept of fact became part of the German language remarkably late. It gained momentum only toward the end of the eighteenth century. I show that the concept of fact emerged as part of a historical knowledge tradition, which comprised both human and natural empirical study. Around 1800, parts of this tradition, including the concept of fact, were integrated into the epistemological basis of several emerging disciplines, including physics and historiography. During this process of discipline formation, the concept of fact remained fluid. I reveal this fluidity by unearthing different interpretations and roles of facts in different German contexts around 1800. I demonstrate how a fact-based epistemology emerged at the University of Göttingen in the late eighteenth century, by focusing on universal historian August Ludwig Schlözer and the experimentalist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. In a time of scientific and political revolutions, they regarded facts as eternal knowledge, contrasting them with short-lived theories and speculations. Remarkably, Schlözer and Lichtenberg construed facts as the basis of Wissenschaft, but not as Wissenschaft itself. Only after 1800, empirically minded German physicists and historians granted facts self-contained value. As physics and historiography became institutionalized at German universities, the concept of fact acquired different interpretations in different disciplinary settings. These related to fact-oriented research practices, such as precision measurement in physics and source criticism in historiography.


Some scholars have expressed concern that judges are encroaching on the fact-finding role of the jury through the use of summary judgment. (1) This concern is more acute in cases that turn on fact-specific inquiries, such as lawsuits where the defense claims qualified immunity. (2) Last term, in Scott v. Harris, (3) the Supreme Court overturned the decisions of the district and appellate courts, which had denied summary judgment to a defendant who claimed qualified immunity. (4) In Harris, the plaintiff argued that he had been unreasonably seized by a police officer who had rammed the plaintiff's car off the road to end a high speed car chase, leaving the plaintiff paralyzed. (5) After reviewing video footage of the chase, (6) the Court determined that there was no genuine issue of material fact as to whether the plaintiff posed a danger to the community, making the officer's seizure of the plaintiff objectively reasonable. (7) Because an objectively reasonable seizure does not violate clearly established Fourth Amendment rights, the officer enjoyed qualified immunity from the suit. This Comment argues that the Court's decision in Harris encroached on the jury's role. Indeed, the number of judges who disagreed with the Court and the nature of the video evidence on which the Court relied suggest that a genuine issue of material fact did exist. Moreover, the Court's reliance on video evidence raises the concern that use of such evidence in summary judgment proceedings will lead judges to assume the jury's fact-finding role. On the night of March 29, 2001, a Georgia police officer clocked nineteen-year-old Victor Harris's car speeding at 73 miles-per-hour in a zone with a 55 mile-per-hour speed limit. (8) The officer turned on his flashing blue lights as he followed Harris's car, but Harris refused to slow down. (9) Other police officers, including Deputy Timothy Scott, joined in the pursuit. (10) At one point in the chase, Harris pulled his car into a parking lot and was nearly trapped by police cars. (11) He managed to get his car back on the highway, colliding with Scott's car in the process. (12) Scott, leading the pursuit at that point, then requested and received permission to disable Harris's car, and proceeded to push his bumper into Harris's vehicle. (13) Harris lost control of his car, ran off the road, crashed, and suffered injuries that left him a quadriplegic. (14) Harris filed suit, alleging, among other things, that Scott used excessive force to end the chase and thereby unreasonably seized Harris in violation of the Fourth Amendment. (15) Scott responded by filing a motion for summary judgment based on a defense of qualified immunity. (16) The District Court denied Scott's motion for summary judgment because it believed that the case presented "material issues of fact" that a jury would have to resolve. (17) The court first decided that Harris had been seized. (18) Drawing all disputed facts in favor of Harris, the court next determined that a jury could find the seizure to be objectively unreasonable. According to the court, a jury could find that Harris's initial speeding did not pose an immediate threat to others, and that his subsequent conduct during the chase, in which he "did not use his vehicle in an aggressive manner," did not create such a threat. (19) Finally, the court considered whether Scott was protected by qualified immunity for his alleged violation of Harris's Fourth Amendment right. Scott would not be entitled to such immunity if a jury determined that "it would have been clear to a reasonable officer that Scott's conduct was unlawful." (20) The court held that a reasonable jury could find that Scott did not know Harris's underlying crime, and that the evidence suggested that Harris posed little danger to officers or civilians. (21) Because these findings created a genuine issue of material fact, the court denied summary judgment. (22) The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the District Court's decision to deny Scott summary judgment against Harris. …


A revolution is underway in the art of cooking. Just as French Impressionists upended centuries of tradition, Modernist cuisine has in recent years blown through the boundaries of the culinary arts. Borrowing techniques from the laboratory, pioneering chefs at world-renowned restaurants such as elBulli, The Fat Duck, Alinea, and wd~50 have incorporated a deeper understanding of science and advances in cooking technology into their culinary art. In Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young, and Maxime Bilet--scientists, inventors, and accomplished cooks in their own right--have created a six-volume, 2,400-page set that reveals science-inspired techniques for preparing food that ranges from the otherworldly to the sublime. The authors and their 20-person team at The Cooking Lab have achieved astounding new flavors and textures by using tools such as water baths, homogenizers, centrifuges, and ingredients such as hydrocolloids, emulsifiers, and enzymes. It is a work destined to reinvent cooking. How do you make an omelet light and tender on the outside, but rich and creamy inside? Or French fries with a light and fluffy interior and a delicate, crisp crust that doesn't go soggy? Imagine being able to encase a mussel in a gelled sphere of its own sweet and briny juice. Or to create a silky-smooth pistachio cream made from nothing more than the nuts themselves. Modernist Cuisine offers step-by-step, illustrated instructions, as well as clear explanations of how these techniques work. Through thousands of original photographs and diagrams, the lavishly illustrated books make the science and technology of the culinary arts clear and engaging. Stunning new photographic techniques take the reader inside the food to see cooking in action all the way from microscopic meat fibers to an entire Weber grill in cross-section. You will view cooking and eating in a whole new light. A sampling of what you'll discover: *Why plunging food in ice water doesn't stop the cooking process *When boiling cooks faster than steaming *Why raising the grill doesn't lower the heat *How low-cost pots and pans can perform better than expensive ones *Why baking is mostly a drying process *Why deep-fried food tastes best and browns better when the oil is older *How modern cooking techniques can achieve ideal results without the perfect timing or good luck that traditional methods demand. Many invaluable features include: *Insights into the surprising science behind traditional food preparation methods such as grilling, smoking, and stir-frying *The most comprehensive guide yet published on cooking sous vide, including the best options for water baths, packaging materials, and sealing equipment; cooking strategies; and troubleshooting tips *More than 256 pages on meat and seafood and 130 pages on fruits, vegetables, and grains, including hundreds of parametric recipes and step-by-step techniques *Extensive chapters explaining how to achieve amazing results by using modern thickeners, gels, emulsions, and foams, including example recipes and many formulas *More than 300 pages of new recipes for plated dishes suitable for service at top-tier restaurants, plus recipes adapted from master chefs including Grant Achatz, Ferran Adria , Heston Blumenthal, David Chang, Wylie Dufresne, David Kinch, and many others. From the professional chef to the home cook, Modernist Cuisine is an indispensable guide for anyone who is passionate about the art and science of cooking.


Introduction: Congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) is a severe malformation, displaying relevant mortality and morbidity rates in newborns. Aim: To characterize clinically and demographically all neonatal cases of CDH admitted to a level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit during a 12-year period and to evaluate the predictive value of baseline characteristics on mortality and morbidity at discharge. Methods: Maternal/infant clinical and electronic records were ret- rospectively reviewed. All neonates with posterolateral CDH admitted between January 2003 and December 2014 were included. Results: Fifty-three newborns were included. Overall mortality during hospitalization was 22/53 (41.5%). Clinical characteristics associated with mortality were the presence of intrathoracic liver (p = 0.005), intrathoracic stomach (p = 0.015), elevated arterial pCO 2 or lower pH values at admission (respectively, p = 0.001 and p < 0.001), pre-ductal oxygen saturation < 85% at admission (p = 0.012) and surgical repair with prosthetic patch (p = 0.041). Morbidity at discharge was reported in 7 (22.6%) survivors. Stomach herniation and sepsis were associated with higher morbidity (respectively, p = 0.012 and p = 0.029). In a logistic regression, patch repair was the only variable with predictive value for death during hospitalization, with an odds ratio (OR) of 15 (95% CI 0.98-228.9), and intrathoracic stomach was a predictor of morbidity at discharge (OR = 15.7, 95% CI 1.4-174.2). Conclusion: Structural characteristics, namely defect size and presence of intrathoracic stomach, remain the primary determinants of neonatal prognosis in CDH. Although post-natal approaches have progressively proven their value in increasing survival and improving management of high-risk cases, future researches should continue focusing on the definition of foetal anatomical markers of severity and prenatal treatment of CDH.


The rapid growth of mobile applications in recent years has created a need for wideband wireless communication. The only predictable trend is that data-rate and QoS requirements will increase rapidly. This demand is pushing time-division-synchronous code-division multiple access (TD-SCDMA) to evolve in order to provide higher and higher data rates. This article presents the evolution map from TD-SCDMA to future terrestrial universal radio environment (FuTURE) TDD in China. The evolution includes four phases: low chip rate (LCR), high-speed downlink/uplink packet access (HSxPA)/TD-SCDMA EV 1x, long-term evolution (LTE) TDD, and FuTURE beyond 3G TDD. The main features of each phase are described in detail. By introducing the new technologies into the system step by step, for example, multiple input and multiple output (MIMO), orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), TD-SCDMA system can evolve to FuTURE B3G TDD smoothly, and provide high-data-rate services with low cost, low latency, and improved coverage and capacity.


We present a learning algorithm for undiscounted reinforcement learning. Our interest lies in bounds for the algorithm's online performance after some finite number of steps. In the spirit of similar methods already successfully applied for the exploration-exploitation tradeoff in multi-armed bandit problems, we use upper confidence bounds to show that our UCRL algorithm achieves logarithmic online regret in the number of steps taken with respect to an optimal policy.


An optical trap uses radiation pressure of light to manipulate microscopic objects. The interaction between the light and the microscopic objects result in the objects experiencing optical forces. These forces are on the same order of magnitude as biological forces (typically \SIrange[range-units=single]{0.1}{100}{\pico\newton}) and this feature makes optical traps appropriate for single-molecule studies. Currently, there is a growing need to create an automated optical trap that uses the entire operating range of the optical trap to study the biological forces. Spatial nonlinearities in the optical force and parameter uncertainty complicate feedback control for optical traps. A consequence is that users are spending an enormous amount of time calibrating the instrument and designing a controller, and this diverts their time away from studying the biophysics. This research explores the use of nonlinear and adaptive feedback methods to create an automated optical trap.

A model is defined to describe the coupling between the dynamics of the optical trap and molecule, and the nominal force within the molecule is treated as a disturbance. The disturbance information is obtained by creating a disturbance model and combining its dynamics with the system dynamics. The system nonlinearities are addressed by using a nonlinear Kalman filter to estimate the system state, then the system state is used in a input-output feedback linearization and linear quadratic structure to satisfy performacne requirements. Statistical analyses are performed to assess the effectiveness the feedback methods have on the open-loop and closed-loop systems. Its performance is compared with that of linear integral control used in practice to quantify the performance improvement when considering the system nonlinearities in the control design. The system nonlinearities and parameter uncertainty are addressed by using adaptive and nonlinear feedback methods. An adaptive state observer provides a simultaneous estimate of the system state and parameters, then these estimated entities are used in an adaptive input-output feedback linearization and LQ structure. The result is the creation of an automated self-tuning optical trap that minimizes the user interaction with the instrument calibration and control design, uses the entire operating range of the optical trap, and obtains an unbiased estimate of the molecule force. The closed-loop performance of these feedback methods are demonstrated by replicating the force-extension curve of a DNA molecule.


It is acknowledged that spatial variations in the DSD and type of rainfall are important for an adequate rainfall estimation using operational weather radars. However, due to a lack of instrumentation, the Z-R relationship is rarely considered spatially variable. This relationship is usually applied unawarely of the scale, which is questionable since the nonlinearity of this relation could lead to undesirable discrepancies when combined with scale aggregation. This paper investigates different methods to define an adequate Z–R law relation for a study region, where a spatial variation of coefficients and rain type may be considered. For this, we utilize data from a disdrometers network and a C-band radar located in Mexico City. Coefficients of the Z-R law are obtained through: the definition of the Z-R relationship at each disdrometer and the use of three methods (dBZ, R and Do/R) for the data classification by rain type (ST, T, C). Results show that the coefficients for the Z-R law are very diverse and strongly dependent on the rain type. Regarding radar data, the evaluation indicates that the values do not correspond quantitatively to those recorded on the earth's surface, but it can represent the variances in most of the period.


OBJECTIVE
The objective of our study was to compare the preoperative diagnostic accuracy of axial, multiplanar, and 3D MDCT images for evaluating congenital lung anomalies in pediatric patients and to assess the potential added diagnostic value of multiplanar and 3D MDCT images in this setting.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
We used our hospital information system to identify all consecutive pediatric patients younger than 18 years who had undergone preoperative MDCT angiography and had a pathologically proven congenital lung anomaly between June 2005 and February 2010. Each MDCT examination was reviewed independently by two experienced pediatric radiologists for the types, location, associated mass effect, and associated anomalous vessels of congenital lung anomalies on axial, multiplanar, and 3D MDCT images. The final diagnosis was determined by surgical and pathologic findings. Diagnostic accuracy, confidence level of diagnosis (scale of 1-3: 1 = highest confidence and 3 = lowest), perceived added diagnostic value of multiplanar or 3D MDCT images (scale of 1-5: 5 = highest added diagnostic value and 1 = lowest), and interobserver kappa agreement were evaluated.

RESULTS
The final study cohort consisted of 46 pediatric patients (28 males and 18 females; mean age, 5.6 ± 6 [SD] months; range, 1 day-50 months). Histopathologic diagnoses included congenital pulmonary airway malformation (n = 19, 41%), sequestration (n = 15, 33%), congenital lobar emphysema (n = 7, 15%), and bronchogenic cyst (n = 5, 11%). Both independent reviewers correctly diagnosed types, location, associated mass effect, and associated anomalous arteries of all congenital lung anomalies with high accuracy (100%) and confidence level (mean confidence level < 1.2) on each type of image display (axial, multiplanar, and 3D). However, for the detection of anomalous veins, multiplanar and 3D images were associated with greater diagnostic accuracy and higher confidence level than axial images alone. Specifically, diagnostic accuracy for the detection of anomalous veins (n = 15; 33%) was 60% (9/15 cases) for axial MDCT images, 80% (12/15) for multiplanar MDCT images, and 100% (15/15) for 3D MDCT images (Friedman test, p = 0.011). Confidence levels for the detection of anomalous veins were significantly higher with 3D MDCT images (mean level = 1.0) and multiplanar MDCT images (mean level = 1.5) compared with axial MDCT images alone (mean level = 2.6) (Friedman test, p < 0.01). Both multiplanar and 3D MDCT images were found to provide added diagnostic value for accurately detecting anomalous veins associated with congenial lung anomalies (paired Student t tests, p < 0.012).

CONCLUSION
Axial MDCT images allow accurate diagnosis of the types, location, associated mass effect, and anomalous arteries of congenital lung anomalies, but supplemental multiplanar and 3D MDCT images add diagnostic value for the evaluation of congenital lung lesions associated with anomalous veins.


Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility that several workplace initiatives could stem the biases of recruiters against people who disclose or demonstrate diagnosed mental disorders. Specifically, in many nations, the level of unemployment in people who experience mental disorders is rife. Arguably, employers exhibit various biases that disadvantage people who disclose or demonstrate mental disorders; for example, recruiters tend to orient attention to the limitations, instead of the strengths, of job candidates. Because of these various biases, employers may reject applicants who acknowledge or manifest a mental disorder, even if these candidates would have been suitable.

Design/methodology/approach

To substantiate these premises, the authors analyzed established taxonomies of cognitive biases to identify which of these biases are likely to deter the employment of people with mental disorders. In addition, the authors applied several theories, such as the future self-continuity hypothesis, to uncover a variety of initiatives that could redress these biases in the future.

Findings

The authors uncovered five constellations of biases in recruiters that could disadvantage individuals who disclose or demonstrate mental disorders. Fortunately, consistent with the meaning maintenance model and cognate theories, when the vision and strategy of organizations is stable and enduring, these biases diminish, and people who report mental disorders are more likely to be employed.

Originality/value

This paper shows that initiatives that promote equality and stability in organizations could diminish stigma against individuals who experience mental disorders.


AbstractThe traditional forcing–feedback framework has provided an indispensable basis for discussing global climate changes. However, as analysis of model behavior has become more detailed, shortcomings and ambiguities in the framework have become more evident, and physical effects unaccounted for by the traditional framework have become interesting. In particular, the new concept of adjustments, which are responses to forcings that are not mediated by the global-mean temperature, has emerged. This concept, related to the older ones of climate efficacy and stratospheric adjustment, is a more physical way of capturing unique responses to specific forcings. We present a pedagogical review of the adjustment concept, why it is important, and how it can be used. The concept is particularly useful for aerosols, where it helps to organize what has become a complex array of forcing mechanisms. It also helps clarify issues around cloud and hydrological response, transient versus equilibrium climate change, and ge...


The "85th percentile rule" is commonly used to set speed limits in jurisdictions across the U.S. Modern interpretations of the rule are that it satisfies key conditions needed for safe roadways: it sets speed limits deemed reasonable to the typical, prudent driver, reduces the problematic variance in travel speeds among vehicles, and allows law enforcement to focus on speeding outliers. Authoritative publications regularly assert that the rule came about because early driving surveys often found that drivers moving at or below the 85th percentile of a speed on a given roadway were within one standard deviation of the mean speed for that roadway and were in the low involvement group for traffic incidents. But does this widely used rule for setting speed limits really have such a scientific pedigree? Given debates in cities around the U.S. about competing uses of street space, we examine where this rule of driver-set speed limits actually came from and whether rule developers' rationales still hold true today. While most observers trace the rule to safety research and a 1964 report, we find that the 85th percentile rule actually emerged decades earlier amidst the nascent traffic engineering profession's preoccupation with "traffic service" to increase vehicular throughput; and with respect to safety, the rule was explicitly intended as a starting point in speed limit setting, and not the last word.


ABSRACT
AIMS: In obesity, as excessive adipose tissue accumulates, an altered metabolic profile occurs along with a variety of adaptations and alterations in cardiovascular structure and function even in the absence of co-morbidities. This study was undertaken to analyze the differences in certain well defined cardiovascular parameters in obese and non-obese subjects in the age groups of 21-60 years.
METHODS: 117 healthy male obese subjects with Body Mass Index > 30 kg/m2 and also 110 healthy male non-obese with Body Mass Index of 18.50 – 24.99 kg/m2 were selected. Parameters such as heart rate, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, mean blood pressure and pulse blood pressure were assessed.
RESULTS: In our study, there was a statistically significant increase in heart rate, systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure in obese subjects when compared to non-obese in all age group. There was a positive correlation between body mass index and heart rate, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, mean blood pressure and pulse blood pressure. The degree of rise was higher for the systolic blood pressure than the diastolic blood pressure.
CONCLUSIONS: Although our study is by no means exhaustive, it does provides a glimpse into the variety of adaptations in cardiovascular structure and function that occur as excessive adipose tissue accumulates, even in the absence of overt disease.


Ionosphere is a part of the atmosphere which is formed due to solar ultraviolet radiation on the atmosphere. It stretched from high altitudes heights above the earth surface to near the Earth's. It is divided into different layers such as D, E, and F and... due to the ionization rate and the density of electrons and ions and some other factors. Ionosphere is known as an environmental plasma medium. The lunar tide has always been regarded interesting as one of the notable phenomenon in the ionosphere, and significant due to fact that is indicates a close correlation between ionosphere and specifications of the layered shape of the plasma movements .In this study the lunar tide in the E layer of the ionosphere in the mid-latitude, has been determined by the analysis of the foE and hmE parameters in 2009 year, while the selected site is Boulder Colorado. When the moon is experiencing one of its four main phases, the tide goes to its maximum or minimum values. So we study correlation of the height (hmE) and critical frequency (foE) in these days. The investigations revealed that, the correlation coefficient between the hmE and foE varies with the variation of the moon phase, but these variations are the same for each of the moon main phases in different months. [A. Rezvanimoghadam, Z. Emami, M. Janserian. Lunar Tidal Effect consideration on the Bottom Side of the Ionosphere through the Variation of Critical Frequencies and Height of the E-layer Plasma in Mid-Latitude. Life Sci J 2013;10(7s):19-22](ISSN:1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite.com. 4


Over the last decade, significant increases in capacitor performance, especially in reliability and energy/power densities, have been achieved for energy discharge applications in plasma science and fusion research applications through a combination of advanced manufacturing techniques, new materials, and diagnostic methodologies to provide requisite life-cycle performance for high energy pulse applications. Recent innovations in analysis of aging are introduced for predicting component performance and fault tolerance, especially relevant for very high energy storage applications necessary for next generation simulators, electrically energized fusion research machines, and advanced high power electronics for commercial, industrial, and military applications. Included in this study will be developments in capacitor technologies for electronics filtering and resonant energy transfer applications, as well as multisecond energy reservoir applications for uninterruptible power sources and the like. Next generation power electronics, driven by advances in solid state switching technologies, will require reduced capacitor dissipation factor by 1/3 to 1/10 at the same cost, particularly for ac applications. In addition, higher power electronics will require robust high frequency mica capacitor technology for >300°C operation, up to 5 kV. The increasing expansion of the motor drive and industrial switched mode power supply (SMPS) market will be driven in cost by the availability of electrolytic capacitors of 750-850 Vdc ratings, at 450 Vdc cost and size. New formation processes and electrolytes are anticipated to be needed to achieve these extended performance levels. At higher frequencies, advanced power electronics drives the need for lower equivalent series resistance (ESR) « 0.1% to 100 MHz, multimicrofarad value solid tantalum capacitors, having fail-safe surface mount configurations. Emerging power electronics applications in the millisecond and longer time are projected to have a broad application need for electrochemical chemical double layer capacitors, especially for compact sizes as this technology has the potential of achieving energy densities of many 20 kJ/kg for discharge times of tens of seconds. The prismatic power conditioning system, designed to be compliant with the available volume and surfaces into which it is to be placed, is described in some detail. It permits flexibility for the design engineer to optimize the design without having to allocate a specific space for the power conditioning system or subcomponents. Such prismatic geometry power and power conditioning systems are becoming commercially feasible in the low power consumer and industrial regime because of dramatic advances in multichip module switching, energy storage, and planarized interconnections. This work builds on assessing the applicability of these technologies to the megawatt-class average power, power electronics regime. Higher power density prismatic power electronics enables a broad range of applications in the commercial arena in areas such as motor drives, inverters, power quality systems, and mobile power systems.


For many emerging and developing economies, it is exceedingly difficult to constrain residents from evading tax liability on income from capital, whether earned domestically or abroad. Meanwhile, an international regime for combatting offshore tax evasion is emerging, and the form of the new regime will be established during a narrow window of opportunity over the next few years. If a uniform, multilateral automatic information exchange system is established, it would improve emerging countries' ability to tax the offshore accounts of their residents and, perhaps more importantly, their capacity to collect information about and tax domestic-source income from capital. However, a fragmented automatic information exchange regime likely would not benefit countries outside the developed economies. Interestingly, the concerns of emerging and developing economies regarding the contours of the new international regime substantially align with the concerns of multinational financial institutions. As a result, these emerging countries may find that multinational financial institutions can be improbable allies in the battle over taxing offshore accounts. With international financial law as the model, and the G-20 as an agenda setter, a governance structure for a uniform automatic information exchange regime that could be useful to emerging countries' tax administrations could materialize. The paper explores the requisite governance structure and concludes by describing steps emerging countries may take in bilateral and multilateral settings to help create that structure.Note: An earlier version of this working paper was entitled 'Emerging Countries and the Taxation of Offshore Accounts' and another was entitled 'Will FATCA Open the Door to Taxing Capital Income in Emerging Countries?'.


Vascular plant species that occur in only one population are surprisingly frequent, and not only on oceanic islands. The potential causes of this extreme restriction include the anthropogenic, the historic, the biological and the ecological. Ozothamnus reflexifolius, a one-population composite shrub occurs in an environment unaffected by human activity and is unlikely to be a neoendemic. It does occupy an environment of extreme aridity in a centre of local endemism, indicating a relict status. The species composition of the vegetation containing O. reflexifolius is distinct from the species composition of the surrounding forest. O. reflexifolius is fecund and has seeds with adaptations for potential wind dispersal to other rock plates, which are not in short supply in the vicinity. However, germination trials indicated that O. reflexifolius seeds have a short period of viability. Annual growth rings in the stems of the species are directly correlated with the number of sympodial branchings and shrub height. The age structure of the population implies continuous regeneration. The varying aspects of the large rock plate on which the distribution of O. reflexifolius is centred would prevent loss of the whole population in any fire, a common event in the area, whereas other rock plates in surrounding areas do not have this protection. The species may colonise, and then be destroyed by fire on surrounding rock plates, while being secure in its central population.


Until recently there was little interest or information on viruses and viruslike particles of eukaryotic algae. However, this situation is changing. In the past decade many large double-stranded DNA-containing viruses that infect two culturable, unicellular, eukaryotic green algae have been discovered. These viruses can be produced in large quantities, assayed by plaque formation, and analyzed by standard bacteriophage techniques. The viruses are structurally similar to animal iridoviruses, their genomes are similar to but larger (greater than 300 kbp) than that of poxviruses, and their infection process resembles that of bacteriophages. Some of the viruses have DNAs with low levels of methylated bases, whereas others have DNAs with high concentrations of 5-methylcytosine and N6-methyladenine. Virus-encoded DNA methyltransferases are associated with the methylation and are accompanied by virus-encoded DNA site-specific (restriction) endonucleases. Some of these enzymes have sequence specificities identical to those of known bacterial enzymes, and others have previously unrecognized specificities. A separate rod-shaped RNA-containing algal virus has structural and nucleotide sequence affinities to higher plant viruses. Quite recently, viruses have been associated with rapid changes in marine algal populations. In the next decade we envision the discovery of new algal viruses, clarification of their role in various ecosystems, discovery of commercially useful genes in these viruses, and exploitation of algal virus genetic elements in plant and algal biotechnology.


This thesis explores experimentally and theoretically two different aspects of the properties and behaviour of metals: their ability to damp noise and their susceptibility to crack when solidifying. The first part concerns intrinsic material damping, and is motivated by increased demands from society for reductions in noise emissions. It is a material's inherent ability to reduce its vibration level, and hence noise emission, and transform its kinetic energy into a temperature increase. To design new materials with increased intrinsic material damping, we need to be able to measure it. In this thesis, different methods for measurement of the intrinsic damping have been considered: one using Fourier analysis has been experimentally evaluated, and another using a specimen in uniaxial tension to measure the phase-lag between stress and strain has been improved. Finally, after discarding these methods, a new method has been developed. The new method measures the damping properties during compression using differential calorimetry. A specimen is subjected to a cyclic uniaxial stress to give a prescribed energy input. The difference in temperature between a specimen under stress and a non-stressed reference sample is measured. The experiments are performed in an insulated vacuum container to reduce convective losses. The rate of temperature change, together with the energy input, is used as a measure of the intrinsic material damping in the specimen. The results show a difference in intrinsic material damping, and the way in which it is influenced by the internal structure is discussed. The second part of the thesis examines hot cracks in solidifying shells. Most metals have a brittle region starting in the two-phase temperature range during solidification and for some alloys this region extends as far as hundreds of degrees below the solidus temperature. To calculate the risk of hot cracking, one needs, besides knowledge of the solidifying material's ability to withstand stress, knowledge of the casting process to be able to calculate the thermal history of the solidification, and from this calculate the stress. In this work, experimental methods to measure and evaluate the energy transfer from the solidifying melt have been developed. The evaluated data has been used as a boundary condition to numerically calculate the solidification process and the evolving stress in the solidifying shell. A solidification model has been implemented using a fixed-domain methodology in a commercial finite element code, Comsol Multiphysics. A new solidification model using an arbitrary Lagrange Eulerian (ALE) formulation has also been implemented to solve the solidification problem for pure metals. This new model explicitly tracks the movement of the liquid/solid interface and is much more effective than the first model.


Aim: The research presented within this thesis aims to gain a detailed understanding of the experience and the benefits of becoming connected to nature. Research focused on adult volunteers who attend a weekly gardening group in Huddersfield, overseen by a local charity called Support to Recovery (S2R).

Method: Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 10 volunteers from a weekly gardening group, which is overseen by S2R and aims to provide well-being support to individuals within the Kirklees area. Participants were asked about their involvement within the group, how they came to be involved and to discuss their experiences so far. These 10 interviews were transcribed and Template Analysis (King & Brooks, 2017) was utilised to extract Preliminary Codes, Themes and Clusters.

Findings: Overall, 15 Themes were identified and clustered into 6 Overarching Themes; Escape, Identity within a Community, Becoming one with Nature, Feeling good whilst in Nature, Psychological Relaxation and Learning new things.

The findings are discussed with reference to the relevant literature and theories, including more specific research and theories that relate to the current research findings for example, Escapism and Identity. Future implications for practice and research are outlined and suggestions for further research in the area of nature and well-being interventions are made.


This study investigates the creation and implementation of elementary and secondary education policy for Chinese-language schools by Japanese officials in the puppet state of Manchukuo. Using Manchukuo textbooks, education journals, and post-war memoirs, it examines the background of the policy-makers, the nature of the ideology they constructed, and the role language played in dissemination of the ideology. The study traces the efforts by the Japanese officials to create a new "Manchurian" national consciousness which they hoped would replace Chinese nationalistic identity among the majority Han Chinese. Originally they tried to shape this identity by employing familiar Chinese models which they expected would mask Japanese control. They used Confucian terminology and appeals to historical precedents to try to legitimize the creation of an independent northeastern state. In time, however, the weight of Japanese demands for empire-wide ideological orthodoxy led the Manchukuo leaders to abandon the Chinese models, and instead portray the state as client, dependent on the Japanese Emperor and in need of an injection of Japan's superior culture. Leading Japanese officials began to support forcing the Chinese to follow Japanese linguistic and ceremonial forms in hopes that it would cause them to appreciate and even willingly support the Japanese effort towards creating a unified Greater East Asia. In other words, their goals changed from securing an acquiescent population to creating willing allies, an effort in which they were ultimately unsuccessful. While the Manchukuo education bureaucracy supported the shift towards an emphasis on the Japanese language, as late as 1943 they resisted attempts at filling the curriculum with Japanese militaristic and imperial material, defying the current trend in Japan and Korea. This resistance was lead by a group of Japanese educators who were participants in the liberal "New Education movement" of the 1920s, who found in Manchukuo an opportunity to implement school reforms which had become impossible in the increasingly conservative atmosphere in Japan. Their success at keeping militaristic elements at bay demonstrates the Japanese empire was less monolithic than usually thought.


A paramount topic in quantum foundations, rooted in the study of the EPR paradox and Bell inequalities, is that of characterizing quantum theory in terms of the space-like correlations it allows. Here we show that to focus only on space-like correlations is not enough: we explicitly construct a toy model theory that, though being perfectly compatible with classical and quantum theories at the level of space-like correlations, displays an anomalous behavior in its time-like correlations. We call this anomaly, quantified in terms of a specific communication game, the "hypersignaling" phenomena. We hence conclude that the "principle of quantumness," if it exists, cannot be found in space-like correlations alone: nontrivial constraints need to be imposed also on time-like correlations, in order to exclude hypersignaling theories.


This paper uses a charging selection concept for plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) to maximize user convenience levels while meeting predefined circuit-level demand limits. The optimal PEV-charging selection problem requires an exhaustive search for all possible combinations of PEVs in a power system, which cannot be solved for the practical number of PEVs. Inspired by the efficiency of the convex relaxation optimization tool in finding close-to-optimal results in huge search spaces, this paper proposes the application of the convex relaxation optimization method to solve the PEV-charging selection problem. Compared with the results of the uncontrolled case, the simulated results indicate that the proposed PEV-charging selection algorithm only slightly reduces user convenience levels, but significantly mitigates the impact of the PEV-charging on the power system. We also develop a distributed optimization algorithm to solve the PEV-charging selection problem in a decentralized manner, i.e., the binary charging decisions (charged or not charged) are made locally by each vehicle. Using the proposed distributed optimization algorithm, each vehicle is only required to report its power demand rather than report several of its private user state information, mitigating the security problems inherent in such problem. The proposed decentralized algorithm only requires low-speed communication capability, making it suitable for real-time implementation.


Transfusion‐transmitted cytomegalovirus (TT‐CMV) is often asymptomatic, but certain patient populations, such as very low birth weight neonates, fetuses requiring intrauterine transfusion, pregnant women, patients with primary immunodeficiencies, transplant recipients, and patients receiving chemotherapy or transplantation for malignant disease, may be at risk of life‐threatening CMV infection. It is unclear whether leukoreduction of cellular blood components is sufficient to reduce TT‐CMV or whether CMV serological testing adds additional benefit to leukoreduction. The AABB CMV Prevention Work Group commissioned a systematic review to address these issues and subsequently develop clinical practice guidelines. However, the data were of poor quality, and no studies of significant size have been performed for over a decade. Rather than creating guidelines of questionable utility, the Work Group (with approval of the AABB Board of Directors) voted to prepare this Committee Report. There is wide variation in practices of using leukoreduced components alone or combining CMV‐serology and leukoreduction to prevent TT‐CMV for at‐risk patients. Other approaches may also be feasible to prevent TT‐CMV, including plasma nucleic acid testing, pathogen inactivation, and patient blood management programs to reduce the frequency of inappropriate transfusions. It is unlikely that future large‐scale clinical trials will be performed to determine whether leukoreduction, CMV‐serology, or a combination of both is superior. Consequently, alternative strategies including pragmatic randomized controlled trials, registries, and collaborations for electronic data merging, nontraditional approaches to inform evidence, or development of a systematic approach to inform expert opinion may help to address the issue of CMV‐safe blood components.


AbstractOne of the leading challenges in hydrocarbon recovery is predicting rock types/fluid content distribution throughout the reservoir away from the boreholes because rock property determination is a major source of uncertainty in reservoir modeling studies. Spatial determination of the lateral and vertical heterogeneities has a direct impact on a reservoir model because it will affect the property distributions. An inappropriate determination of the facies distribution will lead to unrealistic reservoir behavior. Because these data can take different forms (lithologs, cuttings, and for seismic, poststack, and prestack attributes) and have different resolutions, the manual integration of all the information can be tedious and is sometimes impractical. We developed a new neural network-based methodology called democratic neural network association (DNNA). The DNNA method was trained using lithology logs from wells simultaneously with prestack seismic data. This technique, using a probabilistic approach...


Winner of the 2012 PROSE Award for Mathematics from The American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence.

 "A great book, one that I will certainly add to my personal library."
 —Paul J. Nahin, Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering, University of New Hampshire

 Classic Problems of Probability presents a lively account of the most intriguing aspects of statistics. The book features a large collection of more than thirty classic probability problems which have been carefully selected for their interesting history, the way they have shaped the field, and their counterintuitive nature.

 From Cardano's 1564 Games of Chance to Jacob Bernoulli's 1713 Golden Theorem to Parrondo's 1996 Perplexing Paradox, the book clearly outlines the puzzles and problems of probability, interweaving the discussion with rich historical detail and the story of how the mathematicians involved arrived at their solutions. Each problem is given an in-depth treatment, including detailed and rigorous mathematical proofs as needed. Some of the fascinating topics discussed by the author include:

 Buffon's Needle problem and its ingenious treatment by Joseph Barbier, culminating into a discussion of invariance

 Various paradoxes raised by Joseph Bertrand

 Classic problems in decision theory, including Pascal's Wager, Kraitchik's Neckties, and Newcomb's problem

 The Bayesian paradigm and various philosophies of probability

 Coverage of both elementary and more complex problems, including the Chevalier de Mere problems, Fisher and the lady testing tea, the birthday problem and its various extensions, and the Borel-Kolmogorov paradox

 Classic Problems of Probability is an eye-opening, one-of-a-kind reference for researchers and professionals interested in the history of probability and the varied problem-solving strategies employed throughout the ages. The book also serves as an insightful supplement for courses on mathematical probability and introductory probability and statistics at the undergraduate level.


In the 1980s the process of trade liberalization through multilateral negotiation seems to have run aground. In its place there have been a number of bilateral and regional moves toward liberalization. Some have been concerned that these local deals may, by undermining the multilateral process, actually reduce world trade and welfare. This paper develops a simple model of the effects of regional trading blocs, and shows that consolidation of the world into a smaller number of such blocs may indeed reduce welfare, even when each bloc acts to maximize the welfare of its members. Indeed, for all plausible parameter values world welfare is minimized when there are three trading blocs. More complex versions of the model offer softer results, but the main thrust is still to validate concern over the effects of bilateral and regional trade deals.