For applications such as beamforming and matched field processing, the spatial behavior of the shallow water acoustic field is relevant. Oceanic and geoacoustic variabilities introduce random fluctuations into the field, which can be characterized by the spatial coherence. The spatial coherence of the acoustic field can be described by its correlation function. In this presentation results from an investigation of the sensitivity of the horizontal correlation function to variations in parameters of shallow water propagation will be discussed. In order to demonstrate key sensitivities, stratified environmental models with one or more sediment layers will be used. Variabilities are assumed to arise from small random fluctuations within the layers and at the layer interfaces. Formulas based on a modal perturbation approach are used. The dependence of the correlation function on such parameters as range and frequency is of particular interest, and in addition effects of mode coupling are estimated. Numerical simulations illustrating the results will be presented. [Work supported by NSF.]


Aim/Purpose Most programs are designed with full-time doctoral students' characteristics and needs in mind; few programs consider the unique needs of part-time doctoral students, including time restrictions, experiences during the program, identity development, and different professional aspirations. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the potential differences between part-time and full-time doctoral students in their scholarly development, and how technology may serve as a communication and organization tool for individual and program support. Background Built on the application of communities of practice, information and communication technology, and situated learning theory, this study sought to evaluate the potential differences among full-time and part-time doctoral students associated with their scholarly development in a traditional doctoral program at a large research-intensive university. Methodology This study used independent samples t-test to evaluate the potential differences between part-time and full-time doctoral students in their scholarly development. Data were collected from 98 doctoral students via a survey. This A Comparison of Part-Time and Full-Time Doctoral Students 394 study also employed two hypothetical cases that described the issues and solutions related to the program pursuant to scholarly development, which further illustrated the quantitative results and provided more meaningful discussions and suggestions. Contribution This study provided insights into part-time doctoral students' scholarly development and provided suggestions for designing doctoral programs and differentiated mentoring for both full-time and part-time doctoral students. Further, additional multifaceted mentoring approaches including peer mentoring and e-mentoring were evaluated. Findings Significant differences were found in four aspects of doctoral students' scholarly development: the opportunities to do research related to grants with faculty, support for scholarly work in addition to advisor's support, involvement in the teaching/supervision activities, and goals for scholarly development. Recommendations for Practitioners Program designers, faculty, and especially mentors should appreciate the differences between part-time and full-time doctoral students. Potential program redesigns should include judicious applications of technology as essential components to address limited accessibility and opportunities for parttime students. An Individual Development Plan (IDP) should be used to mentor doctoral students to enhance the effectiveness of mentoring regarding academic goals, actions, and related roles and responsibilities. Recommendations for Researchers Future research can further evaluate and develop the instrument to better measure more domains of doctoral students' scholarly development. Additionally, qualitative methods may be used to further provide the emic description of the process of part-time students' engagement with the program, mentors, and peers. Impact on Society With consideration of the unique needs of part-time students and the application of technology-based learning community, opportunities are provided for mentors and doctoral students to engage in scholarship and develop a sense of belonging to their doctoral program. Future Research Future research can examine the differences between male and female doctoral students, different race groups, and disciplines.


Within days after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. government extended its already existing commitment to combat terrorism. President Bush declared a financial war on terrorism, with the aim of depriving terrorists of financial support. He issued Executive Order 13,224, which ordered the blocking of assets of "Specially Designated Global Terrorists." Congress enacted legislation that not only fortified previously existing criminal and civil laws, but also added new ones, for use in combating terrorists and terrorism. The Bush administration dedicated resources to existing and newly created governmental structures that would be responsible for enforcing these laws and for waging the financial war on terrorism. This enhanced legal and structural arsenal contains multiple means by which the U.S. government, as well as citizens injured by activities of foreign terrorists, can pursue economic or criminal sanctions against terrorists and their private sponsors, including individuals, as well as foreign non-governmental organizations, domestic charitable organizations, and their governing bodies. Awareness of this greatly expanded potential exposure to liability, and even criminal sanctions, has already engendered unforeseen side effects. Some well-intentioned donors reportedly are now reticent to make charitable contributions to domestic charitable organization. Law-abiding Muslim charities have documented a decline in contributions received, and charitable organizations are struggling to maintain their pre-September 11 levels of commitment to global philanthropy. As the financial war on terrorism evolves and the arsenal of weapons is strengthened, the government's successes not only may financially starve terrorists, but also may have the unfortunate and unintentional consequence of significantly reducing resources committed to legitimate global philanthropy. Such a result, ironically, would contribute to fundamentalists' and radical terrorists' goal of disrupting globalism, which, if otherwise uninterrupted, could help to achieve social and economic security and prosperity abroad that would lessen much of the appeal of terrorist groups. Preventive measures thus are essential to minimize potential negative consequences of the government's financial war on terrorism. To guard against exposure to liability, donors and leaders of domestic charitable organizations must undertake adequate due diligence. Moreover, the government must take great care to protect against overzealous legislation and enforcement actions. Absent sufficient safeguarding, the government's actions may exacerbate, rather than diminish, the ultimate effects sought by terrorists.


Mythologizing Norval Morrisseau examines the complex identities assigned to Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau. Was he an uneducated artist plagued by alcoholism and homelessness? Was Morrisseau a shaman artist who tapped a deep spiritual force? Or was he simply one of Canada's most significant artists? Carmen L. Robertson charts both the colonial attitudes and the stereotypes directed at Morrisseau and other Indigenous artists in Canada's national press. Robertson also examines Morrisseau's own shaping of his image.

An internationally known and award-winning artist from a remote area of northwestern Ontario, Morrisseau founded an art movement known as Woodland Art developed largely from Indigenous and personal creative elements. Still, until his retrospective exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada in 2006, many Canadians knew almost nothing about Morrisseau's work.

 Using discourse analysis methods, Robertson looks at news stories, magazine articles, and film footage, ranging from Morrisseau's first solo exhibition at Toronto's Pollock Gallery in 1962 until his death in 2007 to examine the cultural assumptions that have framed Morrisseau.


Dyadic data on pairs of objects, such as relational or social network data, often exhibit strong statistical dependencies. Certain types of second-order dependencies, such as degree heterogeneity and reciprocity, can be well-represented with additive random effects models. Higher-order dependencies, such as transitivity and stochastic equivalence, can often be represented with multiplicative effects. The "amen" package for the R statistical computing environment provides estimation and inference for a class of additive and multiplicative random effects models for ordinal, continuous, binary and other types of dyadic data. The package also provides methods for missing, censored and fixed-rank nomination data, as well as longitudinal dyadic data. This tutorial illustrates the "amen" package via example statistical analyses of several of these different data types.


The agricultural population in Turkey declines year by year due to rural-urban migration and, consequently, the number of young farmers is on the decrease in Turkey, like in some developed countries. The Young Farmer Grant Project was launched for encouraging young people in rural areas in 2016. This study was conducted to determine the tendency of the youth who study agriculture to invest in agriculture and their opinions and suggestions on the Young Farmer Grant Project. Data was collected by the survey from 480 students who studied agriculture at Ege University and Kocaeli University. Five-point Likert scale was used to determine the opinions, tendencies and expectations of the students. At this stage, chi-square tests and analysis of variance were also applied. Logistical regression was performed for determining of factors affecting the probability of students benefiting from the Young Farmer Grant Project. According to results of logistical regression, age, the situation of being a farmer in the family and having a family-owned farmland positively affect the probability of students benefiting from the Young Farmer Grant Project.


Growth in population and households, and lifestyle changes are factors placing water resources under increasing stress in some parts of the UK. The Code for Sustainable Homes (CSH), a government regulation defining performance standards for new dwellings, is one measure that may act to counter rising domestic water demand. One goal of the CSH is to reduce potable water use per capita in each home through implementation of water conservation measures. This paper reports on work in progress that aims to understand the likely impact of the CSH on regional and national water demand. A spreadsheet model is being developed to assess domestic water demand under a range of CSH uptake scenarios, as well as a range of demographic, technical, economic and behavioural aspects of water consumption and conservation. The paper discusses the model development and presents some preliminary results for the Yorkshire region.


Michael Brown's death at the hands of Darren Wilson should have prompted a mass-mediated dialogue about institutional racism, implicit bias, and policing. Instead, mainstream media pursued a narrative in which Brown was the protagonist, Wilson was victim, and Black protesters were cast as reactionaries bent on social chaos. In the course of the Ferguson demonstration coverage, the worst narrative devices perpetuated jaundiced stereotypes about African-Americans, crime and criminality. To be sure, we have seen a similar pattern with the media in its account of events surrounding the deaths of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and Freddie Gray. The article explores how the media constructs news, and offers extensive history on the adverse narrative media tropes about Black men since colonial newspapers. Through qualitative and quantitative analysis of news narratives and images, this article demonstrates how Ferguson accounts emphasized Brown's deviance and chaos and disorder. After offering comparative analysis of White criminality and protest news narratives, the article presses upon the social effects of racist and racialized media narratives. The article examines the controversy through First Amendment free speech, hate crimes, and true threat principles as well as FCC regulation of broadcasting, and media ownership. While explicating the First Amendment, regulatory and institutional barriers to curing the harms created, the article arrives upon promising institutional and extra-institutional reforms which can at least provide robust counter-narratives. This article examines the effects of the media's insistent framing of African-Americans engaged in illegitimate, irrational, and even criminal expressions of dissent. In doing so, the author contends that in rationalizing and restructuring African-American deviance and dissent, the media reasserted a majoritarian ideology in which Whiteness — upon which our social, political, and economic institutions are constructed — maintained its status as the dominant order, and law enforcement responses to "disorder" were endowed with a presumptive correctness. In hewing to a pro-majoritarian orthodoxy, the media ignored the role institutional racism and implicit bias played in Brown's death. Simultaneously, the media sublimated the more urgent socio-political grievances demonstrators sought to surface around law enforcement and the justice system. This article seeks to impress upon the reader the most injurious long-term impact of the news media approach to the Ferguson saga. As a basis of discourse, news is just one type of media content that enables a society to build consensus (if not agreement) over myriad social problems, and solutions to those problems. By constructing Brown as the blameworthy 'victim' from the outset, and through unrelenting focus upon Ferguson looting and criminality, the media subverted and derailed any real opportunity to have a meaningful discourses around race, law enforcement and justice system reform, or the myriad social, political, and economic issues Ferguson came to symbolize.


Abstract. Water resources planning requires long-term projections of the impact of climate change on freshwater resources. In addition to intrinsic uncertainty associated with the natural climate, projections of climate change are subject to the combined uncertainties associated with selection of emissions scenarios, GCM ensembles and downscaling techniques. In particular, unknown future greenhouse gas emissions contribute substantially to the overall uncertainty. We contend that a reduction in uncertainty is possible by refining emissions scenarios. We present a comprehensive review of the growing body of literature that challenges the assumptions underlying the high-growth emissions scenarios (widely used in climate change impact studies), and instead points to a peak and decline in fossil fuel production occurring in the 21st century. We find that the IPCC's new RCP 4.5 scenario (low-medium emissions), as well as the B1 and A1T (low emissions) marker scenarios from the IPCC's Special Report on Emissions Scenarios are broadly consistent with the majority of recent fossil fuel production forecasts, whereas the medium to high emissions scenarios generally depend upon unrealistic assumptions of future fossil fuel production. We use a simple case study of projected climate change in 2070 for the Scott Creek catchment in South Australia to demonstrate that even with the current suite of climate models, by limiting projections to the B1 scenario, both the median change and the spread of model results are reduced relative to equivalent projections under an unrealistic high emissions scenario (A1FI).


Background: The destruction of periodontal tissue caused by periodontitis affects the sensory function of the periodontal ligament, reduces the mechanical support of teeth, and ultimately results in reduced masticatory performance in natural dentitions. Research on those who have lost a large number of teeth and the effect of periodontal status on masticatory ability remains unknown. Objective: The aim of the study was to assess the correlation between the effect of periodontal status and occlusal support on masticatory performance among various age groups. Materials and Methods: A total of 240 patients included in the study were divided into three groups according to the severity of periodontal disease and occlusal support as healthy controls– A1 (Group 1), moderate periodontitis– B1 (Group 2), and severe periodontitis– C1 (Group 3) based on Community Periodontal Index (WHO 1987) and Eichner's Index (Eichner 1990). They were further categorized into age groups of 20–30, 30–40, 40–50, and 50–60 years, and equal male to female ratio was maintained among all groups. The masticatory performance was assessed by making patients chew a test gummy jelly freely 30 times and expectorate it into a clean cup. To eliminate the remaining glucose sticking to the surface, it was subjected to running water for 5 min and spun in a magnetic stirrer (10 min, 400 rpm) till it completely dissolved. A small amount of the supernatant was collected, and glucose estimation was done using a glucometer. The glucometer values were subjected to statistical analysis. Results: There was a statistically significant decrease in the masticatory performance when Group 3 was compared to Group 2 and Group 1. In addition, there was a decrease in the masticatory performance among females compared to males and a progressive decline in the masticatory performance with advancing age. Conclusion: All groups showed a statistically significant decrease in the masticatory performance with increase in the severity of periodontal disease and decrease in occlusal support. In addition, there was a decrease in the masticatory performance with an increase in age and males showed a superior masticatory performance than females.


The anti-tuberculosis-vaccine Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) is the most widely used vaccine in the world. In addition to its effects against tuberculosis, BCG vaccination also induces non-specific beneficial effects against certain forms of malignancy and against infections with unrelated pathogens. It has been recently proposed that the non-specific effects of BCG are mediated through epigenetic reprogramming of monocytes, a process called trained immunity. In the present study we demonstrate that autophagy contributes to trained immunity induced by BCG. Pharmacologic inhibition of autophagy blocked trained immunity induced in vitro by stimuli such as β–glucans or BCG. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the autophagy genes ATG2B (rs3759601) and ATG5 (rs2245214) influenced both the in vitro and in vivo training effect of BCG upon restimulation with unrelated bacterial or fungal stimuli. Furthermore, pharmacologic or genetic inhibition of autophagy blocked epigenetic reprogramming of monocytes at the level of H3K4 trimethylation. Finally, we demonstrate that rs3759601 in ATG2B correlates with progression and recurrence of bladder cancer after BCG intravesical instillation therapy. These findings identify a key role of autophagy for the nonspecific protective effects of BCG.


Dammed drinking water reservoirs with their catchment areas and the downstream rivers are dynamic systems that change permanently under the influence of many factors. Their multifunctional use for drinking water supply, flood control, energy production, nature conservation and recreation as well as ecological constraints for the rivers downstream requires an integrative management considering and balancing between different requirements. Thus, an optimal reservoir management has to take into account scenarios of external influences and must be based on predictions of prospective raw water qualities. Furthermore, the impacts of short- and long-term changes of the raw water quality on drinking water treatment have to be considered. The problem is very complex and cannot be solved intuitively but requires the application of hydrological, ecological and process models. This approach was followed in the work presented here, as a tool to predict and evaluate the impacts of different reservoir management strategies in an integrative way is currently not available. The developed decision support procedure (DSP) allows for the estimation of the effects of different hydrological and water quantity management scenarios on raw water quality, water processing costs and ecology in the downstream river. Extreme hydrological events or changing boundary conditions (e.g. climate change) are taken into account.


Introduction: Recent progress in medical technology has resulted in improved surgical outcomes of pars plana vitrectomy (PPV); with microincision systems, the incidence of procedure-related complications during surgery has been reduced. However, unpredictable visual field defects after PPV remain an unresolved issue. A few reports have shown that damage to the retinal neurofibers owing to dry-up during air/fluid exchange or retinal neurotoxicity of the dye used to visualize the internal limiting membrane (ILM), as well as unintentional removal of retinal neurofibers during ILM peeling, are responsible for such visual field disorders. In this report, we present a case of extensive visual field defect due to optic neuropathy exhibiting vertical hemianopsia after PPV. Case Summary: A 50-year-old woman underwent PPV and cataract surgery for a macular hole and mild cataract under retrobulbar anesthesia with 3.5 mL of xylocaine. At the time of opening an infusion cannula for PPV, the intraocular lens was herniating, with an acute increase in pressure from the posterior eyeball; thus, intraocular pressure configuration level had to be decreased from the default level, whereas the other procedures including 20% SF6 injection were performed without any modification. The macular hole was closed postoperatively. However, the patient experienced nasal hemianopsia, which turned out to be optic neuropathy, as assessed via electric physiological examinations. The pattern of the visual field defect was not typical for glaucoma or anterior ischemic optic neuropathy. Her optic nerve head was pale at the temporal side soon after the surgery, and her blood pressure was low, suggesting that there may have been a congestion of the optic nerve feeder vessels because of the relatively high pressure in the orbit. The space occupancy with xylocaine and extensively stretched and plumped out eye ball with infusion during PPV may have pressed the surrounding tissue of the optic nerve and the feeder vessels. Conclusion: PPV is safe for most patients; however, individual variations in local and/or systemic conditions may cause complications. Future studies to optimize the surgical condition for each individual patient may be warranted.


Internet user forums have been proven to be effective not just as a community meeting place but also as a supporting tool for various business products. Traditional forums are designed with "browse and read" journey in which users have to select the right sub forum to get into and select topics to read from within. However, we have identified a new trend in forum design toward community question answering systems with an "ask questions first" user journey, a topic-less organisation, search based information retrieval and social network inspired alerting. Here, we report on the implementation and trial of such a forum, Hubbub, that epitomizes the aforementioned trend. It is designed to eliminate key issues found in current forum technologies and has been fielded as a support channel for a BT Softphone product, resulting in a significant reduction in support costs. We then report on the performance of this forum in practice and speculate on the reasons that forum design is taking this direction. Finally, we conclude the paper with some thought about future direction of forums in the Web 2.0 era.


Theoretical transition probabilities and oscillator strengths are given for a number of infrared-transition arrays in Ne i and Ar i, and for the visible 5s–5p array in Kr i. About 100 Ne i gas-laser lines, and about 10 from Ar i, are included. Our calculations are based on the intermediate-coupling aproximation. Configurations were chosen for line-strength calculations on the basis of goodness of fit of observed energies and Lande g values to those calculated in intermediate coupling; of the many transition arrays possible we chose only the strongest arising from each configuration, as being least susceptible to the effects of configuration interaction. On the basis of comparisons with experimental results for other s–p transition arrays in these gases we estimate that the relative strengths of the strongest half of the lines in each array are correct to about 35%. The results for the p–d arrays are probably as good. The Coulomb approximation was used to obtain absolute line strengths; we estimate that the values of σ2 so obtained are correct to about 25%. The transition arrays treated were: Ne i 4s–3p, 4s–4p, 5s–4p, 5s–5p, 6s–5p, 6s–6p, 7s–6p, 7s–7p, 3p–3d, 4p–3d, 4p–4d, 5p–4d, 5p–5d, 6p–5d, 6p–6d, 7p–6d; Ar i 5s–4p, 5s–5p, 6s–5p, 6s–6p, 7s–6p; Kr i 5s–5p.


Wearable technology is a fast developing area. Often, the focus of research is on accuracy, while the practicalities of using the device may be overlooked, despite the fact that this greatly influences utility. This scoping review therefore explored the design and usability preferences of people for wearable technology for health monitoring.

 A scoping review was conducted of literature evaluating user preferences for the design of wearable technology systems, for people aged >50 years, with good health, or chronic diseases.

 A search of relevant databases yielded 628 potential studies (after duplicates removed). Following title/abstract and then full text screening, 17 papers were included. The most commonly reported theme related to design and user interface (13 studies). Users wanted a small, unobtrusive and light device which doesn't snag on clothing or affect activities of daily living, but yet has a readable and easy-to-use interface, which may prove challenging for designers! Users were most happy to wear a device on the wrist and/or hip region, being considered the least obtrusive / most discrete. Users were open to the technology aspects of the device, but wanted specific training, or clear and readable instructions. Less commonly reported parameters included issues with privacy and ownership of data (two studies); cost (two studies); reliability and accuracy (three studies), including being accurate overnight and in the shower, etc.; and clinical usefulness, i.e. the data being effectively linked with other healthcare data. Where considered, participants didn't want to wear a device by night (two studies). Safety of wearable devices was not a theme in any study.

 Overall, user needs seem to be rarely considered in the design of wearable technology for health monitoring. However, the limited studies do highlight important user concerns, which should be considered by the technology designers and prescribers.


The article describes the problem of awakening the cognitive activity of students, arising due to revolutionary transformations in teaching technologies. It shows the need to study the factors that affect cognitive activity and assesses the information content of those factors. Based on the method of pair comparisons, a technology for ranking the factors affecting cognitive activity has been developed. A mathematical model of the formation and processing of expert assessment results and an example of calculations are given, and the feasibility of including the subsystem for evaluating factors affecting cognitive activity in the computer control system of the university is shown. The structure of an adaptive e-learning system based on the technology of taking into account the factors that form the cognitive independence of students is described Experiments carried out in 3 universities of Ukraine have shown that the use of the developed mathematical model and information technology allows to increase significantly academic performance and to decrease the frequency of refusals from independent work of students using the e-learning environment.


Silicon technology has advanced through the past four decades at exponential rate both in performance and productivity. Along with the miniaturization, the power demand grew also exponentially. New technologies are studied in order to develop switches that commute faster and, in the near future, we might see an increasing number of hybrid approaches to overcome the limitations CMOS performance. The ferroelectric thin layers have been studied for memory applications, one transistor memory cell, and recently ferroelectrics have been proposed by Salahuddin and Datta as dielectric materials in transistors in order to overcome the 60mV/dec limit of the subthreshold swing (SS) in silicon Metal Ferroelectric Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors, Fe-FET. The objective of this thesis is to study the negative capacitance effect of the ferroelectrics that are integrated into the gate stack of a MOS transistor. For this purpose different Ferroelectric Field Effect Transistors (Fe-FETs) have been designed, fabricated and characterized. Due to its remarkable characteristics, like low temperature deposition, medium-k and low leakage current, vinylidene fluoride trifluorethylene, P(VDF-TrFE), an organic ferroelectric copolymer, of 100 nm and 160 nm thickness was integrated into several MOS devices. Three devices were fabricated, a metal-ferroelectric-oxide-semiconductor transistor, a metal-ferroelectric-metal-oxide-metal capacitor and a metal-ferroelectric-metal-oxide-semiconductor transistor. The internal metal was introduced in-between the two dielectrics so that the potential at that point could be probed. For the first time, subthreshold slopes as low as 48mV/dec were obtained over more than three decades of drain current. The polarization was accurately extracted and the S-shape polarization and the negative slope could be observed. The polarization presented both hysteresis and negative slope polarization. A first-order model, that can accurately characterize a Fe-FET without the negative capacitance effect, was developed and validated with the measurements. Furthermore, a model for predicting the subthreshold slope improvement in case of the negative capacitance transistor, based on the Landau's ferroelectric parameters, was presented. Among others, two possible applications of the ferroelectric transistor are highlighted, one a temperature sensor using the metal-ferroelectric-metal-oxide-semiconductor device and the other one is a Schmitt trigger based on the metal-ferroelectric-oxide-semiconductor transistor.


"We are left with a system in which almost every state still outsources its elections to what are actually private organizations." Federal, state and local governments are deeply indebted to private organizations, political parties, candidates, and private individuals to assist it, inter alia, in registering voters, getting citizens to the ballot box through get out the vote campaigns (GOTV), assisting limited English proficient (LEP) citizens, and monitoring Election Day activities. In a recent Supreme Court case, Crawford v. Marion County, Justice Souter recognized that voting legislation has "two competing interests," the fundamental right to vote and the need for governmental structure in elections. The authority to structure elections lies primarily with the state legislature. The Federal Government, however, has the power to prescribe election laws to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. In developing this intricate balance, the government has, as it has in other areas, began to relinquish more authority to private and often partisan influences to create a partnership. In this public-private partnership, the government, however, has outsourced its authority to private groups, organizations and individuals to determine voter eligibility through various election administration measures, such as voter challenges and voter purges. Often these private organizations use public authority for private partisan gain. Moreover, although the laws that govern private involvement in these areas appear neutral, they are often used to disenfranchise and discriminate against minority voters. When private actors perform state actions, such as purging voter rolls or conducting voter challenges in a discriminatory manner, they do so with state endorsement. This article will discuss ways to challenge the unauthorized ceding of constitutional authority and restore an effective balance between the public private partnership that encourages voter access and integrity while maintaining Constitutional constrictions.


A 25-year-old man presented generally unwell to the emergency department. Initial assessment identified systemic inflammatory response syndrome markers with an insect bite as a potential source of infection and he was treated for presumed sepsis. Tachycardia persisted and baseline thyroid function testing showed undetectable free thyroxine and thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), prompting further endocrine investigation. Triiodothyronine (T3) was markedly raised with normal TSH receptor antibodies, and the patient later confessed to supplementary testosterone and T3 use as part of bodybuilding activities. Following counselling, thyroid function normalised and the patient returned to his usual health. This case describes the diagnostic work up in a case of persistent tachycardia caused by T3 supplementation, demonstrating the potential for endocrine supplementation by bodybuilders which may be poorly understood and recognised by clinicians. T3 supplementation should be considered and a thorough drug history obtained in bodybuilders presenting with symptoms of thyrotoxicosis and deranged thyroid function tests.


The aim of the project was the provision of information regarding the effect of various toxins on members of the fouling ecosystems. This was undertaken in two parts: A background survey to provide information for the main study, the latter consisting of experimental work. Part 1 - the Introduction - deals with fouling, importance and implications to the Shipping Companies and provides information on the costs and historical aspects of fouling among other things. Part 2 - the Surveys - provide information on the fouling patterns of ships both laid up and in service, as well as details of the distribution of fouling algae along the British Coast and their fouling systems, the results obtained are discussed in relation to the changes in fouling ecosystems observed with the changes in toxins used in antifoullng paints. The implications of this being discussed in Part 4. A summary of the findings is also included. Part 3 - the experimental work - provides supporting evidence for the changes observed in Part 2 as well as providing other information on the effect of the toxins used on the algae. The results obtained are discussed in relation to the general effect of the toxin; applications of the methods used into future research in marine fouling and possible methods of bioasaay. Part 4 - discusses the implications of the change over in the components of the fouling ecosystem. Explores the possibility of new lines of research into fouling based on the experiments undertaken and discusses the possible occurrence of resistance of algae to toxins being used as antifoulants. Standard experimental methods are given in the appendix, the remainder being included in the main text.


1. Thirty moderately severely hypertensive patients were studied in a double-blind comparison of minoxidil and hydrallazine in combination with frusemide and propranolol. 2. Blood pressure control in both groups of patients was satisfactory but long-term control appeared to be better in the minoxidil group. 3. Renal function was well preserved in both groups. Evidence of cardiac hypertrophy was slow to resolve despite good control of blood pressure. Side effects were negligible, and patient acceptance and rehabilitation was excellent.


Neurological complications are important contributors to morbidity and mortality after liver transplantation. We reviewed 391 patients who underwent 427 consecutive orthotopic liver transplantations to analyze the clinical features of patients who experienced one or more neurological complication (74 patients [19%]) and to compare postoperative neurological problems in adults versus children. Neurological complications were more frequent in adults (64 of 273 patients [23%]) than children (10 of 118 patients [8%]) (P < 0.01). The most common neurological complication was encephalopathy (59%), which ranged widely in severity and occurred with similar frequency in adults and children. Other common neurological complications were seizures (12 patients), brachial plexus and peripheral nerve injuries (16 patients, 15 of whom were adults), stroke (5 patients), and central nervous system infections (5 patients). In 27 patients, drug toxicity was the primary cause of neurological complications, all of which reversed with dosage reduction or discontinuation of drug. Cyclosporine and FK506, primarily during intravenous administration for induction of immunosuppression, accounted for 25 of 27 drug-induced neurological complications, which included encephalopathy, seizures, severe tremor, and severe headache. Despite a higher rate of neurological complications in adults, those in children were more severe and associated with a higher mortality rate. When compared with liver transplant recipients without neurological complications, patients with neurological complications had a higher posttransplant mortality rate (14% vs. 5% for adults, and 50% vs. 7% for children). In conclusion, neurological complications after liver transplantation are more common in adults, more severe and associated with a higher mortality rate in children, and associated with a higher mortality rate in both children and adults when compared with transplant recipients without neurological complications.


Object-centric representations are a promising path toward more systematic generalization by providing flexible abstractions upon which compositional world models can be built. Recent work on simple 2D and 3D datasets has shown that models with object-centric inductive biases can learn to segment and represent meaningful objects from the statistical structure of the data alone without the need for any supervision. However, such fully-unsupervised methods still fail to scale to diverse realistic data, despite the use of increasingly complex inductive biases such as priors for the size of objects or the 3D geometry of the scene. In this paper, we instead take a weakly-supervised approach and focus on how 1) using the temporal dynamics of video data in the form of optical flow and 2) conditioning the model on simple object location cues can be used to enable segmenting and tracking objects in significantly more realistic synthetic data. We introduce a sequential extension to Slot Attention which we train to predict optical flow for realistic looking synthetic scenes and show that conditioning the initial state of this model on a small set of hints, such as center of mass of objects in the first frame, is sufficient to significantly improve instance segmentation. These benefits generalize beyond the training distribution to novel objects, novel backgrounds, and to longer video sequences. We also find that such initial-state-conditioning can be used during inference as a flexible interface to query the model for specific objects or parts of objects, which could pave the way for a range of weakly-supervised approaches and allow more effective interaction with trained models.


Abstract. Possibility to obtain high alite Portland cement of alternative raw materials was established by complete replacement of clay component with electro-phosphoric (EPS) slag. This technology allowed disposal of considerable volume of slag with production of high grade cement and reduction of CO2 emissions. Fuel saving was about 15 % increase in productivity of kiln was 10−15 %. It was detected after industrial tests that some rheological properties of slag were unknown. We studied properties of limestone-residual slag, aimed at production of clinker with alite content 69.6 and 65.4 %. EPS slag was weak structuring element at the initial stage of coagulative structuring. An increase in the volume concentration of solid phases led to an increase in viscosity, dynamic shear stress, and plastic strength. With an increase in concentration by 3 % from 35 to 38 %, fluidity decreased by 20 mm, and mobility by 1.3 times. Increase of bulk concentration of solid phases led to increase in viscosity, dynamic stress viscosity, and plastic strength. With the increase in concentration by 3 % from 35 to 38 %, fluidity had been decreased by 20 mm, and mobility by 1.3 times. Further growth of concentration led to reduction of these indicators by an order. Coarse limestone-residual slag with moisture content 37 % preserved its mobility during 26 days. Under static conditions, critical structural strength (100 g.cm2) of slag was achieved during 24 days. In case of proper mixing, duration of slags' mobility shall be increased. Therefore 37 % can be recommended for lower limit of slag moisture.


We consider stochastic multi-armed bandits where the expected reward is a unimodal function over partially ordered arms. This important class of problems has been recently investigated in (Cope, 2009; Yu & Mannor, 2011). The set of arms is either discrete, in which case arms correspond to the vertices of a finite graph whose structure represents similarity in rewards, or continuous, in which case arms belong to a bounded interval. For discrete unimodal bandits, we derive asymptotic lower bounds for the regret achieved under any algorithm, and propose OSUB, an algorithm whose regret matches this lower bound. Our algorithm optimally exploits the unimodal structure of the problem, and surprisingly, its asymptotic regret does not depend on the number of arms. We also provide a regret upper bound for OSUB in nonstationary environments where the expected rewards smoothly evolve over time. The analytical results are supported by numerical experiments showing that OSUB performs significantly better than the state-of-the-art algorithms. For continuous sets of arms, we provide a brief discussion. We show that combining an appropriate discretization of the set of arms with the UCB algorithm yields an order-optimal regret, and in practice, outperforms recently proposed algorithms designed to exploit the unimodal structure.


The metabolic effects of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection on human blood plasma were characterized using multiplatform metabolic phenotyping with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC-MS). Quantitative measurements of lipoprotein subfractions, α-1-acid glycoprotein, glucose, and biogenic amines were made on samples from symptomatic coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) patients who had tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus (n = 17) and from age- and gender-matched controls (n = 25). Data were analyzed using an orthogonal-projections to latent structures (OPLS) method and used to construct an exceptionally strong (AUROC = 1) hybrid NMR-MS model that enabled detailed metabolic discrimination between the groups and their biochemical relationships. Key discriminant metabolites included markers of inflammation including elevated α-1-acid glycoprotein and an increased kynurenine/tryptophan ratio. There was also an abnormal lipoprotein, glucose, and amino acid signature consistent with diabetes and coronary artery disease (low total and HDL Apolipoprotein A1, low HDL triglycerides, high LDL and VLDL triglycerides), plus multiple highly significant amino acid markers of liver dysfunction (including the elevated glutamine/glutamate and Fischer's ratios) that present themselves as part of a distinct SARS-CoV-2 infection pattern. A multivariate training-test set model was validated using independent samples from additional SARS-CoV-2 positive patients and controls. The predictive model showed a sensitivity of 100% for SARS-CoV-2 positivity. The breadth of the disturbed pathways indicates a systemic signature of SARS-CoV-2 positivity that includes elements of liver dysfunction, dyslipidemia, diabetes, and coronary heart disease risk that are consistent with recent reports that COVID-19 is a systemic disease affecting multiple organs and systems. Metabolights study reference: MTBLS2014.


The practicality of UK renewable energy policy, given the potential impacts of intermittency, has been contested by expert institutions. At the same time, wind energy developments have engendered local controversy and civic campaign groups have emerged at local, regional and national levels. This research integrates these strands in exploring how intermittency is communicated to the public by campaign groups as part of their arguments against or in favour, of wind energy, using social representations theory. Qualitative analysis was conducted on the web material from ten groups operating at different levels across the UK. The results indicated that sceptics made intermittency familiar using concepts of unpredictability and uncontrollability, as well as notions of work over idleness; while supporters referred to variability and fluctuation. Specific themata suggest, despite polarised views, a common underlying structure to social representations of intermittency, centring on compatibility with the grid, views of the weather, the distinctiveness of wind energy and the virtue of facts over myths. The implications of the results are discussed in relation to the shaping of public perceptions and the legitimacy of UK energy policy.


Plant phototropism, the ability to bend toward or away from light, is predominantly controlled by blue-light photoreceptors, the phototropins. Although phototropins have been well-characterized in Arabidopsis thaliana, their evolutionary history is largely unknown. In this study, we complete an in-depth survey of phototropin homologs across land plants and algae using newly available transcriptomic and genomic data. We show that phototropins originated in an ancestor of Viridiplantae (land plants + green algae). Phototropins repeatedly underwent independent duplications in most major land-plant lineages (mosses, lycophytes, ferns, and seed plants), but remained single-copy genes in liverworts and hornworts—an evolutionary pattern shared with another family of photoreceptors, the phytochromes. Following each major duplication event, the phototropins differentiated in parallel, resulting in two specialized, yet partially overlapping, functional forms that primarily mediate either low- or high-light responses. Our detailed phylogeny enables us to not only uncover new phototropin lineages, but also link our understanding of phototropin function in Arabidopsis with what is known in Adiantum and Physcomitrella (the major model organisms outside of flowering plants). We propose that the convergent functional divergences of phototropin paralogs likely contributed to the success of plants through time in adapting to habitats with diverse and heterogeneous light conditions.


1. Diets deficient in phosphorus have been shown to preserve the renal function of uraemic rats, but the role of concomitant alterations in the intake of other nutrients caused by such diets was not elucidated. 2. Five groups of uraemic rats were compared. Three (A, B, C) received ( ad libitum ) diets deficient (0·03%), low (0·2%) or normal (0·5%) in P. Two groups (D, E) received restricted amounts of 0·2% and 0·5% P diets by pair-feeding with group A rats. 3. Phosphorus deficient diet resulted in marked anorexia, growth arrest, low P and high calcium plasma levels and severe rickets, but renal function became stabilized. Groups B and C had both higher total food intake and weight gain but a significantly higher mortality rate. After 36 weeks, mortality was 90% in these groups, and was 19%, 28% and 44% in groups A, D and E rats respectively, despite a higher P consumption in group E than in group B rats. 4. Normal P diet was associated with severe renal calcium deposits and high calcium heart content, which were related to the degree of hyperparathyroidism evaluated by bone histology. 5. Preservation of renal function was mainly mediated by reduction in some other components of the diet and not by P restriction itself. Normal P diet with restricted dietary allotments had little adverse effect on survival, and its influence on renal histology is not easy to explain. 6. Restriction in P sufficient to cause moderate hypophosphataemia, disappearance of phosphaturia and to prevent hyperparathyroidism without causing anorexia and other severe side effects, had little or no beneficial effect on renal deterioration.


STUDY QUESTION
What are the reproductive and obstetric outcomes in patients undergoing radical abdominal trachelectomy (RAT) for early-stage cervical cancer?

SUMMARY ANSWER
When RAT was performed before a pregnancy achieved with fertility treatments, pregnancy rate of 36.2% was obtained and 71.4% of these women gave birth at ≥ 32 weeks of gestation.

WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY
Reproductive and obstetric outcomes after radical vaginal trachelectomy (RVT) are well documented; however, these outcomes after RAT have not been well studied.

STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION
This is a retrospective cohort study of patients at a single institution who underwent RAT and became pregnant. Reproductive and obstetric outcomes of 114 patients who had undergone RAT from September 2002 to December 2010 were investigated.

PARTICIPANTS/MATERIAL, SETTING, METHODS
Women of reproductive age with early-stage cervical cancer who wished to preserve their fertility were documented.

MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE
Patients' median age was 33 years (25-40 years). A total of 31 pregnancies were achieved in 25 patients and 6 patients had 2 pregnancies. Eighteen of 25 patients (72.0%) had infertility problems; 17 patients conceived with IVF-embryo transfer and 1 patient with intrauterine insemination. The pregnancy rate among patients who wished to conceive was 36.2% (25/69). Among 31 pregnancies in 25 patients, 4 patients had first trimester miscarriage and 1 patient had second trimester miscarriage. Excluding the five patients who miscarried and the five ongoing pregnancies, all the 21 patients had deliveries by Cesarean section. Four patients had a preterm birth in the second trimester and 17 patients delivered in the third trimester. Of the 17 pregnancies that reached the third trimester, 2 (11.8%) were preterm births between 29 and 32 weeks, 11 (64.7%) were delivered between 32 and 37 weeks and 4 (23.5%) at ≥ 37 weeks of gestation.

LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION
Because of the retrospective data collection, not all pregnancies may have been recorded.

WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS
Prospective multicenter studies are needed to determine if the results shown in this retrospective cohort can be generalized to all patients with early-stage cervical cancer who wish to undergo the fertility-sparing RAT procedure.


The CMU Statistical Language Modeling toolkit was released in 1994 in order to facilitate the construction and testing of bigram and trigram language models. It is currently in use in over 40 academic, government and industrial laboratories in over 12 countries. This paper presents a new version of the toolkit. We outline the conventional language modeling technology, as implemented in the toolkit, and describe the extra e(cid:14)ciency and functionality that the new toolkit provides as compared to previous software for this task. Finally, we give an example of the use of the toolkit in constructing and testing a simple language model.


Our feminist perspective is one of empowerment for breast cancer survivors, and we believe that physical activity and exercise have the potential to shift the battle away from fear of living to living fully. In light of the psychosocial and cultural factors that influence the interpretation of the breast cancer experience, rehabilitation efforts have shifted from curing the disease to living with the disease, or survival. This shift is reflected in the selection of quality of life as the primary indicant of treatment efficacy. Interpreted from a feminist, empowerment perspective, evidence is presented demonstrating the positive influence of physical activity and exercise on quality of life in breast cancer survivors. We propose that physical activity has the potential to enhance perceptions of capabilities and control, thus empowering the individual to create her own reality. We conclude that physical exercise can be a safe and effective complementary and alternative method of therapy for breast cancer survivors.


ABSTRACT In this Article, I argue that the alleged incoherence and unpredictability of the dormant Commerce Clause doctrine (DCCD) is rooted in the Supreme Court's search, through the years, for a stable set of rules enabling it to distinguish permissible from impermissible state regulations of interstate commerce and commercial actors. Its lack of success, the Article argues, is due in large part to the Court's inability to settle on the constitutional command the doctrine was to enforce. Historically, the Court would promulgate a set of rules, apply them for a time, then alter or modify them as the rules became unsatisfactory. Recent cases with similar facts, yet producing different results, suggest that the superficial stability the Court has achieved with the DCCD in recent years is largely an illusion. Both the "antidiscrimination principle" and the so-called 'Pike balancing"--each representing one of the two tiers in the Court's standard of review--are experiencing the same decline and decay as prior rules regimes. Recent cases suggest that the Court appears poised once again to alter the DCCD but is proceeding in an undertheorized, ad hoc manner. Using the "constitutional decision rules" model of constitutional interpretation developed by Mitchell Berman, and influenced by doctrinal theorists like Richard Fallon and Kermit Roosevelt, I argue that the DCCD could be improved by settling on a "constitutional operative proposition" rooted in the text and history of the Constitution and the Commerce Clause, and devising "decision rules" that would implement that constitutional command. I conclude that the Framers centralized commercial regulation to prevent state regulations of interstate commerce likely to produce friction among states, incite retaliation, and undermine political union. I specifically reject any attempt to impute a free-trade ideology to the Framers. Decision rules enforcing the DCCD should, therefore, go no further than addressing the sorts of "discrimination" that produce this union-undermining effect. In particular, I would have the Court discard the "balancing" of burdens and benefits flowing from truly nondiscriminatory state and local laws. Applying the reconstructed decision rules to several difficult doctrinal areas, I argue, results in either a more satisfactory explanation for actions the Court has taken, or shows more clearly how the Court has incorrectly resolved particular issues. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I. THE DECISION RULES MODEL OF CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION: AN OVERVIEW A. Identifying the Constitutional Operative Proposition B. Crafting Decision Rules and Constitutional "Calcification" II. THE SUPREME COURT AND THE DCCD: A SEARCH FOR DECISION RULES A. Origins: The Marshall and Taney Courts 1. The Marshall Court and the DCCD 2. The Taney Court B. Cooley's National/Local Test C. The Direct/Indirect Test D. The Rise of the Antidiscrimination Principle E. "Balancing" and the Emergence of the Modern Approach III. THE COURT, THE DCCD, AND "CONSTITUTIONAL CALCIFICATION" A. Decision Rules and Calcification 1. Minor Calcification 2. Major Calcification B. Calcification and the DCCD 1. Pike Balancing a. Loss of Fit b. Subterfuge c. Major Calcification 2. The Antidiscrimination Principle a. Loss of Fit b. Subterfuge i. Hunt, Exxon, and Discriminatory Effects ii. Missing Linkages: West Lynn Creamery and Walsh iii. Flow Control Ordinances and Forced-use Rules: C & A Carbone and United Haulers c. Major Calcification IV. CONSTRUCTING A DECISION RULES MODEL OF THE DCCD A. The Constitutional Operative Proposition 1. Critiquing the Court's Modern Contenders a. …


A simple water balance model was applied to a micro-catchment water harvesting system for a semi-arid area in the North-Eastern part of Jordan. Two Negarim micro-catchment water harvesting systems were built at Al-Khanasri research station. A Randomized complete block design (RCBD) in factorial combination was used with six treatments and three replicates. Each plot was divided into two parts; a runoff area, and a run-on area. Two different treatments were used for the catchment area, these were: compacted (T1) and Natural treatments (T2). Three treatments were used for the run-on area, these were: disturbed (S1), stones (S2), and crop residue mulch (S3). Soil water content was measured over a depth of 0-1 m during the seasons 96-97 in these micro-catchments. In this model; daily rainfall, runoff, and evaporation were used. Runoff was calculated by the curve number method; evaporation was calculated by the Penman equation, the Priestley and Taylor method and the Class A pan approach. The least squares method was used for optimizing model parameters. The performance of the model was assessed by different criteria, such as root mean square error, relative root mean square error, coefficient of determination and the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency method. The performance of the micro-catchments system was also evaluated. Results showed that with limited but reliable hydrological data good agreement between predicted and observed values could be obtained. The ratio of water storage in a one meter soil depth to the rainfall falling on each catchment indicated that T1S2 and T1S3 have the highest values in size1 plots while T2S1 and T2S2 have the highest values in size 2 plots. Modelling results showed that for all the size 1 plots, the required ratio of the cultivated to catchment area, (C/CA), required to ensure sufficient harvested water, was less than the actual ratio used in the experimental design. For the size 2 plots this was only true for the T1 treatments. Consequently for the majority of plot sizes and treatments, the results showed that a smaller catchment area is capable of providing sufficient harvested water to meet crop growth requirements. The experimental ratio was based on a typical yearly design rainfall for the region having either a 50% or 67% probability of occurrence. Results also indicated that using stones and crop residue as mulch on the soil surface in the cultivated area was effective in decreasing the evaporation rate. S3 was more efficient than S2 as it stored more water due to the higher infiltration rate (12.4 cm/hr) when compared to S2 (4.1 cm/hr).


Objective: Unusual clinical course Background: Hyaluronic acid is a substance that is naturally present in the human body, especially in joints and eyes. Hyaluronic acid injectable gels have been available for the general market since 2003 as cosmetic dermal fillers and skin boosters. Diffuse alveolar hemorrhage is an acute event that threatens the life of the patient and can lead to pulmonary fibrosis. Alveolar hemorrhage associated with hyaluronic acid dermal fillers is an entity that to the best of our knowledge has never been described in the medical literature. Case Report: We describe a patient who presented with dyspnea and cough after a subcutaneous injection of hyaluronic acid, with radiographic abnormalities including ground glass opacities and consolidation. The patient underwent flexible bronchoscopy and was diagnosed with diffuse alveolar hemorrhage. Conclusions: This case emphasizes that this life threatening condition may occur with the use of this medication and physicians must be aware of this disorder, as early recognition and management can reduce morbidity.


Intervals of sporogenous DNA synthesis in lily anthers are associated with marked accumulations of methanol- and acid-soluble deoxyribosidic compounds. There are differences in solubility between compounds accumulating at meiosis and those accumulating at mitosis. The formation of these compounds appears to be related to a breakdown of somatic DNA.


As one of the first Chinese cities opened to Western trade in mid 19th century, Shanghai soon became the preferred place of residence for foreign merchants and entrepreneurs in East Asia. Shanghai's economy thrived and the people made this development possible came from various provinces of China, from the principal nations of Europe, the United States, Japan, and other Asian countries already colonised by the West. The relative importance of these communities varied from one period to another, but the barriers that separated them - languages, customs, and interests - all contributed to the fragmentation of the local society. This paper examines how different practices came to be grafted onto traditional systems and how Shanghai provided many opportunities for intercultural contacts between groups of people from vastly different backgrounds. I shall demonstrate that a new cosmopolitan society, largely modeled upon the Western modernity but interwoven with traditions from various parts of China, was rapidly emerging in Shanghai in the late nineteenth century, together with a distinctive "Shanghai identity" that shaped both Chinese and foreigners.


Illegal wildlife poaching is driving the loss of biodiversity. To combat poaching, rangers patrol expansive protected areas for illegal poaching activity. However, rangers often cannot comprehensively search such large parks. Thus, the Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security (PAWS) uses machine learning to help identify the areas with highest poaching risk. As PAWS is deployed to parks around the world, we recognized that many parks have limited resources for data collection and therefore have scarce feature sets. To ensure under-resourced parks have access to meaningful poaching predictions, we introduce the use of publicly available remote sensing data to extract features for parks. By employing this data from Google Earth Engine, we also incorporate previously unavailable dynamic data such as climate and primary production patterns to enrich predictions with seasonal trends. We automate the entire data-to-deployment pipeline and find that, with only using publicly available data, we recuperate prediction performance comparable to predictions made using features manually computed by park specialists. We conclude that the inclusion of satellite imagery creates for a robust system through which parks of any resource level can benefit from poaching risks for years to come.


Abstract The first application of CASMO-4/MICROBURN-B2 methodology to Westinghouse SVEA-96 Optima2 reload cycle is described in this paper. The first Westinghouse Optima2 reload cycle in the United States is Exelon's Quad Cities Unit 2 Cycle 19 (Q2C19). The core contains fresh Optima2 fuel and once-burned and twice-burned GE14 fuel. Although the licensing analyses for the reload cycle are performed by Westinghouse with Westinghouse methodology, the core is monitored with AREVA's POWERPLEX-III core monitoring system that is based on the CASMO-4/MICROBURN-B2 (C4/B2) methodology. This necessitates the development of a core model based on the C4/B2 methodology for both reload design and operational support purposes. In addition, as expected, there are many differences between the two vendors' methodologies; they differ not only in modeling some of the physical details of the Optima2 bundles but also in the modeling capability of the computer codes. In order to have high confidence that the online core monitoring results during the cycle startup and operation will comply with the technical specifications requirements (e.g., thermal limits, shutdown margins), the reload core design generated by Westinghouse design methodology was confirmed by the C4/B2 model. The C4/B2 model also ensures that timely operational support during the cycle can be provided. Since this is the first application of C4/B2 methodology to an Optima2 reload in the United States, many issues in the lattice design, bundle design, and reload core design phases were encountered. Many modeling issues have to be considered to develop a successful C4/B2 core model for the Optima2/GE14 mixed core. Some of the modeling details and concerns and their resolutions are described. The Q2C19 design was successfully completed, and the 2-yr cycle successfully started up in April 2006 and shut down in March 2008. Some of the operating results are also presented.


Dr. Roger Schank was the Founder of the renowned Institute for the Learning Sciences at Northwestern University, where he is John P. Evans Professor Emeritus in Computer Science, Education and Psychology. He was Professor of computer science and psychology at Yale University and Director of the Yale Artificial Intelligence Project. He was a visiting professor at the University of Paris VII, an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Linguistics at Stanford University and research fellow at the Institute for Semantics and Cognition in Switzerland. He also served as the Distinguished Career Professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a fellow of the AAAI and was founder of the Cognitive Science Society and co-founder of the Journal of Cognitive Science. He holds a Ph.D. in linguistics from University of Texas.
In 1994, he founded Cognitive Arts Corporation, a company that designs and builds high quality multimedia simulations for use in corporate training and for online university-level courses. The latter were built in partnership with Columbia University.
In 2002 he founded Socratic Arts, a company that is devoted to making high quality e-learning affordable for both businesses and schools.


Laboratory practices are very important activities in BSc (Bachelor of Science) and MSc (Master of Science) engineering courses involving concepts of Measurement Science, because they give to both undergraduate and graduate students the unique opportunity to verify with hands-on experiences the arguments introduced in theoretical lessons. Today there are truly uncountable different possible hardware/software low cost choices available for University teaching which could be complementary or alternative to the commonly used teaching tools (LabVIEW®, MATLAB®, etc.). In effects, the use of open-source and open-hardware platforms can offer different advantages with respect to traditional ones; first, they assure a bottom-up approach, which guarantees a pleasant and constructive learning with a gradual comprehension of concepts from the simple ones to more complex ones. Then, these cheap and readily available platforms permit to verify (also at home) the theoretical concepts and the proposed exercises with low cost devices rather than with expensive ones. Finally, the learning outcomes of the basic courses are indispensable to advanced courses where sensors, wireless networking and embedded systems converge, encouraging students to explore and realize new applications, preparing them for successful careers as engineers.


With the increasing importance of adult and continuing education, the present study aimed to examine the factors that influence continuing web-based learning at work. Three questionnaires were utilised to investigate the association of the job characteristics from Karasek et al.'s (1998) job demand-control-support model and the self-regulated learning with web-based continuing learning; exploratory factor analyses indicate their adequate reliability and validity. A sample of 203 employees of an airline company completed three questionnaires. The path analysis reveals that job demands did not have any significant correlation with any other variables. However, job control, social support and self-regulated learning constituted significant predictors of attitudes towards web-based continuing learning. Furthermore, self-regulated learning mediated job characteristics and attitudes. In conclusion, this is one of the few studies to consider perceptions of both personal online learning (i.e., self-regulated learning and attitudes towards web-based continuing learning) and work-related variables (i.e., job characteristics). The study advances interdisciplinary perspectives on education, information and communications technology and psychology, which has implications for continuing adult education and successful implementation of online workplace learning.


Various numerical simulations are currently available for the representation of flow and heat transfer in glass melts. Increasing computer performance allows 3D complex simulation coupled with electrical boosting, flame radiation heat transfer, chemical reaction, bubbling, etc. We present the numerical results of unsteady modeling of glass flow and heat transfer in the glass melting tank. The use of finite-element spatial discretization decreases the total number of degrees of freedom required to achieve acceptable accuracy, while efficient integration schemes (implicit predictor-corrector) lead to time step sizes which reduce the number of solutions even for studies of long term duration. First, different variations on the TC21 test-case (modification of the pull rate, thermal boundary profiles) are performed. This reference situation was selected by the 21st Technical Committee of the International Commission on Glass. Following this, a reduced-scale mixed electrical-fuel furnace is studied, allowing the modeling of unsteady boosting heat transfer. Finally an unsteady advection-diffusion problem is solved to represent the mixing of two different types of glasses. The interest in unsteady modeling is two-fold: (1) the accurate time evolution of flow and temperature sheds light on the structure and stability of the flow related to a given set of physical properties and boundary conditions; and (2) the transient solution gives reproducible and inexpensive information for the definition of a control process. The main result of this study is the clear distinction between kinematic and thermal time constants and the feasibility of direct exchanges between unsteady simulation and control models.


This article provides a critical overview of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in Russia and Kazakhstan and examines the rationale underpinning such partnerships. The analysis discusses the reasons why governments in Russia and Kazakhstan focus principally on concessions as a form of PPP and goes on to provide a critical assessment of the key approaches and situational factors relating to concessions in these two countries. The article finds that external globalization impulses pressed Russia and Kazakhstan to align their policies and institutions with western orthodoxy and perceived international best practice. An ever-increasing emphasis on use of PPPs has been a key feature of this alignment. However, the governments of Russia and Kazakhstan have increasingly resorted to concessions as progress with the development and implementation of Western style PPP models has stalled. This article concludes that the governments of Russia and Kazakhstan have demonstrated an overly optimistic approach to PPP and as a result may have substantially understated their overall concessional risks and costs. Features of Russian and Kazakhstani PPP arrangements such as ambiguity in output specification and extensive reliance on government subsidies, combined with lack of expertise of private partners, may significantly decrease concession benefits.


A tax shifting from labour income to housing taxation is generally advocated on efficiency grounds. However, most of the empirical literature focuses on the distributional implications of property tax reforms without paying much attention to potential consequences on the labour market. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap by investigating the effects of a tax shifting from labour income to property, guaranteeing revenue neutrality, and to assess the consequences of labour market equilibrium, both on occupation rates and income distribution. We propose to consider a hypothetical tax reform in Italy which uses the revenue of the tax on house property (actually implemented in 2012) for increasing tax credits on low incomes and making them refundable. In order to evaluate the reform we have developed a structural model of household labour supply which takes into account the labour market equilibrium conditions. Overall, the simulated policy provides a more effective income support and better incentives to work for low wage households and determines an improvement in inequality indexes.


This book scrutinizes the relationship between the concept of international legal personality as a theoretical construct and the position of the individual as a matter of positive international law. By testing four main theoretical conceptions of international legal personality against historical and existing international legal norms that govern individuals, the book argues that the common narrative about the development of the role of the individual in international law is flawed. Contrary to conventional wisdom, international law did not apply to States alone until the Second World War, only to transform during the second half of the twentieth century to include individuals as its subjects. Rather, the answer to the question of individual rights and obligations under international law is—and always was—solely contingent upon the interpretation of international legal norms. It follows, of course, that the entities governed by a particular norm tell us nothing about the legal system to which that norm belongs. Instead, the distinction between international and national legal norms turns exclusively on the nature of their respective sources. Against the background of these insights, the book shows how present-day international lawyers continue to allow an idea, which was never more than a scholarly invention of the nineteenth century, to influence the interpretation and application of contemporary international law. This state of affairs has significant real-world ramifications as international legal rights and obligations of individuals (and other non-State entities) are frequently applied more restrictively than interpretation without presumptions regarding 'personality' would merit.


A graph Γ of even order is a bicirculant if it admits an automorphism with two orbits of equal length. Symmetry properties of bicirculants, for which at least one of the induced subgraphs on the two orbits of the corresponding semiregular automorphism is a cycle, have been studied, at least for the few smallest possible valences. For valences 3, 4 and 5, where the corresponding bicirculants are called generalized Petersen graphs, Rose window graphs and Tabačjn graphs, respectively, all edgetransitive members have been classified. While there are only 7 edge-transitive generalized Petersen graphs and only 3 edge-transitive Tabačjn graphs, infinite families of edge-transitive Rose window graphs exist. The main theme of this paper is the question of the existence of such bicirculants for higher valences. It is proved that infinite families of edge-transitive examples of valence 6 exist and among them infinitely many arc-transitive as well as infinitely many half-arc-transitive members are identified. Moreover, the classification of the ones of valence 6 and girth 3 is given. As a corollary, an infinite family of half-arc-transitive graphs of valence 6 with universal reachability relation, which were thus far not known to exist, is obtained.


An important aspect of the development of systems biology approaches in metazoans is the characterization of expression patterns of nearly all genes predicted from genome sequences. Such "localizome" maps should provide information on where (in what cells or tissues) and when (at what stage of development or under what conditions) genes are expressed. They should also indicate in what cellular compartments the corresponding proteins are localized. Caenorhabditis elegans is particularly suited for the development of a localizome map since all its 959 adult somatic cells can be visualized by microscopy, and its cell lineage has been completely described. Here we address one of the challenges of C. elegans localizome mapping projects: that of obtaining a genome-wide resource of C. elegans promoters needed to generate transgenic animals expressing localization markers such as the green fluorescent protein (GFP). To ensure high flexibility for future uses, we utilized the newly developed MultiSite Gateway system. We generated and validated "version 1.1" of the Promoterome: a resource of approximately 6000 C. elegans promoters. These promoters can be transferred easily into various Gateway Destination vectors to drive expression of markers such as GFP, alone (promoter::GFP constructs), or in fusion with protein-encoding open reading frames available in ORFeome resources (promoter::ORF::GFP).


Background Surgical patients are especially susceptible to nutritional disorders; additionally an adequate nutritional status is important in achieving prompt recovery. Purpose To describe and analyse possible shortcomings related to nutritional status of surgical patients associated with an inadequate prescription of parenteral nutrition (PN). Material and methods A prospective, observational study, lasting two months, of post-surgical patients in a third level hospital with PN support. Estimated calorie requirements (CR) of surgical patients were calculated. The Harris-Benedict formula was the method used to evaluate CR taking into account the degree of metabolic stress in each surgical patient. Data were collected from the medical history of each patient: age, diagnosis, duration of PN support, glycaemia, electrolytes, total proteins and other haematological parameters. An assessment was made of how many blood tests were requested for every patient, at the beginning, during and at the end of parenteral support. Results A total of 75 patients were studied. In 19.2% of cases the CR were successfully supplied. In 72.6% of cases the prescribed caloric intake was insufficient compared to their estimated CR. In the remaining 8.2% of cases the caloric intake exceeded their estimated CR. 23.2% of the patients studied were obese. In 76.5% of them, the prescribed caloric intake differed from the estimated CR, despite the body weight calculation being adjusted for these patients. Conclusion Our study showed that 80.8% of patients were not given sufficient nutritional support, missing their estimated CR. It shows the lack of a structured protocol to addresses the nutritional assessment in surgical patients. References and/or Acknowledgements Keith JN. Bedside nutrition assessment past, present, and future: a review of the subjective global assessment. Nutr Clin Pract 2008;23(4):410–16 Martins CP, Correia JR, Do Amaral TF. Undernutrition risk screening and length of stay of hospitalized elderly. J Nutr Elder 2005;25(2):5–21 No conflict of interest.


In the scientific field and in working with data integration, uncertain data is a very
common subject. In [KKA05] a compact representation is proposed for storing uncertain
data in XML. A naive way of querying this data is by calculating all possible worlds and
execute the query on each of the worlds. Calculating these possible worlds is however
very inefficient because of the exponential growth of worlds. In this thesis we will
investigate how the compact representation can be queried in an efficient way.
We will compare two methods for querying the compact representation: Recursive path
analysis and the Compare paths method.
Recursive path analysis.
Using a script, for each step of the query a piece of XQuery code is generated, which
returns each possible answer for that step. The output of step one is the input of step
two and so on. The increase in performance is obtained by calculating the possible
answers for the query, instead of calculating all possible worlds for the document.
Compare paths method.
The query is converted by adding the needed possibility and probability steps to the
query. When executing queries that include a predicate, an extra check has to be
performed to examine if the returned results indeed can occur together with one of the
elements referred to in the predicate. We do this by comparing the paths of node
identifiers belonging to the probability and possibility ancestors of the candidate
elements with the ones of the predicate elements. Two elements occur in the same world
only if the number of probability ancestors that occur in both paths of the two elements
is equal to the number of probability ancestors that occur in both paths.
We test both methods by executing several queries on test documents of different sizes
and containing different levels of uncertainty. This leads to the following conclusions:
– Even for large documents (up to an address book containing 1000 people) the
compare paths method works well. However when requesting documents with a lot of
descendants in the result, the performance decreases quickly. This is a point of
interest for future work.
– The performance of the recursive path analysis is more dependent of uncertainty.
Therefore it works better on smaller documents and documents with a smaller level of
uncertainty.
– In the recursive path analysis, no feature of checking the correctness of child nodes is
implemented. For this reason it performs better than the compare paths method when
elements with a lot of children are returned. However, when using predicates there
are several cases in which the result can contain incorrect child nodes because simply
every node is returned.


At exactly 4:06 p.m. on July 18, 2013, the city of Detroit filed for bankruptcy. It was the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history-the Motor City had finally hit rock bottom. But what led to that fateful day, and how did the city survive the perilous months that followed? In Detroit Resurrected, Nathan Bomey delivers the inside story of the fight to save Detroit against impossible odds. Bomey, who covered the bankruptcy for the Detroit Free Press, provides a gripping account of the tremendous clash between lawyers, judges, bankers, union leaders, politicians, philanthropists, and the people of Detroit themselves. The battle to rescue this iconic city pulled together those who believed in its future-despite their differences. Help came in the form of Republican governor Rick Snyder, a technocrat who famously called himself "one tough nerd"; emergency manager Kevyn Orr, a sharp-shooting lawyer and "yellow-dog Democrat"; and judges Steven Rhodes and Gerald Rosen, the key architects of the grand bargain that would give the city a second chance at life. Detroit had a long way to go. Facing a legacy of broken promises, the city had to seek unprecedented sacrifices from retirees and union leaders, who fought for their pensions and benefits. It had to confront the consequences of years of municipal corruption while warding off Wall Street bond insurers who demanded their money back. And it had to consider liquidating the Detroit Institute of Arts, whose world-class collection became an object of desire for the city's numerous creditors. In a tight, suspenseful narrative, Detroit Resurrected reveals the tricky path to rescuing the city from $18 billion in debt and giving new hope to its citizens. Based on hundreds of exclusive interviews, insider sources, and thousands of records, Detroit Resurrected gives a sweeping account of financial ruin, backroom intrigue, and political rebirth in the struggle to reinvent one of America's iconic cities.


The translation initiation factors eIF4A and eIF4G form, together with the cap-binding protein eIF4E, the eIF4F complex, which is crucial for both recruiting the small ribosomal subunit 40 S to the 5'-untranslated regions of the mRNAs and for the subsequent scanning process. The eIF4A complex is an ATP-dependent RNA helicase whose activity is stimulated by binding to eIF4G. In mammals, this scaffold protein has two binding motifs for eIF4A, one of which is located on the eIF4G middle domain (eIF4GMD) and acts as an activator upon helicase activity. The other binding motif is found in the C-terminal domain (eIF4GCD) with a regulatory mode upon activity in order to co-ordinate the shuttling of eIF4A to the middle domain (eIF4GMD). So-called weak mRNAs, which possess long and highly structured 5 -untranslated regions present in many crucial regulatory messages, e.g. ODC or VEGF, are over-proportionally translated upon up-regulation of the eIF4F complex, which therefore represents a potential target for the development of anti-cancer chemotherapeutics. In this context, one aim of this thesis was the discovery of small drug-like molecules that inhibit complex formations between eIF4G and eIF4A. To this end, a high-throughput suitable HTR-FRET (Homogenous Time-Resolved Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer, Cisbio Bioassays) assay was developed and applied to screen a library of 16544 compounds. As a result, 252 potential target compounds were identified after screen validation, 1 of which showed IC50 value lower than 10 µM. Further, the interface properties of the complex between eIF4A and eIF4G were investigated. In order to obtain a closer understanding of the inhibitory influence of eIF4GCD on eIF4A activity and of the atomic characteristics of the eIF4A:eIF4GCD interface, crystallisation of the eIF4GCD:eIF4A complex was examined in detail. Crystals were obtained by the counter diffusion method, but these crystals did not show any diffraction at the SLS (Swiss Light Source, Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen Switzerland). Therefore, surface entropy reduction mutations were introduced to remove clusters of flexible amino acids of eIF4GCD. Though all of these cluster mutants show a similar binding affinity to eIF4A compared to the wild type, they failed to form any crystals in the present study. Since most of the flexible regions were located in the C-terminal part of eIF4ICD, a truncated construct was generated (eIF4GICD(1426)), which still binds to eIF4A. Biolayer interferometry (BLI) experiments were conducted, and the KD of eIF4GICD(1426):eIF4A was estimated to about 198nM. Sitting drop crystallisation experiments using this truncated protein in complex with eIF4A did yield crystals that, however, lacked suitable diffraction properties. The crystals were morphologically improved by seeding but the quality of the diffraction at the SLS was still insufficient for revealing the crystal structure. It is well known that eIF4A possesses a very flexible C-terminal domain; therefore surface entropy reduction attempts were employed here as well. Because eIF4A is very much conserved, finding suitable candidate mutants present in other members of the DEAD Box helicases family was difficult. All generated variants became insoluble when expressed in E. coli. To remove flexibility in eIF4A, an S-S-crosslink was designed to ensure a closed conformation of the two RecA-like domains of eIF4A. To this end, in eIF4A, the residues Gly-70 (walker A motif) and Arg-367 (arginine finger) were mutated to cysteines supposed to form a disulfide bridge under oxidative conditions and thus to lock the N- and C-terminal RecA domains in the closed conformation. The success of this approach could be confirmed via SDS Page analysis. Using BLI studies, it could be further demonstrated that the closed conformation of eIF4A had lost its binding to eIF4GCD, but that it could be restored to wild-type levels by adding the reducing agent DTT. This finding implies that by complex formation, eIF4GCD arrests eIF4A in the open conformation and that it therefore might well interact with both RecA-like domains: N-terminal and C-terminal. Indeed, gel filtration and BLI experiments confirmed the requirement for both eIF4A domains to bind to eIF4GCD. This result may be the molecular reason for the modulation of eIF4A activity and translation initiation.
In future studies, candidate compounds identified in the FRET screen should be further validated, chemically developed for affinity, and crystallized with eIF4A or eIF4GCD, depending on to which component they bind more tightly.


Educational Advocacy and the Foster Child by Jennifer Loetzerich MS, Walden University, 2010 Post Bac Certification, Mercer University, 2008 BS, State University of West Georgia, 2004 Doctoral Study Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education Walden University July 2017 Abstract In Georgia, there are high rates of instability in foster care, and each time a child changes placement, his or her support networks are gone until he or she can rebuild them. The purpose of this case study was to explore if current stakeholders provide effective support and assistance to professionals and others who assist foster students with their educational needs. This case study used a conceptual framework based on Rankism, inIn Georgia, there are high rates of instability in foster care, and each time a child changes placement, his or her support networks are gone until he or she can rebuild them. The purpose of this case study was to explore if current stakeholders provide effective support and assistance to professionals and others who assist foster students with their educational needs. This case study used a conceptual framework based on Rankism, in which students move up and down the rungs of the ladder of their social system. Data were collected via interviews with a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) worker, a Department Division of Family and Child Services (DFCS) caseworker, a former foster parent, a teacher, a school social worker, a school administrator, and a school counselor, all of whom were involved with foster children. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and then open coded using constant comparative analysis. Findings revealed a need for greater support, and illuminated the repercussions that may occur when students are moved from their homes and/or schools: They may lose their support networks, community supports, school supports, and recognition they had previously until these are rebuilt in their new placement. The major themes that emerged were (a) a need for data sharing, (b) effect of trauma on children, and (c) the need for improved educational advocacy. These findings, along with a review of the literature, led to the development of a policy change recommendation and the creation of a data system to enable collaboration amongst all agencies. The project that emerged was the creation of a data system that affords real-time transfer of educational records, allowing for appropriate educational plans to be put in place. Educational Advocacy and the Foster Child


This paper proposes distribution static compensator topologies for application in three-phase high power distribution systems. These topologies overcome both the voltage and current rating constraints imposed by the semiconductor switches by the use of three single-phase multi-secondary transformers. Five topologies, namely, four leg-group, three leg-group split-capacitor, H bridge-group, three leg-group and two leg-group are suggested. These can effectively compensate unbalance, harmonics and low power factor of the load currents. Apart from the use of minimum number of current sensors and a single capacitor, the control circuit is very simple. It provides the electrical isolation and security deemed essential for high voltage systems. A detailed comparison is made for these topologies. Based on the hardware requirement and compensation quality, the four leg-group and three leg-group topologies are shown to be superior than the other structures for application in three phase four-wire and three-wire systems respectively. They are validated through extensive simulation studies using PSCAD in a three-phase four-wire power network with non-linear unbalanced load. Experimental verification is conducted for H bridge-group topology on a single phase system using a DSP-based prototype laboratory model.


Zinc supplementation is recommended in all acute diarrheas in children from developing countries. We aimed to assess whether zinc supplementation would be equally effective against all the common organisms associated with acute diarrheas. We used data on 801 children with acute diarrhea recruited in a randomized, double blind controlled trial (ISRCTN85071383) of zinc and copper supplementation. Using prespecified subgroup analyses, multidimensionality reduction analyses, tests of heterogeneity, and stepwise logistic regression for tests of interactions, we found that the influence of zinc on the risk of diarrhea for more than 3 days depended on the isolated organism—beneficial in Klebsiella, neutral in Esherichia coli and parasitic infections, and detrimental in rotavirus coinfections. Although we found similar results for the outcome of high stool volume, the results did not reach statistical significance. Our findings suggest that the current strategy of zinc supplementation in all cases of acute diarrheas in children may need appropriate fine tuning to optimize the therapeutic benefit based on the causative organism, but further studies need to confirm and extend our findings.


Type 2 diabetes is at least 4 times more common among British South Asians than in the general population. South Asians also have a higher risk of diabetic complications, a situation which has been linked to low levels of physical activity observed amongst this group. Little is known about the factors and considerations which prohibit and/or facilitate physical activity amongst South Asians. This qualitative study explored Pakistani (n = 23) and Indian (n = 9) patients' perceptions and experiences of undertaking physical activity as part of their diabetes care. Although respondents reported an awareness of the need to undertake physical activity, few had put this lifestyle advice into practice. For many, practical considerations, such as lack of time, were interwoven with cultural norms and social expectations. Whilst respondents reported health problems which could make physical activity difficult, these were reinforced by their perceptions and understandings of their diabetes, and its impact upon their future health. Education may play a role in physical activity promotion; however, health promoters may need to work with, rather than against, cultural norms and individual perceptions. We recommend a realistic and culturally sensitive approach, which identifies and capitalizes on the kinds of activities patients already do in their everyday lives.


BACKGROUND
Deliberate self harm (DSH) is an increasingly common problem. Although much attention is focused on suicide prevention by psychiatric services, the role of the general practitioner (GP) in the prevention of suicidal behaviour and in the aftercare of DSH patients is also important.

AIM
To examine the nature and timing of GP contacts with DSH patients before and after an episode of DSH, and patients' satisfaction with these contacts.

DESIGN OF STUDY
Structured interviews with patients shortly after an episode of DSH and again approximately one year later.

SETTING
A representative sample of 139 DSH patients presenting to a district general hospital.

METHOD
Patients were interviewed shortly after DSH and at follow-up about GP contacts, prescribed medication and psychiatric symptoms.

RESULTS
At the time of DSH, 91.4% of patients were diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder (depression 69.8%), with 28% receiving treatment from psychiatric services. Two-thirds of patients had been in contact with their GP in the month before DSH, but only 13.3% reported expressing suicidal thoughts. Patients consulted their GP in the week following DSH in 40.6% of cases. Over half (57.9%) the patients discussed the reasons for their DSH at the first consultation and 69.5% reported that this was helpful. Overall, 64.3% of patients were satisfied with the follow-up consultations.

CONCLUSIONS
The major role of the GP in the prevention of suicidal behaviour is in the detection and treatment of depression, and in the aftercare of DSH patients.


Logic is a field studied mainly by researchers and students of philosophy, mathematics and computing. Inductive logic seeks to determine the extent to which the premisses of an argument entail its conclusion, aiming to provide a theory of how one should reason in the face of uncertainty. It has applications to decision making and artificial intelligence, as well as how scientists should reason when not in possession of the full facts.

In this book, Jon Williamson embarks on a quest to find a general, reasonable, applicable inductive logic (GRAIL), all the while examining why pioneers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Rudolf Carnap did not entirely succeed in this task.

Along the way he presents a general framework for the field, and reaches a new inductive logic, which builds upon recent developments in Bayesian epistemology (a theory about how strongly one should believe the various propositions that one can express). The book explores this logic in detail, discusses some key criticisms, and considers how it might be justified. Is this truly the GRAIL?

Although the book presents new research, this material is well suited to being delivered as a series of lectures to students of philosophy, mathematics, or computing and doubles as an introduction to the field of inductive logic


Regenerative electroless etching (ReEtching), described herein for the first time, is a method of producing nanostructured semiconductors in which an oxidant (Ox1 ) is used as a catalytic agent to facilitate the reaction between a semiconductor and a second oxidant (Ox2 ) that would be unreactive in the primary reaction. Ox2 is used to regenerate Ox1 , which is capable of initiating etching by injecting holes into the semiconductor valence band. Therefore, the extent of reaction is controlled by the amount of Ox2 added, and the rate of reaction is controlled by the injection rate of Ox2 . This general strategy is demonstrated specifically for the production of highly luminescent, nanocrystalline porous Si from the reaction of V2 O5 in HF(aq) as Ox1 and H2 O2 (aq) as Ox2 with Si powder and wafers.