Namibia is characterized by a history of discriminatory customary practices against women with regards to access to land, rights over land, and security of land tenure. Since independence in 1990, the country has adopted policies and legislative frameworks to bring about gender equality in all spheres of life, including the transformation of land tenure rights. These policies and acts give effect to the constitutional provisions that accord both men and women equal opportunities for access to land, rights over land and security of tenure. Widows are a particularly singled-out social group for legal protection, land security and rights to land enjoyed during their spouses' lifetimes, and are granted protection, at least on paper, from discriminatory practices such as unlawful land evictions. This article evaluates and analyses the current status of land tenure security for widows in the Eenhana Constituency of the Ohangwena Region in Namibia. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods through questionnaires, interviews and focus group discussions with widows, as well as key informant interviews with Communal Land Board representatives, members of the traditional authorities, as well as the Ministry of Land Reform's regional office officials. Through this case study, the findings establish that even though Namibia acclaims progressive policies and legislative frameworks on gender equality, there are still pockets of discrimination against widows where they continue to be at risk of losing their land rights in some of Namibia's communal areas. Addressing the land tenure insecurities and a guarantee of legal land rights for widows is key to reducing vulnerabilities within female-headed households in the communal areas. Traditional authorities remain a key governance structure in communal areas, particularly in relation to access to land, and land rights inheritance issues, amongst others. Similarly, the Communal Land Boards are statutory institutions mandated to ensure implementation of the provisions of the Communal Land Reform Act of 2002, including the protection of land rights for widows. The study therefore recommends three main measures: the removal of all forms of discriminatory customary practices against widows; continued awareness-raising initiatives on the rights of widows; and full implementation of legal provisions for the protection of widows' land rights and security of tenure. 1 Department of Geography, History and Environmental Studies, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Namibia, email@example.com 2 Department of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Namibia, firstname.lastname@example.com 3 Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Midlands State University, Zimbabwe, firstname.lastname@example.com 4 Research and Information Service of Namibia, firstname.lastname@example.com 5 Life Sciences Division, Multidisciplinary Research Centre, University of Namibia, firstname.lastname@example.com 6 Department of Geography, History and Environmental Studies, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Namibia, firstname.lastname@example.com


Once merely straightforward accounts of a company's activities and fiscal performance in the preceding year, annual reports (ARs), a form of purposive communication, have grown polysemic as they become enriched with graphics, visuals, and texts. Accordingly, they serve as important framing devices through which a company can present its own story, its autobiography. Using the ARs of ABS-CBN, arguably the biggest media conglomerate in the Philippines, between 1996 and 2010 as a case study, this paper seeks, at the theoretical and methodological levels, to apply Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework in the study of ARs and, at the practical level, to highlight ABS-CBN's corporate storytelling. Findings indicate the utility of CDA in understanding the annual report, both as imbued with meaning on its own and in relation to its stakeholders. Moreover, this study explicates ABS-CBN's narrative about its standing as a national yet increasingly global network that has faced significant challenges in the course of f ifteen years. Keywords : Philippines, annual reports, television, Critical Discourse Analysis


Explanations of descriptions of events are undivided, holistic, units of analysis for the purpose of justification. Their justifications are based on the transmission of information about the past and its interpretation and analysis. Further analysis of explanations of descriptions of events is redundant. The "holistic" model of explanations fits better the actual practices of scientists, historians and ordinary people who utter explanatory propositions than competing models. I consider the "inference to the best explanation" model and argue that under one interpretation, it cannot account for all the paradigmatic cases of explanation of description of events that I present, though under another interpretation it fits comfortably with my holistic model. Finally, I argue that there is nothing intrinsic or structural to distinguish holistic explanations of descriptions of events from other hypothetical propositions because the pragmatic context of inquiry may well determine exclusively whether a proposition is considered explanatory.


Advancing age is associated with a profound decline in the normal functioning of the immune system that is commonly referred to as immunosenescence. Impaired responses to vaccination and the increased incidence of infection and malignancy seen in the elderly are often considered to be a direct consequence of immunosenescence. A large body of cross-sectional data has shown that habitual exercise is associated with enhanced functional responses in both the innate and adaptive arms of the aging immune system, indicating that exercise may help curtail the onset of immunosenescence. However, it is not known if exercise is also capable of reversing the detrimental effects of aging on an already weakened immune system. The first part of this presentation will focus on the known effects of habitual exercise at preserving the aging immune system and discuss avenues for future research to test the hypothesis that exercise has immune rejuvenating properties in the elderly. Cancer is widely considered to be an age-related disease, with hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) being the preferred treatment for many patients with hematologic malignancies. However, HSCT is associated with significant morbidity and mortality especially due to viral infections (i.e. cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus and adenovirus) and relapse. The second part of this presentation will focus on the immuno-enhancing effects of acute exercise as a means of increasing the efficacy of adoptive transfer immunotherapy the passive infusion of ex vivo expanded donor-derived or autologous immune cells to a cancer patient recipient. Our early work in this area indicates that a single bout of exercise can augment the ex-vivo expansion of donor-derived NK-cells and antigen-specific Tcells for use in allogeneic adoptive transfer immunotherapy. This may offer a safe and cost-effective method to improve prognosis and reduce mortality in cancer patients after HSCT.


The present study focused on the dynamics of the phenology and life cycle of the Phaeophyceae invader Sargassum muticum at three sites on the Atlantic coast of Morocco over a period of two years (2013 and 2014). The results showed that S. muticum has two distinct growth phases; one with slower growth in winter followed by one with faster growth in spring-early summer, when the species exhibited high elongation and branching activities with thalli length ranging from 1 to more than 5 m depending on the study site. The site S1, with a rocky substratum covered by submerged sands, promotes thalli elongation, with maximum lengths of 643.33 11.10 cm recorded in July. At the rocky sites (S2 and S3), the maximum length of the seaweed depends on the pools' depth. Although the elongation of thalli is enhanced by the water body depth, the settlements' density (5-48 ind. m–2) seems to be mainly related to the nature of the substrate. The maturity index progressively increases from spring to early summer, when it reaches the highest values. S. muticum seems to be more abundant and more easily acclimated in shallow rockpools (sufficiently lighted and semi-exposed to wave action at the mid and lower tidal levels) than in protected sandy bottom sites with low hydrodynamic forces.


Development of direct neural interface (DNI) including visual prostheses absolutely requires con rmation of their long-term safety and stability. Functional evaluation by electrically evoked potentials (EEPs) is effective in this regard, although the recording system must be stable for chronic use. In addition, control of anesthetic depth is important for stable recording of the evoked potentials. The purpose of this study was to develop a chronically implanted electrode capable of recording visual evoked responses safely during repeated anesthesia over long periods, which would allow more effective safety evaluations of not only visual prostheses but also DNI. We developed two types of electrodes, and implanted them into rabbits. A general screw electrode was used for comparison with the novel electrodes. Structurally, the newly developed platinum (Pt) ball-tip screw electrode consisted of a plastic screw with smoothly surfaced Pt balls on the tip. The depth of implantation into the brain was adjustable via a threaded insert installed in the skull. The newly developed platinum/iridium (Pt/Ir) ball-tip planar multi-electrode array (MEA) comprised Pt/Ir ball electrodes placed in a two-dimensional lattice pattern, which was implanted just beneath the skull. These electrodes recorded variations in visual evoked potentials (VEPs) in response to 20 J ash stimuli over a period of 48 weeks. After 48 weeks of implantation, the ability of the electrodes to continue recording EEPs was con rmed (500 μA, 500 μs, cathodic rst biphasic). During the recording of VEPs and EEPs, stable anesthesia was maintained with iso urane (end-tidal 2.4%). The depth of anesthesia using iso urane could be adjusted safely, and allowed stable recording of evoked potentials throughout the long-term study. However, stable recording using the general screw electrode was possible only for a short period. We also obtained stable latency and N1 amplitude readings over the 48 weeks using the newly developed electrodes, and successfully recorded EEPs after the 48-week period. These results suggest that the novel electrodes work well over the entire duration of the study, and may allow assessment of long-term safety and stability of not only visual prostheses, but also other devices utilizing brain machine interfaces or direct neural interfaces.


Abstract The "CEA cryogenic target fabrication project" includes materials and technological research on the Cryogenic Target Assembly (CTA), the DT filling and cryogenic transport to the LMJ site, and the conformation of the DT solid layer. The Research program to deliver CTAs to LMJ in 2010 is described. Some important experimental results have already been obtained, and are presented.


A simultaneous measurement method was developed to permit the multiple detection of the first- and second-order harmonic displays of electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectra. Application of integration and differentiation of amplitude and phase simultaneously, i.e., vector operations on the various displays, enables identification of signals expressed by the various harmonics. By using simultaneous detection, we found for the first time that signals indicated by the different displays are not always identical. The transformation from the first to the second harmonic displays (or vice versa) by vector operations indicated that the displays were not interchangeable when nonlinear response was involved. Simultaneous detection proved to be useful for measurements of the electron spin relaxation where multiple signals coexist. The present detection system provides a means for multivector EPR spectroscopy.


The author reviews the international conference "Social Stratification in Russia between the 16th and 20th Centuries in the Context of European History", which took place in Yekaterinburg (14–18 November 2016). The review demonstrates that representatives of leading academic centres discussed and analysed topical issues in social history today. The participants' expertise and the character of discussions lead the author to conclude that Yekaterinburg may be considered an important centre for the study of the social history of the modern era, with the works of Ural historians being highly relevant. The conference was held by leading Ural academic centres for the humanities (the Institute of History and Archaeology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Ural Federal University) and became a notable event in the work of social historians.


A novel type of nanolasers, which combines the advantages of photonic crystal lasers and microdisk lasers, has been demonstrated based on InAlGaAs/InGaAs quantum wells using pulsed optical pumping at room temperature. It incorporates the properties of small footprint, small mode volume, and submilliwatt threshold, and favors vertical emission. We believe that this type of laser acts as a promising candidate for highly-integrated on-chip nanolasers in applications for signal processing and index sensing.


A compilation of the optical constants of ice Ih is made for temperatures within 60 K of the melting point. The imaginary part mim of the complex index of refraction m is obtained from measurements of spectral absorption coefficient; the real part mre is computed to be consistent with mim by use of known dispersion relations. The compilation of mim requires subjective interpolation in the near-ultraviolet and microwave, a temperature correction in the far-infrared, and a choice between two conflicting sources in the near-infrared. New measurements of the spectral absorption coefficient of pure ice are needed, at temperatures near the melting point, for 185–400-nm, 1.4–2.8-μm, 3.5–4.3-μm, 33–600-μm, and 1–100-mm wavelengths.


Real time convolution has many applications among others simulating room reverberation in audio processing. Non-uniformly partitioning filters could satisfy the both desired features of having a low latency and less computational complexity for an efficient convolution. However, distributing the computation to have an uniform demand on Central Processing Unit (CPU) is still challenging. Moreover, computational cost for very long filters is still not acceptable. In this thesis, a new algorithm is presented by taking advantage of the broad memory on Graphics Processing Units (GPU). Performing the computations of a non-uniformly partitioned block convolution on GPU could solve the problem of work load on CPU. It is shown that the computational time in this algorithm reduces for the filters with long length.


Reading is  a  complex cognitive  process of  decoding symbols in  order  to  construct  or  derive meaning (reading comprehension). It is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information and ideas. Like all language, it is a complex interaction between the  text  and  the  reader  which  is  shaped  by  the  reader's  prior  knowledge,  experiences, attitude,  and  language  community  which  is  culturally  and  socially  situated.  The  reading process requires continuous practice, development, and refinement. Key words: cognitive process, prior knowledge, complex interaction between the text and the reader


Conflict is central to human history. It is often the cause, course and consequence of social, cultural and political change. Military history therefore has to be more than a technical analysis of armed conflict. War in the Modern World since 1815 addresses war as a cultural phenomenon, discusses its meaning in different socities and explores the various contexts of military action.


The article follows the evolution of the Greek business activities in foreign countries. Based on two unique databases, the article acknowledges the existence of two sub-periods. More particularly, the years up to 1998 are characterized by two central elements, whose importance diminishes during the second period: the overwhelming significance of the Balkans (especially the countries bordering on Greece) and the hesitance of large Greek firms. In the second period, large firms make a dynamic entry, while some of them start behaving as real TNCs. However, the importance of small firms but also of the Balkans is preserved. As anticipated, with the shift of the morphological features of Greek entrepreneurial activity in foreign countries, the impact on the Greek economy also changes.


Abstract The Nanjing Declaration on Nitrogen Management calls for national governments to optimise N management by several strategies including assessment of N cycles. In New Zealand, reactive N continues to be added to the environment mainly by biological N fixation, and increasingly from N fertiliser additions. Here, we extend our work on N budgets in 2001/02 for New Zealand (267 000 km2), at both national and regional scales, to 1861, 2020 and 2050. We first attempt to estimate the N cycle for 1861, the year of the first census and when European settlers were beginning to clear large areas of forest for agriculture in some regions. For the future, we adopt two scenarios: agricultural production increasing at 3% p.a., and a "cap and trade" scheme for N. These scenarios provide instructive results by projecting two very different potential policy directions into the future; they do not represent predictions. The 3% growth scenario warns of ever‐increasing N loads on the environment. The cap and trade scenario (such as may be introduced by regional councils) supports the development of a mechanism by which farmers might constrain N losses without regulations being introduced. These scenarios seek to provide farmers, industry and regulators with an understanding of the large range of future possibilities. This paper highlights the urgency with which primary industry must move away from increased production per se to systems where value is added to products.


Article type: Original Article Background: Hypoactive sexual desire disorder is the most common sexual disorder among women, which interferes with their various functions. Activity of brain-behavioral and psychological distress systems are considered among factors affecting sexual function. Objectives: The present study aimed to compare women with hypoactive sexual desire and normal women in terms of brain-behavioral and psychological systems. Materials and Methods: In the present causal-comparative study, 37 women with hypoactive sexual desire and 37 normal women were purposively selected with maximum matching in terms of demographic variables from among eligible women attending health centers across Alborz Province in Iran. Data were collected using the following scales: behavioral inhibitory/activation scales (BIS/BAS) and depression, anxiety, stress (DASS) and were analyzed using multivariate analysis (MANOVA) in SPSS software version22. Results: The results obtained showed that mean score of women with hypoactive sexual desire was significantly lower compared with normal women in brain-behavioral activation system (drive, response to reward and pleasure seeking), but significantly higher in behavioral inhibitory system. Furthermore, women with hypoactive sexual desire obtained higher scores which indicate worse conditions than normal women in the components of psychological distress including anxiety, depression and stress. Conclusion: Women with hypoactive sexual desire have weaker behavioral inhibitory/activation systems and higher levels of anxiety, depression, and stress compared to normal women. Given these results, it is recommended that greater attention be paid to factors such as brain-behavioral and psychological distress systems in prevention and treatment programs for hypoactive sexual desire.


IZA DP No. 13952 DECEMBER 2020 Network Sorting and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from the Chaotic Dispersal of the Viet Kieu* Immigrants' social networks exert considerable influence over their labor market opportunities and yet the pre-sorting of co-nationals by ability and across space, endures as a key challenge for empiricists attempting to establish causal network effects. To surmount this issue, we leverage the chaotic dispersal of Vietnamese refugees across the U.S. in 1975, which was demonstrably exogenous in both initial network size and quality, in tandem with an absence of pre-existing networks of co-nationals, to causally identify the effects of network size and network quality on refugees': occupational outcomes, skill intensity and skill upgrading. Our administrative data provide refugee's precise initial locations and pre-placement characteristics in Vietnam, which we uniquely employ as additional controls, as well as longitudinal information about their locations and occupations six years hence. We construct instruments from the initial quasi-random refugee allocations of network size and quality and leverage refugees' geo-locations to insulate our results from the Reflection Problem. Overall, network quality is a far more important determinant of refugees' labor market outcomes when compared to network size, one interpretation of which is that the type of referrals network members receive are more important than the overall number of referrals. Blue-collar networks: increase the probability of refugees' working in blue-collar jobs, draw additional workers into more manual and less complex intensive employment and serve to up-skill individuals along the manual skill dimension. Given the protracted circumstances under which the Viet Kieu entered the U.S., the composition of their networks played a pivotal role in their ultimate success. JEL Classification: F22, J61


The consumption of poultry meat contaminated with Campylobacter jejuni is considered to be a risk factor for human campylobacteriosis. The development of targeted strategies to control campylobacters in broilers would benefit from knowledge of those bacterial factors important in colonization of the avian gut. During preliminary studies it was noted that C. jejuni NCTC 11168 was a poorer colonizer of chickens than strain 81116. This poor colonization could not be fully restored by in vivo passage, suggesting that it was a genetically endowed property of strain 11168. As the genome sequence is available for this strain, the technique of subtractive hybridization was used to identify gene fragments of strain 81116 not present in strain 11168. After two screening cycles, 24 out of 42 clones were identified as having DNA inserts specific for strain 81116. Six of these 24 clones contained gene fragment inserts with similarities to restriction-modification enzymes found in other bacteria. Two inserts had similarity to arsenic-resistance genes, whereas four others had similarities to cytochrome c oxidase III, dTDP-glucose 4,6-dehydratase, gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase and an abortive phage-resistance protein. At least some of these genes may be involved with colonization. A further six inserts had weak similarities to hypothetical proteins or to proteins with assigned functions from strain 11168. The remaining six clones had gene-fragment inserts with no database matches. Southern-blot analysis confirmed that strain-dependent variation existed for each of these DNA inserts. These results indicate that subtractive hybridization can successfully identify genes that are absent from the only C. jejuni strain for which the genome sequence is currently available.


Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) were first presented as a separate entity in hematology in 1982 by the French-American-British (FAB) group. Although widely accepted, this classification was revised in 2001 and again in 2008 by the World Health Organization (WHO). During that time, a great effort was made by diagnostic entities of world renown as well as by other research groups and individuals to establish a reliable prognostic system. Today, two systems are accepted by the hematologic community: the International World Prognostic Scoring System (IPSS) and the WHO Prognostic Scoring System (WPSS). Almost from the beginning, it was assumed that MDS are clonal disorders. Cytogenetics not only proved the clonality in the majority of cases but also greatly contributed to the stratification of patients into risk categories. With the progress made in treatment for MDS, comorbidities became an important part of the integral pretreatment consideration, as patients with a high index of comorbidity evaluation very often do not benefit from treatment. Recent advances in the diagnostic and prognostic evaluation of MDS patients were achieved by studying the effect of age in different MDS subgroups and the role of molecular markers in predicting clinical evolution.


Usually, the problems in AI may be many times related to Philosophy of Mind, and perhaps because this reason may be in essence very disputable. So, for instance, the famous question: Can a machine think? It was proposed by Alan Turing [16]. And it may be the more decisive question, but for many people it would be a nonsense. So, two of the very fundamental and more confronted positions usually considered according this line include the Connectionism and the Computational Theory of Mind. We analyze here its content, with their past disputes, and current situation.


We present a novel recurrent neural network (RNN) model for voice activity detection. Our multi-layer RNN model, in which nodes compute quadratic polynomials, outperforms a much larger baseline system composed of Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) and a hand-tuned state machine (SM) for temporal smoothing. All parameters of our RNN model are optimized together, so that it properly weights its preference for temporal continuity against the acoustic features in each frame. Our RNN uses one tenth the parameters and outperforms the GMM+SM baseline system by 26% reduction in false alarms, reducing overall speech recognition computation time by 17% while reducing word error rate by 1% relative.


In the spirit of Jurgen Habermas's project of linking sociological observation with legal philosophy, this Article analyses the Internet standards processes - complex nongovernmental international rulemaking discourses. It suggests that the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards discourse - a small, slightly formalized, set of cooperative procedures that make the other Internet discourses possible - is a concrete example of a rulemaking process that meets Habermas's notoriously demanding procedural conditions for a discourse capable of legitimating its outcomes. As evidence, the Article offers a social and institutional history of the IETF's Internet Standards process; and argues that participants in the IETF are engaged in a very high level of discourse, and are self-consciously documenting it. Identifying a practical discourse that meets Habermas's conditions removes the potentially crushing empirical objection that Habermas's theory of justice is too demanding for real-life application, although it does not prove its truth. Habermas's work provides a standpoint from which social institutions can be critiqued in the hopes of making them more legitimate and more just. Armed with evidence that Habermasian discourse is achievable, the Article surveys other Internet-based developments that may approach his ideal or, as in the case of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), that already claim a special form of legitimacy. This Article finds most of these other procedures wanting and argues that the existence of even one example of a functioning Habermasian discourse should inspire attempts to make other decisions in as legitimate and participatory a manner as possible. Habermas seeks not only to define when a rulemaking system can claim legitimacy for its outputs, but also to describe tendencies that affect a modern society's ability to realize his theory. Speaking more as a sociologist than a philosopher, Habermas has also suggested that the forces needed to push public decisionmaking in the directions advocated by his philosophy are likely to come from a re-energized, activist, engaged citizenry working together to create new small-scale communicative institutions that over time either merge into larger ones or at least join forces. Like Habermas's idea of a practical discourse, this may sound fine in theory but is difficult to put into practice. New technology may, however, increase the likelihood of achieving the Habermasian scenario of diverse citizens' groups engaging in practical discourses of their own. Technology may not compel outcomes, but it certainly can make difficult things easier. A number of new tools such as slash servers, blogs, wiki webs, community filtering tools and e-government initiatives show a potential for enabling not just discourse, but good discourse. While it is far too soon to claim that the widespread diffusion and use of these tools, or their successors, might actualize the best practical discourse in an ever-wider section of society, it is not too soon to hope - and perhaps to install some software.


Creation of rich, ontology-based metadata is one of the major challenges in developing the Semantic Web. Emerging applications utilizing semantic web techniques, such as semantic portals, cannot be realized if there are no proper tools to provide metadata for them. This paper discusses how to make provision of metadata easier and cost-effective by an annotation framework comprising of annotation editor combined with shared ontology services. We have developed an annotation system Saha supporting distributed collaboration in creating annotations, and hiding the complexity of the annotation schema and the domain ontologies from the annotators. Saha adapts flexibly to different metadata schemas, which makes it suitable for different applications. Support for using ontologies is based on ontology services, such as concept searching and browsing, concept URI fetching, semantic autocompletion and linguistic concept extraction. The system is being tested in various practical semantic portal projects.


This paper focuses on teaching the application of anthropology in business to marketing students. It begins with the premise that consumer marketers have long used ethnography as a component of their qualitative market research toolkit to inform their knowledge about and empathy for consumers. A question for market research educators who include ethnography in their curricula is if and how to teach the richness of anthropologically based approaches, especially given a decoupling of ethnographic method from anthropological theory in much consumer research practice. This discussion might also resonate with anthropology educators who are interested in the ways anthropology is applied in commercial settings. As a demonstration of a teaching mode rather than a research report, this paper describes how a consumer anthropology market research project is used experientially in the classroom to help marketing students learn and appreciate the application of both anthropological method and theory for brand-building. Included is a summary of an ethnographic project on Duncan Hines cake mix and an in-class student exercise during which three conceptual 'jumping off' points from anthropological theory were used to generate marketing initiatives.


HO endonuclease-induced double-strand breaks (DSBs) in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae can be repaired by the process of gap repair or, alternatively, by single-strand annealing if the site of the break is flanked by directly repeated homologous sequences. We have shown previously (J. Fishman-Lobell and J. E. Haber, Science 258:480-484, 1992) that during the repair of an HO-induced DSB, the excision repair gene RAD1 is needed to remove regions of nonhomology from the DSB ends. In this report, we present evidence that among nine genes involved in nucleotide excision repair, only RAD1 and RAD10 are required for removal of nonhomologous sequences from the DSB ends. rad1 delta and rad10 delta mutants displayed a 20-fold reduction in the ability to execute both gap repair and single-strand annealing pathways of HO-induced recombination. Mutations in RAD2, RAD3, and RAD14 reduced HO-induced recombination by about twofold. We also show that RAD7 and RAD16, which are required to remove UV photodamage from the silent HML, locus, are not required for MAT switching with HML or HMR as a donor. Our results provide a molecular basis for understanding the role of yeast nucleotide excision repair gene and their human homologs in DSB-induced recombination and repair.


We study the configuration of preconfigured protection cycles (p-cycles) in
 survivable WDM optical mesh networks with partial wavelength conversion with 100%
 restorability guaranteed against any single failures. We consider the general case
 in which a p-cycle is allowed to use converters partially on the path. We formulate
 the problem as two integer linear programs, one for nonjoint and one for joint
 optimization. In the nonjoint optimization case, working paths are known before the
 protection configuration is processed. Then, p-cycles and wavelength converters are
 optimally determined. In the joint optimization case, working paths, p-cycles, and
 wavelength converters are jointly determined. The objective in both cases is to
 minimize the total cost of link capacity used by the working paths and the p-cycles
 as well as the cost of wavelength converters required for accommodation of a set of
 traffic demands. The proposed p-cycle configuration architectures take full
 advantage of converter sharing that reduces the network cost by requiring as few
 converters as possible. Our numerical results indicate that the proposed approaches
 outperform existing ones in terms of total network cost, total number of converters
 required, and maximum number of converters required at a node.


We describe a broad-band lightwave synthesized frequency sweeper (LSFS) that uses synchronous filtering. We control the center frequency of the bandpass filter (BPF) in the LSFS so that it tracks the frequency of the circulating pulse. In the first half of this paper, we numerically simulate the accumulation of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise in the LSFS and confirm the effectiveness of synchronous filtering in suppressing the noise. We show that the frequency sweep span can be enlarged to cover the erbium-doped fiber amplifier gain bandwidth completely if ideal synchronous filtering is realized. We also describe the way in which the fluctuation of the BPF center frequency severely limits the number of pulse circulations and we estimate the accuracy required for the BPF center frequency control. In the second half, we report our experimental results. We confirmed the completion of more than 10 000 pulse circulations, which corresponded to a frequency sweep span of >1.2 THz. We also estimated the accuracy of the BPF center frequency control experimentally. As a result, the relationship between the accuracy and the number of pulse circulations was in good agreement with that obtained in the simulation.


National Park Service (NPS) units have seen a significant increase in visitation in recent years. From 2014 to 2016, Grand Teton National Park (GTNP) experienced a 17% increase in recreational visits. Managing for increased use, driven partially by new and novel types of recreation activities, is a growing issue of concern for the NPS. This study uses a qualitative approach to examine how emerging activity types paired with increased visitor use in GTNP's popular String and Leigh Lakes (SLL) area may lead to outcome interference among park visitors. An influx of novel uses, such as paddleboarding, to an area that is already popular for a myriad of recreation activities, including canoeing, picnicking, and day hiking, adds a layer of complexity to the management of the lakes. This increase in visitation and activity diversity, combined with limited vehicle access and parking, is creating an environment in which crowding and displacement of visitors is occurring. Using the recreational opportunity demand hierarchy (RODH) and an outcomes-focused management (OFM) framework, this study explores visitor activities, settings, and motivations, as well as possible outcome-interfering variables that may interfere with benefit-achievement. To inform this effort, 62 semi-structured interviews were compiled using a random-sampling technique in the SLL area during the summer of 2017. Data were analyzed using a blind coding technique and results suggest that conflict, crowding, and displacement are possible outcome-interfering variables that can be targeted in future research and monitoring efforts in the SLL area and beyond. The results also indicate that visitors react rationally to previous recreational outcomes. Additionally, we examine how our results can address common critiques of OFM. Finally, we propose a new iteration of the RODH, the rational recreation demand hierarchy (RRDH), in which outcomes direct future recreational decisions. The findings of this study and the updated outcomes-focused framework provide a variety of implications to managers. These include the management of outcomes and outcome-interfering variables as indicators of quality, a means of conceptualizing how outcome-achievement influences future decision-making concerning recreational activities and settings, and the treatment of protected area visitors as rational decision makers. Additionally, this study provides a vignette of how increased visitation, a phenomenon widely reported across US national parks, influences visitor experience. Subscribe to JPRA


Fur traders have played an inordinately important role in western Canadian history; their records and their published journals are the bedrock of our historiography. Paradoxically, we know little about the private lives of many of these traders. By assembling a readily available and conflicting body of knowledge on Alexander Henry, the Elder, and by linking it to other scattered bits of information, this paper presents a profile of Henry and his family that differs considerably from the traditionally accepted view.


This project describes the current state for wireless networks with regard to realtime multiplayer games on mobile devices. It looks at the limitations of these networks and mechanics to reduce the impact of the introduced network latency. The goal is to find an implementation where the user is not able to distinguish between an offline, perfect version and an online version where the user plays against other users in real time. To find this implementations the authors discuss the choices a developer must make when creating a networked game. Three different network implementations are implemented in a simple racing game created by the authors, and the game is tested on a set of users. The results indicate that users focus on responsiveness before noticing inconsistent game states.


Since late 2014, Portuguese Governments adopted ambitious minimum wage policies. Using linked employer-employee data, we provide an econometric evaluation of the impact of those policies. Our estimates suggest that minimum wage increases reduced employment growth and profitability, in particular for financially distressed firms. We also conclude that minimum wage increases had a positive impact on firms' exit, again amplified for financially distressed firms. According to these results, minimum wage policies may have had a supply side effect by accelerating the exit of low profitability and low productivity firms and, thus, contributing to improve aggregate productivity through a cleansing effect.


This report discusses current controversies and arguments for and against public financing of presidential campaigns; legislative history; elements of the program; taxpayer and candidate participation; financial status of the program; recent legislation; and analysis of various policy proposals. If Congress chooses to alter the program, consensus will be necessary in what has historically been a particularly complex and contentious area of campaign finance policy.


Injury prediction is one of the most challenging issues in sports and a key component for injury prevention. Sports injuries aetiology investigations have assumed a reductionist view in which a phenomenon has been simplified into units and analysed as the sum of its basic parts and causality has been seen in a linear and unidirectional way. This reductionist approach relies on correlation and regression analyses and, despite the vast effort to predict sports injuries, it has been limited in its ability to successfully identify predictive factors. The majority of human health conditions are complex. In this sense, the multifactorial complex nature of sports injuries arises not from the linear interaction between isolated and predictive factors, but from the complex interaction among a web of determinants. Thus, the aim of this conceptual paper was to propose a complex system model for sports injuries and to demonstrate how the implementation of complex system thinking may allow us to better address the complex nature of the sports injuries aetiology. According to this model, we should identify features that are hallmarks of complex systems, such as the pattern of relationships (interactions) among determinants, the regularities (profiles) that simultaneously characterise and constrain the phenomenon and the emerging pattern that arises from the complex web of determinants. In sports practice, this emerging pattern may be related to injury occurrence or adaptation. This novel view of preventive intervention relies on the identification of regularities or risk profile, moving from risk factors to risk pattern recognition.


A pseudoelastic micromodel that accounts for deformation twinning and crystallographic slip (Gl¨uge et al. , 2010) is used in conjunction with the representative volume element (RVE) method. The material model consists basically of a nonconvex visco-elastic stress strain-relation, and has to be considered as a microscale-model. The material parameters are adopted to { 10¯12 } twinning in magnesium. The simulation setup follows the commonly conducted compression tests on extruded Magnesium rods, where due to twinning a strong change of texture and a strength differential effect can be observed. The simulations allow for an investigation of the twin propagation in the polycrystal. Furthermore, the simulated twin volume fraction evolution, the texture evolution and the macroscopic stress-strain relation could be compared to experimental fi ndings obtained with pure magnesium and the magnesium based alloy AM30.


Millions of goods and services are now unavailable in many countries due to the current coronavirus pandemic, dramatically impacting on the construction of key economic statistics used for informing policy. This situation is unprecedented; hence methods to address it have not previously been developed. Current advice to national statistical offices from the IMF, Eurostat and the UN is shown to result in downward bias in the CPI and upward bias in real consumption. We conclude that the only way to produce a meaningful CPI within the lockdown period is through establishing a continuous consumer expenditure survey.


THE MOUNTAIN VEGETATION OF SOUTH PERU: SYNTAXONOMY, ECOLOGY, PHYTOGEOGRAPHY AND CONSERVATION This thesis presents an overview and revision of plant communities from xerophytic and mountain landscapes in the dry Andes of South Peru. The revision is based on comparison of the collected vegetation data with other regional and interregional studies. This phytosociologic overview comprises the arid and semi-arid montane vegetation of the province of Arequipa and besides the plant communities of Moquegua from the prepuna between 3470 and 3700 m, the puna between 3750 and 4500 m and the superpuna between 4450 and 4800 m. The Braun-Blanquet approach and multivariate ordination and classification methods have been applied to classify the different plant communities and to study the relation between plant communities and environmental variables, such as altitude, slope degree and exposition, rock and stone cover percentage, manure cover and grazing. Furthermore the results are presented of a phytogeographical analysis of the Andean puna flora (at vascular genus level) and its relation to other tropicalpine regions in South America. Finally, the descriptions of six recently published new species are included in this thesis. The results provide an important database for nature conservation issues, stressing the significance of protecting the fragile and diverse ecosystems of the Moqueguan Andes. The results of this vegetation survey can be used to prioritize the selection and assignment of nature reserves.


The Las Tazas Complex consists of two plutons; a granodioritic northern pluton and a monzonitic southern pluton. These were both emplaced during the Early Cretaceous along the Atacama Fault Zone during a change from dip-slip to transcurrent displacement. The Las Tazas Complex is a syntectonic intrusion. This is hased primarily on; (a) a fundamental agreement between plutonic and regional kinematic frameworks; (b) the presence of a down-temperature fabric continuum along the eastern contact of the Complex and; (c) melt-filled C' - surfaces in the wall-rocks. The Complex was emplaced under local contractional conditions during partitioned transpression. The northern pluton was emplaced during partitioned oblique dextral transpression, while the southern pluton was emplaced during east-side-down compressive dip-slip displacement. The transpressive setting suggests that the magma has actively dilated the fault surfaces under contractional conditions, rather than simply "filling in" space in dilatational jogs.
Lithological zoning within the Las Tazas Complex has resulted from the open-system multiple injection of discrete magma hatches, not from the closed-system in-situ fractionation of a single parental magma body. Emplacement was characterised by periods of the multiple injection of small magma batches during fairly continuous magma production, punctuated by periods of quiescent magma production, represented by internal contacts. Emplacement-level mixing and fractionation has only occurred on a local scale during the evolution of the plutons. Geochemical models of in-situ crystallisation produce ambiguous non-unique models which can only be constrained by clear field observation.
Strain-states associated with emplacement are localised phenomena, induced by a local interaction between magma supply and wall-rock displacement. On this basis strain-states in the vicinity of plutons do not reflect regional strain-states. As such, the kinematic framework and strain state associated with the emplacement of the Las Tazas Complex cannot be used to constrain the regional strain-state during the construction of the Cretaceous magmatic arc.


Creation of a vast variety of proteins is accomplished by genetic variation and a variety of alternative splicing transcripts. Currently, however, the abundant available data on genetic variation and the transcriptome are stored independently and in a dispersed fashion. In order to provide a research resource regarding the effects of human genetic polymorphism on various transcripts, we developed VarySysDB, a genetic polymorphism database based on 187 156 extensively annotated matured mRNA transcripts from 36 073 loci provided by H-InvDB. VarySysDB offers information encompassing published human genetic polymorphisms for each of these transcripts separately. This allows comparisons of effects derived from a polymorphism on different transcripts. The published information we analyzed includes single nucleotide polymorphisms and deletion–insertion polymorphisms from dbSNP, copy number variations from Database of Genomic Variants, short tandem repeats and single amino acid repeats from H-InvDB and linkage disequilibrium regions from D-HaploDB. The information can be searched and retrieved by features, functions and effects of polymorphisms, as well as by keywords. VarySysDB combines two kinds of viewers, GBrowse and Sequence View, to facilitate understanding of the positional relationship among polymorphisms, genome, transcripts, loci and functional domains. We expect that VarySysDB will yield useful information on polymorphisms affecting gene expression and phenotypes. VarySysDB is available at http://h-invitational.jp/varygene/.


The production of material goods requires resource extraction, leading to the release of carbon emissions into the atmosphere. With the growing threat of climate change, the demand for virgin production is increasingly problematic. Reusing products inherently decreases the demand for material production. As a result, reuse has been shown to mitigate many of the negative impacts of climate change. This thesis focuses on the potential for waste reduction by exploring Mainers' motivations for participating in Maine's reuse markets. Eight semi-structured interviews with secondhand shoppers were conducted. Qualitative analysis revealed that four major categories represented consumer motivations to purchase secondhand goods: individualist, social, economic, and critical. This research seeks to gain a deeper understanding of consumer positionality in Maine's reuse markets. These markets both respond to and inform a statewide reuse culture.


Purpose of the paper : Italy is one of the most attractive European destinations for FDI inflows worldwide. It has witnessed a rapid increase in mergers and acquisitions, to the point of overcoming the EU 15 mean in the years 2008-2013 (with the exception of 2012) (UNCTAD, 2014). The question of whether governments should foster foreign take-overs is crucial, since the Italian economy has been traditionally founded on "national champions". The purpose of the paper is to present a broader research project that aims at investigating (at firms' level) the performance differences of all the mid-sized foreign-controlled firms, compared with the non acquired firms in the manufacturing industry. Methodology : the paper analyzes firms acquired in the period between 1999 and 2009 by using data from Mediobanca Research Department. Findings : first results in terms of composition of the acquired mid-sized companies are shown. Practical implications : the paper defines the different perspectives of analysis describing the managerial effects of foreign acquisitions on the acquired firms, the MNE acquirers, and the target country with respect to the industrial development, the employment and the supply chains of the territory. Originality of the paper : the study uses Mediobanca Research Department database for the first time in order to investigate the topic of cross border acquisitions.


The canonical tensor rank approximation problem (TAP) consists of approximating a real-valued tensor by one of low canonical rank, which is a challenging non-linear, non-convex, constrained optimization problem, where the constraint set forms a non-smooth semi-algebraic set. We introduce a Riemannian Gauss-Newton method with trust region for solving small-scale, dense TAPs. The novelty of our approach is threefold. First, we parametrize the constraint set as the Cartesian product of Segre manifolds, hereby formulating the TAP as a Riemannian optimization problem, and we argue why this parametrization is among the theoretically best possible. Second, an original ST-HOSVD-based retraction operator is proposed. Third, we introduce a hot restart mechanism that efficiently detects when the optimization process is tending to an ill-conditioned tensor rank decomposition and which often yields a quick escape path from such spurious decompositions. Numerical experiments show improvements of up to three orders of magnitude in terms of the expected time to compute a successful solution over existing state-of-the-art methods.


The World Health Organization highlighted the increase in the resistance to conventional antibiotics for most pathogens and observed also a decrease of the threshold for all mechanisms of cell-cell microbial communication, leading to the formation of biofilms and to the increase of microbial pathogenicity. Scientific community is therefore oriented to the identification and study of alternative substances to antibiotics. In such context, substances of vegetal source, such as essential oils (EOs), always used in traditional medicine, stimulated— particularly in recent decades—the scientific world to discover and identify substances, intended as a mixture or single components capable to fight pathogenic microorganisms. From this point of view, the study of plants is very interesting and offers many interesting ideas and results. This brief chapter describes the basis of the microbial communication, until the formation of biofilm, and some mechanisms through which essential oils, or some of their main components, may decrease or inactivate the complex mechanisms that lead to pathogenicity, both of prokaryotes and eukaryotes.


This empirical paper aims to cast light on the relatively unexplored field of study of the effects of failure on entrepreneurs. In fact, in the last years different scholars published relevant analyses on the financial, social, and psychological outcomes of this occurrence, but there is still a certain lack of research on the long-term effects of failure on the career choices of failed entrepreneurs.Thus, we consider relevant existing research on entrepreneurship, failure, and career choices, and come to the conclusion that the Career Construction Theory provides a useful framework to interpret the decision on whether to re-entry or not self-employment following failure.Combining the existing relevant body of knowledge, through a deductive process, we present hypotheses and empirically test them on a Swedish sample.The results confirm that portfolio entrepreneurs are more likely to continue, hint that marital roles might affect positively the probability of re-entry, reject the importance of balance between the main roles of the individual at the time of failure for his or her financial performance upon re-entry, and reject that, by including other colleagues in the re-entry, entrepreneurs achieve better financial performances.


In the aftermath of the October 2004 meeting between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf at the United Nations, the longest unresolved conflict on the agenda of the UN Security Council seems primed to take a step closer towards resolution. The dispute in Kashmir, which was first brought to the United Nations in 1948, has proven to be one of the most intractable and dangerous political disputes facing the international community. Kashmir, which former US President Bill Clinton once called "the most dangerous place on earth," has been transformed into a perilous war zone since an armed insurgency against Indian rule began in the late 1980s. The three parties involved in the dispute--India, Pakistan, and the Kashmiri people--have remained at loggerheads for over half a century without any party making substantive political gains. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Kashmir conflict has a long and complicated history. Deep-rooted animosity and distrust have often precluded amicable dialogue between the parties, leaving any substantive joint agreements a distant possibility. The deep-seated disagreement has become progressively more hostile as it has become linked to issues of national pride and national identity. These associations have made compromise all the more difficult to reach. The recent rapprochement between the two nuclear-armed neighbors, sparked by former Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's unprecedented 2003 peace proposal and the subsequent conciliatory Pakistani response, has made considerable headway in preventing hostilities on the subcontinent. The declaration of a ceasefire, the resumption of full diplomatic ties, the planned high-level talks, and a host of confidence-building measures--ranging from softer borders to arms control measures--have created much excitement over the genuine prospects of sustainable peace. The Doctor's Spin While the incipient peace process between India and Pakistan is encouraging, it has contributed to a sense of false optimism. The media hype and its sanguine expectations about the process have masked a recent tragedy on the subcontinent: the collapse of the Kashmir peace process. Too often the conflict in Kashmir is conflated with the broader dispute between India and Pakistan. While the issue of Kashmir is often at the crux of disagreements between the South Asian neighbors, it is a fundamentally distinct conflict with a separate peace process--a process whose recent failure has unfortunately gone unnoticed. The traditional "Kashmir conflict," which garners the majority of public attention, finds its origin in the 1947 partition of the subcontinent after British withdrawal. This conflict is over the competing claims of New Delhi and Islamabad to the territory of Kashmir; the conflicting interpretations of the events of 1947 have led to three wars over the possession of Kashmir. Moreover, the Kashmir issue has remained a stumbling block in attempts to bolster ties between the two neighbors. While failing to address the issue of Kashmir, the current Indo-Pakistani peace process has had some success at fighting through the historical baggage between the two adversaries and fostering an environment conducive to cooperation. On the Ground Although often assumed, it is naive to suggest that Kashmir would cease to be a political-military tinderbox if the South Asian peace process were able to sustain its momentum. Any modus vivendi between India and Pakistan would have little effect on the long-term stability of the region because it excludes a crucial party to the conflict: the Kashmiri people. The real, and arguably more destabilizing, "Kashmir conflict" is the dispute between New Delhi and the state of Kashmir. In response to rigged elections and a track record of poor governance and repression, a popular anti-Indian separatist insurgency took hold in Kashmir during 1989. …


Drought and heat events, such as the 2018 European drought, interact with the exchange of energy between the land surface and the atmosphere, potentially affecting albedo, sensible and latent heat fluxes, as well as CO2 exchange. Each of these quantities may aggravate or mitigate the drought, heat, their side effects on productivity, water scarcity and global warming. We used measurements of 56 eddy covariance sites across Europe to examine the response of fluxes to extreme drought prevailing most of the year 2018 and how the response differed across various ecosystem types (forests, grasslands, croplands and peatlands). Each component of the surface radiation and energy balance observed in 2018 was compared to available data per site during a reference period 2004–2017. Based on anomalies in precipitation and reference evapotranspiration, we classified 46 sites as drought affected. These received on average 9% more solar radiation and released 32% more sensible heat to the atmosphere compared to the mean of the reference period. In general, drought decreased net CO2 uptake by 17.8%, but did not significantly change net evapotranspiration. The response of these fluxes differed characteristically between ecosystems; in particular, the general increase in the evaporative index was strongest in peatlands and weakest in croplands. This article is part of the theme issue 'Impacts of the 2018 severe drought and heatwave in Europe: from site to continental scale'.


ABSTRACT An overarching reason why carers do not utilise support services is that many people who perform care-giving do not necessarily self-identify as a carer. Understanding the development of carer identities is therefore crucial for the utilisation of different carer-focused health services. This study arose from the European Union-funded INNOVAGE project and aimed to describe how older carers conceptualise and understand their identity as carers on a Swedish online social forum. Theoretically the study adopts a constructionist approach and the method of netnography was applied. The findings reveal that a change in self-perception occurs in the process through which a carer role is acquired. The presence or absence of recognition for the older carers' capacity, knowledge and life situation is seen as filtered through the needs of the care recipient, making the carer identity into an invisible self. This is not least the case when the identity is constructed in alliance with conceptual and moral obligations found within a marital discourse. Nevertheless, the opportunity for online communication may help to create a virtual space of social recognition through which different experiences attached to caring can be discussed. The significance of online communication is here understood as the possibility it presents for carers to be recognised by other carers. It is a process through which an invisible self can become visible.


PMCAMx-2008, a three dimensional chemical transport model (CTM), was applied in Europe to quantify the changes in fine particle (PM 2.5) concentration in response to different emission reductions as well as to temperature in- crease. A summer and a winter simulation period were used, to investigate the seasonal dependence of the PM2.5 response to 50 % reductions of sulfur dioxide (SO2), ammonia (NH3), nitrogen oxides (NOx), anthropogenic volatile organic com- pounds (VOCs) and anthropogenic primary organic aerosol (POA) emissions and also to temperature increases of 2.5 and 5 K. Reduction of NH3 emissions seems to be the most effective control strategy for reducing PM2.5, in both pe- riods, resulting in a decrease of PM2.5 up to 5.1 µg m 3 and 1.8 µg m 3 (5.5 % and 4 % on average) during summer and winter respectively, mainly due to reduction of ammo- nium nitrate (NH4NO3) (20 % on average in both periods). The reduction of SO2 emissions decreases PM2.5 in both periods having a significant effect over the Balkans (up to 1.6 µg m 3 ) during the modeled summer period, mainly due to decrease of sulfate (34 % on average over the Balkans). The anthropogenic POA control strategy reduces total OA by 15 % during the modeled winter period and 8 % in the sum- mer period. The reduction of total OA is higher in urban areas close to its emissions sources. A slight decrease of OA (8 % in the modeled summer period and 4 % in the modeled win- ter period) is also predicted after a 50 % reduction of VOCs emissions due to the decrease of anthropogenic SOA. The re- duction of NOx emissions reduces PM2.5 (up to 3.4 µg m 3 ) during the summer period, due to a decrease of NH4NO3, causing although an increase of ozone concentration in ma- jor urban areas and over Western Europe. Additionally, the NOx control strategy actually increases PM2.5 levels during the winter period, due to more oxidants becoming available to react with SO2 and VOCs. The increase of temperature results in a decrease of PM2.5 in both periods over Central Europe, mainly due to a decrease of NH4NO3 during sum- mer (18 %) and fresh POA during wintertime (35 %). Signif- icant increases of OA are predicted during the summer due mainly to the increase of biogenic VOC emissions. On the contrary, OA is predicted to decrease in the modeled win- ter period due to the dominance of fresh POA reduction and the small biogenic SOA contribution to OA. The resulting in- crease of oxidant levels from the temperature rise lead to an increase of sulfate levels in both periods, mainly over North Europe and the Atlantic Ocean. The substantial reduction of PM2.5 components due to emissions reductions of their pre- cursors outlines the importance of emissions for improving air quality, while the sensitivity of PM 2.5 concentrations to temperature changes indicate that climate interactions need to be considered when predicting future levels of PM, with different net effects in different parts of Europe.


It is now possible to estimate black hole (BH) masses across cosmic time, using broad emission lines in active galaxies. This technique informs our views of how galaxies and their central BHs coevolve. Unfortunately, there are many outstanding uncertainties associated with these "virial" mass estimates. One of these comes from using the accretion luminosity to infer a size for the broad-line region (BLR). Incorporating the new sample of low-luminosity active galaxies from our recent monitoring campaign at Lick Observatory, we recalibrate the radius–luminosity relation with tracers of the accretion luminosity other than the optical continuum. We find that the radius of the BLR scales as the square root of the X-ray and Hβ luminosities, in agreement with recent optical studies. On the other hand, the scaling appears to be marginally steeper with narrow-line luminosities. This is consistent with a previously observed decrease in the ratio of narrow-line to X-ray luminosity with increasing total luminosity. The radius of the BLR correlates most tightly with Hβ luminosity, while the X-ray and narrow-line relations both have comparable scatter of a factor of 2. These correlations provide useful alternative virial BH masses in objects with no detectable optical/UV continuum emission, such as high-redshift galaxies with broad emission lines, radio-loud objects, or local active galaxies with galaxy-dominated continua.


Live text commentaries, published on the Internet, are written narratives that give a minute-by-minute account of a sports event while it is actually unfolding. Alternative terms that have been suggested for them are "event tracker", "live ticker", "minute-by-minute report", or "matchcast". They come in very different shapes and forms, and while they share some properties with unscripted radio sports commentaries, they have their own specific features. The textual account of the events on the field is very often accompanied by background information on the contestants, lists, statistics, pictures and diagrams. But live text commentaries also share many features with personal narratives. However, in contrast to personal narratives and to unscripted radio commentaries, live text commentaries are not ephemeral. Each new update, reporting the most recent state of the events on the field, also provides a step-by-step overview of what has already happened.


There is a large body of work in actual practice, and in academia on citizen voice and voice mechanisms. Since the introduction of the concept, and its application to various sectors, contexts and countries, there have been several arguments in support of its effectiveness as a mechanism for holding governments and public officials to account; or ensuring that the voices of the poor and marginalised are heard. Some have also argued that voice is a good measure of inclusiveness, and for improvements in service delivery at the local level. However, there have also been arguments that, in as much as voice as a mechanism is good, it has limitations. The limitations arise from the fact that voice alone, cannot produce the desired effect---response or improvements in service delivery. Thus, for voice to be effective, it must be 'heard.'

This thesis is about the extent to which public voice expressed through radio phone-in programmes can influence the responsiveness of public service delivery organisations at the local level. The study is an empirical enquiry into a new form of voice mechanism, which occurs on radio in Accra, Ghana. The study specifically looks at two unique radio phone-in programmes on two popular Accra-based private commercial FM radio stations. The two programmes provide a weekly on-air platform for residents of Accra and those within transmission range to call in live and lodge complaints about public and/or private services for follow-up and redress.

The main argument of this thesis is that voice mediated through specific radio programmes, not only has the potential to go far; it also has potential to be 'heard' due to follow-up, creative programming and some key characteristics of the programmes.

The thesis utilizes the new concept of 'mediated voice' to understand how radio complaints about waste management (a service provided by the Accra Metropolitan Authority, the local government for Accra) can elicit responses from the service providers.

The main findings in this study are that radio phone-in programmes have the ability to receive individual voice and represent them as though it were a collective problem. This ability ensures that voice is heard. Second, that because of the publicness of the 'voice' on radio, and subsequent follow-up on complaints by the radio programmes, public officials are forced to respond for fear of both administrative and electoral sanctions.


Since its approval in 1985, the implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) has supplanted antiarrhythmic drugs as the standard of care for patients with potentially lethal ventricular arrhythmias. The increased popularity of ICDs stems primarily from their safety and tolerability compared with commonly used medications notorious for adverse drug reactions. As ICD indications have broadened, the number of implantations has increased substantially, and more attention has been directed to sequelae of implantation, particularly after ICD firing. Although scant, studies of quality of life and psychiatric symptoms in patients with ICDs consistently report assorted psychiatric disturbances affecting up to 87% of recipients. Depression and anxiety predominate: up to 38% of patients experience symptoms that meet diagnostic criteria for an anxiety disorder. Psychological theories such as the classic conditioning model, learned helplessness model, and cognitive appraisal model have been invoked to conceptualize these new-onset ICD-induced anxiety disorders. Small trials of psychosocial interventions, including support groups and cognitive behavioral therapy, have had mixed results. Little is known about preexisting anxiety disorders in ICD recipients, particularly which premorbid features predict a worse prognosis, other than suggestions that younger patients and those receiving multiple shocks are at greater risk. Prospective studies of the psychopathology of patients with ICDs, both before and after implantation, are warranted.


In the winter of 1606-07, Dionys Fitzherbert, a daughter of the gentry in her late twenties, fell into a state of crisis which included raving, hallucinations, blasphemy, arid a range of confusions about herself, her family, and death. She imagined that she was choking, that she would vomit up enough matter to cover the entire yard, that her body was coming to pieces, and that she was damned after having committed unforgivable sins against God. She failed to recognize her kinsfolk when they visited her, and offered her neck to their swords; she thought she was going to be left naked, struggled with her attendants, and had her hands bound. She could not tell night from day. She thought she had stolen all her possessions. She believed her doctor had made the heavens and earth, and called him her master; she was convinced that he and his family intended to torment and kill her, but also that she could never die, and that there was no such thing as death. We know about this because--very unusually--Fitzherbert left a manuscript account of her experiences, recording her delusions, her suffering, and her eventual recovery. (1) Her primary aim in this account is to demonstrate that despite the extreme state of confusion and disturbance she describes, what she had been undergoing was a spiritual trial, and that those who called her melancholy or mad were grievously mistaken. She wishes to support and comfort those poor souls who have fallen into similar distresses, against people who though "otherwise worthy of all respect are too ready ... to attribute ytt to melancholly or I know not what turning of the brayne" (MS Sion E47 f. 7r). Is it not bad enough, she asks, that those in such conditions are in a state of desperate misery because they believe themselves to have lost the favor of God, without additionally having to face "the miserable imputation of madnes and all wretchedness" (MS Sion E47 f. 7r)? Her experience, she insists, was a special trial, which for God's unknown reasons looked like mental disorder of some kind, but which should properly be understood and treated in a spiritual framework. There was nothing wrong with her body; her suffering was in her heart and her spirit. That Fitzherbert's dramatic and extreme symptoms result in a diagnosis of melancholy reminds us of the shift that takes place in the meanings of the word in the course of the seventeenth century. Fear, anxiety, and unhappiness are certainly central elements in melancholy before the Enlightenment--"Fear and sorrow are the inseparable symptoms of this miserable passion," according to Jacques Ferrand (235). And general unhappiness is closely related to melancholy, as Robert Burton describes ordinary "transitory Melancholy," in his magisterial compendium The Anatomy of Melancholy, published in 1624: it "goes and comes upon every small occasion of sorrow, need, sickness, trouble, fear, grief, passion, or perturbation of the mind, any manner of care, discontent, or thought, which causeth anguish, dullness, heaviness and vexation of spirit, any ways opposite to pleasure, mirth, joy, delight" (1: 165). As Burton observes, "from these melancholy dispositions no man living is free" (1: 165). But in its proper form it is not only "an habit ... a chronick or continute disease, a settled humour," which embeds and fixes these sorrowful dispositions of the mind (1: 167); it is also a corruption of reason and imagination, leading sufferers into wild errors, making them "suppose many absurd ridiculous things" (1: 195). The relation between melancholy and madness, as Fitzherbert's phrasing suggests, is close. If depression summons up the imagery of sinking, melancholy is an upheaval, a "turning of the brain." In the humoral system, the dominant way of mapping the human organism in this period both psychologically and physiologically, melancholy was seen as the consequence of corrupted humors: vapors rose from corrupted black bile to the brain, obscuring clarity of perception and clouding the mind to produce delusions. …


Posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome (PRES) is a neurological condition with a combination of clinical and radiological features. Clinical symptoms include headaches, confusion, seizures, disturbed vision or an altered level of consciousness. Classic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings indicate subcortical and cortical oedema, affecting mainly the posterior cerebral region. We report two paediatric cases of PRES with underlying renal diseases presenting at the Sultan Qaboos University Hospital in Muscat, Oman, in April 2010 and August 2011. The first case was an 11-year-old girl diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus and the second was a six-and-a-half-year-old boy on peritoneal dialysis due to multi-drug-resistant nephrotic syndrome. Both patients were hypertensive and treated with blood pressure control medications. No residual neurological dysfunction was noted in the patients at a one-year follow-up and at discharge, respectively. The role of hypertension in paediatric PRES cases, among other important risk factors, is emphasised. Additionally, MRI is an important diagnostic and prognostic tool. Prompt diagnosis and aggressive management is fundamental to preventing permanent neurological damage.


Abstract:In a 1954 essay Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton coined the term homophily to describe similarity-based friendship. They based their findings on friendship patterns among neighbors in a biracial housing project in the United States, using a combined quantitative and qualitative, empirical and speculative analysis of social processes. Since then homophily has become a guiding principle for network science: it is simply presumed that similarity breeds connection. But the unpublished study by Merton, Patricia S. West, and Marie Jahoda, which grounds Lazarsfeld and Merton's analysis, and the Merton and Bureau of Applied Social Research's archive reveal a more complex picture. This article engages with the data traces in the archive to reimagine what enabled the residents of the studied housing project to live in difference, as neighbors. The reanimation of this archive reveals the often counterintuitive characteristic of our imagined networks: they are about removal, not addition. It also opens up new imagined possibilities for a digital future beyond the hatred of the different and online echo chambers.


Sometimes it is more than just embarrassing to lack civic awareness. Let's take the case of Jacob Koontz, a Revolutionary War veteran living in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, in 1816. On July 14 of that year, Koontz, apparently unaware that the president of the country was James Madison, wrote to former President Thomas Jefferson asking for help in securing financial payment rather than a land warrant for his wartime service, and included his original discharge papers as proof of his service. About two weeks later, Jefferson sent a letter to Secretary of War William H. Crawford in Washington, D.C., from Jefferson's home in Virginia, and enclosed Koontz's request. In his letter, Jefferson sought to assist Koontz, but also expressed dismay that the man still believed that Jefferson was the president of the United States. Jefferson exclaimed, "I know all of the irregularities of this, but we must not be too regular to do a good act, and there is no danger of the precedent; for we shall never find another in the U.S. who shall be ignorant of the name of his president 7 years after the change." Jefferson's letter provides a great starting point for teaching civics with primary sources. Sharing a copy of Jefferson's letter with students or colleagues may well spark a conversation about both civic literacy and responsibility. Primary sources, such as Jefferson's letter, are materials that were created by those who participated in or witnessed the events of the past. They can include letters, reports, photographs, drawings, sound recordings, motion pictures, and artifacts, as well as other items. In recent years, the use of primary sources as teaching tools in history classes has increased dramatically. This is due, in part, to the rapidly increasing availability of facsimiles, images, and transcriptions on the World Wide Web and to encouragement from the National History Standards for their inclusion. But their usefulness can extend well beyond the study of history into virtually every subject, particularly civics--civic affairs and the rights and duties of citizens. Although rights and duties are not tangible, primary sources that reflect and reinforce them are. They reflect events and experiences that actually occurred and introduce students to the individuals who lived them. In addition to the appeal of primary sources in terms of their tangibility and authenticity, their physical attributes can further capture student attention. …


This book analyses the portrayal of nuclear power in Japanese journalism and the factors that influence it. Combining a field theoretical approach to journalism with frame analysis on different levels of the communication process, the author argues that the nuclear industry in Japan used its financial power to form a 'pro-nuclear civil society' and that this frame sponsorship is the reason for the relatively positive portrayal of nuclear power in Japan until 2011. After 'Fukushima', journalistic autonomy in this domain increased and journalism became a driving force of change in nuclear policy. At the same time, the field of journalism became polarised because its more heteronomous parts remained integrated into the 'pro-nuclear civil society'. This book offers a new perspective on the Japanese media and journalism in Japan, emphasising heterogeneity and change in contrast to previous research, which focused on press clubs as institutions of pervasive media control.


Aims: Standardised patient (SP) methodology is the gold standard for evaluating clinical practice. We investigated the content of optometric eyecare for an early presbyopic SP of African racial descent, an "at-risk" patient group for primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG). Methods: A trained actor presented unannounced as a 44-year-old patient of African racial descent, complaining of recent near vision difficulties, to 100 community optometrists for an audio-recorded eye examination. The eye examinations were subsequently assessed via a checklist based on evidence-based POAG reviews, clinical guidelines and expert panel opinion. Results: Ninety-five per cent of optometrists carried out optic disc assessment and tonometry, which conforms to the UK College of Optometrists' advice that those patients aged >40 years should receive at least two of the following tests: tonometry, optic disc assessment, visual field testing. Thirty-five per cent of optometrists carried out all of these tests and 6% advised the SP of increased POAG risk in those of African racial descent. Conclusion: SP encounters are an effective measure of optometric clinical practice. As in other healthcare disciplines, there are substantial differences between optometrists in the depth of their clinical investigations, challenging the concept of a "standard sight test". There is a need for continuing professional development (CPD) in glaucoma screening, in which the increased risk of POAG in those of African racial descent should be emphasised.


Abstract : The design of a small ultra-high frequency (UHF) antenna for an ultra-wideband (UWB) random noise radar (RNR) system was undertaken to improve system bandwidth and reduce overall system size. The Vivaldi dipole antenna class showed the greatest potential for high performance in this specific application. After extensive computer simulation, three designs were built using two printed circuit board antenna construction methods. The antipodal chopped Vivaldi dipole antenna, built with a milling machine, achieved a wider bandwidth and more uniform spectral performance characteristics. Though current results show improvement over the current log-periodic antenna (LPA) used on the system, greater performance could possibly be achieved with higher fidelity construction methods. The chopped Vivaldi dipole antenna can be classified as a highly efficient, electrically small antenna optimized for UWB applications, due to the combination of small size as well as a nearly uniform frequency response and low dispersion in the UHF bandwidth. Though designed for AFIT's Noise Network (NoNET) system, a UHF UWB RNR, the antenna could be applied to a variety of UHF systems looking to optimize the trade-off between size and power budgets.


The diffusion of particles and conservative, passive tracer density fields in random hydrodynamic flows is considered. The crucial feature of this diffusion in a divergent hydrodynamic flow is the clustering of the conservative, passive tracer density field (in the Euler description) and occasionally of the particles themselves (in the Lagrange description) — a coherent phenomenon which occurs with probability unity and should arise in almost all dynamic scenarios of the process. In the present paper, statistical clustering parameters are described in statistical topography terms. Because of their inertial properties, particles and their concentration field can also cluster in random divergence-free velocity fields, the divergence of the particle velocity field itself being a crucial aspect of such a diffusion. The delta-correlated in time velocity field for fluctuating flow (as, e.g., in the Fokker–Planck diffusion equation for low-inertia particles) is in principle an invalid approximation for the statistical description of particle dynamics, and the diffusion approximation accounting for the finite time correlation radius should instead be used for this purpose.


For the purposes of this paper the title "The Arts in Africa" is interpreted as the Arts of indigenous Africans only. Of all the people living south of the Sahara, over eighty per cent, four out of every five persons, still live in the country and not in towns or industrial areas. Consequently, about four-fifths of all African arts can still be classed as rural. As with folk arts the world over, African rural arts play an important part in creating public opinion and upholding social disciplines. The arts of the urban minority cannot yet be considered to be the "norm" but rather the "abnorm", and should be treated separately. Unlike their rural relatives, African town dwellers enjoy a highly disorganised social and ''family" life, regardless of the nature of local political control, either indigenous or expatriot. Sociologists have found for example that the various anti-social activities of both Negroes and Africans are equally high in places as diverse and as far apart as the island of Jamaica, Accra, Lagos, Kampala, and Johannesburg. Urban arts of the present day do not yet have the same integrating effect upon African social life as the rural. In normal circumstances, Whites throughout Africa appear to prefer various aspects of the urban arts which are closest to them and which they find entertaining. They tend to encourage, almost exclusively, imitation of Western urban habits and recreations. They have not as a rule the slightest contact with African folk arts which are considered by them to be primitive and pre-civilised. This paper should therefore be read in this context.


NASA has awarded the Support for Atmospheres, Modeling, and Data Assimilation (SAMDA) contract to Science Systems and Applications, Inc., of Lanham, Maryland. This contract will support the atmospheric science and data assimilation research conducted by scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.


The purpose of this study is to examine credibility as it pertains to blogging. While studies have traditionally considered credibility in the context of the material being created, this study examines source credibility in the context of the personality creating the material. Therefore, this study functions primarily as an exploratory study and seeks to present an understanding of source credibility from the perspective of the individuals participating in blogging communities cultivated by influential bloggers. An interview questionnaire was specially developed for this study. Ten participants were selected for this study. Eight of them are females, two of the participants are males. All but one of the participants are Caucasians. The study's results show that support for attributions of credibility differing based on receiver gender and ethnicity does not exist. However, there was a difference in the types of credible behavior attributed to the bloggers in this study. Responses concerning the male Hispanic blogger indicate credibly behavior oriented toward providing depth of information, whereas responses concerning the White female blogger indicated an inclination toward a community-centric blog focused on providing a broad range of resources. Due to the limited sample size of this study, the ability to make general statements and infer statistical significance is limited, thus relegating this study to being only useful for exploratory purposes. This study's results, data interpretation, implications, and possibilities for future research are discussed at length.


Near the end of World War II, in an attempt to attack the United States mainland, Japan launched its fu-go campaign, deploying thousands of high-altitude hydrogen balloons armed with incendiary and high-explosive bombs designed to follow the westerly winds of the upper atmosphere and drift to the west coast of North America. After reaching the mainland, these fu-go, the Japanese hoped, would terrorize American citizens and ignite devastating forest fires across the western states, ultimately causing the United States to divert wartime resources to deal with the domestic crisis. While the fu-go offensive proved to be a complete tactical failure, six Americans lost their lives when a discovered balloon exploded. Ross Coen provides a fascinating look into the obscure history of the fu-go campaign, from the Japanese schoolgirls who manufactured the balloons by hand to the generals in the U.S. War Department who developed defense procedures. The book delves into panic, propaganda, and media censorship in wartime. Fu-go is a compelling story of a little-known episode in our national history that unfolded virtually unseen.


Ethereum is a distributed blockchain platform, serving as an ecosystem for smart contracts: full-fledged inter-communicating programs that capture the transaction logic of an account. Unlike programs in mainstream languages, a gas limit restricts the execution of an Ethereum smart contract: execution proceeds as long as gas is available. Thus, gas is a valuable resource that can be manipulated by an attacker to provoke unwanted behavior in a victim's smart contract (e.g., wasting or blocking funds of said victim). Gas-focused vulnerabilities exploit undesired behavior when a contract (directly or through other interacting contracts) runs out of gas. Such vulnerabilities are among the hardest for programmers to protect against, as out-of-gas behavior may be uncommon in non-attack scenarios and reasoning about it is far from trivial. In this paper, we classify and identify gas-focused vulnerabilities, and present MadMax: a static program analysis technique to automatically detect gas-focused vulnerabilities with very high confidence. Our approach combines a control-flow-analysis-based decompiler and declarative program-structure queries. The combined analysis captures high-level domain-specific concepts (such as "dynamic data structure storage" and "safely resumable loops") and achieves high precision and scalability. MadMax analyzes the entirety of smart contracts in the Ethereum blockchain in just 10 hours (with decompilation timeouts in 8% of the cases) and flags contracts with a (highly volatile) monetary value of over $2.8B as vulnerable. Manual inspection of a sample of flagged contracts shows that 81% of the sampled warnings do indeed lead to vulnerabilities, which we report on in our experiment.


Sounds produced by northern bottlenose whales (Hyperoodon ampullatus) recorded in the Gully, a submarine canyon off Nova Scotia, consisted predominately of clicks. In 428 min of recordings no whistles were heard which could unequivocally be attributed to bottlenose whales. There were two major types of click series, initially distinguished by large differences in received amplitude. Loud clicks (produced by nearby whales socializing at the surface) were rapid, with short and variable interclick intervals (mean 0.07 sec; CV 71%). The frequency spectra of these were variable and often multimodal, with peak frequencies ranging between 2 and 22 kHz (mean 11 kHz, CV 59%). Clicks received at low amplitude (produced by distant whales, presumably foraging at depth) had more consistent interclick intervals (mean 0.40 sec, CV 12.5%), generally unimodal frequency spectra with a mean peak frequency of 24 kHz (CV 7%) and 3 dB bandwidth of 4 kHz. Echolocation interclick intervals may reflect the approximate search distance of an animal, in this case 300 m, comparable to that found for sperm whales. The relationship between click frequency and the size of object being investigated, suggests that 24 kHz would be optimal for an object of approximately 6 cm or more, consistent with the size range of their squid prey.


Atypical branches of the aortic arch (AA) occur frequently but are poorly explained. In an 82-year-old Caucasian male cadaver who died of coronary artery disease with severe aortic stenosis, the left vertebral artery (LVA) originated from the AA between the common carotid and subclavian arteries. The prevertebral part of LVA was narrower and entered the C5 transverse foramen. The right vertebral artery (RVA) from the right subclavian was wider than LVA suggesting compensation to the cerebral circulation. An unusual LVA may be asymptomatic; however, it is important in neck and supraaortic arch surgery and in non-invasive neck procedures. Vertebral arteries (VAs) are formed by development of longitudinal anastomoses linking the cervical intersegmental arteries, which regress except the seventh that becomes the proximal subclavian artery, the point of origin of the adult VA. Persistence of the 6th dorsal intersegmental artery might account for LVA arising from AA proximal to the subclavian artery.


Explore the new features in Visual Studio 2019 and build apps using WPF, .NET Core, TypeScript, and Azure
Key Features
Learn how to write better code with the new and improved Visual Studio 2019 toolset

Accelerate cloud development with built-in Azure tools

Collaborate with a distributed team by integrating Visual Studio with source control repositories
Book Description
Visual Studio 2019 is the latest IDE from Microsoft for developers targeting Windows and other platforms to build stunning desktop, web and mobile applications. In this book, you'll learn how to effectively use this IDE to build, debug, and test your applications to enhance productivity by simplifying your most common tasks and allowing more time to focus on other aspects of your project.

Starting with an overview of the new features in Visual Studio 2019, you'll understand what's improved since its previous edition. This Visual Studio book will help you build applications for Windows using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), which provides a unified programming model for developing dynamic, rich, data-driven desktop applications. You'll then learn about Microsoft's implementation of cloud computing with Azure, followed by building applications using .NET Core and TypeScript. This book will also help you explore NuGet, the package manager for the Microsoft development platform, that enables you to create, publish, and consume packages from a central repository by managing a reference list of packages. Finally, you'll delve into the debugging and live unit testing techniques that are built into the IDE.

By the end of the book, you'll have become a more efficient Visual Studio 2019 user, and be able to use it for developing, testing, debugging and deploying your applications.
What you will learn
Increase your productivity with Visual Studio 2019's new features

Understand how the installation wizard works and create an offline installation package

Build stunning applications using WPF, .NET Core, and TypeScript

Explore NuGet packages in depth

Accelerate cloud development with Azure

Debug and test your applications efficiently

Get to grips with integrating Visual Studio with Git repositories
Who this book is for
If you're a Microsoft .NET developer who wants to learn the new features of Visual Studio 2019, or want to delve into cloud computing, .NET Core, TypeScript along with mastering the skills of building, debugging, and unit testing professional apps, you'll find this book useful. Basic knowledge of Visual Studio, .NET, and C# is assumed.


In this paper we describe a method for structure-from-motion recovery when there are multiple objects in the scene. We use our recently developed recursive estimation technique to recover shape and motion parameters given a set of features being tracked in the image. Support maps deened for these features limit the integration of information across space when there are multiple objects in a scene, due to occlusions or interleaved regions. Multiple hypothetical models are run concurrently, based on random initial groupings of the data. A minimum description length selection mechanism determines which 3-D structure/motion models and which groups of features constitute the best match to the data. We show results segmenting a synthetic sequence containing features on two rotating spheres, where there are no static cues available for segmentation, and on a real image sequence containing both camera and object motion.


Electron density irregularities influence Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals, manifesting as ionospheric scintillation. Scintillation poses a service risk to safety-critical GNSS applications at high latitudes. It is difficult to predict, as ionospheric instability processes are not yet fully characterised. This research combines the fields of ionospheric imaging and scintillation monitoring, to investigate the causes of scintillation in the Antarctic and Arctic. Results revealed a plasma patch structure above Antarctica, in response to the impact of a solar wind shock front. Measurements from a network of Global Positioning System scintillation receivers across the continent revealed moderate levels of phase scintillation associated with Total Electron Content (TEC) gradients at the patch break-off point. Scintillation was also driven by solar particle precipitation at E and F region altitudes, verified with in situ spectrometers on polar-orbiting satellites. The current receiver coverage in the region provided the Multi-Instrument Data Analysis Software (MIDAS) tomography tool with sufficient data to track the lifetime of the plasma patch without a convection model. A second experiment was performed at the South Pole, using a collocated GPS scintillation receiver and auroral imager. This allowed simultaneous line-of-sight tracking of GPS signals through the optical auroral emissions. Results showed the first statistical evidence that auroral emissions can be used a proxy for ionospheric irregularities causing GPS scintillation. The relationship was strongest during the presence of discrete auroral arcs. Correlation levels of up to 74% were found over periods of 2-3 hours. The use of multiple emission wavelengths provided basic altitude discrimination. Current capability of ionospheric TEC mapping in the Arctic was tested, where GPS receiver distribution is extensive compared to present Antarctic coverage. Analysis of the ionosphere's response to a storm event revealed a sequential picture of polar cap patch activity, without the aid of plasma convection modelling. The electron density enhancements of the auroral oval were imaged in completeness for the first time using GPS tomography. Reconstructions were verified using ultraviolet auroral imagery from polar-orbit satellites, and vertical profiles from an incoherent scatter radar.