While dramatic increases in women's labor supply and earnings have led to a substantial decline in the fraction of women eligible for spouse benefits at retirement, most wives still receive a survivor benefit, as wives still typically have lower earnings than their husbands and live longer. Using the MINT microsimulation model and the HRS data linked with Social Security administrative earnings records, this paper examines the extent to which Social Security continues to favor couples and will do so in the future. The paper found that: - While the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance program still distributes lifetime income from singles to couples, the transfers appear to be shrinking over time. - Nevertheless, couples are still projected to have a higher benefit/tax ratio, a lower median net tax rate, and a greater likelihood of receiving positive net transfers from the system compared to those who are never married or divorced. - The increased labor force participation and earnings of women have contributed significantly to the decline in redistribution from men to women, and from singles to couples, while the effect of declining marriage rates has only a modest effect. The policy implications of the findings are: - Family benefit provisions within the Social Security program can have a significant impact on various measures of redistribution. - Policymakers may find the results of this paper helpful in evaluating any reform proposals that would change these provisions.


The density transformation according to Seidel, Dt=log[(d0/d)−1] results in a calibration curve that is nearly straight in the wavelength region normally used in spectrographic analysis.The properties of the "transformed density curve" are studied in detail and it is shown that by choice of favorable conditions the remaining curvature is negligible. This offers the possibility to extend the density difference method to the (H and D) density range 0.1–2.


We employ a parsimonious nonlinear Interacted-VAR to examine whether the real effects of uncertainty shocks are greater when the economy is at the Zero Lower Bound. We find the contractionary effects of uncertainty shocks to be statistically larger when the ZLB is binding, with differences that are economically important. Our results are shown not to be driven by the contemporaneous occurrence of the Great Recession and high financial stress, and to be robust to different ways of modeling unconventional monetary policy. These findings lend support to recent theoretical contributions on the interaction between uncertainty shocks and the stance of monetary policy.


More than three-fourths of the world's population live and work in cities, where up to 80% of all available energy is consumed and over half of greenhouse gas emissions are created. In this complex condition, sustainable urban development could deal with both urban growth demands as well as environmental concerns. Regarding awareness of the population distribution as it affects energy consumption, this paper sketches out the relationships between urban morphology and energy consumption, providing some new basic design principles to re-shape urban assessment, as well as to design new sustainable neighborhoods as an integrated part of the city. Our research applies a specific as well as an innovative approach based on a holistic methodology with the consideration of the city as a complex adaptive system with the ability to learn from past encountered conditions. Hence, considering that the energy consumption of the city is not the sum of all its buildings' consumption, and the final emergence of the system is completely different than the individual element's performance, is the main premise of the research. Accordingly, the paper illustrates a simulative method, based on mentioned methodology of complexity, for one whom deals with the sustainable neighborhood designs and urban transformations. The research is not suggesting a unique solution for different contexts, but rather investigating how to control the urban transformation process to achieve a sustainable form.


Legal scholars have recently advanced theories emphasizing the importance of perspectives in the law. Perspective scholarship recognizes that laws are necessarily shaped by society's dominant forces, including its biases and preconceptions. Perspective scholars attempt to understand how these forces have shaped our laws, and they suggest changes to accommodate those affected by society's biases. In this Article, Professor Levine introduces the concept of a religious minority perspective. He develops the concept of a religious minority perspective in the context of several, prominent Free Exercise cases. Professor Levine discusses these cases in his presentation of the central themes of a religious minority perspective, as he illuminates perspective theory in general.


This paper reviews the available knowledge on sedimentology, hydrodynamics and five major ecosystem components (microphytobenthos, vascular plants, terrestrial arthropods, zoobenthos, and avifauna) of Belgian sandy beaches. It covers the area from the foredunes to the lower foreshore, takes an ecosystem approach to beaches of this specific geographic area. Morphodynamically, Belgian beaches are (ultra-)dissipative, macrotidal, and wide. Characteristic grain sizes are 160‐380 lm. The sand becomes coarser, beach slopes steeper and tidal range smaller towards the south-west, where beaches have also been frequently reshaped by human interference such as nourishment. Beach organisms are highly adapted to this unique environment and can reach high numbers. We show that even on a heavily populated coastline subjected to intense recreational and development pressure, beaches provide critical, yet threatened, habitats. Vascular plants growing near the drift line, on the dry beach and in the embryonic dunes are mostly short-lived and thalassochorous; the most common species include sea rocket (Cakile maritima), prickly saltwort (Salsola kali subsp. kali), and sea sandwort (Honckenya peploides). These zones are habitat to a highly diverse suite of terrestrial arthropods of halobiontic, halophilous and haloxene species; prominent members are sandhoppers (Talitrus saltator) and dipterans (flies). Microphytobenthos, mainly diatoms, is an important primary producer on Belgian beaches but is not well known. The meio- and macrobenthos of Belgian beaches contains specific assemblages such as the Scolelepis squamata–Eurydice pulchra community of the upper intertidal zone. Birds no longer nest on the beaches itself, but Belgian sandy shores continue to function as important resting and foraging areas for birds such as the sanderling Calidris alba. We identify several human pressures on the beach ecosystems arising from recreation, beach management and fisheries.


Organised crime, whether or not in its Transnational manifestation, is usually depicted in huge threatening dimensions. However, despite this sometimes superhuman representation one should not forget that we are dealing with a human phenomenon and, therefore, should not lose sight of the corresponding human dimensions. This also concerns related phenomena such as money laundering and corruption. This forces itself upon us when we look back at the threat images that have been put forward by the authorities as well as the media in the past decades. What threat has come true since, say, 1970 or 1980? We observe still the same (criminal) 'business as usual', together with the alleged accumulation of huge amounts of crime-money. However, these threat images are mainly presented from an 'underworld gaze' directed at the criminal exploits of hoodlums and thugs, 'under' the 'civilised' society and often viewed as coming from abroad. Meanwhile the criminal (underworld) markets have not faltered. Despite this continued 'threat', the industrialised world grew steadily richer and safer up until 2008. Then the effects of enduring massive criminal manipulations in the financial upperworld brought this growing affluence to an inglorious end.

Corruption is another threat to the fabric of society. Do the anti-corruption policies in countries at the rim of the EU achieve results? There are reasons to believe that most of the policy making effects consist of the facades in a 'Potemkin village': a paper world of ratified conventions, enacted laws and ineffective institutions. Most human and most deceptive.

In this eleventh volume of the Cross-border Crime Colloquium series, twenty six European experts present their latest or on-going studies and research findings. The seventeen chapters cover a range of subjects which are of lasting interest for researchers as well as policy-makers: organised crime, criminal finances, money laundering and corruption. They make us aware of the human dimension in misdeeds as well as the related policy making.


Panama has a varied and rich flora. The total extension it has (75,517 Km2), And in which 9000 species of angiospermae plants (Magnoliophyta Division) from which 1230 (17,3%) are endemic it is an evidence of this.
Panama has a varied and rich flora. Panama has a very varied and rich flora. An evidence of this is the fact that within its total area (75,517 km2) 9000 angiosperm species (Magnoliophyta division) have been recordered. 1,250 (17,3%) of those plants are endemic.
Human activities in which forests are clear-cut represent a direct and indirect threat to the huge vegetal richness, particularly, to endemic plants whose extintion may cause either loss of species with an unknown economical potential or that has not been exploted at its large extent.
The Sangrillo Negro is an endemic species with a local economic importance whose surviving is threated by the Human Forces. However, its life cycle has not been studied in detail nor estimated how it may be affected by the changes (irregularities). The man has caused in the environment surrounding him. The reasons previously mentioned leaded us to study the Sangrillo Negro during 1985-1990 what allow to check known data and get more new information to make clear some points about this interesting specie.


Minimally invasive direct coronary artery bypass (MIDCAB) is a new approach that allows selected coronary stenoses to be bypassed through a much smaller incision, either a lateral thoracotomy or a mini-sternotomy, without the aid of cardiopulmonary bypass. Generally, the internal mammary artery is used as the bypass graft, although the gastroepiploic artery or saphenous vein may also be used. The minimally invasive approach eliminates the potential complications associated with cardiopulmonary bypass. Other benefits include decreased cost, minimal postoperative discomfort, and a shortened hospital stay. Although MIDCAB is an exciting alternative to conventional coronary bypass or angioplasty procedures, this approach is currently limited mostly to patients with isolated, proximal stenoses of the left main, left anterior descending, and right coronary arteries. MIDCAB will not be suitable for widespread use until further experience is gained and additional technical refinements introduced. In this report, we describe use of the mini-sternotomy approach to MIDCAB in a 62-year-old ma and briefly summarize our total experience at the Texas Heart Institute.


This article reports on the observations of a combined level 2 and 3 Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Committee (MARAC) over a 12 month period. It considers agency representation and discusses this in respect to attendance and the nature of relationships between representatives. The key findings are structured around the experiences of three identifiable groups of panel members and leads to a discussion of how the status of agencies and the informal roles adopted by the different members are defined by power relationships based on possession of knowledge. These relationships reflect cultural traditions in working with high risk offenders, but are also shaped by statutory responsibilities placed on different agencies within the MARAC forum.


Here are a variety of practical materials that are free or cost $10.00 or less. Please request the items directly from the specified advertisers. If you would like to list posters, brochures, or other materials, send advertising copy to PRO-ED Journals Advertising, 8700 Shoal Creek Blvd., Austin, TX 78757. Phone: 512/451–3246. There is no charge to advertise in this column. All listings are subject to publisher's approval; publication does not imply endorsement by the editor or publisher.


Project teams can improve results by recognizing that the future is inevitably uncertain and that by creating flexible designs they can adapt to eventualities. This approach enables them to take advantage of new opportunities and avoid harmful losses. Designers of complex, long-lasting projects--such as communication networks, power plants, or hospitals--must learn to abandon fixed specifications and narrow forecasts. They need to avoid the "flaw of averages," the conceptual pitfall that traps so many designs in underperformance. Failure to allow for changing circumstances risks leaving significant value untapped. This book is a guide for creating and implementing value-enhancing flexibility in design. It will be an essential resource for all participants in the development and operation of technological systems: designers, managers, financial analysts, investors, regulators, and academics. The book provides a high-level overview of why flexibility in design is needed to deliver significantly increased value. It describes in detail methods to identify, select, and implement useful flexibility. The book is unique in that it explicitly recognizes that future outcomes are uncertain. It thus presents forecasting, analysis, and evaluation tools especially suited to this reality. Appendixes provide expanded explanations of concepts and analytic tools.


We use an overlapping generations model to show that a bail-out is the optimal response to a fiscal crisis when the level of integration in a Monetary Union is high and the departure from Ricardian equivalence is significant. As it may not be optimal expost, the no bail-out rule is not credible ex-ante. To make it credible, one would have to look for arrangements that make the cost of one country defaulting sufficiently small, such that it does not impose a risk to the viability of the whole Monetary Union. One way to do that that we exploit is by reducing the relative size of the individual fiscal authority (from national to regional, for example).


Abstract : Additive manufacturing is a technology taking the manufacturing revolutionizing the manufacturing industry. Bycreating three dimensional objects from the ground up, the technology does away with the traditional manufacturing methods usedto design and create all products. This research examines the application of additive manufacturing (AM) with regards to tools andjigs in United States Air Force civil engineering (CE) operations.After testing the parts, a usability survey was conducted to determine the value of AM. The results of the overallresearch indicated that AM will definitely impact the daily operations of a CE unit and a clear need exists for the use ofAM. Further, the research determined that AM has reached a point where the integration of AM into strategically coordinatedunits, along with proper education and training, can be beneficial for the CE career field. Finally, the results indicate that 3Dscanning technology will reach a point within the next 5 years where it can help foster the rapid build-up of 3D CE asset designsfor printing applications. The overall results push forward the Air Forces 3D printing knowledge while providing criticalinformation for decision makers on this up and coming technology.


The overall aim with this project is to apply a candidate gene approach to identify genes
predisposing for the autoimmune disease, canine lymphocytic thyroiditis (CLT). Individuals
clinically diagnosed either as CLT-affected or as healthy non-affected controls were analyzed
from two birth cohorts of the breeds Giant Schnauzer and Hovawart, breeds that both has
high incidence of CLT.
Two different genes were evaluated for their potential involvement in CLT disease aetiology.
Selection of the candidate genes was based on their confirmed role in both human and mouse
as genetic risk factors in thyroid autoimmune disease. Firstly, to evaluate whether certain
DLA-DRB1 Major Histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II exon 2 genotypes predispose
for the development of CLT, cloning and sequencing of DLA-DRB1 exon 2 PCR products
were performed. Secondly, studies of the gene encoding cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen 4
(CTLA-4) were performed using single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis and
microsatellites. Nucleotide sequence analysis of the cloned DLA-DRB1 alleles will allow us to
evaluate whether certain DRB1 alleles are predisposing for CLT [4]. A microsatellite analysis
of CTLA-4 strongly suggested that CTLA-4 may be excluded as a gene predisposing for CLT
in Giant schnauzer, with a chi-square value of 1.96 with three degrees of freedom. For a Chi
square to be significant for three degrees of freedom it should be greater than or equal to 7.82.
The P-value was 0.58, which indicates no statistical significance in the results. However,
additional CLT-affected individuals and healthy controls must be analysed to obtain
conclusive results.


A paradigm shift from mass marketing to the concentrated focus on one-to-one marketing has led to a barrage of tactical strategies to instill long-tenn coasumer loyalty among organisations' most valued customers. At the forefront of these strategies are customer loyalty programs. Since the inception of the first loyalty prot,'11!m, Mdvantage in 1981, the marketplace has seen a proliferation of these programs across a widening range of industries. Not surprisingly, this has led to significant interest in customer loyalty programs among academics and practitioners. Despite the skepticism of academics relating to the effects of loyalty programs, many organisations have allocated a large amount of the or marketing budgets to developing, implementing and maintaining customer loyalty programs in the hope of generating long-term loyalty in customers. To date, current evaluations of customer loyalty programs have assessed the effects of these programs by focussing on behavioural measures (such as repeal purchases) and on economic outcomes (such as market share, penetration and share of wallet.) While these traditional measures have contributed to the understanding of consumer loyalty and evaluations of a program's success, it has been recognised by researchers .hat the measures are inadequate to detennine and explain the loyalty-building attributes of loyalty programs. Moreover, studies from the viewpoint of consumers remain lacking. In an attempt to bridge the gap, this qualitative study explores the attributes of customer loyalty programs that result in consumer loyalty to brands from the perspective of the consumer. The fundamental significance of this study is the integration of the behavioural and the attitudinal theoretical approaches used to investigate these attributes. In addition to this integrative approach, the study incorporates theories from relationship marketing. The components of loyalty and attributes of loyalty programs that were investigated were drawn from an extensive review of the brand loyalty, relationship marketing and customer loyalty program literatures. These components and attributes were deemed to be the most significant in establishing Jong-term consumer loyalty. The data for this qualitative study were derived from twenty-four semi-structured focused interviews with consumers who qualified as members of customer loyalty programs. The tentative conclusions drawn from this research are that from consume(s points of view: (i) the act ofloyalty is exhibited by the continual repeat purchase of the same product from the same store, (ii) the key to a successful customer loyalty program is the implementation of a program that is flexible to its members, ( iii) the key to a defensive orientated loyalty program is a good incentive structure and an effective communication program, and (iv) the development and sustenance of a relationship between a consumer and an organisation is vital to the brand loyalty process. The results of this exploratory study provide a deeper understanding of the customer loyalty program phenomenon and the identification of program attributes that result in long-term consumer loyalty from the perspective of consumers. This research highlights that further investigation is required into the loyalty-building attributes of customer loyalty programs, and this will be central to the development ofloyalty programs that satisfy consumers and effectively establish long-term loyalty to brands.


This paper presents an improved Plantard's modular arithmetic (Plantard arithmetic) tailored for Lattice-Based Cryptography (LBC). Based on the improved Plantard arithmetic, we present faster implementations of two LBC schemes, Kyber and NTTRU, running on Cortex-M4. The intrinsic advantage of Plantard arithmetic is that one multiplication can be saved from the modular multiplication of a constant. However, the original Plantard arithmetic is not very practical in LBC schemes because of the limitation on the unsigned input range. In this paper, we improve the Plantard arithmetic and customize it for the existing LBC schemes with theoretical proof. The improved Plantard arithmetic not only inherits its aforementioned advantage but also accepts signed inputs, produces signed output, and enlarges its input range compared with the original design. Moreover, compared with the state-of-the-art Montgomery arithmetic, the improved Plantard arithmetic has a larger input range and smaller output range, which allows better lazy reduction strategies during the NTT/INTT implementation in current LBC schemes. All these merits make it possible to replace the Montgomery arithmetic with the improved Plantard arithmetic in LBC schemes on some platforms. After applying this novel method to Kyber and NTTRU schemes using 16-bit NTT on Cortex-M4 devices, we show that the proposed design outperforms the known fastest implementation that uses Montgomery and Barrett arithmetic. Specifically, compared with the state-of-the-art Kyber implementation, applying the improved Plantard arithmetic in Kyber results in a speedup of 25.02% and 18.56% for NTT and INTT, respectively. Compared with the reference implementation of NTTRU, our NTT and INTT achieve speedup by 83.21% and 78.64%, respectively. As for the LBC KEM schemes, we set new speed records for Kyber and NTTRU running on Cortex-M4.


This paper describes a general approach to dealing with cross layer information in OMNeT++-based network simulations. Rather than prescribe a specific cross layer architecture, this work is intended to address the software engineering problem of passing information between simulation modules in a sound way. An XML-based mechanism for passing information between modules using OMNeT++'s controlInfo data structure is presented. Because XML is an intermediate format for the OMNeT++ network description language (NED), it is further suggested that allowing NED files to be annotated with information about cross layer interactions will enhance readability and reuse-ability. A further goal of this paper is to initiate discussion and collaboration in the Swedish (and international) OMNeT++ community.


Data that is gathered adaptively --- via bandit algorithms, for example --- exhibits bias. This is true both when gathering simple numeric valued data --- the empirical means kept track of by stochastic bandit algorithms are biased downwards --- and when gathering more complicated data --- running hypothesis tests on complex data gathered via contextual bandit algorithms leads to false discovery. In this paper, we show that this problem is mitigated if the data collection procedure is differentially private. This lets us both bound the bias of simple numeric valued quantities (like the empirical means of stochastic bandit algorithms), and correct the p-values of hypothesis tests run on the adaptively gathered data. Moreover, there exist differentially private bandit algorithms with near optimal regret bounds: we apply existing theorems in the simple stochastic case, and give a new analysis for linear contextual bandits. We complement our theoretical results with experiments validating our theory.


Se-containing proteins play an important role in human metabolic processes such as antioxidant action. However, speciation analysis of Se-containing proteins in biological samples is challenging because of their small amounts. In order to determine selenoprotein P (Sel-P) in human plasma, separation performance was compared between size exclusion chromatography and affinity chromatography. It was found that affinity chromatography showed better separation performance for Sel-P. Micro-affinity chromatography coupled with low flow ICP-MS was developed, which enabled separation analysis of Sel-P in sub-μl samples. Standard solution flow rate ranges for low sample consumption and total consumption nebulizers were investigated. Moreover, the stability analysis for each nebulizer with the change in composition of the mobile phase was investigated. Finally, using the developed micro-affinity chromatography coupled with the low flow ICP-MS, Sel-P and the other Se-containing proteins in sub-μl samples of human plasma were determined.


Acetobacter diazotrophicus, a nitrogen-fixing bacterium associated with sugar cane, secretes a levansucrase (sucrose-2,6-beta-D-fructan 6-beta-D-fructosyltransferase; EC 188.8.131.52). This enzyme is constitutively expressed and represents more than 70% of the total proteins secreted by strain SRT4. The purified protein consists of a single 58 kDa polypeptide with an isoelectric point of 5.5. Its activity is optimal at pH 5.0. It catalyses transfructosylation from sucrose to a variety of acceptors including water (sucrose hydrolysis), glucose (exchange reaction), fructan (polymerase reaction) and sucrose (oligofructoside synthesis). In vivo the polymerase activity leads to synthesis of a high-molecular-mass fructan of the levan type. A. diazotrophicus levansucrase catalyses transfructosylation via a Ping Pong mechanism involving the formation of a transient fructosyl-enzyme intermediate. The catalytic mechanism is very similar to that of Bacillus subtilis levansucrase. The kinetic parameters of the two enzymes are of the same order of magnitude. The main difference between the two enzyme specificities is the high yield of oligofructoside, particularly 1-kestotriose and kestotetraose, accumulated by A. diazotrophicus levansucrase during sucrose transformation. We discuss the hypothesis that these catalytic features may serve the different biological functions of each enzyme.


Essential Cases: Equity & Trusts provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. This case document summarizes the facts and decision in Coventry v Lawrence [2014] AC 822, Supreme Court. The document also includes supporting commentary from author Derek Whayman.


Beyond existing multi-view clustering, this paper studies a more realistic clustering scenario, referred to as incomplete multi-view clustering, where a number of data instances are missing in certain views. To tackle this problem, we explore spectral perturbation theory. In this work, we show a strong link between perturbation risk bounds and incomplete multi-view clustering. That is, as the similarity matrix fed into spectral clustering is a quantity bounded in magnitude O(1), we transfer the missing problem from data to similarity and tailor a matrix completion method for incomplete similarity matrix. Moreover, we show that the minimization of perturbation risk bounds among different views maximizes the final fusion result across all views. This provides a solid fusion criteria for multi-view data. We motivate and propose a Perturbation-oriented Incomplete multi-view Clustering (PIC) method. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.


Regular expressions are systematically used in a number of different application domains. Writing a regular expression for solving a specific task is usually quite difficult, requiring significant technical skills and creativity. We have developed a tool based on Genetic Programming capable of constructing regular expressions for text extraction automatically, based on examples of the text to be extracted. We have recently demonstrated that our tool is human-competitive in terms of both accuracy of the regular expressions and time required for their construction. We base this claim on a large-scale experiment involving more than 1700 users on 10 text extraction tasks of realistic complexity. The F-measure of the expressions constructed by our tool was almost always higher than the average F-measure of the expressions constructed by each of the three categories of users involved in our experiment (Novice, Intermediate, Experienced). The time required by our tool was almost always smaller than the average time required by each of the three categories of users. The experiment is described in full detail in "Can a machine replace humans? A case study. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 2016"


ABSTRACT Introduction Tracheal intubation is accompanied by an increased blood pressure and heart rate. The aim of this study was to find the most important source of this haemodynamic response, namely laryngoscopy or intubation. Method A standard induction technique was used for all patients. Eighty patients were randomly allocated to one of two groups, one group to undergo laryngoscopy followed by intubation (Group I), and the other laryngoscopy only of duration similar to intubation (Group L). Blood pressure and heart rate were recorded in the ward, before induction of anaesthesia and one, two, three, and four minutes after instrumentation. Results The instrumentation times did not differ significantly (p = 0.20). Over time mean arterial pressures were significantly higher in Group I than in Group L (p = 0.038). Over time the ratios of mean blood pressure and heart rate relative to the preoperative heart rate were significantly greater in Group I than in Group L (p < 0.01). Conclusion Blood pressures and heart rates were significantly greater after laryngoscopy followed by intubation than after laryngoscopy of the same duration not followed by intubation. The induction technique, consisting of lignocaine, alfentanil, and propofol, may have attenuated expected increases in blood pressure but not increases in heart rate after intubation.


Parents, friends, high school teachers and guidance counselors, college professors and academic advisors, college orientation programs, and first-year seminars play a role in facilitating students' transition from high school to college. This paper assesses the frequency of activities linked to the transition process and how helpful these behaviors are for students at a medium-sized state university in the Southeast. Mothers provide the greatest number of helping behaviors and are the most helpful resource in the transition process. There are extensive gender and racial differences in the students' perception of helpfulness and the reported number of times students receive help. Even though students believe they receive a lot of help from or rate helpful certain factors, the perceived degree of helpfulness may not be reflected in their GPAs. ********** The higher education literature is replete with studies about the transition to college (Goldrick-Rab, Carter, & Wagner, 2007, p. 2445) but more research is needed regarding the transition process (Locks, Hurtado, Bowman, & Oseguera, 2008, p. 257) because scholars have neglected to study, among other important topics, how students perceive the factors that influence their transition experience (Clark, 2005, p. 296). Weidman (1989) recognizes the role precollege and college factors play in the socialization experience of college students. Impact models, such as Weidman's (1989) model of undergraduate socialization, focus on social structure and study the influence of institutional characteristics, student experiences, and student interactions on the transition experience (see Feldman & Newcomb, 1969; Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005; Hurtado, 2007). First-generation students are at greater risk for a difficult transition from high school to college (Pascarella et al., 2004; Pike & Kuh, 2005; Ishitani, 2006) and students who are academically and socially involved experience a smoother transition to college and are more likely to return for their sophomore year (Tinto, 1998, p. 169). This transition is further enhanced when there is collaborative programming between secondary and postsecondary institutions (Karp & Hughes, 2008) and by the type of college-linking strategy used by high schools (Hill, 2008). While academic intensity and the quality of one's high school curriculum are crucial for academic success and making a smooth transition to college (Adelman, 2002), other factors such as parents, friends, high school teachers and guidance counselors, college professors, academic advisors, college orientation programs, and first-year seminars facilitate students' transition from high school to college (Cabrera & La Nasa, 2000; Tierney, Corwin, & Colyar, 2005; Kelly, Kendrick, Newgent, & Lucas, 2007; Saunders & Serna, 2004; Hossler, Schmit, & Vesper, 1999; Attinasi, 1989; Hurtado, Carter, & Spuler, 1996). Hurtado, Carter, and Spuler (1996, p. 153) found that peer support was an important factor in making the transition to college, although they acknowledged that some of this support might produce negative outcomes such as the lack of good study habits. Cabrera and La Nasa (2000, p. 7) and Hossler, Schmit, and Vesper (1999, p. 27) identify parental encouragement as the strongest factor predicting students' planning for college. Hurtado, Carter, and Spuler (1996, p. 153) found that college academic advisors were important factors in facilitating students' transition to college, while Kelly, Kendrick, Newgent, and Lucas (2007) indicate that fifty percent of the students they studied did not receive any help from their high school guidance counselors regarding college. Pascarella (2005, p. 132) concludes that during the first year of college, students' "interactions with peers can have a significant influence on first-year intellectual growth." Social support networks are important factors in helping students cope with the transition to college (Kenny & Stryker, 1996; Hays & Oxley, 1986; Phinney & Haas, 2003). …


This study examines how the dead were engaged with, treated and managed by one of the most influential of medieval monastic orders, the Cluniacs. At the heart of this study is a consideration of the eleventh-century Cluniac customaries. These invaluable yet under-exploited texts prescribe in minute detail how the dying, the dead body and the monk's memory should be physically and spiritually treated and commemorated. Through them we see a highly ritualised approach to the body, structured by interplay of repetitive symbolic actions, combined with the practical requirements of treating and disposing of a cadaver. These texts were intended to regulate daily life at Cluny, and of her dependencies and affiliates (Paxton 1993a: 1), for as Abbot Hugh's statute in 1200 directed, 'as we are one congregation and order, we should conform in all things' (Constable 2010: 140). They have, however, been described as 'living texts' (Kerr 2007: 14) and the practices they prescribe termed, 'adaptable to local needs and desires' (Constable 1976: 160-161). An integration of osteological and archaeological evidence has permitted a direct examination of the extent to which this was the case for the treatment of the dead. Specifically, it questions how far Cluny could impose conformity in funerary practice amongst its dependencies, which although members of the same familia, varied considerably by 'type' of house and geographical location. The varied ways in which Cluniac customary practice could be adapted and the diverse temporal and spatial factors influencing conformity and digression are thus addressed. Over 400 burials from four well-excavated Cluniac sites in England and France (dating predominantly from the late-eleventh through to the fifteenth century) form the comparative data-sets, where their rich archaeological and osteological documentation has permitted a direct examination of text versus practice. These sites represent two very different types of establishment: the large, original foundations of Bermondsey Abbey (London), Lewes Priory (Sussex) and La Charite-sur-Loire (Burgundy), and the smaller reformed house of Beaumont-sur-Oise (Picardy). This study has thus moved beyond individual house-specific enquiries or broad inter-order comparisons to a detailed examination of how diverse houses within one order responded to the spiritual and practical requirements of managing the dead. Novel in a British later medieval context, the taphonomic approach of anthropologie de terrain has been successfully applied post-excavation using burial photographs and associated archival material. Placing the body at the centre of enquiry, this approach has permitted a more accurate reconstruction (in the absence of 'direct' archaeological indicators) of the multiplicity of acts performed to and for the body in each stage of the Cluniac funerary procedure. It has permitted detailed analysis of pre-burial body preparation, interment strategies and post-burial treatment of disturbed remains, as the deceased were manipulated and re-integrated in varying ways within the funerary landscapes. The concept of the 'death-course' has been introduced to envisage this continual inter-related cultural and biological process; the body and soul are physically and spiritually 'managed' by the living, whilst the corpse is simultaneously transforming through the natural processes of decomposition and decay. Situating the deceased within this framework has helped direct enquiry towards Cluniac attitudes and responses to the dead body in each stage of the death-course, as it evolved from fresh cadaver through to skeletal matter. The results have demonstrated that a complex and dynamic relationship existed between each of the houses, their relative adherence to the customaries, and their attitudes to the dead. Influence from pre-existing monastic customaries and local traditions, developments in Cluniac customary practice, reform pressures, economic practicalities, varied emphasis on doctrinal and folkloric teachings/beliefs and broader social, political and religious changes all contributed to spatial and temporal variability in adherence. Crucially, underlying this was also the practical and unpredictable requirements of managing the realities of death: the biologically and possible spiritually unstable 'dynamic cadaver' (Nilsson 1998). As well as relative distance from Cluny, the 'type' of house was shown to be paramount; circumstances of foundation and community size greatly influenced spiritual and practical responses to the dead. This was also the case on a smaller scale, where the specific burial location was shown to directly influence how the physical and metaphysical manifestations of death were viewed, handled and managed. For Cluny's dependencies examined here, the customaries were shown on the whole to be highly theoretical in terms of the death and burial rites. They promulgated a carefully selected or 'ideal' image of Cluniac spirituality, which may have been more attainable for Cluny, but practically unrealistic for many of the diverse houses under its rule. This study has revealed, however, that customary influence in funerary practice could be more subtle and indirect. A closer and more holistic scrutiny of these texts, alongside the anthropologie de terrain assessment, has revealed that the dead body (in various stages of decomposition) could fulfil diverse roles. The customaries carefully structured and directed daily practice towards cementing and reaffirming community bonds, perpetual meditation on death and continual commemoration of the dead. A number of the identified practices, particularly those relating to the management of disturbed remains, mirrored this structuring. Through handling and staging of the deceased's body, it could acquire new meaning and purpose as a 'tool' for reflecting on death, as a malleable entity for promulgating Cluniac ideals, and as an 'object' around which a shared Cluniac identity and community bond could be created and maintained.


The spatial coherence of a nanosecond pulsed germanium collisionally excited x-ray laser is measured experimentally for three target configurations. The diagnostic is based on Young's slit interference fringes with a dispersing element to resolve the 23.2- and 23.6-nm spectral lines. Target configurations include a double-slab target, known as the injector, and geometries in which the injector image is image relayed to seed either an additional single-slab target or a second double-slab target. A special feature of this study is the observation of the change in the apparent source size with angle of refraction across the diverging laser beam. Source sizes derived with a Gaussian source model decrease from 44 μm for the injector target by a variable factor of as much as 2, according to target configuration, for beams leaving the additional amplifiers after strong refraction in the plasma.


The analogy between the transmission spectrum of a cascaded long-period grating (LPG) and the diffraction pattern of a multislit is presented. Both of them can be expressed with the exact same equation. Only the phase parameters that describe the interference are different. The spectrum of the cascaded LPG and/or a single LPG has been derived into a single analytic equation by diagonalizing the matrix that describes the system. The diagonalizing method that gives the analytic solution of the cascaded device is introduced in detail. Experimentally and theoretically, it is presented that the device composed of N equally spaced identical LPGs has a series of regularly spaced main-loss peaks enveloped by a slowly varying curve determined by the spectrum of the single LPG. Between the adjacent main peaks, there exists N-2 side peaks. With the multislit analogy, the complicated mode coupling in an LPG and/or cascaded LPGs can be explained with the interference among the beams coupled by the series of gratings from an undepleted core mode into a cladding mode. The recoupling back to the core mode does not need to be considered but embedded in the phases of the coupled beams. The analogy holds for any strength of gratings. The phase parameter is proved to be the eigenvalue of the system unit matrix composed of an LPG and the grating-free region between LPGs. The spectral properties of the cascaded LPG are analyzed in detail. As the diffraction pattern of the multislit is enveloped by the curve determined by the shape of a single slit, the interference of the cascaded LPG is enveloped by the curve determined by the specification of a single LPG. The fringe-enveloping curve is also derived in a closed analytic form. As the finesse of the multislit becomes high as the number of slits increases, the finesse of the cascaded LPG increases with the number of the LPGs. The free spectral range decreases with the separation between elements in both cases.


Background/Context In Milliken v. Bradley (1974), the U.S. Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional a metropolitan-wide desegregation plan in Detroit that sought to achieve racial balance in part by busing white suburban students to the city's majority black schools. In a stark departure from Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), Milliken left the question of how, or even whether, to equalize education for black students up to local parents, educators, activists, school board members, state legislators, and other private and public community stakeholders. Purpose/Objective/Focus of Study In this article, I consider school desegregation as a form of social justice for blacks and racial equality for all, 40 years post-Milliken. Drawing from research on school desegregation as social justice and Bell's theory of interest convergence, I argue that integration and equality in the post-Civil Rights Era requires attention to the competing visions of social justice I describe as black equality and white freedom. Research Design Framed by distributional and relational dimensions of social justice and Bell's theory of interest convergence, this paper presents a conceptual analysis of school desegregation as social justice post-Milliken. Conclusions/Recommendations The competing interests of black equality and white freedom central to Milliken remain fundamental to the question of school desegregation 40 years later. In light of growing political and public support for local control, school choice, and neighborhood schools, I conclude by discussing the implications of local control for black students and racial equality within the current context of widening economic equality, political polarization, and racial isolation in the United States and the world.


Abstract Post-1997 Hong Kong under the constitutional framework of "One Country Two Systems" has a political system that may be characterized as a "semi-democracy." Hong Kong's constitutional instrument—the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China—provides that the ultimate goal of the evolution of Hong Kong's political system is the election of its Chief Executive by universal suffrage. Since 2003, a democracy movement has developed in Hong Kong that campaigned for the speedy introduction of such universal suffrage. In 2007, the Chinese government announced that universal suffrage for the election of the Chief Executive of Hong Kong may be introduced in 2017. In 2014, the Chinese government announced further details of the electoral model. The model was rejected by Hong Kong's Legislative Council in 2015, with the result that the election of the Chief Executive in 2017 would not materialize. This article seeks to tell this story of Hong Kong's quest for democratization, focusing particularly on the context and background of the "Occupy Central" Movement that emerged in 2013 and its aftermath. It suggests that the struggle for universal suffrage in the election of Hong Kong's Chief Executive in 2017 and the obstacles it faced reveal the underlying tensions behind, and the contradictions inherent in, the concept and practice of "One Country, Two Systems," particularly the conflict between the Communist Party-led socialist political system in mainland China and the aspirations towards Western-style liberal democracy on the part of "pan-democrats" and their supporters in Hong Kong.


The agricultural sector is a source of greenhouse gas emissions that directly affect the global problem of climate change and contribute approximately 11% in total greenhouse gas emissions in the world and in Croatia too. Irregular and irresponsible agricultural practices, such as excessive tillage and improper fertilization often lead to soil carbon loss and increased carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere. This field study provides results how agricultural practices affect carbon dioxide emissions from soil, carbon sequestration and soil quality during the cultivation of winter wheat. The field experiment was conducted in a temperate continental climate on distric Stagnosol. Four investigated treatments were: organic fertilization, mineral fertilization, control treatment and black fallow. The lowest carbon dioxide emission was recorded on bare soil and the highest on organic fertilization treatment. The application of manure, mineral fertilizers and calcification rendered significant effect on some soil chemical characteristics and daily carbon dioxide flux.


The gene encoding the dipeptidyl peptidase-like protein DPP6 (also known as DPPX) has been associated with human neural disease. However, until recently no function had been found for this protein. It has been proposed that DPP6 is an auxiliary subunit of neuronal Kv4 K+ channels, the ion channels responsible for the somato-dendritic A-type K+ current, an ionic current with crucial roles in the regulation of firing frequency, dendritic integration and synaptic plasticity. This view has been supported mainly by studies showing that DPP6 is necessary to generate channels with biophysical properties resembling the native channels in some neurons. However, independent evidence that DPP6 is a component of neuronal Kv4 channels in the brain, and whether this protein has other functions in the CNS is still lacking. We generated antibodies to DPP6 proteins to compare their distribution in brain with that of the Kv4 pore-forming subunits. DPP6 proteins were prominently expressed in neuronal populations expressing Kv4.2 proteins and both types of protein were enriched in the dendrites of these cells, strongly supporting the hypothesis that DPP6 is an associated protein of Kv4 channels in brain neurons. The observed similarity in the cellular and subcellular patterns of expression of both proteins suggests that this is the main function of DPP6 in brain. However, we also found that DPP6 antibodies intensely labeled the hippocampal mossy fiber axons, which lack Kv4 proteins, suggesting that DPP6 proteins may have additional, Kv4-unrelated functions.


This report was designed to characterize the legal policy and economic climate on the issue of access to drugs for HIV/AIDS and related opportunistic infections (OIs) in Nigeria. Local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and international organizations have produced information on drug availability and accessibility (especially by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and the World Health Organization (WHO)). However there has not been a comprehensive report on how the intersecting issues of health and drug policies pharmacy laws drug distribution prescribing practices research and manufacturing and drug resistance impact drug accessibility. The authors of this report have been researching and working with civil society organizations in Nigeria on the issue of access to drugs for HIV/AIDS. We conducted a number of meetings with many different institutions and organizations that are involved with drug quality availability and resistance. We also met with government officials/institutions that provided information dealing with legal and policy issues relating to drugs. Most of these meetings were confined to Lagos and Abuja and virtually no visits were made outside of these urban areas. We relied on current and existing statistical data from various professional organizations the Internet and libraries to assess information. Moreover we consulted NGOs and people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) both of whom provided data and documents and shared their experience with access to drugs in both urban and rural areas. (excerpt)


Large-scale nitrate deposits are rare on Earth's surface due to the high solubility of nitrate minerals. Exceptions are found in extremely old (to 14 m.y.) and hyperarid deserts such as the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, or the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica. The nitrate in both of these regions has been determined to originate from atmospheric oxidation of NOx. Here we report a new type of massive atmospheric nitrate deposit, with resources equivalent to the Atacama deposits, in the Turpan-Hami area, northwestern China. This deposit is characterized by (1) a location in the center of a large continent; (2) young age (Pleistocene); (3) general enrichment near the surface rather than at depth; and (4) high spatial variability in the nitrogen and triple oxygen isotope composition within this arid region, the δ15N ranging from 0.7‰ to 27.6‰, δ18O from 30.2‰ to 46.7‰, and Δ17O from 5.9‰ to 20.7‰. The Turpan-Hami nitrate deposit nitrogen and triple oxygen isotope composition is closely between those of the Mojave Desert (southwestern United States) and the Atacama Desert, suggesting that (1) Earth's low-middle latitudes (i.e., non-polar sites) have been receiving atmospheric nitrate deposition of similar nitrogen and triple oxygen isotope composition; and (2) local or regional isotope differences in nitrate deposits can be attributed to postdepositional processes, namely the difference in aridity and associated microbial activities.


Water quality analysis was conducted using the physical, chemical and biological analysis methods of water treatment for samples randomly selected from three (3) boreholes and three (3) hand dug wells in Uyo metropolis to determine their suitability for drinking in comparison of the WHO standards for drinking water. After the analysis, one (1) of the boreholes was found to be slightly acidic (pH 6.3) while others were within limit of WHO standards. The mean D.O for borehole (4.161mgl/l) were less than that of wells and did not meet the WHO limit. (5-14mg/l). The BOD of all samples did not satisfy the WHO limit of 2-4mg/l. lead concentrations in bored holes were slightly above WHO limits of 0.01mg/l. the concentration of ions (Fe 4 , Ca 2+ and mg 2+ ), sulphate, and Nitrate fell within the WHO limit. From analysis, it will be


While planning the execution of report-generation workloads, database administrators often need to know how long different query workloads will take to run. Database systems run mixes of multiple queries of different types concurrently. Hence, estimating the completion time of a query workload requires reasoning about query mixes and inter-query interactions in the mixes; rather than considering queries or query types in isolation. This paper presents a novel approach for estimating workload completion time based on experiment-driven modeling and simulation of the impact of inter-query interactions. A preliminary evaluation of this approach with TPC-H queries on IBM DB2 shows how our approach can consistently predict workload completion times with good accuracy.


The frequency disturbance recorder (FDR) is a cost effective data acquisition device used to measure power system frequency at the distribution level. FDRs are time synchronized via the global positioning system (GPS) timing and data recorded by FDRs are time stamped to allow for comparative analysis between FDRs. The data is transmitted over the internet to a central server where the data is collected and stored for post mortem analysis. Currently, most of the analysis is done with power system frequency. The purpose of this study is to take a first in depth look at the angle data collected by FDRs. Different data conditioning techniques are proposed and tested before one is chosen. The chosen technique is then used to extract useable angle data for angle analysis on eight generation trip events. The angle differences are then used to create surface plot angle difference movies for further analysis. A new event detection algorithm, the k-means algorithm, is also presented in this paper. The algorithm is proposed as a simple and fast alternative to the current detection method. Next, this thesis examines several GPS modules and recommends one for a replacement of the current GPS chip, which is no longer in production. Finally, the manufacturing process for creating an FDR is documented. This thesis may have raised more questions than it answers and it is hoped that this work will lay the foundation for further analysis of angles from FDR data.


The authors present their experience on seven cases of Valsalva-sinus aneurysm (VSA) at the Instituto de Molestias Cardiovasculares (IMC), from January 1984 to July 1990, treated surgically using bovine pericardium patch (PB-IMC) or valve replacement when indicated. Five cases were congenital and two were related to rheumatic disease. In two of the congenital cases the aneurysms were leaking into the right atrium, two were leaking into the right ventricle. And the remaining one was not leaking but was projected into the left ventricle. One of the congenital cases was leaking into the right ventricle and the other presented protrusion of the aneurysmatic sac into the left ventricle and eversion of the corresponding aortic leaflets. A bovine pericardium patch was used to give support for he sutures inxthe congenital ASV cases; for the cases related to rheumatic disease a valve replacement was performed using an IMC-PB biologic valve. From the congenital VSA patients, one had deiscence of suture at seven months and at six years, and was submitted to reoperation in both occasions. In the related to rheumatic disease group one died due to stroke on the 15 th postoperative day. The use of PB patch proved satisfactory in this treatment, providing good support for the suture.


Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is a widely used polymer in the production of bottles by injection stretch blow moulding (ISBM). In this work, we present a characterisation method to identify material properties directly from a preform, considering temperature and stress-relaxation effects related to its viscoelastic response. A customised oven and gripping system were designed to perform uniaxial tests in a proper temperature range on tubular specimens obtained from preforms. A visco-hyperelastic model is then proposed: a Marlow-type strain energy function coupled with a Prony series and William-Landel-Ferry equation to include time and temperature dependency. Finally, a case study of ISBM process is implemented in a finite element code considering this constitutive model. Strain maps and predicted thickness of the bottle wall were evaluated as process quality indicators. Simulation results showed good agreement with measurements on the real processed bottle, confirming the usefulness of the approach for product or process parameters optimisation.


This work presents the development of two MEMS programmable diffraction gratings designed for spectroscopic applications in the visible, near- and mid-infrared. These devices have been developed to limit distortion of their optical surfaces at rest and throughout actuation in order to improve their optical performance. In the first part of this thesis, we present the development of a fully programmable micro diffraction grating (F-PMDG): a linear array of individually addressable micromirrors that can be vertically displaced by up to 1.6 µm. The F-PMDG design maintains a simple mechanical structure, avoiding a complicated fabrication procedure while limiting distortion of the micromirrors during actuation. This is achieved through in-plane separation of the electrostatic actuators and the optical surfaces of the micromirrors. Vertical displacement of the micrormirrors is controlled by electrostatic actuators placed on either side of the central micromirror. Actuators with two types of flexures have been implemented in the design of the F-PMDG: classical clamped-clamped (CC) flexures and center-symmetric serpentine flexures. Through analytical and numerical simulation, it has been shown that serpentine flexures reduce the dependence of the actuator on length and thickness allowing the mirrors to be designed with shorter actuators and thicker device layers. Rotational stiffness remains an issue for the serpentine flexures, requiring a high degree of lateral alignment during fabrication; however, as the mirror width is reduced down to 20 µm the rotational stiffness is shown to approach that of CC flexures. F-PMDG arrays with 4-64 micromirrors, 700 µm long and 20-120 µm wide, have been successfully fabricated using anodic bonding to transfer a single crystal silicon (SCS) layer from an SOI wafer onto a prepatterned electrode array. By varying the bonding conditions, the residual stress in the device layer has been limited to 2 MPa leading to flat SCS micromirrors exhibiting a peak-to-valley curvature of ∼ 7 nm over the length of the micromirrors (ROC=8 m). Surface profile measurements performed on fully actuated micromirrors reveal peak-to-valley curvatures of 90%. Tuning of the output wavelength by 5% is demonstrated with an applied voltage of 90 V. Period variations across the grating while tuning are found to reduce the optical efficiency of the device, but can be controlled through individual tuning of the grating halves and proper design of the mechanical compliance of the springs separating the mirrors. Through failure mode analysis, we conclude that electron beam evaporation for the deposition of optical coatings on compliant MEMS structures leads to device failure by stiction – not as a result of stress, mechanical shock, or temperature variations, but rather, by electromagnetic radiation from the rapid fluctuation in the acceleration field of the electron gun. Using this result, we have successfully deposited low stress optical coatings on the surfaces of the VP-MDGs using thermal (Joule effect) evaporation. We have also demonstrated the successful implementation of a VP-MDG in the external cavity of a quantum cascade laser. The VP-MDG acts as a high-efficiency, tunable spectral filter to select the output wavelength of the laser. The results presented in this work provide an important contribution to the field of diffractive MEMS (DMEMS). The advent of a simple, fully programmable array of micromirrors that remain optically flat during actuation will lead to high-efficiency, inexpensive, compact spectroscopic devices. In addition, the further development of a high-efficiency, widely tunable, spectral filter is beneficial for external cavity tunable lasers and microspectrometers.


Although recent work has been completed on the extensive Meadowood Interaction Sphere across the Northeast, little research has been done on the settlement-subsistence patterns of Meadowood complex peoples in southern Ontario. Much of the information necessary for interpreting the pattern has been extracted by CRM excavations and is not widely accessible. This research involves an analysis of the southern Ontario Meadowood settlement system based on information from several recently excavated Meadowood complex sites in the Thames, Credit, and Grand River watersheds, complemented by additional Meadowood data from the Ontario Archaeological Sites Database. Sites in the Thames and Credit watersheds appear to follow a pattern of large camps occupied by large groups of people, possibly year-round, with small teams using smaller sites to target local resources. Meadowood groups in the Grand River drainage and adjacent areas are more poorly documented but appear to follow more varied seasonal settlement patterns.


Mushrooms have been studied and found to accumulate a variety of secondary metabolites with antioxidant activities such as phenolic compounds. Besides phenolics, other bioactive components such as flavanoids from mushrooms are also generally associated with antioxidant activities. Previous studies have reported the association of mushrooms with their antioxidant potentials. However, very few studies are related to unexplored Malaysian wild mushrooms as a new potential source of antioxidant for which to best of our knowledge, no records are available. In this study, ten Malaysian wild mushrooms were collected from the forests around Selangor and Sabah and their potential antioxidant activity were evaluated. The total phenolic content and total flavonoid content were quantified. Antioxidant activities of the mushroom extracts were analyzed by Ferric Reducing Antioxidant Power (FRAP) and 2,2-diphenylpicrylhydrazyl (DPPH) assays for their iron-reducing capacity and free-radical scavenging capacity. The total phenolic content of all ten mushrooms ranged from 0.015-0.075 mg GAE/g dried extract and the total flavonoid content ranged from 0.025-0.131 mg QE/g dried extract. The FRAP values lies between 0.859-2.929 μM TE/g dried extract and the percentage of inhibition observed from DPPH assay ranged from 2%-57% respectively. There is a positive correlation between total phenolic content and antioxidant activities of these mushroom extracts.


In TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods Group Brands, the Supreme Court tightened the venue requirement for patent cases, making it more difficult for a plaintiff to demonstrate that a district court has venue over a defendant. Many commentators, however, view TC Heartland as merely a "reshuffling" of the district courts that receive patent cases. Whereas before the case, a large percentage of patent cases were filed in the Eastern District of Texas, now, after TC Heartland, various other U.S. district courts (principally, the District of Delaware) have experienced an increase in patent infringement filings. Some commentators are unconvinced that this flow of patent cases out of the Eastern District of Texas and into the District of Delaware will benefit the patent system.
As this Article demonstrates, however, there are reasons to think that this "reshuffling" may be beneficial to the patent system. The District of Delaware, unlike the Eastern District of Texas, has incentives to maintain an even-handed approach to patent law. If the district came to be seen as overly patentee-friendly, the state would risk innovative companies choosing to incorporate elsewhere. Ultimately, the District of Delaware is much less likely than the Eastern District of Texas to create plaintiff-friendly procedural rules and administrative practices.
TC Heartland also speaks to the Supreme Court's recent interest in patent cases. TC Heartland continued the recent trend of the Supreme Court granting certiorari in patent cases that concern issues of patent adjudication while avoiding tricky questions of core patent doctrine. This pattern likely points to a Supreme Court that is concerned about the patent system, yet is acutely aware of its own relative lack of expertise concerning patent doctrine. Thus, it may be said that in patent law, the Supreme Court acts as a "release valve," changing patent law only when the Federal Circuit and Congress are incapable of changing the law.


KIC 8569819 is an eclipsing binary star with an early F primary and G secondary in a 20.85-d eccentric orbit. The primary is a δ Sct–γ Dor star pulsating in both p modes and g modes. Using four years of Kepler Mission photometric data, we independently model the light curve using the traditional technique with the modelling code PHOEBE, and we study the orbital characteristics using the new frequency modulation technique. We show that both methods provide the equivalent orbital period, eccentricity and argument of periastron, thus illustrating and validating the FM technique. In the amplitude spectrum of the p-mode pulsations, we also discovered an FM signal compatible with a third body in the system, a low-mass M dwarf in an 861-d orbit around the primary pair. However, the eclipses show no timing variations, indicating that the FM signal is a consequence of the intrinsic change in pulsation frequency, thus providing a cautionary tale. Our analysis shows the potential of the FM technique using Kepler data, and we discuss the prospects to detect planets and brown dwarfs in Kepler data for A and F stars even in the absence of transits and with no spectroscopic radial velocity curves. This opens the possibility of finding planets orbiting hotter stars that cannot be found by traditional techniques.


A ray-theory development of the effect of dip on P-wave transmission through a single layer over a half-space permits an assessment of errors due to dip in estimates of crustal thickness from observed P-wave spectral properties using transmission coefficients for a nondipping interface. The possibility of simultaneously deriving depth and dip from such observation is also shown. The theory has been tested by experiments in a two-dimensional laboratory model and applied to observations of deep South American earthquakes at small epicentral distances.
 Theory and laboratory results show that errors in depth reflecting dip are less than 5 per cent for dips up to 25°. Dip can be estimated by matching observed and theoretical curves, once a velocity contrast has been fixed independently. A curve-matching technique for objectively selecting the best match has been developed.
 A variation of parameter study shows that changes in velocity contrast do not change the shape of the crustal transfer function, but peak-to-trough differences increase with increasing velocity contrast. A change in depth of a dipping layer produces no change in the crustal transfer function plotted in dimensionless frequency. The transfer function changes with dip more rapidly for waves incident downdip. If the data window is long enough to include P and PPP (three P legs in the layer), the depth determination is not sensitive to window length, but dip determination is not possible for short windows.
 The data for Antofagasta permit one of two solutions, a crust either 46.1 or 56.7 km thick, with the M discontinuity dipping 5° east, with the 46.1 km thickness preferred. This result agrees well with refraction results of others. A less firm result for Naña is a crust 74.7 km thick, with dip 15° to the southeast.


Immigrant religious communities in the United States are undergoing profound transformations. Three processes of change occurring in new immigrant religions are described and analyzed: (I) adopting the congregational form in organizational structure and ritual, (2) returning to theological foundations, and (3) reaching beyond traditional ethnic and religious boundaries to include other peoples. These changes support the " new paradigm" in the sociology of religion that refutes secularization theories: Internal and external religious pluralism, instead of leading to the decline of religion, encourages institutional and theological transformations that energize and revitalize religions. Moreover, these changes are not merely attributable to Americanization. Rather, these changes have transnational implications for global religious systems—implications that are facilitated by the material and organizational resources that new U.S. immigrants possess.


The article is devoted to the research of the place of the mathematical word problems in the course of mathematics of primary school in Ukraine. The researchers define the results in the study of solving math problems, find out the essence of the process of solving math problems, form primary school students' ability to solve math problems that contain a constant. Among the mentioned are to find the fourth proportional, do the proportional division and find the unknown number by two differences. The paper deals with the organization of educational research of students in order to identify common and distinctive features of the mathematical structures of these types of math problems and their influence on the method of solution. Based on the methodological system of teaching primary school learners to solve math problems by S. Skvortsova, taking into account the essence of the concept of "ability to solve math problems" and the methodical system of forming the ability to solve certain types of math problems, it has been proposed a system of drilling activities for the generalization of mathematical structures and methods of solving math problems that contain a constant value.


Biocatalysis with immobilized enzymes as catalysts holds enormous promise in developing more efficient and sustainable processes for the synthesis of fine chemicals, chiral pharmaceuticals and biomass feedstocks. Despite the appealing potentials, nowadays the industrial-scale application of biocatalysts is still quite modest in comparison with that of traditional chemical catalysts. A critical issue is that the catalytic performance of enzymes, the sophisticated and vulnerable catalytic machineries, strongly depends on their intracellular working environment; however the working circumstances provided by the support matrix are radically different from those in cells. This often leads to various adverse consequences on enzyme conformation and dynamic properties, consequently decreasing the overall performance of immobilized enzymes with regard to their activity, selectivity and stability. Engineering enzyme catalysis in support nanopores by mimicking the physiological milieu of enzymes in vivo and investigating how the interior microenvironment of nanopores imposes an influence on enzyme behaviors in vitro are of paramount significance to modify and improve the catalytic functions of immobilized enzymes. In this feature article, we have summarized the recent advances in mimicking the working environment and working patterns of intracellular enzymes in nanopores of mesoporous silica-based supports. Especially, we have demonstrated that incorporation of polymers into silica nanopores could be a valuable approach to create the biomimetic microenvironment for enzymes in the immobilized state.


The non-paraxial phase-space representation of diffraction of optical fields in any state of spatial coherence has been successfully modeled by assuming a discrete set of radiant point sources at the aperture plane instead of a continuous wave-front. More than a mere calculation strategy, this discreteness seems to be a physical feature of the field, independent from the sampling procedure of the modeling.


"Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision"--Peter F. Drucker INTRODUCTION Restructuring refers to multidimensional process. However, the term corporate restructuring is used here for operational restructuring as long term strategy of business. Operational restructuring is an ongoing process, which includes improvement in efficiency and management, reduction in staff and wages, sales of assets (for example, reduction in subsidiaries), enhanced marketing efforts, and so on with the expectation of higher profitability and cash flow (1). Rising competition, breakthrough technological and other changes, rising stock market volatility, major corporate accounting scandals have increased the responsibility to managers to deliver superior performance and enhance market value to shareholders. The companies which fail to deal with the above successfully may lose their independence, if not face extinction. According to a study by the Harvard Business School (2), corporate restructuring has enabled thousands of organizations around the world to respond more quickly and effectively to new opportunities and unexpected pressures, thereby re-establishing their competitive advantage. In India, corporate houses have recently witnessed an increase of restructuring in different organizations. The main reasons for the sudden impetus to restructure in India are as follows: a) deshackling of strict MRTP (3) provisions and new government policy of relicensing b) increased competition is another key element for giving rise to corporate restructuring. c) mounting pressure on margins have necessitated higher volume of business, resulting in mergers and acquisitions or the grand concentration of strategy has led to demergers of non profitable businesses, and d) all round resource optimization in existing businesses to streamline operational profit and to stay fit in competition. However, some organizations have done their restructuring through acquisition and mergers and some through demergers. There is also corporate restructuring done through changes in corporate structure and optimization of resources including financial structuring. When the market price of shares are rising, the companies like to use their shares to acquire other companies. Acquisition is a process of taking over companies and merging with the entity in order to improve the margin. Here the advisors of the company may suggest and encourage mergers after taking over the other company. Demerger is a process of corporate restructuring in which single or multiple business units are spun off as a new entity. Demerger is just the opposite of merger. In a market of falling prices, mergers and initial public offers are less popular and the merchant banks, who normally earn their fees from corporate activity, start to look at demerger possibilities of their clients (4). A framework of corporate restructuring shown in Figure 1 below explains all about corporate restructuring [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] OVERVIEWS There were various corporate restructurings in India during the last few years. However, this paper deals with successful corporate restructuring of three Indian companies which immensely enhanced the shareholders' market value and strengthened their competitive edge in recent times. These are Reliance Industries Ltd., Larsen and Toubro Ltd., and Siemens Ltd. For example, the acquisition, merger, and demerger of Reliance Industries Ltd. like their acquisition of IPCL (5) mergers of Reliance Petrochemicals Ltd., and the recent demergers of four entities like Reliance Communication Ventures Ltd., Reliance Energy Ventures Ltd., Reliance Natural Resources Ventures Ltd., and Reliance Capital Ventures Ltd. which spun off from Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL), and were perhaps the most prominent restructurings in recent times. Even the recent demerger of the cement division of Larsen and Toubro Ltd. …


TAs elsewhere, the Colombian private sector has been accused of promoting or profiting from violence in the country. However, the private sector's role in the armed conflict and the impact of conflict on entrepreneurial activity vary, as reflected by differences in political activism, in peacebuilding strategies and in costs endured according to company size, sector, and region of operations. At the same time, accounts of regional variation in conflict intensity suggest that an understanding of the Colombian confrontation requires a subnational approach. This paper explores whether and how differences in regional armed armed conflict can be attributed to differences in entrepreneurial make-up and activity associated with five natural resources, produced in different regions (oil, coffee, bananas, emeralds, and flowers). This paper suggests that company-specific traits, institutions of production, and the nature of international markets have a significant impact on the link between entrepreneurial activity and armed conflict in Colombian regions.


Epithelia from the lobular part of submandibular salivary gland, glandular stomach, intestine and colon of 14-day C3H/HeN fetuses, and from pituitary gland and pancreas of 12-day fetuses were recombined with 14-day mammary fat pad precursor tissue and syngrafted under the kidney capsule. The normal organogenetic development typical of the epithelium occurred. The same epithelia taken from earlier stage fetuses did not develop normally. Thus, 14-day fetal mouse mammary fat pad precursor tissue has the capacity to support normal organogenesis of various fetal epithelia of developmentally advanced stages. This supportive capacity is decreased in the fat pad precursor tissue of 17- to 18-day fetal mice and is entirely lost postnatally.


The major problem with chlorpromazine, a BCS Class II drug, is erratic absorption from GIT, limited aqueous solubility, poor dissolution, and poor bioavailability. The present work is aimed to investigate the use of the liquisolid technique to improve the dissolution of chlorpromazine in a tablet dosage form. The liquisolid tablets were formulated using polyethylene glycol 400 as a liquid vehicle, Avicel PH 200 as a carrier material, Neusilin US2 as a coating material and sodium starch glycolate as a superdisintegrant. The new mathematical model and 32 full factorial design were utilized to formulate various liquisolid tablets. The carrier:coating ratio (X1) and drug concentration (% w/v) in polyethylene glycol 400 (X2) were selected as independent variables whereas, percent cumulative drug release at 30 min (Y1) and disintegration time (Y2) were selected as dependent variables. The results of the evaluation parameters of liquisolid tablets were compared with directly compressed tablet and marketed tablet of chlorpromazine. The optimized tablets with liquisolid compact exhibited acceptable flow properties, weight uniformity, drug content, hardness, friability, and disintegration. Liquisolid tablets showed a higher dissolution rate as compared to a directly compressed tablet and marketed tablet. From the study, it may be concluded that the liquisolid technique is a promising alternative for improving the dissolution property of water-insoluble drugs.


Discursive studies on natural resources often fail to examine how the language of existential threats is constructed, while the probable contextual factors for triggering securitization and its implications are also left unexamined. Applied to the Israeli–Palestinian water conflict, this study utilizes negotiation protocols from the Annapolis peace process to quantitatively examine how securitized discourses are triggered and constructed. The study determines that asymmetric actor ratio and negative background events trigger securitizing moves that in this case perpetuate enmity and division. Securitization under conflict scenarios is found to be mostly detrimental to the resolution of water issues as the resource becomes secondary to other high-profile concerns. A more favorable securitized discourse is identified, but this discourse is infrequent and characteristically aligned with the literature that espouses desecuritization.


NeuroscienceAs lab research on converting human embryonic stem (hES) cells and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells into dopamine-producing neurons proceeds apace, there's growing doubt in some quarters about whether cell transplants will ever show a clear benefit for Parkinson's disease beyond what can be achieved by existing therapies. And researchers are increasingly realizing that there's much more to Parkinson's than a dopamine shortage. The debate about cell therapy for Parkinson's may soon become more intense as scientists in Europe, in collaboration with colleagues in North America, are in final negotiations for a large European Commission grant to conduct a new fetal cell transplant trial. The trial will refine clinical methods and be a "steppingstone" to therapies with cells derived from iPS or hES cells, says the principal investigator. Yet news of the plans dismays some who think it's a step backward.


Several machine learning methods allow for abstaining from uncertain predictions. While being common for settings like conventional classification, abstention has been studied much less in learning to rank. We address abstention for the label ranking setting, allowing the learner to declare certain pairs of labels as being incomparable and, thus, to predict partial instead of total orders. In our method, such predictions are produced via thresholding the probabilities of pairwise preferences between labels, as induced by a predicted probability distribution on the set of all rankings. We formally analyze this approach for the Mallows and the Plackett-Luce model, showing that it produces proper partial orders as predictions and characterizing the expressiveness of the induced class of partial orders. These theoretical results are complemented by experiments demonstrating the practical usefulness of the approach.


While European health care systems are mostly public and similar the contrast is large to the US health industry based to a large extent in the market. Using competence bloc theory the industrial potential of Swedish and European health care is assessed and compared with US health industry. To get the the analysis properly framed health industry is defined to include health insurance, health care and the supporting biotech, pharmaceutical and medical instrument industries. A gradually aging industrialized world makes wealthy customers demand the sophisticated life quality enhancing medical support new technology offers. The overwhelming influence of substitute customership in Europe, through politicians, social insurance, doctors etc., however, holds back development through suppressing the preferences of the true customer (the patient), discouraging innovative product competition and entrepreneurship. The larger part of cost escalation in US health care can be attributed to quality improvements, and luxury health care has stimulated innovative product development. While Swedish health care so far has been a technological winner, commercial competence to become internationally competitive is lacking. It appears politically difficult to recognize that private for profit health care may be both more efficient and profitable than publicly run services. However, once competition for profit has been introduced public providers have to improve performance and the differences will disappear.


This paper presents a first attempt to estimate fu- ture groundwater levels by applying extreme value statis- tics on predictions from a hydrological model. Climate sce- narios for the future period, 2081-2100, are represented by projections from nine combinations of three global climate models and six regional climate models, and downscaled (including bias correction) with two different methods. An integrated surface water/groundwater model is forced with precipitation, temperature, and potential evapotranspiration from the 18 models and downscaling combinations. Extreme value analyses are performed on the hydraulic head changes from a control period (1991-2010) to the future period for the 18 combinations. Hydraulic heads for return periods of 21, 50 and 100 yr (T21 100) are estimated. Three uncertainty sources are evaluated: climate models, downscaling and ex- treme value statistics. Of these sources, extreme value statis- tics dominates for return periods higher than 50 yr, whereas uncertainty from climate models and extreme value statistics are similar for lower return periods. Uncertainty from down- scaling only contributes to around 10 % of the uncertainty from the three sources.


Operator interviews and anecdotal evidence suggest that an operator's ability to manage a network decreases as the network becomes more complex. However, there is currently no way to systematically quantify how complex a network's design is nor how complexity may impact network management activities. In this paper, we develop a suite of complexity models that describe the routing design and configuration of a network in a succinct fashion, abstracting away details of the underlying configuration languages. Our models, and the complexity metrics arising from them, capture the difficulty of configuring control and data plane behaviors on routers. They also measure the inherent complexity of the reachability constraints that a network implements via its routing design. Our models simplify network design and management by facilitating comparison between alternative designs for a network. We tested our models on seven networks, including four university networks and three enterprise networks. We validated the results through interviews with the operators of five of the networks, and we show that the metrics are predictive of the issues operators face when reconfiguring their networks.


The characterisation of asphalt binder at low temperature is of fundamental importance for selecting and designing asphalt materials with good and durable performance in regions experiencing severely cold climates. The current specification addresses this issue based on the Performance Grading (PG) system, developed during the Strategic Highway Research Program, and on low-temperature creep tests performed on asphalt binder with the Bending Beam Rheometer (BBR). Recently, an alternative experimental method was proposed to relate the complex modulus, obtained with the Dynamic Shear Rheometer (DSR) at low temperature, to the BBR creep stiffness. However, while DSR tests are performed in air, BBR relies on an ethanol bath for conditioning the binder specimens, making the relation between complex modulus and creep stiffness dependent on the specific cooling medium. In this paper, the effect of cooling medium on the low PG and on the rheological properties obtained from DSR and BBR tests is experimentally investigated and modelled. First, DSR and BBR tests, in ethanol and air, are performed on a set of different asphalt binders. Then, a relationship between the complex modulus in the time domain and the creep stiffness obtained both in ethanol and air is derived and the low PG for both cooling media is estimated. Finally, 2 Springs 2 Parabolic Elements 1 Dashpot and the Huet models are used to compare the effect of ethanol and air on the rheological properties of the asphalt binders. It is found that air results into higher creep stiffness and smaller m-values compared to ethanol. The two rheological models indicate that, only in the case of air, complex modulus and creep stiffness present the same kernel model parameters. This suggests that the low performance grade, obtained from BBR tests in ethanol, is strongly affected by the cooling medium, as well as the recently proposed procedure based on DSR tests. Based on the finding of the present research, the use of air for BBR creep tests is recommended.


Despite the success of deep horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in yielding large production increases from unconventional shale gas reservoirs, uncertainties associated with basic transport processes require understanding in order to improve efficiency and minimize environmental impacts. The hydraulic fracturing process introduces large volumes of water into shale gas reservoirs, most of which remains unrecoverable and interferes with gas production. In this study, the water adsorption and diffusion measurements of the Longmaxi Formation shale were conducted at 30℃ and 50℃for relative humidities from 11.1% to 97.0%. Based on the experiment, a computational model based on the Maxwell-Stefan diffusion equation was constructed to analyze water adsorption and diffusion in shale rocks, and the Guggenheim-Anderson-de Boer (GAB) isotherm for gas adsorption was included in the model. The results show that water adsorption isotherms of shales belong to type II curve, including the monolayer, multilayer adsorption and capillary condensation, and the GAB model can be used to describe the water adsorption process in shale rocks. With the increasing of relative pressure, the water adsorption of shale increases, and the organic carbon content and temperature strengthen the water adsorption in shale. The capillary pressure can reach the order of several hundreds of MPa after the hydraulic fracturing process, and it results in a large amount of fracturing fluid retained in shale gas reservoirs. Furthermore, the simulations of water adsorption and diffusion in shale rocks is less than the experimental value, which further indicates that capillary condensation occurs in shale rocks. Cited as : Shen, W., Li, X., Cihan, A., Lu, X., Liu, X. Experimental and numerical simulation of water adsorption and diffusion in shale gas reservoir rocks. Advances in Geo-Energy Research, 2019, 3(2): 165-174, doi: 10.26804/ager.2019.02.06.


Abstract 3D seismic data from the Nankai margin provide detailed imagery documenting the onset of deformation at an active sediment-dominated accretionary prism, including a previously unmapped network of normal faults. The Nankai margin off southwest Japan is characterized by active subduction, seismogenesis, and a large accretionary prism with fold-and-thrust belt structure. Imbricate thrusting is the dominant structural style of the outer 20 km of the prism. This structural domain develops at the prism toe, where an incipient imbricate thrust displays significant along-strike variability in dip, offset, and development of hangingwall anticlines. Compressional deformation is preceded by normal faulting that initiates seaward of the trench axis. Seismic data in this area reveal a complex, intersecting pattern of normal faults within the incoming hemipelagic sediments. Underlying the faulted section is a high-amplitude reflector interpreted as representing oceanic basement. This reflector contains elongate horsts and grabens oriented perpendicular to the margin interpreted as relict spreading centre fabric. Analysis of the orientation of normal faults within the Shikoku basin sequence shows a correlation between fault geometry and basement structure. This faulting is notably similar to layer-bound compaction faults, documented in the North Sea and elsewhere, attributed to both hydrofracturing and volumetric contraction of fine-grained sediments. Mapped normal faults may thus be the result of a combination of differential compaction of sediments above irregular, dipping oceanic basement and compactional dewatering seaward of the toe of the accretionary prism.


The K+ channel Kcv from Paramecium bursaria chlorella virus is the smallest known functional K+ channel. As a minimal working model, this K+ channel protein can be considered close to being prototypical in order to understand basic channel design principles and to gain insight into fundamental transport mechanisms. The objective of this work was the computational study of the impact of various mutations of the Kcv N-Terminus on the Kcv function. By the mean of molecular dynamics simulations of K+ channel models in explicit membrane and explicit solvent, the structure, dynamics, and thermodynamics of alternate model systems was examined on the atomic level. In addition to the wildtype, a hyperactive point mutant (KcvP13A) and two inactive deletion mutants (KcvDN8 and KcvDN14) were examined. The protonation state of a key amino acid (Lys29) was also exhaustingly studied. As a working hypothesis it was assumed that analog topology results in analog functionality. Hence, Kcv homology models were generated as well as KirBac1.1 X-ray structure models adapted in analogy to Kcv. A new method was developed in order to extract reasonable and symmetric expectation structures from very long trajectories. These structures can be compared to structures determined by structural biological methods and can be used as an input for proceeding with advanced methods, like e.g. the Poisson-Boltzmann theory or the 3D-RISM integral equation theory. Latter method was used in order to determin the ionic distribution around the protein. Most important results from this thesis are: 1. A workflow was developed that allows the creation of plausible K+ channel homology models. The quality of such a model is good enough to exhibit a full ion transition cycle during simulation. 2. The interaction of positively charged amino acids in the N-terminal helix with the C-terminus results in mutant dependent saltbridge patterns. Weakening of this interaction correlates with dysfuntion. 3. The N-terminus can act as a steric barrier for the transition of K+ ions and, thus, may contribute to the gating mechanism. 4. The protonation state of Lys29 is crutial for the transition of K+ ions and, thus, may also contribute to the gating mechanism. 5. Funtional analogy between distantly related K+ channels is apparent. 6. The reason for the hyperactivity of the point mutant P13A was not determined satisfactorily. Further investigations are necessary in order to generate more plausible models.


This paper constructs a three-stage Slacks-Based Measure (SBM) model to evaluate and analyze the total-factor energy efficiency (TFEE) of 276 cities in China during the period of 2000–2012 from the management and environment dual perspectives according to the principles of multi-stage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model. In the first stage, a SBM-DEA model is applied to assess TFEE scores to illustrate the effects of the energy factors, while considering the undesirable output. In the second stage, we adjust the original data, and then in the third stage, we use SBM model again to get efficiency evaluation and obtain pure management efficiency of every decision unit. The results show that Chinese TFEE is still low and energy saving potential can be up to 34–46%, showing an inverted "U" shape tendency and characteristic of regional imbalance. Based on these findings, we further put forward some paths and strategies to improve Chinese energy efficiency.


We exploit the occurrence of postpartum depression (PPD), which has a random component according to the medical community, to estimate causal effects of a salient form of mental illness on couples' relationship status. We estimate single-equation models as well as bivariate probit models that address the endogeneity of PPD. We find that this relatively prevalent mental illness reduces the probability the couples are married (by 22-24%) as well the probability that they are living together (married or cohabiting) (by 24-26%) three years after the birth of the child. Models stratified by relationship status at the time of the birth indicate that PPD makes it more likely that unions dissolve (particularly among baseline cohabitors) and less likely that unions are formed (particularly among baseline non-cohabitors). The findings contribute to the literature on the effects of mental illness on relationships and to the broader literature on socioeconomic status and health.


The effects of postemplacement deformation on originally nonplanar dikes were tested experimentally and compared to field data from the Rainy Lake zone (Ontario, Canada) where irregular fold-like structures are observed. The analyses reveal that two processes are responsible for the irregular dike geometries. First, dikes intrude with varying orientations as they propagate across layers with rheology contrasts, thus developing nonplanar profiles. Second, with postemplacement ductile deformation, dikes that are more competent than the host rocks are folded and refracted in variable amounts, with the amount depending on the initial dike geometry, the heterogeneities in the host, and the regional strain. Deformed dikes and veins are often used as kinematic markers to evaluate regional tectonics, using methods that generally assume that veins had planar walls prior to deformation. The experimental results indicate that caution should be taken when using this approach, and they provide criteria to distinguish between intrusive and deformation structures in intensely deformed areas where distinction between the two is not readily apparent.


In large systems, it is important for agents to learn to act effectively, but sophisticated multi-agent learning algorithms generally do not scale. An alternative approach is to find restricted classes of games where simple, efficient algorithms converge. It is shown that stage learning efficiently converges to Nash equilibria in large anonymous games if best-reply dynamics converge. Two features are identified that improve convergence. First, rather than making learning more difficult, more agents are actually beneficial in many settings. Second, providing agents with statistical information about the behavior of others can significantly reduce the number of observations needed.