Availability of diverse cultivars is essential in order to meet necessity of regional adaptation to various climatic conditions and to fulfil the farmers' need of differential preference of various phenotypic traits in pearl millet. The present study attempted to quantify the degree of diversity in commercial hybrids of pearl millet and to understand the relationship among various phenotypic and quality traits. A total of 122 commercial hybrids were evaluated at three diverse locations. Results showed large variation for flowering time (42-58 days), tillering (1.1-4.4 panicles/plant), individual grain size (7.6-17.3 mg), plant height (185-268 cm), panicle length (20-33 cm) and grain yield (35-72 q/ha). Clustering of hybrids resulted in 7 distinct clusters, which highlighted the successful efforts of national programme of pearl millet improvement toward genetic diversification of hybrids. These results are discussed as to how this reported diversity has helped in extending the hybrid technology in some of the most difficult and diverse production ecologies. Phenology, tillering and height had significant influence on yields of hybrids. Taller hybrids provided higher yield. Hybrids with lesser duration and shorter height produced more tillers and tillering decreased with the increase in panicle length. The correlation of grain yield with Fe and Zn concentration in grains was not significant suggesting that both these micronutrients can be improved without significantly compromising on grain yield.


To obtain a comprehensive view of the transcriptional programs in prostatic stromal cells of different histological/pathological origin, we profiled 18 adult human stromal cell cultures from normal transition zone (TZ), normal peripheral zone (PZ), benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), and prostate cancer (CA) using cDNA microarrays. A hierarchical clustering analysis of 714 named unique genes whose expression varied at least threefold from the overall mean abundance in at least three samples in all 18 samples demonstrated that cells of different origin displayed distinct gene expression profiles. Many of the differentially expressed genes are involved in biological processes known to be important in the development of prostatic diseases including cell proliferation and apoptosis, cell adhesion, and immune response. Significance Analysis of Microarrays (SAM) analysis identified genes that showed differential expression with statistical significance including 24 genes between cells from TZ versus BPH, 34 between BPH versus CA, and 101 between PZ versus CA. S100A4 and SULF1, the most up‐ and downregulated genes in BPH versus TZ, respectively, showed expression at the protein level consistent with microarray analysis. In addition, sulfatase assay showed that BPH cells have lower SULF1 activity compared to TZ cells. Quantitative real‐time polymerase chain reaction (qRT‐PCR) analysis confirmed differential expression of ENPP2/autotoxin and six other genes between PZ versus CA, as well as differential expression of six genes between BPH versus CA. Our results support the hypothesis that prostatic stromal cells of different origin have unique transcriptional programs and point towards genes involved in actions of stromal cells in BPH and CA. J. Cell. Physiol. 210: 111–121, 2007. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


In most cells, the NF-kappaB transcription factor is sequestered in the cytoplasm by interaction with inhibitory proteins, the IkappaBs. Here, we show that combined IkappaBalpha/IkappaBepsilon deficiency in mice leads to neonatal death, elevated kappaB binding activity, overexpression of NF-kappaB target genes, and disruption of lymphocyte production. In IkappaBalpha/IkappaBepsilon-deficient fetuses, B220+IgM+ B cells and single-positive T cells die by apoptosis. In adults, IkappaBalpha-/-IkappaBepsilon-/- reconstituted chimeras exhibit a nearly complete absence of T and B cells that is not rescued by cotransfer with wild-type bone marrow. These findings demonstrate that IkappaBs tightly control NF-kappaB activity in vivo and that increased NF-kappaB activity intrinsically impairs lymphocyte survival. Because reduction or rise of NF-kappaB activity leads to similar dysfunction, they also reveal that only a narrow window of NF-kappaB activity is tolerated by lymphocytes.


To the Editor: Dog bites are a serious public health problem because of the associated risk for rabies virus exposure in countries to which the virus is endemic (1,2). Human rabies can be prevented by administration of postexposure prophylaxis (PEP). However, PEP rabies vaccine may be unavailable or prohibitively expensive (3). Delay in or failure to receive PEP after possible rabies virus exposure contributes to increased incidence of human rabies deaths (3).

We performed a retrospective investigation of animal bites and postbite treatment in Laikipia North sub-county, Kenya, during January 2013–February 2014. Laikipia North is 1 of 3 sub-counties in Laikipia County and has a population of 32,726 (4). Our investigation was instigated by 3 suspected human rabies deaths that were informally reported to the Kenya Government Zoonotic Disease Unit (ZDU) during early 2014. We reviewed animal bite records from sub-county health facilities and veterinary offices and administered a structured household questionnaire to determine outcomes, knowledge of rabies, bite management, healthcare-seeking behavior, and economic costs. This public health response was government coordinated and approved; no personal identifiers were retained.

During January 1, 2013–February 10, 2014, a total of 106 bites were recorded by 6 government-run health facilities in Laikipia North. Median reported bite incidence per month was 24 bites/100,000 persons (range 6–45 bites/100,000 persons). The median age of bite victims was 13 years (range 1–81 years); 61 (58%) bites occurred in males. Of all bites recorded, 94 (88%) were by dogs, 8 (8%) by scorpions, and 4 (4%) by humans.

The deaths of 3 humans reported to the ZDU occurred in November and December 2013. To assess whether these cases were part of an exposure cluster, we followed up on bite cases during November 1–December 31, 2013. During this period, 17 additional animal bite cases were recorded. Of these 20 bite cases, we successfully traced the households of 11 (55%) case-patients, including 2 of the 3 who died from rabies. Bites were predominantly received from owned pets (82%), and most bites (82%) were reported to be unprovoked. All bites were inflicted on extremities, and almost all (91%) were single-bite injuries (Table).

Table

Responses to questionnaire interview of 11 animal bite victims assessed for rabies, Laikipia County, Kenya, 2014*

Of 11 animals that bit case-patients, 7 had unknown histories of rabies vaccination and 4 were not vaccinated (Table). Four of the 11 animals were suspected to be rabid, including 1 cat and 3 dogs. All the suspected rabid animals were reported to exhibit aggressive or abnormal behavior, drooling or salivation, vocalization, and roaming tendencies (5; Technical Appendix Table 1). Three of the animals reportedly died; status was unknown for 1.

Of the 11 traced bite case-patients, 9 washed their wound before going to a healthcare facility and 8 were prescribed PEP. The median time from bite to reporting to a health facility was 1 day (range 0–3 days). Four respondents delayed in starting PEP: 3 after 3 days, and 1 after 2 days. Reasons given for delay included the high cost of PEP by 3 (including 1 who died); a health facility being too far away by 1, who died; and vaccine unavailable at nearest health facility by 2, 1 of whom died. Of 8 respondents who received PEP, 7 traveled >10 km to reach the nearest health facility. PEP availability was inconsistent at the sub-county hospital and local dispensaries; 6 of 8 respondents seeking PEP visited multiple facilities to receive PEP, including a county referral facility that was >100 km away. The World Health Organization's 5-dose PEP regimen is recommended in Kenya (1). However, only 3 case-patients were prescribed and received 5 doses. Five respondents were prescribed 3, 4, or 6 doses (Technical Appendix Table 2). This finding indicates large inconsistencies in the PEP prescribing practices in this region of Kenya, a pattern that is similar in other parts of East Africa (6).

Respondents bore all medical costs without subsidy. Direct medical costs were ≈$2–$500 (US) per bite victim, and indirect medical costs were ≈$4–$100. The average cost of obtaining a single dose of PEP ranged from $8 to $120 (Table; Technical Appendix Table 2).

All respondents had heard of rabies. Nine (82%) knew it was transmitted to humans through a bite from a rabid dog, and 4 (36%) knew that rabies among dogs could be prevented through vaccination.

During 2014, at least 3 suspected human rabies deaths and 4 domestic animal deaths were associated with this cluster. Postbite care, including PEP, is a heavy economic burden on this community, moreso because rabies vaccine is not always locally accessible. Dog vaccination rates are low in this region and rabies in suspected animals is rarely definitively diagnosed, increasing risks for human rabies virus exposures and the economic burden of PEP administration. We recommend implementation of regular and comprehensive mass dog vaccination campaigns, in line with Kenya's National Rabies Elimination Strategy (7), and further detailed studies on the epidemiology of rabies in this ecosystem, which supports human, wildlife, and domestic dog populations.

Technical Appendix. Questionnaire for persons bitten by animals to assess rabies status of the animals and discussion of direct and indirect costs related to rabies post-exposure prophylaxis.

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To develop long-life welded bellows for use under different pressure conditions, that is, atmospheric pressure and a high vacuum applied to the inside and outside of the welded bellows, respectively, a deformation analysis of welded bellows (Hastelloy C-22, 460 mm in external diameter, 370 mm in internal diameter, 0.475 mm in thickness) is performed by elastoplastic finite element analysis. The simulation results are as follows. In a conventional welded bellows used in an external-vacuum and internal-atmospheric-pressure environment, the external straight portion forms a vertical opening due to the pressure difference. The opening angle decreases by forming a slope on the external straight portion. The stress amplitude that occurs during the compression of a conventional welded bellows reaches its maximum in the vicinity of the external weld. The maximum value also decreases by forming a slope on the external straight portion. Fatigue life testing is performed on bellows produced on the basis of the simulation results. It is confirmed by fatigue life testing that forming a slope on the external straight portion is effective for extending the life of the bellows. [doi:10.2320/matertrans.P-MRA2008809]


Nowadays genetic algorithm (GA) is greatly used in engineering pedagogy as adaptive technology to learn and solve complex problems and issues. It is a meta-heuristic approach that is used to solve hybrid computation challenges. GA utilizes selection, crossover, and mutation operators to effectively manage the searching system strategy. This algorithm is derived from natural selection and genetics concepts. GA is an intelligent use of random search supported with historical data to contribute the search in an area of the improved outcome within a coverage framework. Such algorithms are widely used for maintaining high-quality reactions to optimize issues and problems investigation. These techniques are recognized to be somewhat of a statistical investigation process to search for a suitable solution or prevent an accurate strategy for challenges in optimization or searches. These techniques have been produced from natural selection or genetics principles. For random testing, historical information is provided with intelligent enslavement to continue moving the search out from the area of improved features for processing of the outcomes. It is a category of heuristics of evolutionary history using behavioral science-influenced methods like an annuity, gene, preference, or combination (sometimes refers to as hybridization). This method seemed to be a valuable tool to find solutions for problems optimization. In this paper, the author has explored the GAs, its role in engineering pedagogies, and the emerging areas where it is using, and its implementation.


Backfill materials used in utility trenches must maintain physical and mechanical integrity when subjected to the seasonal effects of freezing and thawing. Materials used over gas utility lines must also have adequate permeability to allow any leaking gas to flow upward and out. To help determine how soils and flowable fills might perform as backfill over utility lines, we conducted laboratory tests to measure the permeability of backfill materials before freezing, during freezing, and after thawing. The two materials investigated in this study were a silty sand, and a flowable fill made with Type F fly ash. Our work also examined the susceptibility of these materials to frost heave and thaw weakening. An apparatus and standard test method for performing permeability during freezing and after subsequent thawing did not exist. We developed a method by adapting the ASTM Standard Test Method for Frost Heave and Thaw Weakening Susceptibility of Soils (D 5918) and the ASTM Standard Test Method for Measurement of Pneumatic Permeability of Partially Saturated Porous Materials by Flowing Air (D 6539). Although more data are needed to confirm specific conclusions determined from this study, the test method developed here appears to be useful for evaluating the effects of freeze-thaw on backfill materials for utility trenches. Additional work is needed to demonstrate whether these laboratory results correspond to actual field conditions.


A 55 year old man with history of palpitation was referred for electrophysiologic study. Baseline ECG, physical examination and transthoracic echocardiographic study were normal. Electrophysiologic study revealed normal AH and HV intervals. Pacing of right atrium with a cycle length of 300 msec showed 2:1 AV block. AH interval was 252 msec and the block was infra-his (Figure 1). With continual of right atrial pacing, one to one AV conduction with increasing AH interval to 282 msec and QRS widening (LBBB pattern) were being observed. HV intervals during 2:1 block and during 1:1 AV conduction were normal. What is the mechanism? Is it an abnormal finding in this patient?


A simplified modal method to explain the resonance phenomenon in guided mode resonance (GMR) gratings with asymmetric coatings is presented. The resonance observed is due to the interaction of two propagation modes inside the grating. The reflectivity spectra and electric field distributions calculated from the simplified modal method are compared using rigorous coupled-wave analysis (RCWA). The influences of high-order evanescent modes on the resonance peak are analyzed. A matrix Fabry-Perot (FP) resonance condition is developed to evaluate the resonance wavelength. An explanation for the resonance phenomenon observed based on the FP resonance phase condition is also proposed and demonstrated. The simplified method provides clear physical insights into GMR gratings that are useful for the analysis of a variety of other resonance gratings.


This paper reports on a unified abstract syntax tree representation, called CIR, which is a program representation for a multi-language environment. The languages in question are C, Pascal, Modula-2 and Fortran-77. Nodes in this intermediate representation usually correspond to syntactic constructs in these languages. It is also possible to reconstruct source text from the CIR representation.It proved possible to achieve a fairly high degree of uniformity in the intermediate representation for the expression and statement parts of these languages. However, the declaration structure proved to be much more irregular, especially for C and Fortran-77. Also, some statistics on different node classes is presented for the languages involved, and a comparison to Diana is done.


Spatial data warehouses SDWs and spatial OLAP SOLAP are well-known business intelligence BI technologies that aim to support multidimensional and online analysis of huge volumes of data with spatial reference. Spatial vagueness is one of the most neglected imperfections of spatial data. Although several works propose new ad-hoc models for handling spatial vagueness, their implementation in spatial database management systems DBMS and SDW is still in an embryonic state. In this paper, we present a new design method for SOLAP datacubes that allows handling vague spatial data analysis issues. This method relies on a risk management method applied to the potential risks of data misinterpretation and decision makers' tolerance levels to those risks. We also present a tool implementing our method and a validation of the method is done based on the designed datacubes schemas testing.


X-linked agammaglobulinemia (XLA) is an inherited immunodeficiency that results from mutations within the gene encoding Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK). Many XLA-associated mutations affect splicing of BTK pre-mRNA and severely impair B cell development. Here, we assessed the potential of antisense, splice-correcting oligonucleotides (SCOs) targeting mutated BTK transcripts for treating XLA. Both the SCO structural design and chemical properties were optimized using 2'-O-methyl, locked nucleic acid, or phosphorodiamidate morpholino backbones. In order to have access to an animal model of XLA, we engineered a transgenic mouse that harbors a BAC with an authentic, mutated, splice-defective human BTK gene. BTK transgenic mice were bred onto a Btk knockout background to avoid interference of the orthologous mouse protein. Using this model, we determined that BTK-specific SCOs are able to correct aberrantly spliced BTK in B lymphocytes, including pro-B cells. Correction of BTK mRNA restored expression of functional protein, as shown both by enhanced lymphocyte survival and reestablished BTK activation upon B cell receptor stimulation. Furthermore, SCO treatment corrected splicing and restored BTK expression in primary cells from patients with XLA. Together, our data demonstrate that SCOs can restore BTK function and that BTK-targeting SCOs have potential as personalized medicine in patients with XLA.


The theoretical framework in which this study is framed concerns the internationalization of production dynamics of firms abroad. The international literature in this field argues that there is not a conventional definition nor a universally tested theory that can explain all forms of foreign-owned production (see, among others, Dunning, 1988b and 1993a, Ietto-Gillies, 2005 and 2007). In this complex context, a large amount of Italian literature has been published around the theoretical framework of internationalization of production of Italian companies abroad (Tattara, Coro and Volpe, 2006, Mariotti and Mutinelli, 2005, et.al.). Nevertheless, a limited number of quantitative studies are available about the topic of Italian firms "migration" in Romania - as a particular expression of productive internationalization of our companies in this Country (Majocchi, 2002, Unimpresa Romania, 2005 and Antenna Veneto Romania, 2005). Thus, in order to investigate it by an industrial policy perspective a multilevel modelling approach has been applied. In particular, a two level model has been used to determine the effects of Romanian regions (romanian judets) in which Italian manufacturing firms internationalized the production in 2009 on their industrial performance. Based on a business register-based survey a business register of the Italian business community in Romania has been created. The data on Italian manufacturing firms located in Romania in 2009 have been selected from this register. The dataset used for the analysis includes 796 cases of firms internationalized in Romania. Therefore, a two level model has been carried out in order to determine the effects of intra-industry characteristics of these firms (i.e. Firm size and Firm Industrial specialization) on their industrial performance in 2009 both at individual and area level. The model results have shown that: as the firms dimension increase they have to be extremely sensible in the choice of the romanian region in which they want to (de)localize the production. Furthermore, the choice of the romanian region of productive delocalization has to be chosen by firms according to their sectors of activity.


The oratorio La strage degl'Innocenti (1665) and the sepolcro Il Pentimento, l'Amore verso Dio, con il Pianto delle Marie, et de Peccatori (1661) are his only surviving sacred dramatic works by Antonio Bertali. Together they represent the composer's mature style which excels in technical skill, rhetorical ingenuity, and musical coherence. Born in or near Verona in c1605, Bertali moved to Vienna in 1624. At the imperial court he worked as a violinist, composer and teacher. After Giovanni Valentini's death in 1649, Bertali succeeded him as imperial chapel master. Testimonies by his contemporaries and the wide dissemination of his works throughout Europe bear witness to his great popularity as a composer during the seventeenth century. Although Bertali also composed secular works, his main task as imperial chapel master concerned the sacred music at court

The libretto of La strage degl'Innocenti is loosely based on an epic poem by Giambattista Marino with the same title. It depicts King Herod amidst his counsellors, in fear of being deposed in favour of the new-born king. Whilst the first two counsellors confirm Herod's rage and advise him to go ahead with the planned slaughter of the children, the third counsellor warns Herod against the consequences of such cruelty and the folly of acting against the divine plan. Nonetheless, Herod and his ministers proceed to the massacre. The second half of the libretto focuses on three mothers lamenting their children's fate whilst Herod's soldiers draw near. All tears being in vain, the killing goes ahead. The breathtaking final chorus bewails the dying children and submits that heaven will take its revenge in time.

Il Pentimento is an example of a sepolcro, a typically Viennese sub-genre of the oratorio, which flourished at the imperial court between c1660 and 1705. As in many other Viennese churches, replicas of the Holy Sepulchre were erected in the Hofburgkapelle and the chapel of empress dowager Eleonora during Holy Week. There they served as backdrop for the semi-staged sepolcro performances. The dramatic plot of Antonio Draghi's libretto for Il Pentimento is minimal: The work begins with a lament for the dead Jesus by the allegorical figures Il Pentimento (Penance) and Amor verso Dio (Love of God). Both declare that they would rather die themselves. This topic is continued in a dialogue between Mary (the mother of Jesus) and Mary Magdalene. Eventually, they are joined by two penitent sinners and the four indulge in an extended contemplation about the nature of sin, with its only ray of light being the hope for redemption. The final sequence, however, reminds all human beings of penitence, fear, the tomb, and worms as a memento of their own mortality.


Purpose Currently, available Computed Tomography dose metrics are mostly based on fixed tube current Monte Carlo (MC) simulations and/or physical measurements such as the size specific dose estimate (SSDE). In addition to not being able to account for Tube Current Modulation (TCM), these dose metrics do not represent actual patient dose. The purpose of this study was to generate and evaluate a dose estimation model based on the Generalized Linear Model (GLM), which extends the ability to estimate organ dose from tube current modulated examinations by incorporating regional descriptors of patient size, scanner output, and other scan‐specific variables as needed. Methods The collection of a total of 332 patient CT scans at four different institutions was approved by each institution's IRB and used to generate and test organ dose estimation models. The patient population consisted of pediatric and adult patients and included thoracic and abdomen/pelvis scans. The scans were performed on three different CT scanner systems. Manual segmentation of organs, depending on the examined anatomy, was performed on each patient's image series. In addition to the collected images, detailed TCM data were collected for all patients scanned on Siemens CT scanners, while for all GE and Toshiba patients, data representing z‐axis‐only TCM, extracted from the DICOM header of the images, were used for TCM simulations. A validated MC dosimetry package was used to perform detailed simulation of CT examinations on all 332 patient models to estimate dose to each segmented organ (lungs, breasts, liver, spleen, and kidneys), denoted as reference organ dose values. Approximately 60% of the data were used to train a dose estimation model, while the remaining 40% was used to evaluate performance. Two different methodologies were explored using GLM to generate a dose estimation model: (a) using the conventional exponential relationship between normalized organ dose and size with regional water equivalent diameter (WED) and regional CTDIvol as variables and (b) using the same exponential relationship with the addition of categorical variables such as scanner model and organ to provide a more complete estimate of factors that may affect organ dose. Finally, estimates from generated models were compared to those obtained from SSDE and ImPACT. Results The Generalized Linear Model yielded organ dose estimates that were significantly closer to the MC reference organ dose values than were organ doses estimated via SSDE or ImPACT. Moreover, the GLM estimates were better than those of SSDE or ImPACT irrespective of whether or not categorical variables were used in the model. While the improvement associated with a categorical variable was substantial in estimating breast dose, the improvement was minor for other organs. Conclusions The GLM approach extends the current CT dose estimation methods by allowing the use of additional variables to more accurately estimate organ dose from TCM scans. Thus, this approach may be able to overcome the limitations of current CT dose metrics to provide more accurate estimates of patient dose, in particular, dose to organs with considerable variability across the population.


Recidivism is high among individuals with co-occurring disorder of a mental illness and chemical abuse or dependency. Specifically, for those who return to the community on supervised release to the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area of Minnesota from state incarceration. Minnesota's Department of Corrections and Community Corrections have implemented the use of Motivational Interviewing by Community Correctional Agents with all Supervisees as part of a model designed to reduce recidivism. The purpose of this study is to expand on the limited literature pertaining to the use of Motivational Interviewing by correctional agents who work with supervisees with a co-occurring disorders. A nonpositivist qualitative approach was used to address the research question: What are correctional agents' perceptions with using Motivational Interviewing with supervisees who have a co-occurring disorder. Correctional agents were recruited through a combination of purposive and snowball strategies. The sample consisted of four participants. Face-to-face semi-standardized interviews were used to collect the data. Grounded Theory was used to analyze the data and produce the finding. The findings of this study showed that the participants were client-centered in their approach to establishing a professional alliance; participants' perceptions of their agencies' support for implementing MI was equally split; and participants perceived mixed successes in the use of MI with supervisees with COD. The discussion addresses these finding, relates them to the importance to the field of social work, and from them makes recommendation for future research.


Existing cloud systems lack robust mechanisms to monitor compliance of services with security and performance policies under changing contexts, and to ensure uninterrupted operation in case of failures. On the other hand, microservices-based cloud system architectures that have become indispensable for defense applications require systematic monitoring of service operations to satisfy their resiliency and antifragility goals. In this work we propose a unified model for enforcing security and performance requirements of mission-critical cloud systems even in the presence of anomalous behavior/attacks and failure of services. The model allows for proactive mitigation of threats and failures in cloud-based systems through active monitoring of the performance and behavior of services, promising achievement of resiliency and antifragility under various failures and attacks. It also provides secure dissemination of data between services to ensure end-to-end secure operation of critical missions.


We study the interaction between (a) inefficiencies in the post-default debtor-creditor bargaining game and (b) ex ante debtor moral hazard and excessive lending in sovereign debt markets. Conditional on default, selffulfilling debt crisis driven by creditor coordination failure exists and crisis risk is inefficiently high. Strengthening collective action clauses (CACs) has an ambiguous impact on crisis risk. Even with ex ante debtor moral hazard, crisis risk remains inefficiently high. Moreover, even without debtor moral hazard, excessive lending by creditors generates, endogenously, positive default probability. We establish the case for a formal sovereign bankruptcy procedure to complement the role of CACs.


COMPUTATIONAL STUDIES OF VISCOELASTIC MULTIPHASE FLOWS by Shriram B. Pillapakkam A finite element code based on the level set method is developed for performing two and three dimensional direct numerical simulations (DNS) of viscoelastic two-phase flow problems. The Oldroyd-B constitutive equation is used to model the viscoelastic liquid. The code is used to study transient and steady state shapes of Newtonian and viscoelastic drops in simple shear and buoyancy driven flows. The roles of the governing dimensionless parameters: Capillary number (Ca), Deborah Number (De) and the polymer concentration parameter c, in determining deformation of drops and bubbles, are also analyzed. The numerical code permits us to vary Ca, De and c independently, which is difficult to achieve experimentally. This capability is used to isolate the roles of these parameters on the nature of viscoelastic stress near the drop surface and their effect on drop deformation. Results for simple shear flows indicate that when the drop phase is Newtonian and the matrix phase viscoelastic, the viscoelastic stresses pull the ends of the drop near the tips of the major axis and near the tips of the minor axes they are tangential, and thus have the net effect of increasing drop deformation. Viscoelastic stresses have the opposite effect when the drop phase is viscoelastic and the matrix phase is Newtonian. Additionally, due to the extensional nature of viscoelastic stresses, drops sheared by viscoelastic fluids develop pointed ends, a phenomenon observed experimentally and popularly known as tip-streaming. For buoyancy driven bubbles rising in quiescent viscoelastic fluids, simulations show that the rise velocity oscillates before reaching a steady value. The shape of the bubble, the magnitude of velocity overshoot and the amount of damping depend mainly on c and the bubble radius. Simulations show that there is a critical bubble volume range in which there is a sharp increase in the terminal velocity with increasing bubble volume similar to the behavior observed in experiments. An explanation for this phenomenon is offered based on the transient oscillations and shape change. The structure of the wake of a bubble rising in a Newtonian fluid is strikingly different from that of a bubble rising in a viscoelastic fluid. In addition to the two recirculation zones at the equator of the bubble rising in a Newtonian fluid, two more recirculation zones exist in the wake of a bubble rising in viscoelastic fluids which influence the shape of a rising bubble. Also, the direction of motion of the fluid a short distance below the trailing edge of a bubble rising in a viscoelastic fluid is in the opposite direction to the direction of motion of the bubble. The wake is 'negative' in the sense that the direction of fluid velocity behind the bubble is the opposite of that for a Newtonian fluid. COMPUTATIONAL STUDIES OF VISCOELASTIC MULTIPHASE FLOWS by Shriram B. Pillapakkam A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of New Jersey Institute of Technology in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical Engineering Department of Mechanical Engineering January 2005


The development of online banking technology revolution in recent years, and speed of this development is extremely rapid. Online banking technology also spreads widely and influences deeply not only economic activities of business, households and governments but also various areas of people's daily life. With the liberalization and internalization of financial markets, in terms of the entrance of the World Trade Organization, banks in Malaysia face pressures in service quality and administrative efficiency. Predicting customers' intention towards Internet banking is an important issue. Internet banking is a new type of information system that uses the innovative resources of the Internet to enable customers to effect financial activities in virtual space. The adoption rate of Internet Banking was estimated by analogy to adoption pattern. This study explores the factors contributing to the adoption of Internet banking in Malaysia. The technology acceptance model was used to study attitude and intention towards Internet banking. Perceived easy of use, Perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment are the three factors which influence the attitude and intention towards using Internet banking. The model we developed proposed that online banking acceptance can be modeled with the variables derived from the TAM (PU and PEOU) and perceived enjoyment (PE). Perceived enjoyment is considered as the major factor for attitude and intention. Implications for banking practitioners as well as directions for future research are discussed.


In contemporary aesthetics, artistic creativity and the perception of beauty are the key concepts in explaining aesthetic consciousness. From the birth of modern aesthetics, an underlying assumption has been that artistic creativity and the perception of beauty are each genuinely universal in human experience, which is worthy of particular attention. To examine the universal validity of Western aesthetic claims on these two distinctive subjects, this paper presents a very brief outline of pre-modern Chinese interpretations of both concepts. Specifically, in comparison to Kant's concept of genius and aesthetic judgment, I draw two conclusions. First, although there was no concept equivalent to art as an umbrella term to embrace diverse artistic activities, pre-modern Chinese intellectuals paid particular attention to originality, naturalness, and ineffability as common and essential features of artistic creativity, which show a high degree of similitude with the Western accounts. The similitude, along with its spontaneous emergence, attests, to a large extent, to the universality in experiencing, characterizing, and interpreting artistic creativity. Second, although there were many words in Chinese vocabulary similar to beauty, pre-modern Chinese intellectuals did not give particular conceptual significance to the perception of beauty. More specifically, in relation to Kant's conception of aesthetic judgment and Stolnitz's definition of aesthetic attitude, despite its long tradition of a disinterested attitude towards objects, pre-modern Chinese intellectuals did not relate this attitude to aesthetic experience. These tentative conclusions also lead us to question the universal validity of the association between art and beauty that was created by modern aesthetics and which contemporary aesthetics still claims as its legitimate field of research.


Language independent 'bag-of-words' representations are surprisingly effective for text classification. The representation is high dimensional though, containing many non-consistent words for text categorization. These non-consistent words result in reduced generalization performance of subsequent classifiers, e.g., from ill-posed principal component transformations. In this communication our aim is to study the effect of reducing the least relevant words from the bag-of-words representation. We consider a new approach, using neural network based sensitivity maps and information gain for determination of term relevancy, when pruning the vocabularies. With reduced vocabularies documents are classified using a latent semantic indexing representation and a probabilistic neural network classifier. Reducing the bag-of-words vocabularies with 90%-98%, we find consistent classification improvement using two mid size data-sets. We also study the applicability of information gain and sensitivity maps for automated keyword generation.


The centralised procedure was created in 1995 to facilitate access to innovative medicines across the European Union. Since then the scope of authorisation via the centralised procedure has been broadened and made mandatory for orphan and oncology medicines. We analysed routine funding in the NHS for new medicines recently authorised via the centralised procedure with a particular focus on oncology and orphan medicines. We utilised a database of outcomes of health technology assessment (HTA) evaluations conducted in the UK by NICE, AWMSG and SMC - OHE's Medicines Tracker. We considered centrally authorised products (CAP) approved between 1 January 2011 and 31 December 2016. We find that a substantial number of products that received an EU authorisation between 2011 and 2016 were not referred for a HTA evaluation in the UK. We also show that there is both variation across agencies and variation across therapeutic classes in terms of adoption decisions and access across England, Scotland and Wales.


Recent state-of-the-art approaches automatically generate regular expressions from natural language specifications. Given that these approaches use only synthetic data in both training datasets and validation/test datasets, a natural question arises: are these approaches effective to address various real-world situations? To explore this question, in this paper, we conduct a characteristic study on comparing two synthetic datasets used by the recent research and a real-world dataset collected from the Internet, and conduct an experimental study on applying a state-of-the-art approach on the real-world dataset. Our study results suggest the existence of distinct characteristics between the synthetic datasets and the real-world dataset, and the state-of-the-art approach (based on a model trained from a synthetic dataset) achieves extremely low effectiveness when evaluated on real-world data, much lower than the effectiveness when evaluated on the synthetic dataset. We also provide initial analysis on some of those challenging cases and discuss future directions.


Basically present business will not be endless otherwise is accompanied with ethics. This thing of course very far diffired from tending to industry era concept that permits all ways, pursues maximum benefits without bothering ethics and others importance, environment and generation a period of coming. Business ethics is study majored about wrong and correct morale. This study concentrates on morale standard as applied in policy, institution, and behavior of business. Whereas social responsibility is processing social interaction between the componies and public. Public claim and development of democracy and rapid of globalization current and free market, causing peeps out awareness from industrial world about the importance of executing company social responsibility (Company social responsibility).
Kata Kunci: Etika, Tanggung Jawab Sosial, Bisnis, Perusahaan, Manajemen.
Kata Kunci: Etika, Tanggung Jawab Sosial, Bisnis, Perusahaan, Manajemen.


With a large percentage of total system cost going to system administration tasks, ease of system management remains a difficult and important goal. As a step towards that goal, this dissertation presents a success story on building systems that are self-predicting. Self-predicting systems continuously monitor themselves and provide quantitative answers to What...if questions about hypothetical workload or resource changes. Self-prediction has the potential to simplify administrators' decision making, such as acquisition planning and performance tuning, by reducing the detailed workload and internal system knowledge required.
Self-prediction has as the primary building block mathematical models, that, once built into the system, analyze past, and predict future behavior. Because of the traditional disconnect between systems researchers and theoretical researchers, however, there are fundamental difficulties in enabling existing mathematical models to make meaningful predictions in real systems. In part, this dissertation serves as a bridge between research in theory (e.g., queuing theory and statistical theory) and research in systems (e.g., database and storage systems). It identifies ways to build systems to support use of mathematical models and addresses fundamental show-stoppers that keep models from being useful in practice. For example, we explore many opportunities to deeply understand workload-system interactions by having models be first-class system components, rather than developing and deploying them separately from the system, as is traditionally done. As another example, lack of good measurement information in a distributed system can be a show-stopper for models based on queuing analysis. This dissertation introduces a measurement framework that replaces performance counters with end-to-end activity tracing. End-to-end tracing allows contextual information to be propagated with requests so that queuing models can attribute resource demands to the correct workloads. In addition, this dissertation presents a first step towards a robust, hybrid mathematical modeling framework, based on models that reflect domain expertise and models that guide model designers to discover new, unforeseen system behavior once the system is deployed. Such robust models could continuously evaluate their accuracy and adjust their predictions accordingly. Self-evaluation can enable confidence values to be provided with predictions, including identification of situations where no trustworthy predictions can be produced.
Through an analysis of positive and negative lessons learned, in a storage system that we designed from scratch as well as in a legacy commercial database system, this dissertation makes the case that systems can be built to accommodate mathematical models efficiently, but cautions that mathematical models are not a panacea. Models are as good as the system is; to make predictions more meaningful, systems should be built so that they are inherently more predictable to start with.


Trademark law prohibits the registration of trademarks that are immoral or scandalous. This "Morality Provision" in trademark law has been criticized as being an unconstitutional abridgement of free speech and resulting in inconsistency and other problems at the USPTO examination stage. This essay exposes another problem with the Morality Provision, which is its abuse by third parties in the TTAB. This essay explores why the Morality Provision — and not any other provisions in trademark law — is susceptible to this type of abuse and outlines examples of these abusive cases in the TTAB. These cases show that, in inter partes proceedings in the TTAB, the Morality Provision is often asserted by individuals without any real interest in the proposed trademark, but who instead morally disapprove of the trademark owner or its commercial activities. This type of behavior, where third parties use trademark law and the TTAB to direct their moral outrage at individuals or businesses of which they disapprove, overextends trademark law's jurisprudence, disrupts commerce, and inappropriately drains government resources. Yet as long as the Morality Provision is part of trademark law in the U.S., these cases continue to appear in the TTAB and result in years of contentious and unnecessary litigation. The tendency and ease for the Morality Provision to be abused in this way combined with its potential to violate free speech and its other problems at the USPTO examination stage supports the argument that the Morality Provision is flawed and should be overhauled or removed from trademark law.


A pre-order cooperative can offer its members savings on conventional supermarket food prices and/or food of higher quality than available elsewhere except at a premium price. It can also offer opportunities to socialize or to develop other community projects. In order to meet any of these goals, the coordinator and members of a pre-order cooperative must understand what needs to be done to keep food ordering and distribution efficient and reliable, and must work together in order to accomplish it.


This paper explores the ways in which the American celebrations of the three-hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare's death in 1916 drew on and combined a range of cultural practices across different genres and media. While the Tercentenary was marked by some traditional theatrical productions, the majority of American commemorative activities were of a different nature: they involved active participation of local communities in the production of original, multi-media (and often multicultural) events. These ranged from tree-planting and wreath-laying (accompanied by speeches and recitations), through festivals, pageants, masques, dances, tableaux, to such unusual tributes as a Shakespearean circus.
 Many of these events belonged to the category of 'community drama', a cultural phenomenon which enjoyed immense popularity in the US at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the words of one of its key advocates, Percy MacKaye, community drama was conceived as a "drama of democracy" – "a drama of and by the people, not merely for the people" (MacKaye 1916, p. xviii). Masques and pageants, the common types of community drama, combined theatrical elements (dialogue and character), visual effects (floats, processions, dressing up), music (both instrumental and vocal), and dancing. Moreover, they aimed to create cultural cohesion among their participants, who often came from different ethnic or social backgrounds. Thus, MacKaye's Tercentenary masque Caliban by the Yellow Sands brought together representatives of large sections of the heterogeneous urban population of New York by making them represent – through pantomime, dance, chorus, and dialogue – the development of the theatre across different ages and cultures. This paper will examine a number of community events produced for the Shakespeare Tercentenary, in order to assess how this participatory, multimedia and multicultural approach to Shakespeare contributed to debates concerning the nature of American culture and identity at the beginning of the twentieth century.


Finding a set of users of interest serves several applications in behavioral analytics. Often times, identifying users requires to explore the data and gradually choose potential targets. This is a special case of Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA), an iterative and tedious process. In this paper, we formalize and solve the problem of guided exploration of user groups whose purpose is to find target users. We model exploration as an iterative decision-making process, where an agent is shown a set of groups, chooses users from those groups, and selects the best action to move to the next step. To solve our problem, we apply reinforcement learning to discover an efficient exploration strategy from a simulated agent experience, and propose to use the learned strategy to recommend an exploration policy that can be applied to the same task for any dataset. Our framework accepts a wide class of exploration actions and does not need to gather exploration logs. Our experiments show that the agent naturally captures manual exploration by human analysts, and succeeds to learn an interpretable and transferable exploration policy.


Solanum aethiopicum L. is indigenous to Africa and constitutes an important vegetable. Morpho-agronomic traits were used to study diversity among 44 accessions of S. aethiopicum groups to identify traits of high discriminatory ability and donor parents with specific or multiple traits for introgression and utilization in breeding programmes. Field experiments were conducted from 2008 to 2010. The principal component (PC) analysis of morpho-agronomic data indicated high discriminatory ability for fruit calyx length, fruit length and leaf length. On PC1, fruit length showed positive and significant correlation coefficients with leaf length, fruit calyx length and width. An independent association was recorded among fruit width, fruits per infructescence and seed yield (t/ha). Ordination (biplot) and grouping (dendrogram) revealed genetic variation and relatedness, phenotypic plasticity and geographical heterogeneity among the accessions within and among the clusters. Members of cluster 1 (group 'c') are a promising donor parent for multiple traits (earliness and fruit length), and members of group 'b' are superior for fruits per plant, fruits per infructescence and fruit infructescence per plant. Hybridization among distant clusters would provide an opportunity for bringing together gene constellations of diverse background. Earliness and fruit length were highly variable among the S. aethiopicum groups. The results are important for the breeding and selection of this crop.


The ability of modulating the properties of metal–organic frameworks (MOF) on demand by external light-stimuli is a most appealing pathway to enhance their performance in storage and separation and to render novel advanced applications. Photoswitchable linkers of different nature have been inserted in several MOF structures either as integral parts of their scaffolds or as guests in the pores. In this highlight we analyse the different strategies and expose some aspects that should be considered in the design of new generations of photoswitchable MOFs.


Kuningan District where agriculture is the inhabitant main livelihood, has the potential for agro based industry sectors. One of Small Industries (SI) which sustain to grow since the 1960's in the Kuningan District is Tofu industry. The purpose of this study were to analyze business performance, to analyze the needs and feasibility of business development and to formulate a strategy in business development of Tofu SI. Data collection methods used were field surveys and in-depth interviews with related experts. Information obtained from the District Government and KOPTI. Data processing technique was using Friedman test and the AHP. Feasibility analysis of business development  of tofu small industry obtained NPV of Rp395.696.655, IRR of 38,72%, B/C ratio of 3.10, PBP of 1.19 years and BEP value of 260.304 units. All these criteria show that further business development  is feasible. Tofu business development strategy based on AHP analysis covers aspects of product manufacturing processes, waste management and business financing. Priority strategies to improve the quality of products is by training human resources such as scheduling techniques relating in utilization of raw materials, raw material selection, division of work, techniques for preparing SOP and also supervision and quality control of products. Priority strategies for waste water treatment efforts is the training of waste water treatment into biogas, producing nata de soya and biofilter. While the priority strategies in the business financing is working capital loans from supplier cooperatives which is the KOPTI


In Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life, the cultural critic and historian Tavia Nyong'o surveys the conditions of contemporary black artistic production in the wake of post-blackness. Moving fluidly between the insurgent art of the 1960s and the intersectional activism of the present day, Afro-Fabulations challenges genealogies of blackness that ignore its creative capacity to exceed conditions of traumatic loss, social death, and archival erasure. Tracking how the bodies that were speculated in as commodities became speculative bodies, he develops an account of black fabulation that is always already feminist and queer. In so doing, he revises accounts of post-humanism and new materialism that ignore the subversive potential of life lived outside the sovereign coordinates of the human. If black survival in an anti-black world often feels like a race against time, Afro-Fabulations looks to the modes of memory and imagination through which a black polytemporality is invented and sustained. "Angular sociality" names the gate and rhythm of black social life as it moves in and out of step with itself, providing its internal dynamism and drama. To outline his theory of afro-fabulation, Nyong'o takes up a broad range of sites of analysis, from speculative fiction to performance art, from artificial intelligence to blaxploitation cinema. Reading the archive of violence and trauma against the grain, Afro-Fabulations summons the poetic powers of world-making that have always been immanent to the fight and play of black life.


Under current law, when a partner sells a partnership interest, the resulting gain or loss is treated as capital gain or loss, except to the extent that the partnership holds certain items whose sale would result in gain or loss that was not capital. The purpose of the current regime appears to be to prevent taxpayers from obtaining more favorable treatment by selling an interest in a partnership than what would result if the partnership were to sell its underlying assets. Given this apparent aim of legislators, current law produces results for taxpayers that are both unduly favorable and unduly unfavorable. In particular, despite current law's aim to equate the tax treatment of the sale of a partnership interest with the tax treatment of the sale of underlying assets (at least with respect to the character of income recognized), differences persist. Sometimes sale of a partnership interest produces more favorable tax treatment than the sale of underlying assets. Other times, sale of a partnership interest triggers less favorable tax treatment than a sale of underlying assets.
The current statutory design necessitates piece-meal reform as taxpayers discover new opportunities to exploit ways in which the statute produces unduly favorable results. Most recently, in December 2017, Congress adopted legislative reform to address one such instance involving the sale of a partnership interest by a non-U.S. person. The current statutory design also requires Congress to update the existing statute to take into account potential ripple effects of unrelated legislative changes, and, therefore, the design is error prone because, inevitably, Congress overlooks and fails to address these potential ripple effects. Changes enacted by Congress in December 2017 provide at least one example of this phenomenon. In particular, Congress enacted a new restriction on the deductibility of losses incurred in a trade or business but did not provide for a corresponding modification to the tax provisions governing sale of an interest in a partnership – creating the potential for another way in which the current statutory design is unduly favorable. This Article proposes a better approach to the tax treatment of the sale of a partnership interest that would more effectively serve the aim of equating the tax treatment of the sale of a partnership interest with the sale of underlying assets.


The articles explores socialization process of adolescent as a meaningful way of becoming an active citizen in the future knowledge society. The main point of this process is that students have not only to adopt themselves into society, but to develop certain competencies for being active creators of this society as well. The author presents some different theoretical perspectives (philosophical-social, psychological and educational) to the knowledge society. It contains some developments of the qualities of the person of tomorrow (Rogers, 1995), developments of "competencies for the good life" (Dupuy, 2001) and some modern educational strategies (education for sustainable development, life long education, education for receiving and creating information and so on). Some of the data from international comparative IEA (International Association for Evaluation of Educational Achievements) CivEd study are presented and some theoretical models of conceptualization of social information (accumulation, identification, role transfere and cognitive development) are introduced. Conclusions and some suggestions for improvement of socialization process of adolescent are developed.


In the context of growing evidence of climate change and the fact that agriculture uses about 70% of all the water available for irrigation in semi-arid areas, there is an increasing probability of water scarcity scenarios. Water irrigation optimization is, therefore, one of the main goals of researchers and stakeholders involved in irrigated agriculture. Irrigation scheduling is often conducted based on simple water requirement calculations without accounting for the strong link between water movement in the root zone, soil–water–crop productivity and irrigation expenses. In this work, we present a combined simulation and optimization framework aimed at estimating irrigation parameters that maximize the crop net margin. The simulation component couples the movement of water in a variably saturated porous media driven by irrigation with crop water uptake and crop yields. The optimization component assures maximum gain with minimum cost of crop production during a growing season. An application of the method demonstrates that an optimal solution exists and substantially differs from traditional methods. In contrast to traditional methods, results show that the optimal irrigation scheduling solution prevents water logging and provides a more constant value of water content during the entire growing season within the root zone. As a result, in this case, the crop net margin cost exhibits a substantial increase with respect to the traditional method. The optimal irrigation scheduling solution is also shown to strongly depend on the particular soil hydraulic properties of the given field site.


Typical operating conditions for mobile sensor systems, and in particular mobile robots, exhibit a wide range of mechanical disturbances due their ego-motion. Sensor systems mounted on these mobile platforms often suffer to varying degrees from these disturbances. The quality of acquired data is degraded as a result. For instance, the quality of captured video frames from an onboard camera greatly depends on the angular velocity of the body on which the camera is mounted. Motion blur degradation results if large angular motions are present. In order to compensate for such disturbances, stabilization platforms are used. A common approach is measuring body movements using inertial sensors and attempting their cancellation with actuators and control systems. Design of high performance control systems often requires analytical system models. In this article, a planar stabilization platform is considered, to develop and study its kinematic and simple-to-complex dynamic model. The mathematical derivation of the model is presented with and without neglect of the actuator mass components as well as friction effects. This is followed by the comparative validation of these model alternatives against a realistic numerical model fitted to physical experimental data. The results demonstrate that the analytical model, in particular with the actuator mass and friction components included, provides a high degree of fit to the actual behavior.


The effects of solar irradiance on the photosynthesis of the marine angiosperm Posido- nia oceanica L. Delile were investigated by means of pulse amplitude-modulated (PAM) fluorescence in the Natural Park of Cabo de Gata-Nijar, southern Spain. The study was conducted in 2 different seasons, summer (September 1996) and winter (February 1997). Daily variation in the effective quan- tum yield (∆F/Fm') was determined in plants growing at 2.5 m and in plants transferred from 15 m to 0.5 and 2.5 m depth. Three different experimental designs were conducted: (1) Incubation of shoots under 3 different solar radiation treatments using cut-off UV filters: full solar radiation (PAR + UV-A + UV-B), solar radiation without UV-B (PAR + UV-A) and solar radiation without UV (PAR); (2) short- term exposure (30 min) to high solar irradiance (photoinhibitory phase) under all treatments followed by transfer fo the plants to low irradiance for 4 h (recovery phase); (3) Preincubation of plants for 4 d under the 3 cited treatments followed by short-term exposure (30 min) to high solar irradiance under PAR + UV-A + UV-B, PAR + UV-A and PAR. A significant decrease in ∆ F/Fm' occurred from dawn to noon (18% in September and only 6% in February), followed by total recovery during the afternoon in both seasons. The highest decrease in ∆F/Fm' occurred in shoots illuminated with PAR + UV-A radi- ation. This decrease was more pronounced in winter than in summer, and was substantially higher in plants transferred from deep (15 m) to shallow water than in plants harvested at 2.5 m. Moreover, the recovery in the afternoon was higher in plants incubated at 2.5 m than in those transferred from 15 m to shallow waters. In the second set of experiments, short exposure (30 min) of plants collected from 2.5 m confirmed that inhibition under PAR + UV-A was higher than under PAR + UV-A + UV-B. In general, full recovery after exposure to high solar irradiance (PAR + UVA + UV-B) occurred only in PAR-treated plants in September. Finally, when shoots of P. oceanica were preincubated for 4 d under PAR, PAR + UV-A or PAR + UV-A + UV-B and then submitted to full solar irradiance at the water sur- face, the greatest reduction in ∆ F/Fm' was seen in plants grown under PAR, while the lowest occurred in PAR + UV-A + UV-B pretreated plants in both seasons. Recovery was higher in PAR + UV-A + UV- B pretreated plants. UV solar irradiance also affected both maximal electron transport rate (ETR) and the initial slope of the ETR-irradiance curves. P. oceanica seems to be well acclimated to high solar irradiance, showing a high capacity for recovery. Solar UV-B might be involved in the impairment and recovery of photosynthesis, since removal of UV-B promoted higher inhibition by solar irradi- ance. The absence of UV under high PAR for several days resulted in a partial loss of the capacity for photoprotection. We conclude that UV radiation could act in the natural habitat as a trigger for the induction of photoprotective mechanisms against high solar irradiance. The ecological implication of the beneficial role of UV-B in well-acclimated marine plants to high irradiance is discussed.


Assessing the Repercussions of a Mass Departure of Building Inspectors from the Code Professional Industry in Utah George Reese Williams School of Technology, BYU Master of Science National studies suggest that eighty percent of existing code professionals are expected to retire within the next fifteen years. As part of this research, it was determined that approximately half of all licensed building inspectors in the State of Utah will reach retirement age within the next ten years. As building inspectors make up a large part of the Code Professional Industry this demographic was selected as the focus of this research. The purpose of this research project was to assess the urgent need for new entrants into the Code Professional Industry in Utah. As part of this research, trends within the local industry over a 20 year period were evaluated. A statewide survey of over 300 licensed building inspectors was conducted to investigate the demographics of the industry, and gain first-hand insight from individual code professionals. This research was successful in quantifying the size of the Code Professional Industry in Utah, and numbering the populations of certified professionals in each individual code discipline. In addition, projected losses were established within each code discipline, discovering many disciplines in which over 50% of current professionals would be lost within a ten year period. In addition projections were made contrasting the number of code professionals leaving the industry versus the small anticipated number of individuals entering the industry. This research conclusively predicts a steady and dramatic decline in the number of licensed code professionals, unless the industry actively works toward addressing the issue. The group of aging code professionals possess a level of knowledge and experience not easily replaced. This study was based on an extensive statewide survey of licensed building inspectors in Utah, and collected opinions, concerns and insights directly from the Code Professional Industry. The findings of this study provide a unique look at this specialized industry within a single state. The lessons learned likely apply to populations of code professionals in other locations. This study concluded that a combination of phased retirement, modified work duties and mentoring programs would be of great benefit to the Code Professional Industry, by allowing the transfer of knowledge between the outgoing generation and the future generation of code professionals.


Stellation is a well known operation which you can apply to a polyhedron. About a century before this operation was defined by Kepler, Luca Pacioli and Leonardo da Vinci had published the book "La Divina Proportione" in which another operation, called Elevation, was described. Both operations have much in common, but there are also many differences. Comparing both operations inspired me to define a new one, which I called Edge Elevation. This led to interesting artistic constructions.


A central feature of tumor metastasis is the migration of malignant cells through interstitial tissues and vascular structures as they spread throughout the body. Various components of the extracellular matrix and of basement membranes, consisting of genetically distinct collagens, proteoglycans, and noncollagenous glycoproteins, are known to modulate certain aspects of cell behavior, including cell movement. Serum spreading factor is a glycoprotein component of human serum that is also found in interstitial tissues. Two native forms are seen in human serum, a Mr 65,000 and a Mr 75,000 component. Spreading factor promotes substratum attachment and spreading of diverse cell types, including epithelial and fibroblastic cells, and will affect the growth rate and differentiation of cells in serum-free culture media. Serum spreading factor was shown to promote the directed migration of the following tumor cell lines in modified Boyden chamber assays: murine melanoma K-1735 (clones M2, M4, and 16); human breast carcinoma MCF-7; and human fibrosarcoma HT-1080. The stimulation of movement occurred over a concentration range of 0.5 to 50 micrograms of serum spreading factor per ml with a maximum response between 5 and 10 micrograms/ml. The maximal response varied with the cell line and ranged from 5- to 50-fold greater migration than control. A monoclonal antibody to spreading factor, previously shown to inhibit the attachment and spreading-promoting activity, abrogated this migration response. Experiments using filters that were precoated with spreading factor indicated that cells could migrate on an insolubilized layer of this protein by haptotaxis. Tumor cell migration to spreading factor in vitro suggests a possible role for this protein in the phenotypic behavior of metastatic cells.


Standing surface acoustic waves (SSAW) are commonly used in microfluidics to manipulate cells and other micro/nano particles. However, except for a simple one-dimensional (1D) harmonic standing waves (HSW) model, a practical model that can predict particle behaviour in SSAW microfluidics is still lacking. Herein, we established a two-dimensional (2D) SSAW microfluidic model based on the basic theory in acoustophoresis and our previous modelling strategy to predict the acoustophoresis of microparticles in SSAW microfluidics. This 2D SSAW microfluidic model considers the effects of boundary vibrations, channel materials, and channel dimensions on the acoustic propagation; as an experimental validation, the acoustophoresis of microparticles under continuous flow through narrow channels made of PDMS and silicon was studied. The experimentally observed motion of the microparticles matched well with the numerical predictions, while the 1D HSW model failed to predict many of the experimental observations. Particularly, the 1D HSW model cannot account for particle aggregation on the sidewall in PDMS channels, which is well explained by our 2D SSAW microfluidic model. Our model can be used for device design and optimization in SSAW microfluidics.


Research impact is often talked about, but how clear is it what this term really means? Kristel Alla, Wayne Hall, Harvey Whiteford, Brian Head and Carla Meurk find that academic literature discusses research impact but often without properly defining it, with academic discourses mostly drawing on bureaucratic definitions originating from the UK. The authors highlight four core elements that comprise most research impact definitions and propose a new conceptualisation of research impact relevant to health policy.


The economical development of industrialized countries is based on consumption of resources and worldwide pollution both unsustainable in the long and in the short term. But this model has entailed global warming, desertification of the planet, etc. Being aware of this situation and the need of a rapid response (after the Second World War, or even before), environmental movements whose ideals were based on "environmental protection" arose. The question was to keep on growing, living, creating but damaging the environment the least possible. The terms "ecological" and "sustainable" emerged and theories and practices grew up with them. The term ecological, however, does not necessarily mean sustainable. Sustainability doesn't only mean not damaging the environment but the possibility of maintaining the productive model in the long term. In principle, sustainability includes ecology by increasing its meaning. That is, what is not sustainable is not ecological. Thus, we could say that ideas of ecology and sustainability are complementary if not synonymous. Architecture, indeed, being responsible of much of the consumption of resources and pollutant emissions, cannot be left out of this paradigm. Architecture must also be ecological. This is one of the reasons why buildings are cataloged and certified for their degree of sustainability and energy efficiency. It is no longer ethical to turn away from the environment. At the beginning of the 21st century, a new paradigm emerges: biomimicry. This idea tries to go beyond respect for the environment, imitating the techniques and resources that nature itself offers us as solutions to problems. This paper presents the way from the paradigm of ecology to the one of biomimicry applied to architecture, and proposes an architecture based on the principles of natural systems, according to a greater respect not only for the environment but also to favor a new balance between human beings and nature, and also among human beings themselves. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sace.20.3.19295


In 2015, the correspondence of Professor of Art History Armin Tuulse (1907–1977) and his wife Liidia Tuulse (1912–2012), which dates back to 1944 when the family escaped to Sweden, arrived at the Estonian Literary Museum. A significant part of the archive is comprised of the correspondence between the spouses, along with frequent contacts with exile Estonian cultural figures and Armin Tuulse's work-related communications with colleagues in Europe, the U.S. and Australia. The main objective of this article is to take a first look at the material and highlight the main points of emphasis in the correspondence of the exile Estonians in the 1940s and 1950s. At that time, the main issue (in addition to worries about everyday hardships and living conditions) was related to the continuation of their work and keeping Estonian culture alive in a foreign cultural and linguistic space. In order to understand Armin Tuulse's position in Sweden, the article also takes a look back onto his activities in the Department of Art History of the University of Tartu in the 1930s and 1940s, when Sten Karling (1906–1987) from Sweden came to teach in Tartu. Under Karling's guidance, Tuulse became a dedicated scholar and later the first Estonian to become a professor of art history.


Trade secrecy - the intellectual property doctrine that allows businesses to keep commercially valuable information secret for a potentially unlimited amount of time - is increasingly intruding in the operation of our public infrastructure, like voting machines, the Internet and telecommunications. A growing amount of public infrastructure is being provided by private entities that are holding critical information about their goods and services secret from the public. This Article examines this phenomenon, which is largely unexplored in legal scholarship, and identifies a significant conflict between the values and policies of trade secrecy doctrine and the democratic values of accountability and transparency that have traditionally been present in public infrastructure projects. This Article argues that in this conflict trade secrecy must give way to traditional notions of transparency and accountability when it comes to the provision of public infrastructure. Although there are good reasons for trade secrecy in private commerce, when applied to public infrastructure, the basic democratic values of transparency and accountability should prevail, especially given that the application of trade secrecy doctrine to public infrastructure projects causes some unanticipated outcomes, like hiding information that could be useful for the public at large and for the improvement of the specific infrastructure project at issue. This Article examines the background and history of trade secrecy and contrasts its values with those of democratic government. It then shows the increasing impact of trade secrecy on public infrastructure through three examples. Finally, the Article suggests some potential remedies to this sphere of increasingly conflicting values.


Here, we evaluate the performance of our range of ensemble simulation based binding free energy calculation protocols, called ESMACS (enhanced sampling of molecular dynamics with approximation of continuum solvent) for use in fragment based drug design scenarios. ESMACS is designed to generate reproducible binding affinity predictions from the widely used molecular mechanics Poisson-Boltzmann surface area (MMPBSA) approach. We study ligands designed to target two binding pockets in the lactate dehydogenase A target protein, which vary in size, charge and binding mode. When comparing to experimental results, we obtain excellent statistical rankings across this highly diverse set of ligands. In addition, we investigate three approaches to account for entropic contributions not captured by standard MMPBSA calculations: (1) normal mode analysis, (2) weighted solvent accessible surface area (WSAS) and (3) variational entropy.


AN ANALYSIS OF PASTORAL PERCEPTIONS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CONDITIONS THAT PROMOTE MINISTRY TEAM EFFECTIVENESS IN MULTI-STAFF CHURCHES Jesse Thomas Adkinson, Ed. D. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2006 Chairperson: Dr. Mark E. Simpson This study examined the extent to which organizational conditions that promote ministry team effectiveness are present in multi-staff churches. The case was made for the need for effective teamwork in the church organization. Five influential and contemporary models of effective teams were examined and through those models a shift in thinking from examining team characteristics toward creating and leading organizational conditions was presented. Finally an integrative effective team model was presented and five key organizational conditions were presented as a synthesis of the components from the five effective team models. Those five organizational conditions are: an environment of trust, a focus on performance, team stability over time, a supportive structure and context, and good team leadership. Based on the five organizational conditions the Team Effectiveness Survey was developed with the assistance of an expert panel. The survey, which examined perceptions of organizational conditions, was distributed electronically to 1165 multistaff churches. The results collected allowed for the comparison of responses between senior pastors and associate staff. Data collected showed a positive perception among pastoral staff as to both the effectiveness of ministry teams and the presence of the five organizational conditions within their churches. Statistical analysis also displayed agreement in perception between senior pastors and associate staff in each of the five organizational conditions. Two conditions, however, did show a slight divergence in perception. Those conditions were the areas of trust and a focus on performance. Analysis of the data was accomplished primarily through descriptive statistics and was displayed through the use of tables and charts. Implications and applications of the research were also presented. Some of the research implications involved the primarily positive views of pastoral staff regarding how their organizations support ministry team effectiveness, the reality that there is room for improvement in helping teams be more successful, and the agreement that senior pastors and associate staff had regarding team effectiveness and the existence of the five conditions. Research applications were suggested in the areas of continued communication among pastoral staff, the need to continue to improve in setting goals and objectives for tasks, and the need for leaders to shift their thinking from influencing individual team effectiveness to influencing the culture of an organization in order to promote team health throughout the organization. Finally, suggestions for further research were proposed.


ABSTRACT Multisite trials, in which individuals are randomly assigned to alternative treatment arms within sites, offer an excellent opportunity to estimate the cross-site average effect of treatment assignment (intent to treat or ITT) and the amount by which this impact varies across sites. Although both of these statistics are substantively and methodologically important, only the first has been well studied. To help fill this information gap, we estimate the cross-site standard deviation of ITT effects for a broad range of education and workforce development interventions using data from 16 large multisite randomized controlled trials. We use these findings to explore hypotheses about factors that predict the magnitude of cross-site impact variation, and we consider the implications of this variation for the statistical precision of multisite trials.


The contrast between the two great classical city-states, Sparta and Athens, pervades both ancient and modern literature. It is argued here that, quite apart from the cultural and institutional differences that have so fascinated historians and philosophers, a real contrast can also be observed in the structure of settlement in each polis that reflects a fundamental difference in the organization of their economies. The analysis exploits a novel methodology. The rank-size relationship has long been valued for investigating settlement structure, but here the nature of that relationship as a fractal with its consequent property of self-similarity is exploited, using the fractal dimension to investigate the occupation of rural Attica and Laconia. It analyzes data from intensive survey and from the Attic bouleutic quotas to give insight into settlement at the dawn of the Classical period. The results of this new analysis are discussed and interpreted.


This Master Thesis proposes a implementation for a doodle system which can scan hand drawn paper doodles using camera into the system and obtain a painting based on doodles impacting on a canvas in the system. The doodles which are scanned into the system are applied physical effects such as collisions and forces on. The implementation is supported by Cinder Library and Bullet Physics LibraryThe Cinder used in this thesis is an open source C++ library developed by The Barbarian Group. The doodle system uses multiple draw methods and the framework provided by Cinder to build graphic components and a new system in a quick and efficient way.The Bullet Physics Library used in this thesis is a professional open source library for physics simulations. The Bullet is integrated into the doodle system as a component which perform physics simulations on doodles.


Puerto Rico's colonial status remains largely invisible to the international world. The discourse of "post colonialism" and the use of misleading euphemisms and legal labels, tend to cloud over the continued exercise of U.S. unilateral control over the island. The human rights violations this colonial status encompasses are even more absent from international agendas, global concern, or in-depth scholarly analysis. Besides being denied the right to self-determination, multiple other human rights infringements occur in Puerto Rico. This article uncovers and analyzes human rights violations Puerto Ricans have endured and continue to experience. These include complex citizenship issues, persecution and killing of nationalists, and- as the largest U.S. Navy practice site- turning the municipality of Vieques into a war zone. This article provides a detailed historical background of the relationship and dynamics between the United States and Puerto Rico, from 1898 to present day, including nuanced accounts about the creation of the 1952 Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and of the trajectory of the Puerto Rico issue before the United Nations. Also discussed is Puerto Ricans' right to self-determination and its increasing elusiveness. The varied ways in which many Puerto Ricans have transcended the massive limitations to which they are subjected, exercising agency to do so (such as "freeing" Vieques and keeping the past alive in the present through celebrations such as the Grito de Lares) are also addressed.


Trace metal micronutrients are integral to the functioning of marine ecosystems and the export of particulate carbon to the deep ocean. Although much progress has been made in mapping the distributions of metal micronutrients throughout the ocean over the last 30 years, there remain information gaps, most notable during seasonal transitions and in remote regions. The next challenge is to develop in situ sensing technologies necessary to capture the spatial and temporal variabilities of micronutrients characterized with short residence times, highly variable source terms, and sub-nanomolar concentrations in open ocean settings. Such an effort will allow investigation of the biogeochemical processes at the necessary resolution to constrain fluxes, residence times, and the biological and chemical responses to varying metal inputs in a changing ocean. Here, we discuss the current state of the art and analytical challenges associated with metal micronutrient determinations and highlight existing and emerging technologies, namely in situ chemical analyzers, electrochemical sensors, passive preconcentration samplers, and autonomous trace metal clean samplers, which could form the basis of autonomous observing systems for trace metals within the next decade. We suggest that several existing assets can already be deployed in regions of enhanced metal concentrations and argue that, upon further development, a combination of wet chemical analyzers with electrochemical sensors may provide the best compromise between analytical precision, detection limits, metal speciation, and longevity for autonomous open ocean determinations. To meet this goal, resources must be invested to: (1) improve the sensitivity of existing sensors including the development of novel chemical assays; (2) reduce sensor size and power requirements; (3) develop an open-source "Do-It-Yourself" infrastructure to facilitate sensor development, uptake by end-users and foster a mechanism by which scientists can rapidly adapt commercially available technologies to in situ applications; and (4) develop a community-led standardized protocol to demonstrate the endurance and comparability of in situ sensor data with established techniques. Such a vision will be best served through ongoing collaborations between trace metal geochemists, analytical chemists, the engineering community, and commercial partners, which will accelerate the delivery of new technologies for in situ metal sensing in the decade following OceanObs'19.


We conduct a pilot investigation to determine the optimal combination of color and variability information to identify quasars in current and future multi-epoch optical surveys. We use a Bayesian quasar selection algorithm to identify 35,820 type 1 quasar candidates in a 239 deg 2 ?> field of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Stripe 82, using a combination of optical photometry and variability. Color analysis is performed on 5-band single- and multi-epoch SDSS optical photometry to a depth of r ∼ 22.4 . ?> From these data, variability parameters are calculated by fitting the structure function of each object in each band with a power-law model using 10 to > 100 ?> observations over timescales from ∼1 day to ∼8 years. Selection was based on a training sample of 13,221 spectroscopically confirmed type-1 quasars, largely from the SDSS. Using variability alone, colors alone, and combining variability and colors we achieve 91%, 93%, and 97% quasar completeness and 98%, 98%, and 97% efficiency, respectively, with particular improvement in the selection of quasars at 2.7 < z < 3.5 ?> where quasars and stars have similar optical colors. The 22,867 quasar candidates that are not spectroscopically confirmed reach a depth of i ∼ 22.0 ; ?> 21,876 (95.7%) are dimmer than coadded i-band magnitude of 19.9, the cutoff for spectroscopic follow-up for SDSS on Stripe 82. Brighter than 19.9, we find 5.7% more quasar candidates without confirming spectra in sky regions otherwise considered complete. The resulting quasar sample has sufficient purity (and statistically correctable incompleteness) to produce a luminosity function comparable to those determined by spectroscopic investigations. We discuss improvements that can be made to the process in preparation for performing similar photometric selection and science on data from post-SDSS sky surveys.


Professor Grue is dead (or is he?). When graduate student/sleuth Miranda Sharpe discovers him slumped over his keyboard, she does the sensible thing--she grabs her dissertation and runs. Little does she suspect that soon she will be probing the heart of two mysteries, trying to discover what happened to Max Grue, and trying to solve the profound neurophilosophical problem of consciousness. Radiant Cool may be the first novel of ideas that actually breaks new theoretical ground, as Dan Lloyd uses a neo-noir (neuro-noir?), hard-boiled framework to propose a new theory of consciousness.In the course of her sleuthing, Miranda encounters characters who share her urgency to get to the bottom of the mystery of consciousness, although not always with the most innocent motives. Who holds the key to Max Grue's ultimate vision? Is it the computer-inspired pop psychologist talk-show host? The video-gaming geek with a passion for artificial neural networks? The Russian multi-dimensional data detective, or the sophisticated neuroscientist with the big book contract? Ultimately Miranda teams up with the author's fictional alter ego, "Dan Lloyd," and together they build on the phenomenological theories of philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) to construct testable hypotheses about the implementation of consciousness in the brain. Will the clues of phenomenology and neuroscience converge in time to avert a catastrophe? (The dramatic ending cannot be revealed here.) Outside the fictional world of the novel, Dan Lloyd (the author) appends a lengthy afterword, explaining the proposed theory of consciousness in more scholarly form.Radiant Cool is a real metaphysical thriller--based in current philosophy of mind--and a genuine scientific detective story--revealing a new interpretation of functional brain imaging. With its ingenious plot and its novel theory, Radiant Cool will be enjoyed in the classroom and the study for its entertaining presentation of phenomenology, neural networks, and brain imaging; but, most importantly, it will find its place as a groundbreaking theory of consciousness.


The Alzheimer's disease (AD) therapeutic research is yielding large number of potent molecules. The nanoparticle-based therapeutics against the protein aggregation in AD is also taking a lead especially with amyloid beta as a primary target. In this work, we have screened for first time, the protein capped (PC) metal nanoparticles for their potency in inhibiting Tau aggregation in vitro. We present a novel function of PC-CdS nanoparticles as a potent Tau aggregation inhibitor by fluorescence spectrometry, SDS-PAGE and Electron microscopy. We demonstrate that the biologically synthesized PC-metal nanoparticles, iron oxide and cadmium sulphide do not affect the viability of neuroblastoma cells. Moreover, PC-CdS nanoparticles show dual property of inhibition as well as disaggregation of Tau. Thus, the nanoparticles can take a lead as potent Tau aggregation inhibitors and can be modified for specific drug delivery due to very small size. This current work presents unprecedented strategy to design anti-Tau aggregation drugs, which provides interesting insights to understand the role of biological nanostructures in Alzheimer's disease.


Biomaterials that come in contact with blood require excellent antithrombogenicity. The antithrombogenicity of newly developed biomaterials is evaluated by in vitro tests and animal experiments. However, no in vitro evaluation system has been established that can suf ciently evaluate the complicated mechanisms of thrombus formation within the body. Even in animal experiments, it is dif cult to observe the chronology of thrombus formation in real time. In this study, we aimed to develop a method for the evaluation of antithrombogenicity of biomaterials. To this end, we examined the optical detection of platelet aggregation occurring on the surface of biomaterials. An apparatus that optically detects platelet aggregation in a test tube or in an in vitro blood circulation circuit was constructed. We used the luciferin-luciferase (L-L) reaction that emits light with an intensity proportional to the concentration of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) s released from platelets after aggregation on the surface of biomaterials. Blood with L-L luminescent reagent added was allowed to aggregate, and chronological changes in intensity of the resulting emission were detected using a photomultiplier tube. This experimental apparatus was able to detect the emission intensity corresponding to the amount of platelet aggregation. The results of in vitro blood circulation tests using a polyvinyl chloride tube or a porcine carotid artery showed a signi cant and strong correlation between maximum emission intensity based on platelet aggregation and dry weight of thrombus formed within the circulation circuit (r = 0.727, p = 0.007). Thus, this experimental system was proven to be useful as an alternative to animal experiments for the evaluation of antithrombogenicity of biomaterials.


We live in a world in which courts crucially shape public policy through constitutional adjudication. This is a book written for that world. It brings together a group of distinguished scholars from many disciplines to examine the Supreme Court's recent decision that statutes prohibiting doctors from helping their patients commit suicide may be constitutional. It offers a guide to that decision and to the larger issues it raises for citizens and scholars alike. It asks everyone's first question: What does the decision mean for today and tomorrow? It asks the lawyer's question: Is the Supreme Court's reasoning clear and convincing? It asks the doctor's question: How will the decision affect the decisions physicians make with their patients? It asks the ethicist's question: Will the decision conduce to wise and just decisions at the end of life? It asks the historian's question: How are we to understand the Court's work in light of our disturbing national experience with euthanasia? Ultimately, it asks the questions citizens need to ask in our new world: Is constitutional adjudication a good way to make public policy? Are courts well equipped--with experience, with doctrine, with wisdom--to make good policy? What role should courts have in making policy in a democracy? Has the Supreme Court made good public policy? What is the right policy for law at the end of life?Carl Schneider is Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School.


This current research was to give new insight into group-based variables that frame belief in conspiracy about terrorism in Indonesia. Results (N = 201) showed that social identification with Moslem was positively related to out-group derogation to the Western people and to the belief that these people have conspired to instigate terrorism in Indonesia. We also demonstrated that, in line with prediction, the effect of social identification on out-group derogation and belief in conspiracy theory held only when participants perceived the Western people as highly threatening Islamic identity. This perceived intergroup threat also structured the mediation role of out-group derogation. More specifically, we hypothesized and found that out-group derogation mediated the effect of social identification on belief in the conspiracy theory, only when Moslem participants perceived the Western people as highly threatening their Islamic identity. We discussed these findings in terms of theoretical and practical implications.


This study concentrates on Scandinavian (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish) hotel chains" globalization discussions and their opportunities to develop in Chinese hotel market. To find out how Chinese consumers perceived Scandinavia, their brand products and people, we adopted Country of Origin (COO) effect as the research approach in this study. We conducted an online survey in China, and collected 436 usable respondents, which were common consumers mainly from four metropolises. The results revealed that Chinese consumers had overall good impressions on Scandinavia. And they were generally positive to potential Scandinavian brand hotels in Chinese market. Chinese consumers who held more positive attitudes toward Scandinavian hotels would have greater behavioral intentions to them. Country of Origin Image directly affected Chinese consumers" attitudes toward Scandinavian brand hotels, while indirectly impacted on their further behavioral intentions, moderated by factors such as product beliefs evaluations, personal experience, face saving, group conformity and attitudes. Generalization is skeptical because findings may vary by regions and demographic backgrounds. In addition, the research model has its weaknesses and it is needed to be refined. As Chinese consumers welcome Scandinavian hotel chains, hotel brands in Scandinavia can seize the opportunities to expand in non-saturated Chinese mid-scale hotel market. This study is one of the first researches which aim to discuss Scandinavian hotel chains expansion in Chinese market, utilizing COO effect as study approach.


"The first casualty when war comes, is truth," said American Senator Hiram Johnson in 1917. In his gripping, now-classic history of war journalism, Phillip Knightley shows just how right Johnson was. From William Howard Russell, who described the appalling conditions of the Crimean War in the Times of London, to the ranks of reporters, photographers, and cameramen who captured the realities of war in Vietnam, The First Casualty tells a fascinating story of heroism and collusion, censorship and suppression. Since Vietnam, Knightley reveals, governments have become much more adept at managing the media, as highlighted in chapters on the Falklands War, the Gulf War, and the conflict between NATO and Serbia over Kosovo. And in a new chapter on the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Knightley details even greater degrees of government manipulation and media complicity, as evidenced by the "embedding" of reporters in military units and the uncritical, openly patriotic coverage of these conflicts. "The age of the war correspondent as hero," he concludes, "appears to be over." Fully updated, The First Casualty remains required reading for anyone concerned about freedom of the press, journalistic responsibility, and the nature of modern warfare.