The purpose is to evaluate the effectiveness of stimulation of delivery in first mature age period of pregnant women mechanically in different somatotypes. Materials and Methods: 658 patients at 38-41 weeks of gestation of the first period of mature age (22-35 years) have been considered. Differentiation by somatotypes has been performed by the method of HT Kaarma (1991). All patients of each somatotype have been divided into primiparous (n = 402) and multiparous (n = 256). Preparation for delivery by mechanical means: on the 1 st day it was introduced into the cervical canal for 16 hours, on the 2nd day — Foley catheter for 8-16 hours (before the birth). Results: In multiparous women the application of mechanical preparation of the birth canal has been effective regardless of somatotype. The percentage of operative delivery in mechanical induction has been lower in multiparous women and also not related to somatotype. In iparous women of asthenic and normosthenic type greater efficiency of mechanical induction in preparation for delivery has been revealed. In asthenic and pyknictype mechanical induction has been inefficient and therefore has not been recommended for the use. Conclusion: Application of mechanical means of stimulation of delivery in iparous pregnant women should be performed according to their somatotype.


Contemporary artists such as Ghada Amer and Clare Twomey have gained international reputations for work that transforms ordinary craft media and processes into extraordinary conceptual art, from Amer's monumental stitched paintings to Twomey's large, ceramics-based installations. Despite the amount of attention that curators and gallery owners have paid to these and many other conceptual artists who incorporate craft into their work, few art critics or scholars have explored the historical or conceptual significance of craft in contemporary art. Extra/Ordinary takes up that task. Reflecting on what craft has come to mean in recent decades, artists, critics, curators, and scholars develop theories of craft in relation to art, chronicle how fine-art institutions understand and exhibit craft media, and offer accounts of activist crafting, or craftivism. Some contributors describe generational and institutional changes under way, while others signal new directions for scholarship, considering craft in relation to queer theory, masculinity, and science. Encompassing quilts, ceramics, letterpress books, wallpaper, and textiles, and moving from well-known museums to home workshops and political protests, Extra/Ordinary is an eclectic introduction to the "craft culture" referenced and celebrated by artists promoting new ways of thinking about the role of craft in contemporary art.

Contributors . Elissa Auther, Anthea Black, Betty Bright, Nicole Burisch, Maria Elena Buszek, Jo Dahn, M. Anna Fariello, Betsy Greer, Andrew Jackson, Janis Jefferies, Louise Mazanti, Paula Owen, Karin E. Peterson, Lacey Jane Roberts, Kirsty Robertson, Dennis Stevens, Margaret Wertheim


This volume addresses the question of migration in Europe. It is concerned with the extent to which racism and anti-immigration discourse has been to some extent normalised and 'democratised' in European and national political discourses. Mainstream political parties are espousing increasingly coercive policies and frequently attempting to legitimate such approaches via nationalist-populist slogans and coded forms of racism. Identity, Belonging and Migration shows that that liberalism is not enough to oppose the disparate and diffuse xenophobia and racism faced by many migrants today and calls for new conceptions of anti-racism within and beyond the state. The book is divided into three parts and organised around a theoretical framework for understanding migration, belonging, and exclusion, which is subsequently developed through discussions of state and structural discrimination as well as a series of thematic case studies. In drawing on a range of rich and original data, this timely volume makes an important contribution to discussions on migration in Europe.


From Sadness and Happiness: Poems by Robert Pinsky: CEREMONY FOR ANY BEGINNING Robert Pinsky ? Against weather, and the random Harpies--mood, circumstance, the laws Of biography, chance, physics-- The unseasonable soul holds forth, Eager for form as a renowned Pedant, the emperor's man of worth, Hereditary arbiter of manners. Soul, one's life is one's enemy. As the small children learn, what happens Takes over, and what you were goes away. They learn it in sardonic soft Comments of the weather, when it sharpens The hard surfaces of daylight: light Winds, vague in direction, like blades Lavishing their brilliant strokes All over a wrecked house, The nude wallpaper and the brute Intelligence of the torn pipes. Therefore when you marry or build Pray to be untrue to the plain Dominance of your own weather, how it keeps Going even in the woods when not A soul is there, and how it implies Always that separate, cold Splendidness, uncouth and unkind-- On chilly, unclouded mornings, Torrential sunlight and moist air, Leafage and solid bark breathing the mist.


Meta data types for providing business rules are described. These business rules form part of the knowledge base of an organisation. The integration of knowledge with data and information is discussed. FORM, a natural language based, conceptual modelling technique is used to describe the meta data types. XML has been recognised by many in the industry as the preferred data interchange language. XML is currently being used to interchange data and its schema. The use of XML to interchange rules is being investigated, in this paper. This will enable organisations to interchange business rules and their meta data, in addition to data and their schema. Such business rules can be interpreted and applied by the receiving systems, thus providing a basis for intelligent behavior when dealing with information being interchanged


Background : Lyme disease is the most commonly reported vector-borne illness in the United States. The disease is caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi and is transmitted to humans through the bite of infected ticks. Typical symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue, a skin rash, and joint pain. If left untreated, infection can spread to the joints, heart, and nervous system, resulting in inflammation and long-term symptoms that include arthritis and/or intermittent pain in joints and muscles, facial palsy, cardiovascular abnormalities and cognitive disturbances. Recent research suggests that late-stage Lyme disease may be a result of malfunctioning immune function. AHCC O is a natural immune modulating compound derived from a unique fraction of special cultured medicinal mushroom mycelia. Previous studies have also suggested that AHCC O exhibits preventive effect against a wide range of infections caused by MRSA, influenza and West Nile virus. The effect of AHCC O supplementation on Lyme disease patients was evaluated in the current study. Methods : In a pilot open-label study, 12 Lyme disease patients were administered 3 grams of AHCC O daily for 8 weeks. Before commencement of the administration and after 4 and 8 weeks, the effects of AHCC O were evaluated clinically based on symptoms, serum antibodies to pathogens, inflammatory activity and serum immunological parameters. Patients completed questionnaires pertaining to Qualify of Life parameters. Results : After 8 weeks of AHCC O administration, AHCC O ameliorated flu-like symptoms and manifestations in the eye, joint, muscle, nervous system and cardiovascular system. In addition, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, an index as inflammation and serum interleukin-8 was significantly decreased. Conclusion: This study provides preliminary evidence that AHCC O may be effective in treating patients with Lyme disease.


A total of 190 drawings were analyzed to identify stereotypical beliefs presented by graduate students working towards licensure and to explore a pedagological intervention of utilizing drawings to enhance student awareness of stereotypes and biases. Results indicated that students assumed a caretaking role for mothers more often than fathers and also operated with the belief that Latino/a people are less affluent than White people. Stereotypical portrayals were also seen in the drawings related to an Arab person. Implications of these findings and recommendations for instructors of courses related to multicultural competency are presented. Key words: Awareness, multicultural competency, awareness exercises, stereotypes. ********** There are many issues involved in counselors understanding their clients' viewpoints, but an important and central part is understanding their clients' cultural backgrounds, especially if these differ from the counselor's own cultural background (e.g., Helms, 1990; Helms & Cook, 1999, Pedersen, 2000, Sue et. al., 1998). Understanding the many, varied cultures that co-exist in today's world and how they might impact on clients' lives is the idea behind multicultural education and competency. Multicultural education is important because of the increasing diversification of cultures in today's world and because it is associated with more positive outcomes in counseling (Griner & Smith, 2006). A high level of multicultural competency reduces the chance that counselors will act on their biases or prejudices and display discriminatory behavior toward their clients. Three stages encompass education related to multicultural competency: awareness, knowledge, and skills (Pedersen, 2000). The first stage, awareness, acts as a foundation for the subsequent stages. However, there is limited research in the current literature pertaining to multicultural awareness. As a result, this study examines drawings by graduate students to identify stereotypes and to investigate the method of drawing pictures as a way to increase awareness. Since the 1970's, there have been many calls for multicultural awareness and education in an attempt to help counselors and psychologists to be multiculturalists (Sue, Arredondo & McDavis, 1992). One of the earliest calls for multicultural awareness was by Vontress (1971) who stated that counselors should be aware of the "racial feelings and attitudes" that they hold because those feelings and attitudes can negatively impact counseling, especially in the establishment of rapport with the client (p. 9). Since then, several others, as well as professional associations in counseling and psychology encouraged, promoted, and facilitated multicultural competency training (Abreu, Chung, & Atkinson, 2000; Sue, Arredondo, & McDavis, 1992). Another reason for the need for multicultural awareness is that the demographic characteristics of the United States are becoming increasingly diverse (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005). The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that by the year 2050, people of color will constitute a majority of the population (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001). As diverse populations increase in number, a corresponding amount of multiculturally trained counselors will be needed to provide effective mental health services for them. However, since counselors often come from an ethnocentric, monocultural background, they will interact with clients from that perspective and devise guidance and solutions for clients based on those ethnocentric, monocultural beliefs. Therefore, the use of awareness methods to develop multicultural competencies is needed for counselors to overcome their ethnocentric biases and be ethical and culturally responsive in their counseling interactions (Arredondo & Toporek, 2004; Brown, 1999; Sue & Sue, 1999). Multicultural competency education is a three-stage process involving the development of awareness, knowledge, and skills. …


Chardonnay is a neutral grape variety offering a diversity of wine styles that are popular among consumers. The links between wine production methods and Chardonnay wine volatile composition, as determinants of quality, require further elucidation. Over 80 commercial Australian Chardonnay wines were assessed by expert panelists who were asked to define four distinct levels of quality in a blind tasting. Wine aroma volatiles in each wine were analyzed by solid-phase microextraction-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, and multivariate statistical techniques were used to examine the relationship between volatile composition and quality as defined by the experts. Of 39 aroma compounds quantified, nine volatiles (including cis- and trans-oak lactones, furfural, and diethyl succinate) correlated significantly and positively with Chardonnay wine quality, while 11 volatiles (including fruity esters and monoterpenoids) correlated negatively. Compounds associated with oak contact and malolactic fermentation were present at highest concentrations in higher-quality wines as perceived by wine experts. Lower scores were assigned to younger but less complex wines, which were richer in fruity esters and other grape-derived compounds. A model was developed using partial least squares regression based on these results, which permitted classification of the Chardonnay wines into high-, medium-, and low-quality brackets depending on their relative concentrations of cis- and trans-oak lactone, ethyl lactate, and 2-methyl-1-propanol (positive) and of 1-propanol and 1-hexanol (negative). There was a significant and positive correlation (r = 0.469, p <0.0001) between retail price and quality score, underlying the usefulness of price as an indicator of quality, although it failed to entirely explain quality (as judged by experts) and should therefore be used in conjunction with other quality cues.


Lynette Yiadom-Boakye's oil paintings focus on fictional figures that exist outside of specific times and places. In an interview with Nadine Rubin Nathan in the New York Times Magazine, Yiadom-Boakye described her compositions as "suggestions of people. . . . They don't share our concerns or anxieties. They are somewhere else altogether." This lack of a fixed narrative leaves her work open to the projected imagination of the viewer. Her paintings are rooted in traditional formal considerations such as line, color, and scale, and can be self-reflexive about the medium itself, but the subjects and the way in which the paint is handled is decidedly contemporary. Her predominantly black cast of characters often attracts attention. In an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist in Kaleidoscope, she explained "People are tempted to politicize the fact that I paint black figures, and the complexity of this is an essential part of the work. But my starting point is always the language of painting itself and how that relates to the subject matter." Yiadom-Boakye was born in 1977 in London, where she is currently based. She attended Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, Falmouth College of Arts, and the Royal Academy Schools. She is the 2018 recipient of the Carnegie Prize, awarded for her contribution to the Carnegie International, 57th Edition. She was shortlisted for the 2013 Turner Prize. Yiadom-Boakye has had many important solo museum shows, including an upcoming exhibition that will open at Tate Britain in London in 2020 that will travel to Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain. Most recently, her work was included in the inaugural Ghanaian pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and she had a solo exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art as part of the Hilton Als series. She is included in numerous institutional collections, ranging from the Tate Collection in London to The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Within the past two years, her work has been added to the permanent collections of the Art Gallery Museum of Southern Australia, Adelaide; the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the Dallas Museum of Art; the Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; the Minneapolis Institute of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Yale Center for British Art, Connecticut. Jack Shainman Gallery has represented Yiadom-Boakye since 2010 when she had her first solo show entitled Essays and Documents. Her most recent show with the gallery was In Lieu of a Louder Love in January 2019. Website: https://jackshainman.com/ artists/lynette_yiadom_boakye


Background activities on mobile devices can cause significant battery drain with little visibility or recourse to the user. They can range from useful but sometimes overly aggressive tasks, such as polling for messages or updates from sensors and online services, to outright bugs that cause resources to be held unnecessarily. In this paper we instrument the Android OS to characterize background activities that prevent the device from sleeping. We present TAMER, an OS mechanism that interposes on events and signals that cause task wakeups, and allows for their detailed monitoring, filtering, and rate-limiting. We demonstrate how TAMER can help reduce battery drain in scenarios involving popular Android apps with background tasks. We also show how TAMER can mitigate the effects of well-known energy bugs while maintaining most of the apps' functionality. Finally, we elaborate on how developers and users can devise their own application-control policies for TAMER to maximize battery lifetime.


The capability of Time of Flight–Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (ToF‐SIMS) of analysing molecular archaeal biomarkers in geobiological samples was tested and demonstrated. Using a bismuth cluster primary ion source, isopranyl glycerol di‐ and tetraether core lipids were detected in small amounts of total organic extracts from methanotrophic microbial mats, simultaneously and without further chemical treatment and chromatographic separation. ToF‐SIMS was also employed to track the distribution of fossilized ether lipids in a massive carbonate (aragonite) microbialite that precipitated as a result of the microbial anaerobic oxidation of methane. An unambiguous signal was obtained when analysing a freshly broken rock surface (base of a microdrill core). Though some limitation occurred due to µm‐topographical effects (sample roughness), it was possible to display the abundance of high molecular weight (C86) of tetraethers exposed in particular regions of the rock surface. 'Molecular mapping' revealed that a part of these molecules was encased within the rock fabric in a cluster‐like distribution that might trace the arrangement of the calcifying microbial colonies in the once active mat system. The results reveal promising perspectives of ToF‐SIMS for (i) the quasi‐nondestructive analysis of lipids in extremely small geobiological samples at low concentrations; (ii) resolving the spatial distribution of these compounds on a µm2‐ to cm2‐scale; and (iii) the more exact assignment of lipid biomarkers to their biological source.


In this paper, we investigate model checking algorithms for variants of strategy logic over pushdown multi-agent systems, modeled by pushdown game structures (PGSs). We consider various fragments of strategy logic, i.e., SL[CG], SL[DG], SL[1G] and BSIL. We show that the model checking problems on PGSs for SL[CG], SL[DG] and SL[1G] are 3EXTIME-complete, which are not harder than the problem for the subsumed logic ATL*. When BSIL is concerned, the model checking problem becomes 2EXPTIME-complete. Our algorithms are automata-theoretic and based on the saturation technique, which are amenable to implementations.


During copulation, male redback spiders (Latrodectus hasselti: Theridiidae) position themselves above the female's jaws. This apparent male complicity in sexual cannibalism is favored by sexual selection because cannibalized spiders receive two paternity advantages. First, cannibalized males copulated longer and fertilized more eggs than those that survived copulation. Second, females were more likely to reject subsequent suitors after consuming their first mate. These results represent empirical evidence for male copulatory suicide as an adaptive behavior.


In this article, we first introduce the notion of a {\it continuous cover} of a manifold parametrised by any compact manifold endowed with a mass 1 volume-form. We prove that any such cover admits a partition of unity where the usual sum is replaced by integrals. We then generalize Polterovich's notion of Poisson non-commutativity to such a context in order to get a richer definition of non-commutativity and to be in a position where one can compare various invariants of symplectic manifolds, for instance the relation between critical values of phase transitions of symplectic balls and eventual critical values of the Poisson non-commutativity. Our first main theorem states that our generalisation of Poisson non-commutativity depends only on real one-parameter spaces since intuitively the Hilbert curve in any high dimensional parameter space fills out the entire manifold and preserves the measure. Our second main theorem states that the Poisson non-commutativity is a (not necessarily strictly) decreasing function of the size of the symplectic balls used to cover continuously any given symplectic manifold. This function has other nice properties as well that do not prevent it from undergoing singularities similar to phase transitions.


The past decades have seen an unmatched advancement of semiconductor industry. The constant need to improve the performances of solid-state devices has driven the research toward the study and fabrication of faster devices/circuits.
Nevertheless, the demand for reduced parasitics necessary to guarantee improved (with respect to previous generation devices) performances has forced researchers to adopt increasingly aggressive isolation schemes (i.e., silicon-on-glass technology).
The major drawback of aggressive isolation schemes is connected to the fact that most of the good electrical insulators are also characterized by a low thermal conductivity that can deteriorate the thermal path and may impose a limit on the current density for high speed devices. Thermal problems can also arise because of the particular semiconductor material used. During the past years there was a rapid ascent in the use of innovative materials like III-V compound semiconductors (like GaAs, InP, GaN etc...). These materials have been introduced to replace silicon because of the better performances from an electrical point of view. However, they often present worse thermal properties; GaAs, for example, has a thermal conductivity equal to a third of that of silicon. Moreover, the continuous request of integrating even more features in a single chip and the consequent miniaturization of the single device (an aggressive scaling) contribute to the power density increase. Nowadays, the power density of a commercial processor is comparable to the one of a nuclear reactor.
Modern - even low-power - electronic devices/circuit can suffer from electrothermal effects at the point that these can hamper the reliability and performances. In this thesis, an approach to the analysis of solid-state devices ranging from simulations to measurements has been proposed with the aim to optimize thermal behavior at device level.
For this purpose an advanced software has been conceived to automatically run detailed 3-D FEM simulations using layout and technology data. This software can be extensively used to deepen the comprehension of thermal issues in solid-state devices and to understand the influence of the main technology and layout parameters on devices/circuits electrothermal behavior. In particular, is has been successfully applied to analyze a large variety of technologies, namely, SOG BJTs, GaAs HBTs, GaN HEMTs, SiGe HBTs, and UTCS technology devices, thus favoring the definition of useful guide-lines to improve their thermal management.
Moreover,an effective equivalent network identification tool has been developed to extract network data from thermal transients with modeling and analysis purposes. A novel compact thermal model has been proposed in order to reduce the simulation complexity still maintaining a good level of accuracy has been successfully demonstrated.
Furthermore, a novel thermal resistance DC measurement technique has been proposed, which enables and accurate evaluation of thermal resistance of bipolar junction transistors regardless of the presence of Early effect.
An electrothermal tool has been developed, which is based on the improvement of commercial circuit simulators. All the relevant physical effects, as well as self-heating and thermal coupling mechanisms are included, so as to guarantee an accurate prediction of the safe operating area borders of the analyzed devices.
As a result, the tool can be successfully employed to support the design stage so as to improve the thermal ruggedness of the transistors of interest.


Materials and methods: 53 clubfeet in 34 infants with a mean age of 2.43 ± 1.97 months were examined clinically using Pirani score. Sonographic examination was done in medial, lateral and posterior projection in affected feet. The sonographic parameters measured were: Medial Malleolar Navicular distance (MMN), Calcaneo-cuboid angle (CC angle) and Tibio-calcaneal distance (TC). Treatment was done with Ponseti method of serial manipulation and casting. Weekly assessment was done clinically by Pirani scoring and various Ultrasonographic parameters. Pirani score were correlated with Ultrasonographic parameters.


In the last 25 years academic research in The Netherlands has seen a rise of excellence oriented research policy instruments. These excellence funding schemes aim to selectively support high-performing and high-potential individuals or organizations, in order to increase differentiation within the science system. The Netherlands is not the only western country that has witnessed a rise of excellence funding instruments. Almost all OECD countries have implemented policies to foster research excellence (OECD 2014). In Scandinavian countries excellent collaborating groups of re-searchers are funded in Centers of Excellence. In Germany, the Exzellenzinitiative was introduced as new funding scheme for the best universities, research clusters and research schools. At the European level the European Research Council (ERC) has implemented several excellence grants since 2007. So far, scholars have identified a number of effects of excellence policies at the institutional level or the science system level (Langfeldt et al. 2015; Borlaug 2015), or have focused on the effects of one specific policy instrument (European Research Council 2012). However, there is limited under-standing of the effects of combined excellence policies on the organization and production of knowledge at group level. This paper aims to fill that gap. It builds on our previous analysis of the influence of excellence policies on excellent groups (Hessels et al. 2016), i.e. groups that have ac-cumulated excellence funding. In this paper we complement this analysis with an analysis of the effects of excellence policies on research groups that have not acquired excellence funding, and it deepens our understanding of the effects of excellence policies considerably. Excellence policies are affecting research within academic institutions. Academic careers are in-creasingly dependent on a researcher's success in the excellence funding schemes (Van Arensber-gen 2014). The tendency to quantify the notion of excellence has led to research evaluation practic-es based on criteria such as the number of published articles, the journal impact factor, the number of citations and the amount of grants received (O'Connor & O'Hagan 2015)). Furthermore, the tem-poral character of excellence funding favors a project based organization of performing research, and research institutions adjust their allocation models to stimulate researchers to attract external funding (Koier et al. 2016). The authors of the EURECIA-report on the effects of the ERC conclude that the grant scheme has impact on the research of a grantee, on the symbolic capital and the ca-reer (European Research Council 2012). Scholars have expressed a number of concerns about the fundamental ideas underlying the excel-lence policies, i.e. creating differentiation in the science system through competition and selection. They argue that excellence policies may create a system where the 'winner takes all', that the focus on competition may hinder cooperation (Muller 2014), or that the quality of education and broader impact recede into the background (Stilgoe 2014). In our paper we focus on the practices of researchers and research groups and we analyze the in-terplay between excellence funding and institutional policies on the one hand and academic research practices on the other. More specifically we explore the consequences of excellence policies for a broad range of research groups: from those that have gathered a number of excellence grants and prizes, to those that lack this type of finance at all. Further, we study the effects of excellence poli-cies and excellence funding on the relationships between research groups and their institutional con-text. Finally, we explore the influence of excellence funding on epistemic choices of researchers. We conceptualise the research practices of research groups in terms of the 'credibility cycle' as introduced by Latour and Woolgar (1986). This quasi-economic model explains the behavior of indi-vidual scientists by their need for credibility. We translate this model to the group level and explore the effects of excellence funding on the incentives and rewards structuring the work of an academic research group. The original credibility cycle is concerned with gaining credit within a community of peers. We add an institutional aspect since multiple elements of the cycle (recognition, money, staff and equipment) can also be influenced by the research institution of a research group. We performed an analysis of sixteen research groups at Dutch academic institutions. Four of these research groups were identified as 'excellent'. They have shown the ability to collect large amounts of excellence funding from governmental funding bodies on the basis of their 'excellent' reputation and high-quality research proposals. We studied the four excellent research groups in detail by car-rying out approximately ten interviews per group supplemented by a document analysis (self-evaluations, policy documents, financial accounts, etc.). The results of the four excellent research groups are then compared to interviews with twelve group leaders of 'non-excellent research groups', again supplemented by a document analysis. Non-excellent groups are, in this paper, de-fined as groups that have not collected (large amounts of) excellence funding, regardless of the reasons for this situation and regardless of their academic quality. The sixteen cases were selected, in addition to their status as 'excellent' or 'non-excellent', by using two dimensions: the degree of strategic task uncertainty (Whitley, 1984) and the degree of collabo-ration. We expect these dimensions to influence the interplay between excellence funding and aca-demic research practices. For every resulting quadrant we selected four cases: one excellent re-search group and three non-excellent research groups. This enabled us to make a systematic com-parison between research groups within each quadrant. We observe that the concept of excellence and the excellence policies are ever present in the re-search practices of both excellent and non-excellent groups. Every group needs to relate to and take part in the 'game' for excellence and excellence funding. Some non-excellent groups are con-nected to excellence policies only through the institutional pressure they feel to (reluctantly) take part in the competition for excellence funding. Some excellent groups, on the other hand, associate strongly with the excellence policy. Other groups are positioned somewhere in between. We have seen no group that could operate completely isolated from the excellence policies. Furthermore, excellent groups experience more autonomy than their non-excellent counterparts in deciding on their staff, their budget and research topics. The non-excellent groups have less lever-age in the negotiations with their organizational superiors. The external recognition that comes with obtaining excellence funds is important for internal (institutional) recognition and autonomy. We further observe an epistemic relation between types of funding and research practices. Since the room for funding research questions through direct block funding is strongly diminished, external funding is a necessary condition to start new research projects. Of all available external funding options, the excellence funding schemes tend to give the grantees the most space to follow their own research interests. Other external (non-excellence) funding possibilities are more restraining in terms of deliverables, accountability, social relevance and arrangements with (international) consor-tia. This may explain why non-excellent groups feel more restrained in their choice of research topics and adjust their research agenda to diverse funding organizations, whereas excellent groups experi-ence more autonomy to set their own agenda.


The head of a socket spanner made of heat-treated 0.40C-0.34Cr steel cracked in service. The pronounced fibrous structure of the component became evident as soon as it was etched with 2% nital. Folds in the material originating from the shaping process were visible, and the micrograph showed that cracks ran along these folds oriented according to the fiber. The fissures, with the exception of the hardening crack, were partly filled with oxide and showed signs of decarburization at the edges. From this it could be assumed that parts of the external skin had been forced into the folds during forging. This evidence supported the conclusion that even through there was some indication of chemical segregation, the folds made during forging initiated the main crack. Furthermore, even if the steel had been more homogeneous, hardening cracks would probably have been promoted by the coarse fissures at the fold zones.


Exploring the Effects of Depression and Physical Activity on Pattern Separation Performance Michelle I. Nash Department of Psychology, BYU Doctor of Philosophy Cognitive performance declines in depression and increases with physical activity. These changes may in part be due to changes in the level of neurogenesis (the generation and survival of adult-born neurons), which decreases with depression and increases with physical activity. Pattern separation (the formation of distinct neural representations of incoming information through orthogonalizing similar patterns of activation) has also been linked to neurogenesis. This project explores pattern separation within these two populations through three experiments. Experiment 1. Previous research has found impaired pattern separation among individuals with higher depression scores, but who have not been diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). This experiment sought to expand these findings and evaluated behavioral differences during the performance of a continuous recognition pattern separation task among women with MDD and ageand education-matched controls. It was hypothesized that clinically depressed participants would have lower pattern separation scores and would be more likely to incorrectly identify lure stimuli as "old". Contrary to this prediction, clinically depressed participants had higher pattern separation scores, while controls were more likely to misidentify lure items as "old". Experiment 2. While there are many known benefits of regular physical activity, the majority of individuals in the United States do not engage in the recommended levels of fitness training. Furthermore, there have only been a limited number of studies evaluating the effect physical activity may have on cognitive abilities and neurological components and none have evaluated what effect the recommended levels of fitness may have on these areas. The second experiment evaluated differences between individuals with varying levels of physical activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during the performance of a continuous recognition pattern separation task. It was hypothesized that participants with self-reported higher levels of physical activity would have greater activation in the CA3/dentate gyrus subregions of the hippocampus than those with lower fitness levels and sedentary individuals. Surprisingly, there were no activation differences across groups. Experiment 3. The final experiment explored diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) differences in physical activity levels with the same sample used in Experiment 2. It was hypothesized that participants with self-reported higher levels of physical activity would have indications of increased white matter integrity compared to those with lower fitness levels and sedentary individuals. There were significant differences across groups in DTI measures of white matter integrity (axial diffusivity or AD) in bilateral cingulum, the left temporal middle gyrus, and the right uncinate fasciculus.


Foraminifera are an ecologically important group of modern heterotrophic amoeboid eukaryotes whose naked and testate ancestors are thought to have evolved ∼1 Ga ago. However, the single-chambered agglutinated tests of these protists appear in the fossil record only after ca. 580 Ma, coinciding with the appearance of macroscopic and mineralized animals. Here we report the discovery of small, slender tubular microfossils in the Sturtian (ca. 716–635 Ma) cap carbonate of the Rasthof Formation in Namibia. The tubes are 200–1300 μm long and 20–70 μm wide, and preserve apertures and variably wide lumens, folds, constrictions, and ridges. Their sometimes flexible walls are composed of carbonaceous material and detrital minerals. This combination of morphologic and compositional characters is also present in some species of modern single-chambered agglutinated tubular foraminiferans, and is not found in other agglutinated eukaryotes. The preservation of possible early Foraminifera in the carbonate rocks deposited in the immediate aftermath of Sturtian low-latitude glaciation indicates that various morphologically modern protists thrived in microbially dominated ecosystems, and contributed to the cycling of carbon in Neoproterozoic oceans much before the rise of complex animals.


The particle gun provides a valuable method to investigate powder stickiness properties. This method gives reproducible results when used under constant testing conditions and allows the isolation of factors influencing stickiness behaviour such as velocity and angle of impact. The (T-Tg)criticaI and rate of stickiness development obtained from the particle gun method were functions of the air velocity, angle of impact, powder aw and ambient air conditions. Under constant testing conditions (feed rate of0.3 g.s-, air velocity of20 m.s-', ambient air at < 50 %RH, room temperature and constant powder aw (T-Tg)critical was reproducible within ± 0 .8°C while the rate of stickiness development was reproducible within± 0.45 %deposition/°C. The results obtained from the particle gun were consistently higher than the fluid bed results and can be explained by the different impact time and force experienced by the particles. Particle gun results can successfully be used to predict blockages in cyclones provided the appropriate correction is made for particle impact force and time. Blockage data from Te Rapa 05 indicates that the critical T-Tg where blockages occur in the cyclones is 27°C for SMP. Currently 05 is running satisfactorily for SMP at a T-Tg value of28°C. Under these operation conditions the cyclone wall temperature results in a T-Tg value of 33°C, the same (T-Tg)criticaI value predicted by the particle gun for standardised SMP. This implies that the cyclone is operating correctly at the maximum T-Tg value before particles become sticky enough to cause blockage problems. Protein standardisation of milk powder via the addition of milk permeate or lactose solution had no detectable effect on the stickiness characteristics of SMP or WMP as measured by the particle gun or the fluid bed rig. No difference was seen in either the bulk or surface composition of the milk powder. This provides evidence to dispel speculation by operators that permeate standardisation produces a more difficult to handle


This dissertation gives a new perspective on the language of the Internet in the 21 ... rif"; font-size: 8pt">st century. In previous CMC studies this language stood for a system of signs employed for communication by means of information transmission from screen to a user. In most cases, this system was presented in the form of a written text, i.e. the term �language of the Internet� was limited only to its textual component. However, given the rise and development of Internet technologies in new millennium, I claim that �language of the Internet� is not only about words used during online communication, it is also about the flow of this communication. Being invisible, non-physical substance, this process occurs mostly at unconscious level, and up to these days, it was (and it is) part of Human-Computer Interaction, mainly, usability studies, which focus on the ease of information retrieval from a website as part of its pre-launch testing.

This dissertation proposes to extend the notion of �language of the Internet� that has overstepped its textual limits and comprises a broader meaning in the context of modern Internet technologies. This evolution of language on the Internet is demonstrated using Barack Obama�s presidential governing online. The choice is caused by his revolutionary election campaign in 2008 that converted him into �the first Internet President� of the United States. As Greengard, (2009) puts it: �Barack Obama�s presidential campaign utilized the Internet and information technology unlike any previous political campaign. How politicians and the public interact will never be the same� (p. 16). Thus, the main aim of this thesis is to give a description of Barack Obama�s presidential governing online from two different perspectives: Human-Computer Interaction and Corpus Linguistics, and their combination is claimed to form Obama�s discourse online. For the attainment of this goal, the thesis addresses the following main objectives:

1. To analyze and describe the structure, information distribution and its retrieval from Barack Obama�s official website Organizing for America.

2. To analyze and describe Barack Obama�s online language through the analysis of his main rhetorical appeals and deictic references on Twitter platform.

The first objective is achieved using Human-Computer Interaction theoretical background. The dissertation does not attempt to give a profound technical analysis of Obama�s website neither it is aimed at comparing it with another site; rather, the purpose to study Obama�s website is merely to demonstrate the other facet of language of the Internet. The dissertation analyzes how the text is distributed on a visually framework (the static approach) along with its hyperlink organization (the dynamic approach). In doing so, I believe we can understand better how the online discourse is structured. To discover whether this structure is effective, the dissertation has adopted a method inspired in Web Design and Computer Sciences which consists of experimentation in usability testing, both in a qualitative and quantitative measurement. On the one hand, I have applied a usability test in which potential users of Obama�s site have given their impressions in what I consider a qualitative approach to the study. On the other hand, I have measured the users� moves throughout the different hyperlinks in the site to discover whether specific informationoriented tasks could be accomplished in a more or less effectively way. This is what I consider a quantitative approach to analyzing the information distribution on the site. The qualitative approach will give us good insight into user�s acceptability and good reception of the information conveyed on the webpage. The quantitative approach will give us optimal understanding on how fluent the communication between the sender (Obama�s office, in this case) and the receiver (the citizenship) is proved to be.

The second objective is achieved using Corpus Linguistics techniques such as semantic tagging of the corpus, compilation of its wordlist, concordance lists for the selected nodes, and statistical analysis of the corpus. The combination of these components will result in a new, revised notion of �language of the Internet� using political domain as an experimental instrument. In Chapter 3, a detailed presentation of the materials and methods is offered, together with the specific objectives, namely, rhetorical space and deixis. The main idea behind the study is to know, first, about the topics Barack Obama talks about. Then, the analysis of the deictic elements (we vs. they, here vs. there, this vs. that, these vs. those, now vs. then; etc.) will give us a good insight in how he delivers those topics to the public.

The recurrent framework along the dissertation will be space and time, contents and how these contents are presented, both visually on a web page, and in the discourse themselves. I will make reference to inclusive and exclusive language, structure of information and will finally give a deep discussion on how language on the Internet becomes more than just a collection of words to be complemented by visual elements, interaction in time and organization at the visual level.

A full description of the methods, results and discussion is offered in the following sections.

Thus, it is claimed that the Internet language of new millennium is treated as a tandem of linguistic and technological components which are closely interconnected and perceived as a single whole. The question under discussion now is not what spelling/grammar features characterize language used online; rather, the intention is to suggest a new approach to the notion of language of the Internet through its use by Barack Obama on his website and Twitter platform as far as it is possible. This is what the following thesis is about.


Received: March 2017, Accepted: May 2017 Background: Emotion plays an important role in adapting to life changes and stressful events. Difficulty regulating emotions is one of the problems drug abusers often face. The present study aimed to determine the effectiveness of emotion regulation training on increasing self-efficacy and well-being in drug-dependent individuals. Materials and Methods: The present study had a quasi-experimental design wherein pretest-posttest evaluations were applied using a control group and follow-up. The population was all substance abusers who referred to the Mehrvarzan addiction treatment clinic of Rafsanjan, Iran, in 2015. The statistical sample was composed of 30 available members. Results: The results showed that the emotion regulation training has significant effectiveness in increasing self-efficacy and well-being in substance abusers. The effectiveness of the training on increasing well-being was persistent in the follow-up period, but increasing self-efficacy was not persistent. Thirty substance-dependent individuals were selected and then randomly assigned to the experiment and control groups. The experiment group received its training in eight 1.5-hour sessions. Analysis of variance with repeated measures was used to analyze the data. There was significant increase in self-efficacy (P < 0.01) and well-being (P < 0.01) after emotion regulation training. Conclusions: Self-efficacy and well-being in drug-dependent individuals of this study were increased by emotion regulation training. We may conclude that the emotion regulation training can be applied alongside other therapies to treat drug abusers in addiction treatment clinic.


Central banks in the developed world are being misled into fighting the perceived dangers of a 'deflationary spiral' because they are looking at only one indicator: consumer prices. This Policy Brief finds that while consumer prices are flat, broader price indices do not show any sign of impending deflation: the GDP deflator is increasing in the US, Japan and the euro area by about 1.2-1.5%. Nor is the real economy sending any deflationary signals either: unemployment is at record lows in the US and Japan, and is declining in the euro area while GDP growth is at, or above potential. Thus, the overall macroeconomic situation does not give any indication of an imminent deflationary spiral. In today's high-debt environment, the authors argue that central banks should be looking at the GDP deflator and the growth of nominal GDP, instead of CPI inflation. Nominal GDP growth, as forecasted by the major official institutions, remains robust and is in excess of nominal interest rates. They conclude that if the ECB were to set the interest rate according to the standard rules of thumb for monetary policy, which take into account both the real economy and price developments of broader price indicators, it would start normalising its policy now, instead of pondering over additional measures to fight deflation, which does not exist. In short, economic conditions are slowly normalising; so should monetary policy.


The aim of this study was to explore factors affecting the wellbeing of institutionalized orphaned children in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. A descriptive qualitative study was used to collect data from Tanzanian orphaned children receiving orphanage care. Purposive sampling was employed to select 10 orphanage centers from which 123 orphaned children were recruited. A semi-structured interview guide relevant to the study objectives was developed from the literature and was used to guide the focus group interviews. Data was analysed by way of thematic analysis. There were 76 male and 47 female orphans; orphans without one or both parents were 87 and 36 respectively. Seventy-eight orphans were in primary school and 45 orphans were in secondary education.  Study findings revealed that the orphanages provided a higher degree of material support compared to psychosocial support services, such as emotional or counselling assistance. The orphanage schedule needs to include time for caregivers and children to talk about their feelings regarding the type services provided at their center, in particular educational services.

 Key words: Support, psychosocial wellbeing, orphanages, Tanzania, children.


Objective Leptin has effects on growth and is also involved in immune regulation. We thought that with its intestinal histopathologic alterations due to immune mechanisms, and subsequent malnutrition and/or growth failure, celiac disease (CD) deserves interest regarding leptin status. Method Serum leptin levels of 19 children with CD on admission and 1 year after gluten-free diet (GFD) and of 16 healthy children were determined. Results Mean age was 9.7±3.3 years. Mean serum leptin level of children with CD on admission and of healthy children were 1.60±0.63 ng/mL, and 3.98±1.49 ng/mL, respectively (P: 0.0001). Mean serum leptin level under GFD was 4.55±1.97 ng/mL. There was a statistical significant difference between serum levels determined before and 1 year after GFD (P: 0.001) and between those of under GFD and healthy children (P: 0.001). Of 19 patients with CD, 10 (52.6%) showed Marsh IIIc, other 9 (47.4%) showed Marsh IIIa histologic lesions. Mean serum leptin level of children with Marsh IIIc and Marsh IIIa were not different (1.70±0.73 ng/mL vs. 1.45±0.59 ng/mL). Leptin was correlated with body mass index in healthy children, and in CD both before and after GFD (P<0.001). Mean lumbar z score of the patients on admission and after GFD were 2.7±1.3 and 1.9±0.8, respectively (P: 0.048). Serum leptin level was not correlated with lumbar z score either before or after GFD. Conclusions Serum leptin level is affected in childhood CD, it is not directly related to histopathologic findings, and is responsive to GFD. Further studies investigating its level in different clinical and histopathologic presentations might give clear clues about the role of leptin in CD.


This paper looks at variation in the expression of perfect meaning in Asian Englishes (Hong Kong, India, Singapore and the Philippines) as represented in the spoken component of the International Corpus of English. Findings confirm the existence of levelling between the present perfect and simple past in these varieties, and that the tendency of the present perfect to lose ground to the preterite is more pronounced in these New Englishes than in British English, especially in the expression of recent past. The occurrence of other variants in the corpus is accounted for in terms of the influence of the respective substrate languages, cognitive constraints characteristic of language-contact situations, pragmatic contextual factors such as the scant use of adverbial support, and, especially, diffusion from the input language, which is an earlier variety of spoken, non-standard English. Relevant intravarietal differences are also discussed and attributed to the different phases of development in which the four varieties currently find themselves.


Microcirculatory dysfunction plays a key role in the patho-physiology of various disease states. The microcirculation in the skin is in a rather complicated. With technical advances, microcirculatory monitoring nowadays becomes more and more available for application in clinical practice. The proposed cosmetic chip platform based on the photoplethysmography (PPG) is a simple and low-cost optical technique that can be used to detect blood volume changes in the micro-vascular bed of tissue.


The Web Application can easily be attacked by the hackers eventhough with the
existence of the normal firewall in the system. This is due to the limitation that the
normal firewall does not work in the application layer. The hackers will attack the Web
Application using the methods like Structured Query Language (SQL) Injection, Cross
Site Scripting (XSS), Command Injection, or Session Manipulation as the normal firewall
only open port 80 for Internet connection. Most of the Web Application Firewall is quite
costly. There are only few that can be operated under free license. The usage of
ModSecurity can solve the problem as it can be downloaded under GNU license. This
thesis is attempted to show the benefits of implementing ModSecurity and also the
reverse proxy server, instead of just implementing the conventional web server. The
penetration test is done to evaluate the performance of the server using this Web
Application Firewall. The results showed that ModSecurity and the Reverse Proxy
methods can improve the level of security for the web server by forbidding any intrusion
to take place through the Web Application. The impacts of the attacks had caused severe
damage to the server. The attacks also had congested the physical memory, CPU usage,
and CPU clock with or without ModSecurity.


ii I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. Abstract Internet commerce continues to grow rapidly. Over 60% of US households use the internet to shop online. A secure payment protocol is required to support this rapid growth. A new payment protocol was recently invented at IBM. We refer to the protocol as SPP or Secure Payment Protocol. This thesis presents a protocol analysis of SPP. It is essential that a thorough security analysis be done on any new payment protocol so that we can better understand its security properties. We first develop a method for analyzing payment protocols. This method includes a list of desirable security features and a list of proofs that should be satisfied. We then present the results of the analysis. These results validate that the protocol does contain many security features and properties. They also help understand the security properties and identify areas where the protocol can be further secured. This led us to extend the design of the protocol to enhance its security. This thesis also presents a prototype implementation of SPP. Three software components were implemented. They are the Electronic Wallet component, the merchant software component and the Trusted Third Party component. The architecture and technologies that are required for implementation are discussed. The prototype is then used in performance measurement experiments. Results on system performance as a function of key size are presented. Finally, this thesis presents an extension of SPP to support a two buyer scenario. In this scenario one buyer makes an order while another buyer makes the payment. This scenario enables additional commerce services. iv Acknowledgements I would like to thank my thesis supervisor, Dr. Johnny Wong for his insightful suggestions and recommendations and also for being one the co-inventors of the SPP protocol. I would also like to thank Professor Richard Holt and Professor Grant Weddell for their time to be the readers of my thesis. Thanks to Lev Mirlas, who provided guidance during the early stages of the thesis. He was also a co-inventor of the SPP protocol. This thesis would not have been possible without the support of my family. I would first like to thank my wife Natalie and my …


In recent years, human rights law clinics have mushroomed across the United States, specializing in work ranging from direct representation of asylum seekers in U.S. courts, to international litigation, to project-based advocacy of conducting fact-finding missions and producing reports documenting human rights violations throughout the world. At the same time, domestic poverty law clinics are increasingly framing some of their advocacy, which often takes the forms of direct legal services, community lawyering, and law reform, in terms of human rights. Critiques of international human rights lawyering often point to the imperialist narratives and victim essentializing that are often perpetuated in human rights lawyering. These critiques may apply with equal force to the international and domestic human rights arenas, including to the direct representation of vulnerable individuals experiencing human rights violations. Human rights clinical law professors often struggle alongside students to develop lawyering strategies and approaches that are responsive to those critiques yet still are effective in achieving the goals of clients - be they individuals, groups, or organizations.While these ethical, strategic, and pedagogic challenges may be novel for human rights clinicians, they are familiar terrain for many poverty lawyers who have long-struggled with similar challenges in the context of direct representation of poor, marginalized clients and engagement in law reform and impact advocacy efforts. Clinicians in other areas of social justice lawyering, particularly those working in the poverty law arena, have developed a rich body of scholarship in this area that has itself been influenced by the corpus of critical legal and social theory. As human rights and poverty law clinicians, we initially presented the core themes addressed in this article during a workshop we collectively led at the 2010 AALS Conference on Clinical Legal Education. Here, we seek to further develop these themes. We review the ways in which critical theory has been introduced to address these vexing questions concerning victim essentialization and othering in poverty and community development law clinics in the U.S., and then explore strategies for redefining human rights lawyering in a way that is responsive to critical theorists and that informs and expands our teaching, our advocacy, and our students' sense of what it means to be a human rights lawyer. In the process, we explore the changing role that human rights law and advocacy has come to play in social justice initiatives in the U.S.


This study presented a new data link layer design for the virtual bus architecture. The virtual bus is a hierarchical access network offered a broadcast capability for data and signaling. The proposed of the study is to support Quality of Service (QoS) in network. During study, the most promising technology capable of delivering full service access at high data rates is Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH)/Synchronous Optical Networking (SONET). For that reason, we develop SDH/SONET as a physical layer for the virtual bus network. The main goal of this investigation was to study the performance of transmission medium and the overall performance of the network. We exemplify a Multiple Access Protocol (MAP) with Generic Frame Procedure (GFP) for transmitting IP network protocol datagram over SDH/SONET. This is a novel method for transmitting MAP with GFP. The protocol adds multi-terminal access capability to an inherently point-to-point link. It enabled the design of seamless networking environments using SDH/SONET as the transmission medium for Metropolitan Area Network (MAN). The new frame mapping protocol is known as Virtual Bus Transport (VBT). The performance of multiple traffic generators in a virtual bus network is of major interest for mobile network provider. We used OMNeT simulation tool to evaluate the result. Through the simulation it proved that the VBT scheduling technique offers better treatment mainly to the higher Qos requirement traffic.


It is widely recognized that the Internet transport layer has become ossified, where further evolution has become hard or even impossible. This is a direct consequence of the ubiquitous deployment of middleboxes that hamper the deployment of new transports, aggravated further by the limited flexibility of the application programming interface (API) typically presented to applications. To tackle this problem, a wide range of solutions have been proposed in the literature, each aiming to address a particular aspect. Yet, no single proposal has emerged that is able to enable evolution of the transport layer. In this paper, after an overview of the main issues and reasons for transport-layer ossification, we survey proposed solutions and discuss their potential and limitations. The survey is divided into five parts, each covering a set of point solutions for a different facet of the problem space: 1) designing middlebox-proof transports; 2) signaling for facilitating middlebox traversal; 3) enhancing the API between the applications and the transport layer; 4) discovering and exploiting end-to-end capabilities; and 5) enabling user-space protocol stacks. Based on this analysis, we then identify further development needs toward an overall solution. We argue that the development of a comprehensive transport layer framework, able to facilitate the integration and cooperation of specialized solutions in an application-independent and flexible way, is a necessary step toward making the Internet transport architecture truly evolvable. To this end, we identify the requirements for such a framework and provide insights for its development.


The gold standard to judge the popularity and usefulness of any scientific branch is associated with the ongoing research activities in that branch. For the present day research works the utility of the statistics, statistical principles are very crucial and necessary. Considering the fundamental research aspect in Ayurveda there is a need to emphasize the various statistical principles that Ayurveda itself has adopted in various instances. Hence, the reliable and valid information reaches the public in the systematic, unbiased, simple manner and people of all degree of intelligence will understand the Data/ information. Collection, classification, presentation, analysis and interpretation of the Data and correlation concepts in statistics will be taken into consideration and they will be related with the concepts, instances mentioned in Ayurvedic authoritative textbooks like Charaka Samhita , Sushruta Samhita , and Ashtanga Hrudaya hence proving the essence of Statistics in Ayurveda . Collecting information regarding plants from tribal people, Classification of Prakruti into Vatala , Pittala, Sleshmala , presenting the chapters, whole Samhita in the systematic manner, comments and various opinions of commentators and final concluding part of the each chapter, debate can be related to collection, classification, presentation, analysis and interpretation of the Data respectively. The concept of measurement of Anjali etc Pramana , Sarva Dharmeshu Madhayma , Madhayama Sarata etc and concept of Bhuyista in the context of types of Desha will be indirectly signifying the essence of statistical concepts of mean, median, mode respectively in Ayurveda . The relation between Nidana and Roga, Kayagni and Dhatu will be signifying the concept of correlation in Ayurveda


This manuscript in a novel fashion looks at transparency by considering an aspect of arbitration where the opposite condition remains quite accepted; namely, the opacity of the deliberations of the arbitral tribunal. The manuscript considers how the institutional structure of arbitration shapes the decision-making process of arbitration tribunals even though that process is as a general matter conducted out of sight of the parties or the public generally. Examining only arbitral decision-making puts to one side the general political assertion that arbitration is a secret process that is suspect and instead allows an examination of a specific activity within arbitration where it is generally accepted that a degree of opacity is required in order to function effectively. A core conclusion is that the risks posed by opacity arguably are mediated significantly by a number of regulatory devices expressed in terms of procedural rules. The manuscript proceeds in three parts. First, it examines the justification and procedural construction of the opacity granted to arbitral decision-making. It is trite to observe that tribunal deliberations are undertaken in private. Forgotten is the choice of informed parties to make arbitral decision-making opaque in this way. Second, it examines the regulation of the opacity created. If the choice to create opacity is forgotten; totally overlooked is the nuanced way in which the formal institutions of arbitration seek to regulate, and thereby moderate, this opacity. In particular, the institutional perspective employed illuminates various aspects of arbitral rules that shape the ways in which arbitral decision-making will take place. Finally, the manuscript points to the gain and challenge of a regulatory perspective. Having exposed the role that various procedural rules play in moderating the opacity placed over arbitral decision making, also exposed is the possibility that some aspects of the opacity granted could be further regulated. But the possibility of regulation begs the question of the aim of regulation and leads the academic and arbitration communities to difficult transnational legal culture questions as to the precise aim of transparency and what it is about collective decision-making that conveys integrity or raises suspicion.


Colour forecasting is a process where attempts are made to accurately forecast colour for fashion-related products that consumers will purchase in the near future, usually two years ahead. Seasonal colours are recognised as a powerful driver of sales. Currently trend forecasts are marketed and sold globally. The information is broad and generalised and does not take into account colour preferences. In the study the anticipation of consumer acceptance was identified as the weakness of the process and an improved system model was developed replacing the anticipation stage with consumer colour acceptance data. The improved model is considered highly beneficial for fashion-related industries to adopt in order to increase their competitiveness in the global market and to assist waste reduction (unwanted products) that impact on the environment. In this paper the development of the two models is presented and discussed in an attempt to purposely promote the usefulness of soft systems methodology for design research.


This paper provides new combinations for two species endemic to the Seychelles, Canthium carinatum and C. sechellarum , which are transferred to Peponidium (tribe Vanguerieae, Ixoroideae, Rubiaceae), as supported by recent molecular phylogenetic analyses. Several new combinations in Vanguerieae from Madagascar are also proposed, based on morphological studies. Canthium bakerianum and C. homolleanum are transferred to Peponidium , whereas C. andringitrense , C. mandrarense , and Peponidium montana are transferred to Pyrostria . The names Pyrostria angustifolia , P. media , and P. major , previously invalid, are here validly published.


This study investigated the differences in epistemological beliefs of preservice teachers in relation to their level of education and their certification area. While there has been little research done on pre-service teachers' and epistemology, it is important to understand the beliefs pre-service teachers hold regarding the nature of knowledge construction as their beliefs will influence their teaching practices. For this study, pre-service teachers were asked to complete the Epistemological Beliefs Survey (EBS) which examined their epistemic beliefs on five sub-scales: Speed of Knowledge Acquisition, Structure of Knowledge, Knowledge Construction and Modification, Characteristics of Successful Students, and Attainability of Objective Truth. Two series of ANOVAs were conducted to examine differences in pre-service teachers' levels of epistemic sophistication on these scales. While differences were found for education level (with more advanced students generally holding more sophisticated beliefs), there were no differences found in relation to certification area. This was one of the first studies in the United States to specifically investigate pre-service teachers as a unique population.


Aim/Purpose: This study examined doctoral faculty of educational leadership within the state of Georgia in the United States. The aim was to illustrate the academic qualifications and practitioner experiences of the faculty that develop students in educational leadership programs to be scholarly practitioners and future educational leaders.

Background: Faculty of educational leadership programs prepare their students to hold imminent senior leadership roles in P-12 school administration and higher education administration. In this apprenticeship model, doctoral faculty utilize their academic qualifications and/or practitioner experiences to develop students into scholarly practitioners.

Methodology: A descriptive quantitative study utilizing content analysis was conducted to examine faculty of doctoral programs in educational leadership (n=83). True to this methodology, the inquiry of this study sought to better understand the academic qualifications and practitioner experiences of doctoral faculty in the field of educational leadership.

Contribution: This study serves as a primer for faculty and researchers to visualize the doctoral faculty of educational leadership programs. It can serve as a catalyst to encourage empirical studies of educational leadership faculty and their effectiveness in preparing scholarly practitioners.

Findings: Key findings included that nearly 2/3 of the faculty have their terminal degrees from a Research 1 institution, 3/5 hold a PhD, and 3/4 have practitioner experience in their respective field.

Recommendations for Practitioners: Doctoral programs should examine the diversity of the academic qualifications and practitioner experiences of their faculty and develop strategies to enhance their programs with these complimenting skill sets.

Recommendation for Researchers: Descriptive studies effectively "dip our toe" into a new area of inquiry. Considerations for future research includes examining student perceptions of their faculty who hold either a PhD or Ed.D, as well as those who are academics versus practitioners to better understand their effectiveness.

Impact on Society: True to the work of John Dewey, education serves as the vehicle to promote a democratic society. Recognizing these doctoral faculty are preparing the future leaders of education, understanding the experiences of faculty will allow for better insight into those who are ultimately shaping the future of education.

Future Research: Future research should focus on empirical studies that explore the effectiveness of faculty based on their academic qualifications and practitioner experiences through the lens of student perceptions.


More than 85% of the global burden of cervical cancer occurs in developing countries, where it
is the second most common cancer among women. In Brazil alone, a total of 17,500 new cases
and 3,300 deaths of cervical cancer are expected in 2012. Despite the investments in cytologybased
screening in the country, the reduction of cervical cancer incidence has been less than
expected. The aim of this thesis was to investigate the cost-effectiveness of alternative cervical
cancer screening and HPV vaccination strategies in Brazil. This was achieved by focusing on
three specific objectives: 1) To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of cervical cancer screening
strategies for women presenting equivocal cytological results, 2) To evaluate the costeffectiveness
of cervical cancer screening strategies for HIV-infected women, 3) To evaluate
the cost-effectiveness of HPVvaccination for pre-adolescent women. An additional objective
was to review and provide guidance on the use of model calibration methods in economic
modelling assessments,as they are particularly important in screening and vaccination studies.
The first empirical analysis found that HPV triage for women above 30 years-old presenting
equivocal cytology results was likely to be very cost-effective. The second empirical analysis
found that to screen HIV-infected women with HPVtesting followed by cytology annually was
also likely to be very cost-effective. The third empirical analysis demonstrated that adding the
quadrivalent vaccination of pre-adolescent girls to the current efforts to control cervical cancer
in Brazil was very cost-effective for most of the scenarios analyzed. The vaccine was even cost
saving when considering low coverage and cost of vaccination. This thesis presents findings
that will inform cervical cancer screening and HPV vaccination policies in middle-income
countries like Brazil and also provides guidance to help improve the standards of model
calibration approaches used in cost-effectiveness analysis.


Apamin-sensitive, small-conductance, Ca 2 -activated K channels (SK channels) modulate neuronal excitability in CA1 neurons. Blocking all SK channel subtypes with apamin facilitates the induction of hippocampal synaptic plasticity and enhances hippocampal learning. In CA1 dendrites, SK channels are activated by Ca 2 through NMDA receptors and restrict glutamate-mediated EPSPs. Studies of SK channel knock-out mice reveal that of the three apamin-sensitive SK channel subunits (SK1–SK3), only SK2 subunits are necessary for the apamin-sensitive currents in CA1 hippocampal neurons. To determine the specific influence of SK2 channels on hippocampal synaptic plasticity, learning, and memory, we used gene targeting through homologous recombination in embryonic stem cells to generate transgenic mice that overexpress SK2 subunits by 10-fold (SK2 /T). In these mice, the apamin-sensitive current in CA1 neurons was increased by approximately fourfold, relative to wild-type (WT) littermates. In addition, the amplitude of synaptically evoked EPSPs recorded from SK2 /T CA1 neurons increased twice as much in response to SK channel blockade relative to EPSPs recorded from WT CA1 neurons. Consistent with this, SK2 overexpression reduced long-term potentiation after high-frequency stimulation compared with WT littermates and severely impaired learning in both hippocampusand amygdala-dependent tasks. We conclude that SK2 channels regulate hippocampal synaptic plasticity and play a critical role in modulating mechanisms of learning and memory.


The role of Western NGOs in the transition of postcommunist nations to democracy has been well documented. In this study, Paulina Pospieszna follows a different trajectory, examining the role of a former aid recipient (Poland), newly democratic itself, and its efforts to aid democratic transitions in the neighbouring states of Belarus and Ukraine. Belarus is widely regarded as the most authoritarian state in the region, while Ukraine is witnessing a slow, if often troubled, democratic consolidation. Each state presents a different set of challenges to outside agencies. As Pospieszna shows, Poland is uniquely positioned to offer effective counsel on the transition to democracy. With similarities of language and culture, and a shared history, combined with strong civic activism and success within the European Union, Poland's regional policies have successfully combined its need for security and a motivation to spread democracy as primary concerns. Pospieszna details the founding, internal workings, goals, and methods of Poland's aid programmes. She then compares the relative degrees of success of each in Belarus and Ukraine and documents the work yet to be done. As her theoretical basis, Pospieszna analyses current thinking on the methods and effectiveness of NGOs in transitions to democracy, particularly U.S.- and European-led aid efforts. She then views the applicability of these methods to the case of Poland and its aid recipients. Overwhelmingly, Pospieszna finds the greatest success in developmental programmes targeting civil society--workers, intellectuals, teachers, students, and other NGO actors. Through extensive interviews with government administrators and NGO workers in Poland and the United States, coupled with archival research, Pospieszna assembles an original perspective on the mitigation of the 'postcommunist divide'. Her work will serve as a model for students and scholars of states in transition, and it provides an overview of both successful and unsuccessful strategies employed by NGOs in democracy assistance.


We investigate various astrophysical contributions to the statistical uncertainty of precision radial velocity measurements of stellar spectra. We first analytically determine the intrinsic uncertainty in centroiding isolated spectral lines broadened by Gaussian, Lorentzian, Voigt, and rotational profiles, finding that for all cases and assuming weak lines, the uncertainty in the line centroid is , where Θ is the full-width at half-maximum of the line, W is the equivalent width, and I0 is the continuum signal-to-noise ratio, with C a constant of order unity that depends on the specific line profile. We use this result to motivate approximate analytic expressions to the total radial velocity uncertainty for a stellar spectrum with a given photon noise, resolution, wavelength, effective temperature, surface gravity, metallicity, macroturbulence, and stellar rotation. We use these relations to determine the dominant contributions to the statistical uncertainties in precision radial velocity measurements as a function of effective temperature and mass for main-sequence stars. For stars more massive than ∼1.1 M⊙ we find that stellar rotation dominates the velocity uncertainties for moderate and high-resolution spectra (R ≳ 30,000). For less-massive stars, a variety of sources contribute depending on the spectral resolution and wavelength, with photon noise due to decreasing bolometric luminosity generally becoming increasingly important for low-mass stars at fixed exposure time and distance. In most cases, resolutions greater than 60,000 provide little benefit in terms of statistical precision, although higher resolutions would likely allow for better control of systematic uncertainties. We find that the spectra of cooler stars and stars with higher metallicity are intrinsically richer in velocity information, as expected. We determine the optimal wavelength range for stars of various spectral types, finding that the optimal region depends on the stellar effective temperature, but for mid M-dwarfs and earlier the most efficient wavelength region is from 6000 to 9000 Å.


Transactions involving intangible assets within multinational enterprises impose challenges for national economic accountants. In light of the challenges, recent research at the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis aims to identify areas for improving the treatment of multinational enterprises in national economic accounts. This paper summarizes the work and demonstrates implications for gross domestic product – the most widely cited measure in national economic accounts – of the United States.


A basic aim of evolutionary biology is to explain the enormous diversity among animal and plant species. But also within species there is often large genetic and phenotypic variation, and such variation is necessary for evolution to create new reproductively isolated species. The present thesis is directed to explain differentiation within populations highlighting and discussing the significance of phenotypic plasticity as an evolutionary process that leads to the expression of alternative phenotypes within a species. Such phenotypic expressions are particularly interesting, because the process by which new species are formed typically involves a temporary stage within the splitting species, that is, different heritable and distinct types that coexist within the same population. Such phenotypes may be raw material for full species formation, and the study of alternative-phenotype species should therefore be particularly worthwhile in speciation research. When alternative phenotypes are not entirely genetic they may arise as a result of developmental plasticity, when organisms develop in accordance with local abiotic and biotic conditions. Subject to developmental plasticity, alternative phenotypes, take different developmental routes depending on the local selection pressures, or depending on the environmental conditions experienced during development. Here, laboratory experiments showed that three-spined sticklebacks exhibit alternative phenotypes as a plastic response to physical environment and diet, demonstrating and supporting the idea that environmental inputs modulate the expression of traits through phenotypic plasticity during ontogeny. When, morphological differences arise, discrete morphological characteristics are originated and may be reinforced by the continuous presence of same environmental conditions. Here is demonstrated that these discrete morphological characteristics lead the individuals to specialise on specific prey or habitat types. Moreover, it is showed that plasticity may also play a role in the final stages of species formation, when reproductive isolation completes the speciation process. It is shown that diet-induced morphology has an important influence in mate preferences representing a strong potential to generate reproductive isolation via assortative mating, and this mate preferences may be highly efficient to maintaining isolation, thus the hypothesis of ecological speciation is supported. Finally, in this study, two alternative-phenotype lakes are described. It is suggested that the origin of the segregated alternative phenotypes in both lakes is a consequence of ecological traits divergences; however in one of the lakes the alternative phenotypes arose from a founder population, meanwhile in the second lake the alternative phenotypes may arose by the ecological adaptation of the forms in allopatry.


A new differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) technique was developed and validated for the determination of iopromide (IOP), iodixanol (ION) and amidotrizoic acid (DTZA), which belong to the iodinated X-ray contrast agent group in pharmaceutical formulations and artificial urine samples. All measurements were performed in the three-electrode configuration with a glassy carbon electrode (GCE) as a working electrode, Ag|AgCl|KCl(sat.) as a reference and platinum wire as an auxiliary electrode. The supporting electrolytes for determination of selected contrast agents were mixtures of methanol and Britton–Robinson buffers with different pH values. Quantification was performed by means of calibration curve and standard addition methods. The calibration curves for ION, IOP and DTZA were linear over a concentration range of 0.032–0.258, 0.039–0.394 and 0.041–0.326 mM, respectively. Good linear behaviour over the investigated concentration ranges was observed with values of r2 higher than 0.994 for all the iodinated contrast agents (ICA). The limits of detection (LOD) and limits of quantification (LOQ) for all analysed contrast agents were calculated and recovery studies were also performed. The percentage recoveries varied from 94.44 to 101.05% (after SPE procedure). Analytical methods for the preparation of urine samples were worked out and optimized before its voltammetry measurements (solid phase extraction – SPE). The differential pulse voltammetry method described in this work is the first procedure allowing determination of three iodinated X-ray contrast agents (IOP, ION and DTZA) in pharmaceutical formulations and artificial urine samples.


A full-color beginner's guide to the core concepts and skills of virtualizationVirtualization is the IT world's hottest trend in recent years, and many colleges do not yet have curricula in place to prepare students for this important area. This guide fills the need, with a learn-by-doing approach to mastering the core elements of virtualization. Each chapter clearly outlines what is covered, thoroughly discusses the concepts, and engages readers with hands-on tutorials. The book covers how virtualization software operates; hypervisor products; how to manage CPU, memory, storage, and networking; and much more.Fills the gap left by the many colleges and universities that are unprepared to educate IT students on virtualization, a megatrend in the IT worldCovers the fundamental concepts and skills, including how virtualization software operates within a computing environmentExplains the difference between Type 1 and Type 2 hypervisors and tells how to create a virtual machine from scratch or by migrating from physical to virtualTells how to manage the basics and how to configure supporting devices for a virtual machineVirtualization Essentials gets IT students and practitioners up to speed on one of the most important aspects of today's IT environment.


Through discriminatory rhetoric state and local officials construct delinquent juvenile immigrant youth as the embodiment of a threat to public safety and American values. Accordingly, alleged delinquent undocumented immigrant children who have spent the majority of their lives in the United States, are subjected to discrimination and exclusionary practices, which enable lessened protections under the law. This article critically analyzes how undocumented delinquent youth, mainly Latino males, are constructed through the various narratives of immigrant children that are perpetuated by the media and policymakers, and how this impacts their treatment within the juvenile justice and immigration systems. Central to this analysis is how the immigrant children's multiple identities of race, class, gender and socio-economic status intersect and impact the Latino delinquent immigrant child's interactions within these legal institutions. The article examines how increased interior immigration enforcement through the creation of state and local policies for the referral of delinquent immigrant youth to the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement to begin removal proceedings. In examining state and local policies, the article considers the inherent bias and the targeting of particular groups that may develop from varied state and local policies that are not uniform and based on the discretion of political actors. Overall, this article takes a critical look at the contrasting ways in which vulnerable undocumented immigrant youth are defined within these legal systems and how the "othering" of Latino male youth facilitates decreased guarantees of substantive legal protections and due process rights, which reinforce existing hierarchies and stereotypes.


This paper presents a method for synthesizing motions of a humanoid robot that receives an object from a human, with focus on a natural object passing scenario where the human initiates the passing motion by moving an object towards the robot, which continuously adapts its motion to the observed human motion in real time. In this scenario, the robot not only has to recognize and adapt to the human action but also has to synthesize its motion quickly so that the human does not have to wait holding an object. We solve these issues by using a human motion database obtained from two persons performing the object passing task. The rationale behind this approach is that human performance of such a simple task is repeatable, and therefore the receiver (robot) motion can be synthesized by looking up the passer motion in a database. We demonstrate in simulation that the robot can start extending the arm at an appropriate timing and take hand configurations suitable for the object being passed. We also perform hardware experiments of object handing from a human to a robot.


Generating a novel and optimized molecule with desired chemical properties is an essential part of the drug discovery process. Failure to meet one of the required properties can frequently lead to failure in a clinical test which is costly. In addition, optimizing these multiple properties is a challenging task because the optimization of one property is prone to changing other properties. In this paper, we pose this multi-property optimization problem as a sequence translation process and propose a new optimized molecule generator model based on the Transformer with two constraint networks: property prediction and similarity prediction. We further improve the model by incorporating score predictions from these constraint networks in a modified beam search algorithm. The experiments demonstrate that our proposed model, Controlled Molecule Generator (CMG), outperforms state-of-the-art models by a significant margin for optimizing multiple properties simultaneously.


In recent years, there have been significant advances in fluid dynamics/physical oceanography, microbiology, weathering, remote sensing, and analytical chemistry as they pertain to the fate and effects of oil spills. Effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on water column organisms and ecosystems have been difficult to ascertain. Laboratory experiments have expanded understanding of oil effects on phytoplankton and zooplankton. "Marine oil snow" has been identified as a significant factor in the fate of oil chemicals and their deposition with sediments. Oil chemicals and their effects on 24 km² of mud-benthic communities surrounding the well site, and in a few other areas, have lasted several years. Some deep-sea corals have also been affected for several years, and oil chemicals and their effects in heavily oiled marsh areas are projected to last a decade or longer. Lightly oiled marsh areas have recovered or are recovering. Research about use of dispersants highlights the need to update the 2005 National Research Council study of dispersant use on oil spills. Ongoing research should provide some closure for the issues of long-term effects on fisheries and marine mammals, and impacts on human health. Practical uses of this new knowledge are discussed briefly.


This Article develops a unified approach to extraterritoriality. It uses the source of lawmaking authority behind a statute to discern the proper canon for construing that statute's geographic reach and to evaluate whether application of the statute violates due process.The approach holds important implications for a variety of high-stakes issues with which courts are presently wrestling, including: the proper role of the presumption against extraterritorial application of U.S. law, whether international law or federal common law should supply the rule of decision in Alien Tort Statute cases, the scope of U.S. jurisdiction over terrorism offenses, and the viability of due process objections to the application of U.S. law abroad.


Abstraction has been used in search and planning from the very beginning of AI. Many different methods and formalisms for abstraction have been proposed in the literature but they have been designed from various points of view and with varying purposes. Hence, these methods have been notoriously difficult to analyse and compare in a structured way. In order to improve upon this situation, we present a coherent and flexible framework for modelling abstraction (and abstraction-like) methods based on transformations on labelled graphs. Transformations can have certain method properties that are inherent in the abstraction methods and describe their fundamental modelling characteristics, and they can have certain instance properties that describe algorithmic and computational characteristics of problem instances. The usefulness of the framework is demonstrated by applying it to problems in both search and planning. First, we show that we can capture many search abstraction concepts (such as avoidance of backtracking between levels) and that we can put them into a broader context. We further model five different abstraction concepts from the planning literature. Analysing what method properties they have highlights their fundamental differences and similarities. Finally, we prove that method properties sometimes imply instance properties. Taking also those instance properties into account reveals important information about computational aspects of the five methods.


Abstract. For quick and efficient response, as well as for recovery after any natural or artificial catastrophe, one of the most important things are accurate and reliable spatial data in real or near real-time. It is essential to know the location as well as to track and analyse passive and active threats to quickly identify the possible dangers and hazards. As technology evolves and advances, there is a broader spectrum of sensors that provide spatial data, and nowadays, decision-making processes also include nontraditional, informal sources of information. Apart from the offer, demand for new spatial data is increasing as well. For quicker and enhanced integration and analysis of data, artificial intelligence (AI) tools are increasingly used which, in addition to immediate rapid reactions, can help to make better and smarter decisions in the future. Such software algorithms that imitate human intelligence can help in generating conclusions from natural phenomena presented by spatial data. Using AI in the data analysis can identify risk areas and determine future needs. This paper presents an overview of the use of AI in geospatial analysis in disaster management.


Discussion of the role of the Internet in government and research tends to be "institution-centric" in that e-government and e-research initiatives are both anchored in top-down strategies to provide information resources to citizens or researchers by place-based institutions, including governments and universities. In both institutional arenas, the diffusion of these services has been limited to small albeit growing proportions of their target audiences. In contrast, individuals with access to the Internet have taken bottom-up initiatives to obtain information and services from the space of flows of the Internet in ways that reach beyond the boundaries of both governmental and research institutions, but in ways that could compete with but also enhance existing institutions, such as by making them more accountable to their respective constituencies. Institutional actors in government and research need to more explicitly recognize and strategically adapt to the practices and tools taken up by networked individuals, such as by creating e-infrastructures that—like the Internet—enable rather than constrain bottom-up innovation.