A floor and trade policy in Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) is the market mechanism by which U.S. biofuel consumption mandates are met. A conceptual model is developed to study the impact of RINs on stimulating investment in cellulosic biofuel refineries. In a two-period framework, we compare the first-period investment level (FIL) in three scenarios: (1) laissez-faire, (2) RINs under a nonwaivable mandate (NWM) policy, and (3) RINs under a waivable mandate (WM) policy. Results show that when firm-level marginal costs are constants, then RINs under WM policy do not stimulate FIL but they do increase the expected profit of more efficient investors. When firm-level marginal costs are not constants, however, RINs under WM policy stimulate FIL. RINs under NWM policy may or may not stimulate FIL, depending on the distribution of second-period cellulosic biofuel prices and on firm-level marginal costs. Key words: cellulosic biofuels, investment, Renewable Identification Numbers, waivable mandate


Background: We report the development of a cutaneous melanoma risk algorithm based upon seven factors; hair color, skin type, family history, freckling, nevus count, number of large nevi, and history of sunburn, intended to form the basis of a self-assessment Web tool for the general public. Methods: Predicted odds of melanoma were estimated by analyzing a pooled dataset from 16 case–control studies using logistic random coefficients models. Risk categories were defined based on the distribution of the predicted odds in the controls from these studies. Imputation was used to estimate missing data in the pooled datasets. The 30th, 60th, and 90th centiles were used to distribute individuals into four risk groups for their age, sex, and geographic location. Cross-validation was used to test the robustness of the thresholds for each group by leaving out each study one by one. Performance of the model was assessed in an independent UK case–control study dataset. Results: Cross-validation confirmed the robustness of the threshold estimates. Cases and controls were well discriminated in the independent dataset [area under the curve, 0.75; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.73–0.78]. Twenty-nine percent of cases were in the highest risk group compared with 7% of controls, and 43% of controls were in the lowest risk group compared with 13% of cases. Conclusion: We have identified a composite score representing an estimate of relative risk and successfully validated this score in an independent dataset. Impact: This score may be a useful tool to inform members of the public about their melanoma risk. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 24(5); 817–24. ©2015 AACR.


Geophysical methods are generally classified as electrical, potential field, and seismic methods. Each method type relies on contrasts of physical properties in the subsurface. Forward models based on the physical properties of air- and water-filled voids within common geologic materials indicate that several geophysical methods are technically feasible for detection of subsurface voids in Ohio, but ease of use and interpretation varies widely between the methods. Ground-penetrating radar is the most rapid and cost-effective method for collection of subsurface data in areas associated with voids under roadways. Electrical resistivity, gravity, or seismic reflection methods have applications for direct delineation of voids, but data-collection and analytical procedures are more time consuming. Electrical resistivity, electromagnetic, or magnetic methods may be useful in locating areas where conductive material, such as rail lines, are present in abandoned underground coal mines. Other electrical methods include spontaneous potential and very low frequency (VLF); these latter two methods are considered unlikely candidates for locating underground voids in Ohio. Results of ground-penetrating radar surveys at three highway sites indicate that subsurface penetration varies widely with geologic material type and amount of cultural interference. Two highway sites were chosen over abandoned underground coal mines in eastern Ohio. A third site in western Ohio was chosen in an area known to be underlain by naturally occurring voids in limestone. Ground-penetrating radar surveys at Interstate 470 in Belmont County, Ohio, indicate subsurface penetration of less than 15 ft (4.6 m) over a mined coal seam that was known to vary in depth from 0-40 ft (0-12.2 m). Although no direct observations of voids were made, anomalous areas that may be related to collapse structures above voids were indicated. Cultural interference dominated the radar records at Interstate 70, Guernsey County, Ohio, where coal was mined under the site at a depth of about 50 ft (15 m). Interference from overhead powerlines, the field vehicle, and guardrails complicated an interpretation of the radar records where the depth of penetration was estimated to be less than 5 ft (1.5 m). Along State Route 33 in Logan County, Ohio, bedding planes and structures possibly associated with dissolution of limestone were profiled with ground-penetrating radar. Depth of penetration was estimated to be greater that 50 ft (15 m).


We studied the problem of 3D reconstruction from a single image. The 3D reconstruction is one of the basic problems in Computer Vision. The 3D reconstruction is usually achieved by using two or multiple images of a scene. However recent researches in Computer Vision field have enabled us to recover the 3D information even from only one single image. The methods used in such reconstructions are based on depth information, projection geometry, image content, human psychology and so on. Each method has certain advantages and can be used to recover the 3D information from certain types of images according to their contents. There is not a standard evaluation method which can compare such these methods. In the thesis five methods of 3D reconstruction of single images are chosen. We review the methods theoretically and compare their 3D results. The five methods are Make3D, Automatic photo pop-up, Auto3D, Metric Rectification and Psychological Stereo which are representative from different types of methods of 3D reconstruction from a single image. Two different evaluation methods were implemented in the thesis. One is based on human inquires and how they experience the 3D reconstruction result of each method and the other one is based on a novel objective method where a controlled scene in form of its complexity was used. The performance of the methods in 3D information reconstruction is reported. Our novel evaluation method shows the benefit of objectivity and reliability of method which can be implemented easy in such difficult comparison situations. Abstract page 2 Acknowlegement page 5 Abbreviation page 6


Managers of multinational corporations are now looking towards low-income markets for their potential for generating large profits. Serving such markets and developing products for them requires a fundamentally different approach of doing business and offers firms a new and unique set of organizational challenges. The objective of this book is to address some of the key challenges when firms enter low-income markets and to develop empirically derived solutions for successful operation.


We prove that any accumulation point of an elastic mode approach, that approximately solves the relaxed subproblems, is a C-stationary point of the problem of optimizing a parametric mixed P variational inequality. If, in addition, the accumulation point satisfies the MPCC-LICQ constraint qualification, and if the solutions of the subproblem satisfy approximate second-order sufficient conditions, then the limiting point is an M-stationary point. Moreover, if the accumulation point satisfies the upper-level strict complementarity condition, the accumulation point will be a strongly stationary point. If we assume that the penalty function associated with the feasible set of the mathematical program with complementarity constraints has bounded level sets, and if the objective function is bounded below, we show that the algorithm will produce bounded iterates and will therefore have at least one accumulation point. We prove that the obstacle problem satisfies our assumptions for both a rigid and a deformable obstacle. The theoretical conclusions are validated by several numerical examples.


We investigated the novel photo-induced dynamics of azobenzene-doped cholesteric (Ch) droplets coexisting with the isotropic (Iso) phase. When the hemispherical Ch droplets initially stuck to glass substrates were irradiated by UV-light, they were parted from the substrates due to the surface disordering caused by the photo-isomerization of azobenzene. Then, the spherical droplets floating in the Iso phase exhibited an unexpected motion - a continuous and unidirectional rotation along the light propagation direction. The rotational direction was reversed by the inversion of either the sample's chirality or the UV irradiation direction, and the rotational velocity increased with both the UV-light intensity and the concentration of the doped azobenzene, the dependences of which were described by linear and relaxation functions, respectively. We proposed a possible scenario based on Leslie's theory combining mass fluxes and torques, which well explained the photo-driven rotation of the Ch droplets.


A THESIS SUBMITTED IN FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY OF SOKOINE UNIVERSITY OF
AGRICULTURE. MOROGORO, TANZANIA. 2017


Jonathan Edwards towered over his contemporaries-a man over six feet tall and a figure of theological stature-but the reasons for his power have been a matter of dispute. Edwards on the Will offers a persuasive explanation. In 1753, after seven years of personal trials, which included dismissal from his Northampton church, Edwards submitted a treatise, Freedom of the Will, to Boston publishers. Its impact on Puritan society was profound. He had refused to be trapped either by a new Arminian scheme that seemed to make God impotent or by a Hobbesian natural determinism that made morality an illusion. He both reasserted the primacy of God's will and sought to reconcile freedom with necessity. In the process he shifted the focus from the community of duty to the freedom of the individual. Edwards died of smallpox in 1758 soon after becoming president of Princeton; as one obituary said, he was a most rational . . . and exemplary Christian. Thereafter, for a century or more, all discussion of free will and on the church as an enclave of the pure in an impure society had to begin with Edwards. His disciples, the New Divinity men-principally Samuel Hopkins of Great Barrington and Joseph Bellamy of Bethlehem, Connecticut-set out to defend his thought. Ezra Stiles, president of Yale, tried to keep his influence off the Yale Corporation, but Edwards's ideas spread beyond New Haven and sparked the religious revivals of the next decades. In the end, old Calvinism returned to Yale in the form of Nathaniel William Taylor, the Boston Unitarians captures Harvard, and Edwards's troublesome ghost was laid to rest. The debate on human freedom versus necessity continued, but theologians no longercontrolled it. In Edwards on the Will, Guelzo presents with clarity and force the story of these fascinating maneuverings for the soul of New England and of the emerging nation. Allen Guelzo writes with grace, charm, and even wit about a weighty subject that others have found forbidding. His scholarship is broad and his expositions lucid.-Daniel Walker Howe, University of California at Los Angeles Edwards on the Will is an important contribution to the study of Jonathan Edwards's thought. Where earlier scholars have been largely preoccupied with Edwards's 'modernity' or with measuring the social effect of Edwards in the context of the American Revolution, Allen Guelzo demonstrates his intellectual 'legacy' not only to the generation of the Revolution but also beyond. This work will stand as the definitive treatment of the legacy of Edwards's classic treatise on Freedom of the Will.-Harry Stout, Yale University This book elevates the study of eighteenth-century New England theology to a new level of sophistication and insight. With a precise, fresh, and lively literary style, Guelzo makes old controversies come alive for a twentieth-century reader. This is intellectual history at its best-learned, animated, and compelling. It is one of the finest studies of theology in America ever written.-E. Brooks Holifield, Emory University By tracing the development of one central point of Edwards's doctrine, Guelzo allows us to see the unfolding of the entire history of the Edwardsean school, and, by implication, of American theology, in the period between 1750-1830. This book is a major work of scholarship-thorough, enlightening, intellectually uncompromising.-Philip F. Gura, University ofNorth Carolina, Chapel Hill


OVERVIEW: In 2013, the Industrial Research Institute (IRI) commissioned the IRI2038 foresight project to research how developments in technology, business processes, regulation and other spheres will impact the art and science of research and technology management over the next 25 years. That study defined three scenarios likely to shape the innovation process in coming years. One of those scenarios was the Hollywood model, in which scientists, engineers, and innovators no longer work for a single firm but rather contract out their services to individual projects and then move on to other projects and companies. Over the course of six months, an IRI Research working group conducted four workshops with R&D leaders at IRI member companies to explore how talent management would be affected in this scenario. The workshops identified challenges and opportunities associated with the Hollywood model as a paradigm for industrial R&D, focused around eight critical aspects of current talent management practice. Although the Hollywood model faces significant infrastructure and legal impediments today, its employment of external R&D workers with diverse experiences and perspectives is likely to create a greater opportunity for significant innovation.


Aerosol loading over Interior Alaska displays a strong seasonality, with pristine conditions generally prevailing during winter months. Long term aerosol research from the University of Alaska Fairbanks indicates that the period around April typically marks the beginning of the transition from winter to summer conditions. In April 2008, the NASA-sponsored "Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites" (ARCTAS) field campaign was conducted to analyze incursions of aerosols transported over Alaska and the Canadian North. In and around Fairbanks, Alaska, data concerning aerosol characteristics were gathered by polarization (0.693 μm) lidar, DRUM Impactor sampler, and balloon-borne optical particle counter. These data provide information on the vertical distribution and type of aerosol, their size distributions, the chemical nature of aerosol observed at the surface, and timing of aerosol loading. A detailed synoptic analysis placed these observations into their transport and source-region context. Evidence suggests four major aerosol loading periods in the 25 March–30 April 2008 timeframe: a period during which typical Arctic haze conditions prevailed, several days of extremely clear conditions, rapid onset of a period dominated by Asian dust with some smoke, and a period dominated by Siberian wildfire smoke. A focused case study analysis conducted on 19 April 2008 using a balloon-borne optical particle counter suggests that, on this day, the majority of the suspended particulate matter consisted of coarse mode desiccated aerosol having undergone long-range transport. Backtrack trajectory analysis suggests aged Siberian wildfire smoke. In the last week of April, concentrations gradually decreased as synoptic conditions shifted away from favoring transport to Alaska. An important result is a strong suggestion of an Asian dust incursion in mid-April that was not well identified in other ARCTAS measurements. The lidar and OPC-sonde unambiguously discern aerosols height stratification patterns indicative of long range transport. Identification of a dust component is suggested by DRUM sampler results, which indicate crustal species, and supported by synoptic and trajectory analysis, which indicates both a source-region lifting event and appropriate air-mass pathways.


The clean synthesis of furfural oxime (FO) has been realized through titanosilicate-catalyzed liquid-phase ammoximation of furfural with ammonia and hydrogen peroxide. A detailed investigation of furfural ammoximation over three representative titanosilicates Ti-MOR, TS-1 and Ti-MWW reveals that the reaction involves the hydroxylamine route and the imine route. The hydroxylamine route accounts for the formation of the target product (FO), while the imine route leads to the formation of undesired products such as 2-furylamide and 2-furoic acid. With a high efficiency for hydroxylamine formation, Ti-MOR proves to be superior to TS-1 and Ti-MWW. The catalytic performance of Ti-MOR depends greatly on the operating conditions of the reaction, which is closely related to its activity in catalyzing hydroxylamine decomposition. The decomposition of hydroxylamine and the non-catalytic oxidation of furfural can be effectively suppressed in Ti-MOR-catalyzed ammoximation when employing water as the solvent and adding H2O2 dropwise into the reaction system. Under optimized conditions, Ti-MOR is capable of providing furfural conversion and oxime selectivity both above 97%.


The effects of laser energy and atmosphere on the emission characteristics of laser-induced plasmas were studied with the use of a Q-switched Nd: YAG laser over a laser energy range of 20 to 95 mJ. Argon, helium, and air were used as surrounding atmospheres, and the pressures were changed from atmospheric pressure to 1 Torr. The experimental results showed that the maximum spectral intensity was obtained in argon at around 200 Torr at a high laser energy of 95 mJ, whereas the line-to-background ratio was maximized in helium at around 40 Torr at a low energy of 20 mJ. The results are discussed briefly on the basis of the temporal and spatial observations of the laser-induced plasmas.


In this paper we present a regularization of an H2-minimization based LPV-model generation algorithm. Our goal is to take care of uncertainties in the data, and obtain more robust models when we have few data. We give an interpretation of the regularization, which shows that the regularization has connections to robust optimization and worst-case approaches. We present how to effectively calculate the original cost function and its gradient, and extend these ideas to the regularized cost function and its gradient. A few examples, illustrating effects of both uncertain and few data, are finally presented to show the validity of the regularization.


BACKGROUND
Loss of meniscal tissue leads to increased pain and decreased clinical function and activity levels. We hypothesized that patients receiving a collagen meniscus implant would have better clinical outcomes than patients treated with partial medial meniscectomy alone.

METHODS
Three hundred and eleven patients with an irreparable injury of the medial meniscus or a previous partial medial meniscectomy, treated by a total of twenty-six surgeon-investigators at sixteen sites, were enrolled in the study. There were two study arms, one consisting of 157 patients who had had no prior surgery on the involved meniscus (the "acute" arm of the study) and one consisting of 154 patients who had had one, two, or three prior meniscal surgical procedures (the "chronic" arm). Patients were randomized either to receive the collagen meniscus implant or to serve as a control subject treated with a partial meniscectomy only. Patients underwent frequent clinical follow-up examinations over two years and completed validated outcomes questionnaires over seven years. The patients who had received a collagen meniscus implant were required by protocol to have second-look arthroscopy at one year to determine the amount of new tissue growth and to perform a biopsy to assess tissue quality. Reoperation and survival rates were determined.

RESULTS
In the acute group, seventy-five patients received a collagen meniscus implant and eighty-two were controls. In the chronic group, eighty-five patients received the implant and sixty-nine were controls. The mean duration of follow-up was fifty-nine months (range, sixteen to ninety-two months). The 141 repeat arthroscopies done at one year showed that the collagen meniscus implants had resulted in significantly (p = 0.001) increased meniscal tissue compared with that seen after the original index partial meniscectomy. The implant supported meniscus-like matrix production and integration as it was assimilated and resorbed. In the chronic group, the patients who had received an implant regained significantly more of their lost activity than did the controls (p = 0.02) and they underwent significantly fewer non-protocol reoperations (p = 0.04). No differences were detected between the two treatment groups in the acute arm of the study.

CONCLUSIONS
New biomechanically competent meniscus-like tissue forms after placement of a collagen meniscus implant, and use of the implant appears safe. The collagen meniscus implant supports new tissue ingrowth that appears to be adequate to enhance meniscal function as evidenced by improved clinical outcomes in patients with a chronic meniscal injury. The collagen meniscus implant has the utility to be used to replace irreparable or lost meniscal tissue in patients with a chronic meniscal injury. The implant was not found to have any benefit for patients with an acute injury.


In a critical process known as the "DNA damage checkpoint," cells monitor their DNA for damage and halt cell division until the damage has been repaired. Kondo et al. now show that two yeast proteins that function in signaling that DNA damage has occurred actually bind close to the site of damage, but do so in distinct ways. They used a chromatin immunoprecipitation method to detect proteins that bound to a double-stranded break in the DNA resulting from continuous expression of the HO endonuclease. One of the proteins bound, Mec1, belongs to a family of protein kinases that includes the ATM protein mutated in the human disease ataxia telangiectasia. Another protein bound at the site of damage was Ddc1, itself thought to be a DNA-binding protein that may recruit other proteins to a complex formed at the damage site. Recruitment of Ddc1, but not that of Mec1, required the action of another participant in the checkpoint pathway, called Rad24. The results help clarify how cells recognize damaged DNA and then initiate signals that produce the appropriate physiological response. T. Kondo, T. Wakayama, T. Naiki, K. Matsumoto, K. Sugimoto, Recruitment of Mec1 and Ddc1 checkpoint proteins to double-strand breaks through distinct mechanisms. Science 294, 867-870 (2001). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Basidiospore germlings of the cowpea rust fungus (Uromyces vignae) penetrate the epidermal cell wall of the nonhost plant Vicia faba. In order to characterize the wall structure of the penetration site, leaves were high pressure frozen, freeze substituted, and embedded in appropriate resins. With antibodies against epitopes present in pectin, polygalacturonic acid, xyloglucan, and callose, we studied the modification of these wall components during infection. The density of epitopes was determined at the penetration site and compared with noninfected areas of the epidermal wall. Along the fungal penetration hypha, a zone of the plant wall, 0.2 µm wide, exhibited a reduced density of pectin and xyloglucan epitopes. A similar reduction of epitope density was also found for xyloglucan after treatment of sections from noninoculated plants with cellulase and xylanase and for pectin after treatment with pectinase. The density of polygalacturonic acid epitopes remained unchanged in the outer layer of the epidermal wall, but increased over the inner layer. A high density of polygalacturonic acid epitopes was found over a collarlike wall apposition produced by the plant cell along the penetration hypha. These results indicate that the fungus degrades the plant cell wall at the penetration site and that the plant cell secretes new wall material into this area to form the wall apposition.


Purpose: Nocturia is considered to be the main cause of disturbance of sleep maintenance and the quality of life for elderly men. We assessed the effectiveness of administering alpha 1 (A)-adrenoceptor antagonist tamsulosin for the patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), and we measured the degree of improvement of the lower urinary tract symptoms and nocturia after treatment. Materials and Methods: From May 2003 to October 2003, 268 patients with BPH were prospectively selected for this study. The patients were treated with tamsulosin at a dose of 0.2mg/day. The effectiveness of tamsulosin was assessed by analyzing the three day voiding diaries and the other parameters, including the International Prostatic Symptom Score (I-PSS), the Bother score, the maximal urinary flow rate (Qmax), and the postvoid residual urine. The data for these parameters were acquired at baseline and after 4 and 12 weeks of treatment. We investigated the differences in the improvement of noctuia in the BPH patients according to the type of nocturia. Results: Of the 268 patients, 189 patients (70.5%) completed the study. The clinical parameters, including the I-PSS, the Bother score, the Qmax and the residual urine showed significant improvement from the baseline. The change of nocturnal frequency was 2.2 at baseline to 1.4 after 12 weeks of treatment. For the subgroups according to the type of nocturia, both the BPH only group and the nocturnal polyuria group showed improvement in the nocturnal frequency and the nocturnal urine volume. Conclusions: Alpha 1 (A) adrenoceptor antagonist, tamsulosin, significantly improved the nocturia as well as the lower urinary tract symptoms, which was confirmed by measuring the clinical parameters. To identify the role of tamsulosin for improving nocturia for patients with BPH, we need to prospective clinical studies according to the type of nocturia. (Korean J Urol 2006;47:1-6)


Encouraging interoperability among systems is a difficult task, and it becomes more so when the systems each have their own discrete view of entities and processes that are common to all. A proposed method of investigating solutions for these problems is to federate the ontology representations of the existing systems. Federating the ontological representations is to follow the same methodology suggested for building federated databases. With federated databases, each system is represented by a local schema; here it is proposed that each system will be represented by a low-level ontological description of the system. By representing the ontological description in not only a similar representation method, but one where entities, processes, and relationships have their meaning exposed through primitives of meaning, it is hoped that using these primitives as the common atoms, the meaning of such ontological representations can be merged, and eventually federated.


Laboratory experiments in psychology find that media violence increases aggression in the short run. We analyze whether media violence affects violent crime in the field. We exploit variation in the violence of blockbuster movies from 1995 to 2004, and study the effect on same-day assaults. We find that violent crime decreases on days with larger theater audiences for violent movies. The effect is partly due to voluntary incapacitation: between 6PM and 12AM, a one million increase in the audience for violent movies reduces violent crime by 1.1 to 1.3 percent. After exposure to the movie, between 12AM and 6AM, violent crime is reduced by an even larger percent. This finding is explained by the self-selection of violent individuals into violent movie attendance, leading to a substitution away from more volatile activities. In particular, movie attendance appears to reduce alcohol consumption. Like the laboratory experiments, we find indirect evidence that movie violence increases violent crime; however, this effect is dominated by the reduction in crime induced by a substitution away from more dangerous activities. Overall, our estimates suggest that in the short-run violent movies deter almost 1,000 assaults on an average weekend. While our design does not allow us to estimate long-run effects, we find no evidence of medium-run effects up to three weeks after initial exposure.


Reinforcement learning (RL) problems constitute an important class of learning and control problems faced by artificial intelligence systems. In these problems, one is faced with the task of providing control signals that maximize some measure of performance, usually taken over time, given feedback that is not in terms of the control signals themselves. This feedback is often called "reward" or "punishment." However, these tasks have a direct relationship to engineering control, as well as the more cognitive intelligence related areas suggested by these terms (Barto, 1990). In recent years, many algorithms for RL have been suggested and refined. Notable are those discussed by Sutton, Barto, and Watkins (1989), Holland's Bucket Brigade (Holland et al., 1986), Watkin's Q-learning algorithm (Watkins and Dayan, 1992), and others. Despite these advances, there remains no standard, analytical methods or test suites for empirically evaluating reinforcement learning systems. Most test problems in RL are in abstract, difficult to analyze forms (e.g., maze problems, the inverted pendulum, etc.). This paper describes a method for designing arbitrary numbers of RL test problems with clear, parameterizable characteristics. An additional contribution of this method is a clear identification of parameters for RL environment complexity. Although the method described is primarily suggested for RL problem design and RL method evaluation, its parameters could be used for analysis of extant RL test problems. The following sections outline basic RL nomenclature, followed by the development of Walsh transform based design techniques for a limited class of RL problems. Straight forward extensions of these techniques to a broad class of RL problems are also provided. Use of these techniques are further extensions are discussed.


This study looks at the return and risk characteristics of the Diversified and Specialised REITs in the UK over the last four and half years commencing January 2007. The methodologies used in this study incorporate some simple statistic tools, multiple factor Sharpe ratio regression, and portfolio construction and use of efficient frontier models. In summary, the hypothesis that the Specialised REITs can perform better than the Diversified counterpart during recessions can be supported. The Diversified REITs show a moderate return with lower level of volatility. However, the Specialised REITs track the market more closely. The Office REITs and Retail REITs produce significant impact on the risk-adjusted performance. The Specialised REITs portfolio under the equal-weighted portfolio construction produces a better mean return at a similar level of the volatility, than the Diversified REITs portfolio.


Surfactant micelles are widely used in a number of industrial, commercial and household products and processes. Understanding flow-microstructure coupling in micellar systems can benefit applications ranging from targeted drug delivery and detergency to enhanced oil recovery and hydrofracking. Amongst micellar fluids, wormlike micelles (WLMs) are extremely interesting due to their structural similarity to polymers and their ability to constantly undergo scission and recombination at equilibrium. More recently, much has been generated in studying the effect of adding colloidal particles to WLMs. Colloidal particles can not only add functionality to the fluid but also act as viscosity modifiers. Such solutions can be used to design active nanomaterials for applications in energy harvesting and sensing. While several theories and continuum-leve l computational models have been developed to study the dynamics and rheology of WLMs, molecularlevel explorations of the flow-structure coupling in such solutions is lacking. Further, in the case of mixtures of colloidal particles and WLMs, there are only a handful of attempts to develop theoretical/computational frameworks capable of describing their thermodynamics, selfassembly and phase behavior. The goals of this thesis are to uncover mechanisms by which WLMs interact with colloidal particles and to determine how these interactions affect the macroscopic properties of mixtures of model WLMs and colloidal nanoparticles (NPs) using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Coarse-grained (CG) molecular models and corresponding force-fields are employed to describe the NP, cationic cetyltrimethylammonium chloride (CTAC) surfactant, hydrotropic sodium salicylate (NaSal) salt, solvent and the underlying physico-chemical interactions. Results are first presented for the dynamics of a single self-assembled rodlike micellar aggregate under shear flow. The effect of shear rate on the configurational dynamics, e.g. orientation distribution of the end-to-end vector and tumbling frequency are presented and compared to experimenta l observations as well as predictions from stochastic simulations and mesoscopic theories. Further, a relationship between micelle length and stretching force is presented and compared with experimental estimates of similar forces in biological systems. Finally, a shear rate-independent energy barrier for micelle scission is identified for relatively large shear rates. We also show that the addition of NPs to surfactant solutions can result in the formation of NP-surfactant complexes (NPSCs). The effect of NP charge and surface chemistry on the nature of the self-assembly is discussed. Further, such NPSCs can further interact with WLMs, in the presence of NaSal salt, to form electrostatically stabilized micelle-NP junctions via an end cap attachment mechanism. The dynamics, energetics and stability of such junction formation is also described in detail. These junctions can give rise to unique rheological modifications of WLMs such as significant buildup in viscosity and viscoelasticity. Large-scale equilibrium and nonequilibrium MD simulations consisting of several NPs and WLMs are performed to study the flowmicrostructure coupling in such systems. The relationship between the zero-shear viscosity, NP volume fraction and salt concentration at a fixed surfactant concentration is presented. Shear thinning behavior is observed for all of the systems studied. Shear thinning is accompanied by flow-alignment and shear-induced isotropic-to-nematic transitions in micellar systems. Further, the evolution of the first normal stress difference, N1, is presented as a function of time and shear rate, and compared with experimental observations for similar systems. The results of this work provides insight into the mechanisms of self-assembly in WLMs and colloidal NPs and demonstrate that rheological properties of WLMs can be uniquely controlled by the addition of NPs. STRUCTURE, DYNAMICS AND RHEOLOGY OF SURFACTANT MICELLES AND MICELLE-NANOPARTICLE SOLUTIONS: A MOLECULAR DYNAMICS STUDY


Abstract
 The red algal family Halymeniaceae has been recently the subject of taxonomic revisions based strictly on molecular data. As a result, the number of genera ascribed to it has been decreasing and many generic definitions changed profoundly owing to inconsistencies in diacritical vegetative and particularly reproductive characters in standard literature. Reproductive uniformity within this family has been claimed since the late 19th century and is generally supported by recent authors. In this study we report on consistent significant differences in the architecture of carpogonial and auxiliary cell ampullae, as well as in early postfertilization events, among Mediterranean species currently assigned to the genus Grateloupia C. Agardh and provide new interpretations of these features. We recognize several distinct types of ampullae and postfertilization events that distinguish groups of species, these groups proving to be strongly supported by rbcL phylogenies. As a result we conclude that the genus Grateloupia as presently circumscribed should be segregated into multiple genera. In addition to Grateloupia sensu stricto, we resurrect Dermocorynus P.L. Crouan et H.M. Crouan, Pachymeniopsis Y. Yamada ex S. Kawabata, Phyllymenia J. Agardh and Prionitis J. Agardh, all of which have been subsumed in Grateloupia by previous authors. New genera based on our anatomical and rbcL results for G. doryphora (Montagne) M. Howe, G. subpectinata Holmes and G. proteus Kützing will be described in subsequent papers.


The European Union has developed a one-size-fits-all approach to promote good governance reforms in African countries, focusing on strengthening the effectiveness of state institutions while increasingly asking for reforms that also target their democratic quality. Assessing the EU's policies in Angola and Ethiopia reveals, however, that the implementation of this approach is more differential. While the EU has a hard time making the two governments address governance issues, it has been more successful in implementing its policy approach in Ethiopia than in Angola. These differences are largely explained by these countries' different degrees of interdependency with the EU rather than differences in stability and democracy. Unlike Angola, Ethiopia heavily relies on EU development aid, giving the EU greater leverage to push for governance reforms. While conditionality is more effective in making African governments address governance issues, it undermines the legitimacy of the EU's development cooperation, which emphasizes partnership and ownership.


A unique overview of the human language faculty at all levels of organization. Language is not only one of the most complex cognitive functions that we command, it is also the aspect of the mind that makes us uniquely human. Research suggests that the human brain exhibits a language readiness not found in the brains of other species. This volume brings together contributions from a range of fields to examine humans' language capacity from multiple perspectives, analyzing it at genetic, neurobiological, psychological, and linguistic levels.
 In recent decades, advances in computational modeling, neuroimaging, and genetic sequencing have made possible new approaches to the study of language, and the contributors draw on these developments. The book examines cognitive architectures, investigating the functional organization of the major language skills; learning and development trajectories, summarizing the current understanding of the steps and neurocognitive mechanisms in language processing; evolutionary and other preconditions for communication by means of natural language; computational tools for modeling language; cognitive neuroscientific methods that allow observations of the human brain in action, including fMRI, EEG/MEG, and others; the neural infrastructure of language capacity; the genome's role in building and maintaining the language-ready brain; and insights from studying such language-relevant behaviors in nonhuman animals as birdsong and primate vocalization.
 Section editorsChristian F. Beckmann, Carel ten Cate, Simon E. Fisher, Peter Hagoort, Evan Kidd, Stephen C. Levinson, James M. McQueen, Antje S. Meyer, David Poeppel, Caroline F. Rowland, Constance Scharff, Ivan Toni, Willem Zuidema


Opinion polls probing both the narrow and broad senses of social welfare among Americans indicate hardly any substantial differences over crucial social sentiments among a variety of groups with at least theoretically divergent interests: rich and poor, men and women, blacks and whites, a variety of ethnic groups, union and nonunion households. The items mainly concern the provision of welfare to the poor through AFDC, now TANF, and Food Stamps but also cover OASDHI. Consistently over more than sixty five years of systematic opinion polling, there is an astonishing consensus, so large in fact that it may undermine any effort to move the American citizenry into a more congregational series of provisions for each other. In fact, the consensus is antagonistic to the public welfare. Americans by their very actions, opinions, and codified intentions have canceled the notions of class and caste in subverting a generous welfare state.


In recent years, the acquisition of data from multiple sources, together with improvements in computational capabilities, has allowed to improve our understanding on natural hazard through new approaches based on machine learning and Big Data analytics. This has given new potential to flood risk mapping, allowing the automatic extraction of flood prone areas using digital elevation model (DEM) based geomorphic approaches. Most of the proposed geomorphic approaches are conceived mainly for the identification of flood extent. In this article, the DEM‐based method based on a geomorphic descriptor—the geomorphic flood index (GFI)—has been further exploited to predict inundation depth, which is useful for quantifying flood induced damages. The new procedure is applied on a case study located in southern Italy, obtaining satisfactory performances. In particular, the inundation depths are very similar to the ones obtained by hydraulic simulations, with a root‐mean‐square error (RMSE) = 0.335 m, in the domain where 2D dynamics prevail. The reduced computational effort and the general availability of the required data make the method suitable for applications over large and data‐sparse areas, opening new horizons for flood risk assessment at national/continental/global scale.


It occurred to me during discussions with other East African ornithologists in the last few years that there was a real need for an annual bird report structured along the lines of the county bird reports of Great Britain. Many distributional records are being denied public access because the observer lacks a medium for communication (vide M6). The Bulletin of the East Africa Natural History Society partly serves this need in that first records and other rarities can be put into print. The now defunct Uganda Bird Newsletter of the Uganda Society was also useful whilst it lasted. It was the suggestion of J. S. S. Beesley (in litt.) that before such a regular report could be at all meaningful, the standard work on the distribution of East African birds, i.e. C. W. Mackworth-Praed & C. H. B. Grant 1957, 1960, African Handbook of Birds, Series 1, vol. 1 & 2, Birds of Eastern and North Eastern Africa1 (subsequently referred to as M1) should be brought up to date. Since the publication of that work our knowledge of the distribution of a considerable number of species has been radically changed. In some cases this is due to an actual change of range, but in most cases it is due to an increase in knowledge. One hundred species are now recorded from Kenya which were not recorded in M1, 42 from Tanzania, and 110 from Uganda. Also, two new species and nine subspecies have been descriptionbed from Kenya, nine subspecies from Tanzania, and three subspecies from Uganda. Most of these records are scattered widely throughout the literature and not of easy access to the layman, particularly those published in the United States. The purpose of this paper is to bring all this information together. It includes all extensions of forms across international boundaries, or from one major geographical area to another, or from one area to another ca.150 km distant or more.


Whether interactions between wildlife and livestock are competitive or facilitative is context dependent. Intermediary factors that explain how context (seasonal or regional characteristics of the ecological community) affects these interactions are rarely reported. We compared activity time and density in vicu~ nas (Vicugna vicugna) introduced into the Chimborazo Faunal Production Reserve (CFPR), Ecuador, to describe how they interact with livestock. We compared vicu~ na density in wetlands and uplands (two landscape structures) with and without livestock (two conditions) using an isodar approach. We measured, over two seasons, vicu~ na forage abundance, composition, preference and accessibility, time vicu~ nas spent vigilant, and their flight distances on approach. We tested optimal foraging theory relating to the hypothesis that time mediates behavior, and found that vicu~ nas were no less frequently vigilant, nor were flight distances greater, during a wet season or in habitats of greater forage abundance and accessibility. We also found no evidence that vicu~ na behavior was density dependent; instead, we found that more time was spent vigilant by vicu~ nas when they foraged near livestock in rainy regions during the dry season. Although forage abundance was similar throughout CFPR during a dry season, better forage quality in areas occupied by livestock may constitute an effect of their facilitating vicu~ nas. A puzzling finding, because it was not explained by any of the other variables we measured, was that at low densities vicu~ nas selected habitat irrespective of livestock, and where their density was higher, it was doubly so adjacent to livestock. We conclude that in the CFPR, spatial heterogeneity in habitat quality determines the interactions between livestock and vicu~ nas. To support recommendations that minimize competition between wildlife and livestock, and to expand on descriptions of the contexts that determine the direction of species interactions, future study may require a wider sampling of the densities of sympatric large herbivores in general, and, in the CFPR, a closer resolution of spatial heterogeneity in forage plant quality.


The study uses data and information from Safaricom Limited, a mobile telecommunications company listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange as a case study to shed light on the marketing strategies that can work in Africa, a continent considered risky for potential investors. Given Africa's abundance of natural resources, good climate and large tourism potential and sustained high growth rates over the last one and a half decades, the continent offers strong potential for both domestic and foreign investment. But the marketing of the potential of the continent has not been successful, calling for increased attention to this area. The traditional marketing approaches used in the developed world may not apply on continent with a myriad of bottlenecks including weak poor infrastructure, civil strife, etc. Innovative approaches and marketing support services are required in order to tap into this potential. The paper argues that consistent application of strategic marketing approaches impacts profits and sustainability positively. Safaricom has built a strong brand that is based on high quality services and customer satisfaction. Controlling over 65% of Kenya's mobile telephone market, Safaricom has mastered its market through the use of differentiation, sustained investment in innovation and better understanding of its customers, and the brand reverberates across the country. The M-PESA mobile money payments and transfer platform, is one of such innovation by Safaricom that is transforming banking in the country, and supporting financial inclusion. Safaricom is a responsible corporate citizen that invests in communities and staff to advance livelihoods. Companies seeking to invest in Africa need to note that the continent is not one homogeneous basket of failure – there are successes in different parts of the continent and large potential to be reaped. The potential for good returns on investment exists in the services sector and others such as agriculture, etc., well beyond the natural resources sector. Sustained engagement in the market and clear understanding of clients' needs, segmenting the market and reaching out to the clients are important for success.

 Key words: Brand, competitive advantage, differentiation, marketing strategy, sustainability.


This paper is designed to systematically reflect upon available theories and empirical developments leading to the proposal of a conceptual framework that will identify: i) main career types of PhD holders; ii) key milestones in career development of each type; and iii) main factors affecting the career decision-making and development process, including personal, organizational, disciplinary, job market and systemic factors. The starting point for this task is the conception of the career as an interactive decision-making process, where career decisions are shaped and taken based on a set of framework conditions. The broad target population both for the conceptual and subsequent empirical exercises are PhD students and holders in all fields of knowledge. The work will focus on providing the following main analytical tools: 1. A typology of careers for PhD students/holders, taking into account both disciplinary and cross-country diversity. Special attention will be devoted to assess the difference between conventional research careers, both in the public and private sector and more unconventional career types (Lee et al., 2010); 2. A sequence of main career milestones for each identified career type; and 3. A structured framework of main factors shaping the career decision-making and development process. A set of most relevant factors will be proposed, taking into account the above-mentioned factors as well as their mutual interaction. Special attention will be paid to cross-country and disciplinary diversity.


The paper seeks to develop a comprehensive framework to cross-border discounted cash flow valuation. Although the literature on company valuation and on international financial management is vast, such a framework has not yet been proposed. We build upon well-known fundamentals and relevant contributions, e.g. on the derivation of the risk-adjusted rate of return. Relevant risks are exchange rate risk, business risk, financial risk, the risk of the tax effects induced by debt financing, and the risk of default. Additional tax effects beyond the well-known tax shield on interest expenses must be considered. Risk discounts from cash flows and risk premia to be added to risk-free interest rates are derived according to the global capital asset pricing model. A conceptual choice occurs not only between the foreign currency and the home currency approach, but also regarding the estimation of future exchange rates. The paper shows how a valuation can be implemented with or without consideration of covariances between cash flows and rate of returns with exchange rates. It also derives the discount rates if forward exchange rates are applied. We discuss the consequences of assuming the uncovered interest parity to hold. We assume deterministic debt and apply the adjusted present value approach. In addition, we derive the RADR to be used in the flow to equity and weighted average cost of capital approach. The paper addresses not only the valuation of a foreign company, but also the valuation of a domestic company that generates cash flows in foreign currency and/or uses debt in foreign currency.


For an arbitrary Coxeter group $W$, Reading and Speyer defined Cambrian semilattices $\mathcal{C}_{\gamma}$ as sub-semilattices of the weak order on $W$ induced by so-called $\gamma$-sortable elements. In this article, we define an edge-labeling of $\mathcal{C}_{\gamma}$, and show that this is an EL-labeling for every closed interval of $\mathcal{C}_{\gamma}$. In addition, we use our labeling to show that every finite open interval in a Cambrian semilattice is either contractible or spherical, and we characterize the spherical intervals, generalizing a result by Reading.


Ecosystem services, the benefits ecosystems provide to people, and hydrologic services, the subset of terrestrial ecosystem services related to water, appear with increasing frequency in water resources research and watershed management. Linking biophysical function to human well‐being is central to the theory of ecosystem services, so distinctive characteristics of research on hydrologic services arise from addressing the way people are affected by ecohydrologic processes. However, based on a rapid scoping of 381 peer‐reviewed studies of hydrologic services, I identified only a small fraction that appear to effectively make the link from biophysical processes to people. In their abstracts, many of the reviewed articles use the language of hydrologic services but appear to be essentially disciplinary studies, accounting for either biophysical functioning or specific beneficiaries in their analysis, but not both. In addition to guiding research, the direct link from biophysical processes to human well‐being makes hydrologic services an appealing foundation for watershed management. The hydrologic services framework has been used to assess conservation benefits, evaluate management practices, prioritize siting, account for externalities, and perform trade‐off or cost‐benefit analysis. Hydrologic services hold potential for novel research and effective watershed management, but challenges remain in executing interdisciplinary research and in addressing the idiosyncratic demands of local management. WIREs Water 2015, 2:345–358. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1081


Background Strong evidence exists for an association between socioeconomic status and body mass index (BMI) as well as between genetic variants and BMI. The association of genetic variants with socioeconomic status has not yet been investigated. The aim of this study was to investigate two obesity-related loci—the transmembrane 18 (TMEM18) and the fat mass and obesity-associated (FTO) gene—for their association with educational level and per capita income, and to test whether the detected genotype–BMI association is mediated by these social factors. Methods 12 425 adults from a large population-based study were genotyped for the polymorphism rs6548238 near TMEM18 and rs9935401 within the FTO gene. Data on educational level and per capita income were based on standardised questionnaires. Results High educational level and high per capita income were significantly associated with decreased BMI (−1.503 kg/m2, p<0.0001/−0.820 kg/m2, p<0.0001). Neither the polymorphism rs6548238 nor rs9935401 nor their combination were significantly associated with educational level (p=0.773/p=0.827/p=0.755) or income (p=0.751/p=0.991/p=0.820). Adjustment for social factors did not change the association between rs6548238 or rs9935401 and BMI. Conclusions As far as the authors know, this is the first study to investigate the association between polymorphisms and socioeconomic status. The polymorphisms rs6548238 and rs9935401 showed no association with educational level or income.


Communicative informatics reflects the interactive complexity of web-based communication and a paradigm shift away from mass communication. Three discursive spheres (database and information systems, human computer interac- tion, and active audiences) work together to control online communication openness and its consequences for post-mass media society's public common. This has implications for communication freedom, creativity, and constraints in an infor- mation-based society. Four propositions shed light on how online audience activity is encouraged by and imperative to corporate interests; how audience creativity can create, accept, or reject messages; how the online audience is monitored; and how online rhetoric can produce or inhibit public commons. Evidence shows that social media's corporate interests can be at odds with online privacy and citizen communication. This tension is explored with a unique focus on rhetoric, argu- ment, and the communication between audience members and Internet-based corporate media by way of digitized commu- nication feedback loops.


Experiences from urban development plans and assessments of their concrete and tangible results in the past decades indicate lack of adequate success of our urbanization system to responding needs of our citizens. This has resulted in need to find a fundamental solution to transforming the centralized system into decentralized. Recent changes in regard to a change of approach from master plan to strategic planning has resulted in an increased sensitivity with regard to enhancement of urban management in addition to the opinion that strategic planning is not in itself a credible replacement for technocratic master planning (top-down) and is not on its own sufficient for sustainable development. In this article, we employ methods of actualization and content analysis to compare the common features of two issues in Iran and subsequently, with an emphasis on correction of structure of urban management system, the concepts of participation of citizens, government, private sector and civic society and enhancement of "good urban governance" with "strategic planning approach" are discussed as keys to the question of solid development."Public participation in decision-making, accountability, equity and efficiency", defines both fundamental principles of good urban governance and characteristics of strategic planning and is essentials of a constant environmental, social and economic development.


Recently, low-power wireless networking standards like 802.15.1 (Bluetooth) have driven consumer interest in personal area networks (PANs). These networks are designed for inexpensively connecting low-power devices located within 1 m to 100 m of each other. In this paper, we discuss recent evolutions to the Bluetooth standard, as well as two emerging PAN standards: 802.15.4/ZigBee, and Ultra-Wide Band. We provide a high-level summary of how these standards operate, as well as a brief discussion of what to expect from each technology in the future.


A complete guide to Pentaho Kettle, the Pentaho Data lntegration toolset for ETL This practical book is a complete guide to installing, configuring, and managing Pentaho Kettle. If youre a database administrator or developer, youll first get up to speed on Kettle basics and how to apply Kettle to create ETL solutionsbefore progressing to specialized concepts such as clustering, extensibility, and data vault models. Learn how to design and build every phase of an ETL solution. Shows developers and database administrators how to use the open-source Pentaho Kettle for enterprise-level ETL processes (Extracting, Transforming, and Loading data) Assumes no prior knowledge of Kettle or ETL, and brings beginners thoroughly up to speed at their own pace Explains how to get Kettle solutions up and running, then follows the 34 ETL subsystems model, as created by the Kimball Group, to explore the entire ETL lifecycle, including all aspects of data warehousing with Kettle Goes beyond routine tasks to explore how to extend Kettle and scale Kettle solutions using a distributed cloud Get the most out of Pentaho Kettle and your data warehousing with this detailed guidefrom simple single table data migration to complex multisystem clustered data integration tasks.


Motion-tracked real-time character control is important for games and VR, but current solutions are limited: retargeting is hard for non-human characters, with locomotion bound to the sensing volume; and pose mappings are ambiguous with difficult dynamic motion control. We robustly estimate wave properties ---amplitude, frequency, and phase---for a set of interactively-defined gestures by mapping user motions to a low-dimensional independent representation. The mapping separates simultaneous or intersecting gestures, and extrapolates gesture variations from single training examples. For animations such as locomotion, wave properties map naturally to stride length, step frequency, and progression, and allow smooth transitions from standing, to walking, to running. Interpolating out-of-phase locomotions is hard, e.g., quadruped legs between walks and runs switch phase, so we introduce a new time-interpolation scheme to reduce artifacts. These improvements to real-time motion-tracked character control are important for common cyclic animations. We validate this in a user study, and show versatility to apply to part- and full-body motions across a variety of sensors.


Survey on zooplankton composition was studied during June 2015 to March 2016, by selecting six stations along the coastal waters of Bushehr (the Northwest Persian Gulf). Twenty four zooplankton taxa were identified, and the different zooplankton groups represented twenty-one families. Copepoda was recorded with the most abundance (53.30 %) followed by Malacostraca (32.87 %), which in turn was followed by Sagittoidea (7.44 %) and Appendicularia (6.39%). A major peak of 189.34 N/m 3 was observed in February-2016 with 53.25% contribution from Copepoda. Among Copepoda, Labidocera sp. was the major contributor to this peak. Appendicularia was the comparatively less represented group, being chiefly represented by Oikopleura dioica. Labidocera sp., Oithona plumifera which were common in most of the stations. This common distribution were observed for Malacostraca, namely Lucifer hanseni (mysis I), Upogebia sp. (zoea I), Parthenope sp., Ilyoplax frater( zoea VI), for Sagittoidea, namely Sagitta enflata, Sagitta neglecta and for Appendicularia, namely Oikopleura dioica. The mean Shannon's diversity index (H') and evenness were 1.36±0.43 and, 0.68±1.17, respectively. The highest Margalef's index was recorded in station-6 (2.72±1.32) and the lowest in station-2 (1.98±0.89). According to nonsignificant differences between temporal and spatial zooplankton density and Shannon's index, from an ecological point of view, it seems the study area is unique and the zooplankton composition is homogenous.


Climate change adaptation (CCA) is argued to require coordinated policy responses because it is a complex, long-term, knowledge intensive, cross-sectoral, and multi-level governance challenge that involves many interdependencies and actors with different perceptions, goals, and approaches. This study, therefore, examines approaches of a set of European Union (EU) member states (Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom (England)) to pursue a more coordinated approach to CCA policy. It specifically addresses the co-ordination approaches that the selected countries use for the development and implementation of their national CCA policies in the immediate period following the publication of the EU's 2013 Adaptation Strategy. The analysis demonstrates that while useful coordination processes have been established in the analyzed EU member states, they have difficulty in challenging existing institutional hierarchies and decision rules. Consequently, longer-term opportunities for managing CCA conflicts and synergies among sectoral policies have to date been limited.


We study the interplay between cultural attitudes and the economic environment, focusing on attitudes towards obedience in the workplace. We establish two key stylized facts: First, at the country level, an upward shift in workplace obedience over time is associated with more exporting in industries that feature a high routine task content ('Specialization Fact'). Second, at the individual level, the degree of \export-routineness" in the economic environment that respondents were exposed to in their formative years -but not in their adult years -shapes the pro-obedience attitudes that they carry with them into the workforce ('Obedience Fact'). Together, these two facts show that cultural attitudes on workplace obedience respond systematically to economic incentives, and that such a culture in turn shapes the subsequent pattern of industry specialization. We develop an overlapping generations model of human capital investment and cultural transmission, to understand how this aspect of culture and specialization patterns in the economy are jointly determined in the long run. In particular, the model demonstrates the possibility of an "obedience trap": countries may specialize in routine sectors (e.g., basic manufacturing) that foster a culture of obedience, at the expense of the development of more nonroutine and potentially more productive activities.


A field experiment was conducted in an Inceptisols with sandy loam soil of the research farm of Agriculture and Forestry University, Rampur, Chitwan, Nepal from October 2016 to January 2017 to evaluate the effects of different sources of organic manure in growth and yield of radish. The experiment was carried out in a Randomized Complete Block Design with six treatments (Poultry manure, goat manure, FYM, biogas byproduct, recommended dose of fertilizer and control) and was replicated four times. Pyuthane Red variety (released on 1994) of radish was used as a test crop. After analysis of primary nutrients of the organic manures, the amount was fixed on the basis of recommended nitrogen (100 kg N per hectare) as a reference value. The application of organic manures significantly increased the plant height, number of leaves, leaf breadth, root length, root diameter and biomass yield. The highest biomass yield (75.16 Mg/ha) and highest root yield (49.41 Mg/ha) was obtained from poultry manure application which was similar with recommended rate of fertilizer. The study suggested that application of poultry was found more beneficial and significantly improved growth and yield of radish.
Int. J. Appl. Sci. Biotechnol. Vol 7(1): 39-42


This paper presents a simplified method for the calculation of thin-plate deflections. The method, which deals with uniformly loaded plates, uses the stiffness method to obtain plate deflection equations for specified boundary conditions. A case study was presented in order to demonstrate the use of the proposed method and to illustrate its capabilities. The results obtained were in close agreement with those obtained analytically and with those obtained using the finite element methods. Finally, a user-friendly program for plate deflection calculations based on the proposed method was developed using the mathematical package MATHCAD.


Queen ants, bees, and wasps are so busy giving birth that they don't have time to raise their offspring. To compensate, the queens fill their colonies with daughters who serve as caregivers, like the worker ants pictured above. These designer offspring are a consequence of a reproductive quirk known as haplodiploidy, in which unfertilized eggs develop as males and fertilized eggs become females. Now, zoologists in the United Kingdom suggest that haplodiploidy helped complex societies among insects evolve. The researchers created a mathematical model showing that if daughters are more likely than sons to help raise offspring, insect mothers will produce more daughters. As the daughters fill the colony, it becomes less important for individual females to reproduce, creating an evolutionary incentive for them to raise their siblings. Over time, the mix of rarer males, female helpers, and a queen mother leads to a hierarchical society, the researchers theorize in the current issue of The American Naturalist. The idea has yet to be tested in a lab, but its logic "is beautifully simple and transparent," says Jacobus J. Boomsma, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Copenhagen who was not involved with the study.


Objective:

To observe the effects of minimally invasive surgery (MIS) for hematoma of intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) evacuation followed by rosiglitazone (RSG) infusion therapy on perihematomal tight junction associated proteins occludin and zonula occludens-1 (ZO-1) expression as well as blood brain barrier (BBB) permeability in rabbits.

Methods:

A total of 50 male rabbits (2.5-3.5 kg) were randomly assigned to a sham group (Sham group, 10 rabbits), an ICH model group (HM group, 10 rabbits), a RSG medication group (RSG group, 10 rabbits), a minimally invasive surgery group (MIS group, 10 rabbits) and a MIS combined with RSG group (MIS+RSG group, 10 rabbits). ICH was induced in all of the rabbits except for those in the Sham group. An MIS was performed to evacuate the hematoma at 6 hours after the successful preparation of the ICH model in the MIS group and the MIS+RSG group. The RSG (0.5mg, dissolved in 0.1 ml of 0.9% sodium chloride solution) was infused into the hematoma area in the RSG group and the MIS+RSG group. All rabbits were sacrificed on day 7 after the relative processes were performed successfully, and the perihematomal brain tissue was removed to determine the occludin and ZO-1 expression and BBB permeability by Evens Blue (EB).

Results:

The occludin and ZO-1 expression were all significantly decreased and the BBB permeability was increased in the HM group compared with the Sham group. The RSG used alone or performing the MIS alone to evacuate the ICH resulted in a marked increase in the occludin and ZO-1 expression and decrease in BBB permeability. The MIS+RSG group displayed a great increase in the occludin and ZO-1 expression and a more significant decrease in BBB permeability.

Conclusions:

The MIS combined with RSG medication could significantly increase the perihematomal occludin and ZO-1 expression and decrease in BBB permeability which plays an important therapeutic role in secondary brain damage following ICH.


Vertebrates developed pulmonary circulation and septated the heart into venous and arterial compartments, as the adaptation from aquatic to terrestrial life requires more oxygen and energy. The interventricular septum (IVS) accommodates the ventricular portion of the conduction system and contributes to the mechanical function of both ventricles. Conditions or diseases that affect IVS structure and function (e.g., hypertrophy, defects, other) may lead to ventricular pump failure and/or ventricular arrhythmias with grave consequences. IVS structure and function can be evaluated today using current imaging techniques. Effective therapies can be provided in most cases, although definitions of underlying etiologies may not always be easy, particularly in the elderly due to overlap between genetic and acquired causes of IVS hypertrophy, the most common being IVS abnormality. In this review, state-of-the-art information regarding IVS morphology, physiology, physiopathology, and disease is presented.


OBJECTIVES
Completion of both the mouse and human genome sequences in the private and public sectors has prompted comparison between the two species at multiple levels. This review summarizes the cytochrome P450 (CYP) gene superfamily. For the first time, we have the ability to compare complete sets of CYP genes from two mammals. Use of the mouse as a model mammal, and as a surrogate for human biology, assumes reasonable similarity between the two. It is therefore of interest to catalog the genetic similarities and differences, and to clarify the limits of extrapolation from mouse to human.

METHODS
Data-mining methods have been used to find all the mouse and human CYP sequences; this includes 102 putatively functional genes and 88 pseudogenes in the mouse, and 57 putatively functional genes and 58 pseudogenes in the human. Comparison is made between all these genes, especially the seven main CYP gene clusters.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS
The seven CYP clusters are greatly expanded in the mouse with 72 functional genes versus only 27 in the human, while many pseudogenes are present; presumably this phenomenon will be seen in many other gene superfamily clusters. Complete identification of all pseudogene sequences is likely to be clinically important, because some of these highly similar exons can interfere with PCR-based genotyping assays. A naming procedure for each of four categories of CYP pseudogenes is proposed, and we encourage various gene nomenclature committees to consider seriously the adoption and application of this pseudogene nomenclature system.


The state appears to be facing a legitimacy crisis. Longstanding electoral democracies have experienced a steady decline in popular legitimacy and participation. Surveys point to falling rates of trust in government and declining support for elected politicians across many states since at least the mid- 1970s (Dalton 2004). Citizens have become more and more suspicious of politicians and public officials, and more and more dissatisfied with existing political and administrative processes. Research also points to declining rates of voting in elections. According to one global study, the percentage of eligible voters who cast a vote in elections that were classified as competitive rose steadily between 1945 and 1990, but then dropped. Whereas the average participation rate for elections held during the 1980s was 68%, this figure fell to 64% in the 1990s (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance 2009).The American case is instructive. A few years ago, Harvard's Vanishing Voter Project found that the period from 1960 to 2000 marked the longest ebb in voter turnout in U.S. history (Patterson 2002). In the run up to the 2000 presidential election, the Project found that more than 60 percent of regular voters agreed with the statement: "Politics in America is generally pretty disgusting" (Patterson 2000). More generally, while caution is always needed in interpreting public opinion studies, a good deal of evidence suggests that there is a deep divide between public preferences and actual public policies on a wide range of domestic and international issues. A 2005 Gallup poll, for instance, found that more than 7 in 10 Americans agreed that the country would be better off"if the leaders of our nation followed the views of the public more closely" (Newport 2005). In a 2008 poll, four in five Americans agreed that their country is "run by a few big interests looking out for themselves," rather than "for the benefit of all people" (Program on International Policy Attitudes 2008).How are we to explain and evaluate the rising tide of anti-government sentiment? Scholars of Public Administration have often wrestled with the problem of legitimacy. One noteworthy recent example is Thomas Catlaw's Fabricating the People: Politics and Administration in the Biopolitical State (2007) - the subject of this symposium. Catlaw argues that the problem of legitimacy arises in large part from the assumptions the administrative state makes about "the People". He claims that the state behaves as if it were based on a single sovereign entity called "the People" when really there is no such entity. In his view, the awkward ontology of the People underlies the difficulties that we have - as scholars and citizens - in making sense of the discretion that individual bureaucrats possess given their role is meant to be one of enacting the public will as expressed by democratically-elected representatives. It is perhaps worth emphasizing that Catlaw's argument is that there is no "People" and so no "Public Will" that exists, let alone exists as any kind of unified entity, prior to representation and construction. Thus, Catlaw's aim is obviously not to advocate an alternative form of government that would properly reflect the will of the People. His aim is, rather, to offer an ontological diagnosis of the legitimacy problem confronting the administrative state.Arguably, few people today actually believe in a unified popular will. We live in multicultural societies. Neoclassical economists and rational choice theorists have spread formal and folk versions of the idea that humans act on self-interest, including politicians and bureaucrats. Many of us are thus likely to agree with Catlaw's conclusion that the People as a unity does not exist. For us, the interesting questions to ask of his book are ones such as: How are "fantasies" of a popular will constructed? What is the ontological nature of a people? How did the state come to embody an allegedly unified People? …


In this study, the assumption that good performance in mathematics in the final school year could be used as a pre-entry requirement to programming courses at universities in South Africa, is challenged. The extant literature reports positive relationships between mathematics performance and success in programming courses. As computer programming modules in higher education institutions (HEIs) are typically characterised by low success rates, it becomes important to eliminate potentially erroneous entry requirements. The low success rate in programming modules is ascribed to the abstract nature and content of programming courses, and the inadequacy of pre-university education to prepare students for the cognitive skills required for success in such programmes. This paper reports on a single independent variable, 'performance in high school mathematics', and its relationship to performance in two computer programming courses. The dataset comprised the school marks of four cohorts of students who were enrolled for the programming modules between 2012 and 2015. Firstly, we computed the point-biserial correlation between a dichotomous variable that indicated whether students had mathematics as a subject in Grade 12 or not, and their performance in the programming modules. Once we established that a relationship existed, the marks achieved in the final school year for mathematics, and performance in two programming modules were correlated. Results indicated that the school mathematics marks correlate only marginally, and that correlations were not significant, with performance in the two programming courses. We also correlated the school mathematical literacy marks with performance in the two programming courses, and found that a strong positive correlation that was significant existed with the second semester programming course. We conclude that the mark achieved for school mathematics cannot be considered as a valid admission criterion for programming courses in the South African context.


In 1984, in her groundbreaking book The Second Self, Sherry Turkle made us aware of the tendency of some people to develop relationships with their computers. Turkle described one such example, an MIT computer hacker who she called Anthony, who had "tried out" having girlfriends but preferred to relate to computers. I believe that the developments in AI since then have demonstrated a progression in human-computer relationships to the point where we can now say with confidence that, in the foreseeable future, significant numbers of Anthony's and their female counterparts will be falling in love with software Companions. This position paper summarizes my arguments.


In today's society we are surrounded by large amounts of information, quick decisions and high expectations to perform successfully in everything we do. As a statistical agency, Statistics Sweden is responsible for producing some of the information that is used for decision-making in society and is therefore under constant internal and external pressure to perform well. The responsibility to produce high-quality statistics to all customers and users is not simple. What is the quality of the statistics produced? How do we assure and control the quality of the statistics? Do we use our resources efficiently? These are important questions, which need to be addressed.One way of addressing these and other issues is to work with quality in a systematic fashion. Thus there is a need for a Quality Management System, i.e., a systematic way to handle quality issues of all kinds in all parts of the organization, and to continue the journey towards the vision of being a "world class statistical agency".This Masters thesis is a description and discussion of the efforts to find a suitable Quality Management System. The thesis starts with a discussion about the vague quality concept, continues with a description of numerous frameworks, methods and systems related to quality management as well as their pros and cons and ends with a recommendation for Statistics Sweden. The recommendation is to use the EFQM Excellence Model as a quality framework, Six Sigma as a tool-box for improvement projects and modern internal auditing methods for evaluation and follow-up. Finally, issues related to the implementation of the system are discussed.


This article offers an analysis of the nation–city, country–capital relationship in the 19th-century East-Central European nation building in a framework of a case study on the question of the Hungarian Scholarly Society (now: Hungarian Academy of Sciences) about the role and function of the cities and towns of Hungary in the development of the Hungarian national culture. The work of the winner, Janos Hetenyi, published in 1841, has found the equilibrium between the topics of the city and nation as ideal wholes, within a framework of a historical analysis of the urbanity of the public philosophy. This model of the urban(e) nation, organized by the cities as cultural centres was worked out in the optimistic decades of the Hungarian Reform Era (1825–1848), only; on its margins has appeared the known elements of the cultural criticism of the next epochs, such as the topics of a sinful and (ethnically) alien city.


Gender inequality remains a major barrier to human development. Girls and women have made major strides since 1990, but they have not yet gained gender equity. In this paper, we review ways to measure and monitor gender inequality, providing a critique of existing measures including the first global gender indices that were launched in the 1995 Human Development Report – the Gender-related Development Index and the Gender Empowerment Measure - and introduce a new index that is presented in the 2010 Human Development Report. The Gender Inequality Index, which addresses the key criticisms of previous measures, is unique in including critical issues of educational attainment, economic and political participation, and reproductive health issues and in accounting for overlapping inequalities at the national level. As such, it represents an important advance on existing global measures of gender equity. Measures of the disadvantages for women raise awareness of problems, permit monitoring of progress towards gender equity objectives and help keep governments accountable. In this light, the Gender Inequality Index is designed to reveal the extent to which the realization of a country's human development potential is curtailed by gender inequality, and provides empirical foundations for policy analysis and advocacy efforts. We also compare our results with the results of alternative gender inequality indices, finding significant variation in rankings across the various indices due largely to differences in the elements of gender inequality they seek to measure.


The focus of industrial organisation theory, to date, has been mainly concerned with the activities of manufacturing
companies, the service (health) sector and more recently, a consideration of knowledge-based firms. Little attention
has been given to the industrial organisation (structure) and competitive (conduct) aspects of the cultural industries.
More research is needed to explore the operation of these newly emerging, but increasingly economically important
sectors. It is contentious, but the author's feel a plausible view, that the cultural industries are primarily concerned with the supply and demand of creative 'commodities' - literature, the visual arts, performing arts, cinema and TV films, even fashion (Caves, 2001). The underpinning contention proposed, by this paper, is one of industrial organisation theory - with its roots deeply embedded in transaction cost economics - not really being able to get to grips with the notion of a cultural or creative entity. Something which isn't focused on a business output, but more on the supply of an 'aesthetic' experience. It is this notion of an 'aesthetic' value inserted in the cultural product, which acts to distinguish the purely cultural (high creative input) - .music, fine art - from the less purer (e.g. television, films) and the non-cultural. This paper will focus on one cultural sector - the music market. It is centred on findings from initial research, which is being supported by the European Union's Leonardo initiative, into the disruptive impact of the Internet and complementary technological advances on the structure and conduct of the music market. It is evident from our initial research that the music market operates on two levels - upper and lower. At the lower level, one finds the small-scale 'picker' who will concentrate on the difficult and somewhat onerous task of selecting and
nurturing the creative music talent. These 'pickers' are immersed in artist activities and are very much devoted to
realizing the full potential of the creative process. The upper level is concerned with the widespread packaging,
marketing and distribution of the music product. This level, to all senses and purposes is a very efficient, large scale marketing machine with a huge, globally-based distribution system. The distributors (record companies) are working with highly developed and well-tested creative inputs (established artists). The distributors have largely controlled the supply and demand levels for music, historically. The Internet, in many ways has radically altered the structure and conduct of the music market. The music 'digital wave' is the consequence of a number of factors: including the emergence of communication technologies' that have provided the crucial infrastructure needed to supply music globally over the Internet. It is the consumer who is going to be freer to choose which music to purchase and they are going to be much less reliant on the conduct of the traditional intermediaries - record labels, agents and publishers.
The process of buying will be much less transaction oriented with the Internet facilitating more scope for relational buying - through asynchronous, virtual-based communication tools. This radicalisation impact is not only in offering the musician more potential, for alternative value creation - financially and aesthetically, but also newly emerging opportunities for distributing their music. Some appropriate case examples will be presented from various levels of the production chain to carefully illustrate the impact of Internet on market structure and conduct. The paper concludes,
by indicating that despite the radical potential of the Internet for the music market it is unlikely that the Internet will result in the complete cannibalisation, of value - aesthetic or financial, in the production chain of music. Even in a fully digitized music business, many traditional actiivites - such as finding and promoting new artists, producing and recording music and securing airplay will continue to be highly important. The Internet, isn't totally devoid of a past in the music context, it is the latest stage in the ongoing evolution of information and communication technologies. Given the lack of any control of one firm or nation over the event and the activities on the web, security and piracy
issues are likely to be unresolved in the short rum - for the music market.


Abstract. Classification of satellite images are complex process and accuracy of the output is dependent on classifier parameters. This paper examines the effect of various parameters like weighted exponent "m" for FCM , PCM classifiers and weighted exponent "m" as well as fixed parameter "?" for NC without entropy based algorithm. The prime focus in this work is to select suitable parameters for classification of remotely sensed data which improves the accuracy of classification output. The uncertainty criterion has been estimated from sub-pixel confusion uncertainty matrix (SCM), based on classified and testing outputs. Therefore, these criterions are dependent on the error of the results and sensitive to error variations. So it has also been tried to estimate entropy, based on outputs generated by various classifiers like FCM, PCM and NC without entropy based classifier, hence this computed entropy is sensitive to uncertainty variations. The AWiFS and LISS-III datasets are being used for classification and testing respectively. Soft classified outputs from FCM, PCM and NC without entropy classifiers for AWiFS and LISS-III have been evaluated using SCM, overall accuracy, fuzzy kappa coefficient and entropy. The SCM and fuzzy kappa coefficients are used to major relative accuracies, while entropy is an absolute uncertainty indicator. From resultant aspect, while monitoring entropy of fraction images for different regularizing parameter values, optimum regularizing parameter has been obtained for "m" = 2.0 and "?" = 1, which gives highest accuracy from sub-pixel confusion uncertainty matrix (SCM) i.e. 96.27% and AWiFS entropy has been 0.71 using noise clustering without entropy based classifier.


Purpose: To compare hemodynamic changes at optic nerve head (ONH) in patients with acute non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION) and age-matched controls by colour Doppler imaging (CDI). Materials and Methods: Twenty-eight patients with acute NAION and 24 ageand sex-matched controls were included in this cross-sectional study. By means of CDI, the blood-fl ow velocities of the central retinal artery (CRA) and posterior ciliary artery (PCA) were measured. Peak systolic velocity (PSV), end-diastolic velocity (EDV) and resistive index (RI) were determined. Measurements on the affected side of the patients were compared to the controls. Results: There was not any signifi cant difference with regard to PSV, EDV, and RI values of the CRA between patients with NAION and controls. PSV and RI of the PCA were signifi cantly increased in patients with NAION compared with controls (P<0.001, P<0.0001, respectively). EDV of the PCA showed no statistically signifi cant difference. Conclusion: Increased PSV and RI of PCA were found on the affected side of acute NAION compared to the controls. These fi ndings might be potentially useful in the diagnosis and monitoring of NAION.


It is well recognised that phase 3 cardiac rehabilitation is beneficial, reducing both mortality and morbidity following acute myocardial infarction. The role of ongoing phase 4 cardiac rehabilitation is less clear. This study was designed to assess the effectiveness of phase 4 cardiac rehabilitation in acute myocardial infarction. Following acute myocardial infarction, 143 patients who had completed phase 3 cardiac rehabilitation were followed up. Analysis was divided into three groups: those who took up phase 4 rehabilitation, those offered who declined and those not offered phase 4 rehabilitation because it was not available locally. Risk factor profile, self-reported exercise and quality-of-life scores using the short form (SF)-36 were assessed in all patients. Body mass index (BMI) shows no overall change in the 'accepted' group, but shows a significant increase between pre and five-year levels in the 'declined' group (p=0.024) and in the 'not offered' group (p=0.014). All groups showed an increase of SF-36 scores following phase 3, which showed a trend towards significance. Both the 'accepted' and 'not offered' groups maintained this improvement, while the 'declined' group returned to baseline (p=0.05 vs. 'accepted' and p=0.03 vs. 'not offered'). All groups had similar exercise levels initially and all showed significant improvements after phase 3 with some deterioration out to five years. This decline in exercise was significant in the 'declined' group (p=0.029) and shows a trend in the 'not offered' group (p=0.057). This small single-centre study suggests that there are observable benefits in participating in long-term phase 4 cardiac rehabilitation. Those who decline phase 4 cardiac rehabilitation clearly do less well. Whether the benefits seen can be attributed directly to phase 4 cardiac rehabilitation would require a different study design to address this issue.


The economics major is a central part of a college education. But is that economics major doing what it is meant to do? And if not, how should it be changed? This book raises a set of provocative questions that encourage readers to look at the economics major in a different light than it is typically considered and provides a series of recommendations for change.


The definitive characteristics of a natural science of behavior are reviewed and contrasted with the characteristics of the traditional social sciences. Differences are traced to the different origins of those disciplines. While philosophical and scientific factors auger for the disciplinary independence of a natural science approach to the discipline, arguments against independence are fueled by economic and political contingencies. Efforts by natural scientists to change disciplines rooted in mysticism have been unsuccessful for reasons that could have been anticipated, and the resulting compromises to the integrity of the natural science discipline are explored. Based on the fundamental incompatibility of the disciplines in question, natural scientists of behavior must choose between the integrity of their discipline and the seductions of the extensive resources currently controlled by their mystical counterparts.


This study investigated whether abstract, gradient phonotactic constraints play a role in speech processing. Dutch listeners performed an auditory lexical decision task, in which the nonword stimuli either did or did not violate a phonotactic constraint. Listeners were faster to reject nonwords that violated a phonotactic constraint. This effect remained significant even after partialling out the effects of lexical factors, such as the similarity of the nonwords to existing words in the lexicon. This finding constitutes, to our knowledge, the first demonstration of the involvement of pure abstract phonotactic constraints in on-line speech perception.


Abstract Microwave-based diagnostics have found broad application in magnetic fusion plasma diagnostics and are expected to be widely employed in future burning plasma experiments (BPXs). Most of these techniques are based directly on the dispersive properties of the plasma medium that, as shown in the body of the paper, results in the microwave/millimeter wave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum being particularly well suited for a variety of measurements of both magnetic fusion plasma equilibrium parameters and their fluctuations. Electron cyclotron emission provides a measurement of electron temperature and its fluctuations while electron cyclotron absorption potentially can provide a measurement of electron pressure (the product of electron density and temperature) as well as information on the suprathermal electron distribution. Electron Bernstein wave emission is also employed for electron temperature radiometric measurements in devices including reversed field pinches, spherical tori, and higher-aspect-ratio tokamaks and stellarators that operate at high β. The radar-based microwave reflectometry technique measures the electron density profile and its fluctuations by means of the reflection of electromagnetic waves at the plasma cutoff layer. Coherent Thomson scattering in the microwave region yields information on the fast ion population. Wave number resolved microwave collective scattering is also widely employed for measuring nonthermal (turbulent) density fluctuations or coherent electrostatic waves. The approach taken in this review is to address each technique separately beginning with the physical principles followed by representative implementations on magnetic fusion devices. In each case, the applicability to future BPXs is discussed. It is impossible in a short review to capture fully the numerous significant accomplishments of the many clever scientists and engineers who have advanced microwave plasma diagnostics technology over many decades. Therefore, in this paper, we can reveal only the basic principles together with some of the most exciting highlights while outlining the major trends, and we hope it will serve as an exciting introduction to this rich field of plasma diagnostics.


In a 2010 essay on the fate of New Historicism, Steven Justice proposes that critics should rethink methods of contextualizing poetry within history. As Justice explains, New Historicism has lead critics to construct increasingly local, microscopic, discrete contexts for reading poetry. How, he asks, might we account for the moment in which poetry is written without isolating that context from larger processes of time and change? This dissertation argues that Chaucer's poetic form can itself point the way towards a dynamic understanding of the moment in which poetry is composed. Chaucer writes in a developing vernacular defined through its constant tendency to change. Meanwhile, he builds his works using borrowed material from old texts: sources both Latin and vernacular, classical and medieval. In order to understand the significance of this layered literary form, I compare Chaucer's poetry to the textual culture of Trecento Italy. There, the growing popularity of Roman history among vernacular readers inspired scribes and translators to develop sophisticated methods of using form to reflect historical, lexical, and cultural difference between past and present. Meanwhile, Trecento Italian poets recognized that the vernacular itself could provide an important site for theorizing historical alterity. As Dante argues, given enough time to develop, a vernacular language will appear completely foreign to its original speakers. Using Italian texts as comparative context for close readings of Chaucer's poetry, I find that Chaucer is also interested in how language and literature change over time. However, rather than focusing on the difference between ancient poetry and medieval texts, Chaucer hones in on the propensity for alterity within his own poetic form and lexicon, which is amplified by the influence of translated and adapted texts. His poetry represents its own moment as being in a state of transformation driven, in part, by the very act of writing. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group English First Advisor David Wallace Second Advisor Rita Copeland Subject Categories English Language and Literature | Medieval Studies This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/754 CHAUCER'S FORMAL HISTORIES: TEMPORALITY AND INTERTEXTUALITY FROM THE ITALIAN TRECENTO TO TROILUS AND CRISEYDE AND THE CANTERBURY TALES