The mobile cloud computing (MCC) has enriched the quality of services that the clients access from remote cloud‐based servers. The growth in the number of wireless users for MCC has further augmented the requirement for a robust and efficient authenticated key agreement mechanism. Formerly, the users would access cloud services from various cloud‐based service providers and authenticate one another only after communicating with the trusted third party (TTP). This requirement for the clients to access the TTP during each mutual authentication session, in earlier schemes, contributes to the redundant latency overheads for the protocol. Recently, Tsai et al have presented a bilinear pairing based multi‐server authentication (MSA) protocol, to bypass the TTP, at least during mutual authentication. The scheme construction works fine, as far as the elimination of TTP involvement for authentication has been concerned. However, Tsai et al scheme has been found vulnerable to server spoofing attack and desynchronization attack, and lacks smart card‐based user verification, which renders the protocol inapt for practical implementation in different access networks. Hence, we have proposed an improved model designed with bilinear pairing operations, countering the identified threats as posed to Tsai scheme. Additionally, the proposed scheme is backed up by performance evaluation and formal security analysis.


Background/Context With a rationale informed by the demographic imperative, the resegregation of public schools, and our positionalities as researchers, we understand both the high stakes and the complexity of capacitating White preservice and in-service teachers capable of anti-racist praxis and race-visible teaching and learning in public school classrooms. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study Deploying the framework of colorblind racism, we systematically reviewed race-evasive White teacher identity studies and answered the question: What can we learn from 25 years of research? Research Design In using the method called the synoptic text, we engaged electronic databases, with special emphasis on ERIC EBSCOhost. The simple and general search term "White teachers" conducted using year-by-year parameters provided the most systematic net for capturing relevant studies. In narrowing our focus, we developed the following criteria: (a) White teachers as central topic, (b) analytical emphases on colorblind racism, (c) publication in peer-reviewed journals, (d) use of qualitative and/or narrative research methodologies, and (e) publication date between 1990 and 2015. Data Collection and Analysis Our general search yielded 136 (N = 136) peer-reviewed empirical qualitative and/or narrative studies between 1990 and 2015, and after narrowing our criteria, we found 47 race-evasive White teacher identity studies (n = 47, 47/136) that we reviewed here. Each study in the document universe was abstracted by authors, added to a spreadsheet, and categorized by emergent themes. Findings/Results The following five themes emerged and developed over the last 25 years: (a) racialized silence and invisibility (9/47), (b) resistance and active reconstruction of White privilege (12/47), (c) whiteness in institutional and social contexts (8/47), (d) fertile paradoxes in new research (9/47), and (e) reflexive whiteness pedagogies (9/47). Conclusions/Recommendations We believe our literature review identifies the complex contours of White preservice and in-service teachers' silence, resistance to, engagement in, and pedagogical grappling with racism, whiteness, and White privilege. The importance of pre-service and in-service teachers being able to engage, understand, and challenge these issues becomes critically important at our crossroads in the present, especially given the recent election that bolstered open and tacit White supremacists into power. If White teachers are to engage racism, whiteness, and White privilege, they must do so with as opposed to for their students, in a Freirean sense. If teaching for social justice is important, renewed interest and investment in White teacher identity studies and related whiteness pedagogies is key for the next 25 years.


This paper presents a short-baseline real-time stereo vision system that is capable of the simultaneous and robust estimation of the ego-motion and of the 3D structure and the independent motion of thousands of points of the environment. Kalman lters estimate the position and velocity of world points in 3D Euclidean space. The six degrees of freedom of the ego-motion are obtained by minimizing the projection error of the current and previous clouds of static points. Experimental results with real data in indoor and outdoor environments demonstrate the robustness, accuracy and eciency of our approach. Since the baseline is as short as 13cm, the device is head-mountable, and can be used by a visually impaired person. Our proposed system can be used to augment the perception of the user in complex dynamic environments.


Abstract. Commonly, definitions of climate are endorsed where the external conditions are held constant. This paper argues that these definitions risk being empirically void because in reality the external conditions vary. As a consequence, analogous definitions for varying external conditions are explored with help of the recently developed theory of non-autonomous dynamical systems, and the similarities and differences between the cases of constant and varying external conditions are discussed. It is argued that there are analogous definitions for varying external conditions which are preferable to the definitions where the external conditions are held constant. In this context, a novel definition is proposed (namely, climate as the distribution over time under a regime of varying external conditions), which is argued to be promising.


In this paper we analyze the anticompetitive effects of concentration of ownership in auction markets. We compare two different auction formats with uniform price. In the first, the price equals the highest accepted bid, whereas in the second the price equals the lowest rejected bid. For the former, and for a two-unit, two-plants, two-firms model, we find an equilibrium where all plants (all firms) bid according to a common bidding function. The concentration of the ownership has the same effect on the bidding behavior as eliminating one plant. However, the expected price is lower than the one expected in such three independent plant scenario. More surprisingly (and special to this 2 × 2 × 2 case), the equilibrium is efficient. In the latter, alternative auction format, firms bids asymmetrically for its two plants. Hence, the equilibrium is inefficient. Also, with this format, we show that the market price may be arbitrarily large. Thus, and contrary to some plausible expectation base in received auction theory, a (sealed-bid) auction format in which the price for a bidder is unrelated to his bid becomes less efficient than one in which the price may coincide with that bidder's bid, when one admits that several bidders may coordinate (through ownership) their bids. The results add to a literature that favors more winner's-bid pricing rules.


Both the invalid and the sickroom pervade the writings of the Victorian period, particularly in fiction, medical guidebooks, and autobiographies. The sickroom is a space that separates the invalid from the healthy space of the house and defines the invalid body as other. However, as a space that is both marginalized and central, the sickroom is molded by the medical and social views of sickness and the individualized experience of illness. This article contextualizes the Victorian sickroom by conceptualizing it through the lens of Foucault's heterotopia of deviation, which represents the medicalized act of dividing practices to physically separate those deemed sick from healthy people and spaces. The sickroom functions as a heterotopia in three ways: physical space created by medical authority; textual space contested through invalid narratives; and bodily space, whereby the sickroom is mapped onto the invalid's body. Thus, the sickroom as heterotopia reveals the contentiousness of invalidism and the limitations of medical authority and power.


We study the s-polarized nonlinear guided and surface electromagnetic waves supported by a three-layer structure consisting of a nonlinear dielectric film, characterized by a Kerr-like dielectric constant, surrounded symmetrically by identical, linear dielectric media. We present numerical results for the effective wave number of these modes as a function of the intensity of the electric field at the lower surface of the nonlinear film for both self-focusing and self-defocusing nonlinear films. A double-valued relation between the effective wave number and the electric field intensity is obtained for certain ranges of the parameters characterizing the structure under investigation. Asymmetric modes in this symmetric structure are found to occur when the nonlinear film is made from a self-defocusing dielectric material.


Influenced by the Parnas and Madey's four-variable model and the concept of phenomena in problem frames, we desire to provide guidelines to facilitate refinement-based formal modelling. These guidelines are based on monitored, controlled, mode and commanded (MCMC) phenomena of a control system. Commanded phenomena reflect the role that an operator plays in system control. The mode phenomenon captures the states of the controller. Requirements of several case studies have been formally modelled using the MCMC phenomena. This helped to identify some of the ambiguities and advantages of the guidelines. In particular, we realised that the concept of commanded phenomena and its difference with monitored phenomena can cause confusion. Also, it was noticed that the mode is a special phenomenon, as it can be modified by operator requests or internally by the control system. In this paper we clarify the concept of commanded phenomena and differentiate between monitored and commanded phenomena clearly. The concept of mode phenomenon is also introduced in details. As practical examples, the phenomena of two case studies, namely a cruise control system and a lane centering controller (LCC), are identified. The MCMC phenomena are also used to structure the requirement document (RD) of a control system. This can help with the transition from an informal RD to a formal model. This approach is used to structure the RD of the LCC case study which is supported by our industrial partner.


The accounting treatment of goodwill has been the source of much debate and controversy amongst standard setters and financial report preparers in UK and many other countries. There have been great difficulties in the definition, measurement and subsequent accounting treatment for goodwill. Despite this, goodwill is a significant asset in many companies, whose existence and value are maintained by considerable annual expenditure. Accounting for goodwill changed in the UK in 2005 through the combined effects of the new International Accounting Standards, IFRS 3, Business Combinations, and IAS 36 Impairment of Assets. This paper critically examines, based on the accounting literature and professional standards, the change in accounting treatment for goodwill pursuant to international financial reporting standards (IFRSs) by reference to the UK accounting standards. It critically discusses and compares the former UK and new IFRS policies for goodwill accounting demonstrating the advantages of and arguments against the impairment-only approach to goodwill. It also highlights the sources of managerial discretion in testing goodwill for impairment and provides concluding remarks. Further studies are needed to examine the long-term effects of the impairment only approach to determine whether managers' opportunistic choices or their incentives to convey their privately held information drive the recognition of goodwill impairments. The paper has implications for financial report prepares and users in highlighting conceptual issues of relevance that will arise in the application of the impairment-only approach to goodwill. It also provides a thorough review of the literature published on the accounting treatment for goodwill in the UK and provides avenues for future research.


The ability to identify and track visually interesting regions has many practical applications — for example, in image and video compression, visual marketing and foveal machine vision. Due to challenges in modeling the peculiarities of human physiological and psychological responses, automatic detection of fixation points is an open problem. Indeed, no objective methods are currently capable of fully modeling the human perception of regions of interest (ROIs). Thus, research often relies on user studies with eye tracking systems. In this paper we propose a cost-effective and convenient alternative, obtained by having internet workers annotate videos with ROI coordinates. The workers use an interactive video player with a simulated mouse-driven fovea, which models the fall-off in resolution of the human visual system. Since this approach is not supervised, we implement methods for identifying inaccurate or malicious results. Using this proposal, one can collect ROI data in an automated fashion, and at a much lower cost than laboratory studies.


The purpose of this study was to assess power relations between school managers and teachers as
a basis for conflict in three (3) selected secondary schools of Rufunsa district in Lusaka Province
of Zambia. This research study was guided by Michael Foucault's Power relations theory.
The sample size comprised thirty four (34) respondents segmented as: 1 DEBS, 3 Head teachers,
9 Head of Departments (HODs) and 21 Teachers distributed equally in the three (3) secondary
schools. Criterion and homogeneous Purposive sampling was used on respondents like DEBS,
Headteachers, HoDs and teachers as well as on secondary schools selected for the study. This
study adopted an explanatory qualitative case study research design. The researcher specifically
used semi-structured interviews to collect data from the DEBS and Headteachers while openended
questionnaires were administered to HoDs and teachers. Thematic analysis with verbatims
was used, where data analysis starts with the categorization of themes from the semi-structured
intervieThe study found, to a greater extent, that negative power relations between school managers and
teachers were a basis for conflict in selected secondary schools of Rufunsa district in Lusaka
Province. While both positive and negative power relations existed in schools, negative power
relations were identified to be common because both school managers and teachers admitted the
existence of power related conflicts and stressed their desire to have the status quo changed
through their submission of suggestions for enhancing positive power relations in schools.
Negative power relations led to conflicts, non-cordial relations, team fragmentation and lack of
collaboration, among others, between school managers and teachers. The ripple effect to such
conflicts was lack of school improvement and poor performance among learners. Further, the
study found that imposed decision-making styles were rampant as opposed to collective
decision-making styles since most teachers and some HoDs respectively attested to the fact that
they were side-lined. Other findings were that negative power relations were responsible for
stifled schools' success and progress, in addition to teacher low morale, motivation and skills'
development. Furthermore, the study established suggestions, based on the findings, for enhancing positive power relations in schools like upholding professionalism, inclusive decision making
as well as accountability and transparency, among others. The researcher not only
proposed seven recommendations that would help restore positive power relations in schools but
also future research area involving power related conflicts in schools.


Intelligent environment research has benefited medical care in a number of ways, including emergency detection, comfort and accessibility. However, most of these techniques have been applied in the context of a single resident, leaving out situations where there is more than one person in the living space. A current looming issue for intelligent environment systems is performing these same techniques when multiple residents or care providers are present in the environment. In this paper we investigate the problem of attributing sensor events to individuals in a multi-resident intelligent environment. Specifically, explore and contrast using two different classification techniques. The naive Bayesian and Markov Model classifiers present different capabilities and features for identifying the resident responsible for a unique sensor event. We present results of experimental validation in an intelligent workplace testbed and discuss the unique issues that arise in addressing this challenging problem.


We present a direct-write technique for assembly of microscale 3D colloidal crystals on substrates. We use a custombuilt high-resolution liquid manipulation system to dispense colloidal suspensions through a capillary tip. Using this system, we establish a liquid bridge between the capillary tip and a temperature-controlled substrate, initiating crystal growth upward from the substrate. We demonstrate construction of cone-shaped and tower structures by controlling the dynamic shape of the liquid meniscus during crystal precipitation. Interplay between lateral capillary forces and granular cohesion governs assembly. Finally, we show that confinement of the meniscus on microfabricated template features enables assembly of discrete particle clusters.


While quantitative easing (QE) in the United States likely increased capital flows to emerging-market economies (EMEs), putting upward pressure on asset prices and exchange rates, diverging fundamentals between advanced economies and EMEs were also important drivers. Evidence suggests that the benefits of QE to EMEs, in higher global demand and increased confidence, appear to outweigh the costs. When advanced economies begin to normalize monetary policy, the best defence for EMEs against any potential instability is likely to be further strengthening of their macroeconomic and financial policy frameworks.


The paper analyzes the research contributions by the faculty members of the Department of Physics, Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), Pune, Maharashtra, India for the period 1990-2014. Bibliographic and citation data were retrieved from Scopus database. Query statements covering all variations in the name of SPPU were used to search the database. Scopus indexed 1629 publications with 22618 citations for the period. Author keywords in Scopus database indicate that faculty members are working in core areas of physics as well as interdisciplinary subjects like chemistry, instrumentation sciences, engineering, etc. The year-wise analysis shows that research productivity of faculty member increased over the period. Faculty members published their research in core physics journals among which Journal of Applied Physics (72 papers) is the most preferred journal. The faculty members of the University have collaborated with scientists from USA, UK, Germany and Japan. At the national level, the University physicists have collaborated most with Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.


We decompose the evidence lower bound to show the existence of a term measuring the total correlation between latent variables. We use this to motivate our $\beta$-TCVAE (Total Correlation Variational Autoencoder), a refinement of the state-of-the-art $\beta$-VAE objective for learning disentangled representations, requiring no additional hyperparameters during training. We further propose a principled classifier-free measure of disentanglement called the mutual information gap (MIG). We perform extensive quantitative and qualitative experiments, in both restricted and non-restricted settings, and show a strong relation between total correlation and disentanglement, when the latent variables model is trained using our framework.


develop after vasectomy, and also a glycoprotein contained in the seminal plasma has also been shown to have been an antigen responsible for urticaria in a female partner. Until now I have not sought information after vasectomy in the male patients with chronic urticaria, and the purpose of this letter is to draw attention to the possible association, and find out if it has already been noted by any of your readers. ROBERT P WARIN


The study was carried out in mushroom production unit of Department of Rural Technology Chauras Campus, HNBGU, Srinagar Garhwal in the year 2017-19. The study examined the cost, returns and break-even point of mushroom production on different mushroom production in Uttarakhand as the sustainable source of income in rural areas. The result shows that if mushroom price per kg decline to Rs.136.20 provided actual production is not less than 59.25 kg in oyster mushroom and Rs.114.30 provided actual production is not less than 441.11kg in button mushroom in a cycle of cultivation. A total of four production periods annually can be achieved in Uttarakhand. Strengthening mushroom production farming could be essential in order to sustain the rural economy to keep its development, increasing and diversifying business and employment opportunities. Mushroom production may provide income opportunities for small farmers. Simple tabular analysis, benefit-cost analysis and break-even analysis is done for statistical analysis. The study concluded that mushroom entrepreneur in Srinagar Garhwal valley may be successful if done with skill and proper planning.


This thesis examines, classifies and evaluates the tactics and organisational methods of British and Irish anarchist groups, which operated in the period 1984-1999 (although reference is made to groupings and events outside of this period). The thesis explains how class struggle anarchism, which was a minority trend even within the libertarian milieu, has developed into a significant and lively (anti-)political movement. This thesis examines recent groups through their own publications and their accounts of their recent actions.

Previous studies have attempted to assess anarchist methods through either liberal or traditional Marxist categories. This thesis develops a mode of assessment that is consistent with the methods of evaluation used by anarchists themselves. This prefigurative ethic is used to build up an ideal-type of anarchism that is consistent with the main characteristics of libertarian theory.

Anarchist prefiguration - which demands that the means must be synecdochic in relation to the ends - requires that the oppressed become the agents who bring about change. Oppression is irreducible to capitalism alone, but in most contexts, economic oppression will be a significant force in the creation of the oppressed agent's identity. Anarchists' preference for 'direct action' captures their commitment to the means being in accordance with the ends, and the primacy of the oppressed in resisting their oppression.

The anarchist ideal is used as a standard to assess the operations of existing anarchist groups. Consistent with prefiguration, anarchist organisation and tactics have to be multiform and flexible, without strategic priority being given to any single organisation or structure. Anarchist tactics must also involve a variety of oppressed subjects, while undermining hierarchies of power. It will be shown that certain organisational methods associated with anarchism; such as old style syndicalism is incompatible with the prefigurative ethic. Similarly certain organisational structures, often dismissed as inconsistent with anarchist principles, such as temporary small groups carrying out selective propaganda by deed, can, under certain conditions, be consistent with anarchism.

The growth of class struggle anarchism is shown to be a result of its prefigurative and multiform organisation and its corresponding diversity of tactics.


Abstract In a crisis-prone world, the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) uprooted by both armed conflicts and environmental disasters has drastically increased and displacement risks have intensified. Despite the growing attention within global security and development agendas to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), there remain striking gaps in addressing SRHR in crisis situations, particularly among IDP women and girls. This article examines the continuum between social reproduction in times of crisis and the material and ideological conditions that restrict women's bodily autonomy in everyday life. Using the case of the Philippines where millions of people are routinely affected by conflict and disaster-induced displacements, it argues that the failure to recognise the centrality of women's health and bodily autonomy not only hinders the sustainable provision of care and domestic labour during and after crisis, but also fundamentally constrains how security is enacted within these spaces. Thus, the article highlights an urgent need to rethink the gendered political economy of crisis responses as a building block for stemming gendered violence and depletion of social reproductive labour at the household, state, and global levels.


According to article 7 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), States parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that women enjoy equality with men in political and public life. The Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee) declares in its General Recommendation No. 23 that while removal of de jure barriers is necessary, it is not sufficient to achieve full and equal participation of women in political and public life. That is why under article 4 of CEDAW, the CEDAW Committee encourages adoption by States parties of temporary special measures aimed at accelerating de facto equality between men and women in order to give full effect to article 7 of CEDAW concerning the participation of women in political and public life. The CEDAW Committee makes reference to setting quotas within a range of measures to achieve equality of political participation. Turkish women acquired the right to vote and to be elected in 1934 and representation of women in the Turkish Parliament began in 1935. Turkey also acceded to CEDAW in 1985. However, the political representation of women in the Turkish Parliament is still insufficient. In its last concluding observations on Turkey, the CEDAW Committee declared that it was concerned about the low participation of women at all levels of decision-making including the parliament which was below the global average. This article analyzes the issue of women's representation in the Turkish Parliament in light of CEDAW. It focuses on CEDAW Committee documents issued during seven reporting cycles. The article begins by examining Turkey's national reports and CEDAW Committee reports related to seven reporting cycles, and then proceeds to discuss the main problems concerning women's parliamentary representation on the basis of these documents.


Let X be a subgroup of the full automorphism group of the Hamming graph H ( m, q ) , and C a subset of the vertices of the Hamming graph. We say that C is an ( X, 2) -neighbour-transitive code if X is transitive on C , as well as C 1 and C 2 , the sets of vertices which are distance 1 and 2 from the code. It has been shown that, given an ( X, 2) -neighbour-transitive code C , there exists a subgroup of X with a 2 -transitive action on the alphabet; this action is thus almost-simple or affine. This paper completes the classification of ( X, 2) -neighbour-transitive codes, with minimum distance at least 5 , where the subgroup of X stabilising some entry has an almost-simple action on the alphabet in the stabilised entry. The main result of this paper states that the class of ( X, 2) neighbour-transitive codes with an almost-simple action on the alphabet and minimum distance at least 3 consists of one infinite family of well known codes.


We report observation of query pulse length dependent Ramsey interference (QPLD-RI), using pulsed Raman excitation in rubidium vapor. This is observed when a long, attenuated query pulse is used during pulsed Raman excitation. We explain the physical mechanism behind the QPLD-RI using a Bloch vector model. We also use numerical solutions to time-dependent density matrix equations to simulate this interference effect, showing qualitative agreement with experimental results. Presence of such interference could create a potential source of error in a vapor cell Raman clock constructed using frequency-domain Ramsey interference (FDRI).


Abstract Research suggests that critical power (CP) can be estimated from a single 3-min bout of all-out cycling. The purpose of this study was to investigate the reliability and validity of the 3-min all-out cycling test when carried out at a constant cadence (isokinetic) and against a fixed resistance (linear). 12 participants completed 8 tests: 1) a ramp test; 2–4) 3 fixed power tests to calculate CP and W′ using the 1/time mathematical model; 5–8) four 3-min all-out tests to calculate EP and WEP; 2 isokinetic and 2 linear tests. There was no significant difference between EP-isokinetic and CP (P=0.377). There were significant differences between EP-linear and CP (P=0.004), WEP-isokinetic and W′ (P<0.001) and WEP-linear and W′ (P<0.001). The coefficient of variation in EP-isokinetic, EP-linear, WEP-isokinetic and WEP-linear was 1.93, 1.17, 8.44 and 5.39%, respectively. The 3-min all-out isokinetic test provides a reliable estimate of EP and a valid estimate of CP. The 3-min all-out linear test provides a reliable estimate of EP, but not a valid estimate of CP. Furthermore, these results suggest that the 3-min all-out test should not be used to estimate W′.


Electrospun micro and nanofibers produced via electrospinning method were used for the sound absorption purposes. Polymers were initially dissolved in dimethyleformamide (DMF) or ethanol with a ratio of 80:20 and electrospun at 20 kV, 20 cm separation distance and 3 ml/hrs pump speed. The two/microphone transfer function method of the B&K impedance tube was used to determine the acoustical properties of the manufactured nanofibers at various frequencies. The test results showed that the absorption coefficients of nanofibers (~500 nm) drastically increased. The reason behind this phenomenon may be attributed to the higher surface area of nanofibers and their interactions with more sound waves/air molecules. This result may open up new possibilities for the sound absorption problems in many fields, such as aircrafts, other transportation vehicles and infrastructures.


Abstract
 Species delimitation in Pinaceae is often challenged by limited morphological differentiation and introgression. In Tsuga (hemlocks), species delimitation has been most challenging among northeastern Asian taxa, where the species are weakly marked morphologically and range in number from three to five in previous studies. Two low-copy nuclear four-coumarase-ligase (4CL) genes andmorphology strongly support a clade of the Japanese endemic T. diversifolia and T. sieboldii from Japan and Ulleung island (Ulleungdo) in Korea. This clade is here referred to as the oceanic hemlocks. 4CL strongly supports a sister-group relationship of the widespread northeastern Asian T. chinensis and eastern North American T. caroliniana. In contrast, chloroplast genomes, which are markedly reduced in Tsuga and relatives, strongly support Japanese T. sieboldii as sister to T. chinensis and moderately support T. caroliniana as sister to a clade of T. diversifolia and hemlocks fromUlleungdo. These divergent topologies suggest chloroplast capture of T. chinensis by Japanese T. sieboldii. Ulleungdo hemlocks are distinct from other northeastern Asian species in leaf and cone morphology and phenologically in common-garden observations. We therefore describe these hemlocks as a new species, T. ulleungensis.


The clathrin-coated vesicle proton pump is a representative member of the new class of endomembrane proton ATPases that share an inhibitor profile which distinguishes them from classic F1F0 and E1E2-type proton pumps. The coated vesicle proton pump is a large (530 kDa) heteroligomer composed of eight polypeptides with molecular masses of 116, 70, 58, 40, 38, 34, 33 and 17 kDa. The 200-fold purified enzyme catalyses ATP-generated proton pumping when reconstituted in liposomes composed of pure lipids. Subunit function has been determined by partial reaction analysis of subunit and subcomplex activities. The isolated 17 kDa subunit, when co-reconstituted with bacteriorhodopsin, forms a dicyclohexylcarbodiimide-inhibitable proton channel. Selective removal of the 116 kDa subunit transforms the proton ATPase from a Mg2+-activatable to a Ca2+-activatable ATPase. Subsequent dissociation and reconstitution of subunits reveals that the 70, 58, 40 and 33 kDa components are required, in composite, to form a functional ATP-hydrolytic core, and that no single subunit or subcomplex deficient in these subunits can catalyse ATP hydrolysis.


Abstract This paper describes the development of a coupled space-angle a posteriori error analysis and adaptive method for radiation transport calculations based on the second-order, even-parity form of the transport equation discretized by a variational finite element–spherical harmonics method (FE-PN). Rigorous a posteriori error estimates for the global L2 norm in the even-parity angular flux are derived by utilizing duality arguments. Separate error components for the spatial and angular discretizations are obtained by the adaptive algorithm by first seeking convergence in the spatial variable and then by projecting the spatially converged solution onto the higher-order PN equation to estimate the angular truncation error. The validity of the developed coupled space-angle adaptive refinement strategy is assessed by comparing the developed error indicator with the true error for representative problems in one and two dimensions. The method of manufactured solutions and alternative transport solution methods are used to provide the true error. Comparisons indicate that the space-angle adaptivity framework is capable of guiding the FE-PN method toward the true solution.


Use Case Driven Object Modeling with UML: Theory and Practice shows how to drive an object-oriented software design from use case all the way through coding and testing, based on the minimalist, UML-based ICONIX process. In addition to a comprehensive explanation of the foundations of the approach, the book makes extensive use of examples and provides exercises at the back of each chapter. This book leads by example. It demonstrates common analysis and design errors, shows how to detect and fix them, and suggests how to avoid making the same errors in the future. The book also encourages you to examine its UML examples and to search for specific errors. You'll get clues, then later receive the answers during review sessions toward the end of the book.


Successful application processing sequential data, such as text and speech, requires an improved generalization performance of recurrent neural networks (RNNs). Dropout techniques for RNNs were introduced to respond to these demands, but we conjecture that the dropout on RNNs could have been improved by adopting the adversarial concept. This paper investigates ways to improve the dropout for RNNs by utilizing intentionally generated dropout masks. Specifically, the guided dropout used in this research is called as adversarial dropout, which adversarially disconnects neurons that are dominantly used to predict correct targets over time. Our analysis showed that our regularizer, which consists of a gap between the original and the reconfigured RNNs, was the upper bound of the gap between the training and the inference phases of the random dropout. We demonstrated that minimizing our regularizer improved the effectiveness of the dropout for RNNs on sequential MNIST tasks, semi-supervised text classification tasks, and language modeling tasks.


An algorithm capable of finding the input and output states of polarization for pulsewidth narrowing at the output of an optical fiber with polarization mode dispersion (PMD) is analytically presented and numerically solved. It has been demonstrated theoretically and experimentally that the output pulses can he narrower than the input pulses when PMD is compensated by controlling both the input polarization and the receiver polarization states. The cost of this improvement is a reduction of the optical power in the output pulse.


This thesis focuses on the subsistence economy of the Yangshao period in the Wei
River Valley, how it changes through time and how it relates to environmental change
and changing social complexity. The research is based on faunal analysis at the
Wayaogou site (6,500-6,000 BP) in Shaanxi Province, China. Pig and sika deer
remains are studied in detail since they dominate the faunal assemblage. For the pig,
its domesticated status is documented and its husbandry strategies are explored in
detail; for sika deer, human hunting practices are investigated. Based on this, the
subsistence system, especially the balance between pig husbandry and sika deer
hunting practices, is addressed. Meanwhile, the utilization patterns of animal bones
are investigated using contextual analysis, to understand human refuse discard
behaviour and residential strategies.
Standard zooarchaeological methods and approaches are used in this study. For pig,
size change, cull patterns, body part representation, and archaeological evidence is
used to infer its domesticated status, husbandry regime and utilization. This study is
enhanced by Linear Enamel Hypoplasia (LEH) analysis, which is applied to pigs from
Wayaogou and other Neolithic sites in the Wei River valley, to explore further the
environmental conditions and husbandry practices. For sika deer, the age structure,
size change, body part representation and bone modifications provide information on
human hunting strategies and selection, as well as other uses of the animal, such as
for bone tools. Spatial analysis is undertaken to investigate the spatial distribution
patterns of faunal remains from Wayaogou. Some special depositions and contexts
are assessed to infer social meanings and implications of faunal remains.
The animal subsistence study is put into a broader context in an attempt to
understand the interactions between climate fluctuations, human responses,
subsistence strategies and social development and decline throughout the Neolithic
in this region.


One God. Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire. Edited by Stephen Mitchell and Peter Van Nuffelen. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2010. Pp. 239- $99-00. ISBN 978-0-521-19416-7.) Monotheism between Pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity. Edited by Stephen Mitchell and Peter Van Nuffelen. [Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Culture and Religion, 12.] (Leuven: Peeters. 2010. Pp. vi, 225. euro48,00 paperback. ISBN 978-9-042-92242-6.) These two collections of essays are the product of a conference entitled "Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire (1-4 c. AD)" that was held at Exeter University in July 2006 and represented a highlight of a triennial research program on the intellectual background to pagan mono theism. The program was conceived as a response to the volume Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity, edited by Michael Frede and the reviewer. The two books differ in conception and format. One God is an elegantly produced hardcover, containing six basically conceptual essays by recognized authorities in the field of religious studies, as well as the contributions of the two editors. Monotheism, on the other hand, is a paperback volume, apparently less carefully edited, which takes the form more of a series of case studies, as the editors themselves note (p. 8). While accepting "pagan monotheism" as a heuristic tool, both books give emphasis to the social and political context of religious praxis and the preeminence of cult and ritual over ideology, although the editors point to a chronological division between the two. Regarding the "Constantinian revolution" as a watershed, they assign to One God papers dealing with the era before the recognition of Christianity as a religio licita and to Monotheism those relating to the period 350-450. It may also be noted that One God concentrates on the Greek East, whereas Monotheism draws to an equal extent on Latin sources. The papers in One God reflect the fundamental distinctions among (a) "soft" (inclusive) pagan and "hard" (exclusive) Judeo-Christian monotheism, (b) numerical and qualitative oneness, and (c) monotheistic thought and polytheistic cult. In a well-structured methodological article, "Pagan Monotheism as a Religious Phenomenon" (pp. 16-33), Peter Van Nuffelen discusses the history and usefulness of such coinages as henotheism, monotheism, and monolatry, together with the neologism megatheism, in the context of the study of Greco-Roman religion. All these terms, he argues, point to the changed way of conceiving and worshiping the godhead in the Roman Empire as from the first century, a change brought about by the interaction between various religious trends under the growing influence of philosophical discourse. Change is equally the central issue in the analysis of Roman religion from the first to the fourth century by John North, "Pagan Ritual and Monotheism" (pp. 34-52), although his emphasis is on social and sociological factors (listed on pp. 42 and 51); not only does North minimize the role of philosophy in the process of mutation, but he dismisses altogether the idea that the tendency toward monotheism is "a necessary condition for the religious transformations we are seeking to analyse" (p. 51). Frede ("The Case for Pagan Monotheism in Greek and Graeco-Roman Antiquity," pp. 53-81) and Stephen Mitchell ("Further Thoughts on the Cult of Theos Hypsistos," pp. 167-208) remain faithful to the positions adopted in their respective essays in Pagan Monotheism. Emphasizing continuity and intellectuality, Frede brings in evidence from Antisthenes, Chrysippus, and Galen to prove that philosophy is at the heart of ancient religion, which "is not just a matter of cult and ritual" (p. 81). By adducing new epigraphic evidence, Mitchell restates his thesis that the cult of Theos Hypsistos was "in essence and in spirit, if not in the narrowest definition, a form of monotheistic religion" (p. 198). With reference to St. Augustine's reception of the Platonic theology, Alfons Furst ("Monotheism between Cult and Politics: The Themes of the Ancient Debate between Pagan and Christian Monotheism," pp. …


Data analysis requires new approaches in many domains for evaluating tools and techniques, particularly when the data sets grow large and more complex. Evaluation-as-service (EaaS) was coined as a term to represent evaluation approaches based on APIs, virtual machines or source code submission, different from the common paradigm of evaluating techniques on a distributed test collection, tasks and submitted results files. Such new approaches become necessary when data sets become extremely large, contain confidential information or might change quickly over time. The workshop on cloud-based evaluation (CBE) took place in Boston, MA, USA on November 5, 2015 and explored several approaches for data analysis evaluation and frameworks in this field. The objective was to include several stakeholders from academic partners, companies to funding agencies to cover various interests and viewpoints in the discussion of evaluation infrastructures. The workshop focused on the biomedical domain but the results are easily applicable to many domains of information analysis and retrieval.


This paper explores the international schemes for private sector's involvement in peace building efforts. It discusses the theories of conflict economics and criticises the role of transnational companies in peace building in Africa. It argues that the participation of the private sector in peace making in African mineral-rich conflict torn zones is the result of international pressure and not a genuine will for a specific industry to contribute to settling the tensions and bring about development.


The article states that the existence of an institutionalized model of citizenship is important for any country. Especially if the country is undergoing transformation, previously having lost socially recognized model, which implies a massive loss of civic identity. Russia has two main stages in the transformation of Soviet citizenship. The first is described in terms of democratic transition, when declared and by a large part of the society accepted is the need to move to the liberal-democratic citizenship of Western model. However, this transition has not occurred. For some time a hybrid model of citizenship has been created in Russia represented by a surrogate institution aimed at solving situational tasks of preserving the ruling regime to complete process of constructinig distributive clan economy. At the moment, the model of citizenship, with the essential features of the previous model (conservative hybrid), underwent turbulence and is in a non-equilibrium state, from time to time taking form of citizenship of past eras. This transition can be completed by some restoration of the postioin, from which transformation of Soviet citizenship began. The empirical material reflects author's research at the regional level, a comparative analysis of the data in 2005 and 2015.


A previous article by the author (Industrial Law Journal, 2012, Vol 41(1), 122) examined how successive governments since the mid-1990s have introduced welfare-to-work programmes and provided support for low-paid workers after their transition to work with a view to promoting retention in the labour market. This article considers the way in which the State, having progressively taken on the roles of both regulator and purveyor of financial support for employment, is now set to enter a new phase as part of Coalition welfare and labour law reforms. As part of securing the key policy objective of 'making work pay', it considers the newer forms of in-work welfare support being developed, including the targeted assistance being given to a wider range of groups. The focus of the commentary is on detailed aspects of what the author has termed the 'wage-work-welfare bargain'. The article considers some of the controversies associated with this kind of State support for the labour market, including early objections by commentators like J.S.Mill (in 'Principles of Political Economy'). Those concerns were reiterated more recently when a Conservative government pioneered modern 'in-work welfare' with schemes like Earnings Top-Up, aspects of which were criticised by welfare and labour economists. The article evaluates some of the effects of supplementing contractual wages with what is, in effect, a wage subsidy. It also considers detailed aspects of the merger of out-of-work and in-work benefits into a single, integrated source of support. As well as supplementing the wages of working claimants, it provides assistance with housing and childcare costs.The expectation will be that workers who are 'underemployed' will be expected to remain jobseekers so that they take up additional working hours, and thereby reduce the burden that would otherwise fall on the community.

The commentary evaluates various strands of support, including new approaches to assistance with housing and childcare costs. As the article discusses, some of the Coalition's changes have started to impact on more vulnerable sections of the workforce including single parents and couples on low incomes in low paid employment.

In the context of forecasts by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) and others that median incomes are set to fall by anything between 7% and 10% in real terms, with 'absolute' and 'relative' poverty set to rise, the article concludes that State support through in-work benefits,tax credits, and changes in the personal taxation regime will be increasingly important. However, as the IFS has indicated, although measures like Universal Credit, coupled with improved tax allowances will be important in reducing the worst effects of falls in earnings and income, much of the gain from UC could be offset by a number of factors including the switch from RPI to CPI indexation of benefits and tax credits support.


Coverage Directed test Generation (CDG) is rife with challenges and problems, despite the relative successes of machine learning methodologies over the years in automating it. This paper introduces the use of the eXtended Classifier System (XCS) in simulation-based digital design verification. It argues for the use of this novel genetics-based machine learning technique to perform effective CDG by learning the full mapping between coverage results and test generator directives. Using the resulting production rules, efficient test suites can be constructed, and inference on the validity of the verification environment can be made. There is great potential in using XCS for design verification and this paper forms an initial attempt to highlight the associated advantages. The technique requires no domain knowledge to setup and satisfies important CDG requirements. Once matured, it is expected to be utilized seamlessly in any industrial level simulation-based verification process.


Buyer power is widely considered to decrease innovation incentives of suppliers. However, there is little empirical evidence for this statement. Our paper analyses how buyer power influences innovation incentives of upstream firms while taking into account the type of competition in the downstream market, namely price and technology. We explore this relationship empirically for a unique dataset containing 1,129 observations of German firms from manufacturing and service sectors including information on the economic dependency of firms from their buyers. Using a generalised Tobit model, we find a negative effect of buyer power on a supplier's likelihood to start R&D activities. This negative effect is mitigated if the supplier faces powerful buyers operating under strong price competition. There is also weak evidence for a negative effect of buyer power on suppliers' R&D intensity if the powerful buyer operates under strong technology competition.


Specific gravity is an important parameter in the dispersal of marine zooplankton, because the velocity of currents, and therefore the speed of transport, is usually greatest near the surface. For the South African chokka squid (Loligo reynaudii), recruitment is thought to be influenced by the successful transport of paralarvae from the spawning grounds to a food-rich feature known as the cold ridge some 100-200 km away. The role of paralarval specific gravity on such transport is investigated. Specific gravity ranged from 1.0373 to 1.0734 g cm(-3) during the yolk-utilization phase, implying that paralarvae are always negatively buoyant, regardless of yolk content. The data were incorporated into a coupled individual-based model (IBM)-Regional Ocean Modelling System model. The output showed that dispersal was dominantly westward towards the cold ridge. Also, modelled paralarval vertical distribution suggested that hydrodynamic turbulence was an important factor in dispersal. The negative buoyancy of early chokka squid paralarvae may reduce the risk of paralarvae being advected off the eastern Agulhas Bank and into the open ocean, where food is less abundant, so specific gravity may be important in enhancing the survival and recruitment of chokka squid.


The economic production quantity method is one of the simplest models to control production and inventory. However, the assumptions on which it is based make its application difficult in practical situations. In most companies, set-up and inventory costs are unknown, or may not even exist as such, although other data are known, such as available capacity in machining hours and limits set by the financing subsystem. The present work offers a multi-item inventory model that sets reference values using known values such as inventory investment limits and production capacity. In order to confer the proposed model's larger practical content, a spreadsheet available to be downloaded has been implemented. Finally, the model dynamics is illustrated as a numerical example obtained from a real company.


ABSTRACT We have recently described the development of a luminescent Mycobacterium paratuberculosis strain of bovine origin expressing the luxAB genes of Vibrio harveyi. With this luminescent isolate, fastidious and costly enumeration of CFU by plating them on agar can be replaced by easy and rapid luminometry. Here, we have reevaluated the effect of Slc11a1 (formerly Nramp1) polymorphism on susceptibility to M. paratuberculosis, using this luminometric method. A series of inbred mouse strains were infected intravenously with luminescent M. paratuberculosis S-23 and monitored for bacterial replication in spleen, liver, and lungs for 12 weeks. The results indicate that, as for Mycobacterium avium subsp. avium, innate resistance to infection is genetically controlled by Slc11a1. In BALB/c, congenic BALB.B10-H2b (BALB/c background; H-2b), C57BL/6, and beige C57BL/6bg/bg mice (all Slc11a1s), bacterial numbers in spleen and liver remained unchanged during the first 4 weeks of infection, whereas in DBA/2 and congenic BALB/c.DBA/2 (C.D2) mice (both Slc11a1r) and in (C57BL/6 × DBA/2)F1 mice (Slc11a1s/r), the bacterial numbers had decreased more than 10-fold at 4 weeks postinfection in both male and female mice. At later time points, additional differences in bacterial replication were observed between the susceptible mouse strains, particularly in the liver. Whereas bacterial numbers in the liver gradually decreased more than 100-fold in C57BL/6 mice between week 4 and week 12, bacterial numbers were stable in livers from BALB/c and beige C57BL/6bg/bg mice during this period. Mycobacterium-specific gamma interferon responses developed earlier and to a higher magnitude in C57BL/6 mice than in BALB/c mice and were lowest in resistant C.D2 mice.


In 1968 the first students were admitted to study special education (then defectology) at the University of Tartu upon the initiative of Ester Lepik; the respective chair was established in 1972. Creating the department of special education at the university was supported by compulsory school attendance, the duration of which was prolonged and content intensified during the 20 th century, and the educational system that adapted to this obligation—there were examples of learning support and the first groups for children with special needs in regular schools, the quickly expanding network of special schools, the first groups for children with special needs were established in pre-school and vocational education institutions and there was a rudimentary support system across schools in the 1960s that was operated by about twenty specialists who had studied outside Estonia. The need for special education was exacerbated by three factors. Firstly, longer compulsory school attendance (1920–1958: step by step 4/6, 7, 8 years; 1971: 11 years; 1986–1992: 12 years). Secondly, medical aid was becoming better in supporting the survival of neonates and children suffering traumas. Thirdly, the interpretation of human rights was remarkably expanding in the 1970s. As of 1990s, the admission figures of special schools located in the countryside have been decreasing. At the same time it was in the 1990s that new types of educational institutions were created upon the initiative of parents, including ones for children with heavy disabilities. The main breakthrough in the specialty occurred in 1985–1995, when over 400 special education teachers started work corresponding to the needs of the society. Special educators were presented with new opportunities; new schools, including private institutions, were established, etc. Yet, educators' patience was tried first with an austerity campaign, then with an inclusive education campaign. Special educators who seemed to want to ignore children's interests and teach children with special needs separately from ordinary pupils—this was said to be unheard of "elsewhere in the world"—were shamed and declared backwards. One could get a negative reputation by protecting any Soviet-time institution or method in general. The Chair of Special Education has been led by Voldemar Vaaranen (1972–1977), Karl Karlep (1977–1987), Ants Reinmaa, (1987–1992), the author was the Holder of Chair ad interim (1992–2015). In 1992 the Department of Special Education consisting of two chairs was created and Karl Karlep was elected Professor of Logopedics and Special Methodology in Teaching Estonian. In the years 1971–1993 a total of 11 Estonian special educators received a Candidate degree in Moscow. In addition to being active academically, it is important that lecturers contribute to developing curricula, learning resources and refresher courses. Special education is closely connected to linguistic and cultural space, learning resources in one's native language are crucially important.


The purpose of this study was to investigate possible reasons for increased student suspensions from the Department of Business Education and Office Systems in the College of Business at Montana State University. The sources of data for this study were obtained from student records on file at the College of Business, Montana State University. Additional student record data and information was obtained from the Montana State University Office of Admissions and from Montana State University Testing Services. When all information had been gathered, the findings were compiled and analyzed. The results were then set up in tables for clarity. A written description and an analysis of the data supplement the tables. The conclusions were (1) the Department of Business Education and Office System's main concern over suspensions should be with the Administrative Assistant Program as evidenced by the large-majority (67 percent), of suspended students in that program, (2) below average stanine scores (less than 4) should immediately be an indicator that a student may have problems, (3) the university calculated high school grade point average for the students and the student's rank in high school class are strong indicators of future performance, (4) of the total number of suspended students, over half, 51 percent, were on probation from 2 to 3 quarters, (5) students enrolled in the Department, knowing they must meet minimum requirements in a pre-requisite type program as freshmen and sophomores in order to advance into the main program as juniors and seniors, will be less likely to encounter academic problems, and (6) the accounting course, BUAC 224, Principles of Accounting, remains the single largest stumbling block for students enrolled in the Department of Business Education and Office Systems. Seme of the recommendations were (1) review any unique environmental and institutional factors so as to enhance capabilities for retaining students who may encounter academic problems, (2) prediction profiles should be developed and tested for freshmen as' soon as a working profile is completed, and (3) since an overwhelming majority of the suspended students were enrolled in the Administrative Assistant program, a preparation pregram unique to students enrolled in this area should be instituted.


Hoping to avoid violent conflict or confrontation after being denied an official permit to march through the streets of Moscow, a small group of gay and lesbian activists gathered peacefully at the entrance to the public park Aleksandrskii Sad on May 27, 2006 for the first gay pride event in Russian history. With the goal of undertaking a peaceful demonstration against homophobia and discrimination, they gathered for Moscow Pride as individual citizens, so as not to be charged with staging an illegal protest. However, they were over whelmingly outnumbered by police and protestors. As the marchers--some carrying rainbow flags or signs reading "Gay Rights," but most holding bouquets of red and white flowers--pressed together for safety, they were bombarded with verbal taunts that soon devolved into physical violence. While Russian Orthodox militants brandished ornate crosses and chanted, "Moscow--not Sodom," women bearing religious icons sang hymns and in termittently chided participants, "You will burn in hell for all eternity." In the face of intensifying violence, police looked on before making arrests--ultimately carting more marchers to the stations than violent protestors. As he was dragged to a police bus, primary organizer Nikolai Alexeyev shouted it was a victory. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] What factors set the scene for this brutal confrontation that Western politicians and activists decried as an egregious breach of human rights? The Russian social scene tends to be antagonistic to the notion of organizing publically around issues of identity, particularly those of sexual orientation and gender identity. Official legislation decriminalizing homosexuality and allowing some social organizing after the collapse of the Soviet Union have by no means led to acceptance of gender non-normative people, or even, for many, a desire for visibility. Some activists' desire to stay in the shadows exists in conflict with the public endeavors by activists such as the organizers of Moscow Pride. An examination of the phenomenon of Moscow Pride and its proponents--particularly in light of the recent European Court of Human Rights ruling against the bans--can offer insight into the development of a human rights discourse in Russia and how this discourse connects to the country's developing civil society and disputed democracy. In undertaking this examination, it is first necessary to review the legal, institutional, and social factors stemming from the Soviet era that contribute to homophobia in Russia today. A Culture of Silence In 1933, the passing of Article 121 in the Soviet Criminal Code made sodomy a criminal offence punishable by up to five years in prison. The renowned Soviet writer Maxim Gorky hailed the new legislation as "a triumph of proletarian humanism," denigrating homosexual behavior as undermining the goals of revolutionary Communism. Homosexuality came to be reviled as a tool against the state, while proper heterosexual relationships were seen as both correct and patriotic. The Russian attitude toward sex is often generalized with a reference to the Soviet woman's exclamation that Russia has no sex. Beyond the overarching enforcement of silence around sexuality revealed in this statement, an ingrained insistence on sexual normality was seen as key to furthering Communist ideals. Under these norms, the image of the good Soviet citizen was constructed as a hardworking proletarian, devoted to the Party, and absolutely and necessarily heterosexual. Because of static gender roles and the ideological responsibility of the Soviet couple to work during the day and produce children at night, homosexuality was perceived as defying both appropriate gendered behavior and the couple's responsibility to society. In addition to the stigma attached to public discussions of sex and non-normative sexual behavior, the notion of organizing around identities was not accepted in Soviet society, largely because of the official line of negating the worth of the individual in favor of the collective. …


According to the contractarian perspective, a public good can be thought of as not so much a good that meets the technical neoclassical criteria of non-rivalness and non-excludability, but as one that is produced on a purely contractual basis, thus necessarily increasing the utility of all the involved parties. In this paper, by critically examining Nozick's "emergent" contractarianism and Buchanan's teleological contractarianism, I shall argue that no such contractual origin can be plausibly attributed to territorial monopolies of force, and that therefore legal monocentrism – the view that the public goods of law and defense can be provided exclusively by territorial monopolies of force – fails the relevant efficiency test as conceived on a contractarian basis. This, in turn, implies that legal polycentrism, one of whose constitutive features is precisely its unambiguously voluntary and contractual character, should be considered as a superior system in this context.


Traffic measurement and monitoring are an important component of network management and traffic engineering. With high-speed Internet backbone links, efficient and effective packet sampling techniques for traffic measurement and monitoring are not only desirable, but also increasingly becoming a necessity. Since the utility of sampling depends on the accuracy and economy of measurement, it is important to control sampling error. In this paper, we propose an adaptive packet sampling technique for flow-level traffic measurement with a stratification approach. We employ and advance sampling theory in order to ensure the accurate estimation of large flows. With real network traces, we demonstrate that the proposed sampling technique provides unbiased estimation of flow size with controllable error bound, in terms of both packet and byte counts for elephant flows, while avoiding excessive oversampling.


Semi-supervised learning is an efficient method to augment training data automatically from unlabeled data. Development of many natural language understanding (NLU) applications has a challenge where unlabeled data is relatively abundant while labeled data is rather limited. In this work, we propose transductive graph-based semi-supervised learning models as well as their inductive variants for NLU. We evaluate the approach's applicability using publicly available NLU data and models. In order to find similar utterances and construct a graph, we use a paraphrase detection model. Results show that applying the inductive graph-based semi-supervised learning can improve the error rate of the NLU model by 5%.


How can development programmes reach out to remote communities? This paper presents experimental evidence on the impact of a role models intervention that aims to inspire ethnic minority households to start businesses and diversify income sources. The experiment took place in three provinces of the Northern highlands of Vietnam. The research design enables us to disentangle the extent to which role models shift behaviour by providing information or inspiration. We find that despite successful implementation of the intervention, which was powered to detect reasonably small effects, and a high level of compliance, the role model intervention did not impact on income, livelihoods, or other welfare outcomes. This points to the difficulties involved in using role models to induce behavioural change in contexts where populations are severely marginalized and face a variety of binding constraints.


Multilingualism is now considered as the mean of achieving common goals on the European ground. This term can be referred to speaking several languages at the same time, and as to an official requirement for the employees of an organisation or a company who should communicate internally and externally by using more than one language and finally, as to multiculturalism which can apply to an individual's capability to master several languages. But since the EU has extended equal treatment to 24 languages spoken in all of its member countries, there is a huge demand for translators, interpreters, linguists and lawyer-linguists. The Irish language, being a working one, while not yet a XX language is an interesting example of achieving the largest scope of multilingualism in the EU.


Abstract. The current operational very short-term and short-term quantitative precipitation forecast (QPF) at the Meteorological Service of Catalonia (SMC) is made by three different methodologies: Advection of the radar reflectivity field (ADV), Identification, tracking and forecasting of convective structures (CST) and numerical weather prediction (NWP) models using observational data assimilation (radar, satellite, etc.). These precipitation forecasts have different characteristics, lead time and spatial resolutions. The objective of this study is to combine these methods in order to obtain a single and optimized QPF at each lead time. This combination (blending) of the radar forecast (ADV and CST) and precipitation forecast from NWP model is carried out by means of different methodologies according to the prediction horizon. Firstly, in order to take advantage of the rainfall location and intensity from radar observations, a phase correction technique is applied to the NWP output to derive an additional corrected forecast (MCO). To select the best precipitation estimation in the first and second hour (t+1 h and t+2 h), the information from radar advection (ADV) and the corrected outputs from the model (MCO) are mixed by using different weights, which vary dynamically, according to indexes that quantify the quality of these predictions. This procedure has the ability to integrate the skill of rainfall location and patterns that are given by the advection of radar reflectivity field with the capacity of generating new precipitation areas from the NWP models. From the third hour (t+3 h), as radar-based forecasting has generally low skills, only the quantitative precipitation forecast from model is used. This blending of different sources of prediction is verified for different types of episodes (convective, moderately convective and stratiform) to obtain a robust methodology for implementing it in an operational and dynamic way.


Trajectory search has long been an attractive and challenging topic which blooms various interesting applications in spatial-temporal databases. In this work, we study a new problem of searching trajectories by locations, in which context the query is only a small set of locations with or without an order specified, while the target is to find the k Best-Connected Trajectories (k-BCT) from a database such that the k-BCT best connect the designated locations geographically. Different from the conventional trajectory search that looks for similar trajectories w.r.t. shape or other criteria by using a sample query trajectory, we focus on the goodness of connection provided by a trajectory to the specified query locations. This new query can benefit users in many novel applications such as trip planning. In our work, we firstly define a new similarity function for measuring how well a trajectory connects the query locations, with both spatial distance and order constraint being considered. Upon the observation that the number of query locations is normally small (e.g. 10 or less) since it is impractical for a user to input too many locations, we analyze the feasibility of using a general-purpose spatial index to achieve efficient k-BCT search, based on a simple Incremental k-NN based Algorithm (IKNN). The IKNN effectively prunes and refines trajectories by using the devised lower bound and upper bound of similarity. Our contributions mainly lie in adapting the best-first and depth-first k-NN algorithms to the basic IKNN properly, and more importantly ensuring the efficiency in both search effort and memory usage. An in-depth study on the adaption and its efficiency is provided. Further optimization is also presented to accelerate the IKNN algorithm. Finally, we verify the efficiency of the algorithm by extensive experiments.


OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this research was to describe perceived barriers to physical activity among pregnant women living in a rural community.

DESIGN AND SAMPLE
The project followed a simple descriptive design. The sample included 88 healthy pregnant women from a rural community in the southeast United States.

MEASURES
The women completed the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) and an open-ended item seeking a description of personal barriers to engagement in regular physical activity.

RESULTS
Scores on the IPAQ were generally equally distributed across categories of low, moderate, and high activity. A total of 42 barriers was described from 34% of the women. Seven themes emerged among the reported barriers: (1) symptoms of pregnancy, (2) family and childrearing activities, (3) lack of personal motivation, (4) time and employment demands, (5) perceptions of sufficient activity from daily life, (6) fear of injury, and (7) lack of a habit of activity.

CONCLUSIONS
Barriers reported by the rural women were similar to those identified in other settings. Some perceptions confirmed myths about the health value of exercise during pregnancy, but did not confirm barriers commonly cited or assumed for reduced physical activity among rural residents.


This note gives guidance on using International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) data to trace aid flows from donor treasuries to their final end use. Traceability in IATI works by following the money as it flows from organization to organization through the development implementation chain. Provided that all organizations publish their information, it is possible to assess how much of the total funding at the beginning of the implementation chain is spent on goods and services, and where the money is spent. See also Tracing US Development Flows .


Collaboration between industry and academia in software testing leads to improvement and innovation in industry, and it is the basis for achieving transferable and empirically evaluated results. Thus, the aim of TAIC PART is to forge collaboration between industry and academia on the challenging and exciting problem of real-world software testing. The workshop is promoted by representatives of both industry and academia, bringing together industrial software engineers and testers with researchers working on theory and practice of software testing. We present an overview of the 12th Workshop on Testing: Academia-Industry Collaboration, Practice and Research Techniques (TAIC PART 2017) and its contributions.


This work analyses the adaptive relationship between early farming settlement and natural environment in Central Europe between 3500 (cal.) BC and AD 400. The primary data-base consists of fourteen alluvial and archaeological pollen sites from the Czech and Slovak Republics. Primary analyses trace divergent vegetation histories in temperate (Hercynian) and continental (Pannonian) bio-geographic zones, and focus on human impact on these biomes. Syn-anthropic impact is registered in agricultural floral expansion, eforestation and dry-steppe formation, vectors which are equated with higher farming population densities. A methodological review allows for an assessment of land-areas represented at the fom1een pollen sites, while the understanding of pollen taphonomy on alluvial accretion surfaces is advanced at the principal site of Vranskỳ potok. Secondary analyses then reconstruct a comparative settlement and climate history in the later Holocene of Central Europe. Importantly, settlement reconstructions exhibit a cyclical pattern of growth and decline at century-level time-scales. When compared to the primary geobotanicalrecord, an alignment of settlement maxima with high levels of human impact on t1ora and soils affirms the reality of this archaeologically perceived settlement cycle. A similar alignment of agricultural maxima with favorable agro-climate furthermore implies that food production is generally limited by secular climate change, while an anthropogenic limitation of agriculture through dry-steppe formation is supported in the Pannonian geo-botanical database. Ultimately, a theoretical treatment of the adaptation concept is attempted after cultural ecologic data presented. Beyond subsistence, this treatment incorporates the ecologic constructs of direct competition (after evidence for warfare) and mean mating-distance (after populationreconstructions). Dia-chronic patterns of cultural distributions suggest that an early linkage of archaeological cultures with distinctive environmental zones is reduced as evidence for warfare and socio-political complexity becomes pervasive. Cultural adaptation thus becomes less a function of optimising subsistence and more one of group defense-population integration.


Model smoothing is of central importance for obtaining a reliable teacher model in the student-teacher framework, where the teacher generates surrogate supervision signals to train the student. A popular model smoothing method is the Temporal Moving Average (TMA), which continuously averages the teacher parameters with the up-to-date student parameters. In this paper, we propose"Spatial Ensemble", a novel model smoothing mechanism in parallel with TMA. Spatial Ensemble randomly picks up a small fragment of the student model to directly replace the corresponding fragment of the teacher model. Consequentially, it stitches different fragments of historical student models into a unity, yielding the"Spatial Ensemble"effect. Spatial Ensemble obtains comparable student-teacher learning performance by itself and demonstrates valuable complementarity with temporal moving average. Their integration, named Spatial-Temporal Smoothing, brings general (sometimes significant) improvement to the student-teacher learning framework on a variety of state-of-the-art methods. For example, based on the self-supervised method BYOL, it yields +0.9% top-1 accuracy improvement on ImageNet, while based on the semi-supervised approach FixMatch, it increases the top-1 accuracy by around +6% on CIFAR-10 when only few training labels are available. Codes and models are available at: https://github.com/tengteng95/Spatial_Ensemble.


The present South African seed potato areas are dependent on a constant introduction of virus free seed potatoes from overseas to supply the potato industry with a sufficient amount of good quality seed potatoes. Despite the fact that virus free seed potatoes are planted, the quality of the seed potatoes produced has not everywhere been satisfactory even though the farmers make serious efforts to produce good seed. The object of this paper is to report on investigations aimed at finding areas suited for seed potato production, establishing why they are suited and why others are not, or are less so and at evaluating methods of producing tolerably good seed potatoes in less successful areas.


Internet technology together with the SGML based XML language family provide means to develop technical customer document management in inter-organisational industrial projects. The purpose of this exploratory study is to describe the characteristics of an inter-organisational industrial project, the problems related to the management of technical customer documentation and the possibilities of the new information technology to solve some of the problems. The model for technical customer document management in an inter-organisational network is presented. The model indicates that more precise investigation is needed and that future research should concentrate on developing systematic extranet and intranet design methodology which focuses on link management.


This paper combines the notions of consuming behaviour and ideological clarity in relation to the political Marketing and more specifically the production and consumption of political campaigns and examines the empirical evidence concerning the proposed topic, by focusing on some basic conceptual and methodological issues, as they are arising from previous research. Accordingly, earlier research has shown that visible political attitudes approximate electoral choice (i.e., actual votes), demonstrating that voters are able to give explanation concerning voting decisions. Other studies, though, have indicated that the attitudes of which we may not be aware, such as our implicit (e.g., subconscious) preferences, determine voting choice. Additionally, previous research was dealing with the campaigns effects and made attempts in measuring the impact of society and media upon electoral campaigns. In a similar manner, earlier studies, gave some directions in the notions of political marketing and voting decision making process. Accordingly, the paper highlights the gap that is presented in the sufficient interlink of those concepts. In the same manner, the paper reviews the methodological impact and the research paradigm of earlier work, in order to identify any possible research gap and limitations and to facilitate the ground for further research.


SYNTHESIS OF GLYCOLIPIDS AND EVALUATION OF THEIR NKT CELL STIMULATORY PROPERTIES Yang Liu Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Doctor of Philosophy Natural killer T (NKT) cells are a subset of T cells that modify a variety of immune responses. NKT cells recognize glycolipid antigen presented by a molecule called CD1d, a nonclassical antigen-presenting molecule. The best known subset of CD1d-dependent NKT cells expresses an invariant T cell receptor Vα (TCR-α) chain. These are referred to as type I or invariant NKT (iNKT) cells. When stimulated by a glycolipid, NKT cells rapidly release large amounts of cytokines. Cytokines released by NKT cells can induce either Th1 or Th2 responses. Th1 cytokines are effective in regulating bacterial, parasitic, and viral infections. But Th1 responses are also involved in some autoimmune diseases, such as type 1 diabetes, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and allergen-induced asthma. Th2 cytokines can attenuate proinflammatory Th1 responses and therefore prevent some autoimmune diseases. Lysosomal processing and CD1d loading is very important in regulating the stimulatory properties of antigens. Analogs of KRN7000, with small molecules appended on C6" position of the galactose portion, do not significantly change stimulation of NKT cells. The question is if the substitution at this position would influence the lysosomal processing. Two sets of monoand disaccharides with and without substitution at C6" position were prepared and evaluated the NKT cell stimulatory properties. The substitution at the C6" position of the sugar moiety of glycolipids do not significantly impact the stimulatory properties of glycolipids and their processing in lysosome. Small changes at C6" are well tolerated. A double bond in the acyl chain and modification of the C6" functional group helped the glycolipid loading into CD1d and NKT cells stimulation. PBS57 is 100 times more active than KRN 7000 in stimulation of NKT cells responses in vitro and in vivo. This improvement is probably due to increasing solubility and improving binding ability with the CD1d.


This paper addresses the problem of 3D human pose estimation in the wild. A significant challenge is the lack of training data, i.e., 2D images of humans annotated with 3D poses. Such data is necessary to train state-of-the-art CNN architectures. Here, we propose a solution to generate a large set of photorealistic synthetic images of humans with 3D pose annotations. We introduce an image-based synthesis engine that artificially augments a dataset of real images with 2D human pose annotations using 3D Motion Capture (MoCap) data. Given a candidate 3D pose our algorithm selects for each joint an image whose 2D pose locally matches the projected 3D pose. The selected images are then combined to generate a new synthetic image by stitching local image patches in a kinematically constrained manner. The resulting images are used to train an end-to-end CNN for full-body 3D pose estimation. We cluster the training data into a large number of pose classes and tackle pose estimation as a K-way classification problem. Such an approach is viable only with large training sets such as ours. Our method outperforms the state of the art in terms of 3D pose estimation in controlled environments (Human3.6M) and shows promising results for in-the-wild images (LSP). This demonstrates that CNNs trained on artificial images generalize well to real images.


The Cygnus Cocoon is an extended source of high-energy gamma-ray emission in the Cygnus region. The gamma-ray emission has been attributed to a volume 50pc in diameter of freshly-accelerated particles near the Supernova Remnant γ Cygni which is located 1.4kpc from the solar system [Ackermann et al., 2011], [Tibaldo et al., 2013]. Since its discovery in 2011, Fermi LAT has improved their event reconstruction to allow analysis at higher energies, and recorded six additional years of data. An analysis was performed on the entire dataset to reproduce the previous results, then expand on them with higher energies and larger time spans of data. No evidence of temporal variability was found for the Cocoon. It was found that for the energy range of 1-870 GeV a logparabola spectrum is preferred over a powerlaw spectrum. Analysis is then done comparing the Cocoon spectrum measured using LAT data with a HAWC source [Hona et al., 2017] that is thought to be the Cocoon. It was found that the LAT powerlaw spectrum connects with the HAWC spectrum at 1 TeV, while the LAT powerlaw spectrum is an order of magnitude lower then the HAWC source. This means that for the combined analysis the powerlaw spectrum is prefered over the logparabola, if the HAWC source is the Cocoon.


As a result of increasing competition caused by globalization in the working world, there is a need of high quality support in the university offers. The high quality mentoring during the academic periods should be accompanied by the progressive and concurrent attendance of the Career Service (CS) work. Comprehensive analysis of the CS offers in Germany, showed that the main concept of CS work consists of four basic elements: information, consultation, career qualification and partnership management. All these issues are covered and intensified by a special CS Concept "Studierende & Arbeitswelt" (S&A) from the Faculty of Human Sciences at the University of Cologne. Since 1989, S&A has been offering the opportunity to supplement studies with career orientation and practical training that significantly increase the students chances at the job market. The program is limited to twenty students, so the focus on new steps into technology guidance is important to rise up the number of participants.
The variety of CS in Germany is mainly covered by "present" approach, like "face to face" consulting or courses for career qualification including recruiting management. For a lot of CS organisations the aspect of partnership management is limited to notices, individual work-consultation and job exchange with non-specific study field offers. In addition, the number of participants on career courses has to be limited due to the requirement of CS to offer a high quality support. This causes a neglect of the high participation need on the part of the students and leads to a deficient coverage of service requirements. The qualifications and information offers of the CS are targeted prevalently on the internal high education level. The embedding of the job market as well as the national and international high education offers usually does not take place. Considering these problems and high requirements of CS work, web-based offers could give a chance to provide high quality and multidisciplinary services to a big variety of students. The electronic CS could assure a flexible and common access to the support and placement for students of all study fields, employers and university stuff members.
In Germany the development of methodology and didactic concepts extending CS work to an electronic platform is in an early stadium. By reason of the virtual interest and the advantages of an electronic platform, various universities in Germany have E-Learning modules and web-based national and international job exchange by now. The global development of an electronic platform for CS could give the opportunity for national and international partnerships in the fields of internships, work quotes and thesis topics, as well as cooperation between employers and universities.


Few, if any, early modern European cities boasted a population as racially, ethnically, and religiously diverse as Renaissance Venice, from German merchants living in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi to the Jewish inhabitants of the Ghetto. This fascinating book focuses on the wealthy elite of that immigrant population. From monumental palaces to pictorial cycles, Blake de Maria examines the artistic patronage commissioned by and associated with rich immigrant merchants who relocated to Venice with the aim of becoming Venetian cittadini, or citizens. As newcomers to the city, immigrant merchant families had to acquire the material commodities necessary for everyday life, and the need to establish an appropriate spiritual identity proved equally pressing. De Maria investigates important aspects of the artistic, commercial, and familial activities of naturalized citizen families, and considers the communal functions of this merchant clan, their social identity as naturalized citizens, their contributions to the fabric of early modern Venice, and their complex relationship with Venice's native population. Rich in new material and full of human interest, the book sheds light on a significant, hitherto little-known sector in Venetian artistic patronage.


In this paper we describe a general framework for evaluation and optimization of methods for diversifying query results. In these methods, an initial ranking candidate set produced by a query is used to construct a result set, where elements are ranked with respect to relevance and diversity features, i.e., the retrieved elements should be as relevant as possible to the query, and, at the same time, the result set should be as diverse as possible. While addressing relevance is relatively simple and has been heavily studied, diversity is a harder problem to solve. One major contribution of this paper is that, using the above framework, we adapt, implement and evaluate several existing methods for diversifying query results. We also propose two new approaches, namely the Greedy with Marginal Contribution (GMC) and the Greedy Randomized with Neighborhood Expansion (GNE) methods. Another major contribution of this paper is that we present the first thorough experimental evaluation of the various diversification techniques implemented in a common framework. We examine the methods' performance with respect to precision, running time and quality of the result. Our experimental results show that while the proposed methods have higher running times, they achieve precision very close to the optimal, while also providing the best result quality. While GMC is deterministic, the randomized approach (GNE) can achieve better result quality if the user is willing to tradeoff running time.


While the increased incidence of academic integrity violations in university classrooms has been well documented over the past several decades, inconsistent attention has been given to small liberal arts colleges in terms of both cheating practices and attitudes towards cheating. This study aims to address this disparity by focusing on academic integrity at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota; a small undergraduate institution with a strong church affiliation. We hypothesise that institutional practices and the small-college culture that are unique to smaller colleges like Concordia act to limit the incidence of academic integrity violations. Our case study makes use of data collected from two student surveys - one conducted in 2008, and a follow-up survey conducted in 2010. Variables representing a range of internal and external factors that contribute to cheating were incorporated into a regression model designed to measure the impact of contextual influences that are potentially unique to students at a small, church-affiliated liberal arts college. Given our findings, we conclude that the college would be wise to consider adopting a traditional honour code system.


Prior work has commonly defined argument retrieval from heterogeneous document collections as a sentence-level classification task. Consequently, argument retrieval suffers both from low recall and from sentence segmentation errors making it difficult for humans and machines to consume the arguments. In this work, we argue that the task should be performed on a more fine-grained level of sequence labeling. For this, we define the task as Argument Unit Recognition and Classification (AURC). We present a dataset of arguments from heterogeneous sources annotated as spans of tokens within a sentence, as well as with a corresponding stance. We show that and how such difficult argument annotations can be effectively collected through crowdsourcing with high inter-annotator agreement. The new benchmark, AURC-8, contains up to 15% more arguments per topic as compared to annotations on the sentence level. We identify a number of methods targeted at AURC sequence labeling, achieving close to human performance on known domains. Further analysis also reveals that, contrary to previous approaches, our methods are more robust against sentence segmentation errors. We publicly release our code and the AURC-8 dataset.1


The striatum controls motor activity through the balance of the activity of a direct and indirect pathway. Kreitzer and Malenka used mice engineered to express green fluorescent protein in neurons of the direct pathway or indirect pathway to show that the cells of the indirect pathway exhibited (i) higher probability of neurotransmitter release, (ii) increased ratios of NMDA- to AMPA-type glutamate receptors, and (iii) increased rate of synaptic activity compared with cells of the direct pathway. High-frequency afferent stimulation only triggered long-term depression (LTD) in the indirect pathway, and application of an antagonist of the endocannabinoid receptor CB1 or the D2 dopamine receptor blocked this response. However, this difference was not caused by a lack of CB1 receptors in the direct pathway, because application of CB1 agonist increased both direct and indirect pathway excitatory postsynaptic potentials. Instead, endocannabinoid release or synthesis in response to synaptic activity appeared to be limited to the indirect pathway. Mouse models of Parkinson's disease showed a lack of an indirect pathway LTD response that was restored if the slices were exposed to a D2 agonist or an inhibitor of endocannabinoid degradation. In the Parkinson's model mice, treatment with both a D2 agonist and the endocannabinoid degradation inhibitor reduced catalepsy and improved motor activity compared to treatment with the D2 agonist alone. A. C. Kreitzer, R. C. Malenka, Endocannabinoid-mediated rescue of striatal LTD and motor deficits in Parkinson's disease models. Nature 445, 643-647 (2007). [PubMed]


Biological therapies are increasingly used for the treatment of inflammatory conditions in the realms of rheumatology, dermatology, and gastroenterology due to their ability to target specific cytokines in the inflammatory cascade. The impact of these biologic therapies is immunosuppression leading to an increased risk of infection. This review focuses on commonly used biologic agents in the treatment of inflammatory conditions and cancer and their impact on pulmonary infections. We have summarized potential pathogens in this group of patients. The hope being that this will increase awareness and therefore prevention timely diagnosis and successful treatment of patients receiving biologic therapies. It is also important to note that it is not solely the choice of an agent that predisposes to particular infections. Concomitant factors that might increase an individuals' risk of contracting an infection include the underlying disease, comorbid diseases, increased age, and other medical treatment as well as exposure to opportunistic pathogens. In the treatment of cancers many immunotherapies are being developed. The most notable adverse effects from immunotherapy are due to stimulation of the immune response, and these may mimic infection by causing flu-like symptoms and breathlessness due to pneumonitis. The treatment of this is immunosuppression, further leading to an increased risk of infection. Biologic therapies have been a revolution in the treatment of inflammatory conditions and cancers. They have improved outcomes and quality of life for patients. However, the use of these drugs needs to be balanced against the risk of infection and every patient needs to be assessed on an individual basis.


Triptolide is the main bioactive molecule isolated from a root extract of Tripterigium wilfordii Hook F. of Celastraceae family. Chemically, it is a diterpenoid triepoxide molecule and its chemical formula is C20H24O6. Its five-membered unsaturated lactone ring (D-ring) is crucial for anti-tumor potential and carbonyl group at C-18 position is essential to exert important influence on the interaction between triptolide and the targeted protein(s). It is bio-synthesized from deoxy-D-xylullose-5-phosphate (DOXP) pathway in the cell. Triptolide can induce apoptosis in a number of breast cancer cells by up-regulating different pro-apoptotic and down-regulating different anti-apoptotic molecules. In vitro experiments indicate that it can down regulate several cell cycle related genes and induces S-phase cell cycle arrest. Triptolide treatment can also modulate the expression of different cell signaling molecules, e.g. ERK, NF-κB, FAK, VEGF, β-catenin, AKT etc. In vivo experiments indicate that triptolide can effectively reduce breast tumor growth in the mouse model. Apart from the single drug treatment, triptolide can effectively be applied in combination therapy. Application of Triptolide with other chemotherapeutic drugs, very efficiently check the proliferation of tumor cells which reduces the effective concentration of the commercially available drugs thus reducing their toxic sideeffects. Although triptolide is very effective against a number of diseases, its higher degree of multi-organ toxicity limits its use of further clinical trial. Therefore, to reduce the toxic effects, a number of strategies have been developed which increase its water solubility and at the same time decrease the toxic effect. In this review article, we have addressed how triptolide participates in the antitumor processes in breast can cer cells.