"Putting Intellectual Property in its Place" examines the relationship between creativity and intellectual property law on the premise that despite concentrated critical attention devoted to IP law from academic, policy, and activist quarters, its role as a determinant of creative activity is overstated. The effects of IP rights or law are usually more unpredictable, non-linear, or illusory than is often presumed. Through a series of case studies focusing on nineteenth century U.S. newspapers, plant hormone research in Canada between the wars, "fake" art, online knitting communities, creativity in small cities, and legal practice, the authors discuss the many ways people comprehend the law through information and opinions gathered from friends, strangers, coworkers, and the media. They also show how people choose to share, create, negotiate, and dispute; based on what seems fair, just, or necessary in the context of how their community functions in that moment, while ignoring or re-imagining legal mechanisms. This is not just the case in places or professions with defined alternative regimes. The authors define their objective in this book as the everyday life of IP law. The book constitutes an experiment in non-normative legal scholarship and in building theory from material and located practice.


Theoretical aspects of periodic functions of matrices and issues arising from the multivalued nature of their inverse functions are studied. Several algorithms for computing periodic and multivalued functions of matrices are developed.

We illustrate the use of matrix functions in the analysis of complex networks---an application that has recently been of very high interest. The relative importance of nodes in the whole network can be expressed via functions of the adjacency matrix. There are two functions, which have proven popular in practice. The first one is the exponential, which has the advantage of being parameter-free. The second one is the resolvent function, which can be the more computationally efficient, but it depends on a parameter. We give a prescription for selecting this parameter aiming to match the rankings of the exponential counterpart.

We define a new matrix function, the matrix unwinding function, corresponding to the scalar unwinding number of Corless, Hare, and Jeffrey introduced in 1996. The matrix unwinding function is shown to be an important tool for deriving identities involving the matrix logarithm and fractional matrix powers. We propose an algorithm for computing the matrix unwinding function based on the Schur--Parlett method with a special reordering. The matrix unwinding function is shown to be useful for computing the matrix exponential using an idea of argument reduction.

We study theoretical and computational aspects of matrix inverse trigonometric and inverse hyperbolic functions. Conditions for existence are given and principal values are defined and shown to be unique primary matrix functions. We derive various functional identities, with care taken to specify choices of signs and branches. An important tool for the derivations is the matrix unwinding function. We derive a new algorithm employing a Schur decomposition and variable-degree rational approximation for computing the principal inverse cosine (acos). It is shown how it can also be used to compute the matrix asin, acosh, and asinh. In numerical experiments the algorithm is found to behave in a forward stable fashion.

Finally, we consider argument reduction in computing the sine and cosine, and their hyperbolic counterparts. New algorithms for these functions are given, which use the matrix unwinding function with multiple angle algorithms for the sine and cosine. An argument reduction algorithm for computing general periodic functions of matrices is presented. Numerical experiments illustrate the computational saving that can accrue from applying argument reduction.


PURPOSE
To design and test an algorithm for reconstructing entrance fluence from an exit fluence through a cylindrical phantom using fluence kernels generated in the BEAMnrc monte carlo code. This work may be extended to replace the simulated fluence with direct measurements on an EPID where dosimetry data from treatment can be acquired and compared with direct measures of fluence from devices used commonly for IMRT verification.

METHOD AND MATERIALS
A parameter space array of monte carlo fluence kernels is calculated for each voxel in a 256x256 pixel grid measuring across 16.384cm2 at 60cm SPD, which corresponds to a 40.96cm2 imager at 150cm SPD. An array of coefficients of parameter space elements is then used to calculate a fluence at 150cm SPD, and an iterative minimization solver is configured to minimize the sum of the square of the differences between the calculated fluence and the measured fluence.

RESULTS
Comparison between two IMRT beam sequences simulated using the same BEAMnrc model used to generate the parameter space array were performed. The iterative solver was allowed to run for 15 minutes on a 128 core cluster on each phase space generated. A comparison of directly simulated entrance fluence and entrance fluence calculated by the proposed algorithm was performed, with a comparison criterion of the percentage of points in the fluence array with a threshold of 10% of maximum intensity, within 1% of the simulated fluence intensity; passing rates of 94.5% and 97.9% were achieved.

CONCLUSION
These results demonstrate that the algorithm is capable of reconstructing entrance fluence from simulated exit fluence within a reasonable tolerance for verification of delivery. Additionally, patient and beam specific parameter space arrays may be generated, allowing live measurements during treatment to be used for the reconstruction of entrance fluence with a high degree of accuracy.


Epizootiological outbreaks of disseminated neoplasia (DN) have been reported in association with mass mortalities in various bivalve species including the cockle Cerastoderma edule. A flow cytometric (FCM) procedure to study DNA content was successfully adapted and tested in haemolymph cells (haemocytes and neoplastic cells) of the cockle. The FCM results were similar to those obtained by histological analysis (DN diagnosis and haemolymph cell features). FCM analysis revealed differences in DNA content among normal haemocytes (diploid) and neoplastic cells. Four types of cells with abnormal DNA content were found in the haemolymph of affected animals: hypodiploid, hyperdiploid, triploid-sesploid and pentaploid. Our results suggest that the flow cytometric DNA content analysis can be applied to identify neoplastic cell types and to study the association between different cell types and the DN progression or remission in this edible and commercially important bivalve species.


This article provides global evidence supporting the Low Volatility Anomaly: that low risk stocks consistently provide higher returns than high risk stocks. This study covers 33 different markets during the time period from 1990-2011. (Two previous studies by Haugen & Heins (1972) and Haugen & Baker (1991) show the same negative payoff to risk in time periods 1926-1970 and 1970-1990.) The procedure for our study is intentionally simple, transparent and easily replicable. Our samples include non-survivors. We look at an international universe of stocks beginning with the first month of 1990 until December 2011; we compute the volatility of total return for each company in each country over the previous 24 months. Stocks in each country are ranked by volatility and formed into deciles. In the total universe and in each individual country low risk stocks outperform, the relationship with respect to Sharpe ratios is even more impressive. We believe this anomaly is caused primarily by agency issues, namely the compensation structures and internal stock selection processes at asset management firms which lead institutional investors on average to hold more volatile stocks. The article also addresses the implications for how corporate finance managers make capital investment decision in light of this evidence. The evidence presented here dethrones both CAPM and the Efficient Market Hypothesis.


This article examines the networks within the research groups where Spanish PhD students are pursuing their doctorate. Capo et al. (2007) used quantitative data to predict PhD students' publishing performance from their background, attitudes, supervisors' performance and research group networks. Variables related to the research group network had a negligible explanatory power on student performance once the remaining variables had been accounted for. In this article, a qualitative followup of the same students is carried out using extreme case sampling and indepth interviews. The qualitative research shows networking as important for students. Out of the 115 aspects that students mention in the interviews as relevant to publishing in the qualitative research, 92 have to do with their supervisors, their research group or their network as a whole. Similarly, out of the 50 hindrances mentioned, 20 have to do with the networks or relations. The most commonly mentioned network-related topics are research group members pushing PhD students to publish, meeting researchers outside the research group, existence of other PhD students in the group, help with the PhD from group members, supervisor's interest in the thesis, the possibility of discussing with experts on the PhD's topic and frequent contact with the supervisor and research group members. Some of these characteristics were not, however, measured in the conventional quantitative social network survey.


The Journal of Medical Entomology and Parasitology is one of the series issued quarterly by the Egyptian Academic Journal of Biological Sciences. It is an important specialist journal covering the latest advances in that subject. It publishes original research and review papers on all aspects of basic and applied medical entomology, parasitology and host-parasite relationships, including the latest discoveries in parasite biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, ecology and epidemiology in the content of the biological, medical entomology and veterinary sciences. In addition to that, the journal promotes research on the impact of living organisms on their environment with emphasis on subjects such a resource, depletion, pollution, biodiversity, ecosystem.....etc.


Title of dissertation: ESSAYS ON THE ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF U.S. AGRICULTURE Shinsuke Uchida, Doctor of Philosophy, 2014 Dissertation directed by: Professor Erik Lichtenberg Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics This dissertation consists of three essays empirically investigating three important aspects of the U.S. agriculture: conservation, subsidy, and productivity. Each essay is conducted with the U.S. Census of Agriculture micro file data. Availability of cross-sectional and time variations of detailed individual farm production and demographic characteristics allows for uncovering heterogeneous relationships between farm production decisions and the corresponding aspects of U.S. agriculture. The first essay examines an adverse effect of a cropland retirement policy. A cropland retirement policy contributes to the reduction of environmental externalities from agricultural production such as soil erosion, nutrient runoff and loss of wildlife habitat. On the other hand, participant's potential adverse behavior could undermine the environmental benefits of the policy. Several sources of such an unintended effect, known as "slippage", have been conceptually identified, but their empirical evidence has been scarce. This article tests one source of slippage caused by in-farm land substitution from noncropland to cropland as a result of farmland retirement in the U.S. Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). The causal relationship of CRP participation and subsequent slippage through in-farm land substitution is identified by employing farm fixed effects, time-varying county fixed effects, and selection-on-observables. These could eliminate effects of unobservables that are potentially correlated with both the program participation and subsequent farmland reallocation decisions. Overall, slippage seems evident and fairly robust among specifications. It is found that an average program participant converts 14% of noncropland to cropping activities after enrollment. Results further show that participants with a larger share of uncropped land contribute more to slippage, indicating that farms with the excess capacity of conversion are more flexible in the land allocation decision and thus likely to give rise to slippage. This suggests that additional restrictions on the rest of land use for participants and/or introduction of penalty points reflecting the share of noncropland in the current auction mechanism can hinder such a backward incentive offsetting the program benefits. The second essay examines the distortionary effects of agricultural policy on farm productivity by examining the response of U.S. tobacco farmers' productivity to the quota buyout of 2004. We focus on the impact of distortionary policy, i.e., the tobacco quota, by decomposing aggregate productivity growth into the contribution of farm-level productivity growth and the contribution of reallocation of resources among tobacco growers. We find that the aggregate productivity of Kentucky tobacco farms grew 44% between 2002 and 2007. The elimination of quota rental costs and reallocation of resources, including entry and exit, accounted for most of the post-buyout productivity growth. It is also noted that the aggregate productivity of Kentucky tobacco farms vary across farm characteristics and locations. This highlights the importance of using highly disaggregated data to uncover the sources of aggregate productivity growth. The third essay examines the relationship between farm size and productivity growth. In the past several decades, crop production in the U.S. has shifted to larger farms. During the same period, crop productivity has fairly improved. While these two events seem clearly associated, no studies have fully uncovered the link between them. Using farm-level longitudinal data from the Censuses of Agriculture from 1987-2007 enables us to decompose the contributions of aggregate productivity growth (APG) by farm size, but also by farm entry/exit and by technology/reallocation. We have three main findings. First, productivity growth is clearly non-uniform among farm sizes. Between 1987 and 2007, virtually all of the aggregate productivity growth of crop farms came from farms with annual sales of more than $500,000. These farms account for only 8% of U.S. crop farms. A closer look at the APG contributions to productivity growth from surviving farms confirms the findings for all crop farms: the productivity of mid-size farms has barely increased, and the productivity of smaller farms has fallen. Finally, the relative importance of technical efficiency growth and resource reallocation varies over time. Technical efficiency growth seems to be a larger source of APG for large farms between 1987 and 1997, whereas reallocation across all sales classes contributes more to APG between 1997 and 2007. Overall, our finding provides the concrete evidence that farm consolidation has been strongly associated with the productivity growth of U.S. crop farms. Our finding that resource reallocation through farm consolidation is nontrivial for the APG of crop farms highlights the usefulness of farm-level panel data for studying structural changes and APG. ESSAYS ON THE ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF U.S. AGRICULTURE


This dissertation uses Foucault's archaeological text The Order of Things (2002) to explicate two propositions. First, Foucault questioned the limits and conditions of possibilities for knowledge about our existence. Second, Foucault presupposed a subject whose capacity to know is constitutive of these limits and conditions of possibility. Evidencing these propositions I will explicate how, through his critique of these possibilities for knowledge, Foucault presupposes a self-constituting subject. This will be undertaken by developing but also modifying the possibilities for understanding Foucault's work delineated by Amy Allen's articles, The Anti-Subjective Hypothesis: Michel Foucault and The Death of the Subject (2000) and Foucault and Enlightenment: A Critical Reappraisal (2003). This will show, first, that it is necessary to contrast Allen's focus on Foucault's critique of transcendentalism by including his critique of positivism. Second, the relation between Foucault's presuppositions about the way in which we constitute the limits and conditions of possibility for modern knowledge. Last, the way in which the perquisite of effective theory limits the meaning of Foucault's.


Objectives: Vestibular Schwannoma is a benign schwann's cell tumor, whose origin remains obscure. It presents a slow growing rate, often associated with subtle symptoms that may take many years to be noted. Unilateral hearing loss, usually progressive is the most common presenting complaint and its features doesn't correlate with tumor size. Atypical presentation should be considered likewise sudden hearing loss, vertigo or tinnitus. Incidental findings correlated imaging exams are increasing last decades. Subjects and methods: We present a retrospective study of 38 patients, who were diagnosed vestibular schwannoma, between january 2010 and june 2018. We reported the initial symptoms at time of diagnosis as well as the hearing outcome correlated tumor size. Results: The mean age of our patients was 53 years old and women represented twice as much as men. Asymmetrical hearing loss was the main inaugural symptom in 39,4% followed by isolated tinnitus in 26,4% of the cases. The smaller tumors were more prevalent than greater ones. Regarding the correlation between hearing impairment and tumor dimension, we objectified statistical significance for their variance, but not in a linear proportion. Conclusion: Acoustic neuroma presenting symptoms are changing, although unilateral hearing loss still is the main complain. The audiometric pattern is unpredictable for what large-size tumors may not affect hearing acuity.


This presentation discusses the findings from evidence-based research into the effectiveness of a partnership between Louise O'Boyle (Ulster University) and PIPS Charity North Belfast, over a series of collaborations between 2012-2016. The constituency of North Belfast is an area of multiple disadvantages and has the highest suicide rate in Northern Ireland (Constituency Profile Belfast North, December 2012). These collaborations included a number of arts-based projects that involved post-primary children, PIPS staff and PIPS Family Support Group. The outcomes of these projects were further utilised to promote emotional wellbeing within the local communities of North Belfast. This presentation will focus on the development of the partnership and discuss what were the key considerations, synergies and modes of working utilised to make it effective; how these findings can inform future partnerships within communities. As proposed in the Assembly's consultation document, 'Strategy for Culture and Arts 2016-2026' the driving vision is "To promote, develop and support the crucial role of arts and culture in creating a cohesive community and delivering social change to our society on the basis of equality for everyone" (2015: 11). This presentation will conclude that fundamental to the development of any partnership is recognition that knowledge can be created outside of the academy and other formal bodies. Who the experts are and where they are located is changing and this approach to partnership can lead to coproduced forms of knowledge. Communities can inspire and inform public bodies and in turn be supported by them


The purpose of the project discussed in this report was to demonstrate that biogas energy systems are an integral and relevant part of ensuring a sustainable future. In order to do this, the first objective of the project was to develop a methodology for designing sustainable energy systems using biogas technology. The methodology was developed after reviewing existing literature on sustainable design methodologies. The proposed methodology consists of five main stages; identifying the fundamental desired outcome, investigating the energy requirements, biogas resource assessment, biogas technology review and designing the biogas energy supply system.

The second objective of this project was to conduct a preliminary assessment of the potential biogas resources in Western Australia. The research into the biogas potential from waste resources in WA was limited to the wheat, dairy, pork and meat processing industries. The estimated annual energy production potential from these resources in WA is 2,030GWh. Biogas is currently an underutilised technology in Western Australia and further investigation is highly recommended to more accurately assess the potential of biogas in the state.

The developed design methodology was applied to design a sustainable biogas system for a meat processing facility in the southwest of Western Australia. The application of the design process highlighted the ability of biogas technologies to provide decentralised energy supply and increase reliability, in addition to meeting the desired outcome of reducing the costs and greenhouse gas emissions related to the facility's current energy consumption. The recommended biogas technology for the meat processing facility, based on the outcomes of the design process, is a two-stage continuous stirred tank reactor, which is one of many proven biogas technologies that has been used successfully internationally over many years.


This paper presents a new technique based on both firewall and load balancing. The aim of the proposed technique is to ensure security in grid computing environment. The security tasks are assigned to firewalls; a load balancer takes into consideration the even distribution of workload between the provided firewalls. Therefore, the security tasks are evenly distributed amongst the firewalls depending on their workload as well as their specifications. On the other hand, this study points out to some of the pervious researches that presented a new structure for the grid computing as an effective solution to handle the security tasks. Moreover, the covered researches are analyzed: their advantages and drawbacks are elicited.


All different sciences are defined in a specific way. It is not enough to define anthropology as a science that has studied human beings at all times and all places. It is the methodology of anthropology that is unique and increasingly appreciated by other fields. With the spread of COVID-19, as displacement became a problem, for the researcher and for those s/he had to be with, this methodology was temporarily put into question: social media or simply telephone contacts to gather data was used. The collection of articles in this issue reconfirms that it is through participant observation that the researcher can diligently and exhaustively study a topic or shine new light upon well-studied topics. Our topics are varied this time, some papers are from different fields, our methodology remains the same.


Feedback from massive stars is believed to play a critical role in shaping the galaxy mass function, the structure of the interstellar medium (ISM) and the low efficiency of star formation, but the exact form of the feedback is uncertain. In this paper, the first in a series, we present and test a novel numerical implementation of stellar feedback resulting from momentum imparted to the ISM by radiation, supernovae and stellar winds. We employ a realistic cooling function, and find that a large fraction of the gas cools to ≲100 K, so that the ISM becomes highly inhomogeneous. Despite this, our simulated galaxies reach an approximate steady state, in which gas gravitationally collapses to form giant 'molecular' clouds (GMCs), dense clumps and stars; subsequently, stellar feedback disperses the GMCs, repopulating the diffuse ISM. This collapse and dispersal cycle is seen in models of Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC)-like dwarfs, the Milky Way and z∼ 2 clumpy disc analogues. The simulated global star formation efficiencies are consistent with the observed Kennicutt–Schmidt relation. Moreover, the star formation rates are nearly independent of the numerically imposed high-density star formation efficiency, density threshold and density scaling. This is a consequence of the fact that, in our simulations, star formation is regulated by stellar feedback limiting the amount of very dense gas available for forming stars. In contrast, in simulations without stellar feedback, i.e. under the action of only gravity and gravitationally induced turbulence, the ISM experiences runaway collapse to very high densities. In these simulations without feedback, the global star formation rates exceed observed galactic star formation rates by 1–2 orders of magnitude, demonstrating that stellar feedback is crucial to the regulation of star formation in galaxies.


Experimentation with plants for remediation of contaminated surface and ground waters is increasing. Potential advantages of in situ phytoremediation over standard, engineered structural approaches include reductions in initial capital outlay and required maintenance, coupled with potential transformation of contaminants into substances that are not hazardous to human health. The costs of developing the technology for a phytoremediation approach also can be reduced by incorporating knowledge of the ecological aspects of plants selected for testing from the initial stages of development. Examples include plants that: 1) successfully transform contaminants under laboratory conditions but have a low probability of survival in situ because of incompatible site conditions; 2) successfully transform contaminants under laboratory conditions, have a high probability of survival in situ, but may be sensitive to transformation compounds; 3) transform contaminants at slower rates under laboratory conditions, but have high potential for in situ performance due to site vigor and insensitivity to transformation compounds; and 4) are moderate performers under laboratory conditions, but have related populations of clones which are predicted to perform more satisfactorily. Basic knowledge of a plant's ecophysiology can reduce the time and expense of developing in situ phytoremediation.


The purpose of this paper is to describe the findings of a study on the effects of implementing a literature circle with adolescent boys disengaged with texts studied in their language arts class. The literature circle presented supplementary texts which supported the understanding of the primary text studied in the students' class. The research was conducted with a group of four 10th grade boys who showed signs of disengagement in the traditional language arts classroom setting. The data collection methods used included teacher interviews, student surveys, observational tally sheets, attitude scales, and student journal entries. The results of the research indicated an increase in engagement when the students studied supplementary texts in the literature circle setting. The implications of this action plan include methodical changes to the way literature is taught in the language arts classroom, such as the formation of literature circles and the offering of texts to supplement primary texts studied.


The outcomes for antireflux surgery in patients with extraesophageal symptoms of gastro esophageal reflux disease (GERD) are usually worse compared with patients with esophageal symptoms. This paper focuses on how to obtain a successful laparoscopic antireflux surgery in patients with extraesophageal symptoms. A successful laparoscopic antireflux surgery in patients with extraesophageal symptoms depends on: (I) an objective diagnosis for GERD. The diagnosis of pathological distal reflux is straightforward; however, the diagnosis of proximal reflux and to the target organs may be hard to be established; (II) the attribution of the symptoms to GERD. Extraesophageal symptoms may have a different cause than GERD even in the presence of GERD. A rational and complete workup is necessary to answer this question. A single test is not able to correlate symptoms to GERD. Judicious clinical decision based on a sum of different pieces of information is needed; and (III) the correct selection of patients based on predictors for good outcomes to show those who would benefit from surgery. Adequate surgical technical principles should be followed.


Competition for clinical trial projects outsourced by the global pharmaceutical industry is increasing with more countries bidding to provide these services. A comprehensive review of the clinical trial landscape in New Zealand was conducted by analysing clinical trial applications, and interviewing senior industry representatives on their expertise, capabilities, knowledge management, and innovative behaviours, as well as the policies and factors that had influenced the development of the industry. The number of clinical trial application approvals increased from 33 in 1989/1990 to 113 in 2008/2009 indicating continued confidence of the pharmaceutical industry in placing clinical research projects in New Zealand. Much of this growth has been due to an increasing number of phase I and II trials as a result of the availability of new purpose‐built facilities. The sponsors of clinical trials in New Zealand have changed from predominantly representatives of the pharmaceutical industry to mainly local and overseas CROs. The industry representatives are very experienced with the range of capabilities expected for clinical trials. They prefer informal sources of knowledge acquisition and display innovative behaviours such as solving problems that cause others difficulty, teamwork, and project planning. A large number of factors have encouraged the clinical trials industry in New Zealand including quality sites and data, the western healthcare system, the high incidence of some diseases, and seasonal opposition to Europe and the United States. Respondents suggested policies and strategies to address the increasing threat from global competition. New Zealand has developed significant expertise in clinical research but it should continue to monitor its industry to ensure continued growth. Drug Dev Res 72: 299–304, 2011. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


TCP/IP protocol suite, the adapted standard for communication over network, suffers from inherent vulnerabilities in the design of underlying protocols. These vulnerabilities are the main source of various attacks. Security protocols are included in the original TCP/IP suite to provide integrity, availability and confidentiality to the data moving on networks. But these security protocols are also vulnerable to different attacks such as DOS, Sniffing etc.. Denial of Service attack is an attack which makes an online information or network resource unavailable to legitimate users. This paper attempts a comprehensive study of vulnerabilities and the Denial of Service problem in security protocols such as IPSec, SSL, and PGP of TCP/IP suite.  The major contribution of this paper is that it helps to classify the different techniques used in a DoS attack, and discuss tools used in setting up a DoS attack over network. We propose architecture for Intrusion Prevention Systems for protecting information processed in Security protocols.


We show how to consider similarity between features for calculation of similarity of objects in the Vector Space Model (VSM) for machine learning algorithms and other classes of methods that involve similarity between objects. Unlike LSA, we assume that similarity between features is known (say, from a synonym dictionary) and does not need to be learned from the data.We call the proposed similarity measure soft similarity. Similarity between features is common, for example, in natural language processing: words, n-grams, or syntactic n-grams can be somewhat different (which makes them different features) but still have much in common: for example, words "play" and "game" are different but related. When there is no similarity between features then our soft similarity measure is equal to the standard similarity. For this, we generalize the well-known cosine similarity measure in VSM by introducing what we call "soft cosine measure". We propose various formulas for exact or approximate calculation of the soft cosine measure. For example, in one of them we consider for VSM a new feature space consisting of pairs of the original features weighted by their similarity. Again, for features that bear no similarity to each other, our formulas reduce to the standard cosine measure. Our experiments show that our soft cosine measure provides better performance in our case study: entrance exams question answering task at CLEF. In these experiments, we use syntactic n-grams as features and Levenshtein distance as the similarity between n-grams, measured either in characters or in elements of n-grams.


THE MISMATCH THESIS: What do economists mean when they talk about "capital accumulation"? Surprisingly, the answer to this question is anything but clear, and it seems the most unclear in times of turmoil. Consider the "financial crisis" of the late 2000s. The very term already attests to the presumed nature and causes of the crisis, which most observers indeed believe originated in the financial sector and was amplified by pervasive financialization.

However, when theorists speak about a financial crisis, they don't speak about it in isolation. They refer to finance not in and of itself, but in relation to the so-called real capital stock. The recent crisis, they argue, happened not because of finance as such, but due to a mismatch between financial and real capital. The world of finance, they complain, has deviated from and distorted the real world of accumulation.

According to the conventional script, this mismatch commonly appears as a "bubble", a recurring disease that causes finance to inflate relative to reality. The bubble itself, much like cancer, develops stealthily. It is extremely hard to detect, and as long as it's growing, nobody – save a few prophets of doom – seems able to see it. It is only after the market has crashed and the dust has settled that, suddenly, everybody knows it had been a bubble all along. Now, bubbles, like other deviations, distortions and mismatches, are born in sin. They begin with "the public" being too greedy and "policy makers" too lax; they continue with "irrational exuberance" that conjures up fictitious wealth out of thin air; and they end with a financial crisis, followed by recession, mounting losses and rising unemployment – a befitting punishment for those who believed they could trick Milton Friedman into giving them a free lunch.

This "mismatch thesis" – the notion of a reality distorted by finance – is broadly accepted. In 2009, The Economist of London accused its readers of confusing "financial assets with real ones", singling out their confusion as the root cause of the brewing crisis. Real assets, or wealth, the magazine explained, consist of "goods and products we wish to consume" or of "things that give us the ability to produce more of what we want to consume". Financial assets, by contrast, are not wealth; they are simply "claims on real wealth". To confuse the inflation of the latter for the expansion of the former is the surest recipe for disaster.

The division between real wealth and financial claims on real wealth is a fundamental premise of political economy. This premise is accepted not only by liberal theorists, analysts and policymakers, but also by Marxists of various persuasions. And as we shall show below, it is a premise built on very shaky foundations.

When liberals and Marxists say that there is a mismatch between financial and real capital, they are essentially making, explicitly or implicitly, three related claims: (1) that these are indeed separate entities; (2) that these entities should correspond to each other; and (3) that, in the actual world, they often do not.

In what follows, we explain why these claims don't hold water. To put it bluntly, neither liberals nor Marxists know how to compare real and financial capital, and the main reason is simple: they don't know how to determine the magnitude of real capital to start with. The common, makeshift solution is to estimate this magnitude indirectly, by using the money price of capital goods – yet this doesn't solve the problem either, since capital goods can have many prices and there is no way of knowing which of them, if any, is the "true" one. Last but not least, even if we turn a blind eye and allow for these logical impossibilities and empirical travesties to stand, the result is still highly embarrassing. As it turns out, financial accumulation not only deviates from and distorts real accumulation (or so we are told), it also follows an opposite trajectory. For more than two centuries, economists left and right have argued that capitalists – and therefore capitalism – thrive on "real investment" and the growth of "real capital". But as we shall see, in reality, the best time for capitalists is when their "real accumulation" tanks! . . .


Globalism has become an emblem for a whole series of dramatic changes in the international economy. The hyperbole in the media and popular novels that suggests a whirling era of giant companies, shifting money, and hapless governments, often hides the distinctive features of changing markets. This paper proposes that recent changes in the organization of production and product development are altering the terms of competition in many world markets and creating significant global opportunities for Danish firms. Those opportunities promise to enhance the development of Danish industry and employment. But there are risks. The new opportunities lie both in the new terms of competition that are observed in altered processes of product and component development and in the cross-national production networks that permit small companies to seize these opportunities. We label as "Wintelism" the new terms of competition and the new competitive strategies; we call the new organization of production Cross- national Production Networks (CNPNs). New risks lie in the accelerated pace of product and process development that make it harder and more essential to correctly judge technical developments, competitor strategies, and customer possibilities. The Danish policy question is whether the set of institutions and arrangements that constitute its industrial "market and policy logic"-or to use a different vocabulary, its National System of Innovation-is able to support the pursuit of the opportunities that "Wintelism" and Cross National Production Networks (CNPNs) create.


In this paper we present a new method for simultaneously determining 3-D shape and motion of a nonrigid object from uncalibrated 2-D images without assuming the distribution characteristics. A nonrigid motion can be treated as a combination of a rigid rotation and a nonrigid deformation. To seek accurate recovery of deformable structures, we estimate the probability distribution function of the corresponding features through random sampling, incorporating an established probabilistic model. The fitting between the observation and the projection of the estimated 3-D structure will be evaluated using a Markov chain Monte Carlo based expectation maximization algorithm. Applications of the proposed method to both synthetic and real image sequences are demonstrated with promising results.


In Book VII of The Republic, dated 360 B.C., Plato describes his allegory of the cave. He questions our reality, which could as easily be an illusion. This touches upon the foundations of philosophy but also on the foundations of mathematics. Both branches of science question axioms taken often for granted. As such, mathematics touches on the foundations of formal representations; so, also of engineering. Philosophy touches on concepts and semantic relations in a similar way. With a technology push that only increases in momentum and philosophy which needs its time to pin point concepts and semantic relations, this conference is timely as indeed a bridge or at least a link should be established. Such a link shields us from making mistakes and even possible harm.
In my talk, I will illustrate basic notions such as mentioned above and will illustrate their use in daily practice. To limit the scope of the basic notions and bring it to engineering practice, I will discuss affective technology as a representative case. I will start with briefly describing:
1. The idea behind this: Computers are more than machines to calculate with, they are a part of our daily activities. They even determine our social lives partly and provide the means to communicate. A next step to take would be to make them empathic, at least to a certain extent.
2. The technology: To capture emotions, computer vision techniques, speech signal processing, and physiological (or biosignals) processing are often employed.
3. The concept of emotion: This is very hard to capture. So far, no consensus exists on its definition.
4. The link ... Affective Technology: This branch of engineering aims to capture emotions and feed this to systems' to adapt their behavior accordingly.
This is, however, only where it begins, not where it ends.
When considering the implications of affective technology, several questions arise. What would this mean, when computers vanish, gain more and more autonomy, and can also sense our feelings? Various additional questions arise; for example, Should we be able to shield our emotions? What legal aspects go with such technology? and Is this where computers will start to take over? These questions illustrate that when introducing affective technology (e.g., robot nannies), this should be done with the utmost care. In the presentation some of the challenges affective technology has to overcome will be identified, which are often only briefly touched, namely: taking into account personality (including interpersonal differences), the reliability of the artificial senses, and the problem of taking context into account. Parallels are drawn with other branches of engineering (e.g., artificial intelligence and biomedical technology), which illustrates the problems affective technology has to face. This makes one wonder: affective technology, should it be future or remain fiction?


Family partnerships and family limited liability companies are typically formed for reasons of efficiency, succession, and valuation. But all good things come to an end. Owners of a family partnership opt for liquidation in a variety of situations, usually following the death of the founding owner(s). Although most practitioners recall that the liquidation of a partnership is not a taxable event, few remember that as many as three Code provisions can come into play upon the liquidation of a family partnership. This article reviews those potential income tax traps and uses two examples to illustrate their coordination and application in a typical setting.


A nearly complete sample of 24 Magellanic Cloud WC/WO subclass Wolf–Rayet stars is studied spectroscopically and photometrically to determine its binary frequency. Theory predicts the Roche lobe overflow produced Wolf–Rayet binary frequency to be 52±14 per cent in the Large Magellanic Cloud and 100 per cent in the Small Magellanic Cloud, not counting non-Roche lobe overflow Wolf–Rayet binaries. Lower ambient metallicity (Z) leads to lower opacity, preventing all but the most massive (hence luminous) single stars from reaching the Wolf–Rayet stage. However, theory predicts that Roche lobe overflow even in binaries of modest mass will lead to Wolf–Rayet stars in binaries with periods below approximately 200 d, for initial periods below approximately 1000 d, independent of Z. By examining their absolute continuum magnitudes, radial velocity variations, emission-line equivalent widths and full widths at half-maximum, a WC/WO binary frequency of only 13 per cent, significantly lower than the prediction, is found in the Large Magellanic Cloud. In the unlikely event that all of the cases with a less certain binary status actually turn out to be binary, current theory and observation would agree. (The Small Magellanic Cloud contains only one WC/WO star, which happens to be a binary.) The three WC+O binaries in the Large Magellanic Cloud all have periods well below 1000 d. The large majority of WC/WO stars in such environments apparently can form without the aid of a binary companion. Current evolutionary scenarios appear to have difficulty explaining either the relatively large number of Wolf–Rayet stars in the Magellanic Clouds, or the formation of Wolf–Rayet stars in general.


It's an Ant's Life Eusocial insects live in highly organized societies where groups of individuals carry out specific tasks; for example, caring for the eggs, cleaning the nest, or foraging, which might suggest the presence of an advanced form of organization, similar to what might be expected from more cognitively advanced species. Mersch et al. (p. 1090, published online 18 April) tracked individual ant movements and interactions to show that their precise social organization results from temporal changes in the spatial location of workers. As they aged, ants largely progressed from being nurses located near the queen, to nest cleaners who move throughout the colony, and finally to foragers moving in and out at the colony edges. Monitoring of individually tagged worker ants revealed three distinct groups that greatly differ in behavior. Ants live in organized societies with a marked division of labor among workers, but little is known about how this division of labor is generated. We used a tracking system to continuously monitor individually tagged workers in six colonies of the ant Camponotus fellah over 41 days. Network analyses of more than 9 million interactions revealed three distinct groups that differ in behavioral repertoires. Each group represents a functional behavioral unit with workers moving from one group to the next as they age. The rate of interactions was much higher within groups than between groups. The precise information on spatial and temporal distribution of all individuals allowed us to calculate the expected rates of within- and between-group interactions. These values suggest that the network of interaction within colonies is primarily mediated by age-induced changes in the spatial location of workers.


ABSTRACT Silva, R.; Martínez, M.L.; Hesp, P.; Catalan, P.; Osorio, A. F.; Martell, R.; Fossati, M.; Miot da Silva, G.; Mariño-Tapia, I.; Pereira, P.; Cienfuegos, R.; Klein, A., and Govaere, G., 2014. Present and future challenges of coastal erosion in Latin America. The coastal zones of Latin America have many landforms and environments, including sedimentary cliffs, deeply incised estuaries, headlands, barrier coasts and low lying, muddy coastal plains. These forms will respond differently to the expected changes in climate and associated sea level rise, which may produce coastal erosion in the future. Considering the coasts of Latin America overall, erosion is not yet a serious threat, although it is widespread and it is severe in some parts. Major erosion problems are frequently associated with human intervention in sediment supply, with poor planning or with the morphodynamic nature of the coast. Permanent erosional processes, locally or regionally, are caused by tectonic subsidence, deforestation and the fragmentation of coastal ecosystems, land use changes and sediment deficits because of infrastructure built along the coast. In this article we analyse coastal erosion in Latin America and the challenges it presents to the region. We first highlight the relevance of Latin America in terms of its biodiversity; then we describe the population at risk, demographic trends and economic growth throughout the low lying coastal zones. We also examine the vulnerability of the region by analyzing the resilience of key coastal ecosystems after exposure to the most frequent hazards that affect coastal zones in Latin America, namely tropical cyclones, sea level rise, ocean acidification, earthquakes and tsunamis. Finally, we discuss seven case studies of coastal erosion across Latin America. We close the study by pinpointing the main areas of concern in Latin America and explore possible strategies to overcome erosion and thus sustain economic growth, minimize population risk and maintain biodiversity.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the effects of a pico-tesla electromagnetic field (PTEF) on healing of sutured and open skin wounds and clinicopathologic variables in rats.

ANIMALS
64 male Fischer-344 rats.

PROCEDURE
An incision made in the dorsal aspect of the neck was sutured (n = 32) or left open to heal (32). In each group, 16 rats were not PTEF-treated (controls). Wound treatment consisted of exposure to a PTEF once daily. Rats in each group were euthanatized at days 2, 4, 7, and 14. Wounds were evaluated via tensiometry (sutured wounds), digital planimetry (open wounds), laser Doppler perfusion imaging, bacteriologic culture, and histologic examination. Blood samples were collected from all rats for analysis.

RESULTS
At day 14, sutured wounds in PTEF-treated rats were stronger (ultimate stress) and tougher (strain energy) than were sutured wounds in control rats. Open wounds in PTEF-treated rats contracted more quickly at days 2 and 4 than did those in control rats. Compared with control wounds, histologic changes (indicative of improved healing) in sutured and open wounds in PTEF-treated rats were detected as early as day 4. Laser Doppler perfusion measurements, results of CBCs, serum biochemical analyses, and bacteriologic cultures were not different between groups.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Exposure to the PTEF caused no adverse effects on clinicopathologic, histologic, or bacteriologic variables tested in this study. It appears that PTEF is a safe form of adjuvant treatment for wounds and improves strength of sutured wounds and speeds contraction of open wounds.


INTRODUCTION Open educational resources (OER) are gaining traction in higher education and becoming accepted by academics as a viable means for delivering course content. However, these resources can be difficult to find and use, both due to low visibility and confusion about licensing. This article describes one university's work with faculty members to identify barriers in their search process when they are looking to adopt OER. DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM A scholarly communication librarian and science librarian partnered to collect faculty and instructor reactions to a particular OER search tool, with the intention of better understanding the difficulties encountered during the search process. Eight interviews were conducted as participants were asked about their preferences when it comes to locating OER, understanding licensing information, and adopting materials for class. NEXT STEPS From these interviews, the librarians identified practical recommendations for instruction/liaison librarians and technical services/systems librarians as they continue working to support faculty and instructors through the OER discovery and selection process. These recommendations relate to four themes uncovered in interviews with faculty and instructors: the need for increased transparency in search tools, the importance of intuitive narrowing and broadening features in search tools, the need for detailed and consistent metadata in OER records, and the need for clarity in intellectual property statements. The librarians note that these recommendations might best be pursued through wide-scale collaboration across library units and, more generally, between libraries, consortia, and institutions.


Abstract Fluor-tsilaisite, NaMn3Al6(Si6O18)(BO3)3(OH)3F, is a new mineral of the tourmaline supergroup. It occurs in an aplitic dyke of a LCT-type pegmatite body from Grotta d'Oggi, San Piero in Campo, Elba Island, Italy, in association with quartz, K-feldspar, plagioclase, elbaite, schorl, fluor-elbaite and tsilaisite. Crystals are greenish yellow with a vitreous lustre, sub-conchoidal fracture and white streak. Fluor-tsilaisite has a Mohs hardness of ~7 and a calculated density of 3.134 g/cm3. In plane-polarized light, fluor-tsilaisite is pleochroic (O = pale greenish yellow and E = very pale greenish yellow), uniaxial negative. Fluor-tsilaisite is rhombohedral, space group R3m, a = 15.9398(6), c = 7.1363(3) Å, V = 1570.25(11) Å3, Z = 3. The crystal structure of fluor-tsilaisite was refined to R1 = 3.36% using 3496 unique reflections collected with MoKa X-ray intensity data. Crystal-chemical analysis resulted in the empirical formula: X(Na0.69⃞0.29Ca0.02)Σ1.00 Y(Mn2+1.29Al1.21Li0.56Ti0.03)S6.00 ZAl6 T(Si5.98Al0.03)S6.00B2.92O27 V(OH)3 W[F0.39(OH)0.25O0.36]S1.00. Comparisons were performed between fluor-tsilaisite and a tsilaisitic tourmaline from the same locality as the holotype specimen. This latter tourmaline sample was selected for this study due to its remarkable composition (MnO = 11.63 wt.%), the largest Mn content found in tourmaline so far. Fluor-tsilaisite is related to tsilaisite through the substitution WF ↔ W(OH) and with fluor-elbaite through the substitution Y(Al + Li) ↔ 2YMn2+, and appears to be a stepwise intermediate during tourmaline evolution from tsilaisite to fluor-elbaite.


We present an experimental and theoretical investigation of a micromachined mirror under a mixed-frequency signal composed of two harmonic ac sources. The micromirror is made of polyimide as the main structural layer. The experimental and theoretical dynamics are explored via frequency sweeps in the desired neighborhoods. One frequency is fixed while the other frequency is swept through a wide range to study the dynamic responses. To simulate the behavior of the micromirror, it is modeled as a single degree of freedom system, where the parameters of the model are extracted experimentally. A good agreement is reported among the simulation results and the experimental data. These responses are studied under different frequencies and input voltages. The results show interesting dynamics, where the system exhibits primary resonance and combination resonances of additive and subtractive type. The mixed excitation is demonstrated as a way to increase the bandwidth of the resonator near primary resonance, which can be promising for resonant sensing applications in the effort to increase the signal-noise ratio over extended frequency range.


The goal of the present study is to compare the morphological changes in dental hard tissue that are obtained through the use of passively Q-Switched multi-pulse Nd:YAG laser irradiation, with a free-generation mode Nd:YAG laser. The experimental samples consisted of six healthy third molars that were divided equally and randomly for the two irradiation methods. The depth of each perforation was quantified using optical coherence tomography (OCT). The highest fluency and the shortest duration of the pulses obtained by the multi-pulse laser with a Q-switch allowed for more efficient ablation of the dental material than what was obtained via the free-generation mode.


As machine learning becomes more widely used in practice, we need new methods to build complex intelligent systems that integrate learning with existing software, and with domain knowledge encoded as rules. As a case study, we present such a system that learns to parse Newtonian physics problems in textbooks. This system, Nuts&Bolts, learns a pipeline process that incorporates existing code, pre-learned machine learning models, and human engineered rules. It jointly trains the entire pipeline to prevent propagation of errors, using a combination of labelled and unlabelled data. Our approach achieves a good performance on the parsing task, outperforming the simple pipeline and its variants. Finally, we also show how Nuts&Bolts can be used to achieve improvements on a relation extraction task and on the end task of answering Newtonian physics problems.


As new forms of governance for climate change emerge in African cities, will they enable emancipatory and socially progressive transformations or will they exacerbate existing inequality, poverty and vulnerability patterns? This paper presents one of the case studies developed by UN-Habitat Cities and Climate Change Initiative in Maputo, Mozambique. The case analyses first, the production of urban vulnerabilities under climate change, and second, the existing governance arrangements for climate change in the city. Building on the lessons of the case study, the paper argues that to ensure that new forms of climate change governance lead to socially and environmentally just outcomes climate change interventions should, at least, meet two conditions: first, they should consider the close interactions between social and ecological elements and, specially, how patterns of urban inequality interact with environmental factors; second, they should recognise the opportunities in African cities through a broad notion of governance that looks beyond the government as the sole agent of urban change.


Asia is at a dangerous moment. China is rising fast. Young, reckless North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is engaging in territorial spats with the US president over nuclear missiles. Japan's nationalist government is remilitarising, throwing off the constitutional constraints imposed at the end of World War II. Washington is charting a different course, too- Donald Trump is the first US president to have contact with Taiwanese leaders since the 1970s, and also the first to edge his finger so firmly towards the nuclear button over North Korea. The doomsday clock has reached two minutes to midnight, as the possibility of global catastrophe looms ever closer. In this revelatory analysis, strategic expert Brendan Taylor examines the four Asian flashpoints that are most likely to erupt in sudden and violent conflict- the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan, the South China Sea and the East China Sea. He argues that crisis can only be averted by understanding the dynamics of these global hotspots and the complex interrelations between them. Drawing on history, contemporary sources and in-depth reports to weave an analysis both pertinent and chilling, Taylor asks what the world's major powers can do to avoid an eruption of war -- and what role Australia, as both a force in this region and a historical ally of the United States, can play to change the course of this otherwise disastrous history.


The crossover between videogames and film inspires this thesis. It is an attempt to integrate narrative and engagement in digital filmmaking thereby enabling active audience participation in the storytelling process. By analyzing early point-‐of-‐view camera experiments and contemporary implementation of these techniques in first-‐ person shooter games this thesis presents the different values of point-‐of-‐view perspective in both games and films. In addition, the thesis explores the impact of film on games via the use of cut scenes, narrative structure and cinematic language in order to uncover some fundamental principles of gameplay experience. Integration of an interactive point-‐of-‐view camera technique with traditional cinematography in a linear narrative underpins the filmmaking experimentation of this thesis. By producing a participatory film, the thesis tests this mix of filmmaking techniques and audience engagement, with a result suggesting that the viewing experience was improved.


About the book:
This Handbook explores the history of mathematics under a series of themes which raise new questions about what mathematics has been and what it has meant to practice it. It addresses questions of who creates mathematics, who uses it, and how. A broader understanding of mathematical practitioners naturally leads to a new appreciation of what counts as a historical source. Material and oral evidence isdrawn upon as well as an unusual array of textual sources. Further, the ways in which people have chosen to express themselves are as historically meaningful as the contents of the mathematics they have produced. Mathematics is not a fixed and unchanging entity. New questions, contexts, and applications all influence what counts as productive ways of thinking. Because the history of mathematics should interact constructively with other ways of studying the past, the contributors to this book come from a diverse range of intellectual backgrounds in anthropology, archaeology, art history, philosophy, and literature, as well as history of mathematics more traditionally understood.
The thirty-six self-contained, multifaceted chapters, each written by a specialist, are arranged under three main headings: 'Geographies and Cultures', 'Peoples and Practices', and 'Interactions and Interpretations'. Together they deal with the mathematics of 5000 years, but without privileging the past three centuries, and an impressive range of periods and places with many points of cross-reference between chapters. The key mathematical cultures of North America, Europe, the Middle East, India, and China are all represented here as well as areas which are not often treated in mainstream history of mathematics, such as Russia, the Balkans, Vietnam, and South America. A vital reference for graduates and researchers in mathematics, historians of science, and general historians.


Objectives: The objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of the total flavonoids of Clerodendrum bungei (TFCB) on the proliferation, invasion, and metastasis of A549 lung cancer cells through the Wnt signaling pathway. Materials and Methods: A549 cells were transfected with a β-catenin overexpression plasmid and the empty vector pcDNA3.1. The A549 cells were divided into six groups: normal A549 cell group, normal A549 cells with TFCB group, vector control group, vector with TFCB group, β-catenin overexpression group, and β-catenin with TFCB group. We used the 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide assay to detect cell proliferation, a scratch test was used to observe cell migration, and a transwell experiment was employed to evaluate cell invasion. Proteins related to the Wnt pathway were detected with Western blot analysis, including β-catenin, GSK-3 β, P-GSK-3 β, c-Myc, and CyclinD1. Results: The proliferation, invasion, and metastasis of A549 cells were significantly enhanced after being transfected with the β-catenin overexpression plasmid (P < 0.05 or 0.01), accompanied by increased expression of β-catenin, C-Myc, CyclinD1 and reduced expression of Gsk-3 β and P-GSK-3 β. Treatment of cells with TFCB resulted in inhibition of cell proliferation, migration, and invasion; downregulated expression of β-catenin, C-Myc, and CyclinD1; and upregulated expression of GSK-3 β and P-GSK-3 β, especially in the β-catenin overexpression group. Conclusion: TFCB has the potential to inhibit the Wnt/β-catenin pathway by prohibiting the overexpression of β-catenin and regulating its downstream factors.


MgF2 and LaF3 are considered as materials of high potentiality for high quality coatings in the spectral range from 150 nm up to 250 nm. Results for these materials, which were investigated within an extended joint experiment of several European laboratories, are presented.


Radioactive iodine species belong to the most dangerous components of nuclear effluents and waste produced by nuclear facilities. In this work, we use computer simulations at the periodic DFT level to investigate dissociative adsorption of iodomethane on silver-exchanged mordenite, which is among the most effective sorbents of iodine species available today. The structure, energetics, and mobility of complexes Ag-(CH3I) and Ag-(CH3I)2 formed upon adsorption of iodomethane on Ag+ sites are investigated using the ab initio MD approach. The free-energy profiles for the reaction CH3I + Ag-MOR → AgI + CH3-MOR are determined using the blue moon ensemble technique. The AgI species formed as a product of dissociative adsorption are shown to combine spontaneously into small clusters (AgI)n with the dimensions restricted by the size and geometry of confining voids. The structure and energetics of the (AgI)n species are analysed in detail and compared with the available experimental and theoretical data. The internal energy of formation of clusters in mordenite is shown to contribute significantly to the shift of equilibrium from the undissociated to dissociated form of adsorbed CH3I.


In a SOA-based system the applications are organized in a manner such that interoperable services can be used from different domains. In a process industry context, different domains can refer to, for example, process instrumentation and monitoring, execution of process control, data acquisition, etc. Large process industry systems are a complex and potentially very large sets of multi-disciplinary, heterogeneous, networked distributed systems. Current industrial process control systems are typically vendor specific; in addition the different domains are associated with different layers, different standards and different technologies. In the paper the authors report about the investigations and assessments performed to find answers for four major critical questions that arise as key when technologies have to be selected and used in a true Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based distributed large scale Process Monitoring and Control system: (1) Real-time SOA (what are the limits of bringing SOA into high performance control loops?); (2) Management of large scale industrial distributed control systems (is it feasible to manage up to tens of thousands of service-oriented devices?); (3) Distributed event-based systems are asynchronous (what are the limits compared to traditional periodic scanning systems?) and (4) Service specification (which semantics are the most suitable for specifying process control and monitoring services?).


Many design tasks involve the creation of new objects in the context of an existing scene. Existing work in computer vision only provides partial support for such tasks. On the one hand, multi-view stereo algorithms allow the reconstruction of real-world scenes, while on the other hand algorithms for line-drawing interpretation do not take context into account. Our work combines the strength of these two domains to interpret line drawings of imaginary objects drawn over photographs of an existing scene. The main challenge we face is to identify the existing 3D structure that correlates with the line drawing while also allowing the creation of new structure that is not present in the real world. We propose a labeling algorithm to tackle this problem, where some of the labels capture dominant orientations of the real scene while a free label allows the discovery of new orientations in the imaginary scene. We illustrate our algorithm by interpreting line drawings for urban planing, home remodeling, furniture design and cultural heritage.


Objective: To evaluate the effects of EPI-743 in subjects with Parkinson's disease (PD).
Background: Oxidative stress and energetic disturbances are thought to contribute to the pathogenesis of PD. EPI-743 (alpha-tocotrienol quinone) is an investigational drug targeting oxidoreductase enzymes essential for redox control of metabolism. In preclinical tests on primary cells from sporadic and mito-PD variants, EPI-743 provides protection against oxidative stress secondary to glutathione depletion.
Methods: This was a 6-month open label trial comparing 2 dose levels of orally administered EPI-743 (200 mg or 400 mg TID). Study outcomes included changes from baseline in UPDRS II and III "ON" scores, and brain metabolite levels as measured by 3T magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). Wilcoxon signed rank sum tests were used in the statistical analysis.
Results: Ten subjects were enrolled in the trial (mean Hoehn and Yahr 1.5); 3 patients discontinued the study after 3 months for reasons unrelated to drug. Six of 7 patients with follow up MRS studies demonstrated a decrease in glutamine/glutamate levels in the basal ganglia opposite the side most severely affected by PD (mean decrease of 1.18 ppm to 0.74 ppm, p=0.002), signifying CNS target engagement. Clinically, subjects demonstrated an improvement in UPDRS Parts II/III, with a mean decrease from 8.1 to 6.7 (p=0.19) in UPDRS Part II and a mean decrease from 16.6 to 13.3 (p=0.17) in UPDRS Part III (n=10). EPI-743 was well tolerated with no dose-limiting toxicities or serious adverse events.
Conclusions: EPI-743 resulted in a significant decrease in CNS glutamine/glutamate levels in PD patients as well as improvements in UPDRS combined parts II and III scores, and UPDRS part III scores alone, that approached statistical significance. Treatment with EPI-743 improved an objective CNS marker of oxidative stress that correlated with clinical improvement. These positive data provide the foundation for further development of EPI-743 for PD. Disclosure: Dr Zesiewicz has received research support from FARA. Dr. Allison has nothing to disclose. Dr. Jahan has nothing to disclose. Dr. Shaw has nothing to disclose. Dr. Murtagh has nothing to disclose. Dr. Jones has nothing to disclose. Dr. Gooch has received personal compensation for activities with NeuralStem, Baxter Pharmaceuticas, and CSL Behring Consultant. Dr. Salemi has nothing to disclose. Dr. Klein has received personal compensation for activities with Edison Pharmaceuticals as an employee. Dr. Miller has received personal compensation for activities with Edison Pharmaceuticals as an employee. Dr. Sullivan has nothing to disclose.


Modeling query concepts through term dependencies has been shown to have a significant positive effect on retrieval performance, especially for tasks such as web search, where relevance at high ranks is particularly critical. Most previous work, however, treats all concepts as equally important, an assumption that often does not hold, especially for longer, more complex queries. In this paper, we show that one of the most effective existing term dependence models can be naturally extended by assigning weights to concepts. We demonstrate that the weighted dependence model can be trained using existing learning-to-rank techniques, even with a relatively small number of training queries. Our study compares the effectiveness of both endogenous (collection-based) and exogenous (based on external sources) features for determining concept importance. To test the weighted dependence model, we perform experiments on both publicly available TREC corpora and a proprietary web corpus. Our experimental results indicate that our model consistently and significantly outperforms both the standard bag-of-words model and the unweighted term dependence model, and that combining endogenous and exogenous features generally results in the best retrieval effectiveness.


High-speed optoelectronic effects, caused by interconnection between the picosecond stimulated emission and the kinetic processes in dense hot electron-hole plasma in GaAs, are briefly reviewed. The newest effect of this class is reported in detail. It deals with the band gap narrowing as a result of generation of multi-component plasma in GaAs. The plasma is generated by a picosecond light pulse and the picosecond stimulated emission is observed. In this situa-tion, the total concentration of the pairs of photogenerated electrons and holes is experimentally proved to be the only parameter defining the electron distribution between Γ 6- and L6-valleys and the corresponding narrowing of the band gap. This is explained by the fact that in the presence of the emission the temperature and concentration of the charge carriers are approximately bound.


Using data on foreign borrowing, I identify Russian banks that were affected by the sudden stop of external financing caused by the Lehman Brothers'collapse. Applying the difference-in-difference method, I compare these "affected" banks to "unaffected" ones and find that the Russian Central Bank's (CBR) anti-crisis financial assistance primarily went to the former group. Tracing the impact of the CBR's liquidity infusions on banks'portfolio allocation decisions, I find that banks used CBR funds not only to pay out foreign debt, but also to accumulate cash deposits in non-resident banks. I also find that affected banks increased their holdings of market securities significantly more than unaffected ones, which suggests that the CBR's bailout policies impacted their risk-taking strategies. While there was no significant difference in corporate lending growth between the two groups after the sudden stop, lending to borrowers with weaker banking relationships (individuals and entrepreneurs) decreased more among affected banks. JEL classification: G21, E58


This article suggests that a law firm that desiring to promote ethical behavior by its lawyers needs to complement efforts to establish an "ethical infrastructure" and an "ethical culture" with attention to its broader organizational culture. Specifically, research indicates that the perception that an organization treats its members fairly - their sense of organizational justice - is an important factor in prompting members' ethical behavior.Many law firms in the last two or three decades have devoted attention to establishing what has been called an "ethical infrastructure" that reflects appreciation of the importance of organizational policies and procedures in encouraging ethical behavior. Such measures are salutary efforts to move beyond relying simply on individual character to ensure that law firm lawyers behave ethically. Research indicates, however, that policies and procedures will have little effect if members of an organization do not believe that they reflect ethical values to which organizational leaders genuinely subscribe. This has led to efforts in recent years to promote an "ethical culture" in firms that stresses the firm's genuine commitment to the values underlying the professional responsibilities of lawyers in the firm. Modeling ethical behavior, penalizing those who violate ethical duties notwithstanding the revenues they generate, and openly discussing the relevance of professional values in various settings are some of the ways that this can done. This can be important in communicating that policies and procedures are not simply formalities with little substantive significance.When members of an organization think of ethics, however, they tend first to focus on how fairly they believe the organization treats people who work there. Research indicates that there is a strong connection between the perception of organizational justice and ethical attitudes and behavior. In the law firm setting, this directs attention to features not necessarily regarded as having salience with respect to professional responsibility, such as a firm's compensation system, its support for members dealing with medical or family issues, and whether people who exhibit cooperative or competitive behavior are more likely to advance. The article suggests that ethical infrastructure and ethical culture can be seen as nested with a broader organizational culture. They each can provide distinct and complementary ways of promoting ethical outcomes, and also offer different angles of vision for research on behavior in law firms.


The decarbonisation of the global economy, though likely to enhance aggregate well- being, will create many losers. The main categories of potential losers are owners of carbon-intensive business assets, workers in such businesses, communities in which such businesses account for a disproportionately large share of economic activity, and owners of carbon-intensive household assets. As decarbonisation processes accelerate, losers will increasingly press for transitional assistance, such as compensation payments and subsidies to facilitate their adjustment to carbon-constrained circumstances. Where decarbonisation depends on new policies and laws, the actions of putative losers will also affect the enactment and implementation of such reforms, potentially leading to stalled transitions or policy reversals. In the face of this increasing demand for "transition policy", policymakers require expert guidance on how to develop coherent and desirable transition policy packages. Yet there is a dearth of policy-focused academic literature on this topic. This paper aims to provide a foundation for filling this gap. It first provides a definition of transition policy, identifying its key parameters. It then explores possible values of these parameters, resulting in an original map of the "logical space" of transition policy: the possible combinations of policy objectives, policy scope, and target actors that transition policy could encompass. To move from the possible to the desirable, the paper finally suggests three criteria for normatively evaluating transition policies: fairness; political transformation potential; and expected effectiveness. An appendix to the paper provides a literature overview of relevant works from multiple disciplines.


Jurisprudence can seem like a formidably esoteric field, with conceptual arguments carried on at a high level of abstraction, seemingly remote from the concerns of practicing lawyers. In fact, it is impossible to ignore jurisprudence when thinking about the role of lawyers in the wave of financial accounting scandals exemplified by the collapse of Enron. The Enron case is not about ethics so much as it is about the interpretation and application of a complex scheme of legal norms to innovative business transactions. The lawyers believed they were taking a legitimate, albeit aggressive interpretive attitude toward the law, by structuring the transaction to avoid as many legal restrictions as possible. It must have come as a surprise to these lawyers when they were criticized after Enron's collapse precisely for taking an aggressive stance toward legal and financial accounting standards. Many commentators criticized lawyers for Enron and other companies such as WorldCom and Global Crossing for neglecting their responsibilities to serve as gatekeepers and for facilitating their clients' evasion of law. The lawyers' typical response is that they were only doing what lawyers do - bringing their clients' actions into conformity with the law, pushing the boundaries of the law where it would be helpful to clients, and refusing to regard themselves as quasi-regulators of transactions. This article resolves this debate using the tools of analytic jurisprudence. The lawyers who defend creative, aggressive advice are essentially arguing for a Holmesian bad man interpretive attitude toward the law, in which the content of the law is identified by predicting when legal officials will impose sanctions on an individual. There are many problems with this approach, but one obvious one is that it reduces the law's constraint practically to a nullity, at least where the regulated actors are highly sophisticated companies with the resources to employ battalions of lawyers to create increasingly complex transactional structures. The Holmesian bad man stance, however, relies on a dubious account of the authority of law - one that prioritizes individual autonomy over all other values that bear on practical reasoning. But autonomy is not the only thing people value and, even if it were of paramount importance, there would still be conflicts between incompatible claims of liberty. The function of the law is to settle these first-order normative conflicts, and this settlement depends on the law having a relatively determinate, stable meaning. The function of law creates a second-order reason for lawyers to respect the settlement established by law and not to attempt to nullify it by creating elaborate structures to avoid penalties. Any interpretive strategy that undermines the capacity of law to resolve normative disagreement is ruled out by the second-order moral reasons that give the law legitimacy. The argument for treating the law instrumentally relies, often tacitly, on a highly suspect characterization of the nature and content of law, one that limits legal norms only to texts. Texts are not self-interpreting, however, and can acquire stable, determinate meaning only as they are situated within an interpretive community. In jurisprudential terms, this is an argument about what Hart would call the rule of recognition. My claim is that the rule of recognition in the U.S. legal system incorporates the practices and conventions of interpretive communities as criteria for identifying law. Conventions regulate the exercise of interpretative judgment and impart stability and determinacy to legal norms that would otherwise be subject to manipulation by lawyers. This article gives a number of examples of this process at work, from simple hypotheticals to a detailed consideration of some of the transactions that played a role in the collapse of Enron. The jurisprudential claim is not limited to Enron-style transactions, but has general applicability across the entire domain of legal counseling and transactional practice.


As contemporary firms increase their reliance on information technology (IT) and are increasingly turning their attention to jointly creating value with their primary stakeholders, there is a growing need to understand what enablers promote from interfirm value co-creation from co-production in supply chains, how the co-production can be realized and what value can be created through the co-production. We integrate systems theory and the relational view perspectives to develop an explanatory model to explain how co-production mediates the impacts of enablers on the reciprocal benefits created in the global supply chain context. Drawing upon systems theory, we identify three constructs: platform compatibility (i.e., compatibility), co-production (i.e., synergy), and collaborative governance (i.e., integration effort). We draw on the relational view to identify two activities: process alignment and resource sharing for co-production, conceptualize three basic types of reciprocal benefits: market, innovation and anshin value, and theorize co-production—the synergy of process alignment and resource sharing activities—as key to the realization of synergy, thereby contributing to the reciprocal benefits in the context of interfirm supply chain. Based on survey data collected from 464 senior management representatives from 230 high-tech manufacturing firms from within Taiwan and China, we found 1) collaborative governance has a positive effect on platform compatibility, 2) both collaborative governance and platform compatibility promote co-production, 3) guanxi has a positive effect on collaborative governance and has a positive moderating effect on collaborative governance and co-production, and 4) co-production positively affects reciprocal benefits. Our findings highlight 1) the important role of co-production in mediating the platform compatibility and collaborative governance effects on reciprocal benefits, and 2) the complementary role of guanxi in strengthening the collaborative governance effect on co-production. These results provide insights into how firms can co-create value through enhanced interfirm co-production.


Mashups are becoming increasingly popular as end users are able to easily access, manipulate, and compose data from many web sources. We have observed, however, that mashups tend to suffer from deficiencies that propagate as mashups are reused. To address these deficiencies, we would like to bring some of the benefits of software engineering techniques to the end users creating these programs. In this work, we focus on identifying code smells indicative of the deficiencies we observed in web mashups programmed in the popular Yahoo! Pipes environment. Through an empirical study, we explore the impact of those smells on end-user programmers and observe that users generally prefer mashups without smells. We then introduce refactorings targeting those smells, reducing the complexity of the mashup programs, increasing their abstraction, updating broken data sources and dated components, and standardizing their structures to fit the community development patterns. Our assessment of a large sample of mashups shows that smells are present in 81% of them and that the proposed refactorings can reduce the number of smelly mashups to 16%, illustrating the potential of refactoring to support the thousands of end users programming mashups.


Abstract Colony-wide feeding currents are a common feature of many bryozoan colonies. These feeding currents are centered on excurrent macular chimneys that expel previously filtered water away from the colony surface. In some bryozoans these macular chimneys consist of a branching channel network that converges at a point in the center of the chimney. The bifurcating channels of the maculae are analogous to a stream channel network in a closed basin with centripetal drainage. The classical methods of stream channel network analysis from geomorphology are here used to quantitatively analyze the number and length of macular channels in bryozoans. This approach is applied to a giant branch of the trepostome bryozoan Tabulipora from the Early Permian Kim Fjelde Formation in North Greenland. Its large size allowed 18 serial tangential peels to be made through the 8-mm-thick exozone. The peels intersected two stellate maculae as defined by contiguous exilapores. The lengths of 1460 channels radiating from the maculae were measured and their Horton-Strahler stream order and Shreve magnitude scored. We hypothesize that if fossil bryozoan maculae function as excurrent water chimneys, then they should conform to Horton's laws of stream networks and behave like closed basins with centripetal drainage. Results indicate that the stellate maculae in this bryozoan behaved liked stream channel networks exhibiting landscape maturation and stream capture. They conformed to the Law of Stream Number. They have a Bifurcation Ratio that falls within the range of natural stream channel networks. They showed a pattern opposite that expected by the Law of Stream Lengths in response to behavior characteristic of a centripetal drainage pattern in a closed basin. Thus, the stellate maculae in this bryozoan probably functioned as excurrent water chimneys with the radiating channels serving to efficiently collect the previously filtered water, conducting it to the central chimney for expulsion away from the colony surface.


In this study, three laboratory scale submerged membrane bioreactors (MBRs) comprising a conventional MBR (C-MBR), moving bed MBR (MB-MBR) and anoxic-oxic MBR (A/O-MBR) were continuously operated with synthesized domestic wastewater (chemical oxygen demand, COD = 500 mg/L) for 150 days under similar operational and environmental conditions. Kaldnes(®) plastic media with 20% dry volume was used as a biofilm carrier in the MB-MBR and A/O-MBR. The treatment performance and fouling propensity of the MBRs were evaluated. The effect of cake layer formation in all three MBRs was almost the same. However, pore blocking caused a major difference in the resultant water flux. The A/O-MBR showed the highest total nitrogen and phosphorus (PO4-P) removal efficiencies of 83.2 and 69.7%, respectively. Due to the high removal of nitrogen, fewer protein contents were found in the soluble and bound extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) of the A/O-MBR. Fouling trends of the MBRs showed 12, 14 and 20 days filtration cycles for C-MBR, MB-MBR and A/O-MBR, respectively. A 25% reduction of the soluble EPS and a 37% reduction of the bound EPS concentrations in A/O-MBR compared with C-MBR was a major contributing factor for fouling retardation and the enhanced filtration capacity of the A/O-MBR.


The number of cases of urethritis, or inflammation of the male urethra, in the US has been estimated to be 2.8 million each year in the United States.1 It is the most common reason young men seek primary care and this syndrome is associated with acute proctitis, epididymitis, and orchitis.2 Approximately half of the cases are idiopathic, meaning that a causative agent cannot be identified. The goal of my project is to identify and characterize novel microorganisms that may be associated with male idiopathic urethritis. We used a variety of approaches to cultivate microorganisms from archived urethral swabs collected from men with idiopathic urethritis and healthy controls. We defined the phylogeny of the isolates using 16S rRNA sequencing to identify organisms that are not presently represented in microbial databases. Currently, we are scaling up a number of novel taxa we identified for genome sequencing. By adding these new genome sequencing to the existing databases we will be able to assign a higher proportion of reads from corresponding metagenomic sequence data and achieve a more complete survey of the male urethral microbiota in health and urethritis. This will provide crucial information which may permit us to identify urethritis associated organisms, develop new molecular diagnostics for these organisms, and discern if how these organisms are sexually transmitted
References 1. Brill JR. Diagnosis and treatment of urethritis in men. Am Fam Physician 2010; 81:873–8. 2. Bachmann LH, Manhart LE, Martin DH, Sena AC, Dimitrakoff J, Jensen JS, et al. Advances in the Understanding and Treatment of Male Urethritis. Clin Infect Dis. 2015;61 Suppl 8:S763–S9.


The macaque FEFs and the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) are high-level cortical areas involved in both spatial attention and oculomotor behavior. Stimulating FEF at a level below the threshold for evoking saccades increases fMRI activity and gamma power in area LIP, but the precise effect exerted by the FEF on LIP neurons is unknown. In our study, we recorded LIP single-unit activity during a visually guided saccade task with a peripherally presented go signal during microstimulation of FEF. We found that FEF microstimulation increased the LIP spike rate immediately after the highly salient go signal inside the LIP receptive field when both target and go signal were presented inside the receptive field, and no other possible go cues were present on the screen. The effect of FEF microstimulation on the LIP response was positive until at least 800 msec after microstimulation had ceased, but reversed for longer trial durations. Therefore, FEF microstimulation can modulate the LIP spike rate only when attention is selectively directed toward the stimulated location. These results provide the first direct evidence for LIP spike rate modulations caused by FEF microstimulation, thus showing that FEF activity can be the source of top–down control of area LIP.


Climate change is expected to have serious impacts on developing countries, including Vietnam. The central government of Vietnam has launched programs to study climate change trends and impacts on natural resources, environment and socio-economic development, and adaptation strategies. These programs have the active involvement of many ministries, sectors, research institutions and local governments. This paper addresses the perceptions of provincial officers in Vietnam regarding climate change, its impacts on agricultural activities, and adaptation options. It examines the current knowledge and understanding capacity of provincial officials in implementing the National Target Program to Respond to Climate Change, and the Action Plan to Response to Climate Change of the Agriculture and Rural Development Sector . The results from the study provide insight into the perceptions on climate change and climate change adaptation measures held by Vietnamese government officials working in environmental and agricultural sectors. The survey data indicate that Vietnamese government officials are aware of climate change and its potential impacts, but have relatively poor understanding of some aspects, given the key role of government officials in implementing Vietnamese adaptation policies and mitigation measures. These new findings are important to Vietnamese and international organizations involved in assisting agricultural research and extension agencies with identifying and implementing strategies to adapt Vietnamese farming systems to a changing climate.


Background: A recently published randomized controlled trial compared single-dose psilocybin with single-dose niacin in conjunction with psychotherapy in participants with cancer-related psychiatric distress. Results suggested that psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy facilitated improvements in psychiatric and existential distress, quality of life, and spiritual well-being up to seven weeks prior to the crossover. At the 6.5-month follow-up, after the crossover, 60–80% of participants continued to meet criteria for clinically significant antidepressant or anxiolytic responses. Methods: The present study is a long-term within-subjects follow-up analysis of self-reported symptomatology involving a subset of participants that completed the parent trial. All 16 participants who were still alive were contacted, and 15 participants agreed to participate at an average of 3.2 and 4.5 years following psilocybin administration. Results: Reductions in anxiety, depression, hopelessness, demoralization, and death anxiety were sustained at the first and second follow-ups. Within-group effect sizes were large. At the second (4.5 year) follow-up approximately 60–80% of participants met criteria for clinically significant antidepressant or anxiolytic responses. Participants overwhelmingly (71–100%) attributed positive life changes to the psilocybin-assisted therapy experience and rated it among the most personally meaningful and spiritually significant experiences of their lives. Conclusion: These findings suggest that psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy holds promise in promoting long-term relief from cancer-related psychiatric distress. Limited conclusions, however, can be drawn regarding the efficacy of this therapy due to the crossover design of the parent study. Nonetheless, the present study adds to the emerging literature base suggesting that psilocybin-facilitated therapy may enhance the psychological, emotional, and spiritual well-being of patients with life-threatening cancer.


Process Mining is a discipline that sits between data mining and business process management. The starting point of process mining is an event log, which is analyzed to extract useful insights and recurrent patterns about how processes are executed within organizations. However, often its concrete application is hampered by the considerable preparation effort that needs to be conducted by human experts to collect the required data for building a suitable event log. Instead, event logs need to be extracted from different and heterogeneous data sources, often using customized extraction scripts whose implementation requires both technical and domain expertise. While this is recognized as a relevant issue in the process mining community, literature solutions tend to be ad-hoc for particular application contexts, or not enough structured to be easily applied in practice. In this paper, we tackle this issue by proposing an interactive and general-purpose approach to support organizations in generating simulated event logs that can be employed to discover the structure of the data pipelines executed within a business process. A data pipeline is a composite workflow for processing data that is enacted as part of process execution. To assess the practical applicability of the approach, we show the results of a preliminary evaluation performed in a digital marketing scenario in the range of the recently funded H2020 DataCloud project.


Too often, scholarship regarding the concept of race in the United States is absent from top-tier journals across fields. Yet, at some institutions, faculty, including scholars who explore race, are required to publish in top-tier journals to secure tenure. This article highlights the extent to which journals—of all tiers—within the field of higher education publish articles explicitly highlighting race in the study. The authors used Bray and Major's (2011) article, "Status of Journals in the Field of Higher Education" as the data source for the sample. Using a systematic approach, the authors surveyed journals in the field of higher education to determine the percentage of studies that explicitly focused on race for each of the journals included, using a three-year timeframe. The authors found that individual journals they labeled as "top tier mentions" published 14-21% of articles on race. The remainder of the journals included in the study published anywhere from 0-7% of their articles on race. Implications for practice— particularly for tenure-track faculty who explore race—and future research are discussed.