OBJECTIVE
Delayed cerebral ischemia (DCI) is a significant contributor to poor outcomes after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH). The neurotoxin 3-aminopropanal (3-AP) is upregulated in cerebral ischemia. This phase II clinical trial evaluated the efficacy of tiopronin in reducing CSF 3-AP levels in patients with aSAH.

METHODS
In this prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter clinical trial, 60 patients were assigned to receive tiopronin or placebo in a 1:1 ratio. Treatment was commenced within 96 hours after aSAH onset, administered at a dose of 3 g daily, and continued until 14 days after aSAH or hospital discharge, whichever occurred earlier. The primary efficacy outcome was the CSF 3-AP level at 7 ± 1 days after aSAH.

RESULTS
Of the 60 enrolled patients, 29 (97%) and 27 (93%) in the tiopronin and placebo arms, respectively, received more than one dose of the study drug or placebo. At post-aSAH day 7 ± 1, CSF samples were available in 41% (n = 12/29) and 48% (n = 13/27) of patients in the tiopronin and placebo arms, respectively. No difference in CSF 3-AP levels at post-aSAH day 7 ± 1 was observed between the study arms (11 ± 12 nmol/mL vs 13 ± 18 nmol/mL; p = 0.766). Prespecified adverse events led to early treatment cessation for 4 patients in the tiopronin arm and 2 in the placebo arm.

CONCLUSIONS
The power of this study was affected by missing data. Therefore, the authors could not establish or refute an effect of tiopronin on CSF 3-AP levels. Additional observational studies investigating the role of 3-AP as a biomarker for DCI may be warranted prior to its use as a molecular target in future clinical trials.Clinical trial registration no.: NCT01095731 (ClinicalTrials.gov).


Objective: Mental diseases cripple the human life. But for everyone a disease free life is desirable. Thus to avoid the unwanted situation, researchers are continuously looking for the remedy of the above. One of the ways for the same is to see whether by proper selection of daily food the desired goal can be reached. The objective of this work is to make a quantitative estimation of the amino acids supply per day from the diet chart proposed, because the amino acids play important role to safe guard against so many mental diseases. Actually, the medicines for mental illness contain high dose of amino acids while a mild dose can act as a preventive for the diseases. Method: In estimation of amino acids in a proposed diet, the quantities of tryptophan, methionine, lysine etc. in each item of the diet has been evaluated and added them up to get the daily intake of the acids. The amount of amino acids obtained thus far has been compared with the daily intake amount necessary to avoid mental diseases. Results: The result shows that the quantities of amino acids obtained daily from the proposed diet successfully cover the daily intake amount necessary to guard against some mental diseases. A comparison of the amount of amino acids obtained from the proposed diet with the medicinal doses for mental diseases shows that the former amount lags much behind the latter. Conclusion: From the result of investigation it may be concluded that from a proper choice of daily diet so many mental diseases could be avoided but when people are attacked with mental diseases diet alone cannot cure the diseases and hence medicinal therapy is urgent.


In order to investigate reasons contributing to the decline in enrollment in computing programs in colleges and universities, this study examined student attitudes towards computing throughout an introductory computing course for non-majors at a northeastern metropolitan university. In addition to providing computer literacy, the course is used for recruiting students into the CS and IS majors. Six sections of the course, with participation ranging from 106 to 133 subjects at four measurement points, were administered the Loyd Gressard Computer Attitude Scale (Loyd and Gressard, 1984, 1985). This paper is a preliminary analysis of the computer attitude data of all students in all sections across two campuses. The results indicated that after statistically significant decreases in positive attitudes toward computers through the first 3 measures (2/3 of the course), there was a statistically non-significant rise at the end of the course once the programming part of the course was completed. The conclusion is that initial enthusiasm for computers, which may come from familiarity with using computers for recreational activities, drops rapidly as the work of learning computing concepts and skills begins.


Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is thought to affect approximately one in 10 people. Patients with CKD have significantly increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in comparison with the general population. This is thought to occur from a combination of increased atherosclerotic disease and medial calcification of arterial walls. Vascular calcification (VC) is recognised as an active, cell-mediated process with similarities to osteogenesis. Numerous systemic and local factors have been identified as inhibitors of calcification including fetuin-A, matrix Gla protein and pyrophosphate. There is also increasing evidence that increased serum phosphorus, serum calcium x phosphorus product, and/or calcium load is associated with increased VC. Current treatment strategies focus on the correction of markers of mineral metabolism bone disease such as phosphate, calcium, parathyroid hormone and vitamin D. The use of agents such as bisphosphonates and cinacalcet show promise, but further data are awaited before their widespread use as a treatment for VC can be advocated. Imaging techniques currently used to assess VC are also discussed. Research into the mechanisms underlying VC are still being investigated and further insight into these mechanisms will lead to the development of therapeutic agents, which could improve cardiovascular outcomes in patients.


Scholars have largely focused on the negative consequences of organizational politics on employees' performance. In contrast, we maintain that organizational politics has positive aspects and moderates the relationship between employee engagement and behaviors at work such as knowledge sharing, creativity, proactivity, and adaptivity. Using data from 253 high-tech employees and their supervisors in Israel, our findings demonstrate that perceptions of organizational politics strengthen the relationship between employee engagement and these behaviors. When engaged employees perceive their workplace to be political, they are more proactive, creative, and adaptive, and more likely to share their knowledge with their peers. These findings confirm the challenge/opportunity stressor theory regarding perceptions of organizational politics and suggest that whether politics is viewed as positive or negative depends on the employees' point of view. For those who are engaged and more actively involved in their jobs, ...


Abstract. This paper presents an advanced approach to statistically analyse storm surge events. In former studies the highest water level during a storm surge event usually was the only parameter that was used for the statistical assessment. This is not always sufficient, especially when statistically analysing storm surge scenarios for event-based risk analyses. Here, Archimedean Copula functions are applied and allow for the consideration of further important parameters in addition to the highest storm surge water levels. First, a bivariate model is presented and used to estimate exceedance probabilities of storm surges (for two tide gauges in the German Bight) by jointly analysing the important storm surge parameters "highest turning point" and "intensity". Second, another dimension is added and a trivariate fully nested Archimedean Copula model is applied to additionally incorporate the significant wave height as an important wave parameter. With the presented methodology, reliable and realistic exceedance probabilities are derived and can be considered (among others) for integrated flood risk analyses contributing to improve the overall results. It is highlighted that the concept of Copulas represents a promising alternative for facing multivariate problems in coastal engineering.


abstract:The independent Maratha kingdom of Chhatrapati Shivaji was founded in the mid-seventeenth century, when the sultanates of the Deccan were defending against the expansionist Mughal empire. The Mughals slowly anchored themselves in the Deccan, and the kingdom of the Nizam Shahs of Ahmadnagar was finally subdued in 1636, a decade after the death of Malik Ambar. Over the next half century, as the Adil Shahs of Bijapur and the Qutb Shahs of Golconda found themselves in a weakened position against the Mughals, the Marathas were consolidating their gains with building campaigns. It is not surprising that the architectural expression of the early Maratha kingdom had the same artisanal qualities and visual vocabulary as the sultanates of the Deccan, given that most of the Maratha elite families, including Shivaji's grandparents, had served at sultanate courts. Examples of nonmilitary architecture in the form of memorials demonstrate the deep connections between the architecture of the Deccan sultanates and that of the early Marathas.


TCF7L2 (rs7903146) as one of the most significant single nucleotide polymorphism, is one of the associated genes with type 2 diabetes. This case-control study was performed on the whole blood of 87 patients with type 2 diabetes and 45 healthy people. Selenium and zinc concentrations in whole blood were measured using flameless atomic-absorption spectrometry. The genotype of TCF7L2 was achieved by real-time PCR and high-resolution melt (HRM). In order to data analyzing, the t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used. The difference of zinc levels and also selenium levels in whole blood for both healthy (Zinc: 164.75 μgr dL-1, selenium: 140.71 μgr L-1) and patients (Zinc: 136.77 μgr dL-1, selenium: 111.66 μgr L-1) groups was significant (P-value <0.05). The different levels of zinc and selenium in healthy genotype group (TT, CT, CC) and type 2 diabetic patient genotype (TT, CT, CC) group was also significant (P-value <0.05). The presence of the T allele as a risk factor led to reducing zinc levels in healthy subjects. Significant reduction in zinc in the diabetic CT versus healthy CC and in diabetic TT versus healthy CT can be considered as a result of the T allele risk. Amount of selenium in TT genotype in both control group and diabetic patients was reduced.


AbstractRecent observational and theoretical studies show a systematic relationship between tropical moist convection and measures related to large-scale convergence. It has been suggested that cloud fields in the column stochastic multicloud model compare better with observations when using predictors related to convergence rather than moist energetics (e.g., CAPE) as per Peters et al. Here, this work is extended to a fully prognostic multicloud model. A nonlocal convergence-coupled formulation of the stochastic multicloud model is implemented without wind-dependent surface heat fluxes. In a series of idealized Walker cell simulations, this convergence coupling enhances the persistence of Kelvin wave analogs in dry regions of the domain while leaving the dynamics in moist regions largely unaltered. This effect is robust for changes in the amplitude of the imposed sea surface temperature (SST) gradient. In essence, this method provides a soft convergence coupling that allows for increased interaction betw...


In June 2013, the High-Level Conference of Middle-Income Countries held in Costa Rica, organised by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), ventured an intriguing look into the future of development. In particular, the conference highlighted the role of networks in overcoming challenges for sustainable development and reshaping international cooperation in and with middle-income countries (MICs). With the choice of this topic, the conference has connected two issues that now figure prominently (and often separately) in the discussion on how to implement the new 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: networks and partnerships, on the one hand, and cooperation with MICs, on the other. As modes of governance, networks can be expected to become more important in MICs as their state bureaucracies and societies become more functionally differentiated. Similarly, the transformative change called for in the 2030 Agenda requires collective action among a broad range of public and private actors, within countries and across borders. Therefore, networks and partnerships have emerged as a central topic in the debate on "means of implementation" and a "revitalised global partnership". Failure to meet this growing demand for collective action can lead to substantial implementation gaps. "Orchestration" has been advanced as a potential strategy to address collective action problems and support networks in various areas of sustainable development. This paper draws on the concept of orchestration to advance ideas for new approaches to cooperation in MICs. Orchestration can be used to broker collective action in and with MICs to support domestic reforms and global engagement in view of implementing the 2030 Agenda.


Cytomegalovirus (CMV)-specific T-cell immunity plays an important role in protection from CMV disease in immunocompromised patients. Identification of cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) epitopes is essential for monitoring T-cell immunity and also for immunotherapy. In this and previous studies, CMV-pp65-specific CTL lines were successfully generated from all of 11 CMV-seropositive healthy donors, using pp65-transduced CD40-activated B (CD40-B) cells as antigen-presenting cells. By use of enzyme-linked immunospot (ELISPOT) assays, individual CTL epitopes could be mapped with truncated forms of the pp65 gene. For human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles with a known binding motif, CTL epitopes within the defined regions were predicted by computer algorithm. For HLA alleles without a known binding motif (HLA-Cw*0801, -Cw*1202, and -Cw*1502), the epitopes were alternatively identified by step-by-step truncations of the pp65 gene. Through this study, a total of 14 novel CTL epitopes of CMV-pp65 were identified. Interestingly, 3 peptides were found to be presented by 2 different HLA class I alleles or subtypes. Moreover, use of CD40-B cells pulsed with a mixture of synthetic peptides led to generation of pp65-specific CTL lines from some of seronegative donors. The study thus demonstrated an efficient strategy for identifying CTL epitopes presented by a variety of HLA alleles.


The potential of technological developments in the form of handheld mobile devices, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) to augment and improve the experience of science for the learner has been well documented (see, e.g. Scanlon et al., 2005), as has their use to augment and improve performance in workplace settings (Waycott and Kulkulska-Hume, 2003; Waycott et al., 2003). These devices also have the potential to provide new ways for teachers and learners to engage with mixed media science learning materials. Working with the Open University's Practice-based Professional Learning (PBPL) Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), we will address these questions by investigating how science teachers studying the Masters-level course Contemporary issues in science learning use mobile technologies in their workplace settings. In particular, we hope to better understand the ways in which PDAs influence the use of OU course material in workplace contexts, and investigate how the link between knowledge about science communication, education and practice can be influenced by the use of PDAs. In this paper we will report on the first phase of the project, documenting the experiences of revising existing mixed media materials for use on PDAs, and the development and trialling of familiarisation activities and data collection techniques. We used a range of data collection methods to record student and tutor use of the PDAs, including weekly audio diaries and a web-based surveying infrastructure that can be programmed to automatically invite users to submit online questionnaires as they complete course-related activities on their PDAs. The results of the first phase will iteratively be developed to document the use of these materials in workplace settings. Our evaluation is based on the activity theory approach developed by Scanlon and Issroff (2005) and the tool appropriation model developed by Waycott et al. (2003).

References
Scanlon, E., Jones, A. and Waycott, J. (2005). Mobile technologies: prospects for their use in learning in informal science settings, Journal of Interactive Media in Education 21(5), pp. 1-17.

Scanlon, E. and Issroff, K. (2005). Activity Theory and Higher Education: evaluating learning technologies, Journal of Computers and Learning, 21 (6), pp. 430-439.

Waycott, J. and Kukulska-Hulme, A. (2003). Students' experiences with PDAs for reading course materials, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 7(1), pp. 30-43.

Waycott, J., Scanlon, E. and Jones, A. (2003). Using PDAs as learning and workplace tools: An Activity theory perspective. In S. Anastopoulu, M. Sharples and G. Vavoula (Eds.), M-Learn 2002: European Workshop on Mobile and Contextual Learning, Birmingham, England.


Background Existing methods to measure influenza vaccine immunogenicity prohibit detailed analysis of epitope determinants recognized by immunoglobulins. The development of highly multiplex proteomics platforms capable of capturing a high level of antibody binding information will enable researchers and clinicians to generate rapid and meaningful readouts of influenza-specific antibody reactivity. Methods We developed influenza hemagglutinin (HA) whole-protein and peptide microarrays and validated that the arrays allow detection of specific antibody reactivity across a broad dynamic range using commercially available antibodies targeted to linear and conformational HA epitopes. We derived serum from blood draws taken from 76 young and elderly subjects immediately before and 28±7 days post-vaccination with the 2008/2009 trivalent influenza vaccine and determined the antibody reactivity of these sera to influenza array antigens. Results Using linear regression and correcting for multiple hypothesis testing by the Benjamini and Hochberg method of permutations over 1000 resamplings, we identified antibody reactivity to influenza whole-protein and peptide array features that correlated significantly with age, H1N1, and B-strain post-vaccine titer as assessed through a standard microneutralization assay (p<0.05, q <0.2). Notably, we identified several peptide epitopes that were inversely correlated with regard to age and seasonal H1N1 and B-strain neutralization titer (p<0.05, q <0.2), implicating reactivity to these epitopes in age-related defects in response to H1N1 influenza. We also employed multivariate linear regression with cross-validation to build models based on age and pre-vaccine peptide reactivity that predicted vaccine-induced neutralization of seasonal H1N1 and H3N2 influenza strains with a high level of accuracy (84.7% and 74.0%, respectively). Conclusion Our methods provide powerful tools for rapid and accurate measurement of broad antibody-based immune responses to influenza, and may be useful in measuring response to other vaccines and infectious agents.


Microbial communities perform key functions for the host they associate with or the environment they reside in. Our ability to control those microbial communities is crucial for maintaining or even enhancing the well-being of their host or environment. But this potential has not been fully harvested due to the lack of a systematic method to control those complex microbial communities. Here we introduce a theoretical framework to rigorously address this challenge, based on the new notion of structural accessibility. This framework allows the identification of minimal sets of "driver species" through which we can achieve feasible control of the entire community. We apply our framework to control the core microbiota of a sea sponge and the gut microbiota of gnotobiotic mice infected with C. difficile. This control-theoretical framework fundamentally enhances our ability to effectively manage and control complex microbial communities, such as the human gut microbiota. In particular, the concept of driver species of a microbial community holds translational promise in the design of probiotic cocktails for various diseases associated with disrupted microbiota.


This dissertation studies how late romantic British authors, writing primarily in the 1820s and 1830s, renegotiate inherited models of "character" from their high romantic predecessors. The authors in this dissertation all fear that having an identity means moral and intellectual stagnation. To have an essence is to be constituted. But at the same time, a self that is entirely conditional and arbitrary is also a source of anxiety. As a result, their texts linger in a sort of epistemological middle ground: a safe and experimental space wherein the discomforts inherent in each philosophical alternative—the self as transhistorical organism and the self as nonessential construct—can be avoided. Percy Shelley writes a poem, Alastor (1816), whose speaking "I" is meant to represent what he calls the "one mind," a sort of transindividual consciousness of which all individual minds are said to be the "marks" or "modifications." William Hazlitt associates the soul with an internal bias fixed at birth and visible in the human body, but not necessarily (á la Plato, Wordsworth and Coleridge) with an immaterial substance fixed in eternity. Letitia Landon creates picturesque characters who confuse and even synonymize surface and depth; her texts capitalize on the contradictions inherent in both personal and fictional subjectivities. Mary Shelley is Blakean and Hegelian in her insistence that a person without psychological contraries makes no moral and spiritual progress. All these authors thrive on the psychological climate or "mood" wherein their texts emerge, one marked by the systematic fragmentation of identity, the incipient dissolution of the idea of character. Their "aesthetic...insist[s] on the difficulty of recognizing...nondemonstrable identities."


Abstract. Nitrogen (N) cycling in drylands under changing climate is not well understood. Our understanding of N cycling over larger scales to date relies heavily on the measurement of bulk soil N, and the information about internal soil N transformations remains limited. The 15N natural abundance (δ15N) of ammonium and nitrate can serve as a proxy record for the N processes in soils. To better understand the patterns and mechanisms of N cycling in drylands, we collected soils along a 3200 km transect at about 100 km intervals in northern China, with mean annual precipitation (MAP) ranging from 36 to 436 mm. We analyzed N pools and δ15N of ammonium, dual isotopes (15N and 18O) of nitrate, and the microbial gene abundance associated with soil N transformations. We found that N status and its driving factors were different above and below a MAP threshold of 100 mm. In the arid zone with MAP below 100 mm, soil inorganic N accumulated, with a large fraction being of atmospheric origin, and ammonia volatilization was strong in soils with high pH. In addition, the abundance of microbial genes associated with soil N transformations was low. In the semiarid zone with MAP above 100 mm, soil inorganic N concentrations were low and were controlled mainly by biological processes (e.g., plant uptake and denitrification). The preference for soil ammonium over nitrate by the dominant plant species may enhance the possibility of soil nitrate losses via denitrification. Overall, our study suggests that a shift from abiotic to biotic controls on soil N biogeochemistry under global climate changes would greatly affect N losses, soil N availability, and other N transformation processes in these drylands in China.


Focused preparation for Critical Care Certification is needed to ensure success. The Anesthesiology Critical Care Certification examination in particular provides an objective assessment from the perspective of physicians who have a keen perioperative mindset and skillset, while simultaneously demonstrating comfort in caring for patients from every background and co-morbidity as all such patients frequently eventually require pre-operative or post-operative management. The Anesthesiology Critical Care board review provides Critical Care Examination style stems with an emphasis on being oriented toward Anesthesiology Critical Care certification, though examination preparation for the Internal Medicine (Pulmonary Critical Care), Neurocritical Care and Surgical Critical Care could easily be achieved with this text as part of one's preparation strategy. The authors provide clinical vignettes with realistic images and values to test one's diagnostic and critical thinking approach to the perioperative patient. Furthermore, every chapter is authored by a physician board certified in critical care medicine. While most authors are anesthesiologists, our text includes content from intensivists with core training in Surgery and Neurology in order to provide a well-rounded perspective on the cases in this book. Much like ICU rounds, this book is systems based and covers the keywords listed by the American Board of Anesthesiology for certification in Critical Care Medicine. Finally, as each area of content is covered, reference materials are available for the reader to gain further expertise in each topical area. The author's goal is the impart this text to the reader as a formidable tool for Critical Care Examination Preparation.


The reconstruction of photorealistic 3D models from camera views is becoming an ubiquitous element in many applications that simulate physical interaction with the real world. In this paper, we present a low-cost, interactive pipeline aimed at non-expert users, that achieves 3D reconstruction from multiple views acquired with a standard digital camera. 3D models are amenable to access through diverse representation modalities that typically imply trade-offs between level of detail, interaction, and computational costs. Our approach allows users to selectively control the complexity of different surface regions, while requiring only simple 2D image editing operations. An initial reconstruction at coarse resolution is followed by an iterative refining of the surface areas corresponding to the selected regions.


Abstract Motivational Interviewing (MI) is designed to motivate people to change by helping them to recognise and resolve the difference between a behaviour problem and personal goals and values. There are several challenges of health behaviour change in MI, as well as traps that the health care provider and patient can easily fall into. During the MI approach, a patient should be guided through the change model, providing him the chance to participate. There are several general principles in the MI approach as well as different interaction techniques. The efficacy of MI has been widely published in the literature.


Optimization techniques can be efficiently utilized to achieve an optimal shape for arch dams. This optimal design can consider the conditions of the economy and safety simultaneously. The main aim is to present an applicable and practical model and suggest an algorithm for optimization of concrete arch dams to enhance their seismic performance. To achieve this purpose, a preliminary optimization is accomplished using PSO procedure in the first stage. Capabilities of Ansys Parametric Design Language (APDL) are applied for modeling the Dam-Foundation-Reservoir system. In the second stage with training the neural network, Group Method of Data Handling (GMDH) and replacement of Ansys analyst, optimal results have been achieved with the lowest error and less number of iteration respectively. Then a real world double-arch dam is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and practicality of the PSO-GMDH. The numerical results reveal that the proposed method called PSO-GMDH provides faster rate and high searching accuracy to achieve the optimal shape of arch concrete dams and the modification and optimization of shape have a quite important role in increasing the safety against dynamic design loads.


Lack of skeletal muscle IL-6 influences hepatic glucose metabolism in mice during prolonged exercise. Am J Physiol Regul Physiol liver is essential in maintaining and regulating glucose homeostasis during prolonged exercise. IL-6 has been shown to be secreted from skeletal muscle during exercise and has been suggested to signal to the liver. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the role of skeletal muscle IL-6 on hepatic glucose regulation and substrate choice during prolonged exercise. Skeletal muscle-specific IL-6 knockout (IL-6 MKO) mice (age, 12–14 wk) and littermate lox/lox (Control) mice were either rested (Rest) or completed a single bout of exercise for 10, 60, or 120 min, and the liver was quickly obtained. Hepatic IL-6 mRNA was higher at 60 min of exercise, and hepatic signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 was higher at 120 min of exercise than at rest in both genotypes. Hepatic glycogen was higher in IL-6 MKO mice than control mice at rest, but decreased similarly during exercise in the two genotypes, and hepatic glucose content was lower in IL-6 MKO than control mice at 120 min of exercise. Hepatic phosphoenol-pyruvate carboxykinase mRNA and protein increased in both genotypes at 120 min of exercise, whereas hepatic glucose 6 phosphatase protein remained unchanged. Furthermore, IL-6 MKO mice had higher hepatic pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) Ser232 and PDH Ser300 phosphorylation than control mice at rest. In conclusion, hepatic gluconeogenic capacity in mice is increased during prolonged exercise independent of muscle IL-6. Furthermore, Skeletal muscle IL-6 influences hepatic substrate regulation at rest and hepatic glucose metabolism during prolonged exercise, seemingly independent of IL-6 signaling in the liver.


Abstract. In recent years, the usage of zoomable maps strongly increased. The development of small and cheap electronic devices with wireless internet connection such as smartphones and tablets has made maps nowadays to a crucial part of everyday life. For the navigation and orientation, the user often uses zoomable maps (Muehlenhaus, 2014). Currently the technological development controls the map design and less cartographic design rules, which leads to the impress those current maps have a lower graphic quality. A sample for this trend is the new vector tile based maps, which offer the advantage of rotatable, multilingual maps build on one database (Martinelli and Roth, 2016). There is a need for the development of cartographic design guidelines to guarantee consistent map readability over all zoom levels. The infinitely zoomable maps especially vector maps intensify this development. Analog maps had one specific scale, while a series of topographic maps were offered in manageable number of scales in comparison to OpenStreetMaps 20 zoom levels for raster tiles (Anon, 2019). Raster web maps had a number of predefined zoom levels, while vector maps offer the possibility of continuous zooming. This fact clarifies the requirement of research and development of rules for such types of maps. A first important task for the fulfilment of this objective is the evaluation of a multi-scale map styles. For this task, we developed the concept of a multi-scale legend. This new tool should help cartographers and designer to create, modify and improve multi-scale map styles. It can help to explore existing map styles, identify inconsistencies and support the design process. We decided to use the legend due to the abstraction of the map style from map content. For visualization of the scale-dependencies for each feature in a row, the scale/zoom level changes in each column. In combination with other map features and zoom levels results a two-dimensional matrix showing the scale-dependent visualization. This legend matrix shows the map features in every zoom level, which allows reaching an overview of the symbolization of features over several scales. In this way, it is possible to check how consistent a map style is in one zoom level as well as over a set of zoom levels. Figure 1 shows an example for a legend matrix using the OpenStreetMap Carto style: the representation of selected water bodies depending on the scale is illustrated. Streams and springs always occur together within the same zoom levels. In contrast to the rivers, the width of the streams remains nearly constant across the different scales. It is also visible that the color for the spring differs from the other water features. A multi-scale legend offers the possibility of grouping feature classes by topics (e.g. water bodies, vegetation and road network) as in the example. Other possibilities are geometry, color or occurrence in similar zoom levels. This can help in the search for errors, in the identification of breaks in the symbolization and in the development of continuous symbolization. The result is similar but more illustrative than the ScaleMaster (Brewer and Buttenfield, 2007, 2010), which is a diagram describing how feature classes are visualized depending from scale. Benefits of this legend are clarification of scale depended visualizations and the graphic implementation of design guidelines. A challenge is the implementation for different map styles due to the associated effort and the resulting sometimes very large overviews. An on-going technological development takes place, wherefore cartographers should upgrade the design guidelines and methods for the production of current technological, well-looking maps. With the multi-scale legend, we provided a smart legend for a zoomable map. Nevertheless, these new ideas we have developed need more research and should always take the map purpose in account. Further, we would like to apply the multi-scale legend on existing map styles to reach more information about how these styles are working. In addition, we will further develop the multi-scale legend to a documentation of the creation of the map, showing how data is generalized and visualized.


We report the development of a WDM optical sensor array interrogation system using the radiation modes from a BFBG. We present results indicating 70nm bandwidth, with 0.2um RMS noise and a minimum WDM spacing of 30um. We further show the system to be polarization independent.


Given a complete graph G, we consider two separate scenarios. First, we consider the minimum number N such that every coloring of G using exactly k colors contains either a rainbow triangle or a monochromatic star on t vertices. This number is known for small cases and generalized for larger cases for a fixed k. Second, we introduce the vertex proper connection number of a graph and provide a relationship to the chromatic number of minimally connected subgraphs. Also a notion of total proper connection is introduced and a question is asked about a possible relationship between the total proper connection number and the vertex and edge proper connection numbers. Thesis Mentor: Dr. Colton Magnant Honors Director: Dr. Steven Engel April 2015 Mathematical Sciences University Honors Program Georgia Southern University


In the 1960s, Edna Staebler moved in with an Old Order Mennonite family to absorb their oral history and learn about Mennonite culture and cooking. From this fieldwork came the cookbook Food That Really Schmecks. Originally published in 1968, Schmecks instantly became a classic, selling tens of thousands of copies. Interspersed with practical and memorable recipes are Staebler's stories and anecdotes about cooking, Mennonites, her family, and Waterloo Region. Described by Edith Fowke as folklore literature, Staebler's cookbooks have earned her national acclaim.

 Including this long-anticipated reprint of Food That Really Schmecks in our Life Writing series recognizes the cultural value of its narratives, positing it as a groundbreaking book in the food writing genre. This edition includes a foreword by award-winning author Wayson Choy and a new introduction by the well-known food writer Rose Murray.


The one-electron oxidation of duplex DNA generates a nucleobase radical cation (electron "hole") that migrates long distances by a hopping mechanism. The radical cation reacts irreversibly with H2O or O2 to form oxidation products (damaged bases). In normal DNA (containing the four common DNA bases), reaction occurs most frequently at guanine. However, in DNA duplexes that do not contain guanine (i.e., those comprised exclusively of A/T base pairs), we discovered that reaction occurs primarily at thymine and gives products resulting from oxidation of the T-C5 methyl group and from addition to its C5-C6 double bond. This surprising result shows that it is the relative reactivity, not the stability, of a nucleobase radical cation that determines the nature of the products formed from oxidation of DNA. A mechanism for reaction is proposed whereby a thymine radical cation may either lose a proton from its methyl group or H2O/O2 may add across its double bond. In the latter case, addition may initiate a tandem reaction that converts both thymines of a TT step to oxidation products.


The study of pragmatic markers has stressed their function of relating segmentsof discourse one to the other, including the functions of response to previoustalk and the marking of stance. This chapter investigates the turn-opening slotas an important locus for pragmatic marking. Tao's (2003) work on turn-openingsconcluded that turn-openers were primarily lexical and linked withprior talk. McCarthy's (2002) study of single-word lexical response tokensrevealed variation in the use of tokens between British and North AmericanEnglish but that work did not cover turn-openers in general. The present chaptercompares turn-openers in informal Irish and British English, focusing onlexically freestanding pragmatic markers. The chapter discusses variety-specificitems in their role as turn-initial pragmatic markers.


Ron Ottewill was educated at Southall County School and at Queen Mary College, London, where he obtained a first-class honours degree in chemistry and then a PhD, under the supervision of Dr D. C. Jones. He moved to Cambridge (Fitzwilliam College) in 1952 on a Nuffield Fellowship, and joined the famous Colloid Science Department, which had been founded by Eric Rideal FRS. There Ron worked with Paley Johnson on antibody–antigen interactions, before becoming an assistant director of research in 1958. After a six-month spell in Theo Overbeek's laboratory in Utrecht during 1956, Ron's research interests turned to what was to become his main research theme over the years, namely the preparation, characterization and properties of model colloidal dispersions. In particular, he became interested in the interactions between particles, which underpin the stability of particulate dispersions. In 1964 Ron Ottewill was invited to move to Bristol University, in the main to set up a new one-year postgraduate MSc course in surface chemistry and colloids. At Bristol, Ron's research group expanded greatly, as did his international reputation. He was promoted to Reader in 1966 and to a personal chair in 1971. In 1982 he became the fourth Leverhulme Professor and Head of the Department of Physical Chemistry. He also served periods as Chair of the School of Chemistry and as Dean of Science. He received many prizes and honours, the two greatest being his election to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1982 and the award of an OBE in 1989. He was invited to give seminars and to collaborate with academia and with industry, all around the world. Outside the university he served on many committees and was involved in the foundation of several academic societies. Ron Ottewill supervised 99 successful PhD students and published more than 300 scientific papers. He formally retired in 1992 but retained an active interest in science till the last.


This paper investigates one aspect of legal translation between English and Chinese, the lexical equivalence and non-equivalence that often present special challenges to Chinese/English translators. It identifies three lexical features and discusses the meanings, equivalents and translation strategies associated with them. The paper suggests the essential requirements for translational competence of a legal translator and argues that, in legal translation, it is essential to consider the contextual factors and pragmatic effects of legal usage in both the SL and TL and to strive to achieve the optimal communicative results given the relative nature of equivalence and the difficulties in cross-cultural and cross-jurisdictional communication. This may also have implications for the training of legal translators in basic knowledge of the relevant legal systems and legal languages, apart from the general translation skills required.


All human beings are sexual from birth to death, and the Intellectually Disabled (ID) are not exempt from this. The issues of sexual needs and sexual behaviour of the ID have been a sensitive and controversial topic. Perhaps because of the taboos associated with Intellectual Disability and sexuality, individually or in combination, very little is known about the sexuality of people with ID, but research studies do indicate that it is much the same as the general population, although opportunities for sexual expression are limited. This article provides an overview of sexuality issues in ID, with regard to sexual rights, sexual development and maturation, menstruation and menstrual hygiene, masturbation, petting, sexual activity, marriage, pregnancy, parenting, sexual abuse, fertility and birth control, menopause, and the progress and issues in sexuality education for ID. Prior research shows that individuals with ID show secondary sexual characteristics and development similar to that of intellectually averaged peers; those in the lower range of functioning develop those characteristics at a slower pace. ID children often neglect menstruation and are non-co operative in menstrual grooming due to poor understanding, irritability, fatigue and increased seizure. Research reports vaginal hysterectomy as management of this. They show a lower rate of offspring production than the non retarded. It is estimated that ID children are sexually victimized at 4-10 times the rate of the general population, 39-83% of girls and 16-32% of boys experience sexual abuse before they reach the age of 18. Parents and professionals are pessimistic in the sexual needs of people with IDD and consider them as asexual. There is an urgent need for development of methods to teach them about sexuality and sexual abuse prevention, since research on sex education revealed poor generalization of skills to real life situations. In situ training revealed better generalization, but has the issue of causing emotional distress and dissonance among ID.


This Guidebook, co-authored with the Wisconsin HOPE Lab, reviews and explains strategies that institutions of higher education may consider to support their students with housing insecurity and other living costs, as well as examples of these strategies' implementation. In the introduction, the Guidebook contextualizes these strategies with reference to evidence on student living costs, most of which has been discussed in prior PD&R publications. With high rates of college enrollment despite stagnant or declining family incomes and increasing college costs, today many college students are struggling to make ends meets and succeed in school. Key strategies include, for example, engaging in extensive, approach outreach for students who may benefit from support; partnering with local agencies and organizations such as Continuums of Care; and connecting students with benefits. The Guidebook is sourced from interviews, suggestions from stakeholders including other federal agencies, and existing research.


3D video coding includes the use of multiple color views and depth maps associated to each view. An adequate coding of depth maps should be adapted to the characteristics of depth maps: smooth regions and sharp edges. In this paper a segmentation-based technique is proposed for improving the depth map compression while preserving the main discontinuities that exploits the color-depth similarity of 3D video. An initial coarse depth map segmentation is used to locate the main discontinuities in depth. The resulting partition is improved by fusing a color partition. We assume that the color image is first encoded and available when the associated depth map is encoded, therefore the color partition can be segmented in the decoder without introducing any extra cost. A new segmentation criterion inspired by super-pixels techniques is proposed to obtain the color partition. Initial experimental results show similar compression efficiency to hevc with a big potential for further improvements.


BIOMASS AND COAL FLY ASH IN CONCRETE: STRENGTH, DURABILITY, MICROSTRUCTURE, QUANTITATIVE KINETICS OF POZZOLANIC REACTION AND ALKALI SILICA REACTION INVESTIGATIONS Shuangzhen Wang Department of Chemical Engineering Doctor of Philosophy Biomass represents an important sustainable energy resource, with biomass-coal cofiring representing among the most effective and cost efficient CO2 reduction strategies. Fly ash generated during coal combustion represents a technically advantageous, inexpensive, and environmentally beneficial admixture in concrete production, partially replacing cement. However, strict interpretation of American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM) and American Concrete Institute (ACI) standards prohibits use of fly ashes from any source other than coal in concrete production; therefore, fly ash from biomass coal cofiring is excluded from use in concrete. This dissertation discusses biomass impacts on concrete properties through experiments conducted on several combinations of blended and pure biomass fly ash in concrete mixtures to determine the effects on freshly mixed concrete, strength and durability of hardened concrete, and implication for long-term material properties. The results show that the performance of biomass and blended biomass-coal fly ash is comparable to that of traditional (neat) coal fly ash. Pozzolanic reactions occur simultaneously but not necessarily proportionally to strength development. Mixtures of biomass and coal fly ash in all proportions mitigate alkali-silica-reaction-based (ASRbased) expansion in concrete. Biomass-specific results indicate that biomass-containing fly ash samples can generate 3-6 times the strength of some neat coal fly ash samples in terms of pozzolanic reactions and that biomass-containing fly ash samples have better or comparable ASR mitigation performance relative to neat coal fly ash. Biomass fly ash applications in concrete production involve pozzolanic, cementitious, and ASR reactions in combination with mixture compositions and preparation techniques to dictate ultimate properties. In these practical applications, biomass fly ash demonstrates no consistent improvement or deprecation of concrete properties relative to coal fly ash. Quantitative pozzolanic reaction mechanism and kinetic analyses indicate biomass and coal fly ashes exhibit comparable reaction rates and react by similar mechanisms. The general conclusion from the experiments is that biomass-containing fly ash, when used in concrete, performs comparable to or better than similar neat coal fly ash preparations in most respects; Substantial efforts were made to ensure samples represent typical commercial samples. Therefore, there exists no reason to exclude biomass from cofiring applications on the basis of fly ash performance in concrete and the related standards should be revised.


This Article documents and evaluates tax obligations paid without cash, referred to as "in-kind tax paying." Such forms of tax paying include paying federal income taxes by remitting a used, flatbed truck to the IRS, paying local property taxes by working a few hours a month answering phones at city hall, and paying state excise taxes by conveying a proportion of all seashells farmed within a state to that state. These are not just hypotheticals, but forms of in-kind tax paying that occur in the United States throughout periods when many taxes are also paid in cash. Nevertheless, despite its long history and prevalence, in-kind tax paying has been underexplored as a viable, and potentially appealing, form of tax remittance. By providing an original taxonomy of in-kind tax paying within a cash economy, this Article makes three contributions. First, it improves our definition of tax paying by identifying the wide variety of in-kind remittances that occur in our current tax system. Second, it refutes the tacit presumption that in-kind remittance of tax obligations is not viable, thus expanding the tax tools available to local, state, and federal governments and demonstrating how narrow presumptions about tax remittance have predetermined core tax policy choices. Third, it confronts the substantial dangers of in-kind tax paying, using these risks to propose new principles for limiting the design and administration of in-kind tax paying. This Article concludes that in-kind tax paying is a viable form of tax remittance even within cash economies, in-kind tax paying remains widely in use, and, under some circumstances, elective in-kind tax paying can be preferable to cash tax exclusivity.


A multiwavelength Brillouin/erbium fiber laser (BEFL) with low threshold power is realized. A low threshold power of 3 mW and a wide tuning range of 18 nm can be achieved by controlling the reflected power in the nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM). Up to 24 lines with a wavelength spacing of 0.086 nm are generated at the Brillouin pump and at the 1 480-nm pump with ?0.5 dBm (0.9 mW) and 25 mW of power, respectively.


OBJECTIVE
To determine if impaired fasting glucose (IFG; fasting plasma glucose level 6.1-6.9 mmol/l) can predict future type 2 diabetes as accurately as does impaired glucose tolerance (IGT; 2-h plasma glucose level 7.8-11.0 mmol/l).

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
A longitudinal population-based study was performed with surveys in 1987 and 1992 on the island of Mauritius, assessing diabetes status by the oral glucose tolerance test. A total of 3,717 subjects took part in both surveys. Of these subjects, 3,229 were not diabetic in 1987 and formed the basis of this study.

RESULTS
At baseline, there were 607 subjects with IGT and 266 subjects with IFG. There were 297 subjects who developed diabetes by 1992. For predicting progression to type 2 diabetes, the sensitivity, specificity, and positive predictive values were 26, 94, and 29% for IFG and 50, 84, and 24% for IGT, respectively. Only 26% of subjects that progressed to type 2 diabetes were predicted by their IFG values, but a further 35% could be identified by also considering IGT. The sensitivities were 24% for IFG and 37% for IGT in men and 26% for IFG and 66% for IGT in women, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS
These data demonstrate the higher sensitivity of IGT over IFG for predicting progression to type 2 diabetes. Screening by the criteria for IFG alone would identify fewer people who subsequently progress to type 2 diabetes than would the oral glucose tolerance test.


Epidural block is today the most common method of pain relief during labor. Nowadays, facing a multiparus parturient requiring epidural for the second or third time is common due to increased frequency of using epidural analgesia during labor.

 Examination of the performance and outcome of women receiving their first versus repeated epidural block.

 The study included 140 American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) Physical Status II parturients (age range 20 to 40 years) and scheduled for normal vaginal delivery. The parturients were divided randomly into two equal groups. Group (A) in which 70 women primipara subjected to their first epidural block, while group (B) in which 70 women multipara subjected to their repeated epidural block. Our primary outcome of the study is the incidence of a unilateral block and secondary outcomes include Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) before the epidural and 30 minutes after injection of local anesthetic and details of labor as gestation and cervical dilatation.

 The results showed that there was a statistically significant decrease in the incidence of a unilateral block in the group (A) when compared to the corresponding values in the group (B) (P-value < 0.05). Moreover, group (A) showed a statistically significant decrease in Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) values 30 minutes after the injection of local anesthetic (P-value < 0.05).

 The conclusion of our study is that there is a higher incidence of unilateral block amongst women receiving their repeated epidurals for labour than those receiving their first epidural block.


Hollybush Gardens presents Carte de Visite an exhibition curated by Lubaina Himid, featuring new work by Helen Cammock, Claudette Johnson and Ingrid Pollard. This project has unfolded over the space of a year in different locations including the print room in the School of Art, Design & Fashion at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) where Lubaina Himid is Professor of Contemporary Art, leading the Making Histories Visible Project – an exploration of the contribution of black visual arts to the cultural landscape.
The gallery's desire to showcase work mostly unseen, and spend time with it, inspired this curatorial invitation. Himid's answer was informed by life-long knowledge of the artists Claudette Johnson and Ingrid Pollard, choosing to expand on this duo with the more recent voice of Helen Cammock. Forebears and successors, a dialogue that must be continued.

Carte de Visite is a show, a meeting point, a conversation. Himid notes 'It has been deeply intriguing to observe what happened when each artist encountered questions about the past and how this will impact upon what they hope may develop in years to come. I now have a better understanding of how these artists work between and beyond an exhibition; they navigate the silences between our histories, either by pinning coloured markers to a three-dimensional map, or by leaving exquisite cards on a silver tray'.


Earth, like the rest of the Known Worlds, has fallen to the Shing. Scattered here and there, small groups of humans live in a state of semi-barbarism. They have lost the skills, science and knowledge that had been Earth's in the golden age of the League of Worlds, and whenever a colony of humans tries to rekindle the embers of a half-forgotten technology, the Shing, with their strange, mindlying power, crush them out. There is one man who can stand against the malign Shing, but he is an alien with amber eyes and must first prove to paranoid humanity that he himself is not a creature of the Shing.


For Maori, tikanga Maori or custom law not only underpinned the recognition of property rights to their fishery but also their environmental ethics and the sustainable management of that fishery. In comparison, the property right of non-indigenous peoples was sourced from a rights system determined by the State. The nature of these property rights, for Maori, has been acknowledged by legislation. The challenge for Maori is to effectively maintain, develop and manage this allocated resource in a way that will not only sustain the resource but also ensure its longevity both socially and economically for future generations. Among the issues Maori will face are how to balance effective governance and efficient management, together with the requirement to address global issues of over-fishing and property rights, all the while preserving and respecting tradition. Irrespective of these challenges, it is the tikanga, or philosophy, intrinsic to the traditional Maori worldview which will guide Maori through these challenges, and provide a way forward for global issues such as climate change.


Energy games are a well-studied class of 2-player turn-based games on a finite graph where transitions are labeled with integer vectors which represent changes in a multidimensional resource (the energy). One player tries to keep the cumulative changes non-negative in every component while the other tries to frustrate this. We consider generalized energy games played on infinite game graphs induced by pushdown automata (modelling recursion) or their subclass of one-counter automata. Our main result is that energy games are decidable in the case where the game graph is induced by a one-counter automaton and the energy is one-dimensional. On the other hand, every further generalization is undecidable: Energy games on one-counter automata with a 2-dimensional energy are undecidable, and energy games on pushdown automata are undecidable even if the energy is one-dimensional. Furthermore, we show that energy games and simulation games are inter-reducible, and thus we additionally obtain several new (un)decidability results for the problem of checking simulation preorder between pushdown automata and vector addition systems.


Military expenditure and the number of service personnel are the two features most commonly used to compare national military power. The question remains, however, to what extent these reflect the real-world situation. This study aims to provide an answer by using economic and military data about conflicts between great powers over the last 160 years. Correlations of War data are employed to show that the relationship between pre-war military expenditure and army size on the one hand and outcomes of war on the other, is blurry to say the least. States with higher military expenditure prevailed in only six of the nine conflicts between great powers examined in this research. Only four of the nine were won by the state with the larger peacetime army. Using the case of the Franco-Prussian War, this work illustrates that even the superiority of both mentioned variables cannot ward off a crushing defeat, let alone ensure victory. A nation's military power stems from its ability to adapt effectively to the realities of modern warfare. This is what neither high military expenditure nor sheer soldier numbers can guarantee.


Standard uniform convergence results bound the generalization gap of the expected loss over a hypothesis class. The emergence of risk-sensitive learning requires generalization guarantees for functionals of the loss distribution beyond the expectation. While prior works specialize in uniform convergence of particular functionals, our work provides uniform convergence for a general class of H\"older risk functionals for which the closeness in the Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) entails closeness in risk. We establish the first uniform convergence results for estimating the CDF of the loss distribution, yielding guarantees that hold simultaneously both over all H\"older risk functionals and over all hypotheses. Thus licensed to perform empirical risk minimization, we develop practical gradient-based methods for minimizing distortion risks (widely studied subset of H\"older risks that subsumes the spectral risks, including the mean, conditional value at risk, cumulative prospect theory risks, and others) and provide convergence guarantees. In experiments, we demonstrate the efficacy of our learning procedure, both in settings where uniform convergence results hold and in high-dimensional settings with deep networks.


Acquired brain injury (ABI) is a common cause of disability among people of all ages. Disabilities related to ABI are often complex and may cause limitations in many areas of life. This bulletin examines ABI in Australia: its causes, the prevalence and severity of disability related to ABI, and the needs of people with ABI in various aspects of life. It also provides a profile of people with ABI who currently use specialist disability services funded under the Commonwealth State/Territory Disability Agreement.


SemercI, A., 2012. Productivity analysis of sunflower cultivations in Turkey. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci. , 18: 873-882 The objective of this research is to determine the resource use efficiency in three different types of sunflower production with respect to orobanche resistance in the agricultural enterprises in Thrace Region, Turkey. The data used in this research have been obtained through questionnaire technique from 571 agricultural enterprises which were determined by ''Stratified Random Sampling Method'' in 2009. In this research, the production elasticity of coefficient (PEC), the marginal income (MI), and the marginal efficiency of coefficients (MEC) of inputs used in 3 types sunflower productions have been made and economically interpreted. In this study, it has been reached to the highest yield by 189.30 kg da -1 in the production of sunflower, resistant to orobanche. In the estimating equations of 3 different types of sunflower, which have been obtained by Cobb-Douglas function type, it has been concluded that there is a decreasing return to scale.


Sustainable success calls for contextually ambidextrous organizing. According to theory, this entails enabling simultaneous high levels of exploration and exploitation within a subsystem. The practices involved in enabling contextual ambidexterity form a major and relatively unexplored leadership challenge. Our main aim is to draw on a combination of ambidexterity and complexity theory insights to understand how contextual ambidexterity emerges in dynamic contexts. We contribute to the literature on the role of leadership in enabling contextual ambidexterity by exploring the daily practices leaders enact to stimulate exploration and exploitation as well as to shift dynamically between them to (re)gain contextual ambidexterity. We present the results of two qualitative studies exploring leadership in project-based organizations where the pressure for contextual ambidexterity is relevant. We show that in responding adaptively to environmental stimuli, leaders shift between practices to emphasize exploitation or exploration to (re)gain the needed high levels of both, and their enactments are bounded by the conditions of keeping exploration and exploitation simultaneously high. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding contextual ambidexterity as a dynamic accomplishment that emerges in everyday interactions, the role of leaders in enabling contextual ambidexterity, and the need for HR managers to support leaders in enacting this dynamic form of leadership.


This article further explores the Organization of Islamic Cooperation's ("OIC") peculiar understanding of international nondiscrimination and equality norms by considering how it engages with sexual orientation and gender identity ("SOGI") rights. After reviewing the OIC's historical approach to human rights and its ambivalent acceptance of universality, the article focuses on the organization's contemporary effort to promote the "protection of the family" within the international human rights arena. This campaign — driven by the OIC's belief that "Islamic family values" are under legal and intellectual assault — champions only those families premised on marriage between a man and a woman. Consequently, families built around lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex ("LGBTI") and other relationships risk exposure to inequality, discrimination and denial of existing rights under international human rights law.

OIC advocacy of protection of the family, however, is by no means the only area where the organization has sought to exclude the LGBTI community. Nor does the OIC's position in the narrow context of family reflect a complete accounting of its motives for opposing recognition of SOGI rights. Accordingly, the article proceeds to consider how other core components of the OIC's human rights platform and accompanying rationales manifest hostility even to the slightest hint of SOGI rights recognition. As will be demonstrated, this hostility cuts across a wide swath of human rights issues, ranging from extrajudicial killings to the right to health. And while by no means reflective of the sole possible interpretation of Islamic norms, the OIC continues to press its view as authoritative, generating significant controversy and fallout, particularly at the United Nations.


Face recognition mainly involves recognizing personal identity, based on statistical as well as geometrical features which are derived from face images .This paper presents an automated system for human face recognition in a real time background world for a large homemade dataset of persons face. The task is very difficult as the real time background subtraction in an image is still a challenge. Addition to this there is a huge variation in human face image in terms of size, pose and expression. To detect real time human face AdaBoost algorithm is used and a simple fast ICA is used to recognize the faces detected. Our method basically consists of two main parts: firstly we detect faces and then recognize the detected faces. Even every one can detect and identify faces in respective data with little or no effort, but building an automated system that will accomplishes such objectives is, however, very challenging. These challenges are even more profound when one considers the large variations in the visual stimulus due to illumination conditions, directions of viewing or poses, facial expression or changes, aging, and disguises such as facial hair, as well as glasses also. Face perceptions are very complex as the recognition of facial expressions involves extensive and diverse areas in the Face recognition research provides the cutting edge technologies in commercial, law enforcement, and military applications. So that an automated vision system that will performs the functions of face detection, verification and as well as recognition will find countless unobtrusive applications, such as airport security and access control, building (embassy) surveillance and monitoring, human-computer intelligent interaction and perceptual interfaces, and smart environments at home, office, and cars. Keywords— ADA, Face Detection, ICA , Recognition,PCA


Summary:

The New Deal for Young People (NDYP) was introduced in Great Britain in January 1998 as one of the key parts of the government's welfare to work strategy. The aims of the programme were to help the young unemployed people into work and increase their employability. NDYP is for 18-24 year-olds who have been claiming Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) for six months or more (including those getting NI credits only). It provides opportunities to work, get new skills and/or get work experience in the voluntary and environmental sectors of the economy.

NDYP starts with a period known as the Gateway. On the Gateway participants receive up to four months of intensive, personalised help and support, initially designed to help find an unsubsidised job. If the participant does not get a job straight away, they will be directed towards one of four New Deal Options. The Options available are subsidised work, full-time education and training, work in the voluntary sector or work with the Environment Task Force. The Options typically last for six months, after which participants enter a period known as Follow through, which provides similar support to that available under the Gateway. NDYP is a mandatory programme, there is no option to not participate and continue to claim JSA.

The aim of this paper is to derive estimates of the extent to which outcomes for individual participants in NDYP were changed by participation in the programme, by comparison with what would have happened to them without the programme. Evaluating the separate effects of the Options is not an aim of this paper. A separate evaluation study, using a different approach, was commissioned to assess the effectiveness of the Options relative to one another (see Bonjour et al., 2001).

The structure of the report is as follows. The next section discusses the methods used in the evaluation. Section Three introduces the data to be used in the analysis and provides some basic descriptive information that highlights the method of analysis. Section Four presents estimated results prior to the introduction of NDYP, this analysis is used to choose the appropriate baseline period against which NDYP is to be assessed. Section Five presents the estimated results for the impact of NDYP on the probability of being unemployed after entering the programme. Section Six considers pre-programme effects. Section Seven considers the destinations upon leaving unemployment. Section Eight concludes.


Evoked potentials are electrical signals produced by the nervous system in response to a stimulus. In general these signals are noisy with a low signal to noise ratio. The aim was to investigate ways of extracting the evoked response within an evoked potential recording, achieving a similar signal to noise ratio as conventional averaging but with less repetitions per average. In this thesis, evolutionary algorithms were used in three ways to extract the evoked potentials from a noisy background. First, evolutionary algorithms selected the cut—off frequencies for a set of filters. A different filter or filter bank was produced for each data set. The noisy signal was passed through each filter in a bank of filters the filter bank output was a weighted sum of the individual filter outputs. The goal was to use three filters ideally one for each of the three regions (early, middle and late components), but the use of five filters was also investigated. Each signal was split into two time domains: the first 3Oms of the signal and the region 30 to 400ms. Filter banks were then developed Ibr these regions separately. Secondly, instead of using a single set of filters applied to the whole signal, different filters (or combinations of filters) were applied at different times. Evolutionary algorithms are used to select the duration of each filter, as well as the frequency parameters and weightings of the filters. Three filtering approaches were investigated. Finally, wavelets in conjunction with an evolutionary algorithm were used to select particular wavelets and wavelet parameters. A comparison of these methods with optimal filtering methods and averaging was made. Averages of 1 0 signals were ibund suitable, and time-varying techniques were Ibund to perlbrm better than applying one filter to the whole signal


This is a sweeping survey of American Indian agriculture from its ancient origins to the present. It combines a wealth of historical, anthropological, legal, and economic information in a clear, readable synthesis. "This is without doubt the most thorough and comprehensive treatment of American Indian agriculture in print. It is multidisciplinary and impressive both in scope and in depth. Hurt shows a deft hand in summarizing not only the literature on the evolution of agriculture in North America, but also the dismal failure of American Indian policy to build on earlier Native American achievements. This book is the starting point for any serious consideration of the literature on subjects ranging from the domestication of corn, to pre-contact irrigation, to current Indian water rights." Richard White, author of "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own." "This extremely worthwhile work is a significant contribution to both Indian history and general American history." Gilbert Fite, past president of the Agricultural History Society and the Western History Association. "Merits the attention of all who are concerned about the past, present, and future of American Indians. The chapters devoted to the past century should be required reading for students of modern agricultural and American Indian history." Peter Iverson, author of "When Indians Became Cowboys: Native Peoples and Cattle Ranching in the American West." "A very thorough and readable account. The scope of this work is truly impressive. The bulk of it revolves around the implementation of United States federal Indian policies aimed at transforming Native Americans into self-sufficient yeoman farmers and farm families during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Hurt's chapters on Indian agriculture and water rights in the twentieth century are very timely and instructive. Should become a standard text for American Indian history courses." "New Mexico Historical Review." "A useful introduction to the subject that is organized in an admirably clear fashion and can be recommended to student and specialist alike." "Journal of American History." "Offers fresh and vital insights into the life and culture of the American Indian." "American Historical Review." "A comprehensive, authoritative account of one of the most significant topics in the history of Indian-white relations." "Western Historical Quarterly.""


This unique volume of thirty essays, by fifty-three internationally known scholars, honours C.S. (Rufus) Churcher, the distinguished Canadian palaeontologist. The papers focus on late Cenozoic mammals in North America and Africa and provide both site-specific descriptions of faunas and their associated geological contexts, and more general syntheses of regional palaeoenvironments and biogeography. The volume provides a much-needed overview of current research. The stature of the researchers who have contributed to the volume, and the breadth of the material presented, is a reflection of Churcher's diverse research interests. The first section contains eleven papers on the palaeoenvironment and palaeoecology of Quaternary mammals in North America; the second section has 9 contributions describing faunas and morphological analyses of North American Quaternary mammals; and the final section contains nine papers on the palaeoecology and palaeoenvironments of late Cenozoic mammals of Africa. In this final section, Alan Gentry pays tribute to Churcher by naming a species after him: Budorcas churcheri. The volume contains individual discussions of North American fossil prairie dogs, mastodons, zebras, short-faced bears, sabre cats, lions, giant armadillos, elk-moose, caribou and muskrats, as well as African hyaenas, zebras, hipparion horses, antelopes, rodents, and giraffes.


Observed choices between risky lotteries are difficult to reconcile with expected utility maximization, both because subjects appear to be too risk averse with regard to small gambles for this to be explained by diminishing marginal utility of wealth, as stressed by Rabin (2000), and because subjects' responses involve a random element. We propose a unified explanation for both anomalies, similar to the explanation given for related phenomena in the case of perceptual judgments: they result from judgments based on imprecise (and noisy) mental representations of the decision situation. In this model, risk aversion results from a sort of perceptual bias—but one that represents an optimal decision rule, given the limitations of the mental representation of the situation. We propose a quantitative model of the noisy mental representation of simple lotteries, based on other evidence regarding numerical cognition, and test its ability to explain the choice frequencies that we observe in a laboratory experiment.


Satisfiability modulo theories (SMT) solving has become a critical part of many static analyses, including symbolic execution, refinement type checking, and model checking. We propose Formulog, a domain-specific language that makes it possible to write a range of SMT-based static analyses in a way that is both close to their formal specifications and amenable to high-level optimizations and efficient evaluation.
Formulog extends the logic programming language Datalog with a first-order functional language and mechanisms for representing and reasoning about SMT formulas; a novel type system supports the construction of expressive formulas, while ensuring that neither normal evaluation nor SMT solving goes wrong. Our case studies demonstrate that a range of SMT-based analyses can naturally and concisely be encoded in Formulog, and that -- thanks to this encoding -- high-level Datalog-style optimizations can be automatically and advantageously applied to these analyses.


In this work, we investigate the null-controllability of a nonlinear degenerate parabolic equation, which is the equation satisfied by a perturbation around the self-similar solution of the porous medium equation in Lagrangian-like coordinates. We prove a local null-controllability result for a regularized version of the nonlinear problem, in which singular terms have been removed from the nonlinearity. We use spectral techniques and the source-term method to deal with the linearized problem and the conclusion follows by virtue of a Banach fixed-point argument. The spectral techniques are also used to prove a null-controllability result for the linearized thin-film equation, a degenerate fourth order analog of the problem under consideration.


In this paper, we outline the cost minimizing behavior of oligopoly firms and the price adjustment process in the labor market which underlie the traditional formulation of aggregate wage-price behavior in the U.S., and show that resulting equations applied to U.S. data remain stable before and after the significant change in the monetary policy rule that had taken place in 1979. This result contradicts the prediction of the Lucas critique applied to this context that, in response to a major change of the monetary policy rule, the Phillips curve and the price setting equation of firms would have undergone significant changes. We test several competing hypotheses for the price level determination, including the possibility that more direct effect of the money supply should be relevant, and show that our formulation dominates alternatives in non- nested tests. Finally, we present evidence that the nature of capital is putty-clay rather than fully malleable, together with a demand function for labor based on this recognition. In the process of these inquiries, we contrast our formulation with that proposed by Layard and Nickell in England.


This paper presents a concrete and widespread example of situation where a user's location privacy is unintentionally compromised by others, specifically the location-privacy threat that exists at access points (public hotspots, FON, home routers, etc.) that have a single public IP and make use of network address translation (NAT). As users connected to the same hotspot share a unique public IP address, a single user's making a location-based request is enough to enable a service provider to map the IP address of the hotspot to its geographic coordinates, thus compromising the location privacy of all the other connected users. When successful, the service provider can locate users within a few hundreds of meters, thus improving over existing IP-location databases. Even in the case where IPs change periodically (e.g., by using DHCP), the service provider is still able to update a previous (IP, Location) mapping by inferring IP changes from authenticated communications (e.g., cookies). The contribution of this paper is three-fold: (i) We identify a novel location-privacy threat caused by shared public IPs in combination with NAT. (ii) We formalize and analyze the threat theoretically. In particular we derive and provide expressions of the probability that the service provider will learn the mapping and of the expected proportion of victims. (iii) We experimentally assess the state in practice by using real traces (collected from deployed hotspots over a period of 23 days) of users who accessed Google services. We also discuss how existing countermeasures can thwart the threat.


[1] Retrieving atmospheric temperature and water vapor profiles from infrared satellite observations over continental surfaces is a complex problem because of the heterogeneity of land surfaces and the difficulty of modeling their interaction with the radiation. This results in the surface-sensitive observations from sounding instruments over land usually not being assimilated into numerical prediction systems at meteorological operational centers. Correct characterization of the interaction between the atmosphere and the surface would allow considering the information contained in those channels. This requires accurate estimates of the surface emissivities at the spectral resolution of recent instruments such as Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) or Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS). An emissivity interpolator is developed in this study to estimate the land surface emissivities at a high spectral resolution compatible with IASI or AIRS instrument channels. It is based on Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) retrieved emissivities. This surface emissivity is used as a first guess in an innovative surface parameter inversion scheme that simultaneously retrieves the surface emissivity and temperature. Radiative transfer calculations with the resulting surface information show a significantly better agreement with the observations (root mean square error of 1.7 K on average over bands 1 and 2 of the IASI spectrum), as compared to calculations using the first guess information (root mean square error of 3.5 K). The retrieved surface skin temperatures are compared to the Land Surface Analysis Satellite Applications Facility (LSA SAF) estimates derived from Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) measurements, and the root mean square difference is below 2 K.


Normative building modeling, addressed in ISO 13790 (Thermal performance of buildings-Calculations of energy use for space heating), has been adopted in major European countries in various applications, including building energy certificate and energy forecast for building stock in regional, national, or international scale. This wide adoption in Europe stems from the capability of normative modeling to deliver objective, yet indicative building energy performance results. This study presents a simplified approach for building energy model calibration by coupling normative energy calculation method and the Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) method. The light weight normative energy calculation method requires a limited number of building inputs which could be collected through a quick walk-through onsite audit. And its minimum computation requirements allow the calibration process to search the entire feasible space more thoroughly and in a timely manner. Coupling normative energy calculation and LHS provides users a simple and yet effective tool for building audit and energy model calibration in support of retrofit decision making. A case study on an existing mix-use university building is presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed approach. Limitations and suggestions to future work are also discussed.


The very high energy (VHE; E > 100 GeV) blazar Markarian 501 (Mrk 501) has a well-studied history of extreme spectral variability and is an excellent laboratory for studying the physical processes within the jets of active galactic nuclei. However, there are few detailed multiwavelength studies of Mrk 501 during its quiescent state, due to its low luminosity. A short-term multiwavelength study of Mrk 501 was coordinated in 2009 March, focusing around a multi-day observation with the Suzaku X-ray satellite and including γ-ray data from VERITAS, MAGIC, and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope with the goal of providing a well-sampled multiwavelength baseline measurement of Mrk 501 in the quiescent state. The results of these quiescent-state observations are compared to the historically extreme outburst of 1997 April 16, with the goal of examining variability of the spectral energy distribution (SED) between the two states. The derived broadband SED shows the characteristic double-peaked profile. We find that the X-ray peak shifts by over two orders of magnitude in photon energy between the two flux states while the VHE peak varies little. The limited shift in the VHE peak can be explained by the transition to the Klein–Nishina (KN) regime. Synchrotron self-Compton models are matched to the data and the implied KN effects are explored.


Radio access networks (RANs) have become one of the largest energy consumers of communication technology [LLH+13] and their energy consumption is predicted to increase [FFMB11]. To reduce the energy consumption of RANs different techniques have been proposed. One of the most promising techniques is the use of a low-power sleep mode. However, a sleep mode can also reduce the performance. In this dissertation, I quantify how much energy can be conserved with a sleep mode and which negative effects it has on the performance of RANs. Additionally, I analyze how a sleep mode can be enabled more often and how the performance can be kept high. First, I quantify the effect of power-cycle durations on energy consumption and latency in an abstract queuing system. This results in a trade-off between energy consumption and latency for a single base station (BS). Second, I show that considering a network as a whole (instead of each BS individually) allows the energy consumption to be reduced even further. After these analyses, which are not specific for RANs, I study RANs for the rest of the dissertation. RANs need to both detect and execute the requests of users. Because detection and execution of requests have different requirements, I analyze them independently. I quantify how the number of active BSs can be reduced if the detection ranges of BSs are increased by cooperative transmissions. Next, I analyze how more BSs can be deactivated if the remaining active BSs cooperate to transmit data to the users. However, in addition to increasing the range, cooperative transmissions also radiate more power. This results in higher interference for other users which slows their transmissions down and, thus, increases energy consumption. Therefore, I describe how the radiated power of cooperative transmissions can be reduced if instantaneous channel knowledge is available. Because the implementation in real hardware is impractical for demonstration purposes, I show the results of a simulation that incorporates all effects I studied analytically earlier. In conclusion, I show that a sleep mode can reduce the energy consumption of RANs if applied correctly. To apply a sleep mode correctly, it is necessary to consider power-cycle durations, power profiles, and the interaction of BSs. When this knowledge is combined the energy consumption of RANs can be reduced with only a slight loss of performance. Because this results in a trade-off between energy consumption and performance, each RAN operator has to decide which trade-off is preferred.


Title of dissertation: CONTROL PROTOCOLS FOR MANIPULATION OF GROUND-STATE QUANTUM BEATS IN A CAVITY QED SYSTEM Andrés David Cimmarusti, Doctor of Philosophy, 2014 Dissertation directed by: Professor Luis A. Orozco Department of Physics Cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) captures the essential interaction between two quantum systems, an atom (for example) and the quantized electromagnetic field. The cavity reduces the plethora of spatial modes of the field in free-space to one or two. This simplification facilitates the study and control of atom-light interactions. In this thesis we show results where we control both aspects of the interaction. Our first measurements demonstrate the implementation of a simple feedback mechanism on a two-mode cavity QED system to preserve the Zeeman coherence of a ground state superposition that generates quantum beats. Our investigation shows how to prevent a shift away from the Larmor frequency and associated decoherence caused by Rayleigh scattering. The protocol consists of turning off the drive of the system after the detection of a first photon and letting it evolve in the dark. Turning the drive back on after a pre set time reveals a phase accumulated only from Larmor precession, with the amplitude of the quantum beat more than a factor of two larger than with continuous drive. We present preliminary conditional measurements in a new cavity QED apparatus that show an environment-assisted speed-up of the evolution of our cavity photon state under weak driving. Changes in the number of atoms (N) that can couple to the field is our way of tailoring the environment. Our results indicate that as N increases, the rate of the re-population of the cavity photon state increases. CONTROL PROTOCOLS FOR MANIPULATION OF GROUND-STATE QUANTUM BEATS IN A CAVITY QED SYSTEM. by Andrés David Cimmarusti Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2014 Advisory Committee: Professor Luis A. Orozco, Chair/Advisor Professor Steve L. Rolston Professor James V. Porto Professor Gretchen Campbell Professor Edo Waks c © Copyright by Andrés David Cimmarusti 2014


The technological revolution of this decade has certainly brought many changes in the functioning of libraries today. Although it has allowed work to be carried out faster and more efficiently and still many library rofessionals are not comfortable with the implementation of technology as it involves change and uncertainty. As a result, they develop additional stress known as techno stress which may have negative impact in the activities of library professionals. This study intends to find out the relationship between the departments where greatest technological advancement has been made and the cause of techno stress at work place among the library professionals of Anna University of Technology, Coimbatore. A questionnaire which comprises of demographic factors, departments where greatest technological advancement has been made, and the causes of techno stress at work place was distributed to the respondents and the relevant information were gathered and analysed. The results of the study are elucidated with relevant interpretation.


Introduction: Xanthophyllum fragrans C.T. White is a rainforest tree that is native to north-eastern regions of Australia. X. fragrans leaf extracts were examined for the ability to inhibit the growth of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Methods: The antimicrobial activity of a methanolic X. fragrans leaf extracts were investigated by disc diffusion and growth time course assays against P. aeruginosa. The growth inhibitory activity was further quantified by MIC determination. Toxicity was determined using the Artemia franciscana nauplii bioassay. Results: The methanolic X. fragrans leaf extract was a potent inhibitor of P. aeruginosa growth (MICs of 430 and 1687μg/mL against the reference and clinical strains respectively). The aqueous X. fragrans leaf extract was also a moderate inhibitor of P. aeruginosa growth (MICs approximately 1000 and 2500μg/mL against the reference and clinical bacterial strains respectively). The antibacterial activities of the methanolic X. fragrans leaf extracts were further investigated using growth time course assays that showed significant growth inhibition in cultures of P. aeruginosa within 1 h of exposure. All extracts were determined to be non-toxic in the Artemia franciscana nauplii bioassay, indicating their safety for use in preventing diseases caused by these pathogens. Conclusion: The lack of toxicity of the X. fragrans leaf extracts and their growth inhibitory bioactivity against P. aeruginosa indicates their potential in the development of new therapies targeting this bacterium.


We present a clustered personal classifier method (CPC method) that jointly estimates a classifier and clusters of workers in order to address the learning from crowds problem.Crowdsourcing allows us to create a large but low-quality data set at very low cost.The learning from crowds problem is to learn a classifier from such a low-quality data set.From some observations, we notice that workers form clusters according to their abilities.Although such a fact was pointed out several times, no method has applied it to the learning from crowds problem.We propose a CPC method that utilizes the clusters of the workers to improve the performance of the obtained classifier, where both the classifier and the clusters of the workers are estimated.The proposed method has two advantages.One is that it realizes robust estimation of the classifier because it utilizes prior knowledge about the workers that they tend to form clusters.The other is that we can obtain the clusters of the workers, which help us analyze the properties of the workers.Experimental results on synthetic and real data sets indicate that the proposed method can estimate the classifier robustly.In addition, clustering workers is shown to work well. Especially in the real data set, an outlier worker was found by applying the proposed method.


We have previously shown that changes in gene expression occur in Arabidopsis thaliana. L. (Heyn) during cold acclimation (SJ Gilmour, RK Hajela, MF Thomashow [1988] Plant Physiol 87: 745-750). Here we report the isolation of cDNA clones of four cold-regulated (cor) genes from Arabidopsis and examine their expression in response to low temperature, abscisic acid (ABA), water stress, and heat shock. The results of Northem analysis indicated that the transcript levels for the four cor genes, represented by clones pHH7.2, pHH28, pHH29, and pHH67, increased markedly between I and 4 hours of cold treatment, reached a maximum at about 8 to 12 hours, and remained at elevated levels for as long as the plants were kept in the cold (up to 2 weeks). Retuming cold acclimated plants to control temperature resulted in the levels of the cor transcripts falling rapidly to those found in nonacclimated plants; this occurred within 4 hours for the transcrpts represented by pHH7.2 and pHH28, and 8 hours for those represented by pHH29 and pHH67. Nuclear run-on transcription assays indicated that the temperature-regulated expression of the cor genes represented by pHH7.2, pHH28, and pHH29 was controlled primarily at the posttranscriptional level while the cor gene represented by pHH67 was regulated largely at the transcriptional level. Northern analysis also indicated that the levels of cor gene transcripts increased in response to both ABA application and water stress, but not to heat shock. The possible significance of cor genes being regulated by both low temperature and water stress is discussed.


Fens and bogs represent a considerable part of the boreal forest area of Scandinavia, but have not received much attention. To understand their role in the water and energy balances an investigation was carried out during the spring and summer of 1994 as a part of the NOPEX program. Groundwater level, precipitation and energy budget parameters were measured at the Ryggmossen bog, 35 km Northwest of Uppsala. The evaporation (10 min averages) was determined by the Energy Balance Bowen Ratio method and a reference evaporation (10 min averages) was also calculated according to Penman (1948). The results of the evaporation and energy balance study showed that the actual evaporation was 60% of the reference evaporation and that the evaporation rate was dependent on the groundwater depth. The weather during the period was warm with extremely low precipitation. The evaporation therefore decreased during the summer in response to the increased depth to the groundwater table. A relation was found between the groundwater level recession rate and the evaporation rate. The albedo increased during the summer and any occasional decrease could be attributed to individual rain storms.


High-performance polymers that have improved processing characteristics, and a method of making them, have been invented. One of the improved characteristics is low (relative to corresponding prior polymers) melt viscosities at given temperatures. This characteristic makes it possible to utilize such processes as resin-transfer molding and resin-film infusion and to perform autoclave processing at lower temperatures and/or pressures. Another improved characteristic is larger processing windows that is, longer times at low viscosities. Other improved characteristics include increased solubility of uncured polymer precursors that contain reactive groups, greater densities of cross-links in cured polymers, improved mechanical properties of the cured polymers, and greater resistance of the cured polymers to chemical attack. The invention is particularly applicable to poly(arylene ether)s [PAEs] and polyimides [PIs] that are useful as adhesives, matrices of composite materials, moldings, films, and coatings. PAEs and PIs synthesized according to the invention comprise mixtures of branched, linear, and star-shaped molecules. The monomers of these polymers can be capped with either reactive end groups to obtain thermosets or nonreactive end groups to obtain thermoplastics. The synthesis of a polymeric mixture according to the invention involves the use of a small amount of a trifunctional monomer. In the case of a PAE, the trifunctional monomer is a trihydroxy- containing compound for example, 1,3,5-trihydroxybenzene (THB). In the case of a PI, the trifunctional monomer is a triamine for example, triamino pyrimidine or melamine. In addition to the aforementioned trifunctional monomer, one uses the difunctional monomers of the conventional formulation of the polymer in question (see figure). In cases of nonreactive end caps, the polymeric mixtures of the invention have melt viscosities and melting temperatures lower than those of the corresponding linear polymers of equal molecular weights. The lower melting temperatures and melt viscosities provide larger processing windows. In cases of reactive end caps, the polymeric mixtures of the invention have lower melt viscosities before curing and the higher cross-link densities after curing (where branching in the uncured systems would become cross-links in the cured systems), relative to the corresponding linear polymers of equal molecular weights. The greater cross-link densities afford increased resistance to chemical attack and improved mechanical properties.