The two most important trends in electronic industry are "miniaturisation" and "increased functionality". Over the last fifteen years, the electronic manufacturing industries have experienced tremendous pressure to meet the requirements for miniaturised products, particularly, hand-held consumer products. Functionality of these products has also evolved at the same pace through packing in more and more features. As these trends are set to continue, there is an increasing demand for better understanding of soldering technology, particularly in the area of solder pastes used in the reflow soldering of surface mount devices. Successful assembly of electronic devices for ultra-fine pitch and flip-chip applications requires the deposition of small and consistent paste deposits from pad to pad, and from board to board. The paste printing process at this chip-scale geometry depends on conditions such as good paste roll, complete aperture filling and paste release from the apertures onto the substrate pads. This means that the paste flow and deformation behaviour is very important in defining the printing performance of any solder paste.

In order to understand rheological phenomena associated with the flow of solder pastes, it is necessary to understand time dependent rheological behaviour. Such behaviour is common to many industrial fluids and consequently has been of interest to rheologists for many years. The time dependent behaviour observed in solder pastes is largely due to the breakdown of the flocculated structure formed during storage or idle period. In general, the breakdown of the structure with shear results in a decrease in apparent viscosity. Recovery after shear is generally a very slow process and depends on the intensity of the breakdown and previous shear history.

The work reported in this thesis on the characterisation and modelling of time-dependent rheological behaviour of solder paste and flux mediums used in surface mount applications is made up of four main parts. The first part concerns the characterisation of the time-dependent behaviour of solder pastes and flux mediums. Two types of tests were performed at this stage: hysteresis-loop test and step-shear-rate test. In the second part of the study the time-dependent rheology of solder pastes and flux mediums has been modelled to evaluate the mechanisms for the break-down of the internal structure of the paste materials. A novel technique has been developed which combines the experimental rheological data with a modified structural kinetic model (SKM) to investigate the rate and extent of structural change of solder paste and flux medium. The third part of the study deals with the experimental and modelling studies of the short term build-up of solder paste and flux medium structure using the stretched exponential model. In the final part of the study the printing trials of four different solder paste samples were carried out to investigate the effect of post-print rest period on slumping behaviour of solder paste.

From the experimental characterisation it was evident that both the solder paste and flux samples are strongly thixotropic and shear-thinning in nature. The thixotropic breakdown behaviour of solder paste and fluxes has been satisfactorily modelled using a second-order structural kinetic model. The results from this study can be of great help for the solder paste manufacturers and formulators in quantifying and predicting the effect of long term shearing on the solder paste samples. The technique developed can also be utilized for similar materials such as solar pastes and conductive adhesives. The short-term build-up of solder pastes and fluxes has been successfully modelled using the stretched exponential model. The paste manufacturers and formulators can use the technique developed to predict and quantify the slumping behaviour of solder paste. The end-users, for example the electronics assemblers may use the technique to optimize their assembly process by minimising/preventing slumping of solder paste.


The reflectance from an amplifying region in which the gain decreases exponentially with distance from the surface is calculated as a function of incident angle. The results are similar in some respects to the reflectance from a uniform amplifying layer reported previously. In particular, a singular point occurs in the reflectance for certain values of the thickness of the amplifying region. However, the results for the exponential case do not explain the previously reported observation of large reflectance from a pumped laser dye. An asymptotic form of the reflectance for a thick amplifying region is presented. The results for asymptotic case are compared with various other theories of reflection from an amplifying region.


This research is devoted to studies of the influence of an externally controlled electric potential difference on Gibbs monolayers of 1-stearoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (SOPC), as well as its influence on the binding of the C2 domain of cytosolic phospholipase-A2 (cPLA2α-C2) protein to the SOPC monolayer. X-ray reflectivity, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and electrochemical methods are used to gather microscopic and macroscopic information about the ordering, orientation, and binding configuration of the SOPC.
 SOPC monolayer assembles at the interface between an aqueous electrolyte solution and an organic electrolyte solution with 1,2-dichloroethane (DCE) as the solvent. The area per lipid of SOPC for different potential differences between the interface is determined from interfacial tension measurements. Cyclic voltammetry confirms the result and provides evidence that the interfacial behavior of SOPC monolayers is reversible. X-ray reflectivity measurements are analyzed to determine the interfacial electron density profile, including the thicknesses of the phosphocholine (PC) head group region and the SOPC hydrocarbon chain regions of the monolayer. MD simulation at fixed area per lipid shows small differences in the orientation of SOPC molecules under electric field. This indicates that the primary effect in the experiments is due to the changing area per lipid as a function of electric potential difference, and the subsequent re-orientation of the lipid to accommodate the change in interfacial density. X-ray reflectivity analysis on cPLA2α-C2 domains bound to the SOPC monolayer on the interface between water and DCE provides information on the angular orientation and penetration depth of the domains. The best-fit orientations and penetration of X-ray reflectivity curves for different potential difference are provided, and the result suggests an increase in the electron density of tailgroup layer due to both protein and DCE penetration into this region. Under very high potential difference (0.38 V), a significant change in reflectivity curve is observed, which could be caused by a decrease of the density of cPLA2α-C2 and lipid on the interface.


The mechanisms underlying neuronal specification and axonogenesis in the vertebrate hindbrain are poorly understood. To address these questions, we have employed anatomical methods and mutational analysis to characterize the branchiomotor neurons in the zebrafish embryo. The zebrafish branchiomotor system is similar to those in the chick and mouse, except for the location of the nVII and nIX branchiomotor neurons. Developmental analyses of genes expressed by branchiomotor neurons suggest that the different location of the nVII neurons in the zebrafish may result from cell migration. To gain insight into the mechanisms underlying the organization and axonogenesis of these neurons, we examined the development of the branchiomotor pathways in neuronal mutants. The valentino b337 mutation blocks the formation of rhombomeres 5 and 6, and severely affects the development of the nVII and nIX motor nuclei. The cyclops b16 mutation deletes ventral midline cells in the neural tube, and leads to a severe disruption of most branchiomotor nuclei and axon pathways. These results demonstrate that rhombomere-specific cues and ventral midline cells play important roles in the development of the branchiomotor pathways.


Neurobiologists and cognitive scientists agree that there is a need for a biologically consistent and realistic description of human cognition. The six essays in this book focus on the empirically answerable issue of whether and to what extent it is possible to explain observations about the mind in terms of observations about the brain. They provide wide-ranging examples of this exciting, ongoing endeavor to provide a neurobiology of cognition from grand scheme attempts to explain the full extent of human cognition, through an examination of the functional structures for echolocation in the bat and the possibilities for its neuronal instantiation, to the cellular and molecular structures of memory and learning.Peter D. Eimas is Professor of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences and Professor of Psychology at Brown University. Albert M. Galaburda, M.D., is Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School.Contents: Some Agenda Item for a Neurobiology of Cognition: An Introduction, Peter D. Eimas, Albert M. Galaburda. Time-Locked Multiregional Retroactivation: A Systems-Level Proposal for the Neural Substrates of Recall and Recognition, Antonio R. Damasio. Neuronal Models of Cognitive Functions, Jean-Pierre Changeux, Stanislas Dehaene. Seeking the Neurobiological Bases of Speech Perception, Joanne L. Miller, Peter W. Jusczyk. Perception and its Neuronal Mechanisms, Richard Held. A View of the World Through the Bat's Ear: The Formation of Acoustic Images in Echolocation, James A. Simmons. The Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, Carl W. Cotman, Gary S. Lynch.


In modern societies, work is the source of most individual, corporate and community wealth. The level of each society's health is therefore particularly vulnerable to disruption caused by employee illness. Today healthy workplaces are one of the most important determinants of health. However, public health has tended to completely ignore health in the workplace and occupational medicine has tended to ignore it in part. This article refers to the Italian and European context and, through a review of international recommendations, research and direct field experiences, presents workplace health promotion as an important tool in the field of public health. Through the years, several initiatives have been tested. One of the platforms that has demonstrated to be cost effective is based on the principles included in the Ottawa Charter which, when applied to the workplace, define workplace health promotion. In the last twelve years, the European Commission has recognized the workplace as a key determinant of health and has outlined a methodology of workplace health promotion as defined in the Luxemburg Declaration. The basis of this methodology is planning. Without correct strategy and policy development it will not be possible to create a sustainable society. The enforcement of Lisbon treaty seems to be a substantial step forward for Europe.


Societies in Transkei, particularly those along the coast, are confronted to varying degrees by the problem and prospects of having to be removed from the areas which they have occupied for decades, sometimes from time immemorial, to make space for government schemes intended for the conservation of the environment and its resources, as determined by various conservation legislation (Chapters 3 and 4). These people have to be settled in new areas which lack the natural resources which they enjoyed in their old areas and on which they depended for their survival and their traditional style of life. What exacerbates the situation is that these removals are not accompanied by development programmes to compensate the people for their loss. Furthermore, the establishment of these conservation areas does not offer any incentives for them to appreciated and see the benefit of conservation (Chapters 5 and 6). Furthermore, although some of the conservation legislation anticipates that there should be consultations with, and participation by, the local people before the conservation programmes are implemented in order for them to present their opinions, it does not seem that the government officials charged with the control and administration of the legislation comply with this requirement. The result is that these conservation programmes are met with resistance from the local people, resulting in the government failing to attain the objectives of the legislation. This study will briefly deal with the history and development of conservation legislation in Transkei from the Colonial era (Chapter 2), and examine the provisions of the applicable conservation legislation during the self-government of Transkei including its independence up to its reincorporation into South Africa during April 1994.


This article discusses the classification algorithms for the problem of personality identification by voice using machine learning methods. We used the MFCC algorithm in the speech preprocessing process. To solve the problem, a comparative analysis of five classification algorithms was carried out. In the first experiment, the support vector method was determined — 0.90 and multilayer perceptron — 0.83, that showed the best results. In the second experiment, a multilayer perceptron with an accuracy of 0.93 was proposed using the Robust scaler method for personal identification. Therefore, to solve this problem, it is possible to use a multi-layer perceptron, taking into account the specifics of the speech signal.


Otits media (OM) is the most frequent indication for antimicrobial prescription to US children. Streptococcus pneumoniae (S. pneumoniae) remains one of the most common pathogens causing OM. Successful eradication of S. pneumoniae in the middle ear can be achieved by adhering to a 7-10 day regimen of oral antibiotics. However, oral drug administration is challenging for parents. Lack of adherence has been associated with treatment failure or early relapse. To overcome this challenge, we used a noninvasive formulation to achieve high transtympanic antibiotic flux and cured S. pneumoniae OM in chinchillas. The formulation consists of a thermosensitive in situ gelling hydrogel, chemical permeation enhancers, and an antibiotic. The direct transport of drugs into the middle ear produced high concentrations of ciprofloxacin (in the range of hundreds of micrograms per milliliter) within the first 24 hours of administration. Drug concentrations above the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) for S. pneumoniae were sustained throughout the 7-day treatment. S. pneumoniae OM in a chinchilla model was successfully eradicated, without causing tissue toxicity. Transtympanic delivery minimized systemic drug exposure, as evidenced by undetectable levels in blood, measured by high-performance liquid chromatography.


Dogs were ubiquitous on urban streets in late medieval and Early Modern times. Reports suggest that more than five hundred dogs were killed in the Westminster parish of St Margaret's as part of a plague prevention scheme in 1603. These were free-roaming dogs; many more populated the street scene. Certain itinerant tradesmen used dogs to accompany or help them, including bellmen, lantern carriers, tinkers, and knife-grinders. Butchers kept dogs to bait beasts before slaughter. Bigger households kept turnspit dogs, and ladies had lapdogs. Man and dog did not always enjoy a symbiotic relationship. Samuel Pepys mentions the irritation of being kept awake by a barking dog in his diary, and his experience was far from singular.Noise was not the only concern. The fear of dog attack fueled a fashion for carrying walking sticks and canes. Many people were bitten, and some (mostly children) died. Many towns issued orders forbidding unmuzzled mastiffs or bitches on heat to "go abroad on the street," particularly at night. In 1668 the Liverpool authorities ordered that all dogs "which can devour children or disturb others" be muzzled; seventeenth-century Manchester had a dozen officers responsible for enforcing a similar law. Many parishes employed dog-whippers to keep nuisance dogs out of congregations.Using manorial and leet records, civic and borough documents, petitions, diocesan records, quarter sessions material, diaries and personal accounts, coroners' reports, and trade company minutes, this chapter reveals the nuisances and dangers that dogs posed to people in late medieval and Early Modern English urban settlements. The key cities under study are London, Norwich, York, Portsmouth, Manchester, Southampton, and Oxford.


This thesis extends a view of human reasoning which emphasises a theory of interpretation in conditional reasoning. It extends work on Wason's (1968) 'selection task', using novel rules and contexts to explore the factors that control subject interpretations, which in turn is reflected in their performance. After reviewing the work on conditional reasoning and particularly the interpretative framework of Stenning & van Lambalgen (2004), the thesis explores subjects' reasoning with rules that describe processes extended in time in two experiments. The most striking finding is that many subjects exhibit an unusual constant anaphor reading, even though the anaphors involved are tenses rather than pronouns. Results are explained in terms of the temporal constraints involved in the situation described. The thesis then uses novel 'information packaging' manipulations which use colour to emphasise different distinctions in Wason's original task. This manipulation provides evidence of where subjects' attention already rests. This is combined with a task that gathers data of subjects' interpretation of negation. Results are consistent with the idea that although subjects in the standard task are focussed on the distinction between cases that fit the rule and ones that do not, there is evidence that emphasising the mapping of the antecedent/consequent onto back/front of the cards is sensitive to these manipulations. The negation interpretation task reveals striking divergences between subjects' interpretations and the classical model assumed in the literature, and these differences are interpretable in terms of default logic. A few conditions were originally designed as controls only to end up generating striking results of their own. Colour is used in the truth conditional semantics of the rules (black/white replaces number/letter or vowel/consonant) instead of being used as mere information packaging. Sizable increases in 'classical competence' responses are observed and this is interpreted in terms of the non-hierarchical structure of the properties used. Studies using LSA and a novel tensor network operating on a database of rules gathered from selection task literature show conclusively that higher frequencies of function words appear in descriptive rules than they do in deontic rules. This thesis concludes that it is possible to direct subjects towards various interpretations on the task through the use of semantic manipulations that include but are not restricted to the ones observed in this work. Issues that include resolving the anaphora in the problem, the hierarchy of the structure of properties and the negation of clauses clearly influence the interpretation subjects arrive at which in turn affects their reasoning and responses. Results indicate that subject assumptions concerning negatives are different from those made by experimenters which inform all major theories including Mental Models, Information Gain and those based on mental logic. In particular, subjects' most frequent selections indicate that they are selecting an implicit negative which is the opposite of what is expected by the principle of truth of Mental Models.


This article contributes to debates regarding the issue of researcher partisanship and bias within social research and situates it within the current trend towards reflexivity. The discussion draws upon the researcher's experiences of conducting fieldwork with the 'boy racer' culture and societal groups affected by their behaviour. In this instance, the researcher unintentionally sided with the 'underdogs' – the 'boy racers'. Hence, it is argued that value neutrality is an impossible goal, particularly in research of a political nature. Social researchers will inevitably 'take sides' whether or not they are willing to admit so. The discussion also touches upon the prevalence of media culture in ethnographic research and the dilemmas faced when making our research public at key moments.


RESUMEN ABSTRACT: Sedimentology and paleoenvironments of the Patagoniano and the transition to the Santa Cruz Formation south of Lago Argentino, Southern Patagonia. Sedimentology and paleoenvironments of the Patagoniano and its transition to the Santa Cruz Formation south of Lago Argentino, southern Patagonia. Detailed sedimentological analysis of the Patagoniano and its transition to the Santa Cruz Formation has been carried out south of Lago Argentino, in southern Patagonia. The 180 meters thick succes- sion of fossiliferous sandstones was subdivided into twelve lithofacies, grouped in three facies associations. From base to top we defined the facies association I, dominated by massive, bioturbated and fossiliferous sandstones; the facies association II, dominated by fining upward cycles of cross-stratified sandstones and heterolithic facies; and the facies association III domi- nated by thin conglomeratic levels interbedded with mudstones rich in plant remains and paleosoils. The facies association I is interpreted as the deposit of a transgressive, shallow sea with oyster rich biogenic accumulations, finally evolving to a co- astal plain paleoenvironment. A new transgression originated the discontinuity underlying the facies association II, which was interpreted as a progradational estuarine system. Finally, the ongoing progradation produced the fluvial meandering system of facies association III, assigned to the Santa Cruz Formation. The new name "Estancia 25 de Mayo" is formalized here for the Patagoniano in the southernmost Cordillera Patagonica, instead of the problematic name Centinela Formation. The Estancia 25 de Mayo Formation was subdivided in two members: the lower Quien Sabe Member, equivalent to the facies association I, and the upper Bandurrias Member, equivalent to the (facies association II).


In a semiconductor market dominated by portable consumer applications, embedded flash memory technology has experienced a rapid diffusion. It is now considered the preferred solid-state memory solution for its non-volatile characteristics, high read and write speeds and scalability properties. As technology scales down in the nanometer range, new accurate physical tools should be made available to circuit designers, to support the development and optimization of high-voltage circuit blocks. A surface potential-based model for the flash memory cell has been developed with the purpose of providing a comprehensive physical understanding of the device operation, suitable for performance optimization in memory circuit design. An accurate validation methodology also takes into account charge balance effects on the isolated floating gate node and parasitic couplings inside and between the memory cells. The compact model supports DC, AC and transient analyses, including program/erase bias scalability, temperature effects, process corners and statistical variations. The results have been compared to Technology Computer-Aided Design (TCAD) simulations demonstrating that short channel effects, overlap capacitances and velocity saturation dominate over the intrinsic behaviour of the cell in ultrascaled devices. The approach includes drain disturb and memory endurance degradation models due to oxide aging. These effects are becoming dominant in ultrascaled devices. The model has been implemented using the Verilog-A language for portability into common circuit simulators. Validation has been performed on measurement results of test structures integrated in a 65nm derivative NOR CMOS technology. The compact model development has been based on a rigorous modeling approach combining conventional TCAD simulation tools with physically-based analyses. A new TCAD tool has been proposed for the investigation of advanced quantum effects, band structure models, quantum tunneling and multiphonon-assisted charge trapping effects in dielectrics. The effects of charge trapping in oxide layers and Si/SiO2 interfaces have been studied, specifically focusing on flash technology, where high voltage biases represent a major issue for dielectric degradation. A multiphonon-assisted model has been coupled with a Poisson-Schrodinger quantum solver. A novel impedance calculation method has been applied to the analysis of DC and AC MOS characteristics. This approach permits the physical modeling of trap filling, frequency response and device electrostatics. Transient effects of trap filling and trap-assisted tunneling through the gate have also been investigated. The adoption of such a multilevel approach permits to apply the methodology to flash memory cells. This enabled the investigation of the role of defects on electrostatics and program/erase efficiency reduction. The flash compact model has been applied in a process development and IC memory design perspective. Technology development requires a profound understanding of trade-offs in flash devices, which affect DC, transient and long-term performances. The design, integration and characterization of a 40 KB memory sector for smart card applications has been performed to demonstrate the capabilities of the compact model.


Maintaining river health is of vital importance to the human populations that depend on them for drinking water, and for the income generated from industry and leisure activities. The key to a clear understanding of the current state of the river environment lies in assimilating the various data that are available for a particular river catchment. As a result of the large expense involved in extensive data collection programmes, measurements are often only taken at a handful of monitoring locations, resulting in large portions of a river network remaining unmonitored and rendering it difficult to assess the health of the river as a whole. Interpreting observations associated with a particular response variable pivots on understanding many other variables whose underlying relationships are often highly complex and which may not be routinely measured. Cutting-edge statistical methods can play a crucial role in the interpretation of such data, particularly when faced with small sample sizes and the presence of latent processes. In particular, developing models for environmental data that relax the assumption of simple linear dependencies between response and covariate is a core theme of this thesis, which can enable powerful descriptions of such complex systems. This approach adopts and promotes modern flexible regression techniques based on penalised splines, which are motivated and summarised in Chapter 2; these permit regression relationships to assume a wide variety of non-linear shapes, without requiring the modeller to impose a priori structure.

This thesis aims to address two related, but distinct regression problems for data collected within a river catchment. Firstly, the relationship between rainfall data collected at a rain gauge and subsequent river flow rates collected at a point downstream is tackled in Chapter 3. In this application, it is of particular interest to understand the degree, duration and time-lag of the influence of a rainfall event on a measurable increase in river flow rates at a downstream location. This relationship is complex because it is governed by attributes of the surrounding river environment that may not be readily available, such as soil composition, land use and ground strata. However, rainfall and flow data are frequently collected at a high temporal resolution, and Chapter 3 develops models that exploits this feature that are able to express complex lagged dependence structures between a sequence of flow rates and a rainfall time series. The chapter illustrates how the resulting model enables insight into the sensitivity of the river to additional rainfall, and provides a mechanism for obtaining predictions of future flow rates, without recourse to traditional computationally intensive deterministic modelling.

This thesis also tackles the problem of constructing appropriate models for the spatial structure of variables that are carried by water along the channels of the river network. This problem cannot be approached using traditional spatial modelling tools due to the presence of the different volumes of water that mix at confluence points, often causing sudden changes in the levels of the measured variable. Very little literature is available for this type of spatial problem, and none has been developed that is appropriate for the large data sets that are becoming increasingly common in many environmental settings. Chapters 4 and 5 develop new regression models that can incorporate spatial variation on a stream network that respects the presence of confluences, flow rates and direction, while including non-linear functional representations for the influence of covariates. These different model components are constructed using the same modern flexible regression framework as used in Chapter 3, and the computational benefits of adopting this approach are highlighted. Chapter 4 illustrates the utility of the new models by applying them to a large set of dissolved nitrate concentrations collected over a Scottish river network. The application reveals strong trends in both space and time, and evidence of a subtle interaction between temporal trend and the location in space; both conclusions would have been difficult to reach using other techniques.


A full-duplex radio over fiber link scheme with 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) 10 Gb/s downstream and 2.5 Gb/s upstream signals is proposed. In the downlink, the 60 GHz dual-tone optical millimeter-(mm-) wave signal carrier is generated by the 15 GHz local oscillator via a Mach-Zehnder modulator with frequency quadrupling. The 16-QAM 5 GHz IF signal is up-converted to 65 GHz by modulating it on one of the two tones with single-sideband (SSB) modulation at the central station. At the remote base station, the 65 GHz SSB optical mm-wave signal is detected by a high-speed photodiode. After the 60 GHz uplink dual-tone optical mm-wave carrier is abstracted by optimized filtering, the uplink 63 GHz mm-wave signal is modulated onto it to down-convert to the 3 GHz SSB optical IF signal. Since both the down- and uplink optical mm-wave signals have SSB spectra with the signal modulated on one of the two tones, they suffer little from the fiber dispersion. The simulation results show that the bidirectional signals have good performance even after being transmitted over 30 km standard single mode fiber.


Facilities which utilize hazardous liquids and gases represent a significant potential liability to the owner, operator, and general public in terms of personnel safety and preservation of assets. It is obvious that a catastrophic incident or loss of property or personnel is to be avoided at all costs. This book was conceived to give the reader a guide to understanding the requirements of the various codes and regulations that apply to the design, construction, and operation of facilities utilizing hazardous materials in their processes.


Classic epidemiology looks at what happens to people who live in a defined region over time. For example, birth rate, the number of births that occur among populations over a year, is a common statistics that we're all familiar with. Since the early 1990s we have conducted research at Dartmouth Medical School to convert that classic epidemiologic perspective into looking at what is happening in terms of the health care system itself. We ask how much care people are getting in different regions of the country. We want to know the patterns of that care. And we want to get into the causes of so-called unwarranted variation, that is, differences that cannot be explained on the basis of patient illness, the dictates of scientific medicine, or the preferences of patients. Those three key words--illness, preference, and science--ultimately don't explain very much of the variation we see. We began the Dartmouth Atlas Project in 1993 as a study of health care markets in the United States, measuring variations in health care resources and their utilization among geographic areas. In recent years, we have expanded our research agenda to include the resources and utilization among patients at specific hospitals. We use very large claims databases from the Medicare program and other sources to define where people go for medical care, what kind of care they receive, and whether increasing investments in health care resources and their use result in better health outcomes.


The article analyses some methodological premises as fundamental guidelines for systematic approach to the development of law and action concerned with the police sciences. As the analyses reveals, the police sciences have been based on the premises of other disciplinary methodologies. So the relationship between police sciences and, for example, philosophy, sociology, psychology, law, etc. has been particularly evident. Nevertheless, the contemporary trend towards independent status of the police sciences has appeared as well. The point is, those exterior disciplines and undertaken research from their perspectives appeared as being not sufficient in the sense they take an incidental character and are not corresponding to the multiple academic demands of contemporary practice and theory of police profession. This reason explains partly academic efforts put forward to sole some other important issues regarded with sociological facts, laws, development strategies as well as perspectives of the police knowledge. In trying to pursue the rational approach towards the development of the police sciences some epistemological, praxiological and axiological research paradigms are being recommended by the article. The issues on the active and passive policing activity, the work on prevention of crimes, the problems of violence, discretion, prestige, accumulation of professional experience, links with society and some other topics are being advised to be of the primary importance for scientific approach in the newly appeared separate field of knowledge on the police profession.


In 1897, when Charles Chesnutt composed "The Dumb Witness," he was returning to the literary form--his conjure tales"--that had won him his earliest successes. That literary return was likely bittersweet for Chesnutt, because while it led directly to the publication of his first book--The Conjure Woman--it also meant working again in a genre about which Chesnutt felt ambivalent. In 1889, after publishing the first four conjure tales, he was already expressing his impatience with this form: "I think I have about used up the old Negro who serves as mouthpiece, and I shall drop him in future stories, as well as much of the dialect" ("To Be an Author" 44-45). Chesnutt's discomfort came, no doubt, from the support that the dialect story gave, in Richard Brodhead's succinct phrasing, to the "preferred fictions of racial life" operating in the postbellum United States (Cultures 210). (1) Most closely associated with the tremendously popular work of Joel Chandler Harris and Thomas Nelson Page, this genre depended on the representation of a seemingly "authentic" African American voice. Speaking a stylized literary form of black dialect, characters like Harris's Uncle Remus and Page's Sam were ex-slaves who ventriloquized a sense of nostalgic longing for the antebellum South. Chesnutt's conjure tales resisted these cultural implications, even as they worked within the same conventions. Nonetheless, Chesnutt was concerned with a growing tendency to limit representations of African American identities to this single image: he complained to George Washington Cable in 1890 that the "chief virtues" of all African American characters appearing in recent popular fiction was their "dog-like fidelity and devotion to their old masters" ("To Be an Author" 65). Indeed, the two elements of his conjure tales that Chesnutt seemed most eager to abandon--the "old Negro who serves as mouthpiece" and the "dialect" in which he speaks--were those perhaps most closely associated with this growing plantation mythology, which worked to fix notions of African American identity in the stereotypical figure of the ex-slave. In the 10 years between the publication of "The Goophered Grapevine," Chesnutt's first conjure tale, and the composition of "The Dumb Witness," the development of segregation culture had even more firmly cemented the popular notions of black and white identities in the United States. Yet if Chesnutt returned, in the late 1890s, to the type of tale written by Harris and Page, he did so in a way that continued to resist the essentialization of racialized identities in which the stories of Harris and Page participated. Chesnutt was, as Henry B. Wonham has recently remarked, a "writer suspicious of race consciousness in any form" (830). Arguing that "race integrity" was "a modern invention of the white people to perpetuate the color line" ("Race Prejudice" 91), Chesnutt demonstrates a skepticism about categories of racial classification that makes him a precursor of contemporary thinkers, such as Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who understand the concept of race as a "fiction," a "dangerous trope" (Introduction 4, 5). (2) The logic of segregation rests on the belief that the social world can be neatly divided into separate identities, and with the writing of "The Dumb Witness," we want to argue, Chesnutt finds a literary strategy for undermining this logic. Recognizing that what underpins segregation culture is a desire to construct clearly demarcated identities, the story, with its incessant interrogation of the witnessing of vision and the dumbness of speech, subverts the notion that identity can be fixed. The Jim Crow segregation period was a crucial moment in the construction of modern US conceptions of racial "difference." The last decades of the nineteenth century saw an increased emphasis on stereotypical representations of African Americans in literature and popular culture and on (pseudo)scientific, biological theories of race. …


Title of Document: FILM-INDUCED EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE AND EXPRESSION IN SOCIAL ANHEDONIA Jaime T Carreno, Doctor of Philosophy, 2009 Directed By: Professor, Jack J. Blanchard, Psychology Social anhedonia is an important feature of schizophrenia and it is a promising indicator of latent liability for the disorder. Although social anhedonia is defined as an affective construct, only a limited number of studies have investigated the affective and behavioral correlates of the construct. Studies that have looked at these variables have been limited by a lack of appropriate measures of affiliation, control for contributions of current depressive symptoms and inclusion of both male and female participants. The current study sought to extend past research by addressing the limitations listed above. A cohort of psychometrically identified social anhedonics and normally hedonic controls were identified from a large college sample. The participants completed a clinical interview and a series of questionnaires. The clinical interviews focused on current and past mood disorders, schizophrenia and schizophrenia spectrum personality disorders. The questionnaires focused on selfreports of current depressive symptoms and general tendencies to express emotion. The participants were then presented with a series of affect eliciting films clip during which their emotional expressions were recorded. After each film, they were asked to self report their affective state. Contrary to past studies and current hypothesizes social anhedonics did not differ from controls in terms of emotional experience or emotional expression. The lack of findings could be as a result of small sample sizes, lack of validated self-report measures of emotional experience, or the nature of the limited sample of behavior collected among other study limitations. FILM-INDUCED EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE AND EXPRESSION IN SOCIAL ANHEDONIA


: Key purpose of this study is to study the impact of coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis on the retail business in Saudi Arabia. The conventional brick and mortar retail business has been following a downward trend over the years with e-retailing exponentially growing during the lockdown period of corona pandemic. It was also noticed that customer preferences and purchasing behaviour are also experiencing a gradual shift from the earlier patterns. In the wake of such adversity, where businesses have collapsed, the study has tried to understand the factors responsible for affecting the retail industries in the kingdom with some key learnings.


Anti-Judaism and the Gospels, ed. William R. Farmer. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1999. Pp. viii + 311. $24.00. This collection of essays, together with responses, is the fruit of a three-year research project sponsored by the University of Dallas on the subject of anti-Judaism and the Gospels. It focuses on three questions: (1) When and under what circumstances did the Gospels begin to serve anti-Jewish ends? (2) Can it be said that the evangelists were anti-Jewish? (3) Are there texts in the Gospels originally intended to injure the Jewish people or their religion? Farmer, in his introduction, correctly emphasizes that the term "anti-Judaism" in his own title is not only anachronistic but historically incorrect, since it identifies certain Jewish individuals and groups who were contemporary with Jesus with all of Judaism at his time and excludes him and his followers from the Jewish people. Amy-Jill Levine, in her essay on Matthew, distinguishing prophetic polemic, Jewish-Christian anti-Judaism, and Gentilizing anti-Judaism, does not accept the view that Matthew's Jesus is simply following current rhetorical practice, and asserts, as does Elaine Pagels, that "philosophers did not engage, as Matthew does here [ch. 23], in demonic vilification of their opponents." But, we may comment, when Cicero, in book 3 of his De Natura Deorum, speaks of his Stoic opponent as "regaling us with the vaporings of old harridans," this is pretty close to vilification. And if we view Matthew as, in effect, a lawyer or a politician, he is not more vitriolic than Cicero in the latter's abusive attacks on Verres, Catiline, and Antony. While not seeing Matthew as condemning Jews as a people or a race, since they are still part of the missionary purview, Levine says that she is forced, though with great reluctance, to conclude that Matthew is anti-Jewish. In his response Philip Shiner says that if anti-Judaism is defined as "antipathy toward Jews based upon a perceived inferiority of Jewish ways and manners," Matt 1 is not anti-Jewish since, far from denigrating the central figure of its narrative, Jesus, it traces Jesus' genealogy back to Abraham and David. But, we may reply, Matthew's point may well be that this is what must most be stressed, that the Jews, coming from such a glorious beginning, should have turned against the ideals of their own founders and consequently are to be condemned. Warren Carter, in his response, suggests that "parts of Matthew can be construed as anti-some-forms of Judaism by some readers at some times, but not all parts, not all Judaisms, and not by all readers." Objecting to Levine's text-centered approach, he emphasizes the roles and locations of readers in formulating anti-Jewish readings. To this we may respond that if Matthew were read in its entirety, as the Torah is read in its entirety in the course of every year by Jews, readers or listeners might form more nuanced views; but in a society in which few people were literate enough to read a document in its entirety, their views were often derived from very selected readings and sermons and, in particular, the readings on Good Friday. Daryl Schmidt, in his essay on Luke, focusing on the image of the implied readers, whom he identifies with the "G-d-fearers," quotes Lloyd Gaston's conclusion that LukeActs is one of the most pro-Jewish and one of the most anti-Jewish writings in the NT and remarks that rather than simply being a paradox, it is also an unresolved tension. Schmidt concludes that it is unlikely that the "G-d-fearers," reassured by Paul's rhetoric that loyalty to Judaism includes messianic claims about Jesus, would join in condemnation of Jews. We may, however, argue that these Gentiles who are "half-way Jews" might, indeed, feel guilty about their failure to be fully consistent in their attitude toward Judaism and thus might be drawn to condemn Judaism altogether, once they had found a kind of Judaism consonant with what some might call their "compromised Judaism. …


Despite external influences such as societal restrictions imposed during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, farmers continue to work, and needs for outreach and education have not waned. Extension professionals must continue to support these needs by using media and channels not typically employed when more traditional vehicles, such as on-site consultations and field days, are not practical or safe. The Iowa Learning Farms team from Iowa State University Outreach and Extension has developed a successful Virtual Field Day program using available online tools that can be easily adopted by other Extension organizations to facilitate outreach.


Behavioural targeting is the monitoring of people's online behaviour to target advertisements to specific individuals. European law requires companies to obtain informed consent of the internet user before they use tracking technologies for behavioural targeting. Other jurisdictions also emphasise the importance of choice for internet users. But many people click 'I agree' to any statement that is presented to them. This paper discusses insights from behavioural economics to analyse problems with informed consent to behavioural targeting from a regulatory perspective. What are the policy implications of insights from behavioural economics in the context of behavioural targeting? Two approaches to improve regulation are explored. The first focuses on empowering the individual, for example by making informed consent more meaningful. The second approach focuses on protecting the individual. If aiming to empower people is not the right tactic to protect privacy, maybe specific prohibitions should be introduced.


Machine Learning models have been shown to be vulnerable to adversarial examples, ie. the manipulation of data by a attacker to defeat a defender's classifier at test time. We present a novel probabilistic definition of adversarial examples in perfect or limited knowledge setting using prior probability distributions on the defender's classifier. Using the asymptotic properties of the logistic regression, we derive a closed-form expression of the intensity of any adversarial perturbation, in order to achieve a given expected misclassification rate. This technique is relevant in a threat model of known model specifications and unknown training data. To our knowledge, this is the first method that allows an attacker to directly choose the probability of attack success. We evaluate our approach on two real-world datasets.


Purpose
This study aims to explore the relationship between audit partner and firm industry specialization and board of director independence on the decision by Taiwanese firms to use International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) flexibility concerning reporting interest income and expense and dividends received in different sections of the statement of cash flows. This flexibility existed in Taiwan for the first time in 2013, the year that Taiwan switched from its own generally accepted accounting principle to IFRS.

Design/methodology/approach
Using 2013 data for a sample of 1,227 firms, 354 of whom changed their reporting classification, this study examined the interaction effect of board independence and partner-level and firm-level auditor industry specialization on the cash flow reporting decision using logistic regression.

Findings
The results show there is a substitute relationship between board independence and partner-level industry specialization on the change in cash flow reporting classification, but a complementary relationship between board independence and firm-level auditor specialization. Further, both partner-level and firm-level auditor industry specializations have a complementary (but negative) relationship with board independence as to whether the firm is likely to report interest expense paid in the operating or financing activities sections.

Practical implications
An important implication is that knowing the levels of audit firm and partner specialization and how independent the board is, is useful for researchers and regulators in investigating auditor-client relationships and understanding the influences of variables investigated here on the outcome(s) of accounting policy and regulatory changes.

Originality/value
This study improved the field's understanding of the impacts of audit partner and firm specialization, board independence and relevant interactions on cash flow reporting choices.


Ultrahigh resolution optical coherence tomography (OCT) is performed with a broadband, Kerr-lens mode-locked, diode-pumped Cr(3+):LiCAF laser. The laser source has a bandwidth of 89 nm with an output power of 37 mW. OCT imaging is demonstrated with 4.5 microm axial resolution in air or 3.4 microm in tissue. In vivo imaging of the human retina is demonstrated. Ultrahigh resolution OCT images from the Cr(3+):LiCAF laser source were compared with standard resolution images from a commercial OCT system and ultrahigh resolution OCT images from a Kerr-lens modelocked Ti:sapphire laser light source. The Cr(3+):LiCAF source is pumped only by two single-emitter laser diodes, which makes this laser a viable, low-cost alternative to mode-locked Ti:sapphire lasers that are currently used for ultrahigh resolution OCT imaging.


In the opening scenes of Tales of Burning Love, two characters sit in a bar telling each other stories and discussing healing remedies for toothache. June, a Chippewa woman, suggests to Jack, the victim of a particularly painful tooth, that he try chewing cloves which she describes as an "old Ojibwa remedy." Jack replies with skepticism, "Cloves, aren't they from Europe or something?" (5). Yet, what is immediately apparent to the reader and the characters is that whether cloves are Native or European is far less important than whether they promote healing. Although this scene seems insignificant initially, June's Ojibwa "cloves" remedy provides a paradigm for cross-cultural sharings and intertextualities of all kinds, including the universal storytelling process which is unconcerned with ownership but asks only that each speaker/ listener benefit from gained wisdom and pass it on. As Erdrich comments in an interview: "Why is that, as humans, we have to have narrative? I don't know, but we do. I suppose it goes back to before the Bible; that storytelling cycle is in oral traditions of all cultures" (Chavkin 175). I would like to argue that contemporary literature needs the kind of healing narrative found in oral traditions, but has lost the consciousness of that need. Through her use of both Native and European storytelling, however, Erdrich awakens this consciousness by reaching back into not only Native but Western Eurocentric traditions for a storytelling form that she can use effectively to heal fractures in the modern psyche, or to put it metaphorically, to at least soothe our collective toothache. Although I do not wish to homogenize indigenous and European traditions or suggest that one was derived from the other, I believe that Erdrich's novel, Tales of Burning Love, is syncretic as it weaves the Native and Western traditions together into an art form uniquely her own. In fact, one of Erdrich's achievements has been this creative blending which is often overlooked as critics seek originality and difference instead of continuity and wholeness. For it is my belief that Louise Erdrich's Tales of Burning Love was influenced by and shares with many pre-modern European texts a rich storytelling tradition which involves multiple narrators in the creation of transformative "magic"--narrative as healing ceremony--and that to interpret the stories in this context provides the reader with a universally accessible, mystical as well as intellectual experience that makes whole cloth of many narrative threads. Although the pre-modern European storytelling cycle, found in texts like the Decameron, the Canterbury Tales, and the Heptameron, does seem moribund or dramatically altered in the contemporary West, Louise Erdrich has found an imaginative means of revising and revitalizing it within a Native American context. (1) It is in this way that she has rebalanced and recentered the contemporary novel, reinfusing it with the healing power of storytelling that has been lost in the modern world. Erdrich, who holds both undergraduate and advanced degrees in English, is an ideal mediator between worlds. As critic John Purdy notes, "Erdrich is quite aware of the traditions and conventions that derive from both European and North American sources, and so it seems perfectly logical that we employ a similarly enlightened methodology when addressing her works" (92). Repeatedly in interviews, Erdrich has named Native, European, and American authors as important influences, from Sir John Mandeville, Shakespeare, and Donne in the Middle Ages and Renaissance to Morrison, Faulkner, Silko, Welch, and Hogan in the twentieth century (Chavkin 220-53). Furthermore, she has described her family reading as "eccentric" and has consistently rejected the notion of a single or dominant influence: "Everybody that you read is a literary influence. I had a literary education so the entire literary canon is a background" (Chavkin 38). …


A brave new world with a wider view Researchers have long attempted to follow animals as they move through their environment. Until relatively recently, however, such efforts were limited to short distances and times in species large enough to carry large batteries and transmitters. New technologies have opened up new frontiers in animal tracking remote data collection. Hussey et al. review the unique directions such efforts have taken for marine systems, while Kays et al. review recent advances for terrestrial species. We have entered a new era of animal ecology, where animals act as both subjects and samplers of their environments. Science, this issue 10.1126/science.1255642, 10.1126/science.aaa2478 BACKGROUND The movement of animals makes them fascinating but difficult study subjects. Animal movements underpin many biological phenomena, and understanding them is critical for applications in conservation, health, and food. Traditional approaches to animal tracking used field biologists wielding antennas to record a few dozen locations per animal, revealing only the most general patterns of animal space use. The advent of satellite tracking automated this process, but initially was limited to larger animals and increased the resolution of trajectories to only a few hundred locations per animal. The last few years have shown exponential improvement in tracking technology, leading to smaller tracking devices that can return millions of movement steps for ever-smaller animals. Finally, we have a tool that returns high-resolution data that reveal the detailed facets of animal movement and its many implications for biodiversity, animal ecology, behavior, and ecosystem function. ADVANCES Improved technology has brought animal tracking into the realm of big data, not only through high-resolution movement trajectories, but also through the addition of other on-animal sensors and the integration of remote sensing data about the environment through which these animals are moving. These new data are opening up a breadth of new scientific questions about ecology, evolution, and physiology and enable the use of animals as sensors of the environment. High–temporal resolution movement data also can document brief but important contacts between animals, creating new opportunities to study social networks, as well as interspecific interactions such as competition and predation. With solar panels keeping batteries charged, "lifetime" tracks can now be collected for some species, while broader approaches are aiming for species-wide sampling across multiple populations. Miniaturized tags also help reduce the impact of the devices on the study subjects, improving animal welfare and scientific results. As in other disciplines, the explosion of data volume and variety has created new challenges and opportunities for information management, integration, and analysis. In an exciting interdisciplinary push, biologists, statisticians, and computer scientists have begun to develop new tools that are already leading to new insights and scientific breakthroughs. OUTLOOK We suggest that a golden age of animal tracking science has begun and that the upcoming years will be a time of unprecedented exciting discoveries. Technology continues to improve our ability to track animals, with the promise of smaller tags collecting more data, less invasively, on a greater variety of animals. The big-data tracking studies that are just now being pioneered will become commonplace. If analytical developments can keep pace, the field will be able to develop real-time predictive models that integrate habitat preferences, movement abilities, sensory capacities, and animal memories into movement forecasts. The unique perspective offered by big-data animal tracking enables a new view of animals as naturally evolved sensors of environment, which we think has the potential to help us monitor the planet in completely new ways. A massive multi-individual monitoring program would allow a quorum sensing of our planet, using a variety of species to tap into the diversity of senses that have evolved across animal groups, providing new insight on our world through the sixth sense of the global animal collective. We expect that the field will soon reach a transformational point where these studies do more than inform us about particular species of animals, but allow the animals to teach us about the world. Big-data animal tracking. The red trajectory shows how studies can now track animals with unprecedented detail, allowing researchers to predict the causes and consequences of movements, and animals to become environmental sensors. Multisensor tracking tags monitor movement, behavior, physiology, and environmental context. Geo- and biosciences merge now using a multitude of remote-sensing data. Understanding how social and interspecific interactions affect movement is the next big frontier. Moving animals connect our world, spreading pollen, seeds, nutrients, and parasites as they go about the their daily lives. Recent integration of high-resolution Global Positioning System and other sensors into miniaturized tracking tags has dramatically improved our ability to describe animal movement. This has created opportunities and challenges that parallel big data transformations in other fields and has rapidly advanced animal ecology and physiology. New analytical approaches, combined with remotely sensed or modeled environmental information, have opened up a host of new questions on the causes of movement and its consequences for individuals, populations, and ecosystems. Simultaneous tracking of multiple animals is leading to new insights on species interactions and, scaled up, may enable distributed monitoring of both animals and our changing environment.


The abundance of anchovy Engraulis japonicus larvae, >20 mum ciliates, copepod eggs and nauplii, and microzooplankton herbivorous activity were studied in the Yellow Sea in June 2000. Anchovy juveniles and larvae were found in only 6 of the 19 stations sampled. The ciliate communities were dominated by 2 species: Laboea strobila and Strombidium compressum. In the surface waters, the abundance of L. strobila ranged between 0 and 560 ind. l(-1). S. compressum only appeared at Stns 15 to 18 (20 to 3300 ind. l(-1)). L. strobila was found mainly in the top 20 m. The abundance of L. strobila was less than 50 ind, l(-1) in waters deeper than 25 m. S, compressum showed subsurface abundance peaks at the salinity abnormality. Tintinnids occurred occasionally with abundance lower than 100 ind. l(-1), The total ciliate abundance fell in the range of 40 to 3420 ind. l(-1). The ciliate biomass in the surface water and the water column ranged between 0,15 and 6.76 mug C l(-1) and 0.4 and 134.4 mg C m(-2), respectively, In the surface waters, the abundance of copepod eggs and nauplii ranged from 0,3 to 3.1 and 1,1 to 15.6 ind, l(-1), respectively. The average abundance of copepod eggs and nauplii in 4 depth (0, 5, 10 and 20 m) fell in the range of 0.2 to 2.8 and 1.0 to 29.4 ind. l(-1), respectively. As a food item of the E. japonicus post-larvae, the abundance of copepod nauplii and eggs appeared to be low. The abundance peaks of ciliate and E, japonicus post-larvae coincided. Although not found in the gut of E, japonicus post-larvae, aloricate ciliates might be ingested by first-feeding anchovy larvae, preventing initial starvation and prolonging the time to irreversible starvation. On the basis of dilution experiments with positive microzooplankton grazing rates, microzooplankton grazed at rates of 0 to 0.61 d(-1). Grazing pressure of microzooplankton on chlorophyll a standing stock (P-i) and potential chlorophyll a primary production (P-p) were 17 to 46% and 35 to 109% d(-1), respectively.


Simulated car races have been used for a long time as an environment where car controlling algorithms can be tested; they are an interesting testbed for all kinds of algorithms, including metaheuristics such as evolutionary algorithms. However, the challenge in the evolutionary algorithms is to design a reliable and effective evaluation process for the individuals that eventually translates into good solutions to the car racing problem: finding a controller that is able to win in a wide range of tracks and with a good quantity of opponents. Evaluating individual car controllers involves not only the design of a proper fitness function representing how good the car controller would be in a competitive race, but also the selection of the best solution for the optimization problem being solved; this decision might not be easy when uncertainty is present in the problem environment; in this case, weather and track conditions as well as unpredictable behavior of other drivers. Creating a methodology for the automatic design of the controller of an autonomous driver for a car racing simulator such as TORCS is an optimization problem which offers all these challenges. Thus, in this paper we describe an analysis and some proposals to improve the evaluation of optimized fuzzy drivers for TORCS over previous attempts to do so. It builds on preliminary results obtained in previous papers as a baseline and aims to obtain a more competitive autonomous driver via redesign of the fitness evaluation procedure; to this end, two different fitness functions are studied in several experiments, along with a novel race-based approach for the selection of the best individual in the evolution.


After the successful release of the first Hunger Games film in 2012, the film's distributor, Lionsgate, was preparing to release the next movie in the series, Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Fan expectations had grown after the success of the first film, and Lionsgate faced the challenge of keeping moviegoers interested and engaged in another Hunger Games movie. In an era marked by the rising popularity of digital and social media, Lionsgate knew that attracting fans to a sequel meant pushing the boundaries of traditional marketing tactics.
Digital brand storytelling is about using digital media in a holistic way to tell a brand story and build excitement for an audience. Brand storytelling seeks to make a connection with the audience by giving them an emotional experience that resonates with them. While Lionsgate was aware that traditional marketing would need to be blended with a digital campaign to bring in moviegoers, it also needed to strike a careful balance between the two and choose the appropriate platforms to tell a cohesive story. Should Lionsgate launch a brand storytelling campaign to appeal to fans? Lionsgate's comparatively small marketing team gathered to brainstorm about how to execute such a campaign and position the film for another big success.


Measurement of the outlet particulate concentration on pressure-type bag filters, whether intermittent or continuous, has been avoided in South Africa as cumbersome and possibly inaccurate. A system based on the requirements of the US EPA's method 5D was however recently designed and installed on three pressure-type reverse air filters serving ferro-chrome electric arc furnaces in order to allow comparison with the legal emission concentration limits for this type of furnace. This paper reports on the design considerations and design process of this system.


Promoting a "broad view of health" is an important objective of the healthy cities movement, including recognition of the powerful role that social relations and living conditions play in the health of community members. This article presents a quantitative approach to assessing consensus and change in ideas about health determinants among local coalition members. A ranking of five determinants of health in the form of paired comparisons was included in a survey of coalition members of 20 local healthy communities projects in California. Findings revealed conflicting views among members in the planning year, with some respondents emphasizing the role of social factors and living conditions and others emphasizing the role of health care and lifestyle decisions. Data collected at the end of the funded intervention showed movement toward a broader view of health, with greater consensus on this view in select communities.


Psychophysical experimentation was performed on the perceived contrast of color images and its effect on observer preference. Goals of this research included the following: investigation into the roles of image lightness, chroma and sharpness manipulations on perceived image contrast; modeling the perception of image contrast with physical image parameters; the relation of perceived contrast of an image to the most preferred version of that image; and the generation of a large scale image contrast data set for later use in image difference/quality metric development. These goals were undertaken by administration of soft copy paired-comparison experiments of perceived image contrast and observer preference. These tests were performed over four months, by more than seventy observers. Perceived image contrast was determined to be scalable with respect to lightness, chroma, and sharpness manipulations. Perceived image contrast scales were image independent between five pictorial images. Significant contrast differences between images of identical white and black points were perceived, demonstrating that image white and black points do not solely determine image contrast. Significant image contrast differences were found between full color images and their achromatic versions, thus demonstrating that perceived image contrast is a function of image chroma information. It was also shown that the perceived contrast of achromatic images is higher than perceived contrast of very low chroma images. Perceived image contrast was empirically modeled using physical parameters of the images. Values based on image lightness, chroma, and sharpness information were used to model the perception of image contrast in a relative and stand-alone sense. In Reproduction Versus Preferred (RVP) contrast modeling, image parameters were taken relative to the most preferred version of the image. In Single Image Perceived (SIP) contrast modeling, parameters of single images were fit to scales of perceived contrast. RVP contrast modeling illustrated that image contrast is perceived relative to the most preferred version of that image. SIP contrast analysis indicated differences in perceived contrast were perceived image independent, and reinforced perception of image contrast relative to the most preferred version of an image. This concept of contrast perception relative to the preferred image indicates image contrast can be described without knowledge of an original scene in the image capture sense or knowledge of an original image in the image reproduction sense.


In this paper, we are interested in the analysis of sequential data and we propose an original framework based on Formal Concept Analysis (FCA). For that, we introduce sequential pattern structures, an original specification of pattern structures for dealing with sequential data. Pattern structures are used in FCA for dealing with complex data such as intervals or graphs. Here they are adapted to sequences. For that, we introduce a subsumption operation for sequence comparison, based on subsequence matching. Then, a projection, i.e. a kind of data reduction of sequential pattern structures, is suggested in order to increase the efficiency of the approach. Finally, we discuss an application to a dataset including patient trajectories (the motivation of this work), which is a sequential dataset and can be processed with the introduced framework. This research work provides a new and efficient extension of FCA to deal with complex (not binary) data, which can be an alternative to the analysis of sequential datasets.


Land surface temperature (LST) is a key indicator of the Earth's surface energy and is used in a range of hydrological, meteorological, and climatological applications. As needed for most modeling and climate analysis applications, LST products that are generated from polar-orbiting meteorological satellite sensors have spatial resolutions from several hundred meters to several kilometers and have (quasi) daily temporal resolution. These sensors include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR), the earth observing system moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS), and the forthcoming visible/infrared imager radiometer suite (VIIRS) series, to be flown onboard the National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (VIIRS flights begin approximately 2009). Generally, split-window algorithms are used with these sensors to produce LST products. In this paper, we evaluated nine published LST algorithms (or, in some cases, their slight variants) to determine those that are most suitable for generating a consistent LST climate data record across these satellite sensors and platforms. A consistent set of moderate-resolution atmospheric transmission simulations were used in determining the appropriate coefficients for each algorithm and sensor (AVHRR, MODIS, and VIIRS) combination. Algorithm accuracy was evaluated over different view zenith angles, surface-atmosphere temperature combinations, and emissivity errors. Both simulated and actual remote sensing data were used in the evaluation. We found that the nine heritage algorithms can effectively be collapsed into three groups of highly similar performance. We also demonstrated the efficacy of an atmospheric path-length correction term that is added to the heritage algorithms. We conclude that the algorithms depending on both the mean and difference of band emissivities (Group 1 in our nomenclature) are most accurate and stable over a wide range of conditions, provided that the emissivity can be well estimated a priori . Where the emissivity cannot be well estimated, the Group 3 algorithms (which do not depend on the emissivity difference) modified with the path-length correction term perform better.


Bees do it, birds do it, and humans do it too – they dance. But what is the function of dance? The answer to this question is not trivial and has kept researchers busy for decades. It is certainly premature to conclude that the puzzle around the signalling quality of dance has yet been resolved, but there is corroborating evidence for the assertion that individuals communicate aspects of their condition as potential mating partners through dance movements. Evolutionary psychologists argue that dance conveys similar aspects of an individual's quality as it has been reported for facial and body morphology. Like in animals it has been stated that men display elaborate dance movements that inform about strength and vigor, and may therefore be regarded as health cues. Women have indeed reported preferences for male dance movements that are physically demanding; whether dance movements also inform about male personality is yet unclear. The present thesis reports three studies on women's perception of men's dance movements, showing that i) women spend higher visual attention to "good" male dancers as compared to "bad" male dancers, ii) dance conveys aspects of male physical strength – a relationship that is absent in women, and iii) although male personality is not accurately assessed from dance movements, women tend to prefer dancers who signal low neuroticism to them. Men's dance movements were motion-captured and applied onto a featureless, gender-neutral, virtual character (avatar). In a series of visual perception studies women's visual attention, attractiveness, and personality assessments were obtained and related to measures of strength and self-reported personality of male dancers. Together the results support the hypothesis that women are visually sensitive to variation in male dance and tend to prefer those dancers who signal qualities, which may be beneficial in pursuing mate-related motives. Strength seems to be one of these features, but personality information does not seem to be encoded in male dance movements. However, the quality of certain movements may lead women to perceive them in a way that causes them to exhibit little preference for moves they suppose to be linked to male neuroticism. A detailed mathematical and biomechanical breakdown of objective movement characteristics and their relationships with perception is clearly an avenue for future research.


Abstract—It can be frequently observed that the data arising in our environment have a hierarchical or a nested structure attached with the data. Multilevel modelling is a modern approach to handle this kind of data. When multilevel modelling is combined with a binary response, the estimation methods get complex in nature and the usual techniques are derived from quasi-likelihood method. The estimation methods which are compared in this study are, marginal quasi-likelihood (order 1 & order 2) (MQL1, MQL2) and penalized quasi-likelihood (order 1 & order 2) (PQL1, PQL2). A statistical model is of no use if it does not reflect the given dataset. Therefore, checking the adequacy of the fitted model through a goodness-of-fit (GOF) test is an essential stage in any modelling procedure. However, prior to usage, it is also equally important to confirm that the GOF test performs well and is suitable for the given model. This study assesses the suitability of the GOF test developed for binary response multilevel models with respect to the method used in model estimation. An extensive set of simulations was conducted using MLwiN (v 2.19) with varying number of clusters, cluster sizes and intra cluster correlations. The test maintained the desirable Type-I error for models estimated using PQL2 and it failed for almost all the combinations of MQL. Power of the test was adequate for most of the combinations in all estimation methods except MQL1. Moreover, models were fitted using the four methods to a real-life dataset and performance of the test was compared for each model.


Biological membranes constitute a source of inspiration for making supramolecular assemblies which can be used in the design of biomimetic sensors. At the same time, the concept of using biomolecules as an elementary structure to develop self-assembled entities has received considerable attention. More particularly, the ability of amphiphilic molecules like lipids, to spontaneously organise into bilayers, is suitable to achieve biomimetic membrane models. The potential of two-dimensional molecular self-assemblies is clearly illustrated by Langmuir monolayers of lipids formed at an air/water interface, which can be used as models to acquire knowledge about the molecular recognition process occurring in biological membranes. Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) technology, based on the transfer of this interfacial monomolecular film onto a solid support, allows building up lamellar lipid stack, with an accurate control of thickness and molecular organisation. This technique offers the possibility to prepare ultrathin layers suitable for biomolecule immobilisation. We are presenting herein an overview of work performed in our group that sheds light on the formation of biomimetic LB membranes associating protein in a well-defined orientation. Two points will be addressed: investigations of protein/lipid interactions using lipid monolayers as membrane models and biosensing applications. The objectives are to highlight advantages of interfacial Langmuir monolayers and supported Langmuir-Blodgett films to investigate molecular interactions between biomolecules and lipid membrane components or to elaborate biomimetic membranes as sensing layers, respectively. The present paper also draws a general picture of non-conventional methods for biomolecule immobilisation and their applications for biochip developments. The technologies presented are based either on original solid supports or on innovative immobilisation processes. First, "Macromolecules to PDMS transfer" technique relying on the direct entrapment of macromolecules spots during PDMS polymerisation is proposed as an alternative for the easy and simple PDMS surface modification. Then, the electro-addressing of biomolecule-aryl diazonium adducts at the surface of conducting biochips will be presented and shown to be an interesting alternative to immobilisation processes based on surface functionalisation.


Literature on network formation typically assumes that people create and remove relations as to maximize their outcome in the network. It is mostly neglected that people might also care about the outcomes of others when creating and removing links. In the current paper, we develop an experiment to investigate whether people show preferences that involve the outcomes of others during network formation. We find varying evidence for effects of social motives in the settings we compare in the experiment. In the final part of the paper, we discuss some explanations for these findings.


AbstractThis thesis examines the changes in managers' construction of their identities during the last two decades of social and organizational change. It is based around a detailed interpretative study of middle managers in three companies, Carlux, Larts and Nylons. The three in-depth case studies were drawn from a wider sample and some additional data were also drawn from this wider sample. The thesis critically examines Gowler and Legge's 1983/1996 model of managers' construction of the meaning of management, and argues that the model is is need of extension - on the one hand, to add emphasis to dimensions of gender and power, and on the other, to take into account the changes in organising process which, it is often argued, are moving from modem to postmodern forms. A model, the Management in Three Movements Model, is generated from critical analysis of the relevant literature to suggest a move at three levels - at a structural level from the differentiation of hierarchy to the dedifferentiation of networking; at a representational level from the rationality of accountability to the enchantment of seduction; and at a behavioural level from the commodification of achievement to the consumption of commitment. Additionally a model of modes of production of managerial subjectivity is proposed, identifying five modes incorporation, of disciplined subjectivity, subjective identity, resistance and autonomy. The case study data are then used to interrogate the models and three key factors are observed to be influencing and interrupting the shift from modem to postmodern - managerial narcissism; gender, particularly masculinity; and forms of resistance. Through analysis of the data, four archetypal modes of narcissism are identified; Clegg et al's power/resistance matrix is modified; and the model of modes of resistance is illustrated at work by mapping aspects of the data onto it. Overall, whilst the shift in conditions of organizational functioning has undoubtedly occurred since Gowler and Legge's investigation, it is argued that this shift has not fully transformed managerial identities from modem to postmodern forms. Using poststructuralist feminist analysis, it is further argued that identity is never fixed into a form of being, but is always to some extent fluid and becoming, and that methodologies now need to be developed which both recognise and are sensitive to these qualities in data, and allow them to em


Apoptosis, a major form of cell death in the immune system, is characterized by cell shrinkage, chromatin condensation, and cleavage into nucleosomal fragments. Apoptosis may be the mechanism for the elimination of autoreactive and unselected CD4+ CD8+ thymocytes in the thymus. A large number of diverse agents are capable of inducing apoptosis in immature thymocytes. Rat thymocytes were treated with etoposide, a DNA topoisomerase II reactive agent, or dexamethasone, a glucocorticoid, and separated on discontinuous Percoll gradients. We have identified and isolated a transitional preapoptotic population of thymocytes that exhibited early morphologic and biochemical changes associated with apoptosis. These preapoptotic cells were intermediate in size and density between normal and apoptotic thymocytes and exhibited a decreased surface expression of both CD4 and CD8 molecules compared to control thymocytes. On ultrastructural examination, they were shown to possess sharply defined clumps of condensed chromatin abutting onto the nuclear membrane. These morphologic changes, the first detectable signs of apoptosis, occurred prior to the internucleosomal cleavage of DNA, often regarded as the biochemical hallmark of apoptosis. Nucleosomal fragments of 180 to 200 base pairs or multiples thereof were, however, detected following subsequent dramatic changes in the nuclear structure of these preapoptotic cells that resulted in morphology typical of apoptosis. These results suggest that early critical events in apoptosis precede internucleosomal cleavage of DNA.


In order to keep subscribers up‐to‐date with the latest developments in their field, John Wiley & Sons are providing a current awareness service in each issue of the journal. The bibliography contains newly published material in the field of diabetes/metabolism. Each bibliography is divided into 26 sections: 1 Reviews; 2 General; 3 Genetics; 4 Epidemiology; 5 Immunology; 6 Obesity; 7 Prediction and Prevention; 8 Intervention: a) General; b) Care; c) Drug Therapy; d)Economics; e) Gene therapy; f) Nursing; g) Nutrition; h) Surgery; i) Transplantation; 9 Pathology and Complications: a) General; b) Cardiovascular; c) Eye disease; d) Gestational and fetal; e) Neurological; f) Podiatrical; g) Renal; 10 Endocrinology & Metabolism; 11 Experimental Studies; 12 Diagnosis and Techniques. Within each section, articles are listed in alphabetical order with respect to author


There is widespread recognition of political economy factors that underline 'inclusive innovation'. Key among these include the trio of states, markets and society; the conditions that lead to technology transfer, adoption and finally diffusion in a new context; the corresponding creation of indigenous capacity with participation from local actors and stakeholders; and socially inclusive outcomes that can thrive from complementarities of technology and social innovation. Building on these ideas from the IDS 50th Anniversary Conference in July 2016, this article links them with the Heeks Ladder of Inclusive Innovation to discuss the prospects for further inclusive innovation and development.


We consider estimation and inference in panel data models with additive unobserved individual specific heterogeneity in a high-dimensional setting. The setting allows the number of time-varying regressors to be larger than the sample size. To make informative estimation and inference feasible, we require that the overall contribution of the time-varying variables after eliminating the individual specific heterogeneity can be captured by a relatively small number of the available variables whose identities are unknown. This restriction allows the problem of estimation to proceed as a variable selection problem. Importantly, we treat the individual specific heterogeneity as fixed effects which allows this heterogeneity to be related to the observed time-varying variables in an unspecified way and allows that this heterogeneity may differ for all individuals. Within this framework, we provide procedures that give uniformly valid inference over a fixed subset of parameters in the canonical linear fixed effects model and over coefficients on a fixed vector of endogenous variables in panel data instrumental variable models with fixed effects and many instruments. We present simulation results in support of the theoretical developments and illustrate the use of the methods in an application aimed at estimating the effect of gun prevalence on crime rates.


SUMMARY Craniofacial anomalies can arise from both genetic and environmental factors, including prenatal hypoxia. Recent clinical evidence correlates hypoxia to craniofacial malformations. However, the mechanisms by which hypoxia mediates these defects are not yet understood. We examined the cellular mechanisms underlying malformations induced by hypoxia using a chicken (Gallus gallus) embryo model. Eggs were incubated in either hypoxic (7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17 or 19% O2) or normoxic (21% O2) conditions. Embryos were photographed for morphological analysis at days 3–6. For analysis of skeletal development, 13-day embryos were cleared and stained with alcian blue and alizarin red for cartilage and bone, respectively. Quantitative analysis of facial shape variation was performed on images of embryos via geometric morphometrics. Early-stage embryos (day 2) were analyzed for apoptosis via whole-mount and section TUNEL staining and immunostaining for cleaved caspase-3, whereas later-stage embryos (days 4–6) were sectioned in paraffin for analysis of cell proliferation (BrdU), apoptosis (TUNEL) and metabolic stress (phospho-AMPK). Results demonstrate that survival is reduced in a dose-dependent manner. Hypoxic embryos displayed a spectrum of craniofacial anomalies, from mild asymmetry and eye defects to more severe frontonasal and cephalic anomalies. Skull bone development was delayed in hypoxic embryos, with some skeletal defects observed. Morphometric analysis showed facial shape variation relative to centroid size and age in hypoxic groups. Hypoxia disrupted cell proliferation and, in early-stage embryos, caused apoptosis of neural crest progenitor cells. Hypoxic embryos also displayed an increased metabolic stress response. These results indicate that hypoxia during early embryonic craniofacial development might induce cellular oxidative stress, leading to apoptosis of the neural crest progenitor cells that are crucial to normal craniofacial morphogenesis.


Abstract. The small size of Early Triassic marine organisms has important implications for the ecological and environmental pressures operating during and after the end-Permian mass extinction. However, this "Lilliput Effect" has only been documented quantitatively in a few invertebrate clades. Moreover, the discovery of Early Triassic gastropod specimens larger than any previously known has called the extent and duration of the Early Triassic size reduction into question. Here, we document and compare Permian-Triassic body size trends globally in eight marine clades (gastropods, bivalves, calcitic and phosphatic brachiopods, ammonoids, ostracods, conodonts, and foraminiferans). Our database contains maximum size measurements for 11,224 specimens and 2,743 species spanning the Late Permian through the Middle to Late Triassic. The Permian/Triassic boundary (PTB) shows more size reduction among species than any other interval. For most higher taxa, maximum and median size among species decreased dramatically from the latest Permian (Changhsingian) to the earliest Triassic (Induan), and then increased during Olenekian (late Early Triassic) and Anisian (early Middle Triassic) time. During the Induan, the only higher taxon much larger than its long-term mean size was the ammonoids; they increased significantly in median size across the PTB, a response perhaps related to their comparatively rapid diversity recovery after the end-Permian extinction. The loss of large species in multiple clades across the PTB resulted from both selective extinction of larger species and evolution of surviving lineages toward smaller sizes. The within-lineage component of size decrease suggests that only part of the size decrease can be related to the end-Permian kill mechanism; in addition, Early Triassic environmental conditions or ecological pressures must have continued to favor small body size as well. After the end-Permian extinction, size decrease occurred across ecologically and physiologically disparate clades, but this size reduction was limited to the first part of the Early Triassic (Induan). Nektonic habitat or physiological buffering capacity may explain the contrast of Early Triassic size increase and diversification in ammonoids versus size reduction and slow recovery in benthic clades.


Clock synchronization protocols are very widely used in IP-based
networks. The Network Time Protocol (NTP) has been commonly deployed
for many years, and the last few years have seen an increasingly rapid
deployment of the Precision Time Protocol (PTP). As time- sensitive
applications evolve, clock accuracy requirements are becoming
increasingly stringent, requiring the time synchronization protocols
to provide high accuracy. This memo describes a multi-path approach to
PTP and NTP over IP networks, allowing the protocols to run
concurrently over multiple communication paths between the master and
slave clocks, without modifying these protocols. The multi-path
approach can significantly contribute to clock accuracy, security and
fault tolerance. The multi-path approach that is presented in this
document enables backward compatibility with nodes that do not support
the multi-path functionality.


We address the complex problem of associating several wearable devices with the spatio-temporal region of their wearers in video during crowded mingling events using only acceleration and proximity. This is a particularly important first step for multi-sensor behavior analysis using video and wearable technologies, where the privacy of the participants must be maintained. Most state-of-the-art works using these two modalities perform their association manually, which becomes practically unfeasible as the number of people in the scene increases. We proposed an automatic association method based on a hierarchical linear assignment optimization, which exploits the spatial context of the scene. Moreover, we present extensive experiments on matching from 2 to more than 69 acceleration and video streams, showing significant improvements over a random baseline in a real world crowded mingling scenario. We also show the effectiveness of our method for incomplete or missing streams (up to a certain limit) and analyze the trade-off between length of the streams and number of participants. Finally, we provide an analysis of failure cases, showing that deep understanding of the social actions within the context of the event is necessary to further improve performance on this intriguing task.


The fatty acids were studied of the total lipid extracts of mature liver flukes Fasciola gigantica from the bile ducts of Nigerian zebu cattle. The high content of saturated fatty acids, which amounted to more than 54% of the total fatty acids, conferred a high level of saturation on these parasites. This was brought about by a general increase in the values of palmitic acid. The results are discussed in connection with the parasite-host relationship.


Current Systems-On-Chip (SoC) execute applications that demand extensive parallel processing. Networks-On-Chip (NoC) provide a structured way of realizing interconnections on silicon, and obviate the limitations of bus-based solution. NoCs can have regular or ad hoc topologies, and functional validation is essential to assess their correctness and performance. In this paper, we present a flexible emulation environment implemented on an FPGA that is suitable to explore, evaluate and compare a wide range of NoC solutions with a very limited effort. We also present an automated way to perform NoC features exploration using the interaction HW/SW on an FPGA. Our experimental results show a speed-up of four orders of magnitude with respect to cycleaccurate HDL simulation, while retaining cycle accuracy. With our emulation framework, designers can explore and optimize a various range of solutions, as well as characterize quickly performance figures.


Low-lying small island developing states are threatened by inundation from rising sea levels caused by anthropogenic global warming. Islanders face the prospect of forcible relocation without protection under international law and with few resources for resettlement. They are entitled to compensation for climate-related loss and damage in the interests of climate justice. The present article discusses the history of proposals for an international compensation mechanism under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change led by the Alliance of Small Island States. These calls led to the establishment of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage Associated with Climate Change Impacts in 2013. Several proposals have been put forward about how a mechanism should operate and achieve its objectives. I argue that climate justice will be promoted through compensation for loss and damage. An international compensation fund offers a relatively simple and ethically satisfactory way of acknowledging the physical loss and psychological damage resulting from climate change and from the extensive violation of islanders' human rights.


Twenty-five goat farms were surveyed to gain data and information about population, farming practices, goat performances and market prospect. Data were then analyzed to compare the prospective of dairy goat farm in compare to meat-types as a livestock enterprise suitable for small-scale or part time farmers. Three dairy goat farms were then selected to define milk production, quality and marketing. Samples of fresh milk were taken from each farm and analyzed for microbial pathogens and physical characteristics. Results found from the 25-selected farms, there were 14 farms (56%) raising meat-type goat and 11 dairy goat farms (44%), but the total population of dairy goat of about 395 animals was much higher than that of meat type goat of 200 animals. Each dairy goat farm kept about 35.9 animals, while meat-type goats were only 14.3 animals. Dairy goat farm has better prospect in compare to meat-types as an alternative livestock enterprise suitable for small-scale farmer or part-time livestock producer in Payakumbuh region. The mean values of total plate counts and Coliforms were found in the range of 8.04-8.46 and 0.72-4.25 log CFU/ml, respectively, while Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli were not detected. The physical characteristics of fresh goat milk from Payakumbuh met the national standard. The potential market for goat milk and higher price of bucks made the farmer to be able to increase their farm scale and to raise their goats more intensively in order to achieve optimum production performances and incomes.


A photonic crystal design that significantly enhances the absorption of tandem thin-film solar cells composed by amorphous and microcrystalline silicon (i.e., a-Si:H/μc-Si:H tandem cell) is proposed. The top junction with a-Si:H is nanopatterned as a one-dimensional photonic crystal. Considering the photocurrent matching, we optimally design the junction thickness and the configuration of the nanopattern; moreover, both transverse electric and magnetic incidences with various illuminating angles are taken into account. Calculations by rigorous coupled-wave approach and finite-element method show that the nanophotonic crystal design can improve the absorption and output photocurrent by over 20%, which shows very low sensitivity to the incident polarization. Moreover, the proposed structure is able to sustain the performance for a very wide angle ranges from 0° to ~80°.