Video self-modeling (VSM) is a type of intervention that has been developed to assist students in viewing themselves successfully in a wide variety of domains. Previous research regarding VSM states that it is beneficial to children with autism spectrum disorder and has helped them improve functioning in many settings. Specifically, VSM is useful to children with autism spectrum disorder because it minimizes attentional and hearing requirements, and allows the child to see themselves as they could be rather than as they currently are. Video modeling avoids reliance on social interactions or the presence of a therapist to promote learning. This reduction in the importance of social interactions may be particularly significant for children who struggle in social settings. Finally, motivation for watching television in general might increase interest in watching the video. The present study was designed to analyze the effects of VSM on children with autism spectrum disorder in an academic setting. The present study added to the literature by allowing classroom teachers to choose the area of academic behavior, thereby increasing social relevance. The present study examined the effects of VSM on children with autism spectrum disorder within a functional interrelated classroom. Specifically, the present study examined the effects of the implementation of VSM within the functional interrelated classroom and the potential it has to enable significant positive changes in on-task behavior and appropriate transitions. The study also examined the maintenance of on-task behavior and appropriate transitions within implementation of the VSM research. Also explored were the teachers' perceptions of on-task behavior and appropriate transitions through surveys that were administered before implementation of VSM and upon completion of VSM. The sample of the current study was comprised of two participants who were enrolled within the functional interrelated classroom and diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The implementation of VSM within an academic setting proved to be successful and showed significant results in increasing on-task behavior with Student 1. Maintenance was also shown with this student. No significance was found with the Student 2 and increasing appropriate transitions; however an anomaly was discovered within one of the days VSM was implemented. With the removal of this anomaly, significance was found with the second student and increasing appropriate transitions. Despite the increase in appropriate transitions, maintenance was not established with the second student. The teachers' perceptions from the administered survey revealed a significant increase in on-task behavior and appropriate transitions with the implementation of the VSM research. When investigating approaches appropriate for students with ASD, it is important to remember that some progress is significant. Implementation of VSM revealed progress with both students with ASD, at varying levels. It is also important to stress that small change for students with ASD may not occur without some difficulty, due to general resistance to changes in their schedules. Over the course of the seven weeks of implementation, small change was observed and can be considered a success in their academic setting.


The helpful effect of a cream ointment prepared from the leaves of Tephrosia vogelii Hook F., was tested for the treatment of bovine dermatophilosis in four local cows of the Sokoto Gudali breed and two 50% Holstein Friesian crosses in Jos, Plateau State Nigeria. All the selected animals used in this study were naturally infected by the Dermatophilus congolensis organism. The selected animals all showed established, oozing, and hard crusty lesions on their skins, typical of dermatophilus lesions. All the animals had various degrees of infections ranging from mild to severe, with the lesions located on different parts of the skin. Six of the animals were selected for the experimental treatment with the prepared ointment made from the leaves of T. vogelii , while the rest of the infected animals in the herd were kept untreated as the control. A cream ointment was prepared from the leaves of T. vogelii for topical application on the skin lesions of the affected animals. The ointment was applied liberally on the lesions every other day. The crusts on the skins of the affected animals were observed to start falling off from the third day in the local animals, and on the sixth day in the crosses, following the first application of the ointment. Complete healing and new hair growth was observed within the period of 4 to 8 weeks. The affected areas of the skins became completely healed and normal without any problem in all the affected animals. No healing or improvement was observed in the control group that was left untreated


In this thesis structural optimization of castings and thermomechanical analysis of castings are studied.In paper I an optimization algorithm is created by using Matlab. The algorithm is linked to the commercial FE solver Abaqus by using Python script. The optimization algorithm uses the successive response surfaces methodology (SRSM) to create global response surfaces. It is shown that including residual stresses in structural optimization of castings yields an optimal shape that differs significantly from the one obtained when residual stresses are excluded.In paper II the optimization algorithm is expanded to using neural networks. It is tested on some typical bench mark problems and shows very promising results. Combining paper I and II the response surfaces can be either analytical functions, both linear and non-linear, or neural networks. The optimization is then performed by using sequential linear programming or by using a zero-order method called Complex. This is all gathered in a package called StuG-OPT.In paper III and IV focus is on the thermomechanical problem when residual stresses are calculated. In paper III a literature review is performed and some numerical simulations are performed to see where numerical simulations can be used in the industry today. In paper IV simulations are compared to real tests. Several stress lattices are casted and the residual stresses are measured. Simulations are performed by using Magmasoft and Abaqus. In Magmasoft a J2-plasticity model is used and in Abaqus two simulations are performed using either J2-plasticity or the "Cast Iron Plasticity" available in Abaqus that takes into account the different behavior in tension and compression for grey cast iron.


This thesis examines the elements of the Gothic tradition in John Fowles's fiction and traces the transformation of the male protagonist throughout the entire range of Fowles's novels. The work also investigates the relationship between the discourses of the literary Gothic and Jungian psychoanalysis and argues in favour of a strong conceptual link between them. Taking advantage of the fact that John Fowles was interested in Carl Jung's ideas, the thesis argues that Jungian psychology throws light on the evolution of Fowles's texts and reveals that each hero performs a phase in a distinct pattern of development and maturation as conceptualised by Jung (Fowles, 1998: 371). In addition, Jungian discourse interacts with the Gothic tradition and complements the presence of elements of the Gothic discourse in Fowles's novels. The thesis inscribes Fowles's dialectical approach to writing into the history of the literary Gothic tradition as well as into the scope of postmodern texts.

Central to the thesis theoretically is the Jungian concept of individuation. Apart from the separate quests in individual novels, Fowles's fiction can be defined as displaying one continuous individuation process. The Fowlesian male character takes part in one long meta-quest which begins with his being too hedonistic and immature (Clegg, Nicholas), then becoming rational and conscious (Charles, David), and finally reaching a state of 'synthesis' in which the two parts of the psyche are reconciled (Daniel Martin). In the first two stages, the forces which become repressed as a result of the over-development of one of the sides of the psyche, tend to produce a Gothic effect in relation to the male character as they fight for the right to be accepted and recognised. In the last phase of his writing career, Fowles shifts his focus to the process of female individuation. In 'A maggot' the writer's attention finally switches from the masculine experiences and pains of development to interest in female versions of the quest for knowledge.


An understanding of the relative stability of surface facets is crucial to develop predictive models of catalyst activity and to fabricate catalysts with a controlled morphology. In this work, we present a systematic density functional theory study of the effect of lattice strain and CO environment on the surface formation energies of Cu, Pt, and Ni. First, we show that both compressive and tensile lattice strains favor the formation of stepped versus low-index terraces such as (111) and (100). Then, we investigate the effect of the CO environment using configurations of CO at various coverages, determined using a greedy, systematic approach, inspired by forward stepwise feature selection. We find that the CO environment favors stepped facets on Ni, Cu, and Pt. These trends are illustrated with the corresponding equilibrium Wulff shapes at various strains and CO pressures. In general, the surface energies of the studied transition metals are highly sensitive to strain and CO coverage, which should be cons...


: Numerous benefits of cloud computing for middle and small-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been documented in the literature. However, existing research often focuses on cost saving, it is still not clear whether and how cloud computing creates value for SMEs. This study investigates the mechanism through which cloud computing creates value for SMEs based on multiple cases of Internet-based SMEs from China. More specifically, we suggest that three cloud computing related capabilities (i.e., flexibility, integration, and ubiquity capability) are most critical for SMEs to generate value from cloud computing and cloud computing enhances SMEs' performance by facilitating their organizational agility.


Abstract Single sized PbS nanocrystals are selectively deposited from the gas phase onto photoresist patterned substrates at atmospheric pressure, forming patterned nanocrystal thin films. Selective deposition is obtained by means of electrostatic control of the charged nanocrystals in the gas phase. The nanocrystal deposition process is characterised by low cost and high parallelism. A lift off process is introduced which removes the photoresist without removing the nanocrystal film in the interested area. Thus, further processing can follow the nanocrystal film deposition. During the deposition of nanocrystals out of the gas phase a preferred deposition into resist openings, i.e. onto the substrate surface is observed. An electrostatic model is developed to explain this focusing effect yielding smaller line width compared with the resist pattern.


The mushroom growth of devices that require connectivity has led to an increase in the demand for spectrum resources as well as high data rates. 5G has introduced numerous solutions to counter both problems, which are inherently interconnected. Distributed antenna systems (DASs) help in expanding the coverage area of the network by reducing the distance between radio access unit (RAU) and the user equipment. DASs that use multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology allow devices to operate using multiple antennas, which lead to spectrum efficiency. Recently, the concept of virtual MIMO (VMIMO) has gained popularity. VMIMO allows single antenna nodes to cooperate and form a cluster resulting in a transmission flow that corresponds to MIMO technology. In this chapter, we discuss MIMO-assisted DAS and its utility in forming a cooperative network between devices in proximity to enhance spectral efficiency. We further amalgamate VMIMO-assisted DAS and network coding (NC) to quantify end-to-end transmission success. NC is deemed to be particularly helpful in energy constrained environments, where the devices are powered by battery. We conclude by highlighting the utility of NC-based DAS for several applications that involve single antenna empowered sensors or devices.


In connection with an examination of lenses to be used in airplane topographical mapping, a careful study has been made of the distortion of a large number of high-grade commercial photographic objectives. The apparatus designed for the measurement of distortion for infinite or finite object distance is described. The data show the distortion of the symmetrical anastigmat when the object is at an infinite distance, and also at unit magnification. At unit magnification, with a symmetrical lens, there should be no distortion, but tests of nominally symmetrical anastigmats show sufficient distortion to affect the performance of the lens. This distortion arises from lack of complete symmetry in the lens construction. Data for the distortion of the unsymmetrical anastigmat (Tessar type) are presented. The results show that rather large variations exist among individual lenses of nominally the same construction. The case in which the axis of the lens is bent, a result of slight prismatic action of the system, is discussed, and a method for determining the magnitude of tilt is described.


Although direct taxation falls within the competence of Member States, the latter must none the less exercise that competence consistently with Community law. This phrase probably has been used by the European Court of Justice in nearly each case where the national direct tax rule was questioned on the basis of the Fundamental Freedoms of the EC Treaty. Having no intention to raise any doubts as to the soundness and validity of the aforesaid phrase, one may ask another what are in fact those requirements of Community law that Member States should follow when exercising their competence in the area of direct taxation. Thus, being inspired by this question the author in this article first discusses the impact of the Fundamental Freedoms to the national direct taxation, then reveals the concepts of indirect discrimination and restrictions of non-discriminative nature, and finally analyses in depth the national dividend taxation rules of the Lithuanian Law on company profit tax as well as provides his opinion as to compatibility of these rules to the relevant jurisprudence of European of Court of Justice. Author thinks that certain provisions of Lithuanian Law on Company Profit Tax provide more favourable tax treatment of residents than of non-residents and are therefore capable of creating discrimination. Futhermore, certain Lithuanian taxation rules potentially create a restriction that is prohibited by the EC Treaty because they have an effect of dissuading taxpayers from exploiting their rights and liberties enshrined in the EC Treaty or make the employment of the Fundamental Freedoms less attractive. Therefore the necessary amendments to the respective legal acts should be made so that not only potential discrimination, but also a potential restriction on the Fundamental Freedoms would be excluded.


This paper looks at the HESA statistics for all students at university at HEIs in England from 2008/9
to 2011/12, linked to the National Pupil Database (NPD), with records for all pupils in England who
ended Key Stage 4 (KS4) in 2006.This limits the analysis only to those eventually continuing to HE
but not among the 7% who attended a private school (and these two limitations must be borne in mind
throughout). Where a young person is obviously disadvantaged, this can be taken into account in
contextualised admissions to HE. Of the indicators currently available in the generic HESA data,
which give the most accurate assessment of that context – singly or in combination? This paper looks
at missing data, and what is known about students for whom data is missing. It looks at changes in
indicators of potential disadvantage over a student's lifetime at school and beyond. And it looks at the
relationship between all indicators and student attainment and progress at school and beyond.
Most of the potentially useful or interesting variables in this HESA dataset are so incomplete as to be
useless for the purposes of contextualised admissions. Only occupational class, parental education and
POLAR quintile of residence have sufficient coverage to consider in detail here. Other indicators such
as sex and ethnicity are best used via the linked NPD dataset. Occupational class and parental
education are only known for that subset of students in each age cohort applying for HE, and this
distorts the picture. For example, of students attending HE, Black students are most likely to have
parents with HE, and so any attempt to use parental education as a contextual indicator could be
counter-productive. Around 20% or more of HE students have unknown occupational class or
parental education, and this also distorts the picture. In general, NPD data on all students is fuller and
better quality. The only indicator in the HEAS dataset used here that is worth pursuing further is
POLAR, which could be available for all of each school cohort, and has the least missing data.
However, there is not much difference in the qualified HE participation rates by POLAR (or
occupational group, or parental education). Ethnic minority (of all categories) and EAL students are
considerably over-represented in HE, while males and those living in care are under-represented.
Poor students and those living in poorer areas appear to participate in almost direct proportion to their
earlier qualifications. Students are then gaining HE results in proportion to their prior attainment, and
largely unrelated to their background once these qualifications are taken into account. Finer-grained
analysis by individual HEI and subject is not really possible because of the small cell sizes. Some
aggregation is necessary. There are clear differences in the prior attainment levels of students
attending different types of HEI, and this difference in attainment is reflected in the type of students
attending – with fewer poor students or those living in care in Russell Group Universities.


Helena Michie's provocative new work looks at how women's bodies are portrayed in a variety of Victorian literary and non-literary genres--from painting, poems, and novels, to etiquette, books, sex manuals, and pornography. After identifying a series of codes and taboos that govern the depiction of women in such activities as eating and working, she then turns to the physical descriptions of Victorian heroines, focusing on those parts of their bodies that are erased, and on those that become fetishized in conventional description. Her vivid analysis moves forward in time with a consideration of 20th-century "second wave" feminism and a discussion of the poetics of the body as articulated by feminist writers on both sodes of the Atlantic. Making use of feminist, poststructuralist, and psychoanalytic accounts of the future of women, and the relation of the body to the text, The Flesh Made Word offers fresh readings of works by writers as diverse as the Brontes, Dickens, Eliot, Gaskell, Trollope, Hardy, Adrienne Rich, Olga Broumas, Audre Lorde, and Louise Gluck."


ABSTRACT Commercially manufactured 'jiaosu' (fermented fruit and vegetable juices) have gained popularity in Asia recently. Like other fermented products, they have a high microbial diversity and richness. However, no published study has yet described their microbiota composition. Thus, this work aimed to obtain the full-length 16S rRNA profiles of jiaosu using the PacBio single-molecule, real-time sequencing technology. We described the bacterial microbiota of three jiaosu products purchased from Taiwan and Japan. Bacterial sequences from all three samples distributed across seven different phyla, mainly Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, and Bacteroidetes. Forty-three genera were identified (e.g. Ochrobactrum, Lactobacillus, Mycobacterium, and Acinetobacter). Fifty-five species were identified (e.g. Ochrobactrum lupini, Mycobacterium abscessus, Acinetobacter johnsonii, Lactobacillus paracasei, Lactobacillus delbrueckii, and Petrobacter succinatimandens). No pathogen sequences were identified within the entire dataset. Moreover, only a low proportion of sequences represented common skin microflora and the food hygiene indicator Escherichia/Shigella, suggesting overall acceptable sanitary conditions during the manufacturing process.


We extend a previous model for scheduling commercial advertisements during breaks in television programming. The proposed extension allows differential weighting of conflicts between pairs of commercials. We formulate the problem as a capacitated generalization of the max k-cut problem in which the vertices of a graph correspond to commercial insertions and the edge weights to the conflicts between pairs of insertions. The objective is to partition the vertices into k capacitated sets to maximize the sum of conflict weights across partitions. We note that the problem is NP-hard. We extend a previous local-search procedure to allow for the differential weighting of edge weights. We show that for problems with equal insertion lengths and break durations, the worst-case bound on the performance of the proposed algorithm increases with the number of program breaks and the number of insertions per break, and that it is independent of the number of conflicts between pairs of insertions. Simulation results suggest that the algorithm performs well even if the problem size is small.


For installations that are already in operation, the following advantages are obtained from installing new electronic equipment: In the case that the dam or certain measuring stations are difficult to reach in extreme weather conditions (flood conditions or heavy snow). In the case that the dam control system can be equipped with a suitable automatic system to improve sensitivity and accuracy for the measurement of certain control values, or the facilitate the automatic data collection and storage of such values. In the case where the control system is required to report extraordinary occurrences in the performance of the dam. In this paper the main duties of the automatic monitoring systems are described by way of a specific example, and several important points are discussed in detail. The example discusses the Vasasca Arch Dam in Switzerland.


This paper studies model-based bandit and reinforcement learning (RL) with nonlinear function approximations. We propose to study convergence to approximate local maxima because we show that global convergence is statistically intractable even for one-layer neural net bandit with a deterministic reward. For both nonlinear bandit and RL, the paper presents a model-based algorithm, Virtual Ascent with Online Model Learner (ViOlin), which provably converges to a local maximum with sample complexity that only depends on the sequential Rademacher complexity of the model class. Our results imply novel global or local regret bounds on several concrete settings such as linear bandit with finite or sparse model class, and two-layer neural net bandit. A key algorithmic insight is that optimism may lead to over-exploration even for two-layer neural net model class. On the other hand, for convergence to local maxima, it suffices to maximize the virtual return if the model can also reasonably predict the size of the gradient and Hessian of the real return.


In this paper we introduce our special thematic section on societal change. We begin by providing an overview of the aims of the section, and how these aims grew out of a need to address conceptual and empirical challenges in the study of societal change. In response to these challenges, the section was intended to provide a forum for theoretical and empirical work from a range of disciplinary perspectives on how societies change, and how such change can be understood. Together, the contributions argue for (1) the need to contextualize the study of societal change, (2) the value of considering factors and processes other than collective action in transforming societies, (3) the importance of ideology and its operation through social institutions such as news media, and (4) an imperative to ensure that our research is fully engaged with society in terms of its grounding in social issues, its sensitivity to our own social context as researchers, and in its practices and outcomes.


Training convolutional neural network models is memory intensive since back-propagation requires storing activations of all intermediate layers. This presents a practical concern when seeking to deploy very deep architectures in production, especially when models need to be frequently re-trained on updated datasets. In this paper, we propose a new implementation for back-propagation that significantly reduces memory usage, by enabling the use of approximations with negligible computational cost and minimal effect on training performance. The algorithm reuses common buffers to temporarily store full activations and compute the forward pass exactly. It also stores approximate per-layer copies of activations, at significant memory savings, that are used in the backward pass. Compared to simply approximating activations within standard back-propagation, our method limits accumulation of errors across layers. This allows the use of much lower-precision approximations without affecting training accuracy. Experiments on CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, and ImageNet show that our method yields performance close to exact training, while storing activations compactly with as low as 4-bit precision.


This study was designed to investigate some important aspects of turn-taking in one type of structured telephone conversation, namely, travel enquiry calls. Specifically, it investigated under what conditions subjects could distinguish turn-final and turn-medial utterances taken from such conversations and presented out of context. The first part of the investigation sought to determine if judges could make this distinction on the basis of an audio presentation of the utterances or on the basis of a typescript of the utterances. We found that judges could distinguish turn-final and turn-medial utterances when presented in audio form, they could not, however, distinguish turn-final and turn-medial utterances on the basis of a typescript alone, except in the case of utterances sampled from just one operator. The second part of the investigation was designed to determine what aspects of verbal content were important in guiding the subjects' judgement of completion on the basis of typescript alone. We looked specifically at the role of topic (for example, utterances concerning 'time' or 'cost' information) and mode of expression (for example 'impersonal' or 'personal' mode) in marking turn-final and turn-medial utterances in these calls. We found that it was specific combinations of topic and mode of expression which were most important in allowing subjects to identify turn-final and turn-medial utterances. This interaction was of more significance than either of these two features alone. The general conclusion from this study is that the interaction between meaning and syntax is crucial to the organisation of the turn-taking process, at least in structured telephone conversations.


SUMMARY. Cardiovascular effects induced by citronellal in rats were investigated in this study. In LNAME hypertensive rats, the oral acute administration of citronellal (200 mg/kg) was able to significantly reduce the blood pressure. In normotensive rats, citronellal (5-40 mg/kg, i.v.) induced hypotension, which was not affected by pre-treatment with atropine, hexamethonium, L-NAME or indomethacin, and bradycardia, which was abolished by atropine and hexamethonium, but not by L-NAME or indomethacin. ECG records revealed that citronellal induced sinoatrial block, which was abolished after atropine. In intact rings of rat mesenteric artery pre-contracted with phenylephrine (10 μM), citronellal (10 –6 to 10 –1 M) was able to induce relaxations (Emax = 106.3 ± 9.4 %) that were not affected by endothelium removal or after pre-contraction with KCl 80 mM. In conclusion, these results demonstrate that citronellal reduces blood pressure. Furthermore, citronellal induces endothelium-independent vasorelaxation in rat artery that appears to involve inhibition of Ca2+ influx.


Nonlinear polarization rotation and generation of a polarization component orthogonal to the input beam were observed along fourfold axes of YVO4 and BaF2 crystals. We demonstrate experimentally that in both crystals the angle of rotation is proportional, at low intensities, to the square of the product of the input intensity and the crystal length and is the result of simultaneous action of two third-order processes. This type of nonlinear polarization rotation is driven by the real part of the cubic susceptibility. The recorded energy exchange between the two orthogonal components can exceed 10%. It is to our knowledge the highest energy-conversion efficiency achieved in a single beam nonresonant χ(3) interaction. A simple theoretical model is elaborated to describe the dependence of nonlinear polarization rotation and orthogonal polarization generation on the intensity of the input beam at both low- and high-intensity levels. It reveals the potential contributions from the real and the imaginary parts of the susceptibility tensor. Moreover, this kind of measurement is designed to permit the determination of the magnitude and the sign of the anisotropy of the real part of third-order nonlinearity in crystals with cubic or tetragonal symmetry on the basis of polarization-rotation measurements. The χxxxx(3) component of the third-order susceptibility tensor and its anisotropy sign and amplitude value for BaF2 and YVO4 crystals are estimated and discussed.


Semiconductor nanowires are an emerging class of nanostructures that represent attractive building blocks for nanoscale electronic and photonic devices. To the present, nanowires are synthesized on a small scale by experimentally demanding gas phase deposition techniques. This thesis describes a simple and cost-efficient solution-based synthesis towards high-quality nanowires of Group II-VI compound semiconductors. The effects of various reaction parameters and of doping on the wires' structural, electrical and magnetic properties are investigated. The first part of this thesis is dedicated to a novel variant of the solvothermal synthesis of CdS nanowires employing a single-source precursor. The wires are of single-crystalline quality and can be indexed to wurtzite-type bulk CdS with the preferential growth direction along the axis. As-grown nanowires have a smooth surface, are up to 40 µm long and exhibit aspect ratios up to 1000. The wires' aspect ratio can be increased by choosing a low precursor concentration. Time-dependent experiments reveal the wires to axially grow at a rate of ≈1µm/h while lateral growth only occurs during the initial reaction phase. As shown by photoluminescence spectroscopy the surface defect density can be significantly lowered by raising the reaction temperature from 180 to 200 °C. Electrically contacted CdS nanowires are highly resistive in the dark, but become more conductive by 4 orders of magnitude upon illumination above the bandgap energy (λ<505 nm). Field effect transistor devices (FET) built from individual CdS nanowires show the formation of Schottky barriers and n-channel enhancement type behavior with poor on/off ratios of ≈15. Spatially resolved photocurrent measurements on single nanowire FETs reveal a strongly localized photocurrent response in the vicinity of the lower biased contact. A qualitative explanation for this effect can be given by assuming a back-to-back arrangement of Schottky diodes and by considering different majority and minority carrier mobilities, such that the total photocurrent is limited by the minority carrier diffusion length. The second part addresses the tailoring of the electrical and magnetic properties of CdS nanowires by doping with indium and manganese, respectively. The addition of small amount of In(III) salts (<0.1 mol%) prior to solvothermal reaction yields single-crystalline and high-aspect ratio nanowires, while for higher In amount the wires' aspect ratio drastically decreases. The conductivity of highly In-doped CdS wires (0.01 mol% In) is increased by one order of magnitude compared to undoped CdS wires, which can be directly attributed to the raised majority carrier concentration of the doped wires. Similarly, single-crystalline wurtzite type Cd1-xMnxS nanowires with x<0.15 can be grown by adding Mn(II) salts. Magnetic studies on Cd1-xMnxS nanowires with x<0.15 show the antiferromagnetic Mn–Mn interactions to be weaker than in the bulk material. The difference can be attributed to an effective reduction of nearest neighbor Mn–Mn interactions on the wire surface, which is caused by the wires' high surface/volume ratio. In the last part of this thesis, the hydrothermal growth of single-crystalline wurtzite type ZnO nanowires and their use in FETs devices is demonstrated. Up to 30 µm long nanowires can be directly grown from alkaline solution on a zinc foil substrate when using the additional oxidant ammonium peroxosulfate. ZnO nanowire FET devices display n-type behavior, a high conductivity and poor gate switching characteristics with an on/off ratio ≈3. Post-growth annealing at 600 °C in air leads to significantly improved on/off ratios of ≈106 and reduces the conductivity by two orders of magnitude. The annealing effect can be explained by a reduction of point defects, namely oxygen vacancies.


The readily scalable catching by polymerization purification technology has been further advanced to purify 5′-phosphorylated synthetic oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs). The new technology utilizes a phosphoramidite that contains a fluoride-cleavable diisopropylsilyl acetal linker and a polymerizable methacrylamide group, and is capable of phosphorylation of ODN. For purification, the phosphoramidite was coupled to the 5′-end of full-length ODN on a synthesizer. Because failure sequences were capped in each synthetic cycle, only the full-length sequences were phosphinylated and acrylated. After cleavage and deprotection, the crude ODN was subjected to polymerization under typical acrylamide gel formation conditions. The full-length ODN was incorporated into polymer. The failure sequences and other impurities were simply removed by washing with water. Pure full-length ODN that contained a 5′-phosphate group was cleaved from the polymer with HF–pyridine. Reversed-phase (RP) HPLC showed that the ODN was pure, and the recovery yield was higher than that of typical preparative HPLC purification.


In 2019, the IEEE launched the P7000 standards projects intended to address ethical issues in the design of autonomous and intelligent systems. This move came amidst a growing public concern over the unintended consequences of artificial intelligence (AI), compounded by the lack of an anticipatory process for attending to ethical impact within professional practice. However, the difficulty in moving from principles to practice presents a significant challenge to the implementation of ethical guidelines. Herein, we describe two complementary frameworks for integrating ethical analysis into engineering practice to help address this challenge. We then provide the outcomes of an ethical analysis informed by these frameworks, conducted within the specific context of Internet-delivered therapy in digital mental health. We hope both the frameworks and analysis can provide tools and insights, not only for the context of digital healthcare but also for data-enabled and intelligent technology development more broadly.


Gasoline vehicles have recently been pointed out as potentially the main source of anthropogenic secondary organic aerosol (SOA) in megacities. However, there is a lack of laboratory studies to systematically investigate SOA for- mation in real-world exhaust. In this study, SOA formation from pure aromatic precursors, idling and cold start gasoline exhaust from three passenger vehicles (EURO2-EURO4) were investigated with photo-oxidation experiments in a 6 m 3 smog chamber. The experiments were carried out down to at- mospherically relevant organic aerosol mass concentrations. The characterization instruments included a high-resolution aerosol mass spectrometer and a proton transfer mass spec- trometer. It was found that gasoline exhaust readily forms SOA with a signature aerosol mass spectrum similar to the oxidized organic aerosol that commonly dominates the or- ganic aerosol mass spectra downwind of urban areas. After a cumulative OH exposure of 5◊ 10 6 cm 3 h, the formed SOA was 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than the primary OA emissions. The SOA mass spectrum from a relevant mix- ture of traditional light aromatic precursors gave f43 (mass fraction at m/z = 43), approximately two times higher than to the gasoline SOA. However O : C and H : C ratios were similar for the two cases. Classical C6-C9 light aromatic precursors were responsible for up to 60 % of the formed SOA, which is significantly higher than for diesel exhaust. Important candidates for additional precursors are higher- order aromatic compounds such as C10 and C11 light aro- matics, naphthalene and methyl-naphthalenes. We conclude that approaches using only light aromatic precursors give an incomplete picture of the magnitude of SOA formation and the SOA composition from gasoline exhaust.


The prediction of economic variables is one of the main issues in a country's macro decisions. Since in many cases there is no historical data for this purpose and it is necessary to have more than one output, it is necessary to use expert opinions and consequently, model expert opinions in the form of mathematical functions, adds to the complexity of the task and the importance of the problem. To solve such problems, this paper presents a ten-step process using fuzzy rule-based systems. At the first step, the three inputs that include: the price of OPEC oil, the level of Iran and Saudi relations and the level of political tension in OPEC member countries and also the three output variables that include: the amount of employment, the economic growth, and the oil price forecast, have been modeled in the form of trapezoidal and triangular functions. Then, these variables have been converted to linear functions. In the next steps, the three-dimensional decision tables were designed and then by using the fuzzy rule-based systems (if, ... Then...), the preconditions and sequences (results) of the decision rules were written and coded in the Matlab software. The results indicate that the outputs are in line with the existing economic realities of Iran and that three input variables to a certain extent can cause changes in the three output variables. Less technical so far with problems with this complexity of problems are capable of results with this obvious.


Italian couturier Roberto Capucci (b. 1930) is revered by contemporary fashion designers for his innovative silhouettes and masterful use of color and materials. Capucci refers to his creations as "studies in form," and draws inspiration from a multitude of sources, including art, architecture, and nature. This beautifully illustrated book, the companion to the first exhibition of Capucci's work in the United States, examines his career from the 1950s to the present in the context of the rise of Italian fashion. Capucci's designs first captured the attention of the international press in 1951, when he presented his collection in Florence. Considered one of Italy's greatest talents, he experimented with construction techniques and unconventional materials such as raffia, wire, and stones. He refused to compromise his artistic vision to commercial concerns, and after withdrawing from the formal fashion world in the early 1980s, he presented one collection a year, each in a different city around the world. Featuring more than 80 extraordinary works, including the iconic "sculpture dresses" with their inventive use of pleating, color, and form, Roberto Capucci is a captivating look at this brilliant designer who transcends the conventional line between fashion and art.


Background: medical facilities research (Rifakes) 2011 was performed to know a comprehensive image about thegovernment health care facilities as a plan in medical service development that fi ts with the society needs. Although healthcenter was already available, but the availability and the properness of the health care facilities were not spread evenly,such as waste handling facilities. The aim of this research is analyzing the availability and the properness of waste handlingin health center based on demography and geography in Indonesia. Methods: This research is a secondary data analysisof Rifakes 2011 about the availability and the properness of waste handling in health center. The data analysis was donein univariat and bivariat. The correlation between the properness of waste handling and the isolation of an area was testedwith spearmann correlation. The correlation between the properness of waste handling of health care in archipelago and ofthat in frontier area was tested with mann whitney test. Results: More than a half ( 66,8%) of the waste handling of healthcenter is already available, yet with improper category ( 72,7% ). There is a signifi cant correlation between the propernessof waste handling with a location topography ( isolation area, archipelago, and frontier area ). The improper waste handlingis especially in rural area with 80, 6%, whereas in city with 5,7%. Conclusion: There is a signifi cant correlation between theproperness of waste handling in health center with topographical and geographical condition. Recommendation: Wastemanagement in health centers should be more serious attention and handling, availability WWTP, feasibility of handlingthe waste, and if possible waste minimalisali clinic.


With rapid economic development and restructuring, there are an increasing number of aged or obsolete buildings in large cities, such as Hong Kong. Adaptive reuse of these buildings provides an alternative for property stakeholders towards more sustainable practices instead of redevelopment or destruction. Adaptive reuse can also make great contributions to sustainable development by reducing construction waste and saving natural resources. As a result of industrial restructuring, manufacturing plants were migrated from Hong Kong to Mainland China during the 1980s and 1990s. Many industrial buildings then became vacant or under-utilised. Adaptive reuse of these industrial buildings is considered a viable way forward for all parties, including government, property stakeholders and the community. However, the problem is how to deal with multiple criteria to assess how these buildings can be reused for residential living, retail, training centres, or other purposes. Adaptive reuse of industrial buildings is discussed in this paper, and a fuzzy adaptive reuse selection model is developed for decision-making. A hypothetical example is used to demonstrate the application of the method and show its effectiveness.


The chapter highlights the key turns in the ICC jurisprudence and debates of the past half-decade in the area of victim participation. It surveys procedural and practical challenges the Court has been facing in implementing its ambitious and indeterminate legal framework and reflects on the prospects for the future. By reaching its teenage years, the ICC may have hoped to develop the 'know-how' of victim participation, including the application process, legal representation, and participation modalities. But as its approaches to these matters have been crafted experimentally and in a piecemeal fashion, they continue to be varied and case-specific. At the level of the institution, the questions of effectiveness and sustainability of the ICC's victim participation model remain acute. This concerns not only the fairness and efficiency of the court process, but also impinges on the ICC's relationship with the affected communities and on the Court's relevance and credibility. The diversity of current policies and persisting problems in their implementation add fuel to the growing insecurities within the ICC system. Victim participation has emerged as a governance issue and a matter of concern for the Assembly of States Parties. This chapter places the strenuous efforts by the Chambers and the Registry in devising effective solutions and the court-wide strategy in the context of the policy pull by the Assembly towards more harmonized practice. Given the tension between the two agendas, it queries to what extent the harmonization approach is timely and realistic and, if it is to be pursued, what it might entail in practical terms. The diversity of situations before the Court—each with unique pattern and character of victimization, security conditions, number of victims in contact with the Court and other 'unknowns'—only enable 'soft' harmonization that leaves room for reasonable flexibility and variation across cases. For victim participation to be workable and sustainable, the axis of harmonization lies along the enhanced pragmatism and rationalization of procedural and administrative practices that promote the ICC's effectiveness as a criminal justice institution. The ICC should rediscover itself as a 'retributive' court rigidly constrained in mandate and resources and free itself from the 'restorative complex'. The emphasis on collective forms of application, participation, and representation will continue, except where victims wish to participate in person. Since this will be allowed where the victim can provide the Court with relevant evidence and information, meaningful participation essentially means one aligned with the Court's core mandate and functions of criminal process, notably the determination of truth.


Modern software systems are built to be used in dynamic environments using configuration capabilities to adapt to changes and external uncertainties. In a self-adaptation context, we are often interested in reasoning about the performance of the systems under different configurations. Usually, we learn a black-box model based on real measurements to predict the performance of the system given a specific configuration. However, as modern systems become more complex, there are many configuration parameters that may interact and we end up learning an exponentially large configuration space. Naturally, this does not scale when relying on real measurements in the actual changing environment. We propose a different solution: Instead of taking the measurements from the real system, we learn the model using samples from other sources, such as simulators that approximate performance of the real system at low cost. We define a cost model that transform the traditional view of model learning into a multi-objective problem that not only takes into account model accuracy but also measurements effort as well. We evaluate our cost-aware transfer learning solution using real-world configurable software including (i) a robotic system, (ii) 3 different stream processing applications, and (iii) a NoSQL database system. The experimental results demonstrate that our approach can achieve (a) a high prediction accuracy, as well as (b) a high model reliability.


The evolution of government purchasing initiatives in Mexico and China, part of the PEPS (Promoting an Energy-efficient Public Sector) program, demonstrates the need for flexibility in designing energy-efficiency strategies in the public sector. Several years of pursuing a top-down (federally led) strategy in Mexico produced few results, and it was not until the program was restructured in 2004 to focus on municipal-level purchasing that the program gained momentum. Today, a new partnership with the Mexican federal government is leading to an intergovernmental initiative with strong support at the federal level. By contrast, the PEPS purchasing initiative in China was successfully initiated and led at the central government level with strategic support from international experts. The very different success trajectories in these two countries provide valuable lessons for designing country-specific public sector energy-efficiency initiatives. Enabling conditions for any successful public sector purchasing initiative include the existence of mandatory energy-efficiency performance standards, an effective energy-efficiency endorsement labeling program, an immediate need for energy conservation, a simple pilot phase (focusing on a limited number of strategically chosen products), and specialized technical assistance. Top-down purchasing programs are likely to be more successful where there is high-level political endorsement and a national procurement law in place, supported by a network of trained purchasers. Bottom-up (municipally led) purchasing programs require that municipalities have the authority to set their own purchasing policies, and also benefit from existing networks of cities, supported by motivated municipal leaders and trained purchasing officials.


Abstract : This project has focused on the design of distributed autonomous controllers for collective behavior of Micro-unmanned Aerial Vehicles (MAVs). Two alternative approaches to this topic are introduced: one based upon the Evolutionary Robotics (ER) paradigm, the other one upon flocking principles. Three computer simulators have been developed in order to carry out the required experiments, all of them having their focus on the modeling of fixed-wing aircraft flight dynamics. The employment of fixed-wing aircraft rather than the omni-directional robots typically employed in collective robotics significantly increases the complexity of the challenges that an autonomous controller has to face. This is mostly due to the strict motion constraints associated with fixed-wing platforms that require a high degree of accuracy by the controller. Concerning the ER approach, the experimental setups elaborated have resulted in controllers evolved in simulation with the following capabilities: (1) navigation across unknown environments, (2) obstacle avoidance, (3) tracking of a moving target, and (4) execution of cooperative and coordinated behaviors based on implicit communication strategies. The design methodology based upon flocking principles has involved tests on computer simulations and subsequent experimentation on real-world robotic platforms. A customized implementation of Reynolds' flocking algorithm has been developed and successfully validated through flight tests performed with the swinglet MAV. It has been notably demonstrated how the Evolutionary Robotics approach could be successfully extended to the domain of fixed-wing aerial robotics, which has never received a great deal of attention in the past.


The soft white cheese is considered one of the most popular locally manufactured cheese in Iraq, a kind of traditional cheese that is mainly produced from sheep milk. It usually becomes available in the markets of Mosul between the months of February and July. To investigate the microbiological quality, 25 samples of white, soft, un-salted fresh locally produced sheep cheese were collected from the market in Mosul. These cheese samples were examined by the quantity method to determine the total viable bacterial counts (TVC) and the total counts of coliform and Escherichia coli bacteria. The minimum, maximum and average results of the aforementioned bacterial counts were 1.0x10, 1.4x10, 1.4x10 CFU g-; 2.9x10, 6.0x10, 12.6x10 CFU gand 18.0x10, 5.8x10, 3.1x10 CFU g-1, respectively. Corresponding to the 'International Microbiological Reference Criteria' for cheese, it could be clear from these results that the samples were highly contaminated. Hence, it can be concluded that the sanitary conditions were inadequate either during the milk production and cheese manufacturing process or throughout their distribution in the local market. Therefore, it is recommended to comply with the public health and sanitary measures during the process of local cheese production. In consequence, it is essential to follow the annual screening of local cheese in terms of bacterial counts to determine the degree of contamination and in order to develop a national standard microbiological criteria and quality control for local cheese. Available online at http://www.vetmedmosul.org/ijvs دلجملا ،ةيرطيبلا مولعلل ةيقارعلا ةلجملا ٣١ ددعلا ، ١ ، ٢٠١٧ ) ١ ٦ (


Introduction: Kappa opioid receptors (KOPrs) are involved in both stress responses and addiction-related behaviour (1). We are using an immunohistochemical approach to investigate brain regions that are activated by stress and drugs of abuse, and to distinguish the role of KOPrs in these responses. Expression of the immediate early gene c-Fos is a neuronal marker of recent neural activity. We are using c-Fos-GFP transgenic mice, in which expression of green fluorescent protein (GFP) is driven by the activation of c-Fos (2). This should provide an index of brain regions activated in these mice following an acutely stressful event or drug administration. Initial proof of concept have investigated the expression of cFos and cFos-driven GFP in multiple brain regions after a single injection of KOPr agonist. Methods: Adult- (8-10wks) male cFos-GFP transgenic mice were injected (i.p) with saline or KOPr agonist U50,488 (20mg/kg). Two hours later, mice underwent transcardial perfusion fixation (under terminal pentobarbital anaesthesia) and brains were removed. Brain sections (40m) were immunolabelled to assess cFos and cFos-driven GFP expression and quantified by fluorescence microscopy. Control U50,488 Significance NAcc cFos 6.9±0.8 10.4±1.1 * NAcc GFP 4.9±0.5 10.1±0.7 *** CA1 cFos 10.5±1.1 15.0±1.5 * CA1 GFP 5.8±0.5 6.8±0.5 - PFC cFos 6.7±0.7 11.6±2.0 * PFC GFP 5.1±0.7 8.0±1.0 * DG cFos 5.1±0.8 6.5±1.1 - DG GFP 3.9±0.5 4.4±0.7 - Results: A single injection of U50,488 significantly increased the expression of both cFos and GFP in nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and prelimbic area of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), compared to saline treated controls. In the CA1 region of the dorsal hippocampus (CA1), cFos, but not GFP, expression was significantly increased. No changes were seen in the dentate gyrus of the dorsal hippocampus (DG) (Table 1). All data mean  S.E.M (N=6 per treatment) relative fluorescence intensity, corrected for background. Unpaired t-test *=P<0.05, ***=P<0.001. Conclusion: These findings suggest that KOPr activation induces cFos expression in the nucleus accumbens and prelimbic area of the prefrontal cortex, both components of the 'reward' circuitry. The finding that in the CA1 region of the hippocampus cFos expression, but not cFos-driven GFP expression, was increased by U50,488 could reflect the temporal sequence, with downstream GFP expression occurring after cFos expression. We are currently investigating how the effects of acute KOPr agonist activation correlate with responses to behavioural stress. 1. Bruchas MR et al. (2010) Brain Res 1314:44-55. 2. Barth AL et al. (2004) J Neurosci 24:6466-75.


The expectation values of operators drawn from a single quantum state cannot be outside of a particular region, called their allowed region or the joint numerical range of the operators. Basically, the allowed region is an image of the state space under the Born rule. The maximum-eigenvalue-states---of every linear combination of the operators of interest---are sufficient to generate boundary of the allowed region. In this way, we obtain the numerical range of certain Hermitian operators (observables) that are functions of the angular momentum operators. Especially, we consider here three kinds of functions---combinations of powers of the ladder operators, powers of the angular momentum operators and their anticommutators---and discover the allowed regions of different shapes. By defining some specific concave (and convex) functions on the joint numerical range, we also achieve tight uncertainty (and certainty) relations for the observables. Overall, we demonstrate how the numerical range and uncertainty relations change as the angular momentum quantum number grows. Finally, we apply the quantum de Finetti theorem by taking a multi-qubit system and attain the allowed regions and tight uncertainty relations in the limit where the quantum number goes to infinity.


Robert Alexy's doctoral thesis was published in 1985 under the title of Theorie der Grundrechte. The Dutch constitutionalist Burkens (Algemene Leerstukken van Grondrechten naar Nederlands Constitutioneel Recht (1989) 27-28) described Alexy's theory as "monumental". The fact then that this work has at long last been translated into English is to be welcomed, as its appeal is no longer only limited to a German-reading audience. (Alexy Begriff und Geltung des Rechts 1994, has also been translated as: Alexy The Argument from Injustice: a Reply to Legal Positivism 2002.) The translation, in itself a monumental endeavour, was attempted and completed with distinction by Julian Rivers, who lectures law at the University of Bristol. Alexy also used the opportunity of an English translation of his work to update numerous references and to include a postscript, in order to outline a number of his ideas with greater clarity and also to answer his critics, notably in the form of Habermas (Between Facts and Norms 1996).


We report on the electronic structure and basic thermodynamic properties of Ce3Rh4Sn13 and of the reference compound La3Rh4Sn13. XPS core-level spectra revealed a stable trivalent configuration of the Ce atoms in Ce3Rh4Sn13, consistent with magnetic susceptibility data. Band structure calculations within the LSDA+U approximation yield the qualitatively correct description of Ce in a trivalent state. The reliability of the theoretical results has been confirmed by a comparison of the calculated XPS valence band spectra with experimental data. The calculated densities of states as well as the rare-earth (RE) 3d XPS spectra point to a weak hybridization between the RE 4f shell and the conduction band states. The band structure calculations result in a magnetic ground state for Ce3Rh4Sn13. Previous analysis pointed to the partial occupancy of the 2a site by Sn atoms. The charge density analysis reveals the dominant metallic character of the chemical bonding at the 2a atomic position. Simulation of vacancies at the 2a site using the virtual crystal approximation (VCA) indicate that the magnetic properties of Ce3Rh4Sn13 strongly depend on the Sn content, which could explain the discrepancy in magnetic properties between different Ce3Rh4Sn13 samples.


The protection afforded by this Regulation should apply to natural persons, whatever their nationality or place of residence, in relation to the processing of their personal data. This Regulation does not cover the processing of personal data which concerns legal persons and in particular undertakings established as legal persons, including the name and the form of the legal person and the contact details of the legal person.


Online communities are increasingly important in modern social life. Yet, the diverse collection of guidelines that have directed online community design may not be keeping pace with significant changes in the operating environment of these systems. This paper collects and distills the most relevant of these guidelines and describes their instantiation in a design artifact foundational to a larger design science research project. The core contributions include the distilled guidelines, a detailed account of the mechanics of their translation into practice, and a framework for doing design science research in online communities.


This mixed-method study used a grounded theory approach to explore the meanings underlying the importance that adolescents attach to their racial-ethnic identities. The sample consisted of 923 9th- to 12th-grade students from Black, Latino, Asian, and multiracial backgrounds. Thematic findings identified a broad range of explanations for adolescents' racial-ethnic centrality, ranging from pride and cultural connection to ambivalence and colorblind attitudes. While racial-ethnic groups differed in reported levels of racial-ethnic centrality, few group differences were identified in participants' thematic explanations, with the exception of racial-ethnic and gender differences for Positive Regard and Disengagement. These findings highlight the diversity of meanings that adolescents attribute to their racial-ethnic centrality as well as the many commonalities among adolescents across gender and racial-ethnic groups.


The non-indigenous and invasive calcareous sponge Paraleucilla magna Klautau, Monteiro & Borojevic, 2004 has been detected for the first time on the Algerian coast. The species has been recorded at high abundance in Algiers Port (Algiers) and in Pisan Island (Béjaïa) during spring 2018. It was present from 2 m to 20 m of depth at the community of seaweeds with filter feeders established on artificial hard substrates and on rocky boulders. Total of 172 individuals were recorded not exceeding 5 cm in height. Anthropogenic activities such as aquaculture farms or shipping traffic might be important vectors or act as stepping-stones in further expansion of Paraleucilla magna.Additional recording of the species adds to the knowledge of its biogeography distribution, biology and ecology in the Mediterranean and may improve selection of key geographical sites for future monitoring on the species proliferation and expansion.


Photocatalytic reduction of CO2 for fuels production by using solar energy is an attractive process to address both energy and environmental issues. Currently, it is still a great challenge to control the CO2 reduction pathways. As a result, many possible chemicals could be present in the reaction products, ranging from CO, CH4 to higher alkanes in the gas phase, and oxygenates in the liquid phase such as alcohols, aldehydes and carboxylic acids. A thorough and accurate determination of products is of critical importance for the evaluation of photocatalyst performance. However to date, only very few studies have paid attention to the screening of reduction products, and more comprehensive and standard analysis methods are not yet reported in the literature. In this review, different analysis methods reported so far are summarized. At the same time, we also developed one set of techniques involving (1) the design of a two-channel-three-detector gas chromatography system for gaseous product analysis in the presence of a high concentration of CO2 and alcohols analysis in the liquid phase, and (2) a high performance liquid chromatography system for the analysis of aldehydes and carboxylic acids in the liquid phase. The effect of commonly used organic additives as well as alkaline conditions on liquid phase analysis was also investigated for the first time.


ABSTRACT Heinrich Himmler created the Waffen-SS in part as a multinational force, willing to fight for a New Europe based on Germanic blood. After the war, many international Waffen-SS units formed veterans' associations (VAs). Like other VAs, these provided veterans with the chance to engage in 'memory work' and to keep alive a sense of comradeship and of valiant sacrifice, as well as an emotional commitment to the fallen. Waffen-SS veterans were, however, alone in celebrating their 'sacrifices'. Others shunned them for their participation in atrocities. To defend themselves, they developed a counter-hegemonic Second World War narrative that presented the Waffen-SS as uniquely heroic 'European' volunteers' against Bolshevism. This counter-narrative, however, only gained resonance with the fall of the Berlin Wall. After 1989, in fact, veterans could seek out and establish sites of public commemoration, not in Western but in Eastern Europe. Hurd and Werther use veterans' journals and books to explore the redeployment of SS ideology in a revisionist version of history. They examine the resurrection of a mass Waffen-SS graveyard in East Ukraine as a telling case history, discussing, not least, the implications of a 'reconciliation' of the former German soldiers with both Ukrainian villagers and Red Army veterans. Finally, they explore the significance of the veterans' 'European' counter-history for a younger generation of neo-Nazis.


The consumers of data derived from extensive forest inventories often seek annual estimates at a finer spatial scale than that which the inventory was designed to provide. This paper discusses a few model-based and model-assisted estimators to consider for county level attributes that can be applied when the sample would otherwise be inadequate for producing low-variance estimates in the smaller counties. I present and demonstrate simple spatial and/or temporal estimators that draw strength from neighboring counties and/or years in order to increase confidence in the county level annual estimates. The spatial estimators are restricted to those that do not require knowledge of exact plot locations in order to enable their use with privacy protected, publicly available data. A series of simulations is used to compare and contrast the performance of these estimators relative to position in the time series of interest under various variance prescriptions. Although none of the estimators is shown to be superior in terms of minimum mean squared error (MSE) overall, a few general conclusions are drawn. The first is that estimators that draw strength through consecutive measurements of the same set of field plots show a significant reduction in MSE under a wider variety of circumstances than those that draw strength from plots in neighboring counties. The second conclusion is that of the estimators that rely on a temporal model, a simple, centralized weight-adjusted moving average (with weights specific to time-series position) often was the most robust.


Vegetation-height management is a potential method to reduce bird numbers at airports. Based on studies in Europe, researchers recommended vegetation heights around 25 cm; however, preliminary studies in the United States produced confl icting results regarding the effect of tall (18 to >25 cm) vegetation on bird numbers at airports. From 1999 to 2002, we compared birds and other wildlife use of 4 short-vegetation plots (mean maximum height of 15.6 cm ± 5.1 SE and visual obstruction reading of 4.6 ± 3.0 cm) and 4 tall-vegetation plots (mean maximum height of 26.9 ± 8.4 cm and visual obstruction reading of 10.0 ± 5.0 cm) in Ohio. We surveyed bird use of the plots 2 to 3 times/week and observed 6,191 birds in short-vegetation plots and 5,962 birds in tall-vegetation plots. We detected no difference between short-vegetation and tall-vegetation plots in the probability of avian use of the plots when evaluated as a binary response of presence and absence. Small mammal capture rates in 100 adjusted trap nights were 0.0 in short-vegetation plots and 0.3 in tall-vegetation plots. We found no difference in the number of deer observed in the plots during sunset and spotlighting counts. There was slightly greater insect biomass in tall- than in short-vegetation plots. Mowing negatively affected small mammal use. The generalization that tall vegetation (18 to >25 cm) alone would reduce bird use of an airport is not supported by the results of this study. Further research on vegetation density, composition, palatability, and nutritional value is necessary to accommodate airfi eld requirements for habitat that is pleasing to the public and repellent to wildlife.


Due to the size of data needed, running software to analyze and tuning intraday trading strategies can take large amounts of time away from analysts, who would like to be able to evaluate strategies and optimize strategy parameters very quickly, ideally in the blink of an eye. Fortunately, Big Data technologies are evolving rapidly and can be leveraged for these purposes. These technologies include software systems for distributed computing, parallel hardware, and on demand computing resources in the cloud. This report presents a distributed software system for trading strategy analysis. It also demonstrates the effectiveness of Machine Learning techniques in decreasing parameter optimization workload. The results from tests run on two different commercial cloud service providers show linear scalability when analyzing intraday trading strategies.


Container-based application deployments have received significant attention in recent years. Operating system virtualization based on containers as a mechanism to deploy and manage complex, large-scale software systems has become a popular mechanism for application deployment and operation. Packaging application components into selfcontained artifacts has brought substantial flexibility to developers and operation teams alike. However, this flexibility comes at a price. Practitioners need to respect numerous constraints ranging from security and compliance requirements, to specific regulatory conditions. Fulfilling these requirements is especially challenging in specialized domains with large numbers of stakeholders.Moreover, the rapidly growing number of container images to be managed due to the introduction of new or updated applications and respective components, leads to significant challenges for container management and adaptation. In this paper, we introduce Smart Brix, a framework for continuous evolution of container application deployments that tackles these challenges. Smart Brix integrates andunifies concepts of continuous integration, runtimemonitoring, and operational analytics. Furthermore, it allows practitioners to define generic analytics and compensation pipelines composed of self-assembling processing components to autonomously validate and verify containers to be deployed.We illustrate the feasibility of our approach by evaluating our framework using a case study from the smart city domain. We show that Smart Brix is horizontally scalable and runtime of the implemented analysis and compensation pipelines scales linearly with the number of container application packages. Subjects Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems, Distributed and Parallel Computing, Software Engineering


Archaeologists have long scrutinised the relationship of images to disciplinary knowledge creation. However, to date, very little attention has been given to archaeological visual media and visual methods as generative tools. Visualisations work to make things possible—income, infrastructure, status, security, ideas and expertise—and their shrewd application has significant consequences for professional development and conceptual/methodological growth. The following thesis embarks on a micro-scale study of the mid-20th century establishment of the Institute of Archaeology (IoA) at the University of London to demonstrate the extent to which visualisation is embedded in, and accountable for, the foundation of academic archaeological studies in Britain. Drawing on results from extensive archival enquiry and interviews, this research stands as an account of institutional development told not through the standard lens of biography or intellectual evolution, but through analysis of the strategic management of visual material culture and graphic performance (i.e., photographs, illustrations, models, display collections, TV, exhibitions, illustrated lectures and conferences). It traces the early history of the IoA through a series of formative events from the mid-1920s to the end of World War II wherein visual media are mobilised to dramatic effect in the coming-into-being of scholarly archaeology in London, and in the post-war regeneration of British culture. Particular attention is paid to the entanglement of visualisation in the IoA's pioneering work on the first archaeological television programmes; the standardisation of archaeological photography; the acquisition and display of the Petrie Palestinian collection; the launching of one-of-a-kind graphic industrial/laboratory units; and the training of the earliest generations of accredited field practitioners. This project is prompted by a desire to overturn two fundamentally unsustainable standpoints. Firstly, visual culture tends to be fallaciously constituted in archaeology—and beyond—as a recent phenomenon whose origins stretch back no more than a few decades (conveniently coinciding with the rise of digital graphic production). However as I argue here, calculated and skilful manipulation of optical media has a deep legacy, implicated in even the most basal levels of the discipline's intellectual and organisational consolidation. Secondly, visual representation as a sub-field of enquiry is often relegated to the sidelines of 'legitimate' practice—dismissed as ephemeral and unrobust, or irrelevant to the fundamentals of archaeology. I counter such perspectives by outlining the rich and prescient history of critical graphic studies in the discipline. I then demonstrate that savvy visualisation can, in fact, breed concrete professional outcomes for archaeologists, providing the infrastructure to develop and refine our methods, the cognitive tools to reconceptualise aspects of the archaeological record, and the commercial capital to sustain and propagate the field. At once a chronicle of the IoA's heritage and a testament to the power of visual media, this thesis situates imagery as a forcible actor in the struggle for disciplinary sovereignty and scholarly authority. Ultimately, it speaks not just of the importance of visualisation to archaeology's past, but so too of its potential for negotiating our future.


Quantum systems can exhibit a great deal of universality at low temperature due to the structure of ground states and the critical points separating distinct states. On the other hand, quantum time evolution of the same systems involves all energies and it is therefore thought to be much harder, if at all possible, to have sharp transitions in the dynamics. In this paper we show that phase transitions characterized by universal singularities do occur in the time evolution of random spin chains. The sharpness of the transitions and integrity of the phases owes to many-body localization, which prevents thermalization in these systems. Using a renormalization group approach, we solve the time evolution of random Ising spin chains with generic interactions starting from initial states of arbitrary energy. As a function of the Hamiltonian parameters, the system is tuned through a dynamical transition, similar to the ground state critical point, at which the local spin correlations establish true long range temporal order. In the state with dominant transverse field, a spin that starts in an up state loses its orientation with time, while in the "ordered" state it never does. As in ground state quantum phase transitions, the dynamical transition has unique signatures in the entanglement properties of the system. When the system is initialized in a product state the entanglement entropy grows as $log(t)$ in the two "phases", while at the critical point it grows as $log^\a(t)$, with $\a$ a universal number. This universal entanglement growth requires generic ("integrability breaking") interactions to be added to the pure transverse field Ising model.


E-learning refers to the way people communicate and learn electronically which has only recently emerged as a key source of competitive advantage in the information society. With the development of the Information and Communication Technologies, E-Learning is argued to become a new and effective learning method and environment besides classroom based learning. Although still an emerging field, many researchers suggest that it offers many benefits that are radically different from a conventional classroom-based learning environment and can still generate result for students. It could be providing independent learning programme for internal students, external students, distant students, and training purpose. However, it is also revealed in literature that E-Learning has been used more indirectly as a tool for organising study courses and educational programmes. The questions such as "can E-Learning be made as a learning strategy" and "can E-Learning replace classroom-based modes of learning and teaching" remain unanswered. This research intends to explore various aspects with regards to how and to what extent E-Learning has been used to improve teaching and learning activities using the University of Bolton as a case study. It also intends to verify the main findings from the literature review via employing a case study approach and hence make comparisons between the national trends of E-Learning usage and the chosen case. The main research findings from this study are presented in this paper.


Active energy consumers and prosumers have an important role to play in the transition to a net-zero compatible energy system, and the decisions they make can help determine how the transition moves forward. If their behaviour is better understood, policymakers, regulators and other stakeholders can ensure that they are properly incentivised to participate and be active in the energy market. The main purpose of this research is therefore to challenge the traditional view of passive energy users driven exclusively by consideration about fuel prices, and to examine the different dimensions which can influence their decision-making process in relation to energy technology adoption and energy trading. The role of prosumers and their potential behaviour and decision-making in future energy markets are therefore investigated in this thesis in three independent but interlinked chapters.Following an introduction in chapter one, the second chapter focuses on the adoption and diffusion of microgeneration technology among households in the United Kingdom. It investigates the factors and local determinants that influence microgeneration technology uptake, including the role of local authorities and energy communities. The third and fourth chapters utilise survey- experiments to investigate the preferences of prosumers and consumers in Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, who were offered the opportunity to trade local energy on a hypothetical trading platform. The third chapter empirically investigates consumers' and prosumers' willingness to join the energy trading platform and the socio-economic factors, individual preferences and behavioural biases which would motivate their participation. By extending the analysis defined in chapter three, chapter four focuses on consumers' and prosumers' willingness to pay and willingness to accept for electricity in the platform, while also studying their trading preferences and the behavioural components of their decision making.The results found evidence that local policy and local authority involvement can positively influence consumers' adoption of microgeneration technology, suggesting that local authorities and energy community groups can play an important part in helping consumers take up their role in the future decentralised and democratised energy market. The results also reveal that savings and earnings are not the only factors considered when decisions to become active participants in the energy market are made. Instead, consumers' and prosumers' decisions to be active in the energy market are also driven by other individual preferences and behavioural biases, such as their pro-environmental attitudes and their desire for independence from their energy suppliers.For policymakers and market operators who are planning for future developments in the energy sector, it is therefore necessary to account for these preferences, and for the role that local authorities and energy communities can play in encouraging consumers' active participation. Consumers need to be put at the heart of the transition in order for these new economic actors to contribute to the achievement of zero emissions targets. Through studying consumer behaviour, this thesis aims to provide a suitable set of recommendations which can be adopted by policy makers with the objective to introduce more appropriate incentives and mechanisms that would promote a more active role of consumers in the future energy market.


Certain advanced technology such as biotechnology have not made any great or significant contributions to the advancement of agriculture. Researchers have only explored the feasibility of technology and have yet to consider the aspects of economics or management. This applies to a portion of the agricultural industry such as fruits and vegetables but does not pertain to grain production which is a vital and indispensable food source for humans. Furthermore, technology has made partial improvements to agricultural production but has not provided fundamental solutions for Japanese agriculture in general. There are concerns that the same kinds of mistakes made in the past technological developments may be repeated in the current application of information technology (IT) and artificial intelligence (AI) technology to agriculture. IT and AI technology, which gathers, analyzes, or assimilates information, could potentially improve the agricultural system as a whole while biotechnology has only addressed the production side. In particular, if we could create open access big data along with an appropriate agricultural policy reform, Japanese agriculture would be drastically enhanced by IT and AI technology. The open access big data will enable IT and AI technology to make great contributions to the national food security. In order to create open access big data, we have to overcome numerous problems including how to collect interoperable data among different stakeholders and how to support farmers and industry participants who are not necessarily well versed in those technologies. In these aspects, this paper tries to make specific policy proposals to overcome such difficulties.


BACKGROUND Children with single ventricle heart disease have significant morbidity and mortality. The maternal–fetal environment (MFE) may adversely impact outcomes after neonatal cardiac surgery. We hypothesized that impaired MFE would be associated with an increased risk of death after stage 1 Norwood reconstruction. METHODS AND RESULTS We performed a retrospective cohort study of children with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (and anatomic variants) who underwent stage 1 Norwood reconstruction between 2008 and 2018. Impaired MFE was defined as maternal gestational hypertension, preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, and/or smoking during pregnancy. Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to investigate the association between impaired MFE and death while adjusting for confounders. Hospital length of stay was assessed with the competing risk of in‐hospital death. In 273 children, the median age at stage 1 Norwood reconstruction was 4 days (interquartile range [IQR], 3–6 days). A total of 72 children (26%) were exposed to an impaired MFE; they had more preterm births (18% versus 7%) and a greater percentage with low birth weights <2.5 kg (18% versus 4%) than those without impaired MFE. Impaired MFE was associated with a higher risk of death (hazard ratio [HR], 6.05; 95% CI, 3.59–10.21; P<0.001) after adjusting for age at surgery, Hispanic ethnicity, genetic syndrome, cardiac diagnosis, surgeon, and birth era. Children with impaired MFE had almost double the risk of prolonged hospital stay (HR, 1.95; 95% CI, 1.41–2.70; P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS Children exposed to an impaired MFE had a higher risk of death following stage 1 Norwood reconstruction. Prenatal exposures are potentially modifiable factors that can be targeted to improve outcomes after pediatric cardiac surgery.


The study aimed to assess the diversity of insects associated with green manure, during its development and after its incorporation into the soil. Was conducted in the period from january to June 2011 and driven at the center of agricultural sciences of UFSCar, municipality of Araras - SP (Latitude 22° 2125 South and a Longitude 47° 2303 West), in an experimental area Red-yellow latosol, a Glebe of 1344m ², outlined by 24 plots, entered into four block design with six treatments each, composed of crotalaria (Crotalaria spectabilis); millet (Pennisetum glaucum) and velvet bean (Mucuna aterrima) black plus with organic compound. The plots used for each treatment were 8, 0 m x 7 m (57.2 m2), and the spacing between plots within each block were of 3.0 metres. The solo collection for analysis comprised on the layer of 0 to 20 cm depth. The insects were captured every two weeks, through the pitfalls of type "pitfall", which remained at fixed points within each block, during the development of the live cover and mulch. We collected a total of 17595 individuals distributed in 8 orders, 62 families. Formicidae was the family of dominant insects during the vegetatives stadium of green manures and after its management in soil with mulch. Among the insects, predators, decomposers dispersers and herbivores, the treatments that were grown three different species of green manures presented higher diversity of insects. The use of organic compound in planting green manures not influence on productivity of the same, however, the rate of decomposition of mulch was less over 45 days.


A new approach to correct-by-construction pretty-printing is presented. The basic methodology is the one of classical (not necessarily correct) pretty-printing: users convert values to pretty-printer documents, and a general rendering algorithm turns documents into strings. The main novelty is that dependent types are used to ensure that, for each value, the constructed document is correct with respect to the value and a given grammar. Other parts of the development use well-established technology: the pretty-printer document interface is basically that of Wadler (2003), but with more precise types, and a single additional primitive combinator; and Wadler's rendering algorithm is used.
 It is proved that if a given value is pretty-printed, and the resulting string parsed (with respect to the same, unambiguous grammar), then the original value is obtained. No guarantees are made about "prettiness".


Water plugging was an important but difficult process close to high-water-cut production wells. The injected water-plugging materials were usually liquid and typically had been evaluated by conventional water-flooding experiments. In this study, SiO2/polystyrene hydrophobic insoluble microsphere particles were introduced as a selective water shutoff agent, and the water saturated core was flooded with oil–water mixture. Indexes such as modified oil-coning time, water cut fluctuation, and cumulative water cut were proposed to evaluate water-plugging capability. A parametric study was conducted to evaluate the influence of particle composition (A, SiO2/polystyrene particle; B, complete polystyrene particle), water cut of the injected oil–water mixture, and preheating temperature of the insoluble particles on water-plugging performance. The results showed that the proposed indexes could be used to compare water-plugging performance during oil–water mixture drive; both particles had better water-plugging performance when the injected mixture was not an ultrahigh water cut (fw < 90%). Particle B had larger lipophilicity and stronger capacity for decreasing the water cut (about 0.55~1.28%) at a conventional temperature when the mixture of the injected fluid had a water cut of 90%. Particle A had lower capacity to decrease the water cut (by about −0.94~0.26%), but it was resistant to reservoir temperature because of its dense structure and the addition of SiO2. These results provided suggestions for the application of hydrophobic insoluble microsphere particles in water plugging in production wells.


Evolutionary methods, such as genetic algorithms (GAs), provide powerful tools for optimization of the force field parameters, especially in the case of simultaneous fitting of the force field terms against extensive reference data. However, GA fitting of the nonbonded interaction parameters that includes point charges has not been explored in the literature, likely due to numerous difficulties with even a simpler problem of the least-squares fitting of the atomic point charges against a reference molecular electrostatic potential (MEP), which often demonstrates an unusually high variation of the fitted charges on buried atoms. Here, we examine the performance of the GA approach for the least-squares MEP point charge fitting, and show that the GA optimizations suffer from a magnified version of the classical buried atom effect, producing highly scattered yet correlated solutions. This effect can be understood in terms of the linearly independent, natural coordinates of the MEP fitting problem defined by the eigenvectors of the least-squares sum Hessian matrix, which are also equivalent to the eigenvectors of the covariance matrix evaluated for the scattered GA solutions. GAs quickly converge with respect to the high-curvature coordinates defined by the eigenvectors related to the leading terms of the multipole expansion, but have difficulty converging with respect to the low-curvature coordinates that mostly depend on the buried atom charges. The performance of the evolutionary techniques dramatically improves when the point charge optimization is performed using the Hessian or covariance matrix eigenvectors, an approach with a significant potential for the evolutionary optimization of the fixed-charge biomolecular force fields.


An Australian national approach is presented to predict monthly patterns of local domestic external water demand from climatic indices of daily rainfall and maximum temperature. The model, which can be rapidly applied to potentially any location in Australia, has been verified by measured monthly external water demand at Adelaide, Bundaberg, Emerald, Fraser Coast, Gold Coast, Mackay, Melbourne, Newcastle, Perth and Toowoomba. The survey data represents demands in periods prior to, during and after the millennium drought of 2001-2005 by discontinuously spanning 25 years from 1985 to 2010. The model avoids local calibration through a national regression of parameters. A demand index is produced that predicts daily proportions of annual demand. Results show that the model is capable of identifying 90% of the spatial and temporal variability in water demand, based on daily index summations by month. This research is useful for reliability estimates of intermittent water supplies, such as rainwater harvesting.


Since the 1980s, the US has developed a form of finance-led capitalism in which growth has been highly dependent on credit expansion and asset bubbles. Profitability has steadily climbed, and there has been a massive redistribution of income in favour of the top 1% of income earners. But the financial crisis which began in August 2007 and which deepened with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 has left this model in ruins. As the traditional instruments of monetary policy proved ineffective the US state was obliged to partially nationalise the financial system. With banks unwilling to lend to even the best-known companies, the US economy is faced with a major recession which is likely to further exacerbate the difficulties facing the financial sector.


In this chapter I aim to systematically discuss the various factors that play a role in the second language acquisition processes that finally lead to what is known as ultimate attainment – from a neuro-imaging point of view. Therefore a basic threefold classification into "biological", "psychological" and "socio-linguistic" factors is tentatively offered. The main focus lies in reviewing recent brain-imaging literature from the relatively young field of "bilingual brain imaging" with the attempt to integrate definitions used in the field of SLA research with the terminology of brain imaging experiments on bilinguals or second language learners. The aim is to put that into a wider framework of second language acquisition by proposing a systematic classification according to which individual differences in L2 learning could better be described. Important factors like, for example, age of onset of learning, proficiency level, experience/exposure, or language aptitude are highlighted and critically discussed.


Tourism has often been described as an economic driving force that contributes to rural and emerging economies development. However, when it comes to the social aspect of development the nature of this contribution is still debated by academics. Information and Communication Technologies can help enhancing the socio-economic contribution of tourism by fostering community-based tourism independent marketing and sales dis-intermediation.  eT4D can be defined as the independent use of technologies by micro and small community based tourism firms to market and sell their products and services thus fostering local socio-economic development.


This is the second edition of a book that was first published in 1996 on issues relating to land law and policy in Papua New Guinea. It marked the first substantive statement on the subject since Professor Rudi James' work in land law and policy in Papua New Guinea, which was published by the Law Reform Commission in 1985. The authors of the book are eminently qualified to write on the subject, a subject which is so close to hearts of all Papua New Guineans. Both have taught at the former Faculty of Law at the University of Papua New Guinea. The second edition of this book marks both an important contribution to the availability of textbooks on Papua New Guinea law and the authors' continuing interest in the interplay of land law principles, use and development of land, and government policies on land.

This edition is particularly significant because it complements the authors' most recent publication titled Land Law in Papua New Guinea; a publication which was one of a series prepared under the auspices of the AusAID funded Access to Laws project. They wrote that book with Mr George Muroa, Senior Lecturer at the School of Law, University of Papua New Guinea.

Papua New Guinea has continued a process of examining its laws, most of which have been introduced from England and Australia, over the years to make them more appropriate to the requirements of the country as it develops and changes. Some of these laws have received severe criticism from lawyers, academics, politicians and ordinary people. The inclusion in this book of articles and other related commentaries which indicate a divergence of views on different aspects of land law by persons other than the authors to augment the text confirm, to some extent, this continuing process. Most major legal principles regarding land law are technical and therefore difficult to understand, unless one is trained to understand and appreciate their significance. While some of the criticisms that have been made against land law principles are valid, others owe their origins to a genuine lack of an understanding of these complex principles.

However, a lack of written materials on the subject only compounds the problem. This edition addresses this and the related wider issue of accessibility to written materials on land law in this country in a concise, authoritative and accurate manner. I especially commend them for the additional material they have included in this edition, material which they were not able to include in the first edition.

The first edition was sold out almost immediately after it was released. This probably explains why the Michael Somare Library of the University of Papua New Guinea does not have a copy of that edition. I am sure that the second edition will, as it truly deserves, receive similar acclaim and popularity. And, this time, the Michael Somare Library will be at the front of the race to get an appropriate number of copies.


Abstract. The feasibility of retrieving vertical profiles of NO2 from space-based measurements of limb scattered sunlight has been demonstrated using several different data sets since the 1980's. The NO2 data product routinely retrieved from measurements made by the Optical Spectrograph and InfraRed Imaging System (OSIRIS) instrument onboard the Odin satellite uses a spectral fitting technique over the 437 to 451 nm range, over which there are 36 individual wavelength measurements. In this work we present a proof of concept technique for the retrieval of NO2 using only 4 of the 36 OSIRIS measurements in this wavelength range, which reduces the computational cost by almost an order of magnitude. The method is an adaptation of a triplet analysis technique that is currently used for the OSIRIS retrievals of ozone at Chappuis band wavelengths. The results obtained are shown to be in very good agreement with the spectral fit method, and provide an important alternative for applications where the computational burden is very high. Additionally this provides a baseline for future instrument design in terms of cost effectiveness and reducing spectral range requirements.


In this article, we present a forecast of the 2010 midterm House election based on information available in early July 2010. We combine this forecast with a note of caution, explaining why electoral circumstances might lead our forecast to err. Finally, we present guidance regarding how to update the electoral forecast for 2010 based on new information that will become available leading up to Election Day. Our forecast, based on information gathered in early July 2010, is a likely Republican takeover of the House. In terms of the national vote, the most likely outcome is a solid Republican plurality of close to 53% of the two-party vote. Damage to the Democrats is minimized somewhat in the translation of votes into seats. By our reckoning, the most likely scenario is a Republican majority in the neighborhood of 229 seats versus 206 for the Democrats. Assuming our model is correct but taking into account its uncertainty, the Republicans have a 79% chance of winning the House.


This paper studies the interaction between and the regulation of duopolists in imperfect permit and output markets. The interaction is modeled with a two-stage game in which the permit holding decision is made after the output decision. In the case of dominant buyer this results in a larger total output compared to the output level when the permit markets are perfect but the output market is imperfect. The opposite result holds for dominant sellers. In addition, the second-best regulation is characterized. It is shown that subsidies for permit buying and taxes for permit selling can be used as instruments to increase efficiency in both markets.