"[I]n the nineteenth century," writes Reginald Horsman, "the Americans were to share in the discovery that the secret of Saxon success lay not in the institutions but in the blood" (24). This "discovery" was of monumental and devastating importance, and by the middle of the century the sign of blood seemed to be everywhere. Americans and Europeans were entering a new era of blood--of blood spilled as never before in genocides around the globe, of blood seeping inexorably into the sacred and profane imagination of race and the nation, and of blood horrors turned into a staple of mass entertainment. This era of blood was the era of the bourgeoisie's entrenchment. In Juice of Life Piero Camporesi tells us, "At least up until the eighteenth century, blood was still dubbed the 'father of all the humors.' Life and salvation were closely tied up with its quality and purity" (14). Camporesi implicitly suggests a diminished rather than an augmented concern with blood in the modern world. But, if anything, this concern was heightened by its modified signification in the nineteenth century. After the collapse of the traditional theory of humors with the rise of scientific medicine in the eighteenth century, blood lost some of its old associations, but it gained some important new ones. Blood came to represent not the character of the individual, but the purity of the race or nation. The idea of purity--or impurity--of blood became the vessel of many bourgeois fears about confrontation with indigenous and colonized peoples, national identity, historical destiny, and the dream of progress. The race or nation whose mission--and manifest destiny--was to lead humanity into a better world could hardly dilute the very essence of its identity by "mixing" its blood. The most cherished precept of this era could be summed up in the words that John C. Calhoun spoke on the U. S. Senate floor in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War: ". . . Ours is a government of the white man . . . . [I]n the whole history of man . . . there is no instance whatever of any civilized colored race, of any shade, being found equal. . ." (my emphasis; qtd. in Fredrickson 136). Though the proud boast was meant to naturalize white colonialism and imperialism, which were already well into one of their most expansive phases in U. S. history, Calhoun's words belie a profound insecurity regarding the popular imagination of the white American destiny. The great fear was miscegenation, a mixing of bloodlines which, as historians and ethnologists of the era were becoming convinced, was the central factor in the decline of great civilizations. "Whenever in the history of the world the inferior races have been conquered and mixed in with the Caucasian," Josiah Nott appealed to fellow Americans, and to southern compatriots especially, "the latter have sunk into barbarism" (qtd. in Horsman 130). This fear was most routinely projected onto the Other who constituted the enemy internal to the body politic--the African. In 1839, the same year that "The Fall of the House of Usher" was published in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, the revered New England theologian Horace Bushnell predicted that if the slaves were ever freed they would die off by the end of the century. As George Frederickson emphasizes in his valuable reading of the period in The Black Image in the White Mind, Bushnell's prediction represented an early transposition onto the slaves of the brutally callous view that had already made Native American genocide seem acceptable and natural to the whites: "'vices which taint the blood and cut down life' might well 'penetrate the whole stock, and begin to hurry them off, in a process of premature extinction; as we know to be the case with another barbarous people, [the Indians] now fast yielding to the infection of death'" (qtd. in Fredrickson 155). Bushnell imagined this extinction to be a "glorious" possibility for the white man; and indeed Frederickson refers to this vision of black annihilation as Bushnell's "happy theme" (155). …


Experts agree that the earth will eventually run out of certain low-cost, nonrenewable resources, possibly as early as a century from now. Will the transition to reliance on other, more abundant resources be smooth or discontinuous? Might industrial societies experience a marked decline in living standards a radically different kind of society from the one we now know? Geologists maintain that once inexpensive high-grade resources are exhausted, economic growth will slow. Economists are more optimistic: they believe that new technologies and materials will be substituted rapidly enough to prevent minor economic dislocations."Toward a New Iron Age?" takes an important step toward reconciling these divergent views. It is the most comprehensive study of the economic consequences of resource depletion in particular, it is a thorough exploration of the prospects for one key metal, copper. The authors draw on geological and engineering data to calculate the resources now available and to assess the feasibility of substituting alternatives. Using linear programming and a range of hypothetical base conditions, they are able to estimate the course, through the next century and beyond, of several crucial factors: the rate at which copper resources will be used and when they will be depleted; how the price of the metal will fluctuate; when alternative materials will be substituted, in what patterns, and at what costs. By the late twenty-first century, the authors believe, low-cost copper will no longer be available. Industrial societies will have to operate on more abundant resources such as iron, silica, and aluminum. They will enter, in short, a New Iron Age."


Clinical trials of SHP2 inhibitors (SHP2i) alone and in various combinations are ongoing for multiple tumors with over-activation of the RAS/ERK pathway. SHP2 plays critical roles in normal cell signaling; hence, SHP2is could influence the tumor microenvironment. We found that SHP2i treatment depleted alveolar and M2-like macrophages and promoted B and T lymphocyte infiltration in Kras- and Egfr-mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, treatment also increased intratumor gMDSCs via tumor-intrinsic, NF-kB-dependent production of CXCR2 ligands. Other RAS/ERK pathway inhibitors also induced CXCR2 ligands and gMDSC influx in mice, and CXCR2 ligands were induced in tumors from patients on KRASG12C-inhibitor trials. Combined SHP2(SHP099)/CXCR1/2(SX682) inhibition depleted a specific cluster of S100a8/9high gMDSCs, generated Klrg1+ CD8+ effector T cells with a strong cytotoxic phenotype but expressing the checkpoint receptor NKG2A, and enhanced survival in Kras-and Egfr-mutant models. Our results argue for testing RAS/ERK pathway/CXCR1/2/NKG2A inhibitor combinations in NSCLC patients. Statement of Significance Our study shows that inhibiting the SHP2/RAS/ERK pathway triggers NF-kB-dependent up-regulation of CXCR2 ligands and recruitment of S100A8high gMDSCs, which suppress T cells in NSCLC. Combining SHP2 and CXCR2 inhibitors blocks this gMDSC immigration, resulting in enhanced Th1 polarization, induction of CD8+ KLRG1+ effector T cells with high cytotoxic activity and improved survival in multiple NSCLC models.


This article raises some fundamental issues in the resource-development literature, such as the effect of resource-availability and resource-related conflicts on personal and community-wide welfare, the interaction between resource-abundance and hopelessness, and the role of government presence and location of communities, using the Niger Delta region of Nigeria as a case study. Employing survey data from two sources, it shows that oil-availability has mixed effects for individuals and communities. It raises educational attainments and socio-economic access among individuals and infrastructural development in communities but also tends to generate higher episodes of violent conflicts, higher inequality, and greater feeling of despondency among individuals. It also fails to significantly affect earning levels or reduce unemployment. Government presence is beneficial as it tends to impact positively on earnings and socio-economic access among residents and reduces the likelihood of being unemployed or experiencing a longer spell of unemployment, but it is also likely to be associated with higher inequalities, higher incidences of conflict, and greater hopelessness. Individuals in more distant communities tend to have lower educational attainments and socio-economic access but they are also more likely to enjoy lower levels of inequality, greater hope, and lower incidences of unemployment. Youths tend to suffer the most from the negative effects of resource-abundance as they appear to be worse off on all measures of personal welfare employed, while geographical characteristics seem important for welfare just the same way as policy and initiatives at the local level. The paper concludes that natural resources, such as oil, can be significantly welfare-improving if its tendency to encourage violent conflict outbreaks can be addressed, but this may not be achieved by merely providing greater infrastructure or expanding educational opportunities but by matching these with significantly-expanded economic space.


Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems are one of the biggest energy consumers around the world. With the efforts of moving to sustainable energy consumption, heat-pump based HVAC systems have gained popularity due to their high efficiency and due to the fact that they are powered by electricity rather than by gas or oil. One drawback of heat-pump systems is that their efficiency sharply decreases when the outdoor temperature is around or below freezing. Therefore, they are backed up by an auxiliary heating system that is effective in cold whether, but that consumes twice as much energy. A popular way of saving energy in HVAC systems is setting back the thermostat, meaning, relaxing the heating/cooling requirements when occupants are not at home. While this practice leads to significant energy savings in many systems, it could in fact increase the energy consumption in a heat-pump based system, using existing control strategies, as it forces an excessive usage of the auxiliary heater. In this paper, we design and implement a complete, adaptive reinforcement learning agent which applies a new control strategy for a heat-pump thermostat. For our experiments, we use a complex, realistic simulator that was developed for the US Department of Energy. Results show that the learned control strategy (1) leads to roughly {7.0%-14.5%} energy savings in typical homes in the New York City, Boston, and Chicago areas; while (2) keeping the occupants' comfort level unchanged when compared to an existing strategy that is deployed in practice.


The current paper aims to develop an effective and integrated MCDM model for the evaluation of the sustainability practices in the banking services, employing a multi-stage, fuzzy MCDM model that integrates the Balanced Scorecard, fuzzy AHP and fuzzy TOPSIS. The approach aims to evaluate sustainability from the following four perspectives: financial stability, customer relationship management, internal business process and environment-friendly management system. A real implementation dealing with the six largest commercial banks in India is discussed. The results highlights the critical aspects of the evaluation criteria and the issues in improving sustainable banking performances. Regarding the sustainability issues, it is shown that the environment-friendly management system takes a back seat compared with the other criteria. Furthermore, the results show that there is a misunderstanding of the role that corporate social responsibility plays with respect to environmental issues. The developed evaluation model offers a valuable management tool for banks' administrators by assisting them in strategic choices in order to achieve their objective of sustainability and sustainable banking. Moreover, it offers a measuring tool with unique features that complements the emerging trend of integrated reporting considering uncertainty. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment


Aquaponics sometimes suffer from unreliable production due to nutrient fluctuations and unprofitability due to the high cost involved. To address these issues, this thesis evaluates the conventional nutrient management of aquaponics by, firstly, comparing plant growth in inorganic fertilizer solution and fish effluent, and secondly, evaluating the nutrient remediating property of Ipomea aquatica. A new Stacked Planting Unit (SPU) which utilizes the vertical space and has a high planting density was proposed as a way of increasing aquaponics' economic profitability. The SPU was evaluated economically and biologically (plant yield).
Portulaca spp. was planted in three different solutions: distilled water, aquaculture effluent, and inorganic fertilizer water solution. After 40 days the plants in the
inorganic fertilizer solution recorded 145% more biomass gain compared to plants in aquaculture effluent. Physiological development of plant was observed to be
markedly superior in the inorganic fertilizer compared to the other treatments.In another experiment, Ipomea aquatica with well developed roots had their roots submerged in aquaculture effluent for seven days and it was found that nitrate and phosphorus were reduced by 59% and 65%, respectively. The two experiments suggested that although phytoremediation is relatively reliable, a different approach in aquaponics recirculation strategy had to be adopted as the growth performance of plants is unsatisfactory. Sweet Basil (Omicum basilicum) and Pak Choy (Brassica rapa) were grown in the SPU and their biomass gain was recorded for each row. Basil represented a medium sized plant and Pak Choy represented a short plant. It
was found their biomass were reduce by 33% ± 1% respectively. Even so, SPU accommodated 108% more plant in an area of land when compared with the conventional planting unit and the increased plant number per area in the SPU
compensated for the non-ideal biomass gain. Pak Choy yielded 2.77 kg/m² and Basil 1.51 kg/m² more than the conventional planting unit. It was also found that the RAS system used in this research would make a loss of RM6675 per year, but if
it is joined to the SPUs, forming stacked aquaponics, the system as a whole, would reverse economically and return a profit.


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This report describes an innovative research education tool for student exposure and training in immunology. Utilizing the wealth of transcriptomics data provided through the immunological genome project, graduate and undergraduate students can engage in hands-on experimental studies to identify and rigorously characterize novel genes in immune cells using RNA interference-mediated approaches. The SIFT activities are directly aligned with cell biology and immunology courses and serve to reinforce and expand on the foundations learned. Furthermore, the student-driven studies provide a sense of ownership and largely expose students to the breadth of experimental research approaches in the biological sciences. Finally, generation of original datasets supports the greater scientific community by contributing in assembly and delineation of the regulatory networks that govern immunity.


There can be no doubt that denying / refusing care to patients in need, through act or omission, goes against the centuries old ethical principles of the medical profession, embodied in the Hippocratic Oath. Legislation also prohibits doctors from striking in South Africa. And yet in spite of all this a strike was mooted by the SAMA leadership, says Prof Mac Lukhele, SAMA Executive Committee member and Chairman of the Committee for Public Sector Doctors: "However, we put our patients first and organising a strike would be a last resort." Last resort? How can a strike put patients first? The fact that a strike was even contemplated is shocking to say the least. Two wrongs do not make a right, and the government's feet-dragging in the implementation of the OSD and poor working conditions do not make a strike by doctors any more legitimate or ethical. Striking public sector doctors not only add to the suffering of the poorest of the poor but also add to the tarnishing of the profession's image. In the long run the damage to the profession will be more than the gain. There are other ways to make your point.


The scarcity of labeled data is a critical obstacle to deep learning. Semi-supervised learning (SSL) provides a promising way to leverage unlabeled data by pseudo labels. However, when the size of labeled data is very small (say a few labeled samples per class), SSL performs poorly and unstably, possibly due to the low quality of learned pseudo labels. In this paper, we propose a new SSL method called DP-SSL that adopts an innovative data programming (DP) scheme to generate probabilistic labels for unlabeled data. Different from existing DP methods that rely on human experts to provide initial labeling functions (LFs), we develop a multiple-choice learning~(MCL) based approach to automatically generate LFs from scratch in SSL style. With the noisy labels produced by the LFs, we design a label model to resolve the conflict and overlap among the noisy labels, and finally infer probabilistic labels for unlabeled samples. Extensive experiments on four standard SSL benchmarks show that DP-SSL can provide reliable labels for unlabeled data and achieve better classification performance on test sets than existing SSL methods, especially when only a small number of labeled samples are available. Concretely, for CIFAR-10 with only 40 labeled samples, DP-SSL achieves 93.82% annotation accuracy on unlabeled data and 93.46% classification accuracy on test data, which are higher than the SOTA results.


During disease progression to AIDS, HIV-1 infected individuals become increasingly immunosuppressed and susceptible to opportunistic infections. It has also been demonstrated that multiple subsets of dendritic cells (DC), including DC-SIGN(+) cells, become significantly depleted in the blood and lymphoid tissues of AIDS patients, which may contribute to the failure in initiating effective host immune responses. The mechanism for DC depletion, however, is unclear. It is also known that vast quantities of viral envelope protein gp120 are shed from maturing HIV-1 virions and form circulating immune complexes in the serum of HIV-1-infected individuals, but the pathological role of gp120 in HIV-1 pathogenesis remains elusive. Here we describe a previously unrecognized mechanism of DC death in chronic HIV-1 infection, in which ligation of DC-SIGN by gp120 sensitizes DC to undergo accelerated apoptosis in response to a variety of activation stimuli. The cultured monocyte-derived DC and also freshly-isolated DC-SIGN(+) blood DC that were exposed to either cross-linked recombinant gp120 or immune-complex gp120 in HIV(+) serum underwent considerable apoptosis after CD40 ligation or exposure to bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or pro-inflammatory cytokines such as TNFα and IL-1β. Furthermore, circulating DC-SIGN(+) DC that were isolated directly from HIV-1(+) individuals had actually been pre-sensitized by serum gp120 for activation-induced exorbitant apoptosis. In all cases the DC apoptosis was substantially inhibited by DC-SIGN blockade. Finally, we showed that accelerated DC apoptosis was a direct consequence of excessive activation of the pro-apoptotic molecule ASK-1 and transfection of siRNA against ASK-1 significantly prevented the activation-induced excessive DC death. Our study discloses a previously unknown mechanism of immune modulation by envelope protein gp120, provides new insights into HIV immunopathogenesis, and suggests potential therapeutic approaches to prevent DC depletion in chronic HIV infection.


Northern peatland ecosystems represent large carbon (C) stocks that are susceptible to changes such as accelerated mineralization due to water table lowering expected under a climate change scenario. During the growing seasons (1 May to 31 October) of 2011 and 2012 we monitored CO 2 fluxes and plant biomass along a microtopographic gradient (hummocks-hollows) in an undisturbed dry continental boreal treed bog (control) and a nearby site that was drained (drained) in 2001. Ten years of drainage in the bog significantly increased coverage of shrubs at hummocks and lichens at hollows. Considering measured hummock coverage and including tree incremental growth, we estimate that the control site was a sink of −92 in 2011 and −70 g C m −2 in 2012, while the drained site was a source of 27 and 23 g C m −2 over the same years. We infer that, drainage-induced changes in vegetation growth led to increased biomass to counteract a portion of soil carbon losses. These results suggest that spatial variability (microtopography) and changes in vegetation community in boreal peatlands will affect how these ecosystems respond to lowered water table potentially induced by climate change.


Graphical models are ubiquitous tools to describe the interdependence between variables measured simultaneously such as large-scale gene or protein expression data. Gaussian graphical models (GGMs) are well-established tools for probabilistic exploration of dependence structures using precision matrices and they are generated under a multivariate normal joint distribution. However, they suffer from several shortcomings since they are based on Gaussian distribution assumptions. In this article, we propose a Bayesian quantile based approach for sparse estimation of graphs. We demonstrate that the resulting graph estimation is robust to outliers and applicable under general distributional assumptions. Furthermore, we develop efficient variational Bayes approximations to scale the methods for large data sets. Our methods are applied to a novel cancer proteomics data dataset where-in multiple proteomic antibodies are simultaneously assessed on tumor samples using reverse-phase protein arrays (RPPA) technology.


Timber harvesting from the tropical rainforests of north Queensland ceased following their inscription on the World Heritage List in 1988. The cessation of logging was due to a political ban, not due to exhaustion of the resources. There is no evidence to suggest that logging could not be sustained. Rather, there are growing evidences to suggest that the polycyclic selection system could have sustained timber harvests indefinitely, although yields would have been comparatively low (0.4 m3/ha/yr). Strengths of this system were secure tenure, independent professional management, minimal damage to residual trees and minimal soil erosion. Weaknesses included low financial returns, inadequate procedures for identifying areas for preservation, and insufficient community involvement. Implications for the tropical timber producers are discussed.


Many research questions in biological research lead to numerous microscope images that need to be evaluated. Here digital image cytometry, i.e., quantitative, automated or semi-automated analysis of the images is an important rapidly growing discipline. This thesis presents contributions to that field. The work has been carried out in close cooperation with biomedical research partners, successfully solving real world problems.The world is 3D and modern imaging methods such as confocal microscopy provide 3D images. Hence, a large part of the work has dealt with the development of new and improved methods for quantitative analysis of 3D images, in particular fluorescently labeled skeletal muscle cells.A geometrical model for robust segmentation of skeletal muscle fibers was developed. Images of the multinucleated muscle cells were pre-processed using a novel spatially modulated transform, producing images with reduced complexity and facilitating easy nuclei segmentation. Fibers from several mammalian species were modeled and features were computed based on cell nuclei positions. Features such as myonuclear domain size and nearest neighbor distance, were shown to correlate with body mass, and femur length. Human muscle fibers from young and old males, and females, were related to fiber type and extracted features, where myonuclear domain size variations were shown to increase with age irrespectively of fiber type and gender.A segmentation method for severely clustered point-like signals was developed and applied to images of fluorescent probes, quantifying the amount and location of mitochondrial DNA within cells. A synthetic cell model was developed, to provide a controllable golden standard for performance evaluation of both expert manual and fully automated segmentations. The proposed method matches the correctness achieved by manual quantification.An interactive segmentation procedure was successfully applied to treated testicle sections of boar, showing how a common industrial plastic softener significantly affects testosterone concentrations.


The typical informational density in German non-fictional prose often triggers sentence splitting in translations into Norwegian. Information given as VP- or NP-adjunctions in the monosentential source versions is extracted and rendered as independent sentences or conjuncts in coordinative structures in the target version. Typically, subordination in the source version signals that the information should not be seen as the main focus of the sentence. Hence, an important means of guiding the reader with regard to discourse function is lost in the translated version. This article aims at showing how certain choices of target version form can be explained by the goal of preserving the discourse structure of the original. A recurring strategy is the use of coordinated clauses or VPs in the target version. Coordination — at least in narratives licensing consequential readings between the first and second conjunct — is exploited as a device of 'downgrading' the information of the first conjunct to a background role, preserving the second conjunct as the main focus equivalent to the original. Thus, coordination seems to compensate for the more restricted use of syntactic subordination in Norwegian.


There is a growing interest in the nature and significance of business processes both within the business community and in management research. For many researchers, process has evolved from its re-engineering origins to become a powerful tool for understanding and explaining business activity. Within this new paradigm, effective Business Process Management (BPM) is viewed as a pervasive and profound business challenge. A number of case studies have explored how companies react to this challenge and several recurring themes have emerged: for example, companies must fully identify their business processes, and introduce 'end to end' process measurement and management. However, these themes have not yet been synthesised into a single model capable of being measured. In the absence of such a model, it is difficult to explain why some companies are more active and effective in managing business processes than others. This paper reports on a collaborative exercise carried out with a large UK Bank to develop and test such a model in an empirical context. The findings suggest that the model is both valid and pragmatic. The results were used by the Bank to identify and implement business improvements. More importantly, the model provides a platform for assessing process performance across the financial services sector and underpinning future explanatory research. The paper concludes that BPM was an important consideration for the Bank, supporting the emerging paradigm, and recommends further research from within this perspective.


Two Asian longhorned beetles (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae), commonly known as Citrus Longhorned Beetle (CLB), Anoplophora chinensis (Forster), and Asian Longhorned Beetle (ALB), A. glabripennis (Motschulsky), are considered the most destructive wood borers introduced in Lombardy (northern Italy).
This research aimed at (1) improving laboratory rearing methods for the biological control agent Aprostocetus anoplophorae (Hym.: Eulophidae), an egg parasitoid specific to CLB, and defining release techniques allowing its establishment; (2) test the efficacy of the sentinel tree technique for the early detection of CLB; and (3) evaluating the efficacy of traps baited with artificial lures in attracting adults of ALB and possibly CLB.
Several problems were faced while rearing the egg parasitoid in laboratory. It appeared that the rate of parasitism of the hosts could depend on the age of the host eggs and/or age of the laying parasitoid females. Data results from the field experiments about A. anoplophorae release-capture showed that the percentage of slits containing a CLB egg was particularly low on most sentinel trees and the percentage of CLB eggs that were killed, because of natural predators, was high. Only one egg amongst those exposed was attacked by the released parasitoid. These negative results were anyway very useful, since they provided evidence and information on the type of host plants to be used, the time necessary for the exposure of the plants to the egg-laying CLB females, the number of laying parasitoid females to be inserted per cage.
The sentinel trees technique revealed to be not successful; signs and symptoms of CLB presence were not recorded during the two seasons of field observations (2012-2013).
Extremely positive was instead the trial with artificial lures carried out during summer 2013. A total of 32 beetles were captured (4 ALB and 28 CLB) deploying 50 baited traps.


This Article analyzes the Federal Reserve's expanded role in payment, clearing, and settlement systems, particularly in connection with certain clearinghouses that have been designated by the newly created Financial Stability Oversight Council as "systemically significant." The Federal Reserve's expanded role is a little understood, but critical supporting component of domestic and international regulatory reforms to the $639 trillion over-the-counter (OTC) derivative markets. These reforms mandate the increased use of clearinghouses in OTC derivative markets. Due to critical reforms in Title VIII of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, the Federal Reserve is now positioned to ensure the stability of designated clearinghouses. Importantly, systemically significant clearinghouses are the quintessential "too big to fail" financial institutions.


Women in leadership are necessary for the development of Cambodia. Their involvement in leadership roles in the public sphere and politics is crucial and has been shown to impact positively on poverty reduction. Governments, NGOs and international organizations have been increasingly aware that development is significantly linked to gender. It is noted that sustainable development should focus on gender equality and that women's empowerment is a key factor in ending extreme poverty. Thus, a developing country like Cambodia should aim to empower women at the grassroots level. This study aims to facilitate how this may be achieved.  The lack of representation of women in local politics in Cambodia has recently been considered as a problem which can slow the progress of local development. This study uses case studies to understand the complexity of some women's real-life situations (life experience, behaviours, and emotions) and to explore the patterns of women becoming leaders at local levels. Three communes in the North-Eastern provinces, Kampong Cham, Kratie and Steung Treng provide the empirical base of the study. The study poses three main research questions: firstly, what type of work, personal characteristics and resources influence women to become local leaders? Secondly, what experiences do female local leaders have? Lastly, what can be learned from women's backgrounds and experiences to assist in the formation of a practical leadership model to help guide other women aspiring to be local leaders? In answering this last research question, the study concludes by offering a practical leadership model that is intended to help increase women's participation in local politics.  This study found that to achieve leadership, women need to build up their local work experience. Secondly, certain personal characteristics need to be developed, including a minimum education level, personal drive, confidence, gentleness, softness, integrity and friendliness. These internal factors gain people's trust, acknowledgement and support. Lastly, women need the continuing support of government, NGOs, family, villagers and others, including political parties. Greater opportunities for women to get involved in local politics will enable them to have access to local work experience, so they can build their own capacity, and enrich their education. The findings will assist organisations and women to plan for leadership and to create and make the most of opportunities.


ABSTRACT Today, the European Union (EU) is confronting a new democratic deficit at the national level. A number of EU member states have experienced an erosion of democracy and the rule of law in recent years, most severely in Hungary and Poland. Drawing on different strands of political science research, the contributions to this section debate the strengths and weaknesses of the various safeguards and tactics the EU has deployed or might deploy to resist democratic backsliding by member governments. This brief introduction raises the main questions of the debate: how politically feasible is the application of existing and proposed EU safeguards, and what are the likely consequences, intended as well as unintended, of various judicial and political approaches?


CONTEXT
Anecdotal reports suggest elite sports clubs combine lower-body positive-pressure rehabilitation with a hypoxic stimulus to maintain or increase physiological and metabolic strain, which are reduced during lower-body positive pressure. However, the effects of hypoxia on cardiovascular and metabolic response during lower-body positive-pressure rehabilitation are unknown.

OBJECTIVE
Evaluate the use of normobaric hypoxia as a means to increase physiological strain during body-weight-supported (BWS) running.

DESIGN
Crossover study.

SETTING
Controlled laboratory.

PARTICIPANTS
Seven familiarized males (mean (SD): age, 20 (1) y; height, 1.77 (0.05) m; mass, 69.4 (5.1) kg; hemoglobin, 15.2 (0.8) g·dL-1) completed a normoxic and hypoxic (fraction of inspired oxygen [O2] = 0.14) trial, during which they ran at 8 km·h-1 on an AlterG™ treadmill with 0%, 30%, and 60% BWS in a randomized order for 10 minutes interspersed with 5 minutes of recovery.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Arterial O2 saturation, heart rate, O2 delivery, and measurements of metabolic strain via indirect calorimetry.

RESULTS
Hypoxic exercise reduced hemoglobin O2 saturation and elevated heart rate at each level of BWS compared with normoxia. However, the reduction in hemoglobin O2 saturation was attenuated at 60% BWS compared with 0% and 30%, and consequently, O2 delivery was better maintained at 60% BWS.

CONCLUSION
Hypoxia is a practically useful means of increasing physiological strain during BWS rehabilitation. In light of the maintenance of hemoglobin O2 saturation and O2 delivery at increasing levels of BWS, fixed hemoglobin saturations rather than a fixed altitude are recommended to maintain an aerobic stimulus.


We present an efficient algorithm for statistical multiple alignment based on the TKF91 model of Thorne, Kishino, and Felsenstein (1991) on an arbitrary k-leaved phylogenetic tree. The existing algorithms use a hidden Markov model approach, which requires at least O( radical 5(k)) states and leads to a time complexity of O(5(k)L(k)), where L is the geometric mean sequence length. Using a combinatorial technique reminiscent of inclusion/exclusion, we are able to sum away the states, thus improving the time complexity to O(2(k)L(k)) and considerably reducing memory requirements. This makes statistical multiple alignment under the TKF91 model a definite practical possibility in the case of a phylogenetic tree with a modest number of leaves.


The system gamma of the imaging pipeline, defined as the product of the encoding and decoding gammas, is typically greater than one and is stronger for images viewed with a dark background (e.g. cinema) than those viewed in lighter conditions (e.g. office displays).1-3 However, for high dynamic range (HDR) images reproduced on a low dynamic range (LDR) monitor, subjects often prefer a system gamma of less than one,4 presumably reflecting the greater need for histogram equalization in HDR images. In this study we ask subjects to rate the perceived quality of images presented on a LDR monitor using various levels of system gamma. We reveal that the optimal system gamma is below one for images with a HDR and approaches or exceeds one for images with a LDR. Additionally, the highest quality scores occur for images where a system gamma of one is optimal, suggesting a preference for linearity (where possible). We find that subjective image quality scores can be predicted by computing the degree of histogram equalization of the lightness distribution. Accordingly, an optimal, image dependent system gamma can be computed that maximizes perceived image quality.


SiCr-based thin-film resistors with low temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) have been integrated in a 0.8-μm BiCMOS technology in a dual thin-film structure, with a heater close to the thin-film resistor. Such a structure allows modifying the thin-film resistance by applying electric pulses to the heater (trimming). The morphology and the electrical properties of the as-deposited and modified thin-film resistors have been studied through transmission electron microscopy analyses and electrical measurements as a function of temperature. Structural analyses have shown the formation of Cr-rich layers at the interfaces. The experimentally observed resistance reduction upon trimming and the TCR variation have been both successfully reproduced by considering the effective medium approximation and by treating the film as a mixture of two materials with different compositions and conductivities.


Today multinational firms face grave uncertainties with respect to their investment strategies in other countries. This paper stresses the importance of integrating the descriptive aspects of this problem with prescriptive recommendations. It does so by raising two interrelated questions: (1) How do multinational firms and insurers deal with the problems of international risk in making their decisions on what investments to undertake? (2) What role can analytic approaches, including insurance mechanisms, play in better managing risk and uncertainty in international transactions?

These questions are addressed by developing a conceptual framework which emphasizes the importance of problem formulation, institutional arrangements and decision processes as a basis for prescriptive recommendations. The problem is characterized by lack of a detailed statistical data base to estimate probabilities and consequences of different types of political, economic, and social risks. Corporate planners and risk managers who have responsibility for these investment decisions would Like concreteness. Hence, their actions appear to be greatly influenced by past experience and personal contacts.

Our prescriptive recommendations are designed to widen the statistical data base by the use of experts and Bayesian analysis as well as to broaden the responsibility for investment decisions within the organization. We also propose a jointly operated US private-federal insurance program which maintains features of current government operated systems but has private firms marketing policies and settling claims.

The above theoretical concepts are illustrated with a case study of Indonesia's investment evaluation problem pursuant to their decision to provide the United States with liquefied natural gas in the early 1970's. This case study illustrates the political risks of firms investing even in highly developed economies such as the United States.


In 2009, the Government of India requested states to develop State Action Plans on Climate Change. Based on a detailed analysis of five state climate plans, this article finds that climate plans provide an important institutional platform to mainstream concerns of environmental sustainability into development planning but fail to update ideas of sustainability to include climate resilience. There are shortcomings in approach, process, formulation of outcomes, and implementation efforts. These shortcomings are united by a common thread – a tendency to prematurely view state climate plans as vehicles for generating implementable actions rather than an opportunity to redirect development towards climate resilience. However, if state plans are viewed as the beginning of a complex process of updating sustainable development planning rather than as an end in themselves, they provide a foundation upon which climate concerns can be more effectively mainstreamed in local development planning.


Given the complexity of the global economy, the challenge of managing complex projects across dispersed geographical locations has never been greater. There is a clear need to find improved ways of managing this often difficult process now and into the future. This book meets that need, giving you a structured and comprehensive approach to leading teams/projects, particularly when these are complex projects done by virtual teams. By applying this Process Model for Leadership of Complex Virtual Teams, you can be assured that you are covering all of the most important activities needed to operate at an optimum level; and which could be very useful to know. The principles outlined here are applicable to public and private sector organisations alike. Government departments with geographically dispersed offices, Commercial, Financial, Telecommunications, Educational, Health Care in fact any organisation operating virtual teams will benefit from this course, particularly where these teams are complex in nature.


The goal of this study was to determine the monthly variations of phytoplankton composition in the least studied southern shores of the Black Sea with respect to environmental factors. This region is known to be one of the most eutrophic seas in the world. During the course of this research, carried out between October 2002 and September 2003, various samples were collected monthly from a depth of 0.50 m at five stations. A total of 129 taxa belonging to 5 divisions and 14 potentially HAB species was recorded during this research. Three peaks were observed in the total phytoplankton in October 2002, May and July 2003. These findings were also supported by chlorophyll a (chl a) concentrations and the biodiversity index of Shannon-Wiener (H'). TRIX indices were computed in order to identify the trophic level of the region and the research area was determined to be highly eutrophic. Three groups of samples were described by Hierarchical agglomerative clustering and Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS) ordination. Species displaying a major role in discriminating the groups were Dactyliosolen fragilissimus (Bergon) G.R. Hassle, 1997, Nitzschia longissima (Brebisson) Ralfs in Pritchard, 1861, Proboscia alata (Brightwell) Sundstrom, 1986, Pseudonitzchia pungens (Grunow ex P.T. Cleve, 1897) Hasle, 1993 and Skeletonema costatum (Greville) P.T. Cleve, 1878 from diatoms, Prorocentrum micans Ehrenberg, 1833 from dinoflagellates and Eutreptia lanowii Steur 1904 from Euglenophyta.


The Song of Songs has been compared to a lock for which the key was lost. Traditionally ascribed to King Solomon, the book has a sensuous imagery that has been the subject of various allegorical interpretations, chiefly as relating to Yahweh's love for Israel or Christ's love for the Church.
 Marvin H. Pope suggests that the poem is what it seems, an unabashed celebration of sexual love, both human and divine, rooted in the fertility religions of the ancient Near East, the sacred marriage rite, and the funeral feast. A distinctive feature of his interpretation is the correlation between Love and Death. Also discussed are parallel literatures, possible Indian influences, and the significance of the Song for women's liberation. Samples of traditional Jewish and Christian allegorical interpretations are cited for each verse.
 Numerous photographs and drawings of ancient Near East origin illustrate and authenticate this provocative and controversial interpretation of Solomon's sublime song.


A typical long-haul heavy duty Diesel engine currently rejects up to 50% of the total fuel energy in the form of heat. Due to increasing CO2 emissions and fuel costs, there is a growing interest in techniques that can even partially utilise this wasted resource to improve the overall system efficiency. Fluid Bottoming Cycles (FBC) including Rankine and organic Rankine cycles offer one means towards converting waste heat into usable power. This thesis investigates the potential of FBCs to improve the net power of two computationally modelled (Ricardo WAVE V8.1) 10 litre engine platforms operating at Euro 6 emission levels.
The heat to power conversion potential of a FBC largely depends on the selected working fluid, its associated cycle operating mode and the system architecture. Firstly, a detailed systematic methodology for the selection and evaluation of pure working fluids was developed and applied using an advanced chemical process modelling tool (Aspen HYSYS V7.3). Using cycle and fluid fundamentals, screening criteria, and ranking indices, the methodology identified ethyl iodide, methanol, R30, acetone, R152 and E152a as the most suitable fluids amongst the 1800 synthetic, organic and inorganic fluids.
Secondly, by varying the expansion inlet parameters, simulations were conducted using 10 pure, dry, isentropic and wet working fluids. The aim was to reduce cycle irreversibilities, highlight the significant sensitivity and performance results, provide directions for practical implementation, and offer new opportunities in energy conversion. For the low, medium and high thermal boundary conditions respectively, liquid expansion (E152a), low pressure limited superheat expansion (methanol, R30, acetone) or dry supercritical expansion (R152), and high pressure limited superheat expansion (using the high temperature organic fluids) were identified as techno-economic optimum. These optimal ORC operating modes achieved efficiencies 65-77% of the theoretical cycle limits.
Finally, 13 combinations of thermal and sub-system architectures were methodically analysed and classified in terms of their level of complexity, average system power and relative size. To provide tailored solutions, the pure working fluid methodology was additionally adapted to examine over 750 water blends and 700 organic blends. Aqueous blends of 3-Methyl-1-Butanol and 1-propanol were found to be best suited to the dual pressure and the dual cycle systems. Furthermore, the ethanol-toluene blend was preferred for the high temperature recuperated cycle. The dual cycle system (aqueous blend and E152a combination) showed the maximum potential and produced an average of 7.5% of additional engine crankshaft power.


Partial discharge (PD) measurements have long been used to assess the condition of the electrical insulation in motors and generators rated 3.3 kV and above. There are many ways to measure PD during normal service of the motor or generator. Unfortunately most of the measurement methods mix stator PD with electrical interference signals from poor electrical connections, power tool operation, corona from transmission lines, etc. The result can be false indications of stator winding problems, reducing confidence in PD measurements. Another issue with on-line PD testing is interpretation: i.e. identifying which machines are in good condition and which need maintenance. In the past decade, a database of over 60,000 test results has been assembled. In hundreds of machines, the condition of the insulation determined by a visual inspection has been compared to the PD levels. The result is a table that provides an objective means of determining the stator insulation condition relative to other similar machines. Analysis of the results also shows that there are significant differences in PD activity between manufacturers. This paper gives a review of the methods that can reduce the risk of false indications, thus making the measurement less subjective


Moral judgments arise from a consideration of mental state inferences and an assessment of the outcomes of a moral event. Perspective taking and empathizing with people involved in a moral situation were predicted to differentially influence moral judgments. Perspective taking was predicted to guide observers to focus on the mental states of an agent, whereas empathy was predicted to guide observers to be sensitive to the outcomes of an event and who is harmed or benefitted by the actions of a moral agent. In turn, perspective taking would intensify moral judgments of blame and praise for outcomes that were produced intentionally, and empathizing would intensify moral judgments for accidental actions. Two studies manipulated information about an agent's mental state and event outcomes by having participants read vignettes that described accidental or attempted events. Participants were instructed to either take the perspective of or empathize with the people in the story and make judgments of blame and praise. Study 1 examined judgments of blame and Study 2 attempted to replicate and extend Study 1 by including praiseworthy vignettes. Empathizing was found to produce greater judgments of blame for accidental actions. Judgments of attempted acts did not robustly differ across instruction conditions.


This paper examines the enforcement of the Brazilian Stock Exchange (B3) self-regulation on companies listed on its special corporate governance segments: Levels 1, 2 and the New Market. From the theoretical perspective, I discuss the main doctrines and international experiences on the subject. The legal analysis shows the contract between the B3 and listed companies being an instrument of this relation. This relation, in turn, is grounded on legal based disciplinary power aimed to be used in the public interest. From the empirical perspective, I analyze fourteen years of data of the sanctions applied by the B3 for companies listed on the special segments. The results show that: (i) sanctions imposed by the B3 have procedural nature instead of substantive; (ii) the number of sanctions did not grow proportionally to the number of listed companies; (iii) there is a negative correlation between the number of fines and the stock market momentum ("bear" or "bull market"); and (iv) on average, companies that receive more fines are smaller, younger, with lower profitability, lower stock returns and higher indebtedness. I present solutions to increase public oversight of the enforcement of the listing segments' rules, such as: enhancing transparency and accountability; strengthening the state supervision over the private regulator's enforcement activities; and, implementing mechanisms to mitigate the risks of under-enforcement caused by conflicts of interests. The Brazilian case is relevant to the global debate because its results suggest responses to the following issues: (i) the limitations of Stock Exchanges to enforce its own rules; (ii) the discussion whether listing rules lead to a "race to the bottom" or "race to the top"; and, (iii) whether "bull" or "bear markets" are related to the enforcement activity. These results highlight the relevance of more research and debates on this issue in the academic world. Taken together, the debate and proposals have the ultimate goal of improving investor protection and strengthen the credibility of the stock markets in order to contribute to greater economic and social development.


Nanomaterials and Nanostructures: Progress Towards Monodisperse Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (Mark C Hersam) The Rise of Graphene (A K Geim & K S Novoselov) Multiferroics: Progress and Prospects in Thin Films (R Ramesh & Nicola A Spaldin) Inorganic Nanotubes and Fullerene-Like Nanoparticles (R Tenne) The Role of Interparticle and External Forces in Nanoparticle Assembly (Younjin Min et al.) Complex Thermoelectric Materials (G Jeffrey Snyder & Eric S Toberer) Solid-State Nanopores (Cees Dekker) Engineering Atomic and Molecular Nanostructures at Surfaces (Johannes V Barth et al.) Molecular Machines and Devices: Making Molecular Machines Work (Wesley R Browne & Ben L Feringa) Molecular Logic and Computing (A Prasanna de Silva & Seiichi Uchiyama) Harnessing Biological Motors to Engineer Systems for Nanoscale Transport and Assembly (Anita Goel & Viola Vogel) Designed DNA Molecules: Principles and Applications of Molecular Nanotechnology (Anne Condon) DNA Nanomachines (Jonathan Bath & Andrew J Turberfield) Nanoelectronics: Nanoelectronics from the Bottom Up (Wei Lu & Charles M Lieber) The Emergence of Spin Electronics in Data Storage (Claude Chappert et al.) Nanoionics-Based Resistive Switching Memories (Rainer Waser & Masakazu Aono) Technology and Metrology of New Electronic Materials and Devices (Eric Vogel) Carbon-Based Electronics (Phaedon Avouris et al.) Electron Transport in Molecular Junctions (N J Tao) Molecular Spintronics using Single-Molecule Magnets (Lapo Bogani & Wolfgang Wernsdorfer) Nanophotonics: Light in Tiny Holes (C Genet & T W Ebbesen) Nano-Optics from Sensing to Waveguiding (Surbhi Lal et al.) Semiconductor Quantum Light Sources (Andrew J Shields) Biomimetics of Photonic Nanostructures (Andrew R Parker & Helen E Townley) Nanobiotechnology and Nanomedicine: Nanoparticle Therapeutics: An Emerging Treatment Modality for Cancer (Mark E Davis et al.) Neuroscience Nanotechnology: Progress, Opportunities and Challenges (Gabriel A Silva) The Potential and Challenges of Nanopore Sequencing (Daniel Branton et al.) Atomic Force Microscopy as a Multifunctional Molecular Toolbox in Nanobiotechnology (Daniel J Muller & Yves F Dufrene) Immunological Properties of Engineered Nanomaterials (Marina A Dobrovolskaia & Scott E McNeil) Injectable Nanocarriers for Biodetoxification (Jean-Christophe Leroux) Selected Applications: Applications of Dip-Pen Nanolithography (Khalid Salaita et al.) Biosensing with Plasmonic Nanosensors (Jeffrey N Anker et al.) Materials for Electrochemical Capacitors (Patrice Simon & Yury Gogotsi) Future Lab-on-a-Chip Technologies for Interrogating Individual Molecules (Harold Craighead) Science and Technology for Water Purification in the Coming Decades (Mark A Shannon et al.).


A growing number of researchers see word sequences following Sinclair's idiom principle (1991:110) as far more central to language than was previously thought. While a considerable amount of work has now been done on describing, classifying and quantifying such multi-word sequences, the bewildering diversity of terminology in the field is one indicator that we are still in the early days of multi-word sequence research. The project introduced in the present paper analyses German data spanning the 20th century in search of changes in recurring multi-word sequences over the period. The results promise not only to shed light on the proportion of words that are part of multi-word sequences (MWS) in written German, which has not so far been investigated broadly, but particularly on the rate and type of change they are undergoing. If language change and change in sociocultural settings can at all be related, multi-word sequences, by virtue of their centrality to human language, will be able to provide meaningful and novel insights into sociocultural change in a speech community.

The paper will present preliminary results of a first phase of the project, based on the Swiss Text Corpus, a 20-million word corpus of the Swiss variety of written Standard German recently completed at the University of Basel. For the investigation, the corpus was divided into four sub-corpora representing different periods of the 20th century. MWS were extracted using the Ngram Statistics Package (Banerjee and Pedersen 2003) and subsequently analysed and compared. The work is among the very first investigations using the Swiss Text Corpus which itself represents the only Swiss Standard German corpus not principally composed of newspaper texts, but balanced across four genre types.

References:
Pedersen, T., & Banerjee, S. (2003). The design, implementation and use of the ngram statistics package. In Proceedings of the 4th international conference on intelligent text processing and computational linguistics, Mexico City.
Swiss Text Corpus (Schweizer Text Korpus): www.dwds.ch
Sinclair, J. (1991). Corpus, concordance, collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


In this paper, we derive an expression of the brightness temperatures of a vegetated surface based on the tau-omega model with the rough surface boundary condition that replaces the conventional exp(-h) model by NMM3D (Numerical Simulations of 3D Maxwell equations). A purpose of the paper is that the same physical rough surface scattering model based on NMM3D and the same physical parameters of rms heights and correlation lengths can be used for both passive and active remote sensing of the same scene of vegetated surfaces. The bistatic scattering of rough surfaces are decomposed into the coherent wave and the co-polarization and the cross-polarization of the incoherent waves to quantify the contribution of each of these components. Numerical results are illustrated for a variety of roughness conditions. Comparisons are made with the exp(-h) model. Results are compared with the experimental passive measurements of PORTOS 1993 for bare soil cases. Data cubes for grassland are calculated for both active and passive signatures at L band. Comparisons are then made with the L band PALS data for the grassland of SGP99 using these data cubes.


The security-development nexus has received significant attention from policymakers as a new trend in post-conflict reconstruction. Integrating the traditionally separate areas of security and development, the nexus has been touted as a new strategy to achieve a comprehensive approach to post-conflict reconstruction.
Despite the enthusiasm behind the security-development nexus, it has received significant criticism. Critics argue that rather than an integrated approach, the nexus results in the securitisation of development, where development is employed to further desired security objectives. These critiques focus on the outcomes of the security-development nexus, with little understanding of what contributes to these outcomes. In my research, I address this gap by focusing on processes and investigating how security and development are integrated. The thesis asks what in practice inhibits the integration of security and development into a nexus.
To do this, the thesis hypothesises and investigates four tensions that influence the integration of security and development. Conceptual tension arises from the different understandings of security and development. Causal tension arises from the different applications of security and development and the linkages between them. Institutional tension arises from the way actors and institutions inform the implementation of programmes. Motivational tension arises from the drivers behind international involvement.
The research is informed by the Welsh School of Critical Security Studies. From this perspective, the security-development nexus is imbued with the potential of a positive result. This potential is operationalised through a human security approach, defined in terms of people-centredness, holism and emancipation. The tensions track the divergence of the security-development nexus from its potential, and show how the integration of security and development is inhibited.
The thesis compares two case studies of internationally driven initiatives to address organised crime in Sierra Leone and Bosnia. Examination of the tensions reveals that actors addressing organised crime have attempted to move away from a security approach, resulting in incipient integration between security and development. In some areas the relationship is mutually constitutive, and sequential in others. However, barriers still remain. Integration is inhibited by the prioritisation of international security concerns and the dominance of security actors. While these factors appear to support the argument on securitisation of development, the continued prominence of security is not an explicit strategy that co-opts development, rather the process of integration is shaped by the tacit knowledge of security actors.


AIM To evaluate the ability of different commercially available cell culture solutions to preserve human donor corneas during 3 weeks of "closed system" organ culture at physiological temperature. This screening was performed in an attempt to establish a rational basis for the development of a serum-free organ culture medium for eye banking. METHODS 72 normal human donor corneas were organ cultured for 21 days at 31°C in eight different test media (nine corneas in each group). The basic culture solutions included: minimal essential medium (MEM), MEM with stabilised l-glutamine, M199, DIF-1000, SFM, F99, and F99 with ascorbic acid, insulin, bFGF, transferrin, selenium, and lipids (termed F99-Sr). All media were supplemented with 2% fetal calf serum (FCS), except for MEM, which was also studied at 8% FCS. The evaluation parameters included: (1) the endothelial cell loss as evaluated using trypan blue staining; (2) the ability of keratocytes and endothelial cells to incorporate tritiated uridine into RNA as evaluated using autoradiography and digital image analysis; (3) the leakage of immunogenic keratan sulphate as assessed using ELISA; and (4) changes in storage medium pH, glucose, and lactate content. RESULTS SFM induced the lowest endothelial cell loss of 14% (SD 2%) and the highest RNA synthesis rates of all test solutions supplemented with 2% FCS. Corneas stored in SFM also showed the least leakage of keratan sulphate and the highest glucose consumption and lactate production. In five media (MEM with 2% FCS, MEM with stabilised l-glutamine, M199, F99, and F99-Sr), comparable and intermediate potentials for organ culture were observed with endothelial cell loss of 16–19%. By contrast, 29% (4%) of the endothelium was lost after storage in DIF-1000. Interestingly, the use of 8% FCS (in MEM) had a marked protective effect on the endothelium, which showed the highest RNA synthetic activity combined with a cell loss of only 11% (4%), compared with 19% (6%) at 2% FCS (p<0.05). CONCLUSION Among the present test solutions, SFM appears to be the most prominent candidate for a new corneal organ culture medium and should be further tested and possibly refined to effectively substitute serum addition.


ABSTRACT Objective: Despite the documented importance of health optimism for enhancing health outcomes, very little work has been done to examine who experiences health optimism and under what conditions. The present study sought to identify modifiable factors associated with health optimism that could constitute the focus of future intervention efforts designed to promote health optimism among older people. Design: Participants were 453 (44% males) community-based Western Australians aged 60+ years (M = 70.39 years, SD = 6.06). Participants completed questionnaires to assess sociodemographic characteristics and provided information relating to physical and psychological health status. Results: Almost a quarter of participants (24%; n = 108) were classified as health optimists. Results from a multivariate regression analysis found quality of life, psychological well-being, and age to be directly and positively associated with health optimism. A subsequent path analytic model found depression (negatively) and self-efficacy (positively) to be indirectly associated with health optimism via both psychological well-being and quality of life. Conclusion: These findings extend the limited evidence on health optimism in older adults by identifying various modifiable factors that may constitute potential areas of focus for future interventions designed to enhance health outcomes via the fostering of health optimism.


The Profession of Pharmacy is an integral part of the healthcare system worldwide. Pharmacies with well-organized practice can go a long way to ensure quality health care for the patient. In the past, pharmacists were responsible for dispensing medications only. Slowly, the traditional role of pharmacists is expanding and now pharmacists are playing a role as a vital team member in the direct care of patients, especially the new generation pharmacists who have Pharm. Ds. Pharmacists play a major role in providing healthcare services by means of community pharmacy services in rural areas where physicians are not available or where physician services are too costly for meeting the healthcare necessities. Many reforms are yet needed to improve job satisfaction among Indian pharmacists such as higher salaries, more job opportunities in government offices, recognition of pharmacists as health care professionals and changes in the Pharm. D and pharmacy curriculum. This report looks at the current issues with the pharmacy profession in India and provides possible recommendations to improve job satisfaction among India pharmacists.


ApoE helps regulate serum cholesterol levels by adding in transport of cholesterol into the cells, as well as, to the liver. ApoE knockout mice (ApoE KO) present a model that demonstrates the effects of hypercholesterolemia. Damage to muscle stimulates a complex regenerative response. The effects of high cholesterol on this regenerative response are not known. PURPOSE: To determine if skeletal muscle regeneration is altered in apoE KO mice by measuring protein synthesis regulator IGF-1, Akt, mTOR, and p70S6K, cell cycle regulator cyclin D1, and myogenic regulatory factors myoD and myogenin. METHODS: Female C57/BL6 (WT) and apoE KO were assigned to wither an uninjured or injured group. To induce skeletal muscle damage the tibialis anterior (TA) was injected with either bupivacaine or phosphate buffered saline (PBS). TA muscle was extracted 3 days post-injection. Quantitative PCR was conducted to determine gene expression for IGF-1, myoD, myogenin, and Cyclin D1. Western blot analysis was performed to quantitate the markers of protein synthesis Akt, mTOR, and p70S6K. RESULTS: IGF-1 gene expression increased 5-fold (p < 0.05) and 3.5-fold (p < 0.05) during skeletal muscle regeneration in WT and aopE-KO mice, respectively. Cyclin D1 increased 1.75fold (p < 0.05) in WT mice 3 days post-bupivacaine injection. However, cyclin D1 gene expression increased 12-fold (p < 0.05)3 days post-bupivacaine injection in apoE-KO mice. An attenuation of myoD was observed in apoE KO mice, as there was only an 1.5-fold increase occurred in the apoE KO group compared to a 3.5-fold in the WT controls. An increase in the phosphorylated forms of markers of protein synthesis was observed after bupivacaine injection; a 4.44-fold, 2.5-fold, and a 1.0-foldincrease was observed in Akt, mTOR, and p70 respectively. CONCLUSION: A deficiency in the apoE gene has no effect on markers of protein synthesis expression but does however have an effect on cyclin D1 and myoD expression.


Background: Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs) described as the major work-related health issue among the industrial workers by exposing to physical factors like overuse, poor posture and heavy lifting in the work setting.
Objective: To determine the prevalence of MSDs and associated risk factors among factory workers of a selected company in Penang, Malaysia.
Methodology: A detailed validated questionnaire contributed to MSDs were administrated to 626 workers in the company. The participants were 403 female and 223 male workers volunteers to participate in this study. Data analyzed with the use of SPSS Window Version 21.0, Pearson 2 used to identify the relationship between musculoskeletal pain and the participants risk factors.
Results: The result showed that the highest prevalence rate was 45.4% of cases musculoskeletal disorders by the factory workers. The most common MSDs among the workers are shoulder (21.8%) followed by lower back (18.7%), upper back (14%) and neck region (13.6%). Among all the workers, Chinese ethnicity workers those who work in the 12-hour shift (71.4%) likely to get MSDs compared to workers in 8 hours shift (28.6%). The Chi-square statistics showed a significant association between the working hours and the pain symptoms (2 (1), N = 17) = 4.496, p < .05). Whereas the participant's age, gender, work performance, and sleep patterns were not associated with the MSDs in this study.
Conclusion: This study concluded the prevalence rate is moderately high and recommends establishing MSDs intervention at workplaces and awareness training as an integral part to reduce the risk factors.


Sustainability education is a growing field within higher education that fosters personal and intellectual engagement with the interconnected tensions of pressing social, ecological, economic, and political issues. Sustainability education aims to prepare learners to become creative problem solvers and active citizens who understand the relationships between and leverage points within complex systems. However, little research has been done to identify how to teach sustainability effectively in ways that prepare emerging leaders to address these complex problems. This paper provides an overview of an action research study that implemented the Burns model of sustainability pedagogy to embed sustainability into a university course on peer mentoring. Results show that implementing this model in the design and teaching of the course changed emerging educators' understanding of sustainability by making it more multidimensional, and that students gained an critical theory perspective of sustainability which they applied to their own educational experiences.


Although the economy has registered positive economic growth over the past 15 years since the demise of apartheid, the formal sector in South Africa has been unable to provide adequate employment for labour. Against a background of the recent almost global recessionary climate, this lack of employment is a serious problem. While government has responded with many initiatives to deal with employment creation, unemployment rates in South Africa remain high. In this paper the problem of low employment economic growth performance is initially examined for the period 1994 -2008 by drawing on the Harrod-Domar model and then over a longer time period by using regression analysis. The paper uses a parsimonious regression model to highlight the probable links between changes in economic growth and changes in employment. The growth elasticity of employment over the 1994-2008 period is low and over a longer time horizon the marginal growth employment effect is weak.


What makes me, me - and you, you? What is this thing called 'love'? Does life have a point? Is 'no' the right answer to this question? Philosophy transports us from the wonderful to the weird, from the funny to the very serious indeed. With the aid of tall stories, jokes, fascinating insights and common sense, Peter Cave offers a comprehensive survey of all areas of philosophy, addressing the big puzzles in ethics and politics, metaphysics and knowledge, religion and the emotions, aesthetics and logic. Replete with a smorgasbord of amusing and mind-boggling examples, The Big Think Book is perfect for anyone who delights in life's conundrums.


Nitrogen mining is the process whereby microbial communities catabolise recalcitrant long-term organic matter (OM) to meet nutritional requirements that are not ensured by labile OM. Microbial degradation of recalcitrant OM impacts soil fertility and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions in agricultural systems. Here we conducted a transcriptomics study to track differential gene expression in the model soil Actinomycete Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2) during the decomposition of mung bean (Vigna radiata L.) and wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) residues of relatively low and high carbon-to-nitrogen (C:N) ratios (17.3 and 35.7, respectively) at 1, 7, and 14 days of incubation. A negative binomial general linear model showed that plant variety predominantly affected transcription (p < 0.001), although time of incubation also had an effect (p = 0.01). In the high C:N ratio treatment, the expression of cellulases, chitinase, N-acetylglucosaminidase, secreted peptidases, and mineral nitrogen (N) metabolism were increased after 24 h. The low C:N ratio treatment demonstrated preferential expression of glutamate dehydrogenase, transporters involved in glutamate uptake and glycolysis, indicating more efficient N and carbon (C) assimilation. After 14 days, the low C:N ratio treatment showed increased transcription of extracellular enzymes, glutamate dehydrogenase, and glutamate transport. These results show an important role for added plant organic N content in determining when the transcription of genes associated with N mining occurs.


There is very significant cost-effective greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation potential in agriculture. The mitigation potential at a range of future carbon prices is similar to the potential in the industry, energy, transport, and forestry sectors. Using economic mitigation potentials from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC AR4), the yearly mitigation potential in agriculture is estimated to be worth between US$32 billion and US$420 billion at carbon prices between US$20 and US$100 (t CO2-eq.-1).1 From both a mitigation perspective and an economic perspective, we cannot afford to miss out on this opportunity. But many mitigation options also offer the promise of facilitating adaptation to climate change and contributing to sustainable development more generally. In this brief, synergies between mitigation, adaptation, and sustainable development are described so that multiple policy goals can be identified when considering how to include agriculture in the climate change negotiations in Copenhagen.


Type I interferons (IFN-I) exert pleiotropic biological effects during viral infections, balancing virus control versus immune-mediated pathologies and have been successfully employed for the treatment of viral diseases. Humans express twelve IFN-alpha (α) subtypes, which activate downstream signalling cascades and result in distinct patterns of immune responses and differential antiviral responses. Inborn errors in type I IFN immunity and the presence of anti-IFN autoantibodies account for very severe courses of COVID-19, therefore, early administration of type I IFNs may be protective against life-threatening disease. Here we comprehensively analysed the antiviral activity of all IFNα subtypes against SARS-CoV-2 to identify the underlying immune signatures and explore their therapeutic potential. Prophylaxis of primary human airway epithelial cells (hAEC) with different IFNα subtypes during SARS-CoV-2 infection uncovered distinct functional classes with high, intermediate and low antiviral IFNs. In particular IFNα5 showed superior antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2 infection. Dose-dependency studies further displayed additive effects upon co-administered with the broad antiviral drug remdesivir in cell culture. Transcriptomics of IFN-treated hAEC revealed different transcriptional signatures, uncovering distinct, intersecting and prototypical genes of individual IFNα subtypes. Global proteomic analyses systematically assessed the abundance of specific antiviral key effector molecules which are involved in type I IFN signalling pathways, negative regulation of viral processes and immune effector processes for the potent antiviral IFNα5. Taken together, our data provide a systemic, multi-modular definition of antiviral host responses mediated by defined type I IFNs. This knowledge shall support the development of novel therapeutic approaches against SARS-CoV-2.


The decapentaplegic (dpp) gene influences many developmental events in Drosophila melanogaster. We have been analyzing dpp expression in two groups of dorsal ectoderm cells at the posterior end of the embryo, in abdominal segment 8 and the telson. These dpp-expressing cells become tracheal cells in the posterior-most branches of the tracheal system (Dorsal Branch10, Spiracular Branch10, and the Posterior Spiracle). These branches are not identified by reagents typically used in analyses of tracheal development, suggesting that dpp expression confers a distinct identity upon posterior tracheal cells. We have determined that dpp posterior ectoderm expression begins during germ band extension and continues throughout development. We have isolated the sequences responsible for these aspects of dpp expression in a reporter gene. We have determined that an unconventional form of Wingless (Wg) signaling, Dpp signaling, and the transcriptional coactivator Nejire (CBP/p300) are required for the initiation and maintenance of dpp expression in the posterior-most branches of the tracheal system. Our data suggest a model for the integration of Wg and Dpp signals that may be applicable to branching morphogenesis in other developmental systems.


We forecast a single time series using many predictor variables with a new estimator called the three-pass regression filter (3PRF). It is calculated in closed form and conveniently represented as a set of ordinary least squares regressions. 3PRF forecasts are consistent for the infeasible best forecast when both the time dimension and cross section dimension become large. This requires specifying only the number of relevant factors driving the forecast target, regardless of the total number of common factors driving the cross section of predictors. The 3PRF is a constrained least squares estimator and reduces to partial least squares as a special case. Simulation evidence confirms the 3PRF's forecasting performance relative to alternatives. We explore two empirical applications: Forecasting macroeconomic aggregates with a large panel of economic indices, and forecasting stock market returns with price–dividend ratios of stock portfolios.


Risk-taking and sensation-seeking behaviors have been found to be common among those engaging in activities such as mountaineering, deep sea diving, skiing, and snowboarding, all of which may be considered relatively high-risk activities for accidental injury. Risk-taking behavioral characteristics have been identified as a possible explanation for the higher incidences of snowsport injuries. The numbers of children and adolescents participating in snow sports continues to rise in Australia. In the southern states of NSW and ACT, school snowsports racing entries since 2001 have increased by 204 %. An exploratory questionnaire was conducted during the 2006 winter season to investigate injury trends, sensation seeking and risk taking in the adolescent snowsport participation population. Sixty-six participants completed a questionnaire. The participants' ages ranged from 12–18 years old with the mean age of 14 years. Alpine skiing accounted for 68.2 % of the participants, snowboarding 21.2 %, and 10.6 % cross-country skiing. Of the 66 participants, 33 suffered injuries prior to the 2006 winter season, with 19 participants having sustained two or more injuries and one participant was injured ten times. There were a total of 72 injuries among the 66 participants. Of those injured, 62 % were injured while free skiing or snowboarding, 28 % during training, and 10 % while racing. The majority (74 %) of injuries were sustained while skiing with friends, 13 % skiing with family, and 13 % skiing alone. From these results there appears to be a direct correlation between risk-taking behavior and snowsport injuries.


In Disturbed Consciousness, philosophers and other scholars examine various psychopathologies in light of specific philosophical theories of consciousness. The contributing authors -- some of them discussing or defending their own theoretical work -- consider not only how a theory of consciousness can account for a specific psychopathological condition but also how the characteristics of a psychopathology might challenge such a theory. Thus one essay defends the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness against the charge that it cannot account for somatoparaphrenia (a delusion in which one denies ownership of a limb). Another essay argues that various attempts to explain away such anomalies within subjective theories of consciousness fail. Other essays consider such topics as the application of a model of unified consciousness to cases of brain bisection and dissociative identity disorder; prefrontal and parietal underconnectivity in autism and other psychopathologies; self-deception and the self-model theory of subjectivity; schizophrenia and the vehicle theory of consciousness; and a shift in emphasis away from an internal (or brainbound) approach to psychopathology to an interactive one. Each essay offers a distinctive perspective from the intersection of philosophy, consciousness research, and psychiatry. ContributorsAlexandre Billon, Andrew Brook, Paula Droege, Rocco J. Gennaro, Philip Gerrans, William Hirstein, Jakob Hohwy, Uriah Kriegel, Timothy Lane, Thomas Metzinger, Erik Myin, Inez Myin-Germeys, Myrto Mylopoulos, Gerard O'Brien, Jon Opie, J. Kevin O'Regan, Iuliia Pliushch, Robert Van Gulick


Mobile operating systems like Android failed to provide sufficient protection on personal data, and privacy leakage becomes a major concern. To understand the security risks and privacy leakage, analysts have to carry out data-flow analysis. In 2014, Android upgraded with a fundamentally new design known as Android RunTime (ART) environment in Android 5.0. ART adopts ahead-of-time compilation strategy and replaces previous virtual-machine-based Dalvik. Unfortunately, many data-flow analysis systems like TaintDroid were designed for the legacy Dalvik environment. This makes data-flow analysis of new apps and malware infeasible. We design a multi-level information-flow tracking system for the new Android system called TaintART. TaintART employs a multi-level taint analysis technique to minimize the taint tag storage. Therefore, taint tags can be stored in processor registers to provide efficient taint propagation operations. We also customize the ART compiler to maximize performance gains of the ahead-of-time compilation optimizations. Based on the general design of TaintART, we also implement a multi-level privacy enforcement to prevent sensitive data leakage. We demonstrate that TaintART only incurs less than 15% overheads on a CPU-bound microbenchmark and negligible overhead on built-in or third-party applications. Compared to legacy Dalvik environment in Android 4.4, TaintART achieves about 99.7% faster performance for Java runtime benchmark.


Abstract: This thesis argues that taking a strategic sustainable development (SSD) approach to conflict resolution in areas of the world in long-term intractable conflict with intermittent violence could support an effective process and lasting outcome. SSD proposes a holistic systems perspective and decision-making framework to address challenges and opportunities at the largest scale, including identifying root causes and drivers of the conflict as well as finding common ground internally and externally. The currently unbalanced dynamics between the two fundaments of sustainability, a robust ecosystem and social fabric, are the basis of deeply unsustainable patterns of behaviour which are often also at the heart of conflicts. Socio-ecological unsustainability can be both a threat, and an opportunity for resolution and social change. The framework offers a proven way of organizing, evaluating and using tools that can aid in dealing with sustainability issues constructively, and evidence is presented to suggest its usage can be extended to conflict issues. This thesis analyzes the links between sustainability, strategic sustainable development and conflict resolution work in the areas of conflict described, and proposes a set of guidelines for approaching conflict resolution with SSD.


We present a highly parallel and reproducible method for reconstituting an array of lipid bilayers to analyze membrane transport. We infuse buffer/lipid/buffer solutions sequentially into a microchannel with numerous microchambers in its walls and seal each chamber by a lipid bilayer containing membrane proteins. Due to the small volume of the chamber (2 pL), membrane transport of confined fluorescent molecules across the bilayer through the proteins is readily observed as changes in fluorescent intensity. We successfully perform quantitative measurement of the transport flux of fluorescent molecules (calcein) through alpha-hemolysin antibiotic pores.


Probiotic nutrients have shown promise in therapy for the treatment of gastrointestinal inflammation, infection, and atopic disease. Intestinal dendritic cells (DC) play a critical role in shaping the intestinal immune response. In this study, we tested the effect of a probiotic preparation (VSL#3) on DC distribution and phenotypes within the intestinal mucosa using a lineage depletion-based flow cytometric analysis. In naïve C57BL/10J mice, intestinal mucosal DC were composed of plasmacytoid DC (pDC) and myeloid DC (mDC). The pDC were the dominant form in lamina propria and Peyer's patches, whereas mDC were the prevailing type in the mesenteric lymph nodes. Additional characterization of pDC and mDC with flow cytometry revealed that they expressed heterogeneous phenotypes in the intestinal mucosa. In mice gavaged with the probiotic VSL#3 for 7 d, the proportion of pDC within the lamina propria was >60% lower, whereas the pDC subset in the mesenteric lymph nodes was more than 200% greater than in sham-treated controls (P < 0.01). Within pDC, the proportion of functionally unique CX3CR1(+) DC was greater than in controls in both the lamina propria and the Peyer's patches (P < 0.01). In contrast to pDC, the mDC number was greater than in controls in all intestinal lymphoid tissue compartments in VSL#3-treated mice (P < 0.01). In conclusion, this study suggests that phenotypically and functionally distinct DC subsets are localized to specific lymphoid tissues within the intestinal mucosa and that the VSL#3 probiotic nutritional supplement alters the distribution of the DC subsets within the intestinal mucosa. These changes may be important in the alteration of mucosal immunity following probiotic VSL#3 therapy.


Recent neural waveform synthesizers such as WaveNet, WaveG-low, and the neural-source-filter (NSF) model have shown good performance in speech synthesis despite their different methods of waveform generation. The similarity between speech and music audio synthesis techniques suggests interesting avenues to explore in terms of the best way to apply speech synthesizers in the music domain. This work compares three neural synthesizers used for musical instrument sounds generation under three scenarios: training from scratch on music data, zero-shot learning from the speech domain, and fine-tuning-based adaptation from the speech to the music domain. The results of a large-scale perceptual test demonstrated that the performance of three synthesizers improved when they were pre-trained on speech data and fine-tuned on music data, which indicates the usefulness of knowledge from speech data for music audio generation. Among the synthesizers, WaveGlow showed the best potential in zero-shot learning while NSF performed best in the other scenarios and could generate samples that were perceptually close to natural audio.


Fresh vegetables, including asparagus, are now available in months outside of the domestic growing season for most U.S. consumers. We use the virtual price method to calculate the equivalent variation for increased availability in a demand system for fresh and frozen vegetables and find that virtual price of out-of-season asparagus is roughly 3 times higher than its in-season price in years prior to year round availability. We find the equivalent variation between 1986-1991 (when asparagus was available approximately half the year) and 1993-1999 (when it was available year round) to be 0.91 of consumer vegetable budgets, implying a welfare benefit of approximately $86 million annually. We also find evidence of habit formation for fresh but not frozen goods.


Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), also known as matrixins, are involved in the degradation of extracellular matrix of the tissue. Cigarette smoking and exercise may influence these molecules in the circulation. PURPOSE: The current study investigated the responses of MMP-1, -2, and -9 before and after a single bout of exercise performed at lowerand higher-intensity in smokers and non-smokers. METHODS: Physically inactive (N=18, physical activity < 2 days per week) male smokers (N=8, carbon monoxide ≥ 16 ppm, smoking history > 2 years, smoking > 10 cigarettes per day) and non-smokers (N=10), the ages between 20 and 30, participated in the study. Participants exercised on a treadmill for 3 miles at two different intensities in random order (lower-intensity: 55% VO2max and higher-intensity: 75% of VO2max). Overnight fasting blood samples were collected before (PRE), immediately post-exercise (IPE), and 1-hr PE to examine the responses of MMP-1, -2, and -9. All data were analyzed using an ANOVA with repeated measure. If necessary, the Sidak's pairwise multiple comparisons and a follow-up simple effects test were used as post-hoc tests (p < 0.05). RESULTS: Only smokers significantly increased MMP-1 at IPE (1.88±0.19 ng/mL) by 22.08% from PRE (1.54±0.16 ng/mL, p=0.014), which then returned to the baseline value at 1-hr PE (1.45±0.15 ng/mL, p=0.001). The significant main effect for time indicated that MMP-2 at IPE (43.71±5.65 ng/mL) was significantly higher than PRE (25.68±3.27 ng/mL, p= 0.011) and 1-hr PE (28.04±3.34 ng/mL, p=0.036). Additionally, smokers had significantly higher MMP-9 (45.77±6.48 ng/mL, p=0.037) as compared with non-smokers (31.17±3.41 ng/mL). CONCLUSION: Regardless of exercise intensity, a single bout of exercise acutely increased both MMP-1, particularly in smokers, and MMP-2. However, this exercise-induced acute elevation of MMP-1 and MMP-2 returned to baseline values at 1hour post exercise. A significantly higher level of MMP-9 observed in smokers may indicate that habitual cigarette smokers, as compared with non-smokers, may be more susceptible to a structural damage of extracellular matrix, endothelial inflammation, and an atherosclerotic event.


Industries are mostly considered as the hub of physical activities, but for the engineers working there at different levels, the job is more of the mental type than the physical one. Every organisation has its own socio-environment, and thus, its own psychosocial stress factors. The employees have to work under these stressors that induce in them mental fatigue. This paper identifies the main psychosocial stressors in accordance to their effectiveness value that would help in reducing mental fatigue of engineers and thus enhancing their productive capacities. This study made a cross-sectional questionnaire survey of stress factors related to psychosocial job characteristics and individual mental fatigue. The questionnaire was sent to engineering based Indian industries. Regression analysis was performed for analysing the problem. The results indicate that conflict or poor relations is the psychosocial stress factor that influences the mental fatigue most, followed by excess work, organisational politics and family life.


Article history: Received July 2, 2016 Received in revised format September 10, 2016 Accepted December 15 2016 Available online December 17 2016 Fashion and Apparel Supply Chains work in a very fast-changing environment and always demand better quality, higher availability of products, broader assortments and shorter delivery times. An efficient Supply Chain Management can make a difference between success and failure in the market. In this context, the main purposes of the presented work are: (i) to define the physical and informative flows, together with connected cost and revenue items, which characterize a Fashion Supply Chain working with a wide network of direct-operated or franchising mono-brand stores and (ii) to optimize Supply Chain performances through a responsive approach which, during the sales season, analyses actual market demand and adjusts operations plans accordingly. The framework aims at becoming a decision support system for the optimization of the performances of a process that starts from the development of the collection by the Styling Office and ends with the withdrawal of unsold items from the stores. In order to analyze the performances under different scenarios, a set of Key Performance indicators, partially selected from the SCOR Model, is defined. Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved. 7 © 201


Nigerian English (NigE) prosody has often been described as strikingly different from Standard English varieties such as British English (BrE) and American English. One possible source for this is the influence of the indigenous tone languages of Nigeria on NigE. This paper investigates the effects of the language contact between the structurally diverse prosodic systems of English and the three major Nigerian languages. Reading passage style and semi-spontaneous speech by speakers of NigE, BrE, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba were analysed acoustically in terms of speech rhythm, syllable structure and tonal structure. Results show that NigE prosody combines elements of intonation / stress languages and tone languages. In terms of speech rhythm, syllable structure and syllable length, NigE groups between the Nigerian languages and BrE. NigE tonal properties are different from those of an intonation language such as BrE insofar as tones are associated with syllables and have a grammatical function. Accentuation in NigE is different from BrE in terms of both accent placement and realisation; accents in NigE are associated with high tone. A proposal for a first sketch of NigE intonational phonology is made and parallels are drawn with other New Englishes.


Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) was added to aluminum/poly(vinylidene fluoride) (Al/PVDF) energetic blends to enhance melt flow rate and adhesion in a fused deposition modeling (FDM) manufacturing scenario. Composites were successfully printed with up to 30 wt% nano-scale Al after PMMA addition. Melt flow rate increased with increasing PMMA content. This resulted in a partially fluorinated binder that can facilitate high solids loadings and can be easily printed with a standard FDM 3D printer. PMMA addition promoted nucleation of the electroactive β-phase PVDF, which suggests the potential to print piezoelectric, energetic composites. Thermal stability was assessed using differential scanning calorimetry and thermogravimetric analysis. Results verified that composite stability decreased with increasing PMMA and Al content, however, decomposition onset temperatures for all concentrations remained well above printing temperatures. Burn rates at higher Al loadings (e.g., fuel rich) showed a decreasing trend. Analysis of post burn soot revealed α-AlF3 and amorphous carbon char as the primary reaction products. Combustion performance results indicate that although PMMA may serve as a heat sink, the reaction between Al and PVDF was not significantly affected by PMMA addition. These findings indicate that by changing PMMA concentrations, rheology, piezoelectric content, thermal properties and combustion performance can be altered to suit specific needs.


It may be America's game, but no one seems to know how or when baseball really started. Theories abound, myths proliferate, but reliable information has been in short supply-until now, when Baseball before We Knew It brings fresh new evidence of baseball's origins into play. David Block looks into the early history of the game and of the 150-year-old debate about its beginnings. He tackles one stubborn misconception after another, debunking the enduring belief that baseball descended from the English game of rounders and revealing a surprising new explanation for the most notorious myth of all-the Abner Doubleday-Cooperstown story. Block's book takes readers on an exhilarating journey through the centuries in search of clues to the evolution of our modern National Pastime. Among his startling discoveries is a set of long-forgotten baseball rules from the 1700s. Block evaluates the originality and historical significance of the Knickerbocker rules of 1845, revisits European studies on the ancestry of baseball which indicate that the game dates back hundreds, if not thousands of years, and assembles a detailed history of games and pastimes from the Middle Ages onward that contributed to baseball's development. In its thoroughness and reach, and its extensive descriptive bibliography of early baseball sources, this book is a unique and invaluable resource-a comprehensive, reliable, and readable account of baseball before it was America's game.