SOCIAL THOUGHT AND COMMENTARY For several decades, anthropology has participated in the general deconstruction of "identity" as a stable object of scholarly inquiry. The notion that individuals craft their identity through social performances, and hence that their identity is not a fixed essence, fundamentally drives current research into gender and sexuality. The notion that collective identity emerges out of political struggle and compromise underlies contemporary studies of race, ethnicity and nationalism. The anti-essentialist mood of today's anthropology fits with wider currents in philosophy (e.g., critiques of the autonomous, self-sustaining subject within Western metaphysics) as well as feminism and cultural studies (e.g., examination of the unconscious aspects of identity formation and the political resistance enabled by multiple and hybrid identities) (see Hall and Du Gay 1996, McRobbie 1994). Outside the academy, however, and to the dismay of anthropologists who fancy themselves as the cultural avant-garde, essentialist identities grow ever more powerful and seductive. New genetic knowledge, for example, adds the cachet of objective science to the notion that one's identity is an inborn, natural, and unalterable quality. Rapid advances in sequencing and analyzing the human genome have strengthened essentialist thinking about identity in American society and elsewhere, and anthropologists can help elucidate what is at stake. Emerging genetic knowledge thus has the potential to transform contemporary notions of social coherence and group identity. I am the co-principal investigator of an interdisciplinary group pursuing this topic, funded by a multi-year grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute through its program on Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI). Our research team, comprising leading bioethicists, geneticists, and ethnic studies specialists, is building a common vocabulary and conceptual framework for the effects of current-day genetics on notions of individual and collective identity, and hence the fundamental basis for social connection. Why is this a compelling question for anthropology? As genetic technologies move out of research laboratories and into public life, there arise enormous debates about their proper use and interpretation (see Brodwin 2000). The ramifying debates about genetic technologies (which appear in court cases, internet sites, articles and books) are driven by larger questions about inclusion and diversity in American society, as Rayna Rapp (1999) and Kaja Finkler (2000) have demonstrated for genetic testing and predictive diagnosis. Not surprisingly, contemporary debates over claims of identity (who I am, fundamentally) and of social connection (who I belong with, fundamentally) have very high stakes. Moreover, the meaning of the "fundamental," in that last sentence, changes in the presence of genetic evidence. For example, tracing your ancestry-via a pattern of particular alleles, or mutations on the Y chromosome or in mitochondrial DNA-has become not just a laboratory technique, but a political act. Who in our society requests this sort of DNA analysis, and who provides it? Once people learn the results, who controls what those results mean? It is no longer just geneticists and population biologists, but also political activists, individuals claiming inclusion in a particular ethnic, racial, or national group, and those who must decide to accept or reject their claims. To interpret the results of research with genetic markers means not just judging whether the laboratory used the right population-specitic allele or had a large enough sample size. It also involves judging the worth of genetic knowledge against other kinds of claims to authentic identity and group membership (oral history, written documentation, cultural practices, inner convictions). What is at stake in genetically-based claims of identity or rightful belonging is not just good or bad science. …


If form follows normative discourse in medical design, what happens to the gestalt when you include related discourses of the medical ventilator in the design process? My aim has been to integrate critical industrial design and with an exploratory aesthetic approach. This aesthetic approach aimed to create an on going exchange between the development of concepts inspired by theory and the creative sketching of 3-D form.The medical ventilator can be divided in three parts: 1. The technical part of the machine, 2. The monitor with an interface, and 3. The tubes that is the connection to the patient. In the beginning of the project I was working with the part of the medical ventilator that connects to the patient, ie. the tubes. My methods at this point were conducting interviews with caretakers, filming nurses handling the tube and having informal discussions with doctors and nurses. Using my own embodied experience is also part of my method since I am a licenced voctional nurse with experience from the ICU ward.I began my project by studiyng the part of the ventilator that connects to the patient. After I had been working with the project for some time I started to realise that what I was refering to as an important part of the medical ventilator, was just seen by others as a "tube". I decided to change the roles, and to work only on the tube, and not on the rest of the apparatus. When I made this discourse shift, I tried to understand why the tube had been neglected in medical design. The tube is de facto an essential part of the ventilator. It is the important link between the patient and the apparatus, and without it, there is no treatment. Despite of this, the ventilator tube is not prioritised in medical design. I used gender theory about hierarchy of power and work division to understand this matter and concluded that the patient has low status in hospital care. Technical intensive care has high status, while patient related care as geriatric care has low status. In similar manner the hierarchy exists in the medical ventilator. The part of the product that contains the technology has high staus, while the part that is low tech and connected to the patient, the ventilator tube, has low status.My combined theoretical and explorative aesthetic approach didn't only prove to change the gestalt, allowing for bodily form that challenges the constructed dichotomy of the hospital discourse. It also changed the entire focus on the product by making the tube central. It also inspired for a solution moving from a visual interface to a haptic and tactile interface. Some questions this design project attempts to discuss: What does it mean to give bodily form to this medical design project? How does the use of a tactility and haptics interface on a surface that may resemble a soft body help response from the staff and relatives as they encounter with the patient? In what way can the medical design process develop in a way to help patients regain humanity


We consider the homogeneous and the non-homogeneous convex relaxations for combinatorial penalty functions defined on support sets. Our study identifies key differences in the tightness of the resulting relaxations through the notion of the lower combinatorial envelope of a set-function along with new necessary conditions for support identification. We then propose a general adaptive estimator for convex monotone regularizers, and derive new sufficient conditions for support recovery in the asymptotic setting.


In this study, the TVI (Tip Vortex Index) technique has been applied to a marine propeller to predict the noise due to tip vortex cavitation. The benchmark DTMB4119 model propeller has been chosen for the hydroacoustic performance analysis in open water condition. The flow around the model propeller has been solved both under non-cavitating and cavitating conditions by lifting surface method (LSM) based on potential flow theory and RANS (Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes) approach based on finite volume method. TVI technique has been coupled with LSM. Uncertainty study based on grid convergence index (GCI) has also been done for RANS approach to determine the optimum grid number. The results of LSM and RANS methods have been validated with the available experimental data under non-cavitating condition. LSM and RANS methods have also been compared in terms of cavity patterns and hydrodynamic performance. The effects of blade number, cavitation number and advance coefficient on propeller tip vortex cavitation noise have been discussed.


Abstract User sanctions influence the legal risk for consumers who engage in illegal drug markets. If a reduction in user sanctions leads to an increase in consumption, drug prices will rise unless supply is perfectly elastic. In equilibrium, a change in consumption associated with decreasing user sanctions could be relatively small if supply is upward sloping. Using a novel dataset with rich transaction-level information, this paper evaluates the impact of recent changes in user sanctions for marijuana on marijuana prices. The results suggest that lower legal risks for users are associated with higher marijuana prices in the short-run, which ceteris paribus, implies an upward sloping supply curve, higher consumption, and higher profits for drug dealers. The findings have important implications for the current policy debates regarding decriminalization of marijuana.


In the past five years, industry has overwhelmingly turned to open source as a primary means to build products and services atop of, with around 80% of surveyed companies acknowledging that they run on open source. 66% of companies say they would first consider open source options before proprietary ones. A decade ago, this wasn't the case at all; these numbers were flipped, with a tiny minority of companies preferring open source solutions. This has changed the dynamics of open source community markedly. In the early days of the open source movement, most people using a project were also contributing back to it in some way. However, the number of users versus contributors has changed by likely uncountable orders of magnitude. With unicorn startups being built on top of this open source shared infrastructure, the incentives and motives behind open source contributors building this valuable infrastructure has also begun to shift. Meanwhile, software engineering studies focused on open source have been overwhelmingly quantitative; quantitative analyses on codebases, issue trackers, surveys, etc. In this essay, we argue that with these changing tides comes dynamics that we can't easily quantify. Why then do rely predominantly on quantitative methods when we attempt to understand the dynamics of open source communities? We lay out a number of research questions and qualitative techniques from the social sciences that can help us better understand these trends, and how to adapt to them going forward. ACM CCS 2012 General and reference → Computing standards, RFCs and guidelines; Applied computing → Publishing;


This thesis investigates the protection landscape surrounding online banking. First, electronic banking is analysed for vulnerabilities and a survey of current attacks is carried out. This is represented graphically as an attack tree describing the different ways in which online transactions can be attacked. The discussion then moves on to various defences which have been developed , categorizing them and analyzing how successful they are at protecting against the attacks given in the first chapter. This covers everything from TLS encryption through phishing site detection to two-factor authentication. Having declared all current schemes for protecting online banking lacking in some way, the key aspects of the problem are identified. This is followed by a proposal for a more robust defence system which uses a small security device to create a trusted path to the customer, rather than depend upon trusting the customer's computer. The protocol for this system is described along with all the other restrictions required for actual use. This is followed by a description of a demonstration implementation of the system. Extensions to the system are then proposed, designed to afford extra protection for the consumer and also to support other types of device. There is then a discussion of ways of managing keys in a heterogeneous system, rather than one managed by a single entity. The conclusion discusses the weaknesses of the proposed scheme and evaluates how successful it is likely to be in practice and what barriers there may be to adoption in the banking system.


From the day cloud computing got its approval, security and performance is the two important issues faced by the cloud service providers and the clients. Since cloud computing is a virtual pool of resources provided in an open environment (Internet), detecting intrusion of unlawful users is one of the greatest challenges of the cloud service providers and cloud users. The artificial intelligence technique has been proposed in this paper in order to identify the intrusion of unauthorized user in a cloud environment. Application or research on cloud computing is always primarily focused upon any one of the issues. In our paper, the proposed algorithm satisfies the security aspects of cloud computing and the performance analysis of the implementation satisfies the performance issues of cloud computing.


At United States online doctoral institutions, many doctoral candidates focus their dissertation research on study problems that emerge from professional practice, which may serve as a vital first experience and preparation for continued practitioner or practice-based research. Although there have been many definitions offered as to what constitutes workplace research, this scholarly reflection explores three essential considerations for duality (dual roles), positionality, and stance in a doctoral dissertation research problem originating from a doctoral candidate's workplace setting or professional practice. As a doctoral scholar with a dual role as a workplace professional and doctoral candidate, the doctoral candidate must often shift perspective and negotiate the concurrent dual or multiple identities of workplace professional, doctoral learner, scholar, and independent researcher. When accomplished, workplace dissertation research may also serve to evolve the candidate's enhanced perspectives, thereby preparing the candidate for continued practice-based research within the discipline that, in turn, may also expand the candidate's views and solutions to post-doc workplace problems. For this scholarly reflection, we defined dual roles, positionality, and stance within the practitioner and practice-based research literature, and further describe our reflections of the experiences as two recent doctoral graduates and our dissertation committee chair. We used Moustakas' critical self-analysis as a scholarly reflective mechanism in context with a critical review of the current literature to consider preparation for practice-based research through workplace dissertation research, and purport that these constructs need further exploration to better prepare doctoral candidates for practice-based research and to generate new knowledge during and following doctoral degree attainment.


In this paper, we describe the embedded conic solver (ECOS), an interior-point solver for second-order cone programming (SOCP) designed specifically for embedded applications. ECOS is written in low footprint, single-threaded, library-free ANSI-C and so runs on most embedded platforms. The main interior-point algorithm is a standard primal-dual Mehrotra predictor-corrector method with Nesterov-Todd scaling and self-dual embedding, with search directions found via a symmetric indefinite KKT system, chosen to allow stable factorization with a fixed pivoting order. The indefinite system is solved using Davis' SparseLDL package, which we modify by adding dynamic regularization and iterative refinement for stability and reliability, as is done in the CVXGEN code generation system, allowing us to avoid all numerical pivoting; the elimination ordering is found entirely symbolically. This keeps the solver simple, only 750 lines of code, with virtually no variation in run time. For small problems, ECOS is faster than most existing SOCP solvers; it is still competitive for medium-sized problems up to tens of thousands of variables.


In the United States, speeding is considered to be a contributing factor in about 30 percent of fatal crashes (US DOT, 2000). In an attempt to reduce speeds on roadway segments where speed is considered to be a safety concern, various low cost countermeasures have been investigated. Such countermeasures include pavement markings that give a psychological appearance of narrowing and/or increasing speed have been considered as a relatively low-cost treatment. Perceptual cues are one potential method of influencing motorists to slow down, and ultimately, to save lives. These perceptual techniques might be useful at lowering speeds in a variety of driving situations such as work zones, curves, roundabouts, and toll plazas. Evaluations are required in order to determine the effectiveness of these various treatments at reducing speeds. This research project explored several possible perceptual countermeasures to try on the approaches to curves for reducing speeds. It was ultimately decided to evaluate the effects of peripheral transverse lines in reducing speeds. Although there have been some limited evaluations of peripheral transverse markings in previous studies, no significant field evaluation has been performed and a recommended design for the markings has not been discussed. The projected results of the research effort is to determine pavement marking treatments with a high probability of success at reducing speeds, develop and design peripheral transverse markings based on site considerations, determine the effectiveness of the markings in the field, determine optimal pavement marking design using a driving simulator, and use a controlled research environment to finalize the design. This dissertation contributes to the body of knowledge on speed reduction research through the development of low cost speed reduction strategies, the design of peripheral transverse lines for varying geometric conditions, evaluation of these treatments in the field, in the simulator, and on a controlled roadway, and to finally compare the benefits of each of the evaluation approaches. In the field, peripheral transverse lines spaced at a frequency of 4 bars per second were evaluated in New York, Mississippi, and Texas. The markings were applied on approaches to curves in both rural and urban environments on both multi-lane and twolane roadways. The authors concluded that overall, the pavement markings reduced speeds up to 59% compared to the baseline in the short term and 24% in the long term on overall vehicle speeds. When evaluating design alternatives of peripheral transverse markings, a follow-up study was performed and compared baseline conditions to markings spaced at a constant interval, exponentially closer, at two bars per second, and at four bars per second. The peripheral transverse lines were effective in reducing centerline encroachment; however, the results were inconclusive as to which particular marking spacing pattern was most effective. There was a large amount of variability in driving speeds using the driving simulator which made it ineffective at comparing designs. The third evaluation was performed at the Virginia Tech Smart Road in which reductions in speed were compared to the baseline at two locations. While one curve had large preview distances and no effect due to the treatments, speed reductions on a freeway ramp type of curve resulted in a speed reduction 42% greater than the reduction in the baseline condition. There are several advantages and disadvantages to evaluations in the field, simulator, and at a controlled research setting which are summarized in this dissertation. Overall, all three have potential of looking at different elements, but it was determined that variability when measuring speed in the driving simulator makes it more challenging as a tool for measuring speed reductions.


Suicide is a public health problem all over the world. However, it has different meaning (s) in different societies. The general aim of this thesis was to gain an in-depth understanding of attitudes and cultural responses toward suicide among the Baganda of Uganda. Qualitative methods of social investigation were applied as the study topic was regarded exploratory. All data in this thesis were collected using Grounded Theory. Article one and four are based purely on Grounded Theory while article two and three were developed using a combination of Grounded Theory and Discourse Analysis. The cross cutting themes in the four papers are attitude formation and positioning. In all the four papers, there was a struggle by the individual or the community to occupy a safe position given the prevailing norms and beliefs in the study communities. These norms and beliefs largely influenced the attitude of the informants towards suicide.Paper I is a methodical paper that focused on both ethical and practical challenges of conducting suicide research using qualitative methods in a low income country and we use Baganda, Uganda as a case study. In this paper, it is indicated that there was an external struggle by the informants to enter into a process of positioning as some of the data collection methods (Focus Group Discussions; FGD) were regarded as not sensitive (appropriate) to the culture and tradition of the Baganda. The Baganda do not discuss death openly in public. However, one of the data collection methods (FGD method) adopted in this study required such an engagement. This created culture tension among the informants. In addition, there were legal related fears since suicidal behavior is outlawed by the laws of the country (the Penal code, 1950). It therefore followed that both culture and some of the laws in the country created apprehension about participating in this project. Dealing with these two challenges depicts a protracted struggle of dealing with gate keepers at national (ethical boards) and community level (traditional leaders). This protracted process of securing ethical clearance from the ethical institutions and working closely with community leaders opened up doors to undertake this study.Paper II reports on the internal dialogue between the individual and the community and how this influenced attitudes toward suicide among the Baganda. The key theme here is that there was always a struggle within the individual (who had his/her private views on suicide) and the communal view (public view) on suicide. In all the four discourses generated in this paper,informants were struggling to shelve off their private views (which were sympathetic to the suicide) and take on the community view that condemns suicide in all circumstances. In the urban study site, in a few instances informants were able to voice out their individual views and sustain them. This indicates a cultural orientation (urban culture) that respects individual rights.Paper III deals with the religious views of the Baganda on suicide. The paper indicates that quite a number of the informants were struggling with the principle view of suicide as a phenomenon and the view on suicidal people. There was always an effort to contest the applicability of some of the religious doctrines and virtues on suicide in real life. The informants found some of the religious doctrines idealistic with limited application to some of the practical needs of the community members, especially those in situations that are associated with a lot of distress (for example due to poverty, long-term illness, loss of property, loss of a loved one among others).Paper IV focuses on how Baganda deal with suicide cognitively and in practical terms. When a suicide occurs, Baganda struggle to enter into a positioning of safety by making an attempt to rewrite the history of the community. They do this through affect regulation by doing the following: no mourning of a suicide and burying a suicide immediately. They also struggle to rewrite the history of the community by securing future generation through practical steps such as: renaming children, performing traditional cleansing ceremonies, running away from the community (from the spirit), denying the suicide an heir among others.The overall finding in this thesis is that suicide is largely unacceptable among the Baganda. Cultural norms, values and beliefs influenced the meaning of suicide in the study communities and these meaning systems in turn influenced the attitudes and cultural responses toward suicide. However, in a few locations (in the urban study site) due to globalization and westernization, a few of the study informants were able to hold accepting views on suicide. Though most informants depicted non-accepting attitudes towards suicide, alternative voices have started to emerge and this duality in the acceptability of suicide has implication for suicide prevention and management in the country. Suicide prevention programs in future should be designed in a manner that caters for this diversity.


The study of complex social networks is an inherently interdisciplinary research area with applications across many fields, including psychology. Social network models describe, illustrate and explain how people are connected to each other and can, for example, be used to study information spread and interconnectedness of people with different kinds of traits. One approach to social network modelling, originating mainly in the physics literature, is to generate targeted kinds of social networks using models with specialized mechanisms while analyzing and deriving features of the models. Surprisingly though, and despite the popularity of this approach, there is no available functionality for generating a wide variety of social networks from these models. Thus, researchers are left to implement and specify these models themselves, restricting the applicability of these models. In this article, I provide a set of Matlab functions enabling the generation of artificial social networks from 22 different network models, most of them explicitly designed to capture features of social networks. Many of these models originate in the physics literature andmay therefore not be familiar to psychological researchers. I also provide an illustration of how these models can be evaluated in terms of a simulated model comparison approach and how they can be applied to psychological research. With the already existing network functionality available in Matlab and other languages, this should provide a useful extension to researchers.


A history of the Mariposa Folk Festival, from its humble roots in Orillia in 1961 to international acclaim and legendary status as a premier folk music gathering.

 Mariposa began in the heyday of the early 60s "folk boom." In its more than fifty-five years, it has seen many of the world's greatest performers grace its stages: Pete Seeger, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Jann Arden, and Serena Ryder.

 The festival has long held a musical mirror to popular culture in Canada. It thrived during the folk boom years and the singer-songwriter era of the early 70s. Its popularity dipped during the rise of disco and punk as the 70s wore into the early 80s. And it nearly died due to lack of interest in the 90s — the days of grunge and new country, and the golden age of CD sales. Thanks to a recent wave of independent, home-grown music, Mariposa is having a resurgence in the early twenty-first century. Audiences have always come and gone, but the festival has stayed true to its mandate: to promote and preserve folk art in Canada through song, story, dance, and craft.


This paper describes the work-in-progress in the topic of the driver assistance services. The Mobility research group of the Deusto Institute of Technology has been working for the last two years in the development of services focused on improving the security and safety of both drivers and passengers. These services are described in this paper.


When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led the Corps of Discovery on their epic journey across the American West, they were acting not only as territorial explorers, but as diplomatic emissaries from the young United States to the Native American peoples they encountered. Castle McLaughlin's fresh examination of the Native American objects related to Lewis and Clark's expedition brilliantly challenges the conventional wisdom about these men and their mission as scientists, collectors, and explorers and places their journey in the context of a complex process of mutual discovery between representatives of very different cultures.In "Arts of Diplomacy", Native Americans are revealed as active participants in the outcome of the expedition, selecting objects of significance to bestow as gifts or use in trade, and skillfully negotiating their own strategic interests in their dealings with the exploring party. McLaughlin makes it clear that Lewis and Clark were not acting as "collectors" of exotic material culture, but rather were dealing on a much more even playing field with cultural representatives whose goodwill - and goods - were critical to the success of their enterprise.The vehicle for this innovative and illuminating analysis is the collection of late-eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Native American objects from the Prairie, Plains, and Pacific Northwest at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. The magnificent objects in the Peabody Museum's collection, presented in lavish color photography, are analyzed in detail and traced through documentation to their probable sources - both tribal makers and users and likely collectors. Long thought to be the only remaining ethnographic items collected by Lewis and Clark, the objects are here exposed to intense scrutiny by a team of anthropologists, art historians, and material culture specialists.McLaughlin's interpretation is a model for how, through informed contextual analysis, objects can be used to tell stories. Her text gives voice to the calumets, buffalo robes, and basketry pieces that served as items of gifting and exchange in cross-cultural encounters. Contemporary Native American voices are heard here as well, in essays by and about Wasco fiber artist Pat Courtney Gold, Mandan-Hidatsa flute player Keith Bear, Hunkpapa Lakota painter Butch Thunder Hawk, Lakota quillwork artist Jo Esther Parshall, Mandan-Hidatsa community activist Mike Cross, and others. Far from being participants in a "First Encounter," as the Lewis and Clark expedition is so often portrayed, the objects tell a story of Native peoples already deeply engaged in a far-reaching exchange of goods and materials - sophisticated traders and cultural brokers with networks of exchange that spanned the globe from eastern Europe to the South Pacific decades before the arrival of Lewis and Clark.As historian James P. Ronda writes in his Foreword, "Built on the best historical and anthropological sources, and informed by current critical theory, Arts of Diplomacy gives voice to seemingly mute objects and lets readers hear Native voices in the expedition conversation." Castle McLaughlin is a social anthropologist who writes frequently on the American West, past and present, and Native American art and visual culture. She is associate curator of Native American ethnography at the Peabody Museum.


WP9 of the CATCH-EyoU project proposes a school-based socially innovative intervention that involves students and teachers. It examines how young people engage in social issues having local and European relevance, combining a participatory approach, community analysis, and structured dialogue with public authorities.
The dataset contains the national report with the main results of the implementation of this intervention in the Portuguese contexts. The transcriptions and analyses of qualitative data (focus groups, interviews) contained in the report serves as the underlying data of the following scientific paper accepted for publication in the journal "Psicologia di Comunita" (https://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Sommario.aspx?IDRivista=139&lingua=it):
Joana Cruz, Carla Malafaia, Filipe Piedade, Jose Eduardo Silva, Isabel Menezes (2019). Promoting European active citizenship: A participatory intervention towards the politicisation of youth social concerns. Psicologia di comunita.

The data has been collected from an upper secondary school in Portugal, involved in the WP9 EU citizenship education intervention.
This data is made available for open access in compliance with H2020 Program regulation, following the guidelines stipulated by the Data Management Plan adopted by the CATCH-EyoU research project.


Conference paper: the Huygens probe landed on Titan at 11:38:11 UT on 14 January, 2005. The The main impact event lasted approximately 20ms, with possible bounce and rocking for up to 2s thereafter. The peak deceleration was 15g. The deceleration was characterized by several accelerometers as well as a penetrometer : we focus on the Surface Science Package ACC-I whose sole function was to record surface impact. This sensor sampled deceleration along, but offset 0.325m from, the probe's axis at 500 samples per second. Simple mechanics suggests the probe decelerated over a stroke of 0.15 to 0.2m, although whether it subsequently bounced or slid out of that cavity is not clear. Comparison of the deceleration amplitude with models of various target mechanical properties suggests sand, soft clay or lightly packed snow are appropriate analogs. However, the fairly sharp onset of the deceleration peak argues against a target that increases in hardness sharply with depth such as dry sand - a more cohesive (perhaps damp) target seems more likely. Interestingly, the deceleration record implies a target strength several times weaker than that indicated by the penetrometer - one possible interpretation is that a number of cobbles on the surface, rather than the curved bottom of the probe, acted to define the contact area with the surface material during the impact event. The relatively soft impact meant that the deformation of the probe was not significant (as evidenced by the lack of any probe or instrument failures at impact) and thus to a first order, the event may be reproduced in physical or numerical models that assume the probe is rigid. We will review the latest simulations and interpretations of the impact event.


Title of Document: MANAGEMENT AND CONSERVATION OF BROOK TROUT IN WESTERN MARYLAND David Charles Kazyak, Ph.D., 2015 Directed By: Dr. Robert H. Hilderbrand Associate Professor University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Appalachian Laboratory Widespread declines have been observed in the abundance, distribution, and size structure of Brook Trout for nearly 200 years. Although broadly distributed, Brook Trout are very sensitive to environmental disturbances, and populations continue to disappear. Environmental change further threatens the persistence of wild Brook Trout, and even currently secure populations may be at risk. Life history variation and population substructures further confound management, and their potential influences on population dynamics warrant further investigation. The objectives of my dissertation were to characterize Brook Trout populations in western Maryland and use this information to forecast alternative futures. We used a large-scale mark-recapture survey (>3,000 marked fish), molecular tools, and simulation modeling to gain a comprehensive understanding of the structure and function of Brook Trout populations in western Maryland. We found that rapid visual assessment was a valid technique (92% accuracy after training) for determining sex in Brook Trout. We found significant variability in individual growth rates (0-144 mm·y), with marked influences of year, sex, size, and stream. We also detected the presence of cryptic metapopulations occurring on a small spatial scale and in the absence of physical barriers to movement. Population substructures such as sex or lineage are easily overlooked, yet they may have measurable and potentially important differences in vital rates. Simulation modeling under current and alternative conditions suggested that environmental stochasticity exerts a strong influence on the population dynamics of wild Brook Trout in western Maryland. Population dynamics were driven by pulse-driven recruitment that was weakly related to spawner abundance. Changes in adult survival, representative of a range of management scenarios, had a considerable impact on population resilience. Conversely, changes in the growth rates of Brook Trout resulted in small changes to population resilience. Enhanced adult survival resulted in a greater abundance of large fish. Collectively, these results suggest regulatory approaches may offer some utility in promoting population resilience while enhancing the quality of the fishery, but are likely insufficient to fully offset the impacts of predicted environmental changes. MANAGEMENT AND CONSERVATION OF BROOK TROUT IN WESTERN MARYLAND


In 1894, Fusakichi Omori published his landmark article on aftershocks in which he described the temporal decay rate of aftershocks as a power law. In this article, I show that the expression proposed by Omori does not hold when the proper visualization method is used (i.e., complementary cumulative density function in log–log plot) and that the choice of a stretched exponential function should have been preferred on physical grounds. I reproduce the emblematic aftershock sequence of the 1891 Great Nobi earthquake used by Omori and show that a stretched exponential expression describes the data better than a power law.


Two vexing puzzles plague American land use regulators. The first puzzle is how to protect property owners from harmful spillovers without unduly stifling land use diversity. The dominant forms of land use regulation in the United States - zoning and private covenants - rely on ex ante prohibitions. Yet, since local governments and private developers rarely can calibrate the level of regulation to residents' true preferences, the costs imposed by these regulations tend to exceed the benefits of actual harm prevention. The result is the over-protection of property owners and, and, many would argue, a monotonous, sterile, inefficient, and inconvenient suburban landscape. The second puzzle is how to address the intrametropolitan inequalities resulting from the fragmented distribution of regulatory authority without undercutting the beneficial effects of inter-jurisdictional competition. While this puzzle extends beyond property law, land use regulations are particularly problematic because they empower local jurisdictions to exclude unwanted residents. The difficulty is, however, that most proposed strategies to address this second puzzle threaten to undermine the efficiency gains that are produced when, as Charles Tiebout influentially predicted, local governments compete with one another for residents. By treating these two land use puzzles as property-entitlement problems, rather than regulatory-design problems, The Unbounded Home breaks free from standard land-use and local-government debates and offers novel solutions to address seemingly intractable difficulties. This review focuses on the two of Fennell's proposals that, in my view, hold the most promise: First, the use of "entitlements subject to self-made options" or "ESSMOs", to address local land use spillovers; and second, the reconfiguration of home-ownership to minimize owners' incentives to demand that exclusionary land use policies.


The respect for human rights follows strong spatial patterns among countries. However, to understand and predict the spatial effects of policies and interventions, it is imperative to know whether these spatial patterns stem from countries' interactions and spillovers, or from common deep determinants, such as history and physical geography. This paper makes an effort to disentangle the two. The lion's share of spatial patterns is accounted for by time-invariant factors, while the evidence of contemporaneous spillovers is very marginal. This limits the scope of regional effects when individual countries change their human rights situations.


When the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) selected a radio access technology based on Wideband Code-Division Multiple Access (WCDMA), sponsored by European telecommunications equipment manufacturers Ericsson and Nokia, for its third-generation wireless communications system, a bitter dispute developed between ETSI and Qualcomm, Inc. Qualcomm threatened to withhold its intellectual property on the CDMA technology unless the Europeans agreed to make the radio access technology backward compatible with IS-95 standard, Qualcomm's favored version of CDMA. A dispute over intellectual property rights over key CDMA techniques also erupted between Ericsson and Qualcomm and both filed patent infringement in US Court. The dispute halted the standards activity and has troubled operators worldwide as well as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).


The learning process, among its different phases, involves monitoring of users behaviour in order to extract knowledge. Details about users have significant weight to understand the interests and intentions and produce forward-looking statements, as well as keep track of the learning management system (LMS). In this work, a model to investigate and predict the behavior of users, taken to explore the additional knowledge information and predict the learning outcomes, is described. In the first instance, the information are extracted through a suitable tool, and, subsequently, are submitted to an analysis phase. Time series analysis techniques are adopted to detect partial similarities between the navigation data and, subsequently, to extract a classification. Finally, performance are measured through statistical measures to evaluate the goodness of proposed approach and test its significance. The results, obtained on Moodle platform, show that the proposed model leads to accurate outcome prediction about users behavior and can be adopted to improve the learning paths, both in its implementation and design.


PURPOSE: The paper focuses on assessing the direct effect of entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention and the indirect effect of the need for independence on the relationship between the constructs. Despite increased efforts towards steering the interest of young graduates towards entrepreneurial venture, the response rate has been rather unimpressive and discouraging, thus demanding the need to account for what factors could drive intention towards venture ownership among graduates in Nigeria. METHODOLOGY: A quantitative approach was adopted and a data set from 235 graduates was used for the study. The data was analyzed using the partial least square structural equation model (PLS-SEM). FINDINGS: It was found that self-efficacy does not significantly affect intention. It was also found that the need for independence affects entrepreneurial intention. The study found that the need for independence fully mediates the relationship between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: This paper provides new insight into the behavioral reasoning theory, through its application in explaining the cognitive role of the need for independence in decision-making, using samples from a developing economy. ORIGINALITY AND VALUE: The study advances a new perspective on the underlining factors that account for an entrepreneur's intent to start a business venture, most especially among young graduates in Nigeria, through the lens of the behavioral reasoning theory. We further support the application of the theory in entrepreneurship literature, given the paucity of studies that have adopted the theory despite its relevance.


Reading as one of language skills plays significant roles in the teaching English as a foreign language. Since the teacher still uses the conventional way to teach reading, students' ability in reading comprehension seems still unsatisfactory yet. So, teacher should explore and develop new strategies. One of strategies in reading comprehension that can trigger our students to attain that purpose is SMART (Self Monitoring Approach for Reading and Thinking) strategy. This study is developing SMART strategy to boost the reading comprehension achievement of the ninth grade students. The research applies a collaborative classroom action research design in which the researcher and the collaborative teacher work together in preparing a suitable procedure of SMART strategy, designing the lesson plan, determining the criteria of success, implementing the action, observing, and doing reflection. The finding indicated that SMART strategy was successful to enhance students' motivation to be actively involved in the instructional process. The improvement on the students' participation was 75% in Cycle 1 and 87% in Cycle 2. Keywords: Reading Comprehension, SMART strategy


In light of the failure of comprehensive immigration reform at the federal level in recent years and in the face of increasing concern about the impact of illegal immigration on local communities, many state, county, and local lawmakers have enacted their own laws and ordinances aimed at the undocumented population and the entities that employ them. Some laws address the employment of undocumented workers by requiring employers to utilize the federal government's Web-based "E-Verify" employment eligibility verification system to verify the work status of new hires. Others prohibit employers from hiring unauthorized workers and punish noncompliance with the denial of business licenses or contracts for work with a state, county, or municipality. Of course, it is already a violation of federal law to employ undocumented non-citizens, so any penalties for these violations are in addition to penalties already set out under federal law. These state laws raise troubling preemption issues that will only be resolved once the Supreme Court weighs in. Notwithstanding the Obama Administration's avowed intention to enact legislation to usher in comprehensive immigration reform, there is no sign that the trend toward increased state and local immigration legislation will abate so long as there is a perception that major voids remain in the federal strategy to address illegal immigration. Focusing on employment -- the major magnet attracting undocumented immigrants across our borders -- this article provides an overview of existing state laws that seek to deter the employment of unauthorized immigrant workers and discusses the current status of federal preemption of such laws. These developments must be viewed in the context of the current federal regulatory scheme and federal worksite enforcement trends, as well as the larger history of federal authority over immigration.


PRACTICAL LOCALIZED WAVES GENERATION by Mohamed Ahmed Salem Since the early works on localized waves (LW), extensive results were published on this important subject, from both the theoretical and the experimental points of view. Nevertheless, those experimental techniques of LW generation suffer from several shortcomings. A major one is that only pulse peaks were accredited. Either the full profile of the generated pulse was not reported, or it was not closely matching the theoretical profile. Additionally, low resolutions of the generated LWs were reported in the acoustic X-Waves. The conductors of the experiment attributed this effect to the limited bandwidth of the excitation elements. The interest in the unique features of LWs and their high potential in different applications were the main motivation for conducting this study. Because of the complex nature of LWs, it is challenging to design a system that can launch LWs with high accuracy and power efficiency as well as the flexibility in choosing the LWs design parameters. Due to practical limitations, the results of this research could not yet be experimentally verified; however, this research aims to provide a practically feasible method for LWs generation that avoids the shortcomings of previous techniques. In the study, the transverse electric (TE) version of the MPS pulse is derived. Expansion in terms of the waveguide's orthogonal modes is presented and followed by the method to determine the excitation currents for the loop antennas inside a circular waveguide. The feasibility and flexibility of the method is demonstrated via numerical examples. PRACTICAL LOCALIZED WAVES GENERATION by Mohamed Ahmed Salem A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of New Jersey Institute of Technology in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering


Effects of protein kinase C (PKC) activation on the insulin-secretory process were investigated, by using beta-cell-rich suspensions obtained from pancreatic islets of obese-hyperglycaemic mice. The phorbol ester 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol 13-acetate (TPA), which is known to activate PKC directly, the muscarinic-receptor agonist carbamoylcholine and high glucose concentration enhanced the phosphorylation of a specific 80 kDa PKC substrate in the beta-cells. At a non-stimulatory glucose concentration, 10 nM-TPA increased insulin release, although there were no changes in either the cytoplasmic free Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i) or membrane potential, as measured with the fluorescent indicators quin-2 and bisoxonol respectively. At a stimulatory glucose concentration TPA caused a lowering in [Ca2+]i, whereas membrane potential was unaffected. Despite the decrease in [Ca2+]i, there was a large stimulation of insulin release. Addition of TPA lowered [Ca2+]i also in beta-cells stimulated by tolbutamide or high K+, although to a lesser extent than in those stimulated by glucose. There was no effect of TPA on either Ca2+ buffering or the ability of Ins(1,4,5)P3 to release Ca2+ in permeabilized beta-cells. However, the phorbol ester inhibited the rise in [Ca2+]i in response to carbamoylcholine, which stimulates the formation of InsP3, in intact beta-cells. Down-regulation of PKC influenced neither glucose-induced insulin release nor the increase in [Ca2+]i. Hence, although PKC activation is of no major importance in glucose-stimulated insulin release, this enzyme can serve as a modulator of the glucose-induced insulin-secretory response. Such a modulation involves mechanisms promoting both amplification of the secretory response and lowering of [Ca2+]i.


ABSTRACT The population structure, particularly growth, age, mortality and somatic production of the olivid snail Olivancillaria deshayesiana were investigated. Annual formation of internal shell growth marks was confirmed by the record of stable oxygen isotopes in the shell, which reflects seasonal patterns of water temperature. A von Bertalanffy growth model fitted to 81 size-at-age data pairs, indicating that O. deshayesiana may attain 31 mm SL in about 10 years. The estimated total mortality Z and natural mortality M were 0.651 y-1 and 0.361 y-1, respectively. Fishing mortality F was 0.290 y-1, and the exploitation rate E was 0.445, indicating that this population was not overexploited at the time of the study. However, this situation may well change in the future, since the important prawn and shrimp fisheries (in intensity and scale) in the Mar del Plata area (38°20′S, 57°37′W) may indirectly affect the exploitation status of the studied population.


Evacuation systems in steelmaking plants contribute to the security of the operators around the furnace and help to gain the emission levels stated in the environmental regulations, furthermore play a major role in the mass and heat balance of the factory. The aim of the dissertation is to study both primary and secondary emission capture systems of an electric arc furnace steelmaking plant by means of 3D computational thermal fluid dynamics calculations.
The overall performance of the post-combustion chamber, and consequently the primary line, is controlled by the size of the gap downstream the fourth hole of an electric are furnace. The impact of the opening coefficient (ratio between the gap area and the total area) on the post-combustion chamber performance has been investigated by means of a comprehensive 3D steady CFD simulation comprising radiative heat exchanges and detailed chemical reactions. It was found that there is not a unique value of the opening coefficient capable of optimizing all the relevant quantities of the evacuation process. A value of the opening coefficient in the range 0.40-0.52 appears advisable. The impact of the (mostly unknown) boundary conditions was also assessed and inefficiencies of the assumed post-combustion geometry have been highlighted.
The secondary line's capturing efficiency during the charging phase was simulated with both transient and steady-state solvers with different turbulent models, namely the standard k-e and the Large Eddy Simulation models. The results revealed that steady-state simulations provide sufficient information for designing and optimizing the geometry of the secondary capture system. The simulations also pointed out several geometries, which cause significant pressure drop and, as a result, diminish capturing ability of the canopy hood and the additional evacuation system. The boundary conditions were imposed with the help of experimental measurements in the simulated steelmaking factory.


The obliquities of planet-hosting stars are clues about the formation of planetary systems. Previous observations led to the hypothesis that for close-in giant planets, spin–orbit alignment is enforced by tidal interactions. Here, we examine two problems with this hypothesis. First, Mazeh and coworkers recently used a new technique—based on the amplitude of starspot-induced photometric variability—to conclude that spin–orbit alignment is common even for relatively long-period planets, which would not be expected if tides were responsible. We re-examine the data and find a statistically significant correlation between photometric variability and planetary orbital period that is qualitatively consistent with tidal interactions. However it is still difficult to explain quantitatively, as it would require tides to be effective for periods as long as tens of days. Second, Rogers and Lin argued against a particular theory for tidal re-alignment by showing that initially retrograde systems would fail to be re-aligned, in contradiction with the observed prevalence of prograde systems. We investigate a simple model that overcomes this problem by taking into account the dissipation of inertial waves and the equilibrium tide, as well as magnetic braking. We identify a region of parameter space where re-alignment can be achieved, but it only works for close-in giant planets, and requires some fine tuning. Thus, while we find both problems to be more nuanced than they first appeared, the tidal model still has serious shortcomings.


The retail practice of charging a fee to stock new products is a relatively new but growing phenomenon. Termed a "slotting allowance", it has attracted considerable scrutiny because of uncertainty about its purposes and consequences. We propose and statistically test several hypotheses to assess the degree of empirical support for each of several extant explanations. Slotting allowances, we find, are charged by relatively large retailers who have an informational advantage over the manufacturer about the likely success of the new product. This result apparently contradicts theorizing about the "informational" content of slotting fees, as well as other pro- and anti-competitive explanations. We also find support for the claim that when retailers fear that manufacturers will not provide post-launch support, they pay relatively high wholesale prices.


A simple, digital signal processing-free, low-cost and robust synchronous clocking technique is proposed and experimentally demonstrated, for the first time, in a 64-QAM-encoded, 11.25Gb/s over 25km SSMF, real-time end-to-end optical OFDM (OOFDM) system using directly modulated DFB laser-based intensity-modulation and direct-detection (IMDD). Detailed experimental investigations show that, in comparison with the common clock approach utilised in previous experimental demonstrations, the proposed clocking technique can be implemented to achieve no system BER performance degradation or optical power budget penalty and more importantly to improve system stability. As a viable synchronous clocking solution for real-time OOFDM transmission, this work is a vital step towards the realisation of practical OOFDM transmission systems and has particular significance for synchronisation of OOFDM multiple access-based passive optical networks where highly accurate synchronisation of all network elements is essential.


Among the projects of IV generation reactors available nowadays, the (High Temperature Reactors) HTR, are highlighted due to their desirable characteristics and they have been studied by the Instituto Nacional de Ciências e Tecnologia de Reatores Inovadores/CNPq(Brazil). For this work, it evaluated the neutronic behavior and fuel composition during the burnup using the codes (Winfrith Improved Multi-Group Scheme) WIMSD5 and the MCNPX2.6, inserting different percentages of reprocessed fuel in the core. The fuel type "C" coming from Angra-I nuclear power plant, in Brazil, enriched with 3.1% was burnt by three typical cycles and then reprocessed. It recovered (Pu) and minor actinides (MA)being neptunium (Np), americium (Am), curium (Cm), and processed six different fuels varying percentage insertion of reprocessed fuel and enrichment uranium. It analyzed the multiplication factor, temperatures reactivity coefficients, and the composition during the burnup. The results showed, in the analyzed conditions, only one of these fuels is possible to be used. To compare, a reference fuel using 15% enrichment (235U) was too evaluated.


High‐grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSC) is characterized by poor outcome, often attributed to the emergence of treatment‐resistant subclones. We sought to measure the degree of genomic diversity within primary, untreated HGSCs to examine the natural state of tumour evolution prior to therapy. We performed exome sequencing, copy number analysis, targeted amplicon deep sequencing and gene expression profiling on 31 spatially and temporally separated HGSC tumour specimens (six patients), including ovarian masses, distant metastases and fallopian tube lesions. We found widespread intratumoural variation in mutation, copy number and gene expression profiles, with key driver alterations in genes present in only a subset of samples (eg PIK3CA, CTNNB1, NF1). On average, only 51.5% of mutations were present in every sample of a given case (range 10.2–91.4%), with TP53 as the only somatic mutation consistently present in all samples. Complex segmental aneuploidies, such as whole‐genome doubling, were present in a subset of samples from the same individual, with divergent copy number changes segregating independently of point mutation acquisition. Reconstruction of evolutionary histories showed one patient with mixed HGSC and endometrioid histology, with common aetiologic origin in the fallopian tube and subsequent selection of different driver mutations in the histologically distinct samples. In this patient, we observed mixed cell populations in the early fallopian tube lesion, indicating that diversity arises at early stages of tumourigenesis. Our results revealed that HGSCs exhibit highly individual evolutionary trajectories and diverse genomic tapestries prior to therapy, exposing an essential biological characteristic to inform future design of personalized therapeutic solutions and investigation of drug‐resistance mechanisms. © 2013 The Authors. Journal of Pathology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland.


Many seek to "fix" Africa - economists, experts, politicians, gurus, cognoscenti and glitterati. But the continent conceals multiple secrets, including the Holy Grail: explanations of its saga over the previous centuries. Africa's Future tells the tale of Africa's economic evolution, revealing unique prisms for understanding the continent's panoramic story, one of triumph over the lasting influences of nature and multiple political tragedies. It explains why from Roman times to 1500 CE Africa went backwards, evolving slowly, growing later, improving recently, and how its modern and archaic economies coexist uneasily today. Modern Africa developed diverse economic pathways to betterment - yet survivalist economies litter the landscape. Its paradox of "subsistence with many faces" coexists amidst the tiny middle class, growing rich, and many more poor expected in the future. Clarke provides fresh and challenging insights into Africa's economies and future, offering seasoned views on a continent of unlocked potential which has witnessed many false dawns. Not "poor" but poorly managed, Africa holds greater promise, its destiny revealed by its history.


This paper analyzes the association between quality of parenting programs and child development outcomes. It focuses on parenting programs delivered through home visits (i.e., home visiting programs) in which a paraprofessional works with the caregiver to improve parental practices, skills and knowledge of child development, with an application to the Peruvian national program Programa Nacional Cuna Mas. Home visiting quality is measured through the Home Visit Rating Scale, version A+2 (HOVRS-A+2), and child development outcomes through the Ages and Stages Questionnaires (ASQ-3) and the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development (Bayley-III). The empirical analysis used is descriptive in nature. Results show that home visiting quality scores are significantly associated with our measures of child development, but this association is not consistent across all measures.


The rolling element bearing is a key component of many machines. Accurate and timely diagnosis of its faults is critical for proactive predictive maintenance. The research described in this thesis focuses on the development of techniques for detecting and diagnosing incipient bearing faults. These techniques are based on improved dynamic models and enhanced signal processing algorithms.

Various common fault detection techniques for rolling element bearings are reviewed in this work and a detailed experimental investigation is described for several selected methods. Envelope analysis is widely used to obtain the bearing defect harmonics from the spectrum of the envelope of a vibration signal. This enables the detection and diagnosis of faults, and has shown good results in identifying incipient faults occurring on the different parts of a bearing. However, a critical step in implementing envelope analysis is to determine the frequency band that contains the signal component corresponding to the bearing fault (the one with highest signal to noise ratio). The choice of filter band is conventionally made via manual inspection of the spectrum to identify the resonant frequency where the largest change has occurred. In this work, a spectral kurtosis (SK) method is enhanced to enable determination of the optimum envelope analysis parameters, including the filter band and centre frequency, through a short time Fourier transform (STFT). The results show that the maximum amplitude of the kurtogram indicates the optimal parameters of band pass filter that allows both outer race and inner race faults to be determined from the optimised envelope spectrum. A performance evaluation is carried out on the kurtogram and the fast kurtogram, based on a simulated impact signal masked by different noise levels. This shows that as the signal to noise ratio (SNR) reaches as low as -5dB the STFT-based kurtogram is more effective at identifying periodic components due to bearing faults, and is less influenced by irregular noise pulses than the wavelet based fast kurtogram.

A study of the accuracy of rolling-bearing diagnostic features in detecting bearing wear processes and monitoring fault sizes is presented for a range of radial clearances. Subsequently, a nonlinear dynamic model of a deep groove ball bearing with five degrees of freedom is developed. The model incorporates local defects and clearance increments in order to gain the insight into the bearing dynamics. Simulation results indicate that the vibrations at fault characteristic frequencies exhibit significant variability for increasing clearances. An increased vibration level is detected at the bearing characteristic frequency for an outer race fault, whereas a decreased vibration level is found for an inner race fault. Outcomes of laboratory experiments on several bearing clearance grades, with different local defects, are used herein for model validation purposes.

The experimental validation indicates that the envelope spectrum is not accurate enough to quantify the rolling element bearing fault severity adequately. To improve the results, a new method has been developed by combining a conventional bispectrum (CB) and modulation signal bispectrum (MSB) with envelope analysis. This suppresses the inevitable noise in the envelope signal, and hence provides more accurate diagnostic features. Both the simulation and the experimental results show that MSB extracts small changes from a faulty bearing more reliably, enabling more accurate and reliable fault severity diagnosis. Moreover, the vibration amplitudes at the fault characteristic frequencies exhibit significant changes with increasing clearance. However, the vibration amplitude tends to increase with the severity of an outer race fault and decrease with the severity of an inner race fault. It is therefore necessary to take these effects into account when diagnosing the size of a defect.


Today India is the fastest growing major economy in the world and offers immense opportunities for business and economic partnership. Many countries are reformulating their economic and foreign policies to engage India. Australia too has been taking steps to establish a comprehensive strategic partnership with India. One of the most standout components of this emerging Australia-India strategic partnership is the economic relationship which is noticeable mainly by the Australian resources and energy-driven export to India. However, the synergies and complementarities in other sectors provide huge opportunities for expansion and have yet to form a considerable chunk of Australia-India economic relationship. Given the political will shown at the top level from both the governments for a Comprehensive Economic Co-operation Agreement (CECA), it is imperative to study the trends and prospects for the investment and economic relationship between Australia and India.BETWEEN Australia-INDIA with India. This paper examines the sectors which need to be synergised for a comprehensive Australia-India economic relationship, namely the resources and energy, agriculture and food, education and tourism, health and medical, manufacturing and infrastructure sectors.


Abstract Citrus aurantifolia leaf essential oil was extracted via hydrodistillation, chemical composition of the oil was analyzed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and its antidiabetic potentials was assessed in alloxan-induced hyperglycaemic rats using metformin as the reference drug for comparison. Chemical analysis showed that D-limonene (57.84%) was the major constituent of the oil. Other notable compounds identified were neral (7.81%), linalool (4.75%), sulcatone (3.48%) and isogeraniol (3.48%). Intraperitoneal administration of C. aurantifolia oil (100 mg/Kg b.wt.) to hyperglycaemic rats for 14 days caused significant reduction in fasting blood and hepatic glucose, whereas hepatic concentration of glycogen was significantly increased. Also, improvement in dyslipidaemia was observed in C. aurantifolia essential oil-treated hyperglycaemic rats; serum concentration of total cholesterol, triacylglycerol and low density lipoprotein-cholesterol were significantly reduced and high density lipoprotein-cholesterol was increased, resulting in decreased predisposition of rats to cardiac risks. Antihyperglycaemic potential of administration of the oil was lower but compared favourably with the oral antihyperglycaemic agent used as reference antidiabetic drug. Overall, data from this study showed that essential oil from the leaf of C. aurantifolia grown in North-Central Nigeria is a D-limonene chemotype. The oil showed considerable glucose lowering effect as well as the potential to ameliorate hyperglycaemia-induced dyslipidaemic complications in alloxanized rats.


Restricting the search space has shown to be an effective approach for improving the performance of automated planning systems. A planner-independent technique for pruning the search space is domain and problem reformulation. Recently, Outer Entanglements, which are relations between planning operators and initial or goal predicates, have been introduced as a reformulation technique for eliminating potential undesirable instances of planning operators, and thus restricting the search space. Reformulation techniques, however, have been mainly applied in classical planning, although many real-world planning applications require to deal with numerical information. In this paper, we investigate the usefulness of reformulation approaches in planning with numerical fluents. In particular, we propose and extension of the notion of outer entanglements for handling numeric fluents. An empirical evaluation, which involves 150 instances from 5 domains, shows promising results.


The NHS collects a large number of data on patient experience, but there are concerns that it does not use this information to improve care. This study explored whether or not and how front-line staff use patient experience data for service improvement.

 Phase 1 – secondary analysis of existing national survey data, and a new survey of NHS trust patient experience leads. Phase 2 – case studies in six medical wards using ethnographic observations and interviews. A baseline and a follow-up patient experience survey were conducted on each ward, supplemented by in-depth interviews. Following an initial learning community to discuss approaches to learning from and improving patient experience, teams developed and implemented their own interventions. Emerging findings from the ethnographic research were shared formatively. Phase 3 – dissemination, including an online guide for NHS staff.

 Phase 1 – an analysis of staff and inpatient survey results for all 153 acute trusts in England was undertaken, and 57 completed surveys were obtained from patient experience leads. The most commonly cited barrier to using patient experience data was a lack of staff time to examine the data (75%), followed by cost (35%), lack of staff interest/support (21%) and too many data (21%). Trusts were grouped in a matrix of high, medium and low performance across several indices to inform case study selection. Phase 2 – in every site, staff undertook quality improvement projects using a range of data sources. The number and scale of these varied, as did the extent to which they drew directly on patient experience data, and the extent of involvement of patients. Before-and-after surveys of patient experience showed little statistically significant change. Making sense of patient experience 'data' Staff were engaged in a process of sense-making from a range of formal and informal sources of intelligence. Survey data remain the most commonly recognised and used form of data. 'Soft' intelligence, such as patient stories, informal comments and daily ward experiences of staff, patients and family, also fed into staff's improvement plans, but they and the wider organisation may not recognise these as 'data'. Staff may lack confidence in using them for improvement. Staff could not always point to a specific source of patient experience 'data' that led to a particular project, and sometimes reported acting on what they felt they already knew needed changing. Staff experience as a route to improving patient experience Some sites focused on staff motivation and experience on the assumption that this would improve patient experience through indirect cultural and attitudinal change, and by making staff feel empowered and supported. Staff participants identified several potential interlinked mechanisms: (1) motivated staff provide better care, (2) staff who feel taken seriously are more likely to be motivated, (3) involvement in quality improvement is itself motivating and (4) improving patient experience can directly improve staff experience. 'Team-based capital' in NHS settings We propose 'team-based capital' in NHS settings as a key mechanism between the contexts in our case studies and observed outcomes. 'Capital' is the extent to which staff command varied practical, organisational and social resources that enable them to set agendas, drive process and implement change. These include not just material or economic resources, but also status, time, space, relational networks and influence. Teams involving a range of clinical and non-clinical staff from multiple disciplines and levels of seniority could assemble a greater range of capital; progress was generally greater when the team included individuals from the patient experience office. Phase 3 – an online guide for NHS staff was produced in collaboration with The Point of Care Foundation.

 This was an ethnographic study of how and why NHS front-line staff do or do not use patient experience data for quality improvement. It was not designed to demonstrate whether particular types of patient experience data or quality improvement approaches are more effective than others.

 Developing and testing interventions focused specifically on staff but with patient experience as the outcome, with a health economics component. Studies focusing on the effect of team composition and diversity on the impact and scope of patient-centred quality improvement. Research into using unstructured feedback and soft intelligence.

 The National Institute for Health Research Health Services and Delivery Research programme.


To determine the usual approach to management of traumatic hyphema in Texas, we mailed a survey to ophthalmologists in the state who indicated a practice focus of either general ophthalmology or pediatric ophthalmology. The survey included inquiries regarding type of practice, patient population, frequency of traumatic hyphema, laboratory investigations, treatment precautions, medical and surgical treatment, criteria for hospitalization, and criteria for surgical intervention. Of the 495 surveys mailed out, 169 (response rate = 34.1%) were returned and filled out completely. More than half of the respondents do not routinely consider sickle cell testing in traumatic hyphema cases. We found no consensus regarding use of systemic antifibrinolytic agents, indications for hospitalization, or timing of surgical intervention. The results of this survey emphasize the lack of consensus surrounding treatment of traumatic hyphema. The relative paucity of sickle cell testing among Texas ophthalmologists, however, appears inconsistent with recommendations in the medical literature.


Hypothesis: Finger trauma often results in discontinuity of the proper palmar digital nerves. The goal of this study was to retrospectively evaluate the clinical outcomes of emergency nerve grafting and the resulting donor site morbidity. Material and method: Three women and 13 men who had been operated between 2008 and 2012 were reviewed. The average patient age was 39 years (range 18–78). All were operated on an emergency basis. The average defect was 38 mm long (range 15–60). The nerves were harvested from four sites: lateral antebrachial cutaneous nerve (12 cases), banked finger (2 cases), terminal portion of posterior interosseous nerve (1 case) and anterior interosseous nerve (1 case). The evaluation consisted of patient questioning and clinical examination of the treated finger and donor site. An objective sensory exam was also performed. The results were expressed according to the British Medical Research Council (MRC) classification. Results: There was little donor site morbidity (2 cases of symptomatic hypoesthesia, 1 case of scar hypersensitivity). Sixty-nine percent of patients stated that their grafted finger did not cause them any trouble during activities of daily living. Three patients required job retraining. Pain in the grafted finger was 0.6 (range 0–5) on the VAS. Normal sensation was restored in 31% of cases based on the monofilament sensory test; 25% had a slight decrease in touch sensitivity and 25% had reduced protective sensations. Weber's two-point discrimination test found 50% normal sensibility (threshold < 6 mm) and 6% with mediocre sensibility (threshold of 6–10 mm). On the MRC grading scale, 50% of patients were at S4, 6% at S3+, 19% at S3, 12% at S2 and 12% at S1. Conclusion: There were 56% good results in this patient series (S3+/S4) and no patients at S0. Donor site morbidity was rare. Thus use of nerve grafting is still a relevant option in an emergency setting. Level of evidence: Level IV. © 2014 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.


Managing the gas-liquid interface within gas diffusion electrodes (GDEs) is key to maintaining high product selectivities in carbon dioxide electroreduction. By screening silver-catalyzed GDEs over a range of applied current densities, we observe an inverse correlation between carbon monoxide selectivity and the electrochemical double-layer capacitance, a proxy for wetted electrode area. We find that plotting current-dependent performance as a function of cumulative charge leads to data collapse onto a single sigmoidal curve indicating that the passage of faradaic current accelerates flooding. We hypothesize that high cathode alkalinity, driven by both initial electrolyte conditions and cathode half-reactions, promotes carbonate formation and precipitation which, in turn, facilitates electrolyte permeation. This mechanism is reinforced by the observations that post-test GDEs retain less hydrophobicity than pristine materials and that water rinsing and drying electrodes temporarily recovers peak selectivity. This knowledge offers an opportunity to design electrodes with greater carbonation tolerance to improve device longevity.


Platelets are generated from megakaryocytes (MKs) in mammalian bone marrow (BM) by mechanisms that remain poorly understood. Here we describe the use of multiphoton intravital microscopy in intact BM to visualize platelet generation in mice. MKs were observed as sessile cells that extended dynamic proplatelet-like protrusions into microvessels. These intravascular extensions appeared to be sheared from their transendothelial stems by flowing blood, resulting in the appearance of proplatelets in peripheral blood. In vitro, proplatelet production from differentiating MKs was enhanced by fluid shear. These results confirm the concept of proplatelet formation in vivo and are consistent with the possibility that blood flow–induced hydrodynamic shear stress is a biophysical determinant of thrombopoiesis.


We supported our families; we honored our culture; we believed in our country. We never thought to display any civil disobedience. The U.S.A. was our home too. --Reflections from an 80-year-old Japanese American internment camp detainee In the spring of 1942, nearly 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living along the west coast of the United States were ordered to evacuate their homes and abandon their businesses. These federal orders, giving Japanese and Japanese Americans just a few days warning before being rounded up and sent to internment camps, came less than four months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent United States entry into World War II. Two-thirds of those evacuated from their homes were American-born citizens. More than half were children, exiled only because their parents had been born in Japan. (1) Evacuees were not told how long they would be held, nor were they charged with any crimes. (2) On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, giving the military commander power to select certain parts of the West Coast as military areas. People considered enemies of war or a threat to national security were forbidden access to those areas. On March 2, General John DeWitt, who had been named military commander, issued a proclamation designating military areas in the states of Washington, Oregon, California, and portions of Arizona. The proclamation, known as Public Proclamation No. 1, excluded certain persons from these areas, specifically Japanese, German, and Italian aliens. (3) On March 16, the states of Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Utah also were designated military areas. Then, on March 18, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9102 creating the War Relocation Authority, (WRA) which established the orderly evacuation of designated persons living in the restricted military areas. Just a few days later, on March 21, Roosevelt signed Public Law 503 making it a federal crime for anyone to disobey General DeWitt's orders. (4) Throughout the spring and summer of 1942, Civilian Exclusion Orders directed all persons of Japanese ancestry, both immigrants and U.S. citizens, to report to control stations or assembly centers, consisting primarily of fairgrounds and horseracing tracks. (5) From there, Japanese Americans were transported to relocation centers, essentially prisons or internment camps constructed of wooden framed barracks situated in desolate, harsh, unsanitary sites. (6) The evacuees, separated from their extended families, former neighbors, and well-established lifestyles, were detained for almost three and a half years at 10 WRA camps scattered across the western United States. (7) The internees were gradually released throughout 1945, the year World War II ended. For most Japanese Americans, their re-entry into the U.S. mainstream was a slow and painful process. (8) Honoring Fred Korematsu One of the best-known Japanese Americans who fought the internment orders was Fred Korematsu. Korematsu, who was born in Oakland, California, was in his early twenties when he refused to report for transportation to an internment camp, even as his family and friends complied with government orders. Korematsu insisted that "it was wrong to subject innocent people to this treatment without trial or any evidence of criminal behavior" ... and that the evacuation order "should be declared unconstitutional." (9) Korematsu was found guilty of violating Public Law 503; his case was appealed all the way to the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court decision upheld the exclusion order, and Korematsu was found guilty of a misdemeanor. However, the case provoked strong reactions on all sides for many years to come. (10) Over time, presidents Nixon and Ford signed bills repealing the law for which Korematsu was convicted. In 1983, Korematsu's case was reopened and the conviction set aside. …


Cell-to-cell communication is the driving force behind successful reproduction in flowering plants. Extensive extracellular communication events occur between the male and female gametophytes during pollen tube reception to facilitate successful fertilization. These signaling events culminate into a product of great importance for both animals and plants: the seed. In this study, the pathogen defense regulator PATTERN-TRIGGERED IMMUNITY COMPROMISED RECEPTOR-LIKE CYTOPLASMIC KINASE 1 (PCRK1) was identified to function in pollen tube reception from both the male and female gametophytes in the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana using a forward genetic screen. A knockout of pcrk1 suppresses the pollen tube overgrowth phenotype leading to infertility in nortia mutants. In addition, pcrk1 pollen affected the pollen tube overgrowth phenotypes of pollen tube reception mutants feronia and turan. Shared molecular components of pollen tube reception and pathogen invasion have been reported. This study reveals another link between pathogen defense and pollen tube reception. By studying the links between fertility and disease in plants, we may be able to uncover potential trade-offs with fertility when breeding for pathogen resistance.


Despite significant methodological advances, much program evaluation and monitoring data are of limited utility because of an over-reliance on quantitative methods alone. While surveys provide generalizable findings on what outcomes or impacts have or have not occurred, qualitative methods are better able to identify the underlying explanations for these outcomes and impacts, and therefore enable more effective responses. Qualitative methods also inform survey design, identify social and institutional drivers and impacts that are hard to quantify, uncover unanticipated issues, and trace impact pathways. When used together, quantitative and qualitative approaches provide more coherent, reliable, and useful conclusions than do each on their own. This note identifies key elements of good mixed-method design and provides examples of these principles applied in several countries.


Core samples from the Paleogene of the Bonavista C-99 well on the northeast Newfoundland shelf and cuttings from downdip Blue H-28 contain foraminiferal assemblages which enable reconstruction of paleoenvironments along a downslope transect in Eocene through Late Oligocene-Miocene time. Comparison with coeval assemblages in North Sea wells with respect to structure and grain size of agglutinated taxa between the two areas reveal inter-basin differences. Reconstruction of the paleobathymetry derived from foraminiferal analysis, confirms seismic evidence for shallowing at the Bonavista site beginning in the Early Oligocene. The relationship of the Bonavista assemblages to contour currents is explored with reference to modern regional analogues. Species such as Reticulophragmium amplectens, Haplophragmoides walteri, Eponides umbonatus and Uvigerina ex. gr. miozea-nuttalli persist stratigraphically higher in the deeper Blue site. The paleoslope of this two-well transect is determined as approximately 0.48° during the Middle to Late Eocene and 0.68° during the Late Oligocene-Early Miocene. The bottom water hydrography of the transect can be evaluated by reference to these assemblages and a comparison to flysch-type agglutinated assemblages from a transect in the North Sea. The presence of an Upper Eocene-Middle Miocene hiatus at the Blue site contrasting with apparently continuous Tertiary deposition at Bonavista places a theoretical upper limit of 500–1000 m on the depth of the early Cenozoic western boundary undercurrent.


Humans have represented data in many forms for thousands of years, yet the main sensory channel we use to perceive these representations today still remains largely exclusive to sight. Recent developments, such as advances in digital fabrication, microcontrollers, actuated tangibles, and shape-changing interfaces offer new opportunities to encode data in physical forms and have stimulated the emergence of 'Data Physicalization' as a research area. The aim of this workshop is (1) to create an awareness of the potential of Data Physicalization by providing an overview of state-of-the-art research, practice, and tools and (2) to build a community around this emerging field and start to discuss a shared research agenda. This workshop therefore addresses both experienced researchers and practitioners as well as those who are new to the field but interested in applying Data Physicalization to their own (research) practice. The workshop will provide opportunities for participants to explore Data Physicalization hands-on, by creating their own prototypes. These practical explorations will lead into reflective discussions on the role tangibles and embodiment play in Data Physicalization and the future research challenges for this area.


We present a system that allows life-science researchers to search a linguistically annotated corpus of scientific texts using patterns over dependency graphs, as well as using patterns over token sequences and a powerful variant of boolean keyword queries. In contrast to previous attempts to dependency-based search, we introduce a light-weight query language that does not require the user to know the details of the underlying linguistic representations, and instead to query the corpus by providing an example sentence coupled with simple markup. Search is performed at an interactive speed due to efficient linguistic graph-indexing and retrieval engine. This allows for rapid exploration, development and refinement of user queries. We demonstrate the system using example workflows over two corpora: the PubMed corpus including 14,446,243 PubMed abstracts and the CORD-19 dataset, a collection of over 45,000 research papers focused on COVID-19 research. The system is publicly available at https://allenai.github.io/spike


A phase II trial of vinorelbine and low dose prednisone in hormone-refractory metastatic prostate cancer was conducted in order to investigate its safety, efficacy and impact on quality of life. Vinorelbine was administered at the dose of 25 mg/m(2) i.v. weekly for 12 weeks and then biweekly, along with 10 mg of daily oral prednisone until time of progression. Fourteen patients, median age of 74 years, were treated. The treatment was generally well tolerated with leukopenia and anemia as the major side effects. One patient achieved partial remission and eleven remained with stable disease. One of the eleven patients with stable disease had a dramatic PSA response from 1000 to 236 ng/ml; seven of these progressed after week twelve when vinorelbine was given biweekly. PSA response occurred in 5 of 14 patients. The median time to progression was 28 weeks and the median survival was 17 months. Nine out of the 14 accrued patients were evaluable for quality of life assessment. Five of them improved, three remained unchanged and two had a slight worsening. Four patients had improvement in pain control and fatigue. Our preliminary data suggest that the combination of vinorelbine/prednisone has modest activity in metastatic prostate cancer with a very favorable toxicity profile and is very well tolerated in this group of elderly patients.


Abstract A free and open press is a critical piece of the civil-society infrastructure that supports both established and emerging democracies. However, as the professional activities of reporting and publishing are increasingly conducted by digital means, computer security and privacy risks threaten free and independent journalism around the globe. Through interviews with 15 practicing journalists and 14 organizational stakeholders (supervising editors and technologists), we reveal the distinct - and sometimes conflicting-computer security concerns and priorities of different stakeholder groups within journalistic institutions, as well as unique issues in journalism compared to other types of organizations. As these concerns have not been deeply studied by those designing computer security practices or technologies that may benefit journalism, this research offers insight into some of the practical and cultural constraints that can limit the computer security and privacy practices of the journalism community as a whole. Based on these findings, we suggest paths for future research and development that can bridge these gaps through new tools and practices.


As aquaculture production and the consumption of aquaculture products increase, the possibility of contracting zoonotic infections from either handling or ingesting these products also increases. The principal pathogens acquired topically from fish or shellfish through spine/pincer puncture or open wounds are Aeromonas hydrophila, Edwardsiella tarda, Mycobacterium marinum, Streptococcus iniae, Vibrio vulnificus and V. damsela. These pathogens, which are all indigenous to the aquatic environment, have also been associated with disease outbreaks in food fish. Outbreaks are often related to management factors, such as the quality and quantity of nutrients in the water and high stocking density, which can increase bacterial loads on the external surface of the fish. As a result, diseased fish are more likely to transmit infection to humans. This review provides an account of human cases of zoonoses throughout the world from the principal zoonotic pathogens of fish and shellfish.


Background: Obesity is a risk factor for many chronic diseases in older women. Tai Chi is an alternative exercise that has not been thoroughly investigated in this population in a community setting for its effects on body fat mass when combined with dietary weight loss. Methods: A 16-week community-based intervention using Tai Chi and behaviorally-based dietary weight loss (TCWL, n=29) in older (68.2 ± 1.5 yr) obese (BMI=35.4 ± 0.8kg/m 2 ) women was conducted compared to a control group (CON, n=9; BMI=38.0 ± 1.5 kg/m 2 ; age=65.5 ± 2.7 yr). Primary and exploratory outcomes included were body fat mass, BMI, percent fat (via bioelectrical impedance), fat-free mass, hip circumference, waist circumference, and waist to hip ratio. Participants in the TCWL group engaged in twice weekly Tai Chi sessions (~50 min) and once weekly nutritional weight loss meetings. The CON group was asked to continue with their daily routines. Results: The TCWL group did not see changes (p < 0.05) when compared to the CON group in weight (-1.6 ± 0.5 kg vs. -1.1 ± 0.9 kg, p=0.66), body fat mass (-3.0 ± 1.5 kg vs. 1.5 ± 2.8 kg, p=0.16), BMI (-0.7 ± 0.2 kg/m 2 vs. -0.4 ± 0.3 kg/m 2 p=0.53), or waist circumference (-4.8 ± 1.2 cm vs. -3.0 ± 2.2 cm, p=0.48). There was also a lack of significant change (p < 0.05) between groups in percent body fat (-0.3 ± 0.2 % vs. -0.4 ± 0.4% p=0.10), fat-free mass (-0.7 ± 0.4 kg vs. -0.9 ± 0.7 kg, p=0.81), hip circumference (-0.2 ± 0.8 cm vs. -0.9 ± 1.4 cm, p=0.67) and waist to hip ratio (-0.03 ± 0.01 vs. -0.03 ± 0.02, p=0.69). Conclusion: The results from this study show that the combination of Tai Chi and dietary weight loss is not effective in altering key measures of body composition in obese older women. There is need for further research with more substantial weight loss and when combined with other exercise modalities.


(ABSTRACT) Advances in very large scale integration (VLSI) technologies impose challenges for voltage regulator modules (VRM) to deliver high-quality power to modern microprocessors. As an enabling technology, multiphase converters have become the standard practice in VRM industry. The primary objectives of this dissertation are to develop advanced topologies and innovative integrated magnetics for high-efficiency, high-power-density and fast-transient VRMs. The optimization of multiphase VRMs has also been addressed. Today's multiphase VRMs are almost universally based on the buck topology. With increased input voltage and decreased output voltage, the multiphase buck converter suffers from a very small duty cycle and cannot achieve a desirable efficiency. The multiphase tapped-inductor buck converter is one of the simplest topologies with a decent duty cycle. However, the leakage inductance of its tapped inductors causes a severe voltage spike problem. An improved topology, named the multiphase coupled-buck converter, is proposed. This innovative topology enables the use of a larger duty cycle ii with clamped device voltage and recovered leakage energy. Under the same transient responses, the multiphase coupled-buck converter has a significantly better efficiency than the multiphase buck converter. By integrating all the magnetic components into a single core, in which the windings are wound around the center leg and the air gaps are placed on the two outer legs, it is possible for multiphase VRMs to further improve efficiency and cut the size and cost. Unfortunately, this structure suffers from an undesirable core structure and huge leakage inductance. An improved integrated magnetic structure is proposed to overcome these limitations. All the windings are wound around the two outer legs and the air gap is placed on the center leg. The improved structure also features the flux ripple cancellation in the center leg and strongly reverse-coupled inductors. Both core loss and winding loss are reduced. The steady-state current ripples can be reduced without compromising the transient responses. The overall efficiency of the converter is improved. The input inductor can also be integrated in the improved integrated magnetic structure. Currently, selecting the appropriate number of channels for multiphase VRMs is still an empirical trial-and-error process. This dissertation proposes a methodology for determining the right number of channels for the optimal multiphase design. The problem formulation and general method for the optimization are proposed. Two examples are performed step by step to demonstrate the proposed optimization methodology. Both are focused on typical VRM 9.0 designs for the latest Pentium …