1. Hypoglycaemia induces glucose intolerance in normal subjects—the 'Somogyi effect'–and may be responsible for some instances of 'brittle diabetes'. This effect may be mediated through the growth hormone response to hypoglycaemia, but other possible hormonal mechanisms have not been excluded. 2. Paired 2-h oral glucose tolerance tests have been carried out 2 h after both (a) i.v. saline (control day) and (b) i.v. insulin (test day) in four normal subjects and twenty-seven patients with pituitary and adrenal under- and over-activity. Plasma glucose, insulin, Cortisol and growth hormone have been estimated at half-hourly intervals during the 4 h of each study. 3. A significant Somogyi effect is usually seen only when there is a growth hormone response to insulin-induced hypoglycaemia; hypopituitary subjects do not show the effect. 4. There is a correlation between the extent of the Somogyi effect and the growth hormone response to insulin, using a simple derived index to represent each function ( P 5. Insulin secretion in normal subjects tends to be higher on the test than the control day, making inhibition of insulin release an unlikely primary mechanism. 6. The presence or absence of a Somogyi effect could not be related to insulin-induced changes in plasma Cortisol values. 7. Examination of individual cases supports the view that, while growth hormone may be mainly reponsible for the Somogyi effect, yet it is sometimes difficult to explain the effect without invoking other endocrine mechanisms.


During a reconnaissance on the north coast of New South Wales I examined two occurrences of water-worn pebbles, at Yamba and Crescent Head, which had been quarried for the manufacture of Hoabinhien I type implements. Their importance lies in the fact that each site presents a single industry unmixed with the numerous extraneous influences found on kitchen-middens south of Port Macquarie. Moreover, it appears probable that neither site has been visited previously by collectors.


The aim of this study is to develop a mushroom management scale and to test its validity and reliability. The scale was applied to 216 research assistant for Exploratory Factor Analysis, and 240 different research assistant for Confirmatory Factor Analysis. As a result of the analysis, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin value is found 0,874 and the Scope Validity Index is found 0,95. The total variance ratio explained by the scale is 67,238%. In addition, according to the result of Explanatory Factor Analysis the scale consists of 4 factors and 19 items. These factors are described as "inadequate information sharing", " anxiety of power loss", "inadequate communication" and "lack of participatory management". Cronbach's Alpha Internal Consistency Coefficient is calculated 0,90 and lastly, its test-retest correlation coefficient is calculated 0,82. At the same time it can be said that according to the Confirmatory Factor Analysis the scale has satisfactory coherence criteria. As a result, a valid and reliable Mushreoom Management Scale consisting of four sub-factors is developed.


Measurements of the jet energy calibration and transverse momentum resolution in CMS are presented, performed with a data sample collected in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36pb−1. The transverse momentum balance in dijet and γ/Z+jets events is used to measure the jet energy response in the CMS detector, as well as the transverse momentum resolution. The results are presented for three different methods to reconstruct jets: a calorimeter-based approach, the ``Jet-Plus-Track'' approach, which improves the measurement of calorimeter jets by exploiting the associated tracks, and the ``Particle Flow'' approach, which attempts to reconstruct individually each particle in the event, prior to the jet clustering, based on information from all relevant subdetectors.


In many developing countries, to sustain the provision of agricultural services to farmers, many have advocated the use of service fees. Successful implementation of such schemes requires understanding of determinants of farmers' willingness to pay. In this paper we use a multivariate probit approach to investigate farmers' stated willingness to pay for different agricultural services including soil fertility management, crop protection, farm management, improved produce quality /varieties, on-farm storage (post-harvest), improved individual and group marketing, and disease control. Data are from the Uganda National Household Survey 2005/2006. Controlling for individual characteristics and regional heterogeneity, our results suggest that farmers with access to information on proposed agricultural service are less willing to pay for it. Similarly, access to extension service tends to reduce farmers' willingness to pay. Market access plays also a significant role; farmers with available market are more willing to pay for agricultural services than those without available market. On the reverse, distance to the market is inversely correlated with the willingness to pay for agricultural services. The results also suggest that land ownership matters; indeed, increase in the size of land owned by farmers increases their willingness to pay for agricultural services. As expected, farmers' income, especially agricultural income significantly increases farmers' willingness to pay for agricultural services. Overall, decisions to pay or not for these services are not independent from each other implying that joint supply of these services should be recommended.


Community Question Answering (CQA) websites provide a rapidly growing source of information in many areas. In most CQA implementations there is little effort in directing new questions to the right group of experts. This means that experts are not provided with questions matching their expertise. In this thesis, we propose a framework for automatically routing a newly posted question to the best suited expert. The purpose of this framework is to decrease the waiting time for a personal response. We also investigate the suitability of two statistical topic models for solving this issue and compare these methods against more traditional Information Retrieval approaches. We show that for a dataset constructed from the Stackoverflow website, these topic models outperform other methods in retrieving a set of best experts. We also show that the Segmented Topic Model gives consistently better performance compared to the Latent Dirichlet Allocation Model.


Information quality (IQ) has become a critical concern in today's organisations. Although recent studies of information systems indicate an increasing importance of IQ, foremost research is still limited. Indeed, little is known about the impact of various design decisions on IQ. Recent research shows that security measures are increasingly important for any information system; however security measures are often introduced without considering the effect on IQ. At the same time, literature provides us with indications that trade-offs between various IQ dimensions exist. In this article we aim to investigate how security measures impact on different IQ dimensions. We carried out an experiment, which indicates that security measures have a significant effect on timeliness, whereas other dimensions are not particularly influenced. This observation led us to the proposal of costbenefit considerations, an important aspect for IQ management. The study is valuable for both research and practitioners. Further research studies can build on our observations and extend the research. Practitioners are provided with arguments for considering IQ trade-offs in relation to security measures.


A
few
years
ago
I
was
recalling
fieldwork
anxieties
to
a
colleague.
His
response
was to
 ask,
 'who
 do
 you
 serve?'
 The
 question
 threw
 me:
 I
 wanted
 to
 say,
 'No
 one,
 I'm
 Australian'.
A
simple
provocation
and
I
become
 a
wild
colonial
girl.
We
had
attended
 a
conference
in
Delhi
together
and
it
got
him
 reminiscing
about
his
time
as
a
student
 in
India:
he
spent
a
 few
years
studying
and
travelling,
accumulating
friends,
stories,
 bits
and
pieces
of
learning
and
love
and
devotion
to
the
country.
From
memory,
 the conversation
 took
place
after
we'd
 returned
 to
Melbourne.
We
were
having
 one
 of
 those
 nurturing
 collegial
 conversations:
 someone
 keeping
 me
 company
 as
 I
 gently
 worried
away
at
the
ethical
conundrums
 of
cultural
research.
He
told
me
that
 from
 his
 long,
 indolent
 time
 spent
 meandering
 around
 India
 it
 is
 the
 question
 from
 a
 student
 friend
 that
 returned
 to
 him
most
 readily,
 keeping
 him
in
 check.
 His
 friend
 asked
 matter‐a‐factly,
 'who
 do
 you
 serve?'
 It
 was
 intended
 as
 a
 straightforward
 question,
 assumed
 to
 have
 a
 ready
 answer:
 not
 designed
 to
 illicit
 consternation,
 anger
 and
 certainly
 not
 existential
 angst.
 He
 couldn't
 answer.
 But
 he
 said
 now
 he
 regularly
reflects
upon
it.
 The
answer
had
become
his
navigational
star.


Molecular phylogenetic studies have resolved placental mammals into four major groups, but have not established the full hierarchy of interordinal relationships, including the position of the root. The latter is critical for understanding the early biogeographic history of placentals. We investigated placental phylogeny using Bayesian and maximum-likelihood methods and a 16.4-kilobase molecular data set. Interordinal relationships are almost entirely resolved. The basal split is between Afrotheria and other placentals, at about 103 million years, and may be accounted for by the separation of South America and Africa in the Cretaceous. Crown-group Eutheria may have their most recent common ancestry in the Southern Hemisphere (Gondwana).


The linear logic of Darwinist thinking attempts to trace the ever branching tree of evolution back to a single cell. This would be consistent with tracing the evolution of the universe back to an infinitely small bubble of spacetime in the Big Bang. Accordingly a chapter of Dawkins book is devoted to tracing the evolution of all humanity back to an African Eve, one woman from whom we all evolved. The idea is based on evidence that mitochondrial DNA is passed on only down the female line and can be assigned a constant mutation rate. There is a theory that mitochondria were once free living bacteria when prokaryotic cells were evolving into eukaryotic cells that constitute all plants and animals. The mechanism by which it could have happened to create the unique structure and energy producing role of mitochondria is lacking along with evidence that the mitochondrial clock is not accurate.


This paper combines a multi-period economic Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) modelling framework with a demographic model to analyse the macroeconomic impact of the projected demographic trends in Scotland. Demographic trends are defined by the existing fertility-mortality rates and the level of annual net-migration. We employ a combination of a demographic and a CGE simulation to track the impact of changes in demographic structure upon macroeconomic variables under different scenarios for annual migration. We find that positive net migration can cancel the expected negative impact upon the labour market of other demographic changes. (Pressure on wages, falling employment). However, the required size of the annual net-migration is far higher than the current trends. The policy implication suggested by the results is that active policies are needed to attract migrants. We nevertheless report results when varying fertility and mortality assumptions. The impact of varying those assumptions is rather small.


The paper considers a wide set of issues concerning the creation of high energetic solid composite propellants causing the minimal polluting effect on the environment. Thereby, the level of toxicity of products of different compositions is discussed and propellants with perchlorates oxidizers are compared with propellants with halogen free oxidizers (mainly, ammonium dinitramide, HMX, CL-20). The main methods for creating compositions having a required performance and the highest energetic characteristics are also under discussion. The dependences of the specific impulse on the mode of formulation arrangement and on the compounds' properties (i.e., formation enthalpy, density, element content) are demonstrated. The main principles for the maximal use of energetic potential of chemical substances are under consideration. These are the proper selection of the binder type which would be optimal for the given mixture of oxidizer with fuel (or energetic) component and the opportunity of using metals and their hydrides (mainly, aluminum hydride (AH)). Main obstacles in using different kinds of compositions, as well as advantages of specific propellants are under consideration as well. A special attention is paid to the interrelationship between the energetic parameter and other performances (thermal stability, combustion law, sensitivity, and compatibility).


4H (hypomyelination, hypodontia and hypogonadotropic hypogonadism) leukodystrophy (4H) is an autosomal recessive hypomyelinating white matter (WM) disorder with neurologic, dental, and endocrine abnormalities. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scoring system for 4H. A scoring system (0-54) was developed to quantify hypomyelination and atrophy of different brain regions. Pons diameter and bicaudate ratio were included as measures of cerebral and brainstem atrophy, and reference values were determined using controls. Five independent raters completed the scoring system in 40 brain MRI scans collected from 36 patients with genetically proven 4H. Interrater reliability (IRR) and correlations between MRI scores, age, gross motor function, gender, and mutated gene were assessed. IRR for total MRI severity was found to be excellent (intraclass correlation coefficient: 0.87; 95% confidence interval: 0.80-0.92) but varied between different items with some (e.g., myelination of the cerebellar WM) showing poor IRR. Atrophy increased with age in contrast to hypomyelination scores. MRI scores (global, hypomyelination, and atrophy scores) significantly correlated with clinical handicap (p < 0.01 for all three items) and differed between the different genotypes. Our 4H MRI scoring system reliably quantifies hypomyelination and atrophy in patients with 4H, and MRI scores reflect clinical disease severity.


Environmental sustainability has become a core objective in policy fields related to the built environment, from the international to local level. The transition to a sustainable built environment depends on increasing the energy performance of buildings, but due to the maturity of the building stock in Europe affecting energy efficiency and the current incentives for investing in sustainable energy solutions, the performance of buildings cannot be improved without widespread citizen engagement. Technical solutions for upgrading smart buildings and connecting them are being developed that create new opportunities for achieving a net-zero or even positive energy balance on the neighbourhood, district and city level. Nevertheless, attention must also be paid to the social aspect using citizen engagement to ensure that such solutions are taken up and replicated. From a social perspective, new skills and values are needed amongst citizens to improve individual and collective behaviours. Co-creation is an approach for shaping the urban environment that includes a wide range of stakeholders and is believed to lead to improved outcomes, especially with regard to integrating users' needs and generating a sense of shared responsibility and ownership over the built environment. The Horizon 2020 project +CityxChange uses co-creation for the development of positive energy districts (PEDs), which have the potential to bring carbon neutral cities to reality. The paper explores several aspects of citizen engagement developed in the project: an urban innovation lab approach, a citizen participation playbook, learning framework for the next generation of smart citizens, and framework for creating positive energy champions.


This project consists of a manual of pediatric optometry presented in both English and French. This manual originated as a course outline in Pediatric Optometry taught at l'University d'Optometrie. It was written for both instructor and student to serve as a general outline for performing examinations on the pediatric population. This manual was written with the assumption that the reader already knows how to perform these optometric tests on the adult population, and is now interested in applying this knowledge to the pediatric population of five years old and under. This manual addresses the additional questions involved with a pediatric case history. It gives variations on entrance skills testing including age-appropriate binocular tests. The examination section describes a wide range of visual acuity tests, refraction and the ocular health check. Finally, flow charts address treatment suggestions for various diagnoses. This manual is presented in both English and French to serve a multicultural population.


We were very pleased to have interest in our paper in this journal1 on the unrecognised importance of drowning as a cause of premature death and suffering. Mr Morgan raises some specific questions about the methodology we chose in our paper.2

The objective of our paper was to demonstrate that calculating the rate of drowning using the total population as a denominator underestimates the risk of drowning, as it assumes equal exposure to water for the whole population. Five estimates of incidence rates of drowning morbidity and mortality were provided in the paper, four of which were adjusted for different levels of self-reported risk. One rate was estimated using the total population as the denominator; three used various levels of reported exposure for the denominator (ie, population risk) and one used a person-time risk measure for reported hours spent swimming. Mr Morgan's questions only related to the drowning death rate calculations for the person-time risk measure related to swimming, and these are …


PURPOSE
To develop MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) visible fiduciary markers to identify the plastic needle locations inside the cylindrical plastic applicator used in interstitial brachytherapy to treat cancers at the virginal apex.

METHODS
MRI visible fiduciary markers were created using polyimide tubing (outer diameter=1.23mm, inner diameter=1.13mm). The tube was filled with jelly and sealed using bone wax at both ends. MRI fiducials were inserted into the plastic flexi needles that were placed in the interstitial brachytherapy applicator needle holes. The applicator was then placed in a container filled with water and underwent MRI scans. T2-weighted (T2W) and proton density weighted (PDW) MR images were acquired in the sagittal orientation. The echo time (TE) and repetition time (TR) were 100ms and 5,849ms for T2W images, and 5.5ms and 4,284ms for PDW images. Both T2W and PDW had an in-plane spatial resolution of 1mm and a slice thickness of 2.5mm. The number of average was 4 for both scans. The total scan time was 4 minutes and 38 seconds for T2W, and 3 minutes and 42 seconds for PDW.

RESULTS
Fiduciary markers in all plastic flexi needles were clearly visible in both T2W and PDW images. For sagittal images, the diameter of the fiducial was smaller than the slice thickness. Due to the partial volume effect, signal from fiduciary markers was smaller than that from the water surrounding the applicator. Therefore, the windowing level was adjusted accordingly to visualize the fiduciary markers.

CONCLUSION
We demonstrated the feasibility of creating MRI visible fiduciary markers that could be fit into plastic needles. These markers can be used to determine applicator needle locations for interstitial brachytherapy, making treatment planning based on MRI images possible.


There is an increasing need to assess the service life of components containing defect which operate at high temperature. This paper describes the current fracture mechanics concepts that are employed to predict cracking of engineering materials at high temperatures under static and cyclic loading. The relationship between these concepts and those of high temperature life assessment methods is also discussed. A model for predicting creep crack growth initiation and growth in terms of C* and the creep uniaxial ductility is presented and it is shown that this model gives good agreement with the experimental results. The effects of cyclic loading on crack growth behaviour are considered and fractography evidence is shown to back a simple cumulative damage concept when dealing with creep/fatigue interaction. Finally a discussion is presented which highlights the important aspect of life assessment methodology for high temperature plant.


Diacylglycerol lipase (DAGL)-α and -β are enzymes responsible for the biosynthesis of the endocannabinoid 2-arachidonoylglycerol. Selective and reversible inhibitors are required to study the function of DAGLs in neuronal cells in an acute and temporal fashion. The work described in this thesis has led to the identification of an activity-based probe (ABP) for DAGL-α. This ABP was instrumental for the identification of a new class of highly selective DAGL inhibitors.
These novel inhibitors can be used to investigate the role of the diacylglycerol lipases in metabolic syndrome and neurodegenerative diseases such a Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and Multiple Sclerosis.


OBJECTIVE—Impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) and/or impaired fasting glucose (IFG) are risk factors for diabetes, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and kidney disease. We determined the effects of ramipril and rosiglitazone on combined and individual CVD and renal outcomes in people with IGT and/or IFG in the Diabetes REduction Assessment With ramipril and rosiglitazone Medication (DREAM) trial. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—A total of 5,269 people aged ≥30 years, with IGT and/or IFG without known CVD or renal insufficiency, were randomized to 15 mg/day ramipril versus placebo and 8 mg/day rosiglitazone versus placebo. A composite cardiorenal outcome and its CVD and renal components were assessed during the 3-year follow-up. RESULTS—Compared with placebo, neither ramipril (15.7% [412 of 2,623] vs. 16.0% [424 of 2,646]; hazard ratio [HR] 0.98 [95% CI 0.84–1.13]; P = 0.75) nor rosiglitazone (15.0% [394 of 2,635] vs. 16.8% [442 of 2,634]; 0.87 [0.75–1.01]; P = 0.07) reduced the risk of the cardiorenal composite outcome. Ramipril had no impact on the CVD and renal components. Rosiglitazone increased heart failure (0.53 vs. 0.08%; HR 7.04 [95% CI 1.60–31.0]; P = 0.01) but reduced the risk of the renal component (0.80 [0.68–0.93]; P = 0.005); prevention of diabetes was independently associated with prevention of the renal component (P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS—Ramipril did not alter the cardiorenal outcome or its components. Rosiglitazone, which reduced diabetes, also reduced the development of renal disease but not the cardiorenal outcome and increased the risk of heart failure.


Objective Verify the role of the kinin B1 receptors (B1R) and the effect of ACE inhibitors (ACEi) on acute gout induced by monosodium urate (MSU) crystals in rodents. Methods Painful (overt pain and allodynia) and inflammatory parameters (joint oedema, leukocyte trafficking, interleukin-1β levels) of acute gout attacks were assessed several hours after an intra-articular injection of MSU (1.25 or 0.5 mg/articulation) into the ankle of rats or mice, respectively. The role of B1R was investigated using pharmacological antagonism or gene deletion. Additionally, B1R immunoreactivity in ankle tissue and sensory neurons, kininase I activity and des-Arg9-bradykinin synovial levels were also measured. Similar tools were used to investigate the effects of ACEi on a low dose of MSU (0.0125 mg/articulation)-induced inflammation. Results Kinin B1R antagonism or gene deletion largely reduced all painful and inflammatory signs of gout. Furthermore, MSU increased B1R expression in articular tissues, the content of the B1 agonist des-Arg9-bradykinin and the activity of the B1 agonist-forming enzyme kininase I. A low dose of MSU crystals, which did not induce inflammation in control animals, caused signs of acute gout attacks in ACEi-treated animals that were B1R-dependent. Conclusions Kinin B1R contributes to acute gouty attacks, including the ones facilitated by ACEi. Therefore, B1R is a potential therapeutic target for the treatment and prophylaxis of gout, especially in patients taking ACEi.


Most recent improvements in battery and electric vehicle (EV) technologies, combined with some favorable off-peak charging rates and an enormous PV potential, make California a prime market for electric vehicle as well as stationary storage adoption. However, EVs or plug-in hybrids, which can be seen as a mobile energy storage, connected to different buildings throughout the day, constitute distributed energy resources (DER) markets and can compete with stationary storage, onsite energy production (e.g. fuel cells, PV) at different building sites. Sometimes mobile storage is seen linked to renewable energy generation (e.g. PV) or as resource for the wider macro-grid by providing ancillary services for grid-stabilization. In contrast, this work takes a fundamentally different approach and considers buildings as the main hub for EVs / plug-in hybrids and considers them as additional resources for a building energy management system (EMS) to enable demand response or any other building strategy (e.g. carbon dioxide reduction). To examine the effect of, especially, electric storage technologies on building energy costs and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, a distributed-energy resources adoption problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear program with minimization of annual building energy costs or CO2 emissions. The mixed-integer linear program is applied to a set of 139 different commercial building types in California, and the aggregated economic and environmental benefits are reported. To show the robustness of the results, different scenarios for battery performance parameters are analyzed. The results show that the number of EVs connected to the California commercial buildings depend mostly on the optimization strategy (cost versus CO2) of the building EMS and not on the battery performance parameters. The complexity of the DER interactions at buildings also show that a reduction in stationary battery costs increases the local PV adoption, but can also increase the fossil based onsite electricity generation, making an holistic optimization approach necessary for this kind of analyses.


They have huge potential for application in molecular-spin-transistors, molecular-spinvalves, and molecular quantum computing. SMMs are characterized by high spin ground states with zero-field splitting leading to high relaxation barriers and long relaxation times. A relevant class of molecules are the lanthanide double-decker phthalocyanines (LaPc2) with only one metal atom sandwiched between two organic phthalocyanine (Pc) ligands.
For envisaged spintronic applications it is important to understand the interaction between the molecules and the substrate and its influence on the electronic and magnetic properties. The subject of this thesis is the investigation of the adsorbed neodymium double-decker phthalocyanine (NdPc2) by means of low temperature scanning tunneling microscopy and
spectroscopy (STM and STS). The molecules are deposited by sublimation onto different substrates. It is observed that a large fraction of the double-decker molecules decomposes during deposition. The decomposition probability strongly depends on the chosen substrate. Therefore it is concluded that the substrate modifies the electronic structure of the molecule leading to a
stabilization or destabilization of the molecular entity. Charge transfer from the surface to the molecule is identified as a potential stabilizing mechanism.
The electronic and magnetic properties are investigated in detail for adsorbed NdPc2 molecules on Cu(100). The results of the experimental study are compared to state-of-the-art density functional theory calculations performed by our colleagues from the Peter Grunberg Institute (PGI-1) at the Forschungszentrum Julich. Interestingly, the lower Pc ring of the molecule hybridizes intensely with the substrate leading to strong chemisorption of the molecule, while the upper Pc ring keeps its molecular type electronic states, which can be energetically shifted by an external electric field. Importantly, it is possible to get direct access to the spin-polarized 4f-states of the central Nd ion by means of STM and STS. This important and unique characteristic absent for late lanthanide double-decker phthalocyanine molecules opens the door for direct reading and writing of the molecular spin-state by purely electrical means. In view of the intended investigations of the magnetic properties of the NdPc2 molecule coupled to ferromagnetic surfaces, spin-polarized STM investigations of the second atomic layer of Fe on W(110) are performed. Here, bulk Cr-tips are used, which were ex-situ electrochemically etched from a Cr rod. Further in-situ treatment is shown to have no essential influence on the magnetic properties of the tips. The reproducible and reliable preparation of the ferromagnetic substrate and the Cr-tips is the basis for further investigations of the NdPc2 molecule adsorbed on the second atomic layer of Fe on W(110). Preliminary STM and STS results give strong evidence, that the direct access to the spin-polarized 4f-states is also feasible after adsorption of the double-decker molecule on a ferromagnetic substrate.


Structural fiber reinforced plastics (FRPs) composites are increasingly replacing metals due to their high specific stiffness and strength. However, FRPs are prone to delamination failure due to insufficient adhesion between the fiber and matrix or due to unexpected overloading. As delaminations reduce the structural stability and durability of FRPs leading to failure, structural health monitoring (SHM) is needed to detect delamination at early stages. This study suggests growing nanoscale ZnO piezoelectric nanowires (NWs) on the surface of carbon fabrics to act both as (1) sensor/transducer for SHM and (2) as an interfacial strengthening mechanism to mitigate delamination in the first place. The study employs a synergistic approach involving processing and characterization of hybrid polymer matrix composites based on ZnO NWs/carbon fibers and characterizing them mechanically and piezoelectrically. The in-situ SHM system utilizes electromechanical impedance based methods for early delamination detection and diagnosis. Utilizing a low temperature (85 °C) hydrothermal synthesis technique, ZnO nanowires were grown on the surface of woven carbon fiber (CF) and woven glass fiber (GF) fabrics. Hybrid Carbon FRPs were fabricated and tested via high velocity (~90 m/s) impact tests, and the impact energy dissipation and delamination failure mitigation capabilities of the FRPs were investigated. A 20% improvement in impact energy dissipation, and 16% reduction in delamination length of the FRPs were observed through whiskeriaztion of the carbon fiber fabrics with surface grown ZnO NWs. Hybrid CF-GF-CF composite laminates comprising different predesignated delamination depths were also fabricated to investigate the effect of damage severity on the electro-mechanical impedance of the FRPs. A correlation between the delamination severity and change in the FRPs' impedance was established. The developed ZnO NWs based SHM provides a truly coupled structure-actuator system and benefits from large arrays of active regions within the composite which has many advantages for early detection of delamination in FRPs.


High-school grades are often viewed as an unreliable criterion for college admissions, owing to differences in grading standards across high schools, while standardized tests are seen as methodologically rigorous, providing a more uniform and valid yardstick for assessing student ability and achievement. The present study challenges that conventional view. The study finds that high-school grade point average (HSGPA) is consistently the best predictor not only of freshman grades in college, the outcome indicator most often employed in predictive-validity studies, but of four-year college outcomes as well. A previous study, UC and the SAT (Geiser with Studley, 2003), demonstrated that HSGPA in college-preparatory courses was the best predictor of freshman grades for a sample of almost 80,000 students admitted to the University of California. Because freshman grades provide only a short-term indicator of college performance, the present study tracked four-year college outcomes, including cumulative college grades and graduation, for the same sample in order to examine the relative contribution of high-school record and standardized tests in predicting longer-term college performance. Key findings are: (1) HSGPA is consistently the strongest predictor of four-year college outcomes for all academic disciplines, campuses and freshman cohorts in the UC sample; (2) surprisingly, the predictive weight associated with HSGPA increases after the freshman year, accounting for a greater proportion of variance in cumulative fourth-year than first-year college grades; and (3) as an admissions criterion, HSGPA has less adverse impact than standardized tests on disadvantaged and underrepresented minority students. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for admissions policy and argues for greater emphasis on the high-school record, and a corresponding de-emphasis on standardized tests, in college admissions.


MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. Grade 4; Intermediate Grades; *Learning Processes; Mathematics Skills; *Performance Factors; Self Efficacy; Self Evaluation (Individuals); *Student Educational Objectives; Student Motivation This study explored the conditions under which learning goals might be more effective than performance goals in raising achievement outcomes. Following a pretest, 40 fourth-grade students received instruction and practice on fractions operations. Half of the students were provided with the goal of learning how to solve problems (learning goal); the half were given a goal of solving problems (performance goal). All students in each goal condition evaluated their progress in skill acquisition. Results of the posttest indicated that, compared to the performance goal, the learning goal led to higher self-regulated performance, self-efficacy, skill, task orientation, self-evaluations, and self-satisfaction, as well as lower ego orientation. Self-evaluation and self-satisfaction scores correlated positively with self-efficacy, skill, and task orientation. Contains 21 references.


The aim of this paper is to discuss the use of Bayesian methods in cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) and the common ground between Bayesian and traditional frequentist approaches. A further aim is to explore the use of the net benefit statistic and its advantages over the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) statistic. In particular, the use of cost-effectiveness acceptability curves is examined as a device for presenting the implications of uncertainty in a CEA to decision makers. Although it is argued that the interpretation of such curves as the probability that an intervention is cost-effective given the data requires a Bayesian approach, this should generate no misgivings for the frequentist. Furthermore, cost-effectiveness acceptability curves estimated using the net benefit statistic are exactly equivalent to those estimated from an appropriate analysis of ICERs on the cost-effectiveness plane. The principles examined in this paper are illustrated by application to the cost-effectiveness of blood pressure control in the U.K. Prospective Diabetes Study (UKPDS 40). Due to a lack of good-quality prior information on the cost and effectiveness of blood pressure control in diabetes, a Bayesian analysis assuming an uninformative prior is argued to be most appropriate. This generates exactly the same cost-effectiveness results as a standard frequentist analysis.


Manuscript type: Research paper. Research aims: This study experimentally examines the relationship between relative performance information (RPI), goal setting and performance. Hypotheses are developed based on social comparison theory, goal setting theory and relevant prior studies. Design/Methodology/Approach: This study deploys multiple sessions of experiments with 110 undergraduate students as the participants. The two manipulated variables are the provision of RPI and the level of goal difficulty. Research findings: Results from the experiment indicate that the presence of RPI is positively associated with performance, and an attainable goal is associated with high goal commitment and eventually, higher performance. More importantly, this study finds an interaction between RPI and goal commitment, where the positive effect of RPI on performance is more pronounced in a condition where individual's goal commitment is high. Theoretical contributions/Originality: This study contributes to the accounting literature by providing empirical evidence that the positive effect of RPI on performance can be enhanced to a greater degree by individual's high commitment towards the assigned goal. Practitioner/Policy implications: This study has a practical implication by providing empirical evidence on how RPI and goal setting can be used strategically by firms to escalate employee's performance. Research limitations/Implications: Limitations related to the types of RPI, goal levels and experiment task applied. Future studies may address these limitations and use a different type of task that is more closely associated with the current workplace situation. Keywords: Relative Performance Information, Goal Setting, Performance, Experimental ExaminationJEL Classification: M41


We consider the following rate distortion problem: given a source X and correlated, decoder side information Y, find the minimum encoding rate for X required to compute f(X,Y) at the decoder within distortion D. This is a generalization of the classical Wyner-Ziv setup and was resolved by Yamamoto (1982). However, this result involved an auxiliary random variable that lacks explicit meaning. To provide a more direct link between this variable and the function f, Orlitsky and Roche (2001) established the minimal rate required in the zero-distortion case as an extension of Korner's graph entropy. Recently, we (with Jaggi) showed that the zero-distortion rate can be achieved by minimum entropy graph coloring of an appropriate product graph. This leads to a modular architecture for functional source coding with a preprocessing "functional coding" scheme operating on top of a classical Slepian-Wolf source coding scheme. In this paper, we give a characterization of Yamamoto's rate distortion function in terms of a reconstruction function. This (non-single-letter) characterization is an extension of our previous results as well as Orlitsky and Roche's results. We obtain a modular scheme operating with Slepian-Wolf's scheme for the problem of functional rate distortion. Further, we give an achievable rate (with single-letter characterization) utilizing this scheme that intuitively extends our previous results.


This article argues that in Britain dominant educational discourses of 'the ideal pupil' exclude minority ethnic pupils and prevent them from inhabiting a position of authentic 'success'. It suggests that 'the successful pupil' is a desired yet refused subject position for many minority ethnic young people — even for those who are (to some extent) performing educational success. The article draws on interview and discussion group data from teachers, minority ethnic parents and minority ethnic pupils (aged 14–16 years) that were collected across four separate studies. All the studies were conducted in British secondary schools and focused on the identities and experiences of British Chinese, British Muslim and ethnically diverse samples of young people. The article engages in an unpicking of the multiple ways in which minority ethnic pupils are Othered in relation to the dominant identity of the 'ideal pupil' as White, male, middle class, and so on. The article moves beyond the notion of a singular Other position, engaging with the slipperiness of power and entanglements of 'race', gender, class and sexuality through the conceptual device of a trichotomy. This integrated model moves beyond notions of simplistic 'stereotyping' to explain how complexly located minority ethnic pupils are always-already positioned as 'other' within British educational discourse, such that even 'high-achieving' minority ethnic pupils may experience success as precarious.


Event-time based stream processing is concerned with analyzing data with respect to its generation time. In most of the cases, data gets delayed during its journey from the source(s) to the stream processing engine. This is known as late data arrival. Among the different approaches for out-of-order stream processing, low watermarks are proposed to inject special records within data streams, i.e., watermarks. A watermark is a timestamp which indicates that no data with a timestamp older than the watermark should be observed later on. Any element as such is considered a late arrival. Watermark generation is usually periodic and heuristic-based. The limitation of such watermark generation strategy is its rigidness regarding the frequency of data arrival as well as the delay that data may encounter. In this paper, we propose an adaptive watermark generation strategy. Our strategy decides adaptively when to generate watermarks and with what timestamp without a priori adjustment. We treat changes in data arrival frequency and changes in delays as concept drifts in stream data mining. We use an Adaptive Window (ADWIN) as our concept drift sensor for the change in the distribution of arrival rate and delay. We have implemented our approach on top of Apache Flink. We compare our approach with periodic watermark generation using two real-life data sets. Our results show that adaptive watermarks achieve a lower average latency by triggering windows earlier and a lower rate of dropped elements by delaying watermarks when out-of-order data is expected.


A Multi-sectoral Systems Analysis (MSA) of the Atlanta-Chattahooche system is proposed. It has three objectives: (i) to identify the major fluxes of nitrogen (N) entering, leaving, and circulating within an urbanrural system; (ii) to quantify the benefits of implementing changes of technology in that system; and (iii) to assess the relevance, or redundancy of the system's features – sectors, processes, and flows – for attaining proposed goals for improving the eco-efficiency and ecoeffectiveness of the system. MSA uses Substance Flow Analysis (SFA) to track the paths of N through a structured model comprising five socio-economic sectors, i.e., water, energy, food, forestry, and waste management. It incorporates a set of eco-effectiveness indicators, to assess the health of the nitrogen metabolism of the system, as well as a Regionalized Sensitivity Analysis (RSA) procedure for identifying economic and policy priorities for rebalancing the flows of N. The capabilities of such a framework are illustrated in the context of the AtlantaChattahoochee system under different scenarios for three candidate technological solutions: (a) urine separating toilets, (b) pyrolysis of poultry litter, and (c) capturing power plant flue gas for algae production. The results show that MSA can be useful for understanding the nitrogen metabolism of the city-watershed system while also indicating which innovative technologies might be most effective in "re-balancing" that metabolism.


The δ13C value of terrestrial CO2 fluxes (δbio) provides important information for inverse models of CO2 sources and sinks as well as for studies of vegetation physiology, C3 and C4 vegetation fluxes, and ecosystem carbon residence times. From 2002.2009, we measured atmospheric CO2 concentration and δ13C-CO2 at four heights (2 to 60 m) in the U.S. Southern Great Plains (SGP) and computed δbio weekly. This region has a fine-scale mix of crops (primarily C3 winter wheat) and C4 pasture grasses. δbio had a large and consistent seasonal cycle of 6.8‰. Ensemble monthly mean δbio ranged from -25.8 ± 0.4 ‰ ( ± SE) in March to -20.1 ± 0.4‰ in July. Thus, C3 vegetation contributed about 80% of ecosystem fluxes in winter-spring and 50% in summer-fall. In contrast, prairie-soil δ13C values were about -15‰, indicating that historically the region was dominated by C4 vegetation and had more positive δbio values. Based on a land-surface model, isofluxes (δbio ± NEE) in this region have large seasonal amplitude because δbio and net ecosystem exchange (NEE) covary. Interannual variability in isoflux was driven by variability in NEE. The large seasonal amplitude in δbio and isoflux imply that carbon inverse analyses require accurate estimates of land cover and temporally resolved 13CO2 and CO2 fluxes.


Research into the primary-secondary dimension of miscommunications has indicated that schizophrenics commit more primary than secondary errors and that they commit more of both of these errors than do nonschizophrenics. This study, motivated by the need to delineate the roles played by the ambiguity of communications used in tests and by the chronicity of the schizophrenic's thought disorder, utilized 24 noun homographs in a 48-item interpretation Test. The test was scored for primary, secondary, concrete, and abstract errors. A total of 20 chronic schizophrenics, 20 acute schizophrenics, and 20 nonschizophrenics, matched for vocabulary level, highest educational grade attained, and parental social class, were employed. Schizophrenics committed more abstract and overall errors than did the nonschizophrenics. The schizophrenics also committed more abstract than concrete errors. Contrary to previous research, a greater primacy error preference for schizophrenics was not obtained.


Reduction of structural Fe in smectites affects the surface chemical behavior of the clay, but the underlying mechanism and changes in clay structure are still in need of investigation, particularly with respect to changes in the tetrahedral sheet. The purpose of this study was to probe changes in the tetrahedral sheet that occur when structural Fe is reduced in the Uley nontronites, NAu-1 and NAu-2, using polarized attenuated total internal reflection Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. Despite the differences in their structures — NAu-2 has tetrahedral Fe3+ while NAu-1 does not — the changes observed in the Si-O stretching region were quite similar. Reduction results in a shift of the in-plane Si-O stretching modes to lower frequencies, while the out-of-plane Si-O stretch shifts to higher frequencies. The magnitude of these shifts is greater in NAu-2 than in NAu-1, but the crystallinity of the tetrahedral silicate sheet of NAu-2 is preserved upon reduction. In both nontronites, the orientation of the out-of-plane Si-O bond changes and becomes completely perpendicular to the basal (001) surface of the clay, indicating the formation of trioctahedral domains wherein the individual tetrahedra reorient relative to the plane of the clay layer.


The contribution of different-sized businesses to job creation continues to attract policymakers' attention, however, it has recently been recognized that conclusions about size were confounded with the effect of age. We probe the role of size, controlling for age, by comparing the cohorts of firms born in 1998 over their first decade of life, using variation across half a dozen northern European countries Austria, Finland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the UK to pin down size effects. We find that a very small proportion of the smallest firms play a crucial role in accounting for cross-country differences in job growth. A closer analysis reveals that the initial size distribution and survival rates do not seem to explain job growth differences between countries, rather it is a small number of rapidly growing firms that are driving this result.


Memorability of media content such as images and videos has recently become an important research subject in computer vision. This paper presents our computation model for predicting image memorability, which is based on a deep learning architecture designed for a classification task. We exploit the use of both convolutional neural network (CNN) - based visual features and semantic features related to image captioning for the task. We train and test our model on the large-scale benchmarking memorability dataset: LaMem. Experiment result shows that the proposed computational model obtains better prediction performance than the state of the art, and even outperforms human consistency. We further investigate the genericity of our model on other memorability datasets. Finally, by validating the model on interestingness datasets, we reconfirm the uncorrelation between memorability and interestingness of images.


Agricultural policy in the EU project was one of the most important parts. That caused several reasons. Intensively supported EU agriculture devoloped very fast, what caused, that setted tasks were achieved and EU faced surpluses of agricultural products. In the same time there come into being very influencive lobby group representing interests of farmers, which actively opposed to any more radical reform. Created market organisation measures caused, that EU market of agricultural products were isolated from cheapest products of the rest of the world and surpluses could be sold only with hight subsidies. That made EU agrucultural policy very expencive and dissatisfaction rose inside EU and from trade partners. It was obvious, that EU common agricultural policy needs reforms. First significant and efective reforms were in 1992. Later – "Agenda 2000", which was based on previos reforms, but more radical with clear link to rural development.


The Ar-Rahnu industry is still new in Malaysia in which many of the outlets commencing operation actively around 2002. Up until now research pertaining to Ar-Rahnu is limited. Previous study only concentrated on customer's awareness and satisfaction of providers of the industry. The main purpose of this paper is to study on critical success factor of Ar-Rahnu, providers of micro-credit through islamic pawn broking practices. Based on identified best practices this paper also proposes a suitable model of Ar-Rahnu which deemed suitable for cooperatives who interested in the industry. Altogether a total of 109 respondents, comprising representatives of Ar-Rahnu outlets throughout Malaysia were selected for the study. There were 7 organisations involved in the Ar-Rahnu business such as YaPEIM, Bank Rakyat, Agrobank, MAIDAM, PKB, Ar-Rahnu Cooperatives and Franchise Ar-Rahnu Cooperatives. These organizations were futher divided into 4 cluster according to nature of their business. Data for the study were obtained from survey and SPSS facilitated data analysis. The performance of the Ar-Rahnu outlets under study is measured using variables implicit in the Ar-Rahnu business, including general business operation, types of gold, pawning conditions and charges, security, and internal and external control. In general the research found the modus operandi of each and every outlet is more or less similar - having standard operating procedure (SOP). Pawning process is also similar between clusters with each charging safekeeping fee at rate ranging RM0.50 to RM0.80 for every RM100 of pawn value. Common issues of importance across Ar-Rahnu providers are competency in gold testing because of the presence of imitation gold and gold jewellery. Customer trust is a primary critical success factor (CSF) for all clusters, followed by competitive safekeeping charges, competency of employess, good quality service and service location. It was found that securing capital is not an issue for the larger organizations, but it is for the smaller ones. A customer-friendly Islamic pawn broking model for cooperatives is developed based on the expectetion of both customers an stakeholders and incorporates the best practices of the present Ar-Rahnu providers. The product of Ar-Rahnu from this model is expected to satisfy customers and bring profit to the operators.


This project focuses on developing a complete telemetry system in response to the growing demand for efficient, mobile and inexpensive system for detecting cardiovascular abnormalities. Our team has already developed two algorithms. The first algorithm detects various critical points on Electrocardiograph (ECG) waveforms such as: P-wave, QRS complex, T-wave and ST elevation. Based on these points, the second algorithm detects Myocardial Infractions (MI) in a patient. Currently, we are developing a telemetry system that comprises of an Arduino microcontroller and a smartphone. The 12-lead ECG signals are collected from a patient or an ECG simulator. The signals are then sent to an electronic circuit for amplification and filtration. The amplified and filtered signals are collected in the Arduino microcontroller. The microcontroller sends the signals, via Bluetooth, to an Android smartphone application developed by our team. The ECG data is sent from the smartphone to a webserver using 3G or Wi-Fi connection. The data is securely processed and analyzed in the webserver using the algorithms developed by our team. The processed ECG waveforms and the results of its analysis are sent back and displayed on the smartphone application. The analyzed results display whether the patient has a likelihood of having an MI. Furthermore, the analyzed results are stored in a secure database for future reference. Using the real-time analyzed ECG waveforms, the integrated system is designed to provide early warning of cardiac risk, thus saving valuable time and effort in patients' treatment. Along with that, this system will be efficient in terms of cyber security, cost management and reliability.


The manifestations of housing projects being abandoned are detrimental to the Government and house buyers. The suggestion to implement the Build-Then-Sell (BTS) Housing Delivery System by the Malaysian Government is an effort to tackle the problem of abandoned housing projects in Malaysia. However, it needs the cooperation of housing developers who have been first selling the houses and then building them, in what is known as the Sell-Then-Build (STB) system. The Malaysian Government has proposed the 10:90 BTS housing delivery system to deal with grievances of house buyers of abandoned housing projects. However, the Government's plan to require housing developers to adopt the 10:90 BTS system in 2015 was not carried out as the developers raised several issues related to its implementation. In view of the problems faced by house buyers of abandoned housing projects, the Federal Government appointed the Ministry of Urban Well Being, Housing and Local Government to revive these projects. In the housing industry, the interests of all stakeholders need to be considered. This is  to ensure that the housing delivery system is technically feasible and acceptable, and the problem of abandoned housing is resolved to the benefit of all parties.


Inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) is the state-of-the-art technique for multi-elemental analysis of plant tissue. It provides a powerful tool in functional genomics, linking altered elemental profiles of mutants with gene expression and function. In addition, with its unmatched sensitivity, ICP-MS enables characterization of the substrate specificity and regulation of membrane transport proteins. Digestion of plant tissue has traditionally represented a bottleneck due to the low capacity of commercially available equipment. However, recent developments in micro-scaled digestion, combined with semi-quantitative analysis and chemometrics, have enabled high-throughput multi-elemental profiling and multivariate classification of large sample sets, thereby supporting a range of new applications in molecular breeding, quality assessment and authenticity testing of plants. Novel hyphenated techniques based on liquid chromatography and ICP-MS (LC-ICP-MS) have significantly improved the understanding of elemental species and their importance for e.g. the bioactivity of metals in plants. Development of procedures for sample pre-treatment, extraction and multi-dimensional separation now allows characterization of important metallo-biomolecules in plants, such as the coordination complexes of phytochelatins, metallothioneins, nicotianamine and inositol phosphates. These are key ligands involved in ion homeostasis, translocation and long-term storage of elements. Much emphasis has also been given to studies of covalently bound Se and As species, primarily due to their impact on human health. LC-ICP-MS has extensively been complemented by molecular mass spectrometry for structural information of biologically relevant species. This review covers the most recent developments in multi-elemental analysis (Part A) and speciation analysis (Part B) in plant science. A number of relevant cases are presented in order to demonstrate how the analytical developments have unravelled the functional roles of elements in plants science. These cases show that ICP-MS is an essential technology in plant metallomic platforms.


Background: Transbronchial cryobiopsy (TCB) through flexible bronchoscopy (FB) represents a promising technique to obtain larger samples of higher quality and diagnostic yield in patients with interstitial lung diseases (ILDs) in comparison to forceps biopsy. Aim: The study objectives were evaluation of diagnostic yield and safety of TCB in comparison to forceps biopsy in ILDs patients. Material and Methods: Patients with ILDs indicated for lung biopsy were enrolled. Both TCB and forceps biopsies were taken from each patient with randomized sequence. Biopsies number with each technique was decided by the operator. The largest diameter of the samples was measured in mm by electronic caliper, diagnostic yield and postbronchoscopy bleeding and pneumothorax were evaluated. Results: Eighteen patients were included. The median number of TCB was 1 while forceps biopsy was 2 with significant difference (p ≤ 0.001). The measured gross diameter (mm) of obtained samples by TCB was significantly larger than that of forceps TBLB (6 vs 2.1 respectively) figure (1). The diagnostic yield of TCB was significantly higher 14 (77.8%) compared to 8 (44.4%) for forceps biopsy (p= 0.031). No bleeding was recorded after forceps in 12 (66.7%), while in TCB 9 (50%) (p= 0.250). There was no significant difference in both techniques in mild bleeding (TBC 7 vs forceps 5) (p=0.5) and moderate bleeding (TBC 2 vs forceps 1) (P= 0.5). No severe bleeding was recorded. Pneumothorax was reported in 3 (16.7%) patients after TBLB. Conclusions: TBC is effective method to obtain larger samples with higher diagnostic yield in comparison to forceps biopsy. Bleeding occurs more frequently after TCB, however without serious adverse events.


Understanding how communities respond to environmental variation is a central goal in ecology. Plant communities respond to environmental gradients via intraspecific and/or interspecific variation in plant functional traits. However, the relative contribution of these two responses to environmental factors remains poorly tested. We measured six functional traits (height, leaf thickness, specific leaf area (SLA), leaf carbon concentration (LCC), leaf nitrogen concentration (LNC) and leaf phosphorus concentration (LPC)) for 55 tree species occurring at five elevations across a 1200 m elevational gradient of subalpine forests in Yulong Mountain, Southwest China. We examined the relative contribution of interspecific and intraspecific traits variability based on community weighted mean trait values and functional diversity, and tested how different components of trait variation respond to different environmental axes (climate and soil variables). Species turnover explained the largest amount of variation in leaf morphological traits (leaf thickness and SLA) across the elevational gradient. However, intraspecific variability explained a large amount of variation (49.3%–76.3%) in three other traits (height, LNC and LPC) despite high levels of species turnover. The detection of limiting similarity in community assembly was improved when accounting for both intraspecific and interspecific variability. Different components of trait variation respond to different environmental axes, especially soil water content and climatic variables. Our results indicate that intraspecific variation is critical for understanding community assembly and evaluating community response to environmental change.


In recent years a number of soil water monitoring instruments have been developed and made commercially available. These instruments generally respond to the complex soil dielectric permittivity and operate at frequencies between 10 and 150 MHz. Although there is some evidence that these instruments are sensitive to temperature change in certain soils, little empirical data exists describing the degree of this sensitivity. We quantified temperature effects on both the real and imaginary components of the complex permittivity for 19 soils collected around the United States using the Hydra Probe soil water sensor, which operates at 50 MHz. We found that the real component response ranged from positive to negative such that the effect of a 40°C temperature change resulted in a maximum apparent water content change of ± 0.028 m3 m−3 among soils. The effect of temperature on the imaginary component was as much as six times greater than on the real component, changing about 2% °C−1, which is similar to that observed for electrical conductivity. The high imaginary component sensitivity to temperature is probably responsible for the high temperature sensitivity noted for commercial soil water sensors because they generally respond to a composite of both components. In addition, there was a strong linear correlation (R2 = 0.81) between the effect of temperature on the calculated soil water content and the magnitude of the imaginary component. While this relationship suggests the possibility of calculating temperature effects on Hydra Probe–calculated soil water content in the field, it applies only to saturated soil conditions at present.


This is a preliminary investigation of redevelopment performance of three "urban villages", located at the core of a major Chinese city. It shows that, when land use change occurs at a high rate, rural-urban transition may appear in urban core areas. Social and physical changes take time given building lag and ambiguous property rights. The process may be regarded as a structurally deepening rural-urban transition, in a 'market distortion' environment. Land market inefficiency is evident, with physical, institutional, financial and 'random' causes, leading to diverse social and economic outcomes. Each village may evolve differently to serve certain social-economic functions in city. "Idle property" clearly indicates pure social cost. Reducing the pure loss (e.g., redevelopment failure) is important. Questions such as "what are the risks and barriers in redeveloping urban villages" deserve further analysis.


The inherent nature of wireless networks exposes them to cyber threats. To keep this critical technology from attacks, advancements in security standards demand simultaneous outspread of their awareness among people. Periodic evaluation of Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) security status in any given region recognizes the awareness trends and sets directions for concerned authorities. This research studies the prevailing security practices of WLANs in Auckland city, to describe the course of their alertness with respect to similar studies done in 2007 and 2013. Raspberry Pi 2 Model B is used for research to provide a basis for comparison and reference for future relevant studies. The results are significant from commercial perspective.


This document defines the Device Owner attribute. It indicates the
entity (e.g., company, organization, department, agency) that owns the
device. This attribute may be included in public key certificates and
attribute certificates. This document is not an Internet Standards
Track specification; it is published for informational purposes.


Unsolicited one-way Internet traffic, also called Internet background radiation (IBR), has been used for years to study malicious activity on the Internet, including worms, DoS attacks, and scanning address space looking for vulnerabilities to exploit. We show how such traffic can also be used to analyze macroscopic Internet events that are unrelated to malware. We examine two phenomena: country-level censorship of Internet communications described in recent work, and natural disasters (two recent earthquakes). We introduce a new metric of local IBR activity based on the number of unique IP addresses per hour contributing to IBR. The advantage of this metric is that it is not affected by bursts of traffic from a few hosts. Although we have only scratched the surface, we are convinced that IBR traffic is an important building block for comprehensive monitoring, analysis, and possibly even detection of events unrelated to the IBR itself. In particular, IBR offers the opportunity to monitor the impact of events such as natural disasters on network infrastructure, and in particular reveals a view of events that is complementary to many existing measurement platforms based on (BGP) control-plane views or targeted active ICMP probing.


We investigated the modal properties of complex refractive-index core photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) with the supercell model. The validity of the approach is shown when we compare our results with those reported earlier on a step complex refractive-index profile. The imaginary part of the electric field results in wave-front distortion in the complex refractive-index profile PCFs, which means that the power flows out or into the doped region according to the sign of the imaginary part of the refractive index. A simple formula is proposed for calculating the gain or loss coefficients of these fibers. The numerical results obtained by the approximation formula agree well with the full-vectorial results.


There has been a growing interest in investigating the impact of Chinese-style fiscal decentralization in recent years. Some speculate that fiscal decentralization in China has led to the country's phenomenal economic growth. Chinese-style fiscal decentralization has evolved greatly over the past three decades. Asymmetric decentralization — expenditure remains decentralized with revenue being recentralized — replaced genuine decentralization in 1994 and resulted in a sea-change in central-local fiscal relations in China. Drawing on a close examination of the evolution of fiscal decentralization, this article suggests that upward accountability resulting from asymmetric decentralization and other factors have contributed to spectacular economic growth in China. Negative consequences of an assertive central government associated with asymmetric decentralization have also been investigated. The article argues that the Chinese government needs an institutional framework to rein in predatory behaviors of both the central government and local governments under an increasingly urbanized and globalized society in China.


ABSTRACT Biofuels provided 2.7% of world's transportation fuel in 2015 which is expected to rise to 28% by 2050. However, most of the biofuel produced till date is from crops that can be used as food or feed. Microalgae, or third generation biomass, has the potential to overcome the problems associated with the food vs. fuel debate. Microalgae are microscopic photosynthetic organisms which have the ability to fix CO2. Thermochemical conversion via hydrothermal liquefaction is a favourable technology for recovering energy from algal biomass. Research is focused on discovering a viable and sustainable feedstock by cultivating and up-scaling the use of microalgae and then utilizing hydrothermal liquefaction to produce a workable biofuel. Synthetic biology and several genetic engineering techniques have also shown promising results in the production of biofuels. Much research is being carried out using microalgae as biomass for biofuel generation; however, it needs a robust conversion technology to make the process commercially viable.


More fun inThe Wacky World ofWayside School"Watch closely," said Mrs. Jewls. "You can learn much faster using a computer instead of paper and pencil." Then she pushed the new computer out the window The children all watched it fall thirty floors and smash against the sidewalk. "See?" said Mrs. Jewls. "That's gravity! I've been trying to teach you about gravity, but the computer showed you a lot quicker!"That's the way things happen at Wayside School. There are 29 kids in Mrs. Jewls's class and this book is about all of them. There is Todd, who got in trouble every day ... until he got a magic dog; Paul, whose life was saved by Leslie's pigtails; Ron, who dared to try the cafeteria's Mushroom Surprise and all the others who help turn a day at Wayside School into one madcap adventure after another. But, after the things that happened in Sideways Stories from Wayside School, what would you expect?The extraordinary thirty-story school and its zany inhabitants are back in the long-awaited sequel to the classic SIDEWAYS STORIES FROM WAYSIDE SCHOOL, one of the most popular Camelot books ever. "Rib-tickling...sure-to-please..." -- Kirkus


Learn to shoot professional-quality HD footage with your DSLR Camera The DSLR Filmmaker's Handbook, 2nd Edition is the expert guide to getting professional movie-making results with an HD video-enabled DSLR camera. Fully updated to reflect the latest technology, this updated edition provides guidance toward best practices and techniques that maximize results. Shooting HD video with a DSLR has many benefits and also a few tricky drawbacks but this guide gives you the insight and training you need to overcome these challenges as you learn what to anticipate, how to work around it, and how to fix imperfections in post-production. Award winning independent filmmaker Barry Andersson walks you through the shooting process and shows you what to do before, during, and after filming to ensure high quality results. Most of today's DSLRs have the capacity to shoot HD video. This, combined with incredible low-light capabilities, shallow depth of field, and relatively low price point make these cameras an extremely attractive entry point for would-be independent filmmakers. This book shows you how to exploit your DSLR's capabilities to produce beautiful film, with step-by-step expert instruction. * Understand the limitations of DSLR video * Learn what to plan for before filming begins * Exploit HD capabilities to maximize the film's visuals * Produce professional-level, film-quality footage With thorough explanations and expert instruction, The DSLR Filmmaker's Handbook, 2nd Edition is the training you need to start shooting beautiful HD footage.


Drying structures using high-frequency electromagnetic radiation or microwave technology is currently gaining much more usage in the engineering practice. The goal of the method is the quickest elimination of water in construction (wall, floor structure, etc.). Microwave is a part of the electromagnetic radiation of frequency between 300 MHz and 300 GHz and wavelength between 1 mm and 1 m. The frequency of 2.45 GHz and 122 mm wavelength is used for engineering practice. Due to the effect of microwave radiation the divergent homogeneity of temperature field of different building materials can be observed. This article discusses the spread of thermal field depending on the volume of water and thereby the size of mass humidity of the given material (timber). The temperature fields will be observed by a thermo camera, always after a certain time cycles of the heating.


In Chevron, U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., the Supreme Court famously held that judicial deference to agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes is appropriate largely because the executive branch is politically accountable for those policy choices. In recent cases, the Court has not displayed unwavering commitment to this decision or its principle of political accountability. This Article explores Gonzales v. Oregon as well as an earlier case, FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., in which the administrations possessed strong claims of accountability yet the Court did not defer to the agency determinations. In both, the Court justified its refusal of deference by contending that the questions were too extraordinary for Congress implicitly to have delegated. This Article argues that these cases might be better understood to reflect a judgment not about whether Congress had delegated interpretive authority, but about how each administration had exercised its authority. Both administrations, while accountable in a general sense, acted undemocratically when viewed in the particular context. They used broad delegations in ways insensitive to likely congressional or popular interests on controversial issues, and inconsistent with the obligations of the executive branch within government. The Court determined that the conditions for judicial deference were not met. Thus, these cases reflect an approach that, while inconsistent with conventional notions of political accountability, is nevertheless principled and defensible. The Article shows that this approach is reflected in other cases, although not many. The infrequency does not diminish the importance of the message that the cases send to the executive branch. But it does illuminate important limits: Ordinarily, administrations do not raise alarms, and political accountability is sufficient for judicial deference. An examination of the cases demonstrates that the Court is aware of the danger that it might invalidate agency interpretations based simply on the Justices' own ideology or politics, and that it has taken steps to curb such judicial overreaching.


Nerve lesions caused by traumatic events to the lower extremity's peripheral nerves are rated using Section 16.4 of the sixth edition of the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment (AMA Guides). Results from sensory and motor nerve tests are used to assign the impairment class within Table 16-12, Peripheral Nerve Impairment (6th ed, 534). The default rating may be modified with the functional history and clinical studies modifiers, but not the physical examination modifier, because it is used to assign the impairment class and define the degree of neurologic severity. Impairment for both sensory and motor deficits are assigned and then combined at the lower extremity level.


Abstract In this study, we have used tectonic-diffusion model calculations to estimate resources of bedrock-hosted granitic tin deposits of Phanerozoic age. These deposits range from proximal skarns, greisens and pegmatites in or near plutonic granites, to distal veins and disseminations, many of which are associated with subvolcanic rhyolites. Tin is also found in residual and placer deposits, some of which are associated with bedrock deposits. Most of the bedrock deposits formed at temperatures of 200–500 °C from fluids with a wide range of salinities and CO2 contents. Limited information suggests that they formed over a relatively continuous range of depths from a few hundred metres to as much as 6 km, with an average of about 2 km. Information was obtained on 547 deposits, including 435 with measured or estimated ages and 301 with estimated tin contents, almost all of which are bedrock rather than residual-placer deposits. The bedrock deposits have an average size of 58 000 t, and the largest five deposits, including one in Bolivia and four in China, account for 46% of the total tin resources in all deposits. Tectonic-diffusion model calculations indicate that approximately 14 520 granitic tin deposits remain in the crust and that they contain 8.4×108 t of tin. If about 50% of the deposits above depths of 1 km can be discovered and mined, current tin production of about 260 000 t annually can continue for about another 200 years. Supplementary material: Data on granitic tin deposits are available at www.geolsoc.org.uk/SUP18688


The electroencephalogram (EEG) is a recording of the brain's total electrical activity. Since the brain processes information, the information in the brain's total electrical activity probably corresponds to the information processing in the brain. This assumption was used to study the entropy or 'self-information' in the EEGs of participants who were performing a short-term memory task. There were two groups of participants in this study; one group had a medical diagnosis of "normal aging,"(Normal) and the other group had a diagnosis of "very mild dementia," (Dementia). The dementia diagnosis means that they have short-term memory impairment. The EEG of each participant was recorded while they performed a short-term memory task; face recall. Their EEG was also recorded while they performed a second short-term memory task; object recall. These EEG data were used to test a basic hypothesis; the entropy in the EEGs of the Dementia group would be significantly different than the entropy in the EEGs of the Normal group. When choosing a method to test this hypothesis, it is important to account for how the brain processes a recall stimulus. The brain information processing that occurs during a recall task has informational, temporal and spatial properties. Therefore, to accurately analyze the entropy in the EEG data three things must be specified: 1) which entropy measure to use, 2) which time intervals of the EEG data to use, and 3) what locations on the participant's scalp (choice of EEG electrodes) to use. The specifications used are: 1) Entropy measure. The entropy measure used was the Tsallis entropy. Tsallis entropy is a generalization of the Shannon entropy to a non-additive entropy measure. An additive entropy measure assumes that the entropy of a whole system is equal to the sum of the entropies of each part of the system. EEG data may not conform to this assumption, so we used the Tsallis entropy instead of the Shannon entropy. 2) EEG time interval. The EEG data used were those data that occurred during the first 300 milliseconds (ms) after the appearance of the recall stimulus. A participant's response is purely perceptual/cognitive for about 300 ms after the appearance of the recall stimulus (Sternberg 1966, 1969). Muscle movement responses, responses which are more variable, begin later in the task. This suggests that the first 300 ms of the EEG data will be more specific to the task. 3) Spatial component - the choice of EEG electrodes. Electrodes chosen for this EEG data analysis should correspond with the way that information moves through the brain during the first 300 ms of the recall task. The task began with a visual stimulus. The information from this stimulus enters the posterior cortex at V1 (Broadman area 17). After about 150 ms, this (transformed and partially altered) information enters the anterior cortex. Therefore, the EEG data which correspond to the recall task are those data recorded by posterior electrodes during the first 150 ms and those data recorded by anterior electrodes for the next 150 ms. The entropy analysis of these data was accomplished by computing the Tsallis entropy in two posterior electrodes; P3 and P4 for the first 150 ms after the appearance of the stimulus. Then, the Tsallis entropy of the EEG data in the second, contiguous 150 ms time interval was computed.
The EEG data for this second entropy measurement were recorded by two anterior electrodes: T7Fp3 and T8Fp4 (electrodes placed slightly behind the temples). Thus, the EEG data analyzed were data which corresponded to the flow of brain information during the first 300 ms of the recall task. It has been assumed that the entropy in an EEG corresponds to brain information processing during the recall task. However, these entropies, alone, do not show how brain information changes when moving from posterior cortex to anterior cortex. A commonsense solution to this difficulty would be to compute the mutual entropy (mutual information) measure. However, this measure is based on the assumption of a closed information channel. This assumption does not hold true for the brain. The neural information pathway from early visual cortex to anterior cortex is not a closed pathway. For this reason, a relative entropy measure, a measure of the amount of anterior EEG entropy relative to the amount of posterior EEG entropy is more appropriate. This relative entropy measure is the ratio of the anterior EEG entropy to the posterior EEG entropy. This ratio of entropies or "entropy ratio" was the measure used to compare Normal and Dementia participants. Normal participants were expected to have larger entropy ratios than those with dementia. Thus, the quantitative hypothesis is, the entropy ratios of the Normal participants will be higher than the entropy ratios of the Dementia participants. For the most part, this hypothesis was formulated before the testing of the 47 participants. It was ante hoc. To be more exact, the specifics of the method for testing the hypothesis were formulated during the EEG testing of the first few participants; about eight participants. A total of 33 normal aging participants and 14 very mildly demented participants were tested. The results are: 31 of the 33 Normals had higher entropy ratios than the 14 entropy ratios of the Dementia group. These 31 entropy ratios were all greater than one. 14 of the 14 entropy ratios of the Dementia group were less than or equal to one (at two decimal places of precision). Participant's entropy ratios can be used to discriminate between the Normal and Dementia groups. Assume that entropy ratios greater than one denote normal aging and entropy ratios less than or equal to one denote dementia (impaired short-term memory). Then these criteria distinguish between the Normal and Dementia groups with a specificity of 100% (14 of 14) and a sensitivity of 94% (31 of 33). This means that two Normal participants were incorrectly classified as having dementia. However, both of these participants have a family history of Alzheimer's Disease dementia. One participant had a parent, now deceased, who had severe dementia. This participants other parent has Alzheimer's Disease. The second participant also has a parent with Alzheimer's a genetic predisposition to Alzheimer's Disease dementia. For this reason, these two participants may have very early Alzheimer's Disease. This remains to be seen, as does further refinement and testing of this hypothesis.


Relating categories across languages is the crucial question in the study of language universals.) It will be argued here that the syntactic categories (primary sentential constituents) of a language are not projections of lexical categories, and that identifying categories across languages as equivalent, as Steele (1981) has for instantiations of the category AUX, does not rest upon a language internal correspondence between these syntactic categories and particular lexical categories. A set of language independent definitions of the syntactic categories SUBJECT, AUX, PREDICATE and ADVERBIAL in terms of the functional properties (role in function/argument structure) of sentential constituents is proposed, and the instantiation of these categories in the unrelated languages Egyptian Arabic and English is shown. This set of category definitions suffices for an economical account of sentence structure in these configurational languages, and the definitions are shown to be useful in cross -language comparisons. The claim is made here that PREDICATE is a universal syntactic category: that is, all (complete) sentences of all languages necessarily have some constituent that we may label PREDICATE. This is not true of the other syntactic categories to be identified here, nor is it true of any lexical category, including verb.


OF DISSERTATION 3D INFRASTRUCTURE CONDITION ASSESSMENT FOR RAIL HIGHWAY APPLICATIONS Highway roughness is a concern for both the motoring public and highway authorities. Roughness may even increase the risk of crashes. Rail-highway grade crossings are particularly problematic. Roughness may be due to deterioration or simply due to the way the crossing was built to accommodate grade change, local utilities, or rail elevation. With over 216,000 crossings in the US, maintenance is a vast undertaking. While methods are available to quantify highway roughness, no method exists to quantitatively assess the condition of rail crossings. Conventional inspection relies on a labor-intensive process of qualitative judgment. A quantifiable, objective and extensible procedure for rating and prioritizing improvement of crossings is thus desired. In this dissertation, a 3D infrastructure condition assessment model is developed for evaluating the condition and performance of rail highway grade crossings. Various scanning techniques and devices are developed or used to obtain the 3D "point cloud" or surface as a first step towards quantifying crossing roughness. Next, a technique for repeatable field measurement of acceleration is presented and tested to provide a condition index. Acceleration-based metrics are developed, and these can be used to rate and compare crossings for improvement programs to mitigate potential vehicle damage and provide passenger comfort. A vehicle dynamic model is next customized to use surface models to estimate vertical accelerations eliminating the need for field data collection. Following, crossing roughness and rideability is estimated directly from 3D point clouds. This allows isolation of acceleration components derived from surface condition and original design profile. Finally, a practice ready application of the 3D point cloud is developed and presented to address hump crossing safety. In conclusion, the dissertation presents several methods to assess the condition and performance of rail crossings. It provides quantitative metrics that can be used to evaluate designs and construction methods, and efficiently implement cost effective improvement programs. The metrics provide a technique to measure and monitor system assets over time, and can be extended to other infrastructure components such as pavements and bridges.


Understanding the influence of evolutionary history on species-specific phenological events of high-altitude plants and their sensitivity to the abiotic factors has gained importance mainly in the context of climate change. However, the majority of phenology studies across altitudinal gradient are carried out on flowering, whereas other reproductive phenology events are seldom considered. We tested the role of abiotic factors and evolutionary history on the reproductive phenology traits of high-altitude Rhododendron community which comprised of 10 locally aggregated species in Kyongnosla Alpine Sanctuary, Sikkim Himalaya. The study was carried out from 2013 to 2015 across an altitude gradient of 3400–4230 m a.s.l. We generated dated phylogenetic hypotheses to test for phylogenetic signal in reproductive phenology events, and its durations across 10 Rhododendron species and also among groups of species distributed at every 100 m altitude. Comparative phylogenetic methods were used to explore the relationship between phenology traits and abiotic variables such as daylength and temperature. The early phenology events such as budding, flowering, and initial fruiting, which occurred during the favorable month of the year, exhibited strong phylogenetic signal and were mainly associated with daylength and temperature. In contrast, the later events such as immature fruiting, mature fruiting, and fruit dehiscence, which
occurred during the later months of the year, showed a weak phylogenetic signal and were mostly associated with daylength. With the increase in altitude, we found a decreasing trend of phylogenetic signal for the early phenology events and later events did not show a significant trend. Our results suggest that only early events are constrained by evolutionary history; thus, the closely related species share the similar timing of the early phenology events. Also, the role of shared evolutionary history in phenological trait sensitivity to the abiotic factors reduces from early to the late phenology events. This approach can be extended to other representative plant families of the Himalayan region to better understand the response of reproductive traits to abiotic factors in deep evolutionary time.


A model is presented in which the Earth is characterized by the mantle deep convection, and the thickness of the continental and oceanic lithospheres change with time as the pressure-temperature-geochemical conditions alter in the upper mantle. This model predicts that no island arc differentiation took place before 4000 Ma. During the Archaean, the shallow lithosphere allowed local, tectonic coherence and a gradual increase in the depth of subduction differentiation processes. The change to large cratonic-scale tectonic stability during the Proterozoic occurred as a result of lower lithosphere conditions allowing granulites to be stable—the consequential dehydration of the continental lithosphere creating extensive lateral and vertical stability. The change to 'modern' plate tectonics finally took place when the strengths of the oceanic and continental lithospheres became sufficiently close that mantle convection could produce continental splitting. It is suggested that this model accounts for the overall changing tectonic and geochemical features of the continental crust, although such generalities must be applied cautiously to specific localities.


Dung's abstract argumentation has been object of intense study not just for its relationship with logical reasoning but also for its uses within artificial intelligence. One research branch in abstract argumentation has focused on finding new methods for computing its different semantics. We present a novel method, to the best of our knowledge, for computing semi-stable semantics using 0-1 integer programming. This approach captures the notions of conflict freeness, acceptability, maximality with regard to set inclusion, etc., by 0-1 integer constraints. Additionally, this work also presents an empirical experiment to compare this novel approach with an answer set programming approach. Our results indicate that this new method performed well, and it has a great opportunity space for improving.


Rapid seismological analyses, carried out within minutes of the March 11, 2011, Tohoku earthquake, were crucial in providing an earthquake ground shaking and tsunami early warning and in hastening the evacuation of the population along Japan's northeastern coast. By 20 to 30 minutes after fault rupture began, these analyses had established that the event had a moment magnitude of M_w = 9 and involved shallow thrust faulting on the plate boundary megathrust. Preparation for future large earthquakes on megathrusts in Japan and elsewhere should include onshore and offshore geodetic monitoring of strain accumulation, implementation of rapid earthquake and tsunami warning systems, and public training and education for shaking and tsunami response.


Tests of arcing and current collection in simulated space plasma conditions have been performed at the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) in Cleveland, Ohio, for over 30 years and at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama, for almost as long. During this period, proper test conditions for accurate and meaningful space simulation have been worked out, comparisons with actual space performance in spaceflight tests and with real operational satellites have been made, and NASA has achieved our own internal standards for test protocols. It is the purpose of this paper to communicate the test conditions, test procedures, and types of analysis used at NASA GRC and MSFC to the space environmental testing community at large, to help with international space-plasma arcing-testing standardization. To be discussed are:


Gene therapy offers a radical different approach to the treatment of arthritis. Here we have demonstrated that two marker genes (lacZ and neo) and cDNA coding for a potentially therapeutic protein (human interleukin 1-receptor-antagonist protein; IRAP or IL-1ra) can be delivered, by ex vivo techniques, to the synovial lining of joints; intraarticular expression of IRAP inhibited intraarticular responses to interleukin 1. To achieve this, lapine synoviocytes were first transduced in culture by retroviral infection. The genetically modified synovial cells were then transplanted by intraarticular injection into the knee joints of rabbits, where they efficiently colonized the synovium. Assay of joint lavages confirmed the in vivo expression of biologically active human IRAP. With allografted cells, IRAP expression was lost by 12 days after transfer. In contrast, autografted synoviocytes continued to express IRAP for approximately 5 weeks. Knee joints expressing human IRAP were protected from the leukocytosis that otherwise follows the intraarticular injection of recombinant human interleukin 1 beta. Thus, we report the intraarticular expression and activity of a potentially therapeutic protein by gene-transfer technology; these experiments demonstrate the feasibility of treating arthritis and other joint disorders with gene therapy.


Quinoa, a food crop native to South America, is now gaining much attention in China. Quinoa was introduced to China in the 1960s; however, it was only distributed in scattered districts until 2008. The foundation of the Quinoa Committee of the Crop Science Society of China (QCCSSC) in 2015 has promoted the combination of policy-makers, researchers, manufacturers, and farmers related to quinoa. In 2018, the harvest area of quinoa in China increased to nearly 12,000 ha, with a total production of 20,000 tons distributed in 24 provinces. Through the collaboration of enterprise and research institutes, quinoa cultivation techniques were integrated into different eco-regions, and a series of stabilized breeding materials was gained. Additionally, 14 varieties were certified by provincial or municipal cultivar registration committees. Quinoa products, such as noodles, liquor, and yogurt, were developed based on nutritional and technological research. Thanks to the promulgation of the first Chinese industrial standard for quinoa, quinoa products are now available both in online shops and offline supermarkets. Above all, China is undergoing an adjustment of sustainable agricultural policy and increasing demands for more nutritional and diversified foods, demonstrating a great prospect for quinoa.


From the author of the internationally-acclaimed best-selling text The Developing Mind, and esteemed leader and educator in the field of mental health, comes the first book ever to integrate neuroscience research with the ancient art of mindfulness. The result is a groundbreaking approach to not simply mental health, but life in general, which shows readers how personal awareness and attunement can actually stimulate emotional circuits in the brain, leading to a host of physiological benefits, including greater well-being, resilience, emotional balance, and improved cardiac and immune function. For clinicians and laypeople alike, Siegel's illuminating discussions of the power of the focused mind provide a wealth of ideas that can transform our lives and deepen our connections with others, and with ourselves.


This paper introduces the design and experimental validation of a flexible robotized work cell for automated assembly of bends on top of a heat exchanger coil. This automatic system is based on the use of a specifically designed end-effector, able to store several bends together and to singularize and insert them in the tubes. In this way the pick-and-place operations that are typical in automated assembly are eliminated, thus dramatically reducing cycle time. Automatic bowl-feeders are used to serialize bends in the tool crib, where the end-effectors are refilled in hidden time after each tool change. A machine vision system identifies tube positions and detects defects on tube tops, to avoid insertion in damaged tubes. The insertion scheme is derived by comparing tube positions to those stored in a database, so the work cell can produce a highly variable product mix.


The Clay-with-flints has a patchy, but extensive, outcrop in southern England south of the limit of the Anglian ice sheets, and in
northern France where it is referred to as the Argiles a silex. Since early Victorian times, when it was recognised that its principal
components were clay and unworn flints, the deposit has been presumed to have been derived from the dissolution of large
volumes of chalk. It was also recognised, however, that the clay contents of typical chalks were too low to have produced the
clay-flint ratios of much of the Clay-with-flints. The additional clay, together with sand that could not have been derived from
the Chalk Group, was therefore presumed to be of later origin. The solution hypothesis remained largely undisputed until the
20th Century, even though there is no published example of an intermediate stage in the process in the form of a layer of partially
dissolved chalk. The age of formation of the Clay-with-flints has long been the subject of dispute, partly because of the absence
of palaeontological evidence, and partly because the name has been applied to a wide variety of lithologies including reworked
and remobilised materials. Suggested ages range from Palaeocene in parts of northern France to Pleistocene in the London Basin.
In east Devon and west Dorset, beds of partially dissolved in situ Upper Greensand and Chalk tens of metres thick are overlain
by Clay-with-flints. They confirm the importance of large-scale solution as a contributing factor in the formation of the deposit in
south-west England. The partially dissolved layers and the Clay-with-flints were folded and faulted in the Miocene, and they can
be seen to pre-date Pleistocene erosional features including hanging dry valleys and frost-wedge pipes. The principal phase of
dissolution is presumed to have been in warm moist climates during the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.