Elafin, an endogenous serine protease inhibitor, is a critical component of the epithelial barrier against neutrophil elastase (NE) activity. The central hypothesis examined in this dissertation was that elafin has tumor suppressive properties in breast cancer. In support of this hypothesis, immunohistochemical (IHC) analysis revealed that elafin was downregulated in the majority of invasive breast tumors and a subset of preinvasive ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) compared to elafin expression in the normal mammary epithelium. To understand the role of elafin in the mammary epithelium and the impetus for its downregulation during breast tumorigenesis, primary and immortalized human mammary epithelial cells (HMECs) were utilized as a model system. Elafin was highly expressed in G0-arrested HMECs, suggesting a previously unrecognized role for elafin in growth control. Stable knockdown (KD) of elafin compromised the ability of HMECs to maintain G0-arrest during long-term growth factor deprivation. This effect was reversed by re-expression of wild-type elafin but not elafinM25G lacking protease inhibitory function, suggesting a role for deregulated protease activity. Elafin KD HMECs demonstrated enhanced sensitivity to NE-induced proliferation. Mechanistically, activation of the ERK signaling pathway downstream of toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) was essential to the mitogenic effect of NE in this system. Compared to HMECs, the majority of breast cancer cell lines lack endogenous elafin expression. Adenoviral-mediated expression of elafin was utilized to evaluate the tumor suppressive properties of elafin in breast cancer cell lines. Rb-status was identified as the critical factor governing the anti-tumor effect of elafin in this system. In breast cancer cell lines expressing functional Rb, the expression of elafin triggered Rbdependent cell cycle arrest. However, in breast cancer cell lines lacking functional Rb, elafin expression induced caspase-3 dependent apoptotic cell death. Elafin is a critical counterbalance against NE-activity. IHC analysis revealed that high levels of NEexpressing tumor-associated neutrophils (TAN) were associated with reduced viii recurrence-free survival, high tumor grade, and triple-receptor negative breast cancer (TNBC). ERK-catalyzed phosphorylation of p90RSK (T359/S363) and Rb phosphorylation (S807/811) were significantly enriched in NE-positive breast tumors, suggesting that NE-induced ERK signaling and proliferation may be relevant to human breast cancer. The in vivo role of deregulated NE in breast tumorigenesis was examined in the C3(1)TAg mouse model of TNBC. Knockout of NE in C3(1)TAg mice significantly reduced tumor growth and proliferation. Elafin has tumor suppressive properties in the context of breast cancer and is a critical counterbalance against the growth promoting effect of NE in vitro and in vivo. Deregulated NE-activity is a viable therapeutic target in breast cancer.


Magnetic flux and electric charge are linked in a memristor. We reported recently that a memristor has a peculiar effect in which the switching takes place with a time delay because a memristor possesses a certain inertia. This effect was named the "delayed switching effect." In this work, we elaborate on the importance of delayed switching in a brain-like computer using memristor neural networks. The effect is used to control the switching of a memristor synapse between two neurons that fire together (the Hebbian rule). A theoretical formula is found, and the design is verified by a simulation. We have also built an experimental setup consisting of electronic memristive synapses and electronic neurons.


Michael Urban (with assistance of Andrei Evdokimov). Russia Gets the Blues. Music, Culture, and Community in Unsettled Times. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2004. 179 pp. Illustrations. Index. $45.00, cloth. $17.95, paper.As Michael Urban explains in the preface, Russia Gets the Blues came from the confluence of his extracurricular experience with Russian blues' performances and his hunt for a new research topic. The book reflects this bifurcated origin in both its arrangement and its content. Urban frames his fluid narrative of the birth and growth of Russian blues (Chapters 2-5) with a detailed contextualization of its roots (Chapter 1), and its social and political make-up (Chapters 6-7). Urban defines the two "analytic currents" of his book as "cultural transmission" (or "the flow of new information across borders") and "cultural reception" (or "the influence that Russian cultural practices have on the manner in which the blues idiom has been appropriated, interpreted, performed, and appreciated") (p. viii). The narrative, "diachronic" chapters deal with "cultural transmission," while the last two "synchronie" chapters take up "cultural reception" (p. ix).One can surmise that Urban had a good time researching the project-his enthusiasm and sensitivity to his subject suggest that much. Working on contemporary topics carries an advantage of relevance and vitality that comes from being so close to the sources. Urban's reliance on interviews with the members of the blues community is a major asset of the book, because in addition to providing the contemporaries' side of the story to complement his theoretical arguments, the interviews offer the reader an unmediated sensation of this peculiar and touching culture. At the same time, despite chronological proximity to the people and events Urban described, it is remarkable how clear a picture of the Russian blues scene one gets from reading his book.Urban's "sociomusical portrait of Russia's blues community" (p. viii) begins with a general outline of the topic and a list of inquiries that he continues to address throughout the book. The first chapter raises the question of similarities in the origins of Russian and American blues traditions. In it, Urban argues the shared social, political, economic and cultural conditions at the time of the genre's inception and growth in Russia and the United States. Essentially, Urban speaks about blues as an expression of the national condition. Still, he manages to avoid the danger of logical stretches and excessive generalization and remains very cautious and reasonable in his arguments. Bypassing the intuitive temptation of explaining Russia's favourable reception of blues by it soul-searching character, Urban offers a well-supported explanation that takes into account aesthetics as well as history. …


This paper investigates the implications of monetary policy for domestic investment through its effects on bank lending to the private sector and interest rates in sub-Saharan African countries. The study argues that the pursuit of inflation control through contractionary monetary policy carries high costs in terms of reduced investment and ultimately slower economic growth. The econometric evidence based on a sample of 37 sub-Saharan African countries over 1980-2012 shows that contractionary monetary policy affects domestic investment negatively both indirectly through the bank lending or quantity channel as well as directly through the interest rate or cost of capital channel. The results suggest that policies that maintain a low interest rate regime would stimulate bank lending to the private sector, which in turn would boost domestic investment. The results have important policy implications for African countries in their efforts to achieve and sustain high growth rates as a means of reaching their national development goals notably employment creation and poverty reduction.


It is notoriously difficult for philosophers to explain, to people unfamiliar with their discipline, what it is that they do. "I teach." "What do you teach?" "Philosophy." If we were to say "physics" or "history" or even "psychology," our interlocutors would think they had no problem in understanding our profession, but the answer "philosophy" almost always provokes incomprehension and unease. We can evade the issue by saying that as philosophers we study and explain the works of writers like Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes, but this clarification merely puts off the reckoning by one step; what is it that those people have written about? One reason for this difficulty is that philosophy does not have an identifiable, partial domain as its subject matter. It attempts to think about the widest context, that which is not differentiated as one part from other parts. If it were a partial discipline, it could at least be vaguely comprehended as being something other than, say, mathematics or sociology, something that studies this domain as opposed to that. Philosophy does not define itself by such partialization, however. It leaves nothing out, and hence leaves us without the contrasting foil that would allow us to say what it is. People who are unfriendly to philosophy suspect that it is inflated, presumptuous, and nonrigorous; this feeling is an inadequate but understandable way of recognizing the fact that philosophy is not defined by being partial. A second reason for the difficulty in saying what philosophy is lies in its method. The method of philosophical thinking is not obvious; we think we have some idea of the manner in which, say, physicists or linguists proceed in their inquiries, but how do philosophers proceed in theirs? It is hard to say; philosophy appears to be an arcane intellectual discipline, a form of thinking whose ways are esoteric and obscure. How does it come to know what it thinks it knows? I wish to help clarify what philosophy is by discussing its method. I will suggest that the form of thinking proper to philosophy is extremely simple: philosophy is the intellectual activity that works with distinctions. Its method is the making and the questioning of distinctions. Philosophy explains by distinguishing. This does not mean that philosophy just asserts distinctions and lets it go at that; rather, it works with distinctions, it brings them out and dwells on them, dwells with them, showing how and why the things that it has distinguished must be distinguished one from the other. Furthermore, since it essentially works with distinctions, philosophy sometimes will show that a certain distinction that has been proposed or taken for granted is unreal or invalid. Philosophy sometimes obliterates distinctions. Such rejection of distinctions, however, is the negative and refutational aspect of philosophy's work; its positive success consists in achieving a distinction that clarifies a situation or a controversy, a distinction that brings out the nature of a thing. Furthermore, even when denying a distinction, philosophy proceeds by making other distinctions that allow it to deny the one in question. Let me give some illustrations before proceeding to my argument. My claim is that philosophy does not just discuss and define, say, human freedom; rather, it will examine how responsible action is to be distinguished from the nonresponsible. It does not just talk about politics; it will distinguish the political from the economic and from the familial. It does not just examine the nature of numbers; it will show the distinction between the mathematical and the physical, between the mathematical and the logical, between the numerical and the merely collected. Philosophy does not just investigate substance; it develops the difference between the substantial and the coincidental. It does not simply investigate what propositions are; it clarifies the distinctions between propositions and states of affairs, and between propositions and the mental activities that grasp them. …


The advantages and disadvantages of breeding in nestboxes are well known, whilst the merits of roosting in nestboxes during the non-breeding season remain poorly understood. Here I review the advantages and disadvantages of using nestboxes as roosting sites during the non-breeding season. The main advantage of nestboxes is that they increase the number of cavities available for roosting and birds gain considerable thermal benefits and energy savings, when compared to congeners roosting outside of cavities. However, the main disadvantage is that roosting birds are widely targeted by detrimental ectoparasites, and birds actively avoid nestboxes where ectoparasites are abundant. Meanwhile, there is insufficient evidence to make any firm conclusions as to whether roosting in nestboxes increases or decreases predation risk and this is an area, which warrants further research. Consequently, there is a great deal of variation in the quality of individual nestboxes as roosting sites, and interspecific competition results in larger and more dominant species roosting in preferred nestboxes. In summary, this review emphasises the importance of nestboxes to roosting birds during the non-breeding season.


Abstract A concentration of Pseudorca crassidens remains resulting from a mass stranding on the tidal flats of the Colorado River Delta, Baja California, Mexico, was analyzed to determine how bone and individual density and variation in taphonomic condition differs from a time-averaged assemblage of marine mammals. Five hundred and thirty seven skeletal elements, including 26 whole skulls, were found among 204 bone sites in a 13,000 m2 area. Skulls provide the best estimate of minimum number of individuals; all other skeletal elements are underrepresented. Twenty bones per individual, one bone per 26 m2, and one individual per 536 m2 characterize this the mass-stranding locality. Bone density and individual density are greater at this locality than in a previously studied time-averaged assemblage from the Colorado Delta. Although the lack of variation in taphonomic condition is sometimes used as one criterion for a mass-death assemblage, the condition of the remains in this mass stranding varies both within and among skeletal elements. Teeth tend to be in good condition, earbones in fair condition, and vertebrae in poor condition. The taphonomic differences are a result of variation in the density and size of the skeletal element, variation in associated sediment (sand or mud), and variation in exposure (surface or buried). Despite the fact that all the individuals died at the same time, the taphonomic condition of their skeletal elements varies greatly.


Significance We show that the combination of topology and geometry in mammalian cortical networks allows for near-optimal decentralized communication under navigation routing. Following a simple propagation rule based on local knowledge of the distance between cortical regions, we demonstrate that brain networks can be successfully navigated with efficiency that is comparable to shortest paths routing. This finding helps to conciliate the major progress achieved over more than a decade of connectomics research, under the assumption of communication via shortest paths, with recent questions raised by the biologically unrealistic requirements involved in the computation of optimal routes. Our results reiterate the importance of the brain's spatial embedding, suggesting a three-way relationship between connectome geometry, topology, and communication. Understanding the mechanisms of neural communication in large-scale brain networks remains a major goal in neuroscience. We investigated whether navigation is a parsimonious routing model for connectomics. Navigating a network involves progressing to the next node that is closest in distance to a desired destination. We developed a measure to quantify navigation efficiency and found that connectomes in a range of mammalian species (human, mouse, and macaque) can be successfully navigated with near-optimal efficiency (>80% of optimal efficiency for typical connection densities). Rewiring network topology or repositioning network nodes resulted in 45–60% reductions in navigation performance. We found that the human connectome cannot be progressively randomized or clusterized to result in topologies with substantially improved navigation performance (>5%), suggesting a topological balance between regularity and randomness that is conducive to efficient navigation. Navigation was also found to (i) promote a resource-efficient distribution of the information traffic load, potentially relieving communication bottlenecks, and (ii) explain significant variation in functional connectivity. Unlike commonly studied communication strategies in connectomics, navigation does not mandate assumptions about global knowledge of network topology. We conclude that the topology and geometry of brain networks are conducive to efficient decentralized communication.


Objectives
Social scientists need practical methods for harnessing large, publicly available datasets that inform the social context of aging. We describe our development of a semi-automated text coding method and use a content analysis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and dementia portrayal on Twitter to demonstrate its use. The approach improves feasibility of examining large publicly available datasets.

Method
Machine learning techniques modeled stigmatization expressed in 31,150 AD-related tweets collected via Twitter's search API based on 9 AD-related keywords. Two researchers manually coded 311 random tweets on 6 dimensions. This input from 1% of the dataset was used to train a classifier against the tweet text and code the remaining 99% of the dataset.

Results
Our automated process identified that 21.13% of the AD-related tweets used AD-related keywords to perpetuate public stigma, which could impact stereotypes and negative expectations for individuals with the disease and increase "excess disability".

Discussion
This technique could be applied to questions in social gerontology related to how social media outlets reflect and shape attitudes bearing on other developmental outcomes. Recommendations for the collection and analysis of large Twitter datasets are discussed.


Orientation: The call centre is recognised as being a stressful work environment that affects the general wellbeing of call centre agents. Research purpose: This study explored whether call centre agents' sense of coherence significantly influences their career adaptability and whether their burnout levels significantly moderate the sense of coherence–career adaptability relationship. The research also investigated whether age, gender and years of service (as control variables), along with sense of coherence, predicted career adaptability. Motivation for the study: The positive psychological construct of career adaptability and its association with call centre agents' sense of coherence, burnout, age, gender and years of service have not yet been investigated in the call centre environment. Research design, approach and method: A cross-sectional quantitative survey design was used. The Orientation to Life, Career Adapt-Abilities Scale and Maslach Burnout Inventory General Scale were administered to a non-probability purposive sample of 409 early-career Black staff employed in three of the largest outsourced financial call centres in Africa. Main findings: Multiple regression analyses revealed that age, gender and meaningfulness significantly predicted call centre agents' career adaptability, but that their burnout levels do not significantly moderate the sense of coherence–career adaptability relationship. Practical/managerial implications: Enhancing call centre agents' sense of meaningfulness will increase their levels of career adaptability and career wellbeing. Contribution/value-add: This research is the first to investigate the construct of career adaptability in the call centre environment and adds new knowledge and insights to the existing wellness and positive psychology literature.


Background Brain computer interfaces (BCI) based on electro-encephalography (EEG) have been shown to detect mental states accurately and non-invasively, but the equipment required so far is cumbersome and the resulting signal is difficult to analyze. BCI requires accurate classification of small amplitude brain signal components in single trials from recordings which can be compromised by currents induced by muscle activity. Methodology/Principal Findings A novel EEG cap based on dry electrodes was developed which does not need time-consuming gel application and uses far fewer electrodes than on a standard EEG cap set-up. After optimizing the placement of the 6 dry electrodes through off-line analysis of standard cap experiments, dry cap performance was tested in the context of a well established BCI cursor control paradigm in 5 healthy subjects using analysis methods which do not necessitate user training. The resulting information transfer rate was on average about 30% slower than the standard cap. The potential contribution of involuntary muscle activity artifact to the BCI control signal was found to be inconsequential, while the detected signal was consistent with brain activity originating near the motor cortex. Conclusions/Significance Our study shows that a surprisingly simple and convenient method of brain activity imaging is possible, and that simple and robust analysis techniques exist which discriminate among mental states in single trials. Within 15 minutes the dry BCI device is set-up, calibrated and ready to use. Peak performance matched reported EEG BCI state of the art in one subject. The results promise a practical non-invasive BCI solution for severely paralyzed patients, without the bottleneck of setup effort and limited recording duration that hampers current EEG recording technique. The presented recording method itself, BCI not considered, could significantly widen the use of EEG for emerging applications requiring long-term brain activity and mental state monitoring.


Bedded barite forms a distinct component of four Broken Hill-type deposits in the amphibolite-facies metamorphosed Bushmanland sequence of South Africa. In the Gamsberg Zn-Pb deposit, barite has been effectively fractionated from the base metal sulphide facies and concentrated as a separate deposit towards the eastern part of the Gamsberg inselberg. The barite occurs as massive to laminated layers, associated with other oxidised lithologies, such as hematite-quartz rocks and manganiferous iron formations. Geochemical and isotopic evidence favours a non-marine, hydrothermal origin of the Ba and supports a close genetic relationship with the base metal sulphide ores. Fractionation of these hydrothermal components occurred due to redox conditions within the depositional basin, which restricted base metal precipitation to an anoxic basin facies and barite to an oxidised shelf facies. The spatial distribution of barite and other oxidised lithologies indicate that redox transitions occurred immediately before and after deposition of the base metal sulphide ores. Such rapid facies changes are typical for sediment-hosted Zn-Pb deposits, reflecting tectonically induced sub-basin formation and reactivation of feeder conduits, which represent important prerequisites for the formation of these deposits. In addition, the presence of barite in the Bushmanland deposits indicates that the ore-forming fluids were reduced, since Ba cannot be transported in the presence of sulphate. Reduced fluids are sensitive to temperature changes and a decrease in brine temperature most probably resulted in the termination of base metal sulphide deposition. Postdating deposition of the sulphide ores, Fe, Mn and Ba were still supplied to the system and precipitated as manganiferous iron formations and bedded barite lenses that overlie the sulphide horizon. Anomalous concentrations of Ba within the wall rocks of the Aggeneys-Gamsberg deposits indicate that hydrothermal discharge commenced before and continued after peak base metal sulphide deposition. The presence of this Ba halo has implications for exploration of similar deposits in the Namaqua Province.


The adjustment of the balance between strength and ductility is still a great challenge for ultrahigh temperature materials. Essentially, the strength depends on the valence electron density of transition metals and the bond strength of chemical bonding. However, the ductility of a solid is mainly determined by the symmetrical slips and crystal structure. Based on the above design principles, we apply first-principles calculations to investigate the structure, elastic properties and brittle-or-ductile behavior of TM3Sis with a cubic structure. Two new TM3Si structures: Ti3Si and W3Si (space group: Pm3[combining macron]n) are predicted. The calculated results show that W3Si exhibits strong volume deformation and shear deformation resistances in comparison to TM5Si3. In particular, W3Si also exhibits excellent ductility due to the symmetrical structure. The calculated electronic structure reveals that a high elastic modulus derives from the strong and symmetrical W-Si and W-W bonds. Therefore, we can control a crystal structure with symmetrical slips and choose a TM metal with a high valence electron density, to improve the correlation between ductility and strength.


Electrical stimulation through direct electrical activation has been widely used to recover the function of neurons, primarily through the extracellular application of thin film electrodes. However, studies using extracellular methods show limited ability to reveal correlations between the cells and the electrical stimulation due to interference from external sources such as membrane capacitance and culture medium. Here, we demonstrate long-term intracellular electrical stimulation of undamaged pheochromocytoma (PC-12) cells by utilizing a vertical nanowire electrode array (VNEA). The VNEA was prepared by synthesizing silicon nanowires on a Si substrate through a vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) mechanism and then fabricating them into electrodes with semiconductor nanodevice processing. PC-12 cells were cultured on the VNEA for 4 days with intracellular electrical stimulation and then a 2-day stabilization period. Periodic scanning via two-photon microscopy confirmed that the electrodes pierced the cells without inducing damage. Electrical stimulation through the VNEA enhances cellular differentiation and neurite outgrowth by about 50% relative to extracellular stimulation under the same conditions. VNEA-mediated stimulation also revealed that cellular differentiation and growth in the cultures were dependent on the potential used to stimulate them. Intracellular stimulation using nanowires could pave the way for controlled cellular differentiation and outgrowth studies in living cells.


How can we best understand the different ways in which ethical issues are addressed in the Hebrew Bible? And how might that understanding usefully inform ethical decision making in our own day? These are the two key questions explored by John Barton in Part One of this study, in which he looks at how the Bible's narratives, as well as its collections of laws, oracles and wisdom writings, all contribute to our understanding of the whole. In Part Two, he focuses on the moral vision of the Prophets--especially Amos, Isaiah and Daniel--providing the reader with the fruits of his research in this area over the last few decades. The result is a book that enables students of the Bible, Ethics, and other theological disciplines to firmly grasp the main issues at stake in current scholarly debate about the ethical legacy of the Old Testament.


For the past century. the human has been suffered by "Poverty", Several attempts have been made to tight this particular moral challenge. Since last four decades providing small loans for the vulnerable entrepreneurs" which is called as "Microfinance". has been known as one of the 1110St efficient tools for poverty alleviation. But conventional microfinance or "Microcredit Program" that is based on pre deterrnined interest may cause more issues for the borrowers, in terms of repaying back the loans. In addition" all contracts based on predetermined interest is strongly prohibited in Islamic rules, which is called ''Shariah". Therefore, for meeting Muslim clients of microfinance products who were not interested in using microcredit, based on avoiding getting predetermined interest, "Islamic Microfinance" was born in South East Asia. But, after three decades and despite of having great market, Islamic microfinance institutions (Islamic MFIs) still face unsustainability (unsustainable performance) which can result in high poverty rate in. this region. The main purpose of this study is to determine influences of three dimensions of market orientation, namely customer orientation, competitor orientation and inter-function coordination on two aspects of sustainability of Islamic microfinance institutions (management sustainability and financial sustainability). in Malaysia that is considered as one of the pioneers in Islamic microfinance business. The "stakeholder theory"!" and also Some of Islamic behavioral values like "Brotherhood" and ''AI-Adl'' have been used for supporting theoretical framework of the current research. The current study is conducted based on top two Islamic microfinance institutions in Malaysia, as the samples, namely Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia (AIM) and The Economic Fund for National Entrepreneurs Group (T.E.KUN). The used data was gathered from three
categorizes; management level inclusive 60 top managers of AIM and T'EKUN (out of 90), employee level consists of 300 respondents and finally, customer level inclusive 400 customers from the both Islamic MfIs, chosen randomly. Using the variance based structural equation modeling (SEM), partial least squares (PLS) analyses, the results of this investigation have revealed that financial sustainability and management sustainability of Islamic MFIs in Malaysia are found to be influenced positively by their level of being customer oriented. Further, management sustainability of Islamic MFIs is demonstrated to be influenced positively by inter-function coordination. In contrast the results also demonstrated that financial sustainability of Islamic MFls is not influenced positively by competitor orientation and inter-function coordination. Finally, from the analysis, the positive relationships between competitor orientation and utility management sustainability of Islamic MFls did not receive statistical support.


e read with great interest the article by Lima-Martinez and cols. (1). They studied the relationship between epicardial adipose tissue (EAT) thickness and plasma levels of adiponectin in Venezuelan patients. And they found a significant as-sociation between EAT thickness and both metabolic syndrome components and adi -ponectin concentration. The authors also reported a strong correlation between left ventricular mass and EAT thickness. The article has important messages. But there are some items to be clarified.Angiotensin II (AII), the major hormone of the renin-angiotensin system, plays an important role in the pathogenesis of hypertension and atherosclerosis. Evidence has suggested that AII impairs insulin sensitivity (2). Hypertensive subjects and animal models have shown improvements in insulin resistance in response to treatment with angiotensin I converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors or AII type 1 receptor (AT1R) blo -cker (3). The exact mechanisms for the AII-induced insulin resistance remain largely unknown. But Ran and cols. previously showed that long-term AII infusion decreased the circulating adiponectin concentration without affecting the gene expression in rats, and this may facilitate the development of insulin resistance. And AT1R blocker ameliorated the AII-induced hypoadiponectinemia (4).Left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) is well known to be associated with increased cardiac risk. Regression of LVH over a period of a few months has been reported with ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) (5). Regression of LVH continues gradually over time (three years or more) and may be associated with com-plete reversal of LVH and other abnormalities induced by hypertension such as left atrial enlargement and diastolic dysfunction (5).Lima-Martinez and cols. mentioned that 16 out of 27 patients in their series were on ACE inhibitor or ARB therapy (1). Considering the above mentioned data, an-tihypertensive therapy may have influenced left ventricular measurements and plasma levels of adiponectin. For these reasons, the authors have better mentioned this point as a limitation of the study.


In 1892, professor and literary critic John Bell Henneman addressed the Virginia Literary Society of the State Female Normal School of Farmville, Virginia. Henneman would go on to some academic prominence, helping to edit in the early years of the twentieth-century, for example, the multivolume series, The South in the Building of the Nation (1909-1913) and overseeing for a time the publication of the Sewanee Review. But in 1892 he was a professor at neighboring Hampden-Sydney College, who took for his lecture's title "The Nineteenth Century Woman in Literature" His subject matter was a natural choice given his audience, he explains, and given the fact that women are actually at the root of many of history's turning points: man's loss of innocence in the Garden of Eden, the outbreak of the Greek and Trojan War, the dissolution of Antony's empire. Now, in this "period of the emancipation of women" (3), Henneman professes, women are still busy, "engaged in coquetting with, and in wooing, and in many instances in successfully capturing every employment, every occupation, every field of literature, art, and even science" (3). Though Hennemann's chivalric flourishes throughout his speech surely suggest a man who wanted to woo his own audience, the subtext of his early remarks seems clear: woman could be dangerous, her ambitions were many, and subterfuge was her surest ally. My interest in women's writing is prompted by an interest in that subterfuge, by an interest in how authors say what they mean by not appearing to mean what they say. Long denied access to humor as a tool for delivering a message, while seemingly unaware of or uncommitted to its content, women have historically been thought unfunny. Daniel Wickberg, in his recent study of the concept of having "a sense of humor" argues that humor, as we understand that word today, really emerges in the mid to late nineteenth century, when "humor" begins to refer to "a mode of representation" rather than to the laughable qualities possessed by individuals, as it had been earlier understood. A "humorist" then, comes to mean a self-conscious creator of humor (29). Yet just as the role of the humorist is being defined in the nineteenth century, women are being excluded from exercising its power: women "seldom show a sense of humor" remarked a writer for the Nation in 1866 (qtd in Wickberg 82). In the last fifteen years, however, scholars and readers have at last confirmed what Kate Sanborn, editor of The Wit of Women, observed in 1885: women have consistently written humor and society has persistently failed to recognize it as such. Recent critical essays and anthologies have begun to rectify what Nancy Walker once termed the "very invisibility" of American women's humor by suggesting that women have a long history of appropriating the role of the humorist, that they have created specific literary forms to bear the weight of their comedic efforts, and that they have turned to humor to serve purposes distinctive from those of their male counterparts (10). Southern women seldom appear in such studies, however. Not until Barbara Bennett's recent examination of southern women's humor, Comic Visions, Female Voices: Contemporary Women Novelists and Southern Humor (1998), do we encounter a sustained effort to examine the South's intersection with gender and the production of humor. In her wide reading of southern women's novels published since 1970, Bennett argues persuasively that women have used satire to debunk specifically southern icons (the southern lady) and codes of behavior (southern honor). Women have used humor, Bennett asserts, to create themselves, to unite themselves, and to transgress culturally prescribed boundaries. Yet as Bennett's opening chapter intimates, southern women's humor is not a phenomenon of the twentieth century's last thirty years. In fact it stretches far beyond even the mid-century authors whom critics generally regard as humorous--Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor, for instance--although even their uses of humor remain largely unexamined. …


BACKGROUND
Sometimes in glaucomatous patients treated with trabeculectomy there is not a correlation between bleb shape and intraocular pressure. So we studied the functional anatomy of the filtering bleb by a ultrasound biomicroscope, using high frequency (50 Mhz) probe, which provides high resolution images of filtering blebs.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
A total of 46 filtering blebs of 46 patients after trabeculectomy were analyzed by ultrasound biomicroscopy (50 Mhz). Dimensions, shapes and structure of blebs were evaluated in 2 groups of patients.

RESULTS
It was possible to obtain longitudinal or transverse images of filtering blebs, to measure the height, to evaluate the reflectivity inside and to follow the route under the scleral flap. Blebs with lower reflectivity and a visible route under the scleral flap had a lower intraocular pressure while the height was not important for a good intraocular pressure.

CONCLUSIONS
So ultrasound biomicroscopy can be a useful method to study filtering blebs and also to explain the mechanisms of filtering structures in patients who underwent trabeculectomy.


During the past few years, researchers and practitioners have developed novel techniques, using ansa cervicalis to innervate muscles of the larynx paralyzed due to surgical procedures carried out in the chest and neck areas. During routine dissection of a middle-age male cadaver, an unusual course of the superior root of the ansa cervicalis was observed. In this case, the superior root of the ansa cervicalis fused with the vagus and ran within the carotid sheath, and then joined the inferior root forming the ansa cervicalis in the anterior wall of the carotid sheath. The study of this case will add to our current knowledge of ansa cervicalis and thus aid prevention of injury to the nerve during various surgical procedures.


Beginning with agoraphobia and claustrophobia in the late nineteenth century, followed by shell shock and panic fear after World War I, phobias and anxiety came to be seen as the mental condition of modern life. They became incorporated into the media and arts, in particular the spatial arts of architecture, urbanism, and film. This "spatial warping" is now being reshaped by digitalization and virtual reality.Anthony Vidler is concerned with two forms of warped space. The first, a psychological space, is the repository of neuroses and phobias. This space is not empty but full of disturbing forms, including those of architecture and the city. The second kind of warping is produced when artists break the boundaries of genre to depict space in new ways. Vidler traces the emergence of a psychological idea of space from Pascal and Freud to the identification of agoraphobia and claustrophobia in the nineteenth century to twentieth-century theories of spatial alienation and estrangement in the writings of Georg Simmel, Siegfried Kracauer, and Walter Benjamin. Focusing on current conditions of displacement and placelessness, he examines ways in which contemporary artists and architects have produced new forms of spatial warping. The discussion ranges from theorists such as Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze to artists such as Vito Acconci, Mike Kelley, Martha Rosler, and Rachel Whiteread. Finally, Vidler looks at the architectural experiments of Frank Gehry, Coop Himmelblau, Daniel Libeskind, Greg Lynn, Morphosis, and Eric Owen Moss in the light of new digital techniques that, while relying on traditional perspective, have radically transformed the composition, production, and experience--perhaps even the subject itself--of architecture.


The aim of this research was to understand better the rheological behaviour of part processed leather in order to improve area yield.
Rheological behaviour was characterised in uniaxial tests by measuring the stress-strain relationship, the immediate and recovered set and stress relaxation. The influence of moisture content, time under strain and applied strain were determined. The effect of drying under strain was also explored. Results were interpreted using rheological and structural models.
It was found that for wet leather the relationship between applied strain and long term set is nonlinear. Moreover, below a critical strain no set is imparted. At this critical strain there is a change from a bending to a tensile mode of fibre deformation. Long term set only occurs in wet leather when collagen fibres are subject to tension. In wet leather, recovery occurs because collagen fibres return to their initial bent configuration.
The long term set of partially processed leather at low strains increases with decreasing moisture content because collagen fibres permanently deform due to the rupture of intra-fibre adhesions. Inter-fibre adhesions formed on drying result in a yield point on the stress-strain curve. At the yield point the adhesions rupture and the mode of fibre deformation changes from stretching between adhesions to bending. A model, which views the structure of leather as adhesion nodes, joined by segments of fibres, has been used to predict increases in the initial modulus caused by drying under strain, in terms of the recruitment of straight fibre segments between nodes.
When material is held under strain, there is a proportionate decrease in stress and increase in the immediate set, which is shown to be consistent with the Maxwell model. The two stage recovery of set is fitted to a multiple Voigt model.
A novel way of achieving area yield without loss of tensile strength or softness is suggested in which the leather's structure is relaxed whilst remaining wet and is then fixed by drying rapidly under strain


Many software applications involve models of data that are manipulated by the application. There is often a need to transform (or translate) the data from one model, into another in which the data is differently structured. In addition, there is an increasing requirement to pass data between different applications, which invariably have different formats for their data models. Both of these issues require a translation of the modelled data from one form to another. The process of translating a model from one form to another is known as model transformation or model translation. The literature on model transformation includes a number of techniques for specifying transformations. However, the majority of these techniques are grammar-based specifications, many of which use a textual grammar, although some make use of graphical (graph) grammars. These subsequently lead to a monolithic one-step implementation process that performs the transformation. This thesis addresses two issues that are related to the area of model transformation. Firstly, it addresses the need for a standard notation that can be used for writing model translator specifications. Secondly, a technique for implementing model translators is developed that actively performs the transformation. Rather than a single step process, that must be executed every time the source model changes, the active implementation approach presented performs a continuous translation updating the target model every time a change is made to the source model. The specification technique makes use of the standardised Unified Modelling Language (UML) and Object Constraint Language (OCL) for specifying a transformation relationship between two object-oriented models, each of which is also specified using UML and OCL. The implementation approach uses an event-based version of the observer pattern enabling the construction of translator to be formed from a number of mini-translator parts, each of which monitors a small set of components. These mini-translators act upon events generated by the model components and update the transformed components to reflect the changes. The specification and implementation techniques described can be applied to many problem areas. In particular this thesis discusses their application to Multiple View Visual Languages (i.e. the UML itself) and automatic performance model generation.


Direction-of-Arrival (DOA) estimation from data collected at a sensor array in the presence of noise has been a fundamental and long-established research topic of interest in sensor array processing. The application of DOA estimation does not only restrict to radar but also spans multiple additional fields of research, including radio astronomy, biomedical imaging, seismic exploration, wireless communication, among others.

Due to the wide applications of DOA estimation, various methods have been developed in the literature to increase the resolution capability, computational efficiency, and robustness of the algorithms. However, a trade-off between the estimation performance and the computational complexity is generally inevitable. This thesis addresses the challenge of developing low-complexity DOA estimators with the ability to resolve closely spaced source signals in the threshold region, i.e., low sample size or low Signal-to-Noise ratio.

Motivated by various interpretations of the conventional DOA estimators in the literature and their implied signal models, in this thesis, we introduce a novel class of DOA estimators which is referred to as the Partial Relaxation framework. In the Partial Relaxation framework, the DOA parameters are estimated from the eigenvalues of a particular modified covariance matrix at each look-direction in the Field-of-View. Simulations show that the proposed DOA estimators achieve excellent performance in the threshold region without exploiting any particular structure of the sensor array.

Theoretical and practical aspects of the DOA estimators under the proposed framework are investigated in this thesis. From the practical perspective, as the computation of selected eigenvalues is crucial for the proposed estimators, we introduce a general and efficient implementation which exploits the underlying structure of the matrix argument induced by the Partial Relaxation framework. Compared with the naive implementation, the execution time of the proposed estimators with the efficient implementation is reduced by multiple orders of magnitude. From the theoretical aspect, a closed-form expression of the lower bound for the estimation error of all unbiased estimators under the Partial Relaxation framework is derived. Consequently, implications and comparisons of the proposed lower bound with theoretical results in the literature are studied and discussed.


Barrier-engineered charge-trapping NAND Flash (BE-CTNF) devices are extensively examined by theoretical modeling and experimental validation. A general analytical tunneling current equation for multilayer barrier is derived using the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin approximation. The rigorously derived analytical form is valid for both electron and hole tunnelings, as well as for any barrier composition. With this, the time evolution (Vt-time) of any BE-CTNF device during programming/erasing can be accurately simulated. The model is validated by experimental results from bandgap-engineered silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon and various structures using an Al2O3 top-capping layer. Using this model, various structures of BE-CTNF with high-κ tunneling or blocking dielectric are investigated. Finally, the impacts of barrier engineering on incremental-step pulse programming are examined.


We analyze individual travel discomfort-time tradeoffs in Paris subway using stated choice experiments. The survey design allows to set up in a willingness-to-pay space to estimate the distributions of elasticities of values of travel time savings to crowd density and time multipliers. Several formulations of a generalized travel cost function are tested. Accounting for heterogeneity in preferences, the econometric models all take the form of an ordered Probit with known bounds. We derive several estimates that could be used for fine-tuning of traffic simulation systems and more general transportation policy analysis.


We present a probabilistic framework for ecient non-negative matrix factorization of discrete (count/binary) data with sideinformation. The side-information is given as a multi-level structure, taxonomy, or ontology, with nodes at each level being categorical-valued observations. For example, when modeling documents with a twolevel side-information (documents being at level-zero), level-one may represent (one or more) authors associated with each document and level-two may represent aliations of each author. The model easily generalizes to more than two levels (or taxonomy/ontology of arbitrary depth). Our model can learn embeddings of entities present at each level in the data/sideinformation hierarchy (e.g., documents, authors, aliations, in the previous example), with appropriate sharing of information across levels. The model also enjoys full local conjugacy, facilitating ecient Gibbs sampling for model inference. Inference cost scales in the number of non-zero entries in the data matrix, which is especially appealing for real-world massive but sparse matrices. We demonstrate the eectiveness of the model on several real-world data sets.


Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for 1984–90, the author analyzes the entrance of young individuals into the German labor market, comparing the experience of apprenticeship graduates to that of graduates from universities, full-time vocational schools, and secondary schools. Apprentices experienced fewer unemployment spells in the transition to their first full-time employment than did non-apprentices. Among apprentices, those trained in large firms had the smoothest transition to employment; once employed, however, apprentices (whether they stayed in their training firm or not) and non-apprentices had similar job stability (as measured by tenure). An estimated 70% of apprenticeship trainees left their training firm within a five-year period. These findings are consistent with the view that apprenticeship training develops general, portable skills rather than firm-specific skills.


This article explores the development of strategic planning and management in the state institutions of Lithuania. The issues of correlation between strategic management and leadership as well as goals set for strategic management from positions of leadership lying within the focus of recent theoretical studies have been taken as the essential dimension to this research. The analysis of formal strategic planning methodology, in particular, its requirements for the content of plans and the planning process, and its change has been carried out based on this approach. The horizontal cross-section of the analysis is the analysis of the methodology from the point of view of regulation centralisation-decentralisation. On the ground of the performed analysis, classification of stages in the development of strategic management is provided. Strategic management prospects are linked to the wider issue of political leadership and democratic strategy communication processes. With respect to this aspect, areas of cooperation for science and public administration practice are sought. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ppaa.11.1.1405


Ormana is a country under the governance of İbradi province, Antalya. The settlement which is located on Toros Mountains with a steeply and stony geography is one of the significant samples of Mediterranean architecture known for its constructions built with conventional materials, technics and methods. The houses dubbed as 'buttoned house' has been categorized within Akseki-İbradi group. The households in Ormana are generally designed and built two stored including basement and first floor. Traditional households mostly share common characteristics and follow each other on subjects such as function, outline of plan and organization of residence. Intensive labor power used to build mansions is not applied to build plain and simple public apartments. The most encountered construction method in the area is the common construction technic. The method, traditionally called as 'wall with pistuvan or wall with hatil' is extremely simple but functional based on strengthening the walls that built without concrete through wooden 'hatil'. The reason for this technic is that Ormana and its periphery is deprived of lime sources geologically. The archaic knowledge of this architectural style, using these domestic materials as a crucial part of construction, without a doubt, is a part of our cultural legacy. Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is defined by UNESCO as practices, representations, expressions, information, skills and other parts of these such as tools, equipment and cultural places belonging to certain communities, groups and in some cases to individuals. An article written according to information obtained through field work in the area, in 2013, embodies the architectural style peculiar to area, architectural terminology, knowledge of construction and construction traditions in context of folklore by definition and analysis.


This thesis addresses the topic of agglomeration externalities. Agglomeration externalities can roughly be defined as advantages and disadvantages local firms experience when locating close to other firms. An old debate exists over the question whether firms benefit more from being close to firms in the same industry, or from being close to firms in a large number of different industries. Put differently, researchers have tried to assess whether firms are better off in specialised cities or in diversified cities. To date, empirical evidence is contradictory and the issue remains unresolved. A plausible explanation that is studied in this thesis is that agglomeration externalities are different in different situations. Another reason explaining why the diversity-versus-specialisation debate has not reached a conclusion that is scrutinized in the thesis is that the distinction between diversity and specialization constitutes a false dichotomy. Industries are related to each other in terms of their technologies. Therefore, some industries are likely to generate more spillovers for each other than others. The thesis is rooted in the evolutionary economic paradigm. For example, industry life cycle theorizing is used to structure thoughts on how agglomeration externalities change as industries mature. Furthermore, evolutionary economics regards economic development as a path dependent process in which new activities are added to old activities by adapting and recombining existing technologies into new ones in a branching process. This notion underlies one of the main contributions of the thesis: the development of a Revealed Relatedness index. This index extracts information about technological relatedness from the product portfolios of plants, allowing the quantification of technological relatedness between almost all pairs of manufacturing industries in the economy. The resulting relatedness structure of the economy proofs to be an important driver of the structural transformation we observe in Swedish regional economies. Methodologically the thesis is quantitative in nature. To study variations in agglomeration externalities, it distinguishes between traditional categories of localisation, Jacobs and urbanisation externalities. Localisation externalities are advantages and disadvantages to firms generated by nearby other firms in the same industry, Jacobs externalities are derived from a large variety of local economic activities, and urbanisation externalities are associated with a large local population. Subsequently, the demarcation between localisation and Jacobs externalities is softened by adding two new classes: related localisation externalities and related Jacobs externalities. These categories capture benefits (or costs) of a local presence of related industries, and of local diversity in related industries, respectively. The most important finding is that agglomeration externalities indeed change as industries and plants mature. In particular, local diversity has a beneficial effect in early development stages, whereas localisation effects are strongest in more mature phases. The importance of technological relatedness is manifest in the fact that related localisation externalities lead to persistently better survival chances. The thesis concludes with the presentation of two broad research agendas. The first suggests studying agglomeration externalities across contexts in a large-scale comparative analysis. The second is concerned with the consequences of reconceptualising the economy as a constantly evolving network of technologically related activities.


The determination of sub-lethal effects of pesticides on beneficial insects is challenging topic because the vast
number of different possible endpoints. Traditionally measured endpoints reflect the basic outcome but do
not give any information about the mode of actions or the real non-harming dosages of the studied toxicants.
Physiological changes, however, reflect even small deviations from normal state. The gas exchange patterns
are sensitive cues to determine the sub-lethal toxicosis in insects. Methods of respiratory physiology have been
used to detect sub-lethal toxic effects of many chemicals, but information for biological preparations is also
needed, especially when bees are used in entomovectoring task.
The aims of this study were i) to clarify which are the effects of three microbiological preparations on two bee
species, honey bees Apis mellifera L. and bumble bees Bombus terrestris L. and ii) could we compare the effects
of the same preparations on different bee species. We saw that honey bees and bumble bees react similarly on
microbiological preparations, however the reaction strength differed. We found that kaolin affects the survival
of bumble bees and honey bees as much as did entomopathogenic preparations, whereas pure spores of a
non-hazardous fungus and wheat flour did not. Bumble bees seem to be more tolerant to microbiological
preparations than honey bees.


Because body image dissatisfaction is such a pervasive problem in adolescent girls, school counselors need to develop effective prevention programs in this area. In this article, a model to promote girls' body image resilience is presented. The model identifies five protective factors that contribute to girls' abilities to resist sociocultural pressures regarding thinness. Specific prevention and counseling strategies that school counselors can use to promote positive body image in adolescent girls are provided.


Self‐stabilized magnetic colloids consist of magnetic particles dispersed in an appropriate matrix. Fixing the particles in a stabilizing matrix has the advantage of preventing particle agglomeration, increasing resistance to oxidation, and allowing control over the interparticle spacing and particle size. We describe the chemical synthesis of cobaltnanoparticles in a polystyrene/triphenylphosphine polymer matrix. Depending on the synthesis parameters, magnetic properties of the as‐synthesized nanocomposites range from superparamagnetic to ferromagnetic with coercivities on the order of 130 Oe. Solvent choice and polymer crosslinking significantly affect the magnetic properties. Annealing in vacuum produces coercivities of up to 600 Oe and remanence ratios of up to 0.4. Measurement of the isothermal remanence magnetization and dc demagnetization indicate the presence of both magnetizing and demagnetizing interactions, in contrast to particles synthesized without the polymer, which show no evidence for magnetizing interactions. The zero‐field‐cooled temperature‐dependent magnetization displays a cusp, while the field‐cooled magnetization increases monotonically below the cusp temperature. Glassy behavior is observed for temperatures below the cusp, although the mechanism producing this behavior is not yet understood.


How many times do you think you have eaten fish this year? Fish is delicious and it's really good for you, but we need to make sure that we don't over-fish our seas and oceans (Fig. 1). That way there are enough fish left to feed us for all the years to come. We propose three simple rules for fisheries management, which would reduce the impact of fishing on the major fish species. The rules would also help to rebalance the ecosystems and reduce the damage
that fishing causes when boats scrape their nets over the seabed to catch fish.


Background. Prior studies report high levels of co-morbidity between major depression (MD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and suggest that these disorders are closely related genetically. The personality trait of neuroticism (N) is substantially correlated with risk for MD and GAD. Method. Bivariate twin models were applied to lifetime diagnoses of modified DSM-IV diagnosis of MD and GAD obtained at personal interview in 1998–2003 with 37296 twins from the population-based Swedish Twin Registry. A trivariate Cholesky model with N, MD and GAD was applied to a subset (23280 members of same-sex twin pairs) who completed a self-report questionnaire assessing N in 1972–1973. Results. In the best-fit bivariate model, the genetic correlation between MD and GAD was estimated at +1·00 in females and +0·74 in males. Individual-specific environmental factors were also shared between the two disorders with an estimated correlation of +0·59 in males and +0·36 in females. In the best-fit trivariate Cholesky model, genetic factors indexed by N impacted equally on risk for MD and GAD in males and females. However, in both sexes, genetic risk factors indexed by N contributed only around 25% to the genetic correlation between MD and GAD. Conclusion. Genetic risk factors for lifetime MD and GAD are strongly correlated, with higher correlations in women than in men. Although genetic risk factors indexed by the personality trait of N contribute substantially to risk for both MD and GAD, the majority of genetic covariance between the two disorders results from factors not shared with N.


Models for repeated measures or growth curves consist of a mean response plus error and the errors are usually correlated. Both maximum likelihood and residual maximum likelihood (REML) estimators of a regression model with dependent errors are derived for cases in which the variance matrix of the error model admits a convenient Cholesky factorisation. This factorisation may be linked to methods for producing recursive estimates of the regression parameters and recursive residuals to provide a convenient computational method. The method is used to develop a general approach to repeated measures analysis.


Nourishing the body is a basic human right. The literature argued that children are born with the potential to develop both physically and emotionally. However, socioeconomic and environmental factors affect the health and nutrition of many children in developing countries. Little research has been done on the dietary needs of children living in orphanages in Ghana. The main objective of the study was to determine the nutritional status, food consumption patterns and dietary intake of the orphanage children. A nonexperimental, descriptive action research with a multi-methodological approach was used. This study was conducted in an orphanage in Tamale. Forty children, 22 boys and 18 girls, aged 2-18 years and 23 orphanage workers formed the sample. Methods included on site observation, completion of a standard demographic questionnaire, a validated quantitative food frequency questionnaire and anthropometric measurements. The nutritional status indicated that, 10% and 15% of the children were severely stunted and wasted respectively (<-2) Z score. The dietary intake data showed energy intakes for the children aged 1-3 years as 963 kcal, 7-10 years as 1627.4 kcal and 11-14 years as 1547.53 kcal and 15-18 years as 1540.6 kcal. Protein intake for the same age groups was 33, 52.1, 50.6 and 49.3 g respectively, with fat 27 g, 33.9 g, 31.9 g, 31.9 g and carbohydrate 150 g, 284.3 g, 269.1 g and 296.1 g respectively. The top five most frequently consumed foods were coffee (232 ml) and tea (232 ml), maize meal (109 g), bread (77 g), white rice (55 g). Protein was limited with anchovies ("Keta schoolboys") and beans as the only source. Orphanage children are vulnerable and disadvantaged members of the community, especially if measures to provide adequate dietary intakes in terms of macro-and micronutrient are not in place. The findings indicated low intake of both macro-and micronutrients with the exception of protein. Nutritional status indicated that, 10% and 15% of the children were severely stunted and wasted respectively (<-2) Z score. The results of this study formed the basis for a nutrition education and training programme that was implemented in the orphanage.


In Her Startling Collection Of Short Stories, Broken Lives and Other Stories, Anthonia C. Kalu creates a series of memorable characters who struggle to hold displaced but dynamic communities together in a country that is at war with itself. Broken Lives and Other Stories presents a portrait of the ordinary women, children, and men whose live have been battered by war in their homeland. Written in response to the Nigerian Civil War, known on the Igbo side as Ogu Biafra - the Biafran War - this collection focuses on the everyday conditions of the local people and how their personal situations became entangled in national crises. The stories capture a diversity of issues, from the implications of self-rule and the presence of soldiers among civilians, to masquerades, air raids, and rape. Through her riveting narratives, Kalu draws the reader into the depths of some of Africa's most troubling issues, such as the concern for safety during the frequent outbreaks of hostilities, which can range from civil unrest to armed combat. How do young people, women, and the elderly cope during those crises? Are the struggles for national political power greater than the everyday struggle for decent living by the person on the street? While conveying the vitality and joy of Africa's women and youth, Broken Lives and Other Stories also examines the impact of the brain drain caused by wars and instability within the continent itself. Both the war against women and women's constant war to survive in contemporary Africa are brought into sharp focus throughout these stories. For readers interested in the last thirty-five years of unrest across Africa, this collection is essential reading.


This paper proposes a new framework able to take into account recursive interactions in bipolar abstract argumentation systems. We address issues such as "How an interaction can impact another one?", or in other words "How can the validity of an interaction be affected if this interaction is attacked or supported by another one?". Thus, building on numerous examples, a new method for flattening such recursive bipolar abstract argumentation systems (ASAF) using meta-arguments is proposed and compared with the original framework defined in [8].


Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by large numbers of senile plaques in the brain that consist of fibrillar aggregates of 40- and 42-residue amyloid-beta (Abeta) peptides. However, the degree of dementia in AD correlates better with the concentration of soluble Abeta species assayed biochemically than with histologically determined plaque counts, and several investigators now propose that soluble aggregates of Abeta are the neurotoxic agents that cause memory deficits and neuronal loss. These endogenous aggregates are minor components in brain extracts from AD patients and transgenic mice that express human Abeta, but several species have been detected by gel electrophoresis in sodium dodecylsulfate (SDS) and isolated by size exclusion chromatography (SEC). Endogenous Abeta aggregation is stimulated at cellular interfaces rich in lipid rafts, and anionic micelles that promote Abeta aggregation in vitro may be good models of these interfaces. We previously found that micelles formed in dilute SDS (2 mM) promote Abeta(1-40) fiber formation by supporting peptide interaction on the surface of a single micelle complex. In contrast, here we report that monomeric Abeta(1-42) undergoes an immediate conversion to a predominant beta-structured conformation in 2 mM SDS which does not proceed to amyloid fibrils. The conformational change is instead rapidly followed by the near quantitative conversion of the 4 kDa monomer SDS gel band to 8-14 kDa bands consistent with dimers through tetramers. Removal of SDS by dialysis gave a shift in the predominant SDS gel bands to 30-60 kDa. While these oligomers resemble the endogenous aggregates, they are less stable. In particular, they do not elute as discrete species on SEC, and they are completed disaggregated by boiling in 1% SDS. It appears that endogenous oligomeric Abeta aggregates are stabilized by undefined processes that have not yet been incorporated into in vitro Abeta aggregation procedures.


In the presented work, I evaluate if and how Virtual Reality (VR) technologies can be used to support researchers working in the geosciences by providing immersive, collaborative visualization systems as well as virtual tools for data analysis. Technical challenges encountered in the development of theses systems are identified and solutions for these are provided.

To enable geologists to explore large digital terrain models (DTMs) in an immersive, explorative fashion within a VR environment, a suitable terrain rendering algorithm is required. For realistic perception of planetary curvature at large viewer altitudes, spherical rendering of the surface is necessary. Furthermore, rendering must sustain interactive frame rates of about 30 frames per second to avoid sensory confusion of the user. At the same time, the data structures used for visualization should also be suitable for efficiently computing spatial properties such as height profiles or volumes in order to implement virtual analysis tools. To address these requirements, I have developed a novel terrain rendering algorithm based on tiled quadtree hierarchies using the HEALPix parametrization of a sphere. For evaluation purposes, the system is applied to a 500 GiB dataset representing the surface of Mars.

Considering the current development of inexpensive remote surveillance equipment such as quadcopters, it seems inevitable that these devices will play a major role in future disaster management applications. Virtual reality installations in disaster management headquarters which provide an immersive visualization of near-live, three-dimensional situational data could then be a valuable asset for rapid, collaborative decision making. Most terrain visualization algorithms, however, require a computationally expensive pre-processing step to construct a terrain database.
To address this problem, I present an on-the-fly pre-processing system for cartographic data. The system consists of a frontend for rendering and interaction as well as a distributed processing backend executing on a small cluster which produces tiled data in the format required by the frontend on demand. The backend employs a CUDA based algorithm on graphics cards to perform efficient conversion from cartographic standard projections to the HEALPix-based grid used by the frontend.

Measurement of spatial properties is an important step in quantifying geological phenomena. When performing these tasks in a VR environment, a suitable input device and abstraction for the interaction (a "virtual tool") must be provided. This tool should enable the user to precisely select the location of the measurement even under a perspective projection. Furthermore, the measurement process should be accurate to the resolution of the data available and should not have a large impact on the frame rate in order to not violate interactivity requirements.
I have implemented virtual tools based on the HEALPix data structure for measurement of height profiles as well as volumes. For interaction, a ray-based picking metaphor was employed, using a virtual selection ray extending from the user's hand holding a VR interaction device. To provide maximum accuracy, the algorithms access the quad-tree terrain database at the highest available resolution level while at the same time maintaining interactivity in rendering.

Geological faults are cracks in the earth's crust along which a differential movement of rock volumes can be observed. Quantifying the direction and magnitude of such translations is an essential requirement in understanding earth's geological history. For this purpose, geologists traditionally use maps in top-down projection which are cut (e.g. using image editing software) along the suspected fault trace. The two resulting pieces of the map are then translated in parallel against each other until surface features which have been cut by the fault motion come back into alignment. The amount of translation applied is then used as a hypothesis for the magnitude of the fault action. In the scope of this work it is shown, however, that performing this study in a top-down perspective can lead to the acceptance of faulty reconstructions, since the three-dimensional structure of topography is not considered.
To address this problem, I present a novel terrain deformation algorithm which allows the user to trace a fault line directly within a 3D terrain visualization system and interactively deform the terrain model while inspecting the resulting reconstruction from arbitrary perspectives. I demonstrate that the application of 3D visualization allows for a more informed interpretation of fault reconstruction hypotheses. The algorithm is implemented on graphics cards and performs real-time geometric deformation of the terrain model, guaranteeing interactivity with respect to all parameters.

Paleoceanography is the study of the prehistoric evolution of the ocean. One of the key data sources used in this research are coring experiments which provide point samples of layered sediment depositions at the ocean floor. The samples obtained in these experiments document the time-varying sediment concentrations within the ocean water at the point of measurement. The task of recovering the ocean flow patterns based on these deposition records is a challenging inverse numerical problem, however.
To support domain scientists working on this problem, I have developed a VR visualization tool to aid in the verification of model parameters by providing simultaneous visualization of experimental data from coring as well as the resulting predicted flow field obtained from numerical simulation. Earth is visualized as a globe in the VR environment with coring data being presented using a billboard rendering technique while the
time-variant flow field is indicated using Line-Integral-Convolution (LIC). To study individual sediment transport pathways and their correlation with the depositional record, interactive particle injection and real-time advection is supported.


Two-dimensional (2-D) viscoelastic finite element models were used to calculate the time-dependent changes in Coulomb failure stresses following thrust earthquakes due to respective effects of relaxation of viscous lower crust or upper mantle and postseismic creep on the main fault or its downdip extension. Results suggest that thrust earthquakes cause a coseismic increase in Coulomb stress along antithetic lobes normal to the slip plane. Following a quake, creep processes that reduce stresses in a ductile lower crust or upper mantle are calculated to cause a transfer of stress to the upper crust. Under certain conditions, transfer of stress may lead to a further buildup of high Coulomb stress along the base of the upper crust, potentially shortening the time to failure of other faults in the region. The conditions under which an antithetic lobe of high Coulomb stress are favored to expand at the base of the upper crust postseismically within a few decades include the following: the lower crust or upper mantle has an effective viscosity not greater than 1019 Pa s; the thrust fault has a moderate dip angle (40°–50°); the brittle/ductile transition is deep enough to provide a corridor at the base of the upper crust for expansion; and the crust has a low apparent coefficient of friction (<0.2). Postseismic increases in Coulomb stress within the upper crust may also be caused by aseismic creep on the fault. Stress changes due to this mechanism are maximized with a high apparent coefficient of friction. Analysis of experimentally determined non-Newtonian flow laws suggests that wet granitic, quartz, and feldspar aggregates may have a viscosity of the order of 1019 Pa s. The calculated rate of stress transfer from a viscous lower crust or upper mantle to the upper crust becomes faster with increasing values of the power law exponent and the presence of a regional compressive strain rate. Results of this 2-D analysis suggest a potentially important role of viscous flow in controlling time-dependent postseismic stress changes that warrant further investigation using 3-D viscoelastic analysis.


This thesis employs a third wave feminist perspective to consider the regular crises experienced by British librarianship concerning professional status and issues of theory and practice. It proposes that librarianship, particularly within the public library, is being contested by a range of external and internal forces with immense significance, and that such processes have occurred at other periods of major change, notably the late nineteenth century and the late 1960's and early 1970s. It explores the gendered roots of such manifestations, and reviews the critiques and other possibilities offered by earlier feminist waves, with those of second wave feminism seen as of particular significance, but limited to their ability to offer satisfactory insights.

Contemporary librarianship is identified as vulnerable because of its difficulty in accepting the gendered nature of its nineteenth-century construction, when the activities of American librarians like Melvil Dewey has profound effects on its ongoing form, components and practitioners. Ongoing debates about librarianship's professional status are viewed, using second and third wave feminist insights from sociology and other theoretical positions including queer theory, as outcomes of late Victorian notions of gender roles that have embedded structures, framework and behaviours within librarianship that still continue. It is argued that the librarianship ratified by the professional library associations resists ideological challenges to its construction and maintenance, with feminism the pivotal example under consideration, and that relevant activity taking place in settings outside the mainstream is frequently invisible. This is proposed as limiting the possibilities of librarianship and the work of librarians, within what is defined as a feminised occupation. A twenty-first century interpretation of librarianship informed by feminism is proposed, and considered through the utilisation of an original concept, gendertopia, derived from Foucault's heterotopia, that describes the transformative potential of libraries and aspects of librarianship.

To undertake this investigation the experience and actions of women librarians within mainstream British libraries were explored through field-work, along with the activities of three contemporary British women's libraries that operate outside the mainstream and which derived form different periods of twentieth century feminisms. The author has been actively involved in some of the activities described, and to reflect this and feminist research methodologies, the development of which are described, an explicit theoretical position is taken that integrates autobiographical and fictional material.


The design of an organization--the accountability system that defines roles, rights, and responsibilities throughout the firm--has a direct impact on the performance of every employee. Yet, few leaders devote focused attention to how this design is chosen, implemented, and adjusted over time. Robert Simons argues that by viewing design as a powerful and proactive management lever--rather than an inevitable outcome of corporate evolution--leaders can maximize productivity across every level of the organization. Levers of Organization Design presents a new design theory based on four key yet often underrated categories: customer definition, critical performance variables, creative tension, and commitment to mission. Building from these core areas, Simons lays out a step-by-step process leaders can follow to create structures and accountability systems that positively influence how people do their work, where they focus their attention, and how their activities can be aligned to contribute to overall strategic goals. He also introduces four levers of organizational design--unit configuration, diagnostic control systems, interactive networks, and responsibility to others--that leaders can manipulate to improve overall organizational efficiency and effectiveness vastly. For anyone accountable for measuring and managing performance, this book shows how good design can become an organization's roadmap to success. Robert Simons is the Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration in the accounting & control area at Harvard Business School.


Cyclosporine is crucial for the prevention of organ allograft rejection and allogeneic graft-vs-host disease (GVHD). Despite its potent immunosuppressive activity, cyclosporine elicits a T cell-mediated autoimmune syndrome after autologous or syngeneic bone marrow transplantation, which has been termed syngeneic GVHD (SGVHD). Recent studies have shown that for disease manifestation, a cytoxan and radiation-sensitive T cell dependent host resistance mechanism must be eliminated, allowing the clonal expansion of autoreactive cells. This report characterizes the autoregulatory lymphocyte population, present in normal animals, capable of inhibiting the adoptive transfer of SGVHD. First, twice the number of unfractionated splenocytes from normal animals to those from autoimmune donors ensured complete inhibition of the adoptive transfer of immune reactivity. Second, the phenotype of this host resistance mechanism in normal splenocytes involves dual regulatory T cell subsets. A helper/inducer subset (W3/25+) must be cotransferred with a cytotoxic/suppressor subset (OX8+) in a ratio that approximates the normal ratio in normal unfractionated splenocytes in order to affect inhibition of the transfer of SGVHD. Moreover the specific inducer regulatory activity resides in the OX22-, W3/25+ subset of Th cells.


A completely new near field mapping system based on micro monopole antenna has been developed in order to determine the electric near-field at the surface of MMIC. The possibilities of this innovative experimental setup are shown by 2D mapping of a bend 5 line deposited on GaAs substrate and a coupled-line filter on Duroid 6002. These are supported by 3D electromagnetic simulations. We finally give some results obtained on a real MMIC with a medium resolution of 50µm. The industrial applications are clearly the reliability issues of microwave power devices but also a new tool for MMIC designers. The knowledge of radiated near field will also contribute to optimize the packaging of microwave functions.


Chen Kui was a scholar-official of the Southern Song dynasty. He published the Wen Ze (here translated as The Rules of Writing) in 1170. This book is commonly described by Chinese scholars as China's first systematic account of Chinese rhetoric. The book comprises ten chapters, covering aspects of rhetoric and composition, including the use of rhetorical devices, the functions and methods of citation, and the importance of using everyday language. Despite its acknowledged importance by Chinese scholars, The Rules of Writing' remains comparatively unknown, even within China. This article will focus on three topics discussed by Chen Kui that I hope will be of interest to applied linguists and to teachers of academic writing, especially those involved in the teaching of academic discourse to international students of Chinese background. The three topics are: the appropriate use of language; the sequencing of argument when writing discursive texts; and the methods and uses of citation. It will be argued that writing styles are a product of the age in which they develop, and that these styles change significantly over time, no matter in which culture they may be set. Principles of Chinese rhetoric as discussed here have their counterparts in other rhetorics. They are not uniquely Chinese.


The dynamic fracture behavior of brittle materials that contain micro-level cracks should be examined when material subjected to impact loading. We investigated the effect of micro-cracks on the propagation of macro-cracks that initiate from notch tips in the Kalthoff–Winkler experiment, a classical impact problem. To define predefined micro-cracks in three-dimensional space, we proposed a two-dimensional micro-crack plane definition in the bond-based peridynamics (PD) that is a non-local form of classical continuum theory. Randomly distributed micro-cracks with different number densities in a constant area and number in expending area models were examined to monitor the toughening of the material. The velocities of macro-crack propagation and the time required for completing fractures were considered in several predefined micro-cracks cases. It has been observed that toughening mechanism is only initiated by exceeding a certain number of micro-cracks; therefore, there is a positive correlation between the density of predefined micro-cracks and macro-crack propagation rate and, also, toughening mechanism.


The South African abalone cultivation industry has developed rapidly and is now the largest producer outside Asia. With a rapid decline in wild abalone fisheries, farming now dominates the abalone export market in South Africa. Kelp (Ecklonia maxima) constitutes the major feed for farmed abalone in South Africa, but this resource is now approaching limits of sustainable harvesting in kelp Concession Areas where abalone farms are concentrated. This paper gives an overview of the development of the South African abalone industry and analyses how abalone farming, natural kelp beds and seaweed harvesting are interlinked. It discusses options and constraints for expanding the abalone industry, focussing especially on abalone feed development to meet this growing demand. Kelp will continue to play an important role as feed and kelp areas previously not utilised may become cost-effective to harvest. There are many benefits from on-farm seaweed production and it will probably be a part of future expansion of the abalone industry. Abalone waste discharges are not at present regarded as a major concern and farming brings important employment opportunities to lower income groups in remote coastal communities and has positive spill-over effects on the seaweed industry and abalone processing industry.


Over the past two decades, Reinforcement Learning has emerged as a promising Machine Learning technique that is capable of solving complex dynamic problems. The benefit of this technique lies in the fact that the agent learns from its experience rather than being told directly. For problems with large state-spaces, Reinforcement Learning algorithms are combined with function approximation techniques, such as neural networks. The architecture of the neural networks plays a significant role in the agent's learning. Past research has demonstrated that networks with a constructive architecture outperform those with a fixed architecture on some benchmark problems.

This study compares the performance of these two architectures in Othello - a complex deterministic board game. Three networks are used in the comparison: two with constructive architecture - Cascade and Resource Allocating Network, and one with fixed architecture - Multilayer Perceptron. Investigation is also made with respect to input representation, number of hidden nodes and other parameters used by the networks. Training is performed with both on-policy (Sarsa) and off-policy (Q-Learning) algorithms.

Results show that agents were able to learn the positional strategy (novice strategy in Othello) and could beat each of the three built-in opponents. Agents trained with Multilayer Perceptron perform better, but converge slower than those trained with Cascade.


Book Review Scandal Proof: Do Ethics Laws Make Government Ethical? G. Calvin Mackenzie 2002, the Brookings Institute, Washington, DC. Calvin Mackenzie's book, Scandal Proof: Do Ethics Laws Make Government Ethical?, is a concise, yet comprehensive, retrospective analysis of the development of ethical policy in the American federal government from the time of the American Revolution to present day. The author focuses his examination on ethical legislation that has limited executive branch employees, particularly appointed administrators, in the performance of their duties. He describes the impetus for restrictive ethics regulation at the federal level as the perception of scandalous behavior in public office, which brings about new legislation with every newly elected presidential administration. Mackenzie says an expanding cycle of legislative control, in an effort to deter corruption, has created an illusion of regulation by failing to address the actual behaviors that comprise corruption in government. Instead, a bureaucracy of perpetuating enforcement has created an unending appointment process that burdens every presidential administration with a culture of continuous investigation. Added to this equation, is the changing standard of acceptable behavior in government office and in society as a whole. Fueled by multiple policy windows that have altered the methods of influencing policy, ethics regulation has become more encompassing. And, the nature of corruption has adapted to these expanding standards. Mackenzie says population growth accompanied by an increase in government services, and the financial liability that goes with them, have complicated the situation to a point of inefficacy. The author presents two pivotal moments in time as the main springs to the current situation that surrounds ethical regulation in government. The first is the growth of government that began with President Franklin's 1930's New Deal ' followed by the expansion of the American role in the world after the second World War. New social welfare and world stewardship roles were assumed to have stimulated growth in government not previously experienced. Mackenzie accentuates this point by declaring, "Big government arrived in mid-century, and has never left" (p. 5). The second is President John Kennedy's 1961 initiative for new ethics legislation based on his Ethics and Conflict of Interest in Government advisory panel's denunciation of the "inconsistent, overlapping, and, in some cases, contradictory" (p. 22) ethics regulations existing at that time. Congress responded with new enforcement legislation. Since then, each succeeding presidential administration has added to the ethical requirements for public service in the federal government through a stringent reliance on enforcement regulations. Ironically, a reciprocating cycle of presidential emphasis on ethics to appease public sentiment has limited the flexibility of the president. The momentum begun by President Kennedy culminated in The Ethics in Government Act of 1978. This law was aimed at restoring the confidence of the American people in government following the Watergate Scandal of the early 1970's. It established a. framework of ethics regulation that has since been continuously amended in piecemeal fashion. The author maintains that the resulting outcome is an overabundance of regulation that does little to address the misbehavior characteristic of the Watergate Scandal, but tightens the regulatory net of enforcement that invades every aspect of federal employment. The end result is a declining pool of candidates for presidential appointments and a reduction in the implementation of public mandates. Mackenzie presents a justifiable argument in support of his premise that the excessive ethical regulation of federal employees is smothering government efficiency and effectiveness. He proposes that trust in government officials by the American people has declined despite the immense infusion of ethics regulation. …


\textit{Differentiable ARchiTecture Search} (DARTS) has recently become the mainstream of neural architecture search (NAS) due to its efficiency and simplicity. With a gradient-based bi-level optimization, DARTS alternately optimizes the inner model weights and the outer architecture parameter in a weight-sharing supernet. A key challenge to the scalability and quality of the learned architectures is the need for differentiating through the inner-loop optimisation. While much has been discussed about several potentially fatal factors in DARTS, the architecture gradient, a.k.a. hypergradient, has received less attention. In this paper, we tackle the hypergradient computation in DARTS based on the implicit function theorem, making it only depends on the obtained solution to the inner-loop optimization and agnostic to the optimization path. To further reduce the computational requirements, we formulate a stochastic hypergradient approximation for differentiable NAS, and theoretically show that the architecture optimization with the proposed method, named iDARTS, is expected to converge to a stationary point. Comprehensive experiments on two NAS benchmark search spaces and the common NAS search space verify the effectiveness of our proposed method. It leads to architectures outperforming, with large margins, those learned by the baseline methods.


This paper shows that investors financing a portfolio of projects may use the depth of their financial pockets to overcome entrepreneurial incentive problems. Competition for scarce informed capital at the refinancing stage strengthens investors' bargaining positions. And yet, entrepreneurs' incentives may be improved, because projects funded by investors with "shallow pockets" must have not only a positive net present value at the refinancing stage, but one that is higher than that of competing portfolio projects. Our paper may help to understand provisions used in venture capital finance that limit a fund's initial capital and make it difficult to add more capital once the initial venture capital fund is raised.


Theoretical investigations of the interactions between carbon monoxide (CO) and bromopentafluorobenzene (C6F5Br) have been carried out at both M06-2X/6-311++G(2d,2p) and M06-2X/aug-cc-pVTZ levels of theory. Because both C and O atom-ends of CO show negative electrostatic potential, they can favorably interact with the positive electrostatic potential generated by the σ-hole of Br and the π-hole of the aromatic ring of C6F5Br, yielding four different dimers and trimers. Their structures, spectroscopy and nature were systematically studied. The competition between the interactions involving the σ-hole of the Br atom and the π-hole of C6F5Br with the C and O atom-ends of CO was illustrated for the dimers and trimers, and meanwhile, the cooperativity between the two components of the trimers was elaborated. In addition, the experimental FT-IR and fluorescence spectra were measured for C6F5Br and the mixed C6F5Br and CO system without and with the solvent of hexane to gain information on the formation of molecular complexes between C6F5Br and CO. The results presented in this work are beneficial for the understanding of the competition and cooperativity of σ- and π-hole intermolecular interactions.


We report a facile biomimetic sol-gel synthesis using the sponge phase formed by the lipid monoolein as a structure-directing template, resulting in high phase purity, mesoporous dysprosium- and gadolinium titanates. The stability of monoolein in a 1,4-butanediol and water mixture complements the use of a simple sol-gel metal oxide synthesis route. By judicious control of the lipid/solvent concentration, the sponge phase of monoolein can be directly realised in the pyrochlore material, leading to a porous metal oxide network with an average pore diameter of 10 nm.


Abstract. The temperature dependence of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation from ozonolysis of β-pinene was studied in a flow reactor at 263 K–303 K and 1007 hPa under dry and humid conditions (0% and 26%–68% relative humidity, respectively). The observed SOA yields reached maximum values of 0.18–0.39 at high particle mass concentrations ( M o ). Under dry conditions, the measurement data showed an overall increase in SOA yield with inverse temperature, but significant oscillatory deviations from the predicted linear increase with inverse temperature (up to 50% at high M o ) was observed. Under humid conditions the SOA yield exhibited a linear decrease with inverse temperature. For the atmospherically relevant concentration level of M o =10 μg m −3 and temperature range 263 K–293 K, the results from humid experiments in this study indicate that the SOA yield of β-pinene ozonolysis may be well represented by an average value of 0.15 with an uncertainty estimate of ±0.05. When fitting the measurement data with a two-product model, both the partitioning coefficients ( K om,i ) and the stoichiometric yields (α i ) of the low-volatile and semi-volatile model species were found to vary with temperature. The results indicate that not only the reaction product vapour pressures but also the relative contributions of different gas-phase or multiphase reaction channels are strongly dependent on temperature and the presence of water vapour. In fact, the oscillatory positive temperature dependence observed under dry conditions and the negative temperature dependence observed under humid conditions indicate that the SOA yield is governed much more by the temperature and humidity dependence of the involved chemical reactions than by vapour pressure temperature dependencies. We suggest that the elucidation and modelling of SOA formation need to take into account the effects of temperature and humidity on the pathways and kinetics of the involved chemical reactions as well as on the gas-particle partitioning of the reaction products.