The lifestory of Mary I-daughter of Henry VIII and his Spanish wife, Catherine of Aragon-is often distilled to a few dramatic episodes: her victory over the attempted coup by Lady Jane Grey, the imprisonment of her half-sister Elizabeth, the bloody burning of Protestants, her short marriage to Philip of Spain. This original and deeply researched biography paints a far more detailed portrait of Mary and offers a fresh understanding of her religious faith and policies as well as her historical significance in England and beyond. John Edwards, a leading scholar of English and Spanish history, is the first to make full use of Continental archives in this context, especially Spanish ones, to demonstrate how Mary's culture, Catholic faith, and politics were thoroughly Spanish. Edwards begins with Mary's origins, follows her as she battles her increasingly erratic father, and focuses particular attention on her notorious religious policies, some of which went horribly wrong from her point of view. The book concludes with a consideration of Mary's five-year reign and the frustrations that plagued her final years.Childless, ill, deserted by her husband, Mary died in the full knowledge that her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth would undo her religious work and, without acknowledging her sister, would reap the benefits of Mary's achievements in government.


All ultrasound exposure indices that have been formulated up to the present time assume that the propagation of ultrasound is linear. In fact, under most exposure conditions for which biological effects may be a concern, sound propagation is highly nonlinear. A nonlinear propagation model has been used to evaluate the nature of the effects that occur under realistic exposure conditions encountered in diagnostic procedures. Because of the way that the thermal index is defined, it turns out that ignoring nonlinear propagation leads to underestimates of tissue temperature increments that typically are less than 40%. As currently implemented, the mechanical index may be underestimated by more than a factor of 2 because it ignores the saturation of the sound fields that result from nonlinear propagation. For large propagation distances in soft tissues (e.g., 10 cm at 3 MHz in liver), however, it is physically difficult to exceed tissue pressures corresponding to MI≳2 because of these same saturation phenomena.


This first report from the Beckley Foundation Drug Policy Programme (BFDPP) discusses the global drug control system - particularly the role of the United Nations – and the challenges confronting drug policy. It argues that the current system is not achieving its stated objective: to eradicate completely – or even substantially reduce – illicit drug markets. On the contrary, over four fifths of the 92 countries that reported on progress to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said that drug use in their populations was either not coming down or – in the majority of cases – was still going up.
The BFDPP is calling for a fundamental review of the impact of this global framework. The overarching objectives of global drug policy should be to reduce crime and nuisance, death, physical and mental illness, damage to children and families and failure in education and employment resulting from drug use. This report will ask whether these objectives are being achieved and which strategies are most likely to deliver positive results in the future.
It is concluded that the drug free world currently sought by the UN is an impossible ideal, but a world in which far less harm is caused as a result of the production, trafficking and consumption of drugs is both an inspiring ideal and an achievable objective.


An improved design concept for aerogel vacuum thermal-insulation panels calls for multiple layers of aerogel sandwiched between layers of aluminized Mylar (or equivalent) poly(ethylene terephthalate), as depicted in the figure. This concept is applicable to both the rigid (brick) form and the flexible (blanket) form of aerogel vacuum thermal-insulation panels. Heretofore, the fabrication of a typical aerogel vacuum insulating panel has involved encapsulation of a single layer of aerogel in poly(ethylene terephthalate) and pumping of gases out of the aerogel-filled volume. A multilayer panel according to the improved design concept is fabricated in basically the same way: Multiple alternating layers of aerogel and aluminized poly(ethylene terephthalate) are assembled, then encapsulated in an outer layer of poly(ethylene terephthalate), and then the volume containing the multilayer structure is evacuated as in the single-layer case. The multilayer concept makes it possible to reduce effective thermal conductivity of a panel below that of a comparable single-layer panel, without adding weight or incurring other performance penalties. Implementation of the multilayer concept is simple and relatively inexpensive, involving only a few additional fabrication steps to assemble the multiple layers prior to evacuation. For a panel of the blanket type, the multilayer concept, affords the additional advantage of reduced stiffness.


In Switzerland, the largest railway stations are called "RailCities" by the Swiss Railways. It emphasizes their transformation into place to live and perform several different activities, similar to a small-scale city. Similar concerns than in urban areas are increasing: escalating costs of new infrastructure, increasing concerns regarding traffic congestion, scarcity of land use. Pedestrian demand management strategies would allow to modify individual travel behavior. The activity-based approach models the interactions shaping the activity participation patterns. Traveling is seen as a derived demand from the need to pursue activities. Several models have been proposed. Activity scheduling model in an entire-day framework is a mix of rule-based algorithm, duration models and discrete choice structures. The biggest drawback of most of these models is the postulated rules: they are structured on home and tours from home, with models applied sequentially according to priorities of activity types. Very often, the large dimensionality of the problem (activity types, continuous time, number of episodes in the day) implies aggregation (broad periods of time, mandatory vs non mandatory, primary vs secondary) or hierarchy of dimensions. We are developing a modeling framework based on path choice. The activity-episode sequence is seen as a path in an activity network. The sequence is not home-based nor tour-based, so that the model can be applied in different contexts, both urban and pedestrian. The large dimensionality is managed through an importance sampling based on Metropolis-Hastings algorithm for the generation of the choice set. The time is discretized in regular intervals. The utility of an activity-episode sequence is the sum of individual trips and activities, including the time-of-day preferences and the satiation effects. First estimation results are presented based on data from WiFi traces.


We consider a general model in which there is a coupled dynamics of node states and link states in a network. This coupled dynamics coevolves with dynamical changes of the topology of the network caused by a link rewiring mechanism. Such coevolution model features the interaction of the local dynamics of node and link states with the nonlocal dynamics of link rewiring in a random network. The coupled dynamics of the states of the nodes and the links produces by itself an absorbing phase transition which is shown to be robust against the link rewiring mechanism. However, the dynamics of the network gives rise to significant physical changes, specially in the limit in which some links do not change state but are always rewired. Firstly a network fragmentation occurs at the critical line of the absorbing-state transition, and only at this line, so that fragmentation is a manifestation of criticality. Secondly, in the active phase of the absorbing-state transition, finite-size fluctuations take the system to a single network component consensus phase, while other configurations are possible in the absence of rewiring. In addition, this phase is reached after a survival time that scales linearly with system size, while the survival time scales exponentially with system size when there is no rewiring. A social interpretation of our results contribute to the description of processes of emergence of social fragmentation and polarization.


We study flag enumeration in intervals in the Bruhat order on a Coxeter group by means of a structural recursion on intervals in the Bruhat order. The recursion gives the isomorphism type of a Bruhat interval in terms of smaller intervals, using basic geometric operations which preserve PL sphericity and have a simple effect on the cd-index. This leads to a new proof that Bruhat intervals are PL spheres as well a recursive formula for the cd-index of a Bruhat interval. This recursive formula is used to prove that the cd-indices of Bruhat intervals span the space of cd-polynomials. The structural recursion leads to a conjecture that Bruhat spheres are "smaller" than polytopes. More precisely, we conjecture that if one fixes the lengths of $x$ and $y$, then the cd-index of a certain dual stacked polytope is a coefficientwise upper bound on the cd-indices of Bruhat intervals $[x,y]$. We show that this upper bound would be tight by constructing Bruhat intervals which are the face lattices of these dual stacked polytopes. As a weakening of a special case of the conjecture, we show that the flag h-vectors of lower Bruhat intervals are bounded above by the flag h-vectors of Boolean algebras (i. e. simplices).


Little research was done in the past concerning the propagation of three dimensional effect in shallow wake flow caused by a roughness patch. Today's research on related subjects is dominated by emerging obstructions in shallow water where the flow can be assumed as (quasi) two dimensional. However the relevance of a submerged obstruction with increased roughness can be found in wake control, oyster reefs, river- and estuary bottoms and heterogeneous land occupancy. To get a better understanding of the consequences of the three dimensionality of the flow structures, experiments are performed in a wide shallow flume to examine these structures. The main objective is to examine whether the wake structure of a roughness patch can be treated as (quasi)-two-dimensional. The objective has been answered by a combination of a literature study and an experiment performed at the faculty's laboratory. The results show four dominant mechanisms in the wake of a roughness patch: transverse mass flux, bottom friction, mixing layer and the secondary circulation. Based on a momentum balance the transverse mass flux and the bottom friction are the largest contributions to this balance. Although the contribution of the mixing layer and the secondary circulation to the recovery of the wake are of the order of 10%, their influence on the flow structure is more pronounced. The mixing layer is shifted towards the wake centerline due to the presence of a transverse mass flux forming a misalignment between the maximum spanwise Reynolds stress and the position of the wake half width. Since this shift is of limited influence on the position of the secondary circulation, a misalignment if formed between the maximum momentum transport by the secondary circulation and the mixing layer causing a lower streamwise velocity at the edge of wake with respect to the wake of an emerging obstruction. The secondary circulation is responsible for the transport of low momentum fluid towards the edge of the wake near the bottom, and high momentum fluid towards the wake centerline near the surface. This behavior is responsible for the cross gradient in the streamwise velocity profiles as shown by the data obtained. For modeling purposes of well mixed quantities, a (quasi)-two-dimensional approach only holds if the weaker streamwise velocity near the edge of the wake is taken into account. In the case a prediction of depth varying quantities is desired, the cross gradient caused by the secondary circulation needs to be implemented as well which results in the need of a three-dimensional modeling approach.


A spherical drop, placed in a second liquid of the same density, is subjected to shearing between parallel plates. The subsequent flow is investigated numerically with a volume-of-fluid (VOF) method. The scheme incorporates a semi-implicit Stokes solver to enable computations at low Reynolds number. Our simulations compare well with previous theoretical, numerical, and experimental results. For capillary numbers greater than the critical value, the drop deforms to a dumbbell shape and daughter drops detach via an end-pinching mechanism. The number of daughter drops increases with the capillary number. The breakup can also be initiated by increasing the Reynolds number.


Internationally, political and academic discourse is increasingly focussed on two intensifying trends: the underprovision of environmental quality and population ageing. However, the potential interrelationship between these two phenomena has been virtually completely ignored. Importantly, the social preference for environmental care is a critical factor explaining the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), the purported inverted U-curve relationship between environmental degradation and Gross Domestic Product. However, little is known about the potential impact of population ageing on the social preference for environmental protection. This is alarming as micro based surveys reveal that demographic factors may indeed affect social preferences for environmental quality (Hersch and Viscusi, 2005). This study explores if and how population ageing contributes to an explanation of the EKC via willingness to pay. The main results can be summarised as follows. In three EKC specifications for air pollutants, we find that the estimated coefficients for population ageing are positive and statistically different from zero, indicating that population ageing may increase pollution emissions. Using Baldwin's (1995) decomposition of actual pollution emissions, we propose alternative explanations for this result. In particular, population ageing may negatively impact abatement expenditure either through individual preferences or a tighter government budget constraint which channels expenditure away from the environmental protection.


This paper looks at the ways in which broadband networks can support sustainability, focusing on the actions of individual consumers in Australia. It centres on the arguments that broadband can be used to substitute physical products with digital ones, and to substitute physical activities (like travel) with digital ones (like videoconferencing and telework). Data on current broadband availability, uptake and usage in Australia are presented. The idea that broadband technologies are currently taken up in ways that encourage sustainable action is challenged, noting that average users are not yet sufficiently interested in, or comfortable with broadband technologies to act in ways that enable sustainability. Recognising that broadband networks do have the potential to encourage sustainability at the household level, the paper identifies current constraints and offers some suggestions on mitigating them.


Stochastic local search is one of the most successful methods for model finding in propositional satisfiability. However, many combinatorial problems have no concise propositional encoding. In this paper, we show that domain-independent local search for satisfiability (Walksat) can be generalized to handle systems of linear pseudo-Boolean (0-1 integer) constraints, a representation that is widely used in operations research. We introduce the algorithm WSAT (PB) and demonstrate its potential in two case studies. The first application is an optimization problem from radar surveillance. Experiments on problems of realistic size show that WSAT (PB) is an efficient heuristic to find good approximate solutions. For most of the test problems, it found provably optimal solutions. In the second case study, we show that pseudo-Boolean local search can efficiently solve the progressive party problem, a problem that is hard for constraint programming with chronological backtracking, and whose 0-1 encoding is beyond the size limitations of integer linear programming.


Foam flooding is one of the enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods. Stability of the produced foam plays a significant role in overall efficiency of foam flooding. Polymers can be added to foam solutions to improve foam stability and enhance its characteristics. In this study the feasibility of improving foam stability by polymer addition is investigated. Alkyl Ethoxy Sulfate (AES) surfactant as the anionic surfactant and Cetyl Trimethyl Ammonium Bromide (CTAB) as the cationic surfactant are used as the foaming agents. The effects of polymer addition on foam stability is determined by the addition of different concentrations (0-3000 ppm) of PHPA and xanthan to foam solution and finally foam stability as the time taken for 80% of the foam to collapse was determined accordingly. The experimental results showed that CTAB performed better than AES as the foaming agent. Foam stability was enhanced by the addition of both PHPA and xanthan to foam solutions. Xanthan was more compatible with formation brine and PHPA was more compatible with fresh water to enhance foam stability.


EMBO Reports (2018) e46262

Sometimes, it is not until after you have started a new job that you get a sense of the skills your employer was looking for when hiring you. I had been working as an assistant professor of biology for over 6 months when I finally figured out what kind of scientist the department was actually hoping to get: a bioinformatics fix‐it‐all, a quick cure for their expanding genomic woes, an in‐house computational genius willing to lend his powers to every graduate thesis containing a next‐generation sequencing (NGS) dataset. Sadly, I may have disappointed some of my colleagues.

Like many evolutionary biologists, my research relies heavily on molecular sequence data, and because of this I am sometimes categorized as a bioinformatician—admittedly, I occasionally market myself as one—when, in fact, I am merely an end user of sophisticated software, pipelines, and programs that genuine bioinformaticians have designed. Of course, I have picked up some computational skills along the way, enough to assemble and analyze the mitochondrial and chloroplast genomes that encompass my research life. But I am a far cry from being able to perform, for example, the in‐depth analyses needed for high‐quality metagenomics work. Consequently, when a graduate student or colleague knocks on my office door and says, "Hey, Dave. We just did a ton of next‐gen on … and we were hoping that you could help analyze the data," I feign a smile and resist the urge to crawl under my desk.

When I started my job and word got around that a "sequencing" person had arrived, my inbox became bloated with emails from students and coworkers asking for help. In most cases, I tried my best to offer sound advice: "Have you tried this software?" "How about applying this measure to your data?" "Maybe you …


A search for evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model in final states with multiple high-transverse-momentum jets is performed using 20.3 fb−1 of proton-proton collision data at √ s = 8 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. No significant excess of events beyond Standard Model expectations is observed, and upper limits on the visible cross sections for non-Standard Model production of multi-jet final states are set. A wide variety of models for black hole and string ball production and decay are considered, and the upper limit on the cross section times acceptance is as low as 0.16 fb at the 95% confidence level. For these models, excluded regions are also given as function of the main model parameters.


Diagnostic testing in patients with congenital heart disease is usually performed supine and at rest, conditions not representative of their typical hemodynamics. Upright exercise measurements of blood flow may prove valuable in the assessment of these patients, but data in normal subjects are first required. With the use of a 0.5-T open magnet, a magnetic resonance-compatible exercise cycle, and cine phase-contrast techniques, time-dependent blood flow velocities were measured in the right (RPA), left (LPA), and main (MPA) pulmonary arteries and superior (SVC) and inferior (IVC) vena cavae of 10 healthy 10- to 14-yr-old subjects. Measurements were made at seated rest and during upright cycling exercise (150% resting heart rate). Mean blood flow (l/min) and reverse flow index were computed from the velocity data. With exercise, RPA and LPA mean flow increased 2.0 +/- 0.5 to 3.7 +/- 0.7 (P < 0.05) and 1.6 +/- 0.4 to 2.9 +/- 0.8 (P < 0.05), respectively. Pulmonary reverse flow index (rest vs. exercise) decreased with exercise as follows: MPA: 0.014 +/- 0.012 vs. 0.006 +/- 0.006 [P = not significant (NS)], RPA: 0.005 +/- 0.004 vs. 0.000 +/- 0.000 (P < 0.05), and LPA: 0.041 +/- 0.019 vs. 0.014 +/- 0.016 (P < 0.05). SVC and IVC flow increased from 1.5 +/- 0.2 to 1.9 +/- 0.6 (P = NS) and 1.6 +/- 0.4 to 4.9 +/- 1.3 (P < 0.05), respectively. A 56/44% RPA/LPA flow distribution at both rest and during exercise suggests blood flow distribution is dominated by distal pulmonary resistance. Reverse flow in the MPA appears to originate solely from the LPA while the RPA is in relative isolation. During seated rest, the SVC-to-IVC venous return ratio is 50/50%. With light/moderate cycling exercise, IVC flow increases by threefold, whereas SVC remains essentially constant.


In the wake of the Supreme Court decision in Carter v Canada (AG), Canadian Parliament has legalized Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) for people who are suffering from a grievous and irremediable medical condition. Access is restricted by the definition of grievous and irremediable, which includes being in an "advanced state of decline that cannot be reversed" and being at a point where the "natural death of the person has become reasonably foreseeable taking into account all medical circumstances." Prior to the government's introduction of the new law, a Special Joint Parliamentary Committee had recommended that MAID should be available much more widely, including for those who request MAID for the suffering associated with mental illness. In this paper, the authors argue against providing access to MAID for mental illness. Discussing evidence from Belgium and the Netherlands, they point out that there is a gap between the idealized basis upon which MAID is advocated for patients with psychiatric conditions and the reality of its practice. The assumption that only patients with true irremediable depressive disorders would have access to assisted dying, after careful assessment of their decision-making capacity based on rigorous thresholds, is not supported by the evidence. Because of the necessarily broad criteria used to regulate assisted dying, legalizing the practice for psychiatric conditions will place already vulnerable patients at risk of premature death.


NiFe-Cu-Co trilayer nano-contact spin-torque oscillators (NC-STOs) fabricated on an yttrium-iron garnet (YIG) film were studied in two different modes. In passive mode, i.e. without any NC-STO auto-oscillations, a microwave current through the nano-contact can excite spin waves (SW) in the YIG film, and, vice versa, antenna generated SWs in the YIG film can be detected by the nano-contact. In active mode, i.e., in the presence of auto-oscillations, significant changes appear in the NC-STO spectrum when its frequency approaches that of the SWs excited in the YIG. These results demonstrate strong coupling between NC-STOs and SWs in YIG and open new possibilities of 1) pure spin-current generation in YIG by NC-STOs; 2) mutual locking of a number of NC-STOs through SWs in YIG; and 3) improvement of NC-STO spectra through SW feedback in YIG.


The principle of maximum likelihood reconstruction has proven to yield satisfactory results in the context of quantum state tomography for many-body systems of moderate system sizes. Until recently, however, quantum state tomography has been considered to be infeasible for systems consisting of a large number of subsystems due to the exponential growth of the Hilbert space dimension with the number of constituents. Several reconstruction schemes have been proposed since then to overcome the two main obstacles in quantum many-body tomography: experiment time and post-processing resources. Here we discuss one strategy to address these limitations for the maximum likelihood principle by adopting a particular state representation to merge a well established reconstruction algorithm maximizing the likelihood with techniques known from quantum many-body theory.


The purpose of this study was to explore the reasons why six Malaysian students from upper secondary
school are playing video games, types of games and the features preferred. A qualitative method was being used in
the study. Purposive sampling was conducted in selecting the students. The findings indicated that students played
video games for a great range of reasons. Different students play for different reasons. Some shared common
reasons and preferences. A few findings were very specific and never mentioned before in previous researches.
However, more research needs to be undertaken in order to address the diversity of students with a bigger sample
and different methodology.


Preface: Genetics of plant performance: from molecular analysis to modeling: 1. Genetic and molecular analysis of growth responses to environmental factors using Arabidopsis thaliana natural Variation M. Reymond et al.- 2. From QTLs to genes controlling root traits in maize R. Tuberosa and S. Salvi.- 3. Multi-trait multi-environment QTL modelling for drought stress adaptation in maize M. Malosetti et al .- 4. Accounting for variability in the detection and use of markers for simple and complex traits S.C. Chapman et al.- 5. An integrated systems approach to crop improvement G.L. Hammer and D.R. Jordan.- 6. Crop systems biology: an approach to connect functional genomics with crop modeling X. Yin and P.C. Struik.- Modelling genotype x environment interactions: 7. A modelling approach to genotype x environment interaction:genetic analysis of the response of maize growth to environmental conditions W. Sadok et al.- 8. Modelling genotype x environment x management interactions to improve yield, water use efficiency and grain protein in wheat S. Asseng and N.C. Turner.- 9. Physiological processes to understand genotype x environment interactions in maize silking dynamics L. Borras, M.E. Westgate and J.P. Astini.- 10. Modelling the genetic basis of response curves underlying genotype x environment interaction F.A. van Eeuwijk, M. Malosetti and M.P. Boer.- Physiology and genetics of crop adaptation: 11. Physiological interventions in breeding for adaptation to abiotic stress M.P. Reynolds and R.M. Trethowan.- 12. Physiological traits for improving wheat yield under a wide range of conditions G.A. Slafer and J.L. Araus.- 13. Is plant growth driven by sink regulation? Implications for crop models, phenotyping approaches and ideotypes M. Dingkuhn et al.- 14. Yield improvement associated with Lr19 translocation in wheat: which plant attributes are modified? D.J. Miralles, E. Resnicoff and R. Carretero.- Physiology and modelling of crop adaptation: 15.Simulation analysis of physiological traits to improve yield, nitrogen use efficiency and grain protein concentration in wheat P. Martre et al.- 16. An architectural approach to investigate maize response to low temperature K. Chenu et al.- 17. Tillering in spring wheat: a 3D virtual plant-modelling study J.B. Evers and J. Vos.- 18. Use of crop growth models to evaluate physiological traits in genotypes of horticultural crops E. Heuvelink et al.- Diversity, resource use and crop performance: 19. Role of root clusters in phosphorus acquisition and increasing biological diversity in agriculture H. Lambers and M.W. Shane.- 20. Prospects for genetic improvement to increase lowland rice yields with less water and nitrogen S. Peng and B.A.M. Bouman.- 21. Exploiting diversity to manage weeds in agro-ecosystems L. Bastiaans et al.- Outlook and dialogue: 22. When can intelligent design of crops by humans outperform natural selection? R.F. Denison.- 23. Integrated assessment of agricultural systems at multiple scales M.K. van Ittersum and J. Wery.- 24. A dialogue on interdisciplinary collaboration to bridge the gap between plant genomics and crop sciences P.C. Struik et al.- List of reviewers


Mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) is a technique that provides comprehensive molecular information with high spatial resolution from tissue. Today, there is a strong push toward sharing data sets through public repositories in many research fields where MSI is commonly applied; yet, there is no standardized protocol for analyzing these data sets in a reproducible manner. Shifts in the mass-to-charge ratio (m/z) of molecular peaks present a major obstacle that can make it impossible to distinguish one compound from another. Here, we present a label-free m/z alignment approach that is compatible with multiple instrument types and makes no assumptions on the sample's molecular composition. Our approach, MSIWarp (https://github.com/horvatovichlab/MSIWarp), finds an m/z recalibration function by maximizing a similarity score that considers both the intensity and m/z position of peaks matched between two spectra. MSIWarp requires only centroid spectra to find the recalibration function and is thereby readily applicable to almost any MSI data set. To deal with particularly misaligned or peak-sparse spectra, we provide an option to detect and exclude spurious peak matches with a tailored random sample consensus (RANSAC) procedure. We evaluate our approach with four publicly available data sets from both time-of-flight (TOF) and Orbitrap instruments and demonstrate up to 88% improvement in m/z alignment.


About 39% of the Bosnian population is urban. The main objective of this work is to get an insight into urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) in Bosnia with a focus on legal and regulatory framework, governance, and advisory services' role. Information were collected by a literature review and semi-structured interviews of 30 urban gardeners as well as extension agents and municipal officers in Sarajevo region. The paper analyses references to UPA in the main agricultural development policies in Bosnia; assesses focus on UPA by extension agents; and analyses urban planning and zoning regulations and budget dedicated to agriculture in many municipalities of Sarajevo region. Semi-structured interviews focused also on economic, environmental, aesthetical and social benefits of UPA. Development of UPA requires improving the regulatory framework, promoting multilevel and multi-stakeholder governance, and fostering pluralistic extension and advisory services.


Online graduate programs in psychology are becoming common; however, a concern has been whether instructors in the programs provide adequate research mentoring. One issue surrounding research mentoring is the absence of research laboratories in the virtual university. Students attending online universities often do research without peer or lab support and without previous experience in supervised research projects. This article describes a virtual qualitative research lab course at an online university that both mentored students and collected data through a virtual qualitative lab on a national scale. The authors also address logistics, problems and issues that arose, and suggestions for future courses.


Research examining firm and industry effects on performance has primarily focused on the financial aspects of firm performance. Corporate social performance (CSP) is a major aspect of firm performance that has been under-examined empirically in the literature to date. Adding to the fundamental debate regarding firm versus industry effects on performance, this study uses data drawn from the Kinder, Lydenberg and Domini Co. (KLD) database to examine the degree to which CSP is related to firm, industry, and temporal factors. The results of these analyses suggest that CSP tends to change in a linear manner over time; however, the slope of this line varies across firms and industries. These findings are supported by several robustness checks accounting for autocorrelation, alternative measures of industry, different samples commonly used when using KLD data to measure CSP, and alternative measures of CSP when using the KLD database. The authors also directly compare firm, industry, and temporal effects between CSP and financial performance.


Realistic modeling of vehicular mobility has been particularly challenging due to a lack of large libraries of measurements in the research community. In this paper we introduce a novel method for large-scale monitoring, analysis, and identification of spatio-temporal models for vehicular mobility using the freely available online webcams in cities across the globe. We collect vehicular mobility traces from 2,700 traffic webcams in 10 different cities for several months and generate a mobility dataset of 7.5 Terabytes consisting of 125 million of images. To the best of our knowl- edge, this is the largest data set ever used in such study. To process and analyze this data, we propose an efficient and scalable algorithm to estimate traffic density based on background image subtraction. Initial results show that at least 82% of individual cameras with less than 5% deviation from four cities follow Loglogistic distribution and also 94% cameras from Toronto follow gamma distribution. The aggregate results from each city also demonstrate that Log- Logistic and gamma distribution pass the KS-test with 95% confidence. Furthermore, many of the camera traces exhibit long range dependence, with self-similarity evident in the aggregates of traffic (per city). We believe our novel data collection method and dataset provide a much needed contribution to the research community for realistic modeling of vehicular networks and mobility.


Seedling emergence of low-phytate (LP) soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.] lines has been reported to be lower than that of normal-phytate (NP) lines. One objective of this study was to evaluate if backcrossing the LP trait into a NP line would result in LP progeny with normal emergence. The LP line CX1834-1-6 (CX1834) was crossed to B01769B019 (B019), a NP line with reduced palmitate content, and three backcrosses were made to B019. A total of 36 BC 3 F 4 -derived LP lines from the population were evaluated at five locations in 2005 in comparison with CX1834, B019, and an NP cultivar IA3023. The mean phytate P and inorganic P content of all the backcross lines was not significantly different from CX1834. There were 18 backcross lines that had a mean field emergence that was significantly greater than CX1834 and not significantly different from B019. The results indicated that backcrossing seemed to be successful for developing LP lines with normal field emergence. A second objective of the study was to determine the effectiveness of warm germination, cold vigor, and accelerated aging tests for predicting field emergence of LP lines. Fifteen of the backcross lines were evaluated in the three tests that represented the range of field emergence that had been observed. The tests were useful for identifying lines with inferior field emergence but were not reliable enough to replace field tests for identifying the best emerging lines.


Dramatic changes in the information security risk landscape over several decades have not yet been matched by similar changes in organizational information security which is still mainly based on a mindset that security is achieved through extensive preventive controls. As a result, maintenance cost of information security is increasing rapidly, but this increased expenditure has not really made an attack more difficult. The opposite seems to be true, information security attacks have become easier to perpetrate and appear more like information warfare tactics. At the same time, the damage caused by a successful attack has increased significantly and may sometimes become critical to an organization. In this paper we evaluate one particular extremely asymmetric risk where a strongly motivated attacker unleashes a prolonged attack on an organization with the aim to do maximum damage, and suggest that the probability of such an attack is increasing. We discuss how preventive controls are unlikely to ever be effective against such an attack and propose more advanced strategies that aim to limit the damage when such an attack occurs. One crucial lesson to be learned for those organizations that are dependant on their information security, such as critical infrastructure organizations, is the need to deny motivated attackers access to any information about the success of their attack. Successful deception in this area is likely to significantly reduce any potential escalation of the incident.


Diabetes mellitus is the most common metabolic disorder occasioned by derangement in glucose equilibration between the ECF and ICF. The derangement is known to affect the appropriate balance of electrolytes that serves as a buffer in the body. In this study anion gap was evaluated among outpatient diabetics as compared to non-diabetics control group. The categorization into the study or control groups was done by serum glucose estimation using glucose oxidase method. The study group mean age was 51 ±14 as against control group of 47 ± 10. One hundred and fifty subjects were divided in two groups based on serum glucose concentration. Group A (control group) consisted of 50 subjects with mean serum glucose concentration 4.3 ±1.7 mmol/l and anion gap 13.8 ± 2.6, group B (diabetics) consisted of 100 subjects that had serum glucose concentration 15.0 ± 3.9 and anion gap 18.4 ± 2.5. The glucose was estimation by glucose oxidase method, whereas the anion gap was calculated by subtracting the concentrations of sodium and potassium from the concentrations of chloride and bicarbonate. The concentrations of the electrolytes where assayed using ion selective electrodes (ISE). A statistical significant difference P < 0.05 was observed between group A and B glucose concentrations and the anion gap. The abnormal anion gap was created by the insufficiency of bicarbonate used for the buffering of the electrolytes variability occasioned by derangement in glucose metabolism and distorted hormonal secretion. Hence metabolic acidosis is strongly linked with diabetics as a result of distorted anion gap. Healthcare providers and takers should ensure that anion gap estimation is factored into investigations for the management of diabetics. Also, patients with deranged anion gap should be placed as an emergency case for proper management. Clinicians should ensure that patient's anion gap is within the reference anion gap range so as to prevent development into metabolic acidosis and subsequent ketoacidosis.


This thesis provides an extended analysis of the television policies of the British
Labour Party from 1951 up to the present day. It examines the evolution of Labour's
television policy and focuses on the social, political and economic contexts in which
policies were developed, the party forums in which policies were discussed and the
consequenceso f thesep olicies for British television as a whole. It evaluatest he
contrasting contributions to television policy made by the parliamentary leadership,
the Labour left, the trade unions, and intellectuals sympathetic to the party.
Although the Conservatives have been widely acknowledged to be responsible for
the majority of innovations in British television, the thesis refutes the view that this is
due to any lack of interest in television policy inside the Labour Party. Drawing on
extensive archive material and interviews with key participants, it argues that the
Labour Party has intervened in all the main debates concerning British broadcasting
and has produced a wide range of proposals for the reform, modemisation and
consolidation of television structures in the UK.
The thesis examines the party's response to the development of commercial
television in the 1950s and to the Pilkington Report in the early 1960s. It assesses
the impact on television policy of the Labour governments in the 1960s and
highlights the contribution of left-wing demands for television reform in the 1970s.
The thesis then considers the government's response to the Annan Report at the end
of the 1970s and analyses how the party responded to the Conservative government's
reform of television in the following decade. The thesis concludes with an
evaluation of the role of television in the emergence of New Labour and provides a
critique of the current Labour government's record concerning television
developments.
The thesis suggests that divisions between rival interests in the Labour Party have
undermined the possibility of a unified television policy. The result of these
divisions has been that the leadership has marginalised innovative proposals for reform in favour of policies that have safeguarded the existing structures of and
power relations in television.


Objectives. Data from the Netherlands indicate a recent increase in prevalence of chronic diseases and a stable prevalence of disability, suggesting that diseases have become less disabling. We studied the association between chronic diseases and activity limitations in the Netherlands from 1990 to 2008. Methods. Five surveys among noninstitutionalized persons aged 55 to 84 years (n=54847) obtained self-reported data on chronic diseases (diabetes, heart disease, peripheral arterial disease, stroke, lung disease, joint disease, back problems, and cancer) and activity limitations (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] long-term disability questionnaire or 36item Short Form Health Survey [SF-36]). Results. Prevalence rates of chronic diseases increased over time, whereas prevalence rates of activity limitations were stable (OECD) or slightly decreased (SF-36). Associations between chronic diseases and activity limitations were also stable (OECD) or slightly decreased (SF-36). Surveys varied widely with regard to disease and limitation prevalence rates and the associations between them. Conclusions. The hypothesis that diseases became less disabling from 1990 to 2008 was only supported by results based on activity limitation data as assessed with the SF-36. Further research on how diseases and disability are associated over time is needed. (Am J Public Health. 2012;102:163–170. doi:10.2105/AJPH.


One of the most recent trends in technology field is the 360° technology. In order to investigate its potentiality for the evaluation of memory function, we compared participants' performance in two memory tasks between an encoding delivered through an immersive 360° environment and a non-immersive 360° one. Specifically, we investigated if the immersive 360° environment would facilitate memory encoding in comparison to the non-immersive 360° one. Forty-two participants visualized two 360° pictures of a bedroom containing specific items and items shared by the two rooms, either in the "non-immersive → immersive" order or in the "immersive → non-immersive" one. Results showed that the immersive set-up was able to strengthen the mnestic trace only when participants performed the tasks in the "non-immersive → immersive" order. A possible explanation is a potential familiarity with the technologies used to explore the 360° environments. Overall, these results only partially supported the effectiveness of immersive 360° technology in facilitating episodic memory encoding; future studies should further explore the potentiality of this innovative technology.


Introduction During the last few decades, healthcare expenditures (HCEs) have increased significantly in Iran and throughout the world. Understanding the determinants of such increases is essential to health policymakers in finding the best policies to manage healthcare costs. This study aimed to determine the impact of some of the key explanatory variables on household healthcare expenditures across the provinces of Iran. Methods A panel data econometric model was used to determine the main factors that affected household healthcare expenditures (HHCEs) across the provinces of Iran from March 21, 2006 to February 19, 2013. The data on household healthcare expenditures per capita, number of physicians per 10,000 population, the degree of urbanization, the proportion of the population that was 65 or older, household income per capita, and literacy rate were obtained from the Household Expenditure and Income Survey (HEIS) data in the Statistical Center of Iran. F-Limer and Hausman tests were used to choose the panel data, and Stata V.12 was used to analyze the data. Results Our findings indicated that income per capita, physicians per 10,000 population, and the degree of urbanization had significant impacts on healthcare expenditures. Also, the results of the study showed the elasticity of income, physicians, urbanization, proportion of the population 65 or older, and the literacy rate were 0.25 (p < 0.002), 0.37 (p < 0.001), 5.01 (p < 0.001), −0.1 (p < 0.73), and −1.02 (p < 0.082), respectively. Conclusion The results of the study indicated that the income elasticity of healthcare expenditures was less than 1; health expenditures were considered to be a "necessity good" across the provinces of Iran during the period that was studied. In addition, there were some other factors that affected healthcare expenditures that were not considered in the study, such as the advancement of new technology and the costs of dying. However, it is recommended that future research examine the effect of these factors on HCEs in Iran.


Can we use spiking neural networks (SNN) as generative models of multi-neuronal recordings, while taking into account that most neurons are unobserved? Modeling the unobserved neurons with large pools of hidden spiking neurons leads to severely underconstrained problems that are hard to tackle with maximum likelihood estimation. In this work, we use coarse-graining and mean-field approximations to derive a bottom-up, neuronally-grounded latent variable model (neuLVM), where the activity of the unobserved neurons is reduced to a low-dimensional mesoscopic description. In contrast to previous latent variable models, neuLVM can be explicitly mapped to a recurrent, multi-population SNN, giving it a transparent biological interpretation. We show, on synthetic spike trains, that a few observed neurons are sufficient for neuLVM to perform efficient model inversion of large SNNs, in the sense that it can recover connectivity parameters, infer single-trial latent population activity, reproduce ongoing metastable dynamics, and generalize when subjected to perturbations mimicking photo-stimulation.


Biological tissue is often composed of cells with similar morphologies replicated throughout large volumes and many biological applications rely on the accurate identification of these cells and their locations from image data. Here we develop a generative model that captures the regularities present in images composed of repeating elements of a few different types. Formally, the model can be described as convolutional sparse block coding. For inference we use a variant of convolutional matching pursuit adapted to block-based representations. We extend the K-SVD learning algorithm to subspaces by retaining several principal vectors from the SVD decomposition instead of just one. Good models with little cross-talk between subspaces can be obtained by learning the blocks incrementally. We perform extensive experiments on simulated images and the inference algorithm consistently recovers a large proportion of the cells with a small number of false positives. We fit the convolutional model to noisy GCaMP6 two-photon images of spiking neurons and to Nissl-stained slices of cortical tissue and show that it recovers cell body locations without supervision. The flexibility of the block-based representation is reflected in the variability of the recovered cell shapes.


Climate change is the cause of more frequent and intense rainfall where they affect wireless communications because they cause severe weakening of the power of the emitted signal. These losses reduce network coverage and, therefore, system availability. The proposed solution is to integrate an Internet of Things (IoT) rainfall monitoring system where it will be able to collect real-time data on the height of rain that erupts in a particular place. This data will help areas where base stations install and the distance of the link that may need to be changed to reduce rainfall's harmful effects. So, the prediction of attenuation due to rain is an essential parameter in both terrestrial and satellite connections. The present study uses the ITU-R P 838 and ITU-R P 530 models to theoretically calculate losses in a 5G wireless broadband link with 99.9% link availability. This study conducts three frequency bands, 24 GHz, 28 GHz, and 38GHz, in Palo Alto, California. The travel distance is 5km, while the rainfall rate for the analyzed area is in zone D. The results show that the attenuations are proportional to the frequency, polarization, and rainfall rate. Keywords—Rain attenuation; Internet of Things; wireless broadband


Following up on the IDB-9 commitments, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB, or Bank) established a new Access to Information Policy that took effect on January 1, 2011. The new policy was expected to match international best practices and to increase the overall transparency of the Bank, strengthening its governance and development effectiveness. This review assesses the extent to which the access to information reform has been fully and effectively implemented. The review finds that the new policy largely matches best practices in comparator institutions, with, however, one provision that is unique to the IDB policy and inconsistent with the core principle of transparency: a broadly written exception to disclosure of country-specific information to which a country objects. As evidence of country use of this exception already suggests, this exception could completely undermine the access to information reform endeavor. The policy cannot be implemented effectively unless the country-specific exception is narrowed. Overall, the Bank is in the process of fully implementing the Access to Information Policy. Implementation progress has been substantial in the key areas of designing a regulatory framework, training staff, upgrading the Bank's document management system, and establishing governance structures and processes; and issues are being addressed as they become evident. Still, key steps to full and effective implementation remain under way. As a consequence, the effectiveness of the new policy has been significant in relation to the disclosure of key documents (such as Board-related information) but remains limited overall. Important revisions to the Implementation Guidelines have taken much longer than planned, and remain a work in progress. Timely disclosure and improved online access remain challenges. The share of documents made public under the new policy has decreased marginally, and staff and external stakeholders report limited awareness of the new policy. These findings reflect a need to improve IT monitoring systems to ensure policy compliance, expand staff training, broaden the communications strategy, and improve the online accessibility of information. This review offers six suggestions for further actions to advance effective implementation of the Access to Information Policy: (i) revise the policy to clarify that redaction is the remedy for country objections to disclosure of country-specific information, and make explicit that the final decision on the handling of information lies with the Bank, after consultation in cases of country concern; (ii) to be consistent with IDB-9 commitments to disclose project results, include Expanded Project Supervision Reports (XPSRs) in the list of disclosed information for non-sovereign-guaranteed operations; (iii) to effectively monitor policy compliance, establish a mechanism to spot-check the accuracy of document classification; (iv) enhance and launch the planned tracking system for timely disclosure of public information; (v) improve the IDB's website and better integrate the different repository systems to ensure easy and adequate accessibility to the Bank's information; and (vi) identify and track indicators of transparency.


This study explores the ways in which grade 10 girls experience violence within a single-sex high school setting in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The focus of the study is on their accounts of witnessing violence amongst other girls in the school. The study shows that despite the view that single-sex schools are regarded as a safer option for many girls in South Africa, different forms of violence and aggression are reported by the girls in this study. Violence and aggression are not easily definable but the eye-witness accounts from the grade 10 girls in this study show how in everyday relations violence is gendered, raced and classed. Violence and aggression are also related to sexuality and the study shows how girls fight for boys. This study draws upon a qualitative methodological approach to identify the various forms of violence experienced within this setting. Through the process of analysing semi-structured interviews, this study has revealed that the single-sex environment for high school girls is a highly charged site of violence and aggression. Implications for understanding girls' violence, as well as recommendations to address such, conclude the study. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY 1.


Bendōwa is the earliest extant doctrinal text by Dōgen (1200–1253), revered today as the founding patriarch of the Japanese Sōtō School of Zen Buddhism. It may well be regarded as Dōgen's declaration of independence as a Buddhist enlightened master. Narratives play an important part in this seminal document: they serve to legitimate Dōgen, to place his teaching in the history of the Buddhist tradition, and to explicate various points in the discussion of his doctrine. Narratological analysis elucidates the structural characteristics of the narrative parts of Bendōwa and helps to clarify their meaning and functionality. It may even be successsfully applied to non-narrative, argumentative sections of the text.


There is a limited literature on pre-school children's experiences with digital technologies at home and little discussion of the ways in which children harness these technologies for their own purposes. This paper discusses findings drawn from three studies that investigated the role of domestic technologies and digital toys and games in young children's lives. Specifically, it focuses on children's early communicative and creative experiences, concluding that digital technologies have the potential to expand young children's repertoire of activities in this context. It is therefore important that pre-school and early years specialists recognise and respond to the expertise children will have already developed by the time they enter formal education, given the increasing technologisation of communicative and creative activities, likely to continue over the life course of those born at the start of the 21st century. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic center dot Young children's emergent communicative and creative competences in the early years represent valuable starting points for their more formal developmentparticularly in the context of early literacywhen they start school. What this paper adds center dot This paper explores ways in which these developing competences are supported by domestic digital technologiesthe wide and increasing range of technological tools, ranging from computers and mobile phones to MP3 players and technological toys and games available in the home. center dot It concludes that digital technologies have the potential both to facilitate communicative and creative tasks and to expand young children's repertoires. Implications for practice and/or policy center dot Early years policy in the UK already draws attention to the need to build on the experiences children bring with them from home, including their experiences of using domestic digital technologies. center dot Practitioners need to develop imaginative ways of responding to what children already know and can do with technology, in the context of communicating and creating, given the growing significance of digital technologies in these fields.


Global climate change poses one of the most urgent challenges of our age. The increasing frequency and intensity of weather shocks, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, and hurricanes, adversely affect conditions of agricultural production and jeopardize efforts to achieve global food security. In recent years, there has been a rapidly growing body of literature across multiple scholarly disciplines aiming to quantify and assess the net effect of climate on a number of socially and economically relevant outcomes. Building entirely on original primary sources, this dissertation provides some of the first evidence in a colonial setting on the far-reaching effects of extreme climatic variability on raising property crime, triggering civil conflict and shaping patterns of human settlement. It provides evidence from British colonial Africa and Asia during the first half of the twentieth century (1880-1960). The research strategy consists of both a qualitative and an econometric component. By merging the theoretical and empirical insights of several strands of literature this dissertation has both academic and social merit. Its academic merit lies in its promise to unravel the net effect of climate on society from the many other contextual factors. And its social merit lies in its capacity to reveal key factors that mitigate the adverse effects of weather shocks, enabling effective and tailor-made policy interventions in relatively poor rural communities. This dissertation contributes to deeper explanations of long-term agrarian development in tropical Africa and Asia, and offers fresh input to academic and societal debates on how to mitigate the effects of weather extremes. (Less)


This work defines a situation aware adaptive event stream processing model and scenario specification language. The processing model and language allow the specification of stream processing tasks, which support an automatic scenario specific adaptation of their processing logic based on detected situations and interim processing results. The motivation for this work lies in the missing support of current state of the art Event Stream Processing (ESP) systems for such a "situation-aware adaptive Event Stream Processing" which leads to the problem that for each scenario that requires this kind of processing, a new processing system needs to be designed, implemented and maintained. It is therefore the aim of this work to ease the development of such situation aware adaptive processing systems. An example for such a scenario is the detection and tracing of solar energy production drops caused by clouds shading solar panels as they pass. The scenario requires a processing system to handle large amounts of streaming data to detect a cloud (possible situation). The later verification of the cloud as well as its tracking however only requires a small situation specific subset of the overall streaming data, e.g. the measurements from solar panels of the affected area and its surroundings. This subset changes its characteristics (location, shape, etc) dynamically as the cloud traverses the region. The scenario thus requires a situation-aware adaptation of its processing setup in order to focus on a detected cloud and to track it. This work approaches the problem by defining a situation-aware adaptive stream processing model and a matching scenario definition language to allow the definition of such processing scenarios for a scenario independent processing system. The requirements for the definition of the model and language are the result of an analysis of three distinct scenarios from two application domains. The designed model defines situation aware adaptive processing in three main phases: Phase 1: In the Possible Situation Indication phase, possible situations are detected in a large set of streaming data. Phase 2: The Focused Situation Processing Initialization phase determines whether an indicated possible situation needs to be investigated or if it can be ignored, for example because the situation was already under investigation. If a potential situation needs to be investigated, a new situation specific focused processing is started. Phase 3: In the Focused Situation Processing phase, possible situations are verified and


This paper discusses the approaches to teaching linear equation solving that are embedded in a Standards-based mathematics curriculum (Connected Mathematics Program or CMP) and in a traditional mathematics curriculum (Glencoe Mathematics) in the United States. Overall, the CMP curriculum takes a functional approach to teaching equation solving, while Glencoe Mathematics takes a structural approach. The functional approach emphasizes the important ideas of change and variation in situations and contexts. It also emphasizes the representation of relationships between variables. The structural approach, on the other hand, requires students to work abstractly with symbols and follow procedures in a systematic way. The CMP curriculum may be regarded as a curriculum with a pedagogy that emphasizes predominantly the conceptual aspects of equation solving, while Glencoe Mathematics may be regarded as a curriculum with a pedagogy that emphasizes predominantly the procedural aspects of equation solving. The two curricula may serve as concrete examples of functional and structural approaches, respectively, to the teaching of algebra in general and equation solving in particular.


Spoladea recurvalis (Fbr.) (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) larvae can cause up to 100% foliage loss on amaranths during severe outbreaks. The Bacillus thuringiensis Subsp. kurstaki product Halt® is a biologically safe biopesticide recommended for the management of Spodoptera exigua (Hübner) and Plutella xylostella (Linnaeus). Spoladea recurvalis larvae are less susceptible to the product. Thirteen chemical additives to improve the efficacy of a Bt spray for control of S. recurvalis were evaluated in laboratory bioassays against second‐instar larvae. All the additives except calcium chloride caused an increase in mortality when applied in mixtures with Bt. Among the seven inorganic salts, boric acid was the only inorganic acid that caused more than 50% larval mortality. Boric acid at a concentration of 0.05% increased the activity of B. thuringiensis by 2.9‐fold. Boric acid had the shortest LT50 values of 5.3 days compared with all other combinations. Two nitrogenous compounds, peptone and sodium nitrate, caused 54 and 51% larval mortalities; however, this increase in efficacy was not significantly different from the mortalities caused by Bt applied without any additive. Urea increased larval mortality from 40% to 51%, although the increase was not significant from a Bt spray application only. Citric acid had no significant effect on the efficacy of Bt spray against S. recurvalis larvae. Overall, among the additives evaluated, the efficacy of Bt spray was most enhanced by boric acid and could be further evaluated under field conditions for validation, and integration into an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategy for S. recurvalis management.


Abstract. Mineral dust aerosol can be transported over the nearby oceans and influence the energy balance at the sea surface. The role of dust-induced sea surface temperature (SST) responses in simulations of the climatic effect of dust is examined by using a general circulation model with online simulation of mineral dust and a coupled mixed-layer ocean model. Both the longwave and shortwave radiative effects of mineral dust aerosol are considered in climate simulations. The SST responses are found to be very influential on simulated dust-induced climate change, especially when climate simulations consider the two-way dust-climate coupling to account for the feedbacks. With prescribed SSTs and dust concentrations, we obtain an increase of 0.02 K in the global and annual mean surface air temperature (SAT) in response to dust radiative effects. In contrast, when SSTs are allowed to respond to radiative forcing of dust in the presence of the dust cycle-climate interactions, we obtain a global and annual mean cooling of 0.09 K in SAT by dust. The extra cooling simulated with the SST responses can be attributed to the following two factors: (1) The negative net (shortwave plus longwave) radiative forcing of dust at the surface reduces SST, which decreases latent heat fluxes and upward transport of water vapor, resulting in less warming in the atmosphere; (2) The positive feedback between SST responses and dust cycle. The dust-induced reductions in SST lead to reductions in precipitation (or wet deposition of dust) and hence increase the global burden of small dust particles. These small particles have strong scattering effects, which enhance the dust cooling at the surface and further reduce SSTs.


Sample collection is a common task for mobile robots and there are a variety of manipulators available to perform this operation. This thesis presents a novel scoop sample collection system design which is able to both collect and contain a sample using the same hardware. To ease the operator burden during sampling the scoop system is paired with new semi-autonomous and fully autonomous collection techniques. These are derived from data provided by colored 3D point clouds produced via image-based 3D reconstructions. A custom robotic mobility platform, the Scoopbot, is introduced to perform completely automated imaging of the sampling area and also to pick up the desired sample. The Scoopbot is wirelessly controlled by a base station computer which runs software to create and analyze the 3D point cloud models. Relevant sample parameters, such as dimensions and volume, are calculated from the reconstruction and reported to the operator. During tests of the system in full (48 images) and fast (6-8 images) modes the Scoopbot was able to identify and retrieve a sample without any human intervention. Finally, a new building crack detection algorithm (CDA) is created to use the 3D point cloud outputs from image sets gathered by a mobile robot. The CDA was shown to successfully identify and color-code several cracks in a full-scale concrete building element.


Mistakes in the text and texture of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow become almost as controversial as the more central elements of the novel, but little effort has been expended to categorize and investigate those beyond the realms of verifiable historical and scientific data.1 A brief look at several types of errors in the novel will reveal no apparent pattern, and thus every reason for the increased operations of paranoid critical faculties. The question of mistakes, after all, divides into the incidental and the intended (or, in more Pynchonesque terms, those we can plot over me, and those plotted for and against us). Ultimately, this distinction can be resolved by the element of control--or, as Pynchon suggests through the 2 medium of Carroll Eventyr, "the illusion of control."


Caustic esophageal burns may cause many somatic, mental, and social problems. One of the major sequels is the loss of one's own esophagus. Taking a start from the concept that qfor such accidents, the best is to prevent children from contacting the corrosive substancesq, we made an epidemiological survey. In the first section, we analyzed the parents' attitudes for caustic ingestion, questioning whether they have some precautions at home or not, their level of awareness on caustics. In the second section, we detailed the first- aid at home. Thirdly, we questioned parents' awareness about the law. In the first part, we found that the parents, in general, were aware of drugs trying to prevent their children by keeping the drugs etc. In the second part, we found that almost 70% of parents' choices for the final approach in first aid at home was to visit a doctor's office or a health facility. We did not observe such satisfactory results when we questioned the law aspect of such accidents. Almost 50% of the parents agreed on their responsibility of guilt but most of them did not know the rule of Turkish law about such ingestion or accidents. This study stresses out that, when individually evaluated, the parents' attitudes for caustics etc. are not generally in the wrong direction, but still there is much to do to inform the parents especially the ones who have given the wrong answers both on the medical aspects and the rules of the law. It is worth to spend a multicenter and multinational effort on the preventive aspect of this problem to document the differences of the communities and what is more important for every community in the study, what are the common denominators and what can be done for prevention and if possible, eradication of such a problem by people involved in treating such patients. [Journal of Turgut Ozal Medical Center 1996;3(4):315-318] Key words: Corrosive materials, childhood injury, esophageal injury


Abstract At the global scale, vineyards are usually managed intensively to optimize wine production without considering possible negative impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services (ES) such as high soil erosion rates, degradation of soil fertility or contamination of groundwater. Winegrowers regulate competition for water and nutrients between the vines and inter‐row vegetation by tilling, mulching and/or herbicide application. Strategies for more sustainable viticulture recommend maintaining vegetation cover in inter‐rows, however, there is a lack of knowledge as to what extent this less intensive inter‐row management affects biodiversity and associated ES. We performed a hierarchical meta‐analysis to quantify the effects of extensive vineyard inter‐row vegetation management in comparison to more intensive management (like soil tillage or herbicide use) on biodiversity and ES from 74 studies covering four continents and 13 wine‐producing countries. Overall, extensive vegetation management increased above‐ and below‐ground biodiversity and ecosystem service provision by 20% in comparison to intensive management. Organic management together with management without herbicides showed a stronger positive effect on ES and biodiversity provision than inter‐row soil tillage. Soil loss parameters showed the largest positive response to inter‐row vegetation cover. The second highest positive response was observed for biodiversity variables, followed by carbon sequestration, pest control and soil fertility. We found no trade‐off between grape yield and quality vs. biodiversity or other ES. Synthesis and applications. Our meta‐analysis concludes that vegetation cover in inter‐rows contributes to biodiversity conservation and provides multiple ecosystem services. However, in drier climates grape yield might decrease without irrigation and careful vegetation management. Agri‐environmental policies should therefore focus on granting subsidies for the establishment of locally adapted diverse vegetation cover in vineyard inter‐rows. Future studies should focus on analysing the combined effects of local vineyard management and landscape composition and advance research in wine‐growing regions in Asia and in the southern hemisphere.


In the wake of dramatic policy changes commencing in late 2015, including the Government of Alberta's announcement of the Climate Leadership Plan, the Renewable Energy Program, and the decision to introduce a parallel capacity market into Alberta's previous energy-only market, the future of Alberta's electricity market is uncertain. However, regulatory intervention in an attempt to improve the function of electricity markets and encourage renewable generation is not a new concept. Other jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and jurisdictions in the United States, have used regulatory intervention to address issues in energy markets and to drive renewable generation. Regulatory intervention in these jurisdictions has not always achieved the intended consequences. In some cases, regulatory intervention has exacerbated issues it intended to solve, or created new problems. In other cases, regulatory intervention has relatively improved the function of electricity markets and incited renewable generation. This paper considers the evolution of energy policy and competing policy drivers, including system reliability, use of sustainable fuels to generate electricity, and price surges. The paper will discuss the success and failure of regulatory intervention in select jurisdictions, and how these lessons might apply in the new age of Alberta's electricity market.


This paper analyses academic change in higher education internationally but mainly in Europe. It examines one College in Ireland as it faces major change and examines whether best practice change that has been successful elsewhere might be appropriate in this particular setting, with it's own culture and history. Research is ongoing, using qualitative inquiry and fourth generation evaluation which seeks to address the concerns and issues of stakeholders. It is an illuminative evaluation project that seeks to allow senior management in the College see what is happening elsewhere and evaluate whether such methods might be appropriate in their own college. The focus here is on a literature review of academic change in Europe and the move of some universities to become more entrepreneurial organisations. Changing academic roles and structures are ongoing sources of tension for academic staff in Europe and there appears to be no panacea for successful change. Collegial and bureaucratic institutions are seen to be outdated because of their slowness in responding to a changing environment. Corporate institutions respond quickly with top down change initiatives but often alienate academic staff and so do not harness and maximise the talent at their disposal. An entrepreneurial organisation appears to be the way forward combining top down and bottom up change. This requires major structural and cultural change within the College under consideration and is the focus of ongoing research. There is a gap in knowledge in understanding how best practice change which might have been successful elsewhere can be applied to the specific culture of the College in question. The authors are expected to have some of the outcomes of this inquiry at the time of presentation in June 2007.


Plant leaves harbor complex microbial communities that influence plant health and productivity. Nevertheless, a detailed understanding of phyllosphere community assembly and drivers is needed, particularly for phyllosphere fungi. Here, we investigated seasonal dynamics of epiphytic phyllosphere fungal communities in switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.), a focal bioenergy crop. We also leverage previously published data on switchgrass phyllosphere bacterial communities from the same experimental plants, allowing us to compare fungal and bacterial dynamics and explore interdomain network associations in the switchgrass phyllosphere. Overall, we found a strong impact of sampling date on fungal community composition, with multiple taxonomic levels exhibiting clear temporal patterns in relative abundance. In addition, leaf nitrogen concentration, leaf dry matter content, plant height, and minimum daily air temperature explained significant variation in phyllosphere fungal communities, likely due to their correlation with sampling date. Finally, among the core taxa, fungi–bacteria network associations were much more common than bacteria–bacteria associations, suggesting the importance of interdomain phylogenetic diversity in microbiome assembly. Although our findings highlight the complexity of phyllosphere microbiome assembly, the clear temporal patterns in lineagespecific fungal abundances give promise to the potential for accurately predicting shifts in fungal phyllosphere communities throughout the growing season, a key research priority for sustainable agriculture.


Conventionally, physico-chemical methods are used in mineral processing for recovering value minerals from ores. The ageing of ore processing tailings and waste rocks, and mining tailings contamination by chemical reagents constitute a major threat to the environment. It is imperative to develop novel economically more efficient and environmentally benign methods of flotation and waste processing, exploiting the intriguing and exciting ability of bacteria to selectively modify the surface properties of solids. Microorganisms have not only facilitate hydrometallurgical leaching operations but have also show a great promise in mineral beneficiation processes such as flotation and flocculation. Several laboratory investigations revealed that microorganisms could function similar to traditional reagents. Microorganisms have a tremendous influence on their environment through the transfer of energy, charge, and materials across a complex biotic mineral-solution interface. The bio-modification of mineral surfaces involves the complex action of microorganism on the mineral surface. The manner, in which bacteria affect the surface reactivity and the mechanism of bacteria adsorption, is still unknown and accumulation of the primary data in this area is only starting. The bio-flotation and bio-flocculation processes concern the mineral response to the bacterium presence, which is essentially interplay between microorganism and the physicochemical properties of the mineral surface, such as the atomic and electronic structure, the net charge/potential, acid-base properties, and wettability of the surface. There is an urgent need for developing basic knowledge that would underpin biotechnological innovations in the natural resource (re)processing technologies that deliver competitive solutions.


In recent years, information has played a key role in business competitiveness, allowing not only to inform managers about external contexts, but also to internal problems. Thus, cost accounting has relevant tools, with the ability to provide information about how the resources of a company are used, making it possible to evaluate and improve their performance. The main goal of this thesis is to develop a different costing system model to a company, in order to provide distinct information on the costs of production processes, to help managers make better operational and strategic decisions. This company business is processing and packaging fruit and vegetables, in particular they are organized by three main sectors: fruit, potatoes and 4th range products. Those cost allocation methodologies could be identified, on one hand, the profitability of each product, helping to define the best medium-term strategy and, on the other hand, some operational faults. Basically, this work aims to prove the importance of costing models to improve the performance and the competitiveness in a real context.


Exception handling mechanisms were added to programming languages to segregate normal algorithmic processing from error processing. However, handlers which are typically associated with exceptions through a program's control features, clutter source text when features are nested or when different objects require different responses to exceptions. The authors describe a method for associating handlers with data objects in declarations that better segregates algorithmic and error processing. They call their notion data-oriented exception handling to distinguish it from more conventional, control-oriented mechanisms. Empirical studies of Ada programs indicate that conventional exception handling mechanisms are more complex than necessary and that data-oriented exception handling can be used to produce programs that are smaller, better structured, and easier to understand and modify. >


Shotgun metagenomics of microbial communities reveals information about strains of relevance for applications in medicine, biotechnology and ecology. Recovering their genomes is a crucial, but very challenging step, due to the complexity of the underlying biological system and technical factors. Microbial communities are heterogeneous, with oftentimes hundreds of present genomes deriving from different species or strains, all at varying abundances and with different degrees of similarity to each other and reference data. We present a versatile probabilistic model for genome recovery and analysis, which aggregates three types of information that are commonly used for genome recovery from metagenomes. As potential applications we showcase metagenome contig classification, genome sample enrichment and genome bin comparisons. The open source implementation MGLEX is available via the Python Package Index and on GitHub and can be embedded into metagenome analysis workflows and programs.


We present a detailed temperature and frequency dependence of the optical conductivity measured on clean high-quality single crystals of URu2Si2 of ac− and ab-plane surfaces. Our data demonstrate the itinerant character of the narrow 5f bands, becoming progressively coherent as the temperature is lowered below a crossover temperature T∗∼75 K. T∗ is higher than in previous reports as a result of a different sample preparation, which minimizes residual strain. We furthermore present the density-response (energy-loss) function of this compound, and determine the energies of the heavy-fermion plasmons with a− and c-axis polarization. Our observation of a suppression of optical conductivity below 50 meV along both the a and c axes, along with a heavy-fermion plasmon at 18 meV, points toward the emergence of a band of coherent charge carriers crossing the Fermi energy and the emergence of a hybridization gap on part of the Fermi surface. The evolution towards coherent itinerant states is accelerated below the hidden order temperature THO=17.5 K. In the hidden order phase the low-frequency optical conductivity shows a single gap at ∼6.5 meV, which closes at THO.


The world's leading financial thinkers share their insights into the latest developments in credit derivatives In The Credit Derivatives Handbook, some of the world's sharpest financial and legal minds come together to discuss how credit derivatives have evolved from tools restricted to the banking industry into flexible and customizable instruments used by investors of all kinds. You will come away with the knowledge and insight needed to measure and value risk, as well as the ability to put credit derivatives to work. Over fifteen contributors provide in-depth analyses of subjects in their respective areas of expertise, such as: Key products, applications, and typical trades, hedging and credit structuring Pricing of credit default swaps and synthetic CDOs Design of synthetic CDOs Copula models, with illustrative examples Credit derivatives in investment portfolios Opportunities for structuring credit derivatives in accordance with Islamic finance Comprehensive in scope but executed in meticulous detail, The Credit Derivatives Handbook provides a complete, global perspective of what the editors consider "one of the most important financial innovations of recent times."


This work proposes a task-based methodology for the measurement of employment and investment in organisational capital (OC) in 20 OECD countries. It builds on the methodology of Squicciarini and Le Mouel (2012) and uses information from the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). OC is defined as firm-specific organisational knowledge resulting from the performance of tasks affecting the long-term functioning of firms, such as developing objectives and strategies; organising, planning and supervising production; and managing human resources. Cross-country heterogeneity in OC-related occupations emerges: while 20 occupational classes of the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO 2008) are on average identified as being OC-related, country-specific values range between 14 (in Korea) and 24 occupations (in Poland). A core group of managerial occupations are consistently identified as OC occupations across countries, whereas differences arise in the selection of professionals and associate professionals in science and engineering, health, education, and business administration. Estimates suggest the share of OC occupations in total employment to amount to 16% on average, with country-specific values that vary between 9.5% (Denmark) and 26% (United Kingdom); and that total investment in OC, as a share of value-added, ranges from 1.4% in the Czech Republic to 3.7% in the United Kingdom, with an average 2.2% across all countries. Managers appear to account for less than half of total employment and investment in OC. Total investment in OC results higher in services than in manufacturing. In the services sector, on average half of investment in OC comes from small firms, while in manufacturing, 45% of investment in OC comes from large firms. Finally, the importance of OC investment in the public sector is investigated. With only few exceptions, investment in OC is higher in the public sector than in the private sector. These estimates of OC investment can be used to analyse its role with respect to skill use and mismatch, its impact on the routinisation of tasks and resulting polarisation of wage distribution, and its role in firms' integration and upgrading along global value chains (GVC).


Environmental issues and globalization pushed companies to be more environmentally conscious and socially responsible. Recently, term of sustainability has been extended in various aspects like manufacturing processes to respond to mentioned concern. Moreover, numerous industries and companies applied sustainable supply chain to achieve more advantageous economically as well as environmentally. Many factors exist, that play significant role in SSCM strategies implementation. These critical success factors receive more attention from various angles of management in recent years and help managers to increase competitive advantage and reach to the company's goals. Identification and investigation of CSFs in SSCM is so important to realize the sustainability. Some of these factors are common between two dimensions and some of them are mutual among all three main dimensions in triple line bottom in sustainability. In this paper, related literature around critical success factors in supply chain is explained and some of the factors are introduced. Then role of interaction between critical success factors and sustainability criteria are discussed.


Robotics is being heavily integrated in a great number of daily-life applications, such as domestic assistance, autonomous driving, and healthcare. Other applications, such as entertainment, are beginning to integrate robotic elements. A robotic behavior, however complex, can in general be modelled and implemented as a Finite State Machine (FSM). While these robotic behaviors may typically be implemented using high-level scripting languages such as Lua or Python, or even proprietary solutions, a set of use cases where the efficiency of C++ must be invoked exist. The use case presented in this paper is Robot Devastation, a video-game that combines Augmented Reality elements with robots to emulate combats between robots. Robot Devastation strives for code efficiency to enhance the end-user game play experience. In this work, we present the lightweight reusable C++ library that has been developed for implementing its FSM, reluctantly called StateMachineLib within the rd:: namespace. Aimed at seamless integration with robotic middlewares, let its current loosely coupled integration with the well-known robotic platform YARP serve as a living example its flexibility and usefulness.


Abstract. When applying a quantile mapping-based bias correction to daily temperature extremes simulated by a global climate model (GCM), the transformed values of maximum and minimum temperatures are changed, and the diurnal temperature range (DTR) can become physically unrealistic. While causes are not thoroughly explored, there is a strong relationship between GCM biases in snow albedo feedback during snowmelt and bias correction resulting in unrealistic DTR values. We propose a technique to bias correct DTR, based on comparing observations and GCM historic simulations, and combine that with either bias correcting daily maximum temperatures and calculating daily minimum temperatures or vice versa. By basing the bias correction on a base period of 1961–1980 and validating it during a test period of 1981–1999, we show that bias correcting DTR and maximum daily temperature can produce more accurate estimations of daily temperature extremes while avoiding the pathological cases of unrealistic DTR values.


Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common type of neoplastic disorder diagnosed in childhood. It is the cause of one third of all pediatric malignancies. ALL is characterized by the abnormal production and proliferation of immature lymphoblasts in bone marrow (BM). It seems that ALL occurs due to a genetic mutation in DNA structure producing white blood cell (WBC) stem cells. Because ALL is a systemic disease, its primary management is based on chemotherapy.There are important risk factors responsible for the poor prognosis of  ALL in children less than 1 year old and greater than 10 years old, such as: high WBC, mature T cell ,mature B cell, central nervous system (CNS) involvement, DNA index 10 at diagnosis, no remission at the end of induction therapy and Minimal residual disease at the end of consolidation therapy. Complications might appear during the treatment including tumor lysis syndrome, bleeding, renal failure, sepsis, seizure, thrombosis, etc. Some consequences might identify after a long-term follow-up such as learning impairment, growth retardation, and secondary malignancies. It is estimated that up to 90% of pediatric ALL cases are curable.


Recent analysis of elite-level half-pipe snowboard competition has revealed a number of sport specific key performance variables (KPV's) that correlate well to score. Information on these variables is difficult to acquire and analyse, relying on collection and labour intensive manual post processing of video data. This paper presents the use of inertial sensors as a user-friendly alternative and subsequently implements signal processing routines to ultimately provide automated, sport specific feedback to coaches and athletes. The author has recently shown that the key performance variables (KPV's) of total air-time (TAT) and average degree of rotation (ADR) achieved during elite half-pipe snowboarding competition show strong correlation with an athlete's subjectively judged score. Utilising Micro-Electrochemical System (MEMS) sensors (tri-axial accelerometers) this paper demonstrates that air-time (AT) achieved during half-pipe snowboarding can be detected and calculated accurately using basic signal processing techniques. Characterisation of the variations in aerial acrobatic manoeuvres and the associated calculation of exact degree of rotation (DR) achieved is a likely extension of this research. The technique developed used a two-pass method to detect locations of half-pipe snowboard runs using power density in the frequency domain and subsequently utilises a threshold based search algorithm in the time domain to calculate air-times associated with individual aerial acrobatic manoeuvres. This technique correctly identified the air-times of 100 percent of aerial acrobatic manoeuvres within each half-pipe snowboarding run (n = 92 aerial acrobatic manoeuvres from 4 subjects) and displayed a very strong correlation with a video based reference standard for air-time calculation (r = 0.78 ± 0.08; p value < 0.0001; SEE = 0.08 ×/÷ 1.16; mean bias = -0.03 ± 0.02s) (value ± or ×/÷ 95% CL).


Context: Opsoclonus, a rare neurological manifestation in scrub typhus, causes significant distress and disability. There is a paucity of clinical data and outcomes in these patients. Aim: This study aims to describe the clinical and laboratory profile and longitudinal outcomes in a scrub typhus patient cohort with opsoclonus. Settings and Design: This retrospective study was conducted in a 2700-bed teaching hospital in South India, in scrub typhus patients with opsoclonus over a 5-year period. Patients and Methods: Clinical, laboratory, and radiological data and outcomes at discharge and 6- and 12-weeks postdischarge were documented. Results: Of 1650 scrub typhus patients, 18 had opsoclonus. 17 had opsoclonus at presentation, while one patient developed opsoclonus on the 5th admission day, 1-day postdefervescence. Opsoclonus was first noted after a median interval of 11 (7–18) days from fever onset. It was associated with myoclonus in 94% (17/18), cerebellar dysfunction in 67% (12/18), extrapyramidal syndrome (EPS) in 33% (6/18), and aseptic meningitis in 17% (3/18) patients. Mean cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) white blood cell (WBC) count was 9 ± 2.7 cells/cumm, with mean CSF protein 118.5 ± 53.9 mg% and mean CSF glucose 97 ± 13 mg% in 1l/15 patients. Brain magnetic resonance imaging was unremarkable in 75% (9/12). Case-fatality rate was 5.5% (1/18). Complete resolution of the index neurological syndrome occurred at 12-week postdischarge. Conclusions: Opsoclonus is a rare neurological manifestation in scrub typhus, usually occurring in association with myoclonus, cerebellar dysfunction, or EPS. It appears to occur during the resolving febrile phase, with neurological deficits completely resolving at 12 weeks.


1. Immediate and long-term blood pressure-lowering activity of five beta-adrenoreceptor antagonists with different ancillary pharmacological properties were compared in a randomized double-blind placebo controlled factorial trial in twenty-five previously untreated patients with stable uncomplicated essential hypertension. 2. In doses which produced similar reductions in exercise tachycardia, all drugs exerted similar anti-hypertensive activity, which was greater on systolic than diastolic pressure and greatest during exercise. 3. These effects were maximum within an hour and lasted for over 8 h after a single oral dose. 4. Blood pressure-lowering activity, particularly the reduction in exercise systolic pressure, was significantly related to the logarithm of the dose of each drug. 5. Anti-hypertensive activity was maximally enhanced after 4 weeks of sustained treatment at any given dose. There was no short-term habituation to treatment and substitution with placebo resulted in a return of the blood pressure to pretreatment values within 4 weeks without subsequent overshoot. 6. The blood pressure-lowering activity of these drugs was predominantly related to their common property of competitive antagonism of cardiac beta-adrenoreceptors; their ancillary pharmacological properties, with the exception of intrinsic vasodilator activity, played little part in this response.


In the focus of this thesis are the new and modified algorithms for object detection, recognition and tracking within the context of video analytics. The manual video surveillance has been proven to have low effectiveness and, at the same time, high expense because of the need in manual labour of operators, which are additionally prone to erroneous decisions. Along with increase of the number of surveillance cameras, there is a strong need to push for automatisation of the video analytics. The benefits of this approach can be found both in military and civilian applications. For military applications, it can help in localisation and tracking of objects of interest. For civilian applications, the similar object localisation procedures can make the criminal investigations more effective, extracting the meaningful data from the massive video footage. Recently, the wide accessibility of consumer unmanned aerial vehicles has become a new threat as even the simplest and cheapest airborne vessels can carry some cargo that means they can be upgraded to a serious weapon. Additionally they can be used for spying that imposes a threat to a private life. The autonomous car driving systems are now impossible without applying machine vision methods. The industrial applications require automatic quality control, including non-destructive methods and particularly methods based on the video analysis. All these applications give a strong evidence in a practical need in machine vision algorithms for object detection, tracking and classification and gave a reason for writing this thesis. The contributions to knowledge of the thesis consist of two main parts: video tracking and object detection and recognition, unified by the common idea of its applicability to video analytics problems. The novel algorithms for object detection and tracking, described in this thesis, are unsupervised and have only a small number of parameters. The approach is based on rigid motion segmentation by Bayesian filtering. The Bayesian filter, which was proposed specially for this method and contributes to its novelty, is formulated as a generic approach, and then applied to the video analytics problems. The method is augmented with optional object coordinate estimation using plain two-dimensional terrain assumption which gives a basis for the algorithm usage inside larger sensor data fusion models. The proposed approach for object detection and classification is based on the evolving systems concept and the new Typicality-Eccentricity Data Analytics (TEDA) framework. The methods are capable of solving classical problems of data mining: clustering, classification, and regression. The methods are proposed in a domain-independent way and are capable of addressing shift and drift of the data streams. Examples are given for the clustering and classification of the imagery data. For all the developed algorithms, the experiments have shown sustainable results on the testing data. The practical applications of the proposed algorithms are carefully examined and tested.