Background: Investigation into the role of vitamin D in fractures in the pediatric population has been limited despite estimates that as many as 70% of American children have inadequate vitamin D levels (measured as 25-hydroxyvitamin D, 25(OH)D). The purpose of this study was to evaluate vitamin D's role in pediatric fracture risk by comparing 25(OH)D between fractured and nonfractured cohorts. Methods: A 12-month prospective case-control study was completed in children aged 2 to 14 years in an urban, academic hospital. Sixty fractured children requiring conscious sedation or general anesthesia for management were compared with 60 nonfractured controls. All participants and their guardians were surveyed for low bone density risk factors, and total serum 25(OH)D was measured. Statistical analysis was completed using Student t tests, &khgr;2 tests, analysis of variance, and logistic regression models. Results: After controlling for age and daily sun exposure, lower total serum 25(OH)D was associated with higher fracture risk (odds ratio=0.94; 95% confidence interval, 0.90-0.99; P=0.023). In the fractured cohort, 6 (10%) patients were deficient (25(OH)D<20 ng/mL) and 33 (55%) were insufficient (25(OH)D, 20 to 30 ng/mL). Of the nonfractured population, 8 (13%) were deficient and 19 (32%) were insufficient. There were more insufficient patients in the fractured than in the nonfractured cohort (odds ratio=2.99; 95% confidence interval, 1.27-7.0; P=0.037). Conclusions: Higher fracture incidence is associated with serum 25(OH)D insufficiency. Hypovitaminosis D may place the pediatric population at increased risk for fracture. Consideration should be given to routine assessment of vitamin D in fractured children. Level of Evidence: Prognostic level III—prospective case-control study.


Ultra-large-volume and low-cost-per-chip CMOS photonics integrated circuit has been searching for high-performance, Si-compatible laser sources that can be directly integrated on Si wafer for mass production. III-V semiconductor, the considered efficient light generation material, unfortunately has big lattice mismatch and thermal expansion contrast with Si, extremely difficult to be epitaxially grown on Si. Here we demonstrate an optically pumped monolithic InGaAs/GaAs multi-QWs single-mode DFB nano-ridge laser which is directly grown from 300 mm Si wafer by using aspect ratio defect trapping technique.


One way to express the value of a natural habitat is its capacity to harbour a particular target species. In the case of migratory birds, the cumulative number of birds that can be accommodated at a site for a given period of time ('bird-days') became an accepted currency for this carrying capacity. However, there is no general consensus on the factors determining the number of bird-days. By focusing on Bewick's swans (Cygnus bewickii) foraging on tubers of fennel pondweed (Potamogeton pectinatus) in the Lauwersmeer, the Netherlands, this thesis investigates which factors are relevant in shaping the number of migratory waterbirds using a stopover site. First of all, the results revealed that, in a heterogeneous environment, predictions about consumer numbers cannot rely exclusively on the amount of available food: accessibility, harvest rates and foraging costs should be included. These factors can be combined together in a single measure, the locally achievable net energy intake rate, which proved to be a good proxy for explaining the distribution of animals. This currency also provided evidence that swans exploit human-disturbed parts to a lower extent. On the other hand, the resulting lower swan densities at these parts offer first-winter swans the possibility to compensate for their lower feeding efficiency: they follow a risk-prone behaviour and select these disturbed, but largely unexploited foraging patches. The use of bird-days as a currency assumes that the effects of interference competition on individual intake rates is negligible. Previous work had shown that the effect of interference competition was largely dependent on how food is distributed in the environment. Experiments with ducks revealed that in a spatially autocorrelated, slightly clumped food distribution, resembling the natural situation, differences in intake rate between group or solitary foragers, or between dominants and subordinates are small. In addition, Bewick's swans avoid forming high competitor densities in the field, thereby minimize the effects of interference competition. Hence, the mean population intake rate at observed competitor densities is only slightly lower than achieved in the absence of interference. Therefore, bird-days may be an appropriate unit for expressing the carrying capacity of the Lauwersmeer for Bewick's swans. The available tuber density is also shaped by interspecific competition (i.e., with other species). Based on field observations, it was hypothesized that pochards (Aythya ferina) kleptoparasitize Bewick's swans. However, a controlled experiment revealed that pochards only glean food items that float away from the swans and are not stealing. Hence, swans and diving ducks form a commensalistic relationship, with none suffering from the other species. In contrast, summer herbivores, such as mute swans (Cygnus olor), which consume aboveground vegetation of fennel pondweed, indirectly reduce the tuber stock available for Bewick's swans in the autumn. In order to predict patterns in complex ecological environments certain simplifications are inevitable. In heterogeneous environments, however, oversimplification lures: the spatial variation in biotic and abiotic factors and the foraging behaviour of the studied species have to be taken into account when forecasting the numbers a site can contain.


This study, which is the product of research carried out in the labor market in the Antofagasta region, examines the low degree of participation by women in the zone and describes the factors associated with this situation. The analysis of the results was based on conversations with 87 female workers (salaried and/or micro businesses) from diverse labor sectors of the region. Obstacles for gaining access to the market, the reasons for redeployment of this sector and measures that would address this condition are identified. This study corroborates results obtained by previous research and concludes that, despite economic growth in the zone, the factors associated with this phenomenon are related to the mining condition of the region, insufficient employment training, incompatibility between productive and reproductive roles, reduced economic opportunities and gender discrimination, all of which are structural, cultural and institutional variables.


Studies that support an investment in precious metals, whether as a defense against severe financial market downturns, as a hedge against inflation, or for price appreciation potential, do not offer guidance on the percentage allocation for "buy-and-hold" investors. As a response to this issue, this study applies the Black–Litterman model of modern portfolio theory to well-known index mutual funds—one guided by the classic 60%/40% stock/bond allocation and one based on an all-equity allocation. The period under study is from January 2000 to September 2020. Although statistical evidence supporting the efficacy of a precious metal allocation is elusive, the results suggest an average allocation of about 2% for "buy-and-hold" investors who seek one. TOPICS: Commodities, portfolio theory, portfolio construction, performance measurement Key Findings ▪ In the 21st century, the prices of precious metals, such as gold and silver, registered robust runs, recording strong double-digit growth rates from 2000 to 2012. The years following, however, saw a reversal of fortunes. Such volatility naturally leads to contention about the efficacy of a precious metal allocation in well-diversified balanced and equity portfolios, with views ranging from 0% to 40%. ▪ Applications of the Black–Litterman model of modern portfolio theory to index-based balanced and equity mutual funds to 1-, 3-, 5-, and 10-year forward-looking holding periods reveal, at times, a place for a precious metal allocation. From 2003 to 2010 and from 2016 to 3Q2020, for example, the allocations are in the range of 5%–10%. Other periods, however, register little more than 0%. ▪ The statistical evidence supporting a precious metal allocation is elusive. Nonetheless, there is enough evidence supporting the holding of precious metals at times that an allocation of about 2% appears appropriate for buy-and-hold investors who prefer one.


In recent years organizations developing information systems have started to demand that there should be an explicit connection between the rationale of the system developed and the system itself. In the "From Fuzzy to Formal" project an attempt to develop a methodology supporting this was made. Within the project a method called Enterprise Modeling was developed, aiming at creating this connection. This method contains five different sub-models. The sub-models are connected to each other by inter-model links. The models developed using EM are of high complexity. Therefore tool and repository support should be provided. To be flexible and extendible, such a tool set should be based upon a standardized meta-model. CDIF is an example of such a standard. In this dissertation we develop a meta-model capable of capturing the information that is created using the Enterprise Modeling technique. We use the extensibility mechanism that is provided with the CDIF standard to extend the existing CDIF Integrated meta-model to support the models used in this work. We also develop a procedure supporting the mapping between the representations. Finally we discuss the functionality of a tool capable of supporting the work with the models.


Abstract Recent studies have attempted to link environmental cues, such as lighting, with human performance and health, and initial findings seem to indicate a positive correlation between the two. Light is the major environmental time cue that resets the human circadian pacemaker, an endogenous clock in the hypothalamus that controls the timing of many 24-hour rhythms in physiology and behavior. Insufficient or inappropriate light exposure can disrupt normal circadian rhythms which may result in adverse consequences for human performance, health and safety. This paper addresses the problem of prospective analysis of building architecture for circadian stimulus potential based on the state of the art in photobiology. Three variables were considered in this analysis: lighting intensity, timing, and spectrum. Intensity is a standard design tool frequently used in illuminating engineering. Timing and spectrum are not commonplace considerations, so the analysis that follows proposes tools to quantitatively address these additional requirements. Outcomes of photobiology research were used in this paper to define threshold values for illumination in terms of spectrum, intensity, and timing of light at the human eye, and were translated into goals for simulation – and ultimately for building design. In particular, the climate-based Daylight Autonomy (DA) metric was chosen to simulate the probabilistic and temporal potential of daylight for human health needs. The developed method was applied to study the impact of key architectural decisions on achieving prescribed stimulus of the circadian system in a hospital patient room design; studied variables included orientation, window size, and glazing material. A healthcare setting was specifically chosen with the intent of follow-on research to validate our findings with actual patient outcome data.


This paper models the short and medium-run impact of aid on migration, considering alternatively the effect of unconditional and conditional cash transfers to financially constrained households. Data from the evaluation of a Mexican development program, Progresa, are used to estimate the effect of the potential grant size on migration. The empirical analysis is consistent with model prediction. It shows that the program is associated with an increase in international migration, which is also a positive function of size of potential transfer. The grant may loosen financial constraints. At the same time, fine-tuned conditional grants targeting prospective migrants (in the form of secondary school subsidies) reduce the short-term migration probability. As regards medium-term migration, secondary school beneficiaries are not more likely to migrate than the control group after they complete the subsidised education cycle.


Because of the climatic conditions, the Finnish milk production research has focused to improve the utilisation of grassland, mainly as conserved forages. The main research areas have been ensiling, evaluation of the forage feeding value, predicting nutrient supply from grass silage-based diet and the effects of forage quality and concentrate supplementation on milk production responses. Due to changes in ensiling technologies and variety of forage crops new silage additives have been adopted. A centralized system for the analysis of forage energy value is based on NIRS calibration. It was calibrated against in vitro pepsin-cellulase solubility method that was validated against in vivo digestibility. The concentration of indigestible neutral detergent fibre was found to be a useful parameter both in empirical models predicting forage digestibility and mechanistic rumen models predicting the amounts of absorbed nutrients. Models predicting relative intake potential of forages and total diet were developed, and an intake model combining animal and diet effects independently of each other was developed. Using meta-analysis approaches a nutrient response model was developed for dairy cows for milk, energy corrected milk and protein yield. Feed evaluation, intake and nutrient response models form now the basis of practical Finnish ration formulation system that can optimize diets according to maximum income over feed cost in addition to minimum feed cost.


Will the universe continue to expand forever, reverse its expansion and begin to contract, or reach a delicately poised state where it simply persists forever? The answer depends on the amount and properties of matter in the universe, and that has given rise to one of the great paradoxes of modern cosmology: there is too little visible matter to account for the behavior we can see. Over ninety percent of the universe consists of missing mass or dark matter - what Lawrence Krauss, in his classic book, termed the fifth essence. In this new edition of The Fifth Essence, retitled Quintessence after the now widely accepted term for dark matter, Krauss shows how the dark matter problem is now connected with two of the hottest areas in recent cosmology: the fate of the universe and the cosmological constant. With a new introduction, epilogue, and chapter updates, Krauss updates his classic for 1999 and shares one of the most stunning discoveries of recent years: an anti-gravity force that explains recent observations of a permanently expanding universe.


The workshop aimed at bringing experts working in the field of offshore wind farms – benthos together for the first time in order to get an overview on the state of the art. This was achieved by an extended poster session. The second issue of WKEOMB was to identify knowledge gaps and evaluating monitoring strategies. This issue was evaluated by disentangling the cause-effect relationships affected by the pressures of the activities during the construction and operation phase of offshore wind farms. All cause-effect relationships were summarized in a schematic presentation. The identifi-cation and a comprehensive overview of cause-effect relationships is a prerequisite for an efficient, hypothesis driven approach towards the disentanglement of the vari-ous effects of offshore wind farms on the marine benthos as well as on the whole eco-system. Further, manifold cause-effect relationships were prioritized based on three main research themes, biological resources – biogeochemical reactions – biodiversity, disentangled by the participants as relevant.
An important outcome of the workshop is that benthos receives by far too little atten-tion compared to other ecosystem components (e.g. seabirds, marine mammals), al-though it contributes to a great extent to marine ecosystem services and goods, e.g. biodiversity, long-term carbon storage and trophic supply for higher trophic-level species. A second main outcome of WKEOMB was that legal baseline monitoring merely allows for net-effect descriptions but not for identifying and understanding the underlying processes. Key processes should be, thus, identified and become sub-ject to hypotheses-based target monitoring and/or experimental studies.


We study the behavior of a flexible polymer chain in the presence of a low-molecular weight solvent in the vicinity of a liquid-gas critical point within the framework of a self-consistent field theory. The total free energy of the dilute polymer solution is expressed as a function of the radius of gyration of the polymer and the average solvent number density within the gyration volume at the level of the mean-field approximation. Varying the strength of attraction between polymer and solvent we show that two qualitatively different regimes occur at the liquid-gas critical point. In case of weak polymer-solvent interactions the polymer chain is in a globular state. On the contrary, in case of strong polymer-solvent interactions the polymer chain attains an expanded conformation. We discuss the influence of the critical solvent density fluctuations on the polymer conformation. The reported effect could be used to excert control on the polymer conformation by changing the thermodynamic state of the solvent. It could also be helpful to estimate the solvent density within the gyration volume of the polymer for drug delivery and molecular imprinting applications.


Recently we have introduced a method named inter-dataset variability compensation (IDVC) in the context of speaker recognition in a mismatched dataset. IDVC compensates dataset shifts in the i-vector space by constraining the shifts to a low dimensional subspace. The subspace is estimated from a heterogeneous development set which is partitioned into homogenous subsets. In this work we generalize the IDVC method to compensate inter-dataset variability attributed to additional PLDA hyper-parameters, namely the within and between speaker covariance matrices. Using the proposed method we managed to recover 85% of the degradation due to mismatched PLDA training in the framework of the JHU-2013 domain adaptation challenge.


The economic and political instability of most of the Arab countries may lead to the assumption that Arab stock markets are riskier and less predictable than stock markets in developed countries. Value at Risk (VaR) measures risk exposure at a given probability level and is very important for risk management. In this paper extreme value theory with volatility updating is used to forecast Value at Risk in three emerging Arab stock markets and the US stock market. Several forecast accuracy criteria are used to compare forecast performance in the four stock markets, including a suggested asymmetric forecast criterion. The various criteria used in this paper suggest that Arab stock markets are less risky than the US stock market.


The paper focuses on finding the m best solutions to combinatorial optimization problems using best-first or depth-first branch and bound search. Specifically, we present a new algorithm m-A*, extending the well-known A* to the m-best task, and for the first time prove that all its desirable properties, including soundness, completeness and optimal efficiency, are maintained. Since best-first algorithms require extensive memory, we also extend the memory-efficient depth-first branch and bound to the m-best task.

We adapt both algorithms to optimization tasks over graphical models (e.g., Weighted CSP and MPE in Bayesian networks), provide complexity analysis and an empirical evaluation. Our experiments confirm theory that the best-first approach is largely superior when memory is available, but depth-first branch and bound is more robust. We also show that our algorithms are competitive with related schemes recently developed for the m-best task.


Democracy, free thought and expression, religious tolerance, individual liberty, political self-determination of peoples, sexual and racial equality--these values have firmly entered the mainstream in the decades since they were enshrined in the 1948 U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. But if these ideals no longer seem radical today, their origin was very radical indeed--far more so than most historians have been willing to recognize. In A Revolution of the Mind, Jonathan Israel, one of the world's leading historians of the Enlightenment, traces the philosophical roots of these ideas to what were the least respectable strata of Enlightenment thought--what he calls the Radical Enlightenment.Originating as a clandestine movement of ideas that was almost entirely hidden from public view during its earliest phase, the Radical Enlightenment matured in opposition to the moderate mainstream Enlightenment dominant in Europe and America in the eighteenth century. During the revolutionary decades of the 1770s, 1780s, and 1790s, the Radical Enlightenment burst into the open, only to provoke a long and bitter backlash. A Revolution of the Mind shows that this vigorous opposition was mainly due to the powerful impulses in society to defend the principles of monarchy, aristocracy, empire, and racial hierarchy--principles linked to the upholding of censorship, church authority, social inequality, racial segregation, religious discrimination, and far-reaching privilege for ruling groups.In telling this fascinating history, A Revolution of the Mind reveals the surprising origin of our most cherished values--and helps explain why in certain circles they are frequently disapproved of and attacked even today.


ALI Restatements of the Law have traditionally exerted significant influence over court decisions and the development of the common law. During the past two decades, however, the ALI has seen an upsurge in interest group activity designed to shape or even thwart aspects of the Institute's work. Most recently, the Restatement of the Law of Liability Insurance (RLLI) has been the focus of not only criticism of particular provisions but a concerted effort by members of the insurance industry to demonize the project as a whole and bar use of the document by courts. The vehemence of insurer opposition seems odd in that the RLLI is a mainstream document that leans in favor of insurers on several important issues. Why have insurers been so vehemently opposed to the RLLI? Have previously non-partisan law reform efforts now become afflicted with the same interest group muscle flexing that pervades modern electoral politics? And if so, what are the implications for the future of this aspect of American law? This Article examines not only the background of and debate over the RLLI but also addresses the evolution of special interest group interaction with law reform organizations in order to offer an explanation for the increasing politicization of what historically has been largely non-partisan creation of "soft law."


The current-voltage characteristics of the Ni/InAlN/GaN Schottky diodes were measured at various temperatures in the range of 300–700 K. The experimental data were analyzed considering different current-transport mechanisms. From the analysis it follows that the tunneling current, which might be due to a multistep tunneling along dislocations, is the dominant component at all temperatures in the samples investigated. The barrier height of the Ni/InAlN/GaN Schottky diodes, evaluated from the thermionic emission current, shows a slightly negative temperature coefficient and its value at 300 K is ≥1.46 eV. This is significantly higher barrier height than reported before (<1 eV). This discrepancy follows from an incorrect evaluation using the intercept and slope of a measured characteristic without separation of the individual current components.


Foraging characteristics ofbreeding Common Yellowthroats (Geothlypis tichas sinuosa) on the central California coast varied between early morning and midday periods, among periods within the nesting season, and between sexes. From early morning to midday, yellowthroats increased their use of vegetation at heights below 1 m and above 3 m, but reduced their use of vegetation at heights of 2-3 m. A midseason increase in the use of vegetation at heights above 3 m occurred after 3 May. Male yellowthroats foraged at significantly greater heights, on average, were more likely to choose flycatching over other maneuvers, and were possibly better adapted, morphologically and behaviorally, to exploit spatiotemporal changes in prey abundance than were females. Singing males occurred at greater heights, on average, than either foraging males or females, but did not differ from foraging birds in their use of substrates or plant species. We evaluated the use of plant species for foraging in comparison with availability within 10 m of foraging individuals and over the entire study area, and found significant diurnal and intraseasonal patterns of selection. Common Yellowthroats actively selected arroyo willow (Salk Zasiolepis) at both spatial scales of availability during all diurnal and seasonal periods. Use of foraging maneuvers varied intraseasonally but was independent of diurnal period. We found no significant interaction between diurnal and intraseasonal patterns of foraging. Our results suggested that Common Yellowthroats alter their foraging behavior in response to changes in foraging conditions associated with diurnal and intraseasonal dynamics of freshwater marsh ecosystems. Pooling of foraging data over diurnal or intraseasonal periods, or between sexes, may mask significant differences that are important in understanding foraging characteristics.


Van Raam currently manufacture a high tricycle design dating back to 1998. Efforts to update the design have
been unsuccessful. With the goal in mind to offer a new Van Raam model with added value to potential high
tricycle users, a design process is started independent from the current high tricycle models. The target group
is defined through segmentation of the complete population. Segments who experience too little benefit from
owning a high tricycle are eliminated, leaving people with motor disabilities or an IQ between 55 and 70. Motor
disabled over 40 years old are by far the most numerous demographic segment. In order to make the target
group homogeneous, only people with motor disabilities aged over 40 who do not participate in the workforce
are selected as the target group.
A behavioural segmentation is used to segment this target segment into user segments. The variables of this
segmentation are sought benefit, distance per use, frequency of use and the influence the weather has on both
frequency and use. From this segmentation, two segments are selected, a mobility user and a recreational user.
The mobility user wants to use the tricycle to increase their mobility outside the home, with use mainly
restricted to the town of the user. The recreational user uses the tricycle as a tool of recreation by cycling routes
through appealing landscapes in the company of bicycle users. In order to specify the requirements the tricycle
design has to meet to enable the users in their desired use, several analyses are conducted.
Tasks are analysed to see the interaction between the steps the user needs to take in using a tricycle. These
tasks are parking, mounting, cycling and dismounting. If the user chooses to transport load, the tasks of loading,
securing and unloading are added. The recreational user wants to cycle longer distances, making the cycling task
the most important task to the user. As the mobility user frequently uses the tricycle for short distances, all tasks
are equally important.
Scenarios are used to describe different things a user can use the tricycle for, such as getting groceries, going
to appointments, visit friends or family and recreational touring. These scenarios combine the tasks with the
environments the tasks are preformed in during the scenario. Recreational touring in the main divider of the two
segments, as it is the reason for the recreational user to purchase a tricycle and irrelevant to the mobility user.
The information from these analyses are gathered in two separate programs of requirements which will be
used as a basis for future product development. The recreational user is a user that is currently unserviced by
the Van Raam product portfolio. To satisfy the recreational user, a cycle has to be stable while mounting, but
otherwise similar in use experience to a regular bicycle. Low noise levels and operating the vehicle at higher
speeds are very important. To enable the desired use, the user does not want to be influences in their seating
position if the road cycled on has a cross slope. Prolonged cycling has to be comfortable, otherwise the user will
not be satisfied.
The mobility user is able to satisfy a large part of their needs by the current Van Raam product portfolio. Their
needs could be satisfied more by a design that offers stability and little changes in the seating position of the
user if the wheels of the cycle are at different height levels. Features that needs to be activated by the user need
a low force threshold, as well as easy access.


Early identification of skin tumors decisively influences patient survival. Symmetry, size, and regularity of borders and color patterns clinically suggest the benign or malignant nature of pigmented skin lesions. Recently, videomicroscopy of cutaneous lesions has provided high resolution digital images that can be electronically processed, but results of image analysis have been variable, probably also because of lack of standardization. In this study, Intel's Open Computer Vision function library was used to standardize shape recognition, and fractal dimension to assess the regularity of contours; diagnostic performance of human operators on videomicroscopic images and images showing only the contours of the lesions was also tested. Results of this pilot study show that contour regularity alone is probably not decisive for diagnosis, and suggest the need for larger casuistics and numeric assessment of the other relevant diagnostic parameters. Improvement of computer vision algorithms appears also necessary for future use of image analysis in ordinary clinical conditions.

[ DOI : 10.1685/CSC09268] About DOI


The fast-growing reliance of our daily life upon online information services often demands an appropriate level of privacy protection as well as highly available service provision. However, most existing solutions have attempted to address these problems separately. This thesis investigates and presents a solution that provides both privacy protection and fault tolerance for online information retrieval. A new approach to Attack-Tolerant Information Retrieval (ATIR) is developed based on an extension of existing theoretical results for Private Information Retrieval (PIR). ATIR uses replicated services to protect a user's privacy and to ensure service availability. In particular, ATIR can tolerate any collusion of up to t servers for privacy violation and up to ƒ faulty (either crashed or malicious) servers in a system with k replicated servers, provided that k ≥ t + ƒ + 1 where t ≥ 1 and ƒ ≤ t. In contrast to other related approaches, ATIR relies on neither enforced trust assumptions, such as the use of tanker-resistant hardware and trusted third parties, nor an increased number of replicated servers. While the best solution known so far requires k (≥ 3t + 1) replicated servers to cope with t malicious servers and any collusion of up to t servers with an O(n^*^) communication complexity, ATIR uses fewer servers with a much improved communication cost, O(n1/2)(where n is the size of a database managed by a server).The majority of current PIR research resides on a theoretical level. This thesis provides both theoretical schemes and their practical implementations with good performance results. In a LAN environment, it takes well under half a second to use an ATIR service for calculations over data sets with a size of up to 1MB. The performance of the ATIR systems remains at the same level even in the presence of server crashes and malicious attacks. Both analytical results and experimental evaluation show that ATIR offers an attractive and practical solution for ever-increasing online information applications.


The mobility of vacancies in alloys may limit dislocation climb. Using a combined density functional theory and kinetic Monte Carlo approach we investigate vacancy diffusion in Ni-Re, Ni-W, and Ni-Ta binary alloys up to 10 at.% solute concentration. We introduce an interaction model that takes into account the chemical environment close to the diffusing atom to capture the effect of solute-host and solute-solute interactions on the diffusion barriers. In contrast to an ideal solid solution it is not only the diffusion barrier of the solute atom that influences the vacancy mobility, but primarily the change in the host diffusion barriers due to the presence of solute atoms. This is evidenced by the fact that the observed vacancy slowdown as a function of solute concentration is larger in Ni-W than in Ni-Re, even though Re is a slower diffuser than W. To model diffusion in complex, non-dilute alloys an explicit treatment of interaction energies is thus unavoidable. In the context of Ni-based superalloys two conclusions can be drawn from our kinetic Monte Carlo simulations: the observed slowdown in vacancy mobility is not sufficient to be the sole cause for the so-called Re-effect; and assuming a direct correlation between vacancy mobility, dislocation climb, and creep strength the experimentally observed similar effect of W and Re in enhancing creep strength can be confirmed.


The convergence of telephony with the Internet has led to numerous new attacks that make use of phone calls to defraud victims. In response to the increasing number of unwanted or fraudulent phone calls, a number of call blocking applications have appeared on smartphone app stores, including a recent update to the default Android phone app that alerts users of suspected spam calls. However, little is known about the methods used by these apps to identify malicious numbers, and how effective these methods are in practice. In this paper, we are the first to systematically investigate multiple data sources that may be leveraged to automatically learn phone blacklists, and to explore the potential effectiveness of such blacklists by measuring their ability to block future unwanted phone calls. Specifically, we consider four different data sources: user-reported call complaints submitted to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), complaints collected via crowd-sourced efforts (e.g., 800notes.com), call detail records (CDR) from a large telephony honeypot [1], and honeypot-based phone call audio recordings. Overall, our results show that phone blacklists are capable of blocking a significant fraction of future unwanted calls (e.g., more than 55%). Also, they have a very low false positive rate of only 0.01% for phone numbers of legitimate businesses. We also propose an unsupervised learning method to identify prevalent spam campaigns from different data sources, and show how effective blacklists may be as a defense against such campaigns.


Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.) cover crops were grown in a rotation with broccoli (Brassica oleracea L. var. italica Plenck.), spinach (Spinacia oleracea L.), and turnip greens (Brassica rapa L. var. (DC.) Metzg. utilis) to evaluate the legume's ability to remove excess P from soils when poultry litter was used as a fertilizer. Fertilizer treatments were: 1) litter to meet each crop's recommended preplant N requirements (1×); 2) litter at twice the recommended rate (2×); and 3) urea at the 1× rate as the control. Following the vegetable crops, cowpeas were planted on half of each replication, while the other half was fallowed. The cowpeas were harvested at the green-shell seed stage and then underwent a simulated haying operation to remove remaining shoot material from the field. Soil samples were taken at 0-15 cm and 15-30 cm depths at the onset of the study and after each crop to monitor plant nutrient concentrations. The cowpeas lowered soil test N concentra- tions at both soil sampling depths, but had no consistent effect on soil test P concentrations. Soil test P at the 0-15 cm depth was not increased by litter at the 1× rate but was increased by litter at the 2× rate relative to the urea control, regardless of cropping system. Poultry litter was effective as a fertilizer for all three vegetable crops, but the 1× rate appeared inadequate for maximum production of broccoli and turnip greens.


In 2011, the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health (MOH) launched the Saudi
Telemedicine Network (STN) as the first national project for telemedicine in the KSA, which is planned to be completed by 2020. The benefits associated with the STN will only be realised through its successful implementation within the Healthcare Facilities (HCFs) across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). There is a high failure rate of implementation projects of telemedicine within other countries (approximately 75% globally, and 90% in developing countries). Furthermore, there is high failure rate of implementation projects of complex Health Information Technology (HIT) systems within HCFs of the KSA (roughly 80%). These dramatic statistics demonstrate the great need for a suitable framework to assist the STN implementation and increase the likelihood of its successful implementation. Prior studies have asserted that there could
not be a one-size-fits-all framework that could be applicable and used by all countries for assisting the implementation of telemedicine. To the best of our knowledge, there is not any existing framework that has been specifically developed for assisting the STN implementation.
Thus, this research is aimed at developing a novel, agile, holistic framework, referred to as "JoinSTNassistant Framework", aimed to assist HCFs across the KSA regarding their organisational decision to join the STN. It must be ensured that this JoinSTNassistant Framework is theoretically rigorous, as well as relevant specifically to the context and the needs of the KSA, its HCFs, and the STN roadmap. Therefore, the JoinSTNassistant Framework has been developed through three-sequential phases. The First Phase of development defines and applies the theoretical and philosophical foundations of the JoinSTNassistant Framework. In this First Phase, 56-selected studies from an extensive literature review were analysed. The Second and Third phases of development reflect the practical and pragmatic requirements of the JoinSTNassistant Framework. These two phases must be considered as two stages of validation of the findings of the First Phase, involving as many potential users as possible in the development of the Framework, so as to ensure that it reflects their expectations and meets their needs. The Second Phase of development involved interviews with 81 strategic-level decision makers of HCFs within the KSA. The Third Phase implemented an even higher level of validation, involving as many as 905 potential users, forming a representative sample size of the decision makers of all HCFs across the KSA. In addition, a web-based application (i.e., Portal) for the JoinSTNassistant Framework, referred to as "JoinSTNassistant Portal" was developed for modifying and adjusting the JoinSTNassistant Framework in order to be applicable for each one of HCFs across the KSA, for assisting and guiding them in reaching a decision to join the STN. This research is part of the STN project and is collaborating with the National eHealth Strategy and Change Management Office in the MOH of KSA, and with the STN agency, who is the sponsor and the owner of the STN project.


The turn towards Global history shows no sign of abating. It seems that across the discipline, historians are becoming increasingly interested in understanding the past on a planetary scale. Prominent Imperial historians, in particular, have been among the most fervent advocates of Global history. So close are the concerns of some Imperial history—particularly British Imperial history—to those of Global history, that it is getting harder to disentangle the two. Despite this we argue that, whilst both fields are overlapping and heterogeneous, historians should reflect more explicitly on the methodological differences that exist between them. In the process we point out some lessons that Global historians might learn from Imperial historians, and viceversa. We argue for "connected histories of empire" that seek to uncover links that operated across the formal borders of imperial formations and that deploy novel spatial frameworks. Such an approach would draw on the diverse methodologies developed by Imperial and Global historians who seek to write both "comparative" and "connected" histories. We point the way towards histories that are more than imperial, but less than global.


Open and fair elections are paramount to modern democracy. Although some people claim that the pencil-and-paper systems used in countries such as Canada and UK are still the best method of avoiding vote rigging, recent election problems have sparked great interest in managing the election process through the use of electronic voting systems. It is a goal of this paper to describe a voting system that is secret and secure as well as verifiable and useable over an existing computer network.We have designed and implemented an electronic voting system – Verifiable E-Voting (VEV) – with an underlying protocol that secures the election process from malicious practices at the same time as allowing voters and candidates to verify the correctness of their votes.


The Trojan asteroids have been highlighted as a main target for future discovery missions, which will enable key questions about the formation of our Solar system to be answered. Programs like the Japanese Jupiter and Trojan Asteroids Exploration Programme are already testing technology demonstrators like the IKAROS spacecraft to enable future interplanetary missions to Jupiter and the Trojans. In this paper an analytic analysis of the stability of the Low thrust Sun Jupiter Asteroid Spacecraft system, is presented, from a Hamiltonian point of view. Setting the three primaries in the stable Lagrangian equilateral triangle configuration, eight natural (i.e. with zero thrust) equilibrium points are identified, four of which are close to the asteroid, two stable and two unstable, when considering as primaries the Sun and any other two bodies of the Solar System. Artificial equilibria, which can be seen as low thrust perturbations of the natural ones, are then taken into account with the aim of identifying their linearly stable subset. The Lyapunov stability of these marginally stable points is then analysed using basic KAM (Kolmogorov Arnold Moser) theory and Arnold's stability theorem. In order to apply such theorem an iterative procedure to reduce the Hamiltonian into Birkhoff's Normal Form is applied up to fourth order, explicitly defining, at each step, the generating function of a symplectic transformation. Despite the complexity of this process, Normal Forms are a fundamental, necessary step for any application of KAM theory; such theory, transforming a non-integrable system into a sum of perturbed integrable ones, enables the computation of a high order analytical approximation of the system dynamics, plus an estimation of the discrepancy from the initial model. As an application of KAM theory, a proof of the nonlinear stability for the low thrust generated equilibrium points under non resonant conditions is found using Arnold's stability theorem. Results show that Lyapunov stability is guaranteed along the linearly stable domain with the exception of a set of points with zero measure where the conditions to apply Arnold's theorem are not satisfied.


Our goal is to build systems which write code automatically from the kinds of specifications humans can most easily provide, such as examples and natural language instruction. The key idea of this work is that a flexible combination of pattern recognition and explicit reasoning can be used to solve these complex programming problems. We propose a method for dynamically integrating these types of information. Our novel intermediate representation and training algorithm allow a program synthesis system to learn, without direct supervision, when to rely on pattern recognition and when to perform symbolic search. Our model matches the memorization and generalization performance of neural synthesis and symbolic search, respectively, and achieves state-of-the-art performance on a dataset of simple English description-to-code programming problems.


The use of wood in built environments has been increasing during the last decades, and more focus has been set on the influence of wood surfaces on indoor environments on the objective and subjective measures of human well-being. In addition, the moisture buffer capacity of hygroscopic materials, such as wood, has been under investigation in order to quantify the impact of wooden surfaces on energy savings in buildings. The current study presents the results of wood surfaces and indoor air temperatures as well as indoor air relative humidity measured in two solid timber test houses. The findings reveal a substantial effect on wood surface temperature under fluctuating indoor relative humidity due to the latent heat of sorption of water vapors. The results were compared with hygrothermal numerical simulations, showing good agreement and the validated numerical model was used in order to quantify the energy performance in a bathroom when the latent heat of sorption is exploited. The combination of wood with a well-controlled HVAC system in rooms with moisture production shows significant potential for indirect energy savings by adjusting the indoor temperature and exploiting the increase of surface temperature in the hygroscopic structure. Furthermore, the emissions of volatile organic compounds from pine wood were studied in laboratory facilities, with focus on the variations of emissions due to diurnal fluctuations in air humidity. Human participants were exposed in a large test chamber to a concealed source of volatile organic compound emissions in the form of fresh pine wood, while the actual exposure reached air levels of monoterpenes up to 18 mg/m3 during the intervention situation. Perceptions of air quality and mucosal irritation effects were reported in a standard questionnaire during this double-blind test with no irritation effects reported.


Franchising has become a dominant model of retailing in the Western world and is rapidly expanding in emerging countries. This paper is an attempt to explain the significant differences in the development of franchising in three emerging countries: Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Explanations can be found in the general institutional environment in these countries, including the political and economic environments; governments' willingness to modernize the distribution structures; and the legal and regulatory environments specific to franchising. Our analytical framework is based on institutional theory (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), a framework that provides further insights beyond the approaches based on economic efficiency (agency theory and the resource scarcity perspective). Based on an analysis of the documents in the major public databases in the three countries, supplemented with field research, we propose an analytical framework that helps explain the uneven developments of franchising in the three North African countries based on the specific institutional environment of each country. This study thus provides empirical evidence supporting the institutional theory of franchise expansion. It appears that institutional theory complements agency theory and resource scarcity theory in explaining the development of franchising in emerging markets: while agency theory and resource scarcity theory explain the motivation of firms to expand internationally through franchising, institutional theory helps explain the success or failure of these firms in the emerging markets they expand to.


We investigate the quantum regime of a high-gain free-electron laser starting from noise. In the first part, we neglect the radiation propagation and we formulate a quantum linear theory of the N-particle free-electron laser Hamiltonian model, quantizing both the radiation field and the electron motion. Quantum effects such as frequency shift, line narrowing, quantum limitation for bunching and energy spread, and minimum uncertainty states are described. Using a second-quantization formalism, we demonstrate quantum entanglement between the recoiling electrons and the radiation field. In the second part, we describe the field classically but we include propagation effects (i.e. slippage) and we demonstrate the novel regime of quantum SASE with high temporal coherence and discrete spectrum. Furthermore, we describe "quantum purification'' of SASE: the classical chaotic spiking behavior disappears and the spectrum becomes a series of discrete very narrow lines which correspond to transitions between discrete momentum eigenstates ( which originate high temporal coherence).


An intensity-based fiber-optic sensor for measuring axial and angular displacement has been designed and tested in a controlled laboratory environment. In addition, a mathematical model allowing the simultaneous calculation of the three desired parameters needed to characterize the tilt and the position of a surface under investigation is described. Preliminary tests show good agreement between the theory and the experimental results and show the sensor's potential for application in the manufacturing industry for position and vibration control. The sensor shows significant improvement in angular range over previously reported methods. An axial displacement range of 2 mm, with an accuracy of 40 mum, and an angular displacement range of 40 mrad, with an accuracy of 0.5 mrad, are demonstrated. Suggestions for further improvement of the range and the sensitivity of the sensor are also described.


The Academic Encounters Second edition series uses a sustained content approach to teach skills necessary for taking academic courses in English. There are two books for each content area. Academic Encounters Level 1 Student's Book Reading and Writing: The Natural World engages students through academic readings on stimulating topics from the fields of natural science and biology. Topics include the water cycle, plant and animal life, and the human body. Students develop important skills such as reading for the main idea, reading for speed, understanding vocabulary in context, and note-taking. By completing writing assignments, students build academic writing skills and incorporate what they have learned. The topics correspond with those in Academic Encounters Level 1 Listening and Speaking: The Natural World. The books may be used independently or together.


Those areas in which weather modification law is being altered to fit the twenty-first century are: 1. De-regulation. Regulation of weather modification through mandating professional licenses of cloud seeders and permits for seeding projects and requiring record keeping and reporting is now the norm; but the extent of such regulation is diminishing. 2. Cost consciousness. Weather modification technology users are being required to bear a larger share of the cost of operations and regulation. 3. Tort reform. Weather modification operators and sponsors have less exposure to legal liability now than previously because of legislative tort law reform which has changed substantive and procedural liability law and the law of damages. This should affect liability insurance availability, coverage and cost in the twenty-first century.


We introduce a novel generic energy functional that we employ to solve inverse imaging problems within a variational framework. The proposed regularization family, termed as structure tensor total variation (STV), penalizes the eigenvalues of the structure tensor and is suitable for both grayscale and vector-valued images. It generalizes several existing variational penalties, including the total variation seminorm and vectorial extensions of it. Meanwhile, thanks to the structure tensor's ability to capture first-order information around a local neighborhood, the STV functionals can provide more robust measures of image variation. Further, we prove that the STV regularizers are convex while they also satisfy several invariance properties w.r.t. image transformations. These properties qualify them as ideal candidates for imaging applications. In addition, for the discrete version of the STV functionals we derive an equivalent definition that is based on the patch-based Jacobian operator, a novel linear operator which extends the Jacobian matrix. This alternative definition allow us to derive a dual problem formulation. The duality of the problem paves the way for employing robust tools from convex optimization and enables us to design an efficient and parallelizable optimization algorithm. Finally, we present extensive experiments on various inverse imaging problems, where we compare our regularizers with other competing regularization approaches. Our results are shown to be systematically superior, both quantitatively and visually.


This study aimed to produce functional food products with the main ingredient of pumpkin and olein fraction of red palm oil (OF-RPO). This research was conducted in two stages. The first was to analyze consumer acceptance where a Completely Randomized Design was used with one factor. The factor was the composition of pumpkin and OF-RPO levelled as follow: 100:0, 95:5, 90:10, 85:15, 80:20, and 0:100 (v/v). In the second stage, analyses of carotenoids using HPLC, FFA, pH, vitamin C, and peroxide values were carried out on selected formula (mixture of pumpkin and OF-RPO), formula with 100 mL of pumpkin, formula with 100 mL of OF-RPO, and negative control (without pumpkin and OF-RPO), before and after the storage period of two months, except for HPLC analysis. The best formula based on acceptance test was a composition of 90 mL pumpkin and 10 mL OF-RPO was further diluted 1:4 (v/v). Characteristics of the product were sweet, sour, not bitter, not grassy, and not rancid. The emulsion product contains trans-β-carotene at 141.65±0.47 mg/L, equivalent to 237 UI activity of vitamin A/mL. The content of trans- β -carotene was found at the highest (341.83 mg/L) from the pumpkin juice, while the OF-RPO had the lowest trans-β-carotene content (41.2 mg/L). Product was acidic with a pH of 3.6±0.1 and with vitamin C content of 13.2±1.2 mg/100 g of product. Acidity and vitamin C levels tended to remain stable during the storage period for two months. Peroxide value of the emulsion product was at 0.8 mEq oxygen/kg. The FFAs were in the range of 1.59 to 1.73% and they also did not change significantly after storage for two months.


Collectively known as Hallyu , Korean music, television programs, films, online games, and comics enjoy global popularity, thanks to new communication technologies. In recent years, Korean popular culture has also become the subject of academic inquiry. Whereas the HallyuAEs impact on KoreaAEs national image and domestic economy, as well as on transnational cultural flows, have received much scholarly attention, there has been little discussion of the role of social media in HallyuAEs propagation. Contributors to Hallyu 2.0: The Korean Wave in the Age of Social Media explore the ways in which Korean popular cultural products are shared by audiences around the globe; how they generate new fans, markets, and consumers through social media networks; and how scholars can analyze, interpret, and envision the future of this unprecedented cultural phenomenon.


Abstract. Significance: Surgery is often paramount in the management of many solid organ malignancies because optimal resection is a major factor in disease-specific survival. Cancer surgery has multiple challenges including localizing small lesions, ensuring negative surgical margins around a tumor, adequately staging patients by discriminating positive lymph nodes, and identifying potential synchronous cancers. Intraoperative molecular imaging (IMI) is an emerging potential tool proposed to address these issues. IMI is the process of injecting patients with fluorescent-targeted contrast agents that highlight cancer cells prior to surgery. Over the last 5 to 7 years, enormous progress has been achieved in tracer development, near-infrared camera approvals, and clinical trials. Therefore, a second biennial conference was organized at the University of Pennsylvania to gather surgical oncologists, scientists, and experts to discuss new investigative findings in the field. Our review summarizes the discussions from the conference and highlights findings in various clinical and scientific trials. Aim: Recent advances in IMI were presented, and the importance of each clinical trial for surgical oncology was critically assessed. A major focus was to elaborate on the clinical endpoints that were being utilized in IMI trials to advance the respective surgical subspecialties. Approach: Principal investigators presenting at the Perelman School of Medicine Abramson Cancer Center's second clinical trials update on IMI were selected to discuss their clinical trials and endpoints. Results: Multiple phase III, II, and I trials were discussed during the conference. Since the approval of 5-ALA for commercial use in neurosurgical malignancies, multiple tracers and devices have been developed to address common challenges faced by cancer surgeons across numerous specialties. Discussants also presented tracers that are being developed for delineation of normal anatomic structures that can serve as an adjunct during surgical procedures. Conclusions: IMI is increasingly being recognized as an improvement to standard oncologic surgical resections and will likely advance the art of cancer surgery in the coming years. The endpoints in each individual surgical subspecialty are varied depending on how IMI helps each specialty solve their clinical challenges.


A wide body of research explores gender differences in welfare outcomes, and their implications for economic development. We aim to contribute to this work by looking at differences in reported well-being (happiness) across genders around the world. We examine differences across genders within countries, comparing age, income, education, and urban versus rural cohorts, and explore how those same within country differences vary in countries of different development levels. Our findings, based also on previous research on well-being more generally, highlight some consistent patterns across genders, with women typically happier than men in the world as a whole, with the exception of the poorest sample of countries. We also find substantial differences in the standard relationships between key variables - such as marriage - and happiness when we take differences in gender rights into account. Our research also suggests that cross-gender differences in well-being are affected by the same empirical and methodological factors that drive the paradoxes underlying the income and happiness debates more generally, with norms and expectations playing an important mediating role. Women's happiness seems to fall - at least in the short-term - when there are changes/improvements in gender rights, in keeping with our more general findings on the drops in reported well-being that are often associated with the process of acquiring agency.


Submodular maximization is a general optimization problem with a wide range of applications in machine learning (e.g., active learning, clustering, and feature selection). In large-scale optimization, the parallel running time of an algorithm is governed by its adaptivity, which measures the number of sequential rounds needed if the algorithm can execute polynomially-many independent oracle queries in parallel. While low adaptivity is ideal, it is not sufficient for an algorithm to be efficient in practice---there are many applications of distributed submodular optimization where the number of function evaluations becomes prohibitively expensive. Motivated by these applications, we study the adaptivity and query complexity of submodular maximization. In this paper, we give the first constant-factor approximation algorithm for maximizing a non-monotone submodular function subject to a cardinality constraint $k$ that runs in $O(\log(n))$ adaptive rounds and makes $O(n \log(k))$ oracle queries in expectation. In our empirical study, we use three real-world applications to compare our algorithm with several benchmarks for non-monotone submodular maximization. The results demonstrate that our algorithm finds competitive solutions using significantly fewer rounds and queries.


This thesis is concerned with the Numerical Solution of Partial
Differential Equations.
Initially some definitions and mathematical background are given,
accompanied by the basic theories of solving linear systems and other
related topics. Also, an introduction to splines, particularly cubic
splines and their identities are presented. The methods used to solve
parabolic partial differential equations are surveyed and classified
into explicit or implicit (direct and iterative) methods. We
concentrate on the Alternating Direction Implicit (ADI), the Group
Explicit (GE) and the Crank-Nicolson (C-N) methods.
A new method, the Splines Group Explicit Iterative Method is
derived, and a theoretical analysis is given. An optimum single
parameter is found for a special case. Two criteria for the
acceleration parameters are considered; they are the Peaceman-Rachford
and the Wachspress criteria. The method is tested for different
numbers of both parameters. The method is also tested using single
parameters, i. e. when used as a direct method. The numerical results
and the computational complexity analysis are compared with other
methods, and are shown to be competitive. The method is shown to have
good stability property and achieves high accuracy in the numerical
results.
Another direct explicit method is developed from cubic splines;
the splines Group Explicit Method which includes a parameter that can
be chosen to give optimum results. Some analysis and the computational
complexity of the method is given, with some numerical results shown
to confirm the efficiency and compatibility of the method.
Extensions to two dimensional parabolic problems are given in a
further chapter.
In this thesis the Dirichlet, the Neumann and the periodic
boundary conditions for linear parabolic partial differential equations
are considered.
The thesis concludes with some conclusions and suggestions for
further work.


Observing the lower solar atmosphere with enough linear resolution (< 100 km) to study individual magnetic flux tubes and other features on scales comparable to the photon mean free path has proven to be a challenging and elusive goal. Space-borne instruments based on conventional heavy optics turned out to be too expensive, and adaptive optics on the ground made slow progress for many years. Nevertheless, the scientific case for high-resolution imaging and magnetography has only become more compelling over the last ten years. Today, ground-based adaptive optics is a promising approach for small fields of view at visible wavelengths. Space experiments will need to employ lightweight optics and low cost platforms. The Sunrise balloon experiment is one example. We describe a concept for a sounding rocket experiment that will achieve 0.1-arcsecond imaging using a lightweight, ultraprecise 55-cm mirror in the far ultraviolet (160 nm continuum, Lyman alpha, and possibly C IV 155 nm). The f/1.2 parabolic primary mirror is entering the final stages of production. The mirror is a ULE honeycomb design with front and back face sheets. The front sheet will be figured to 6.3 nm rms with microroughness 1 nm or better. For the initial proof of concept, we describe a no-frills, high-cadence imager aboard a Black Brant sounding rocket. Development of lightweight UV/EUV optics at Goddard Space Flight Center has been supported by the Internal Research and Development program.


Abstract. A new flow-through reaction cell consisting of an X-ray-transparent semicrystalline thermoplastic has been developed for percolation experiments. Core holder, tubing and all confining parts are constructed using PEEK (polyetheretherketone) to allow concomitant surveillance of the reaction progress by X-ray microtomography (μ-CT). With this cell setup, corrosive or oversaturated fluids can be forced through rock cores (up to ∅ 19 mm) or powders at pressures up to 100 bar and temperatures up to 200 °C. The reaction progress of the experiment can be monitored without dismantling the sample from the core holder. The combination of this flow-through reaction cell setup with a laboratory X-ray μ-CT system facilitates on-demand monitoring of the reaction progress of (long-term) hydrothermal experiments in the own laboratory, keeping interruption times as short as possible. To demonstrate both the suitability of the cell construction material for X-ray imaging purposes and the experimental performance of the flow-through system, we report the virtually non-existent bias of the PEEK cell setup with distinctive X-ray observations (e.g., differing states of pore fillings: air vs. fluid; detection of delicate fabric elements: filigree zeolite crystals overgrowing weathered muscovite), and the monitoring of the gypsum/anhydrite transition as a case study of a 4-D fabric evolution.


The kilogram is the last unit of the international system of units (SI) still based on a material artefact, the international prototype of the kilogram (IPK). The comparisons made in the last hundred years have clearly revealed a long-term relative drift between the IPK and the official copies kept under similar conditions at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures. A promising route towards a new definition of the kilogram based on a fundamental constant is represented by the watt balance experiment which links the mass unit to the Planck constant h. For more than ten years, the Federal Institute of Metrology METAS has been actively working in the conception and development of a watt balance experiment. This paper describes the new design of the Mark II METAS watt balance. The metrological characteristics of the different components of the experiment are described and discussed.


1. Specimens of human duodenal mucosa were obtained at duodenotomy. Superficial mucosal scrapings were homogenized in isotonic sucrose solution and fractionated by differential centrifugation. The distribution of organelles among the subcellular fractions was monitored by assay of suitable marker enzymes. 2. Enterokinase was recovered predominantly in the nuclear+brush-border fraction and 80% of the total activity was found to be particulate; approximately 20% of the enzyme was present in the soluble fraction, compared with 1% of the brush-border markers sucrase and alkaline phosphatase. 3. The brush-border-containing fraction was subfractionated by treatment with hypertonic Tris followed by differential and density gradient centrifugation. Enterokinase was distributed among the subfractions in parallel with brush-border markers and was concentrated in a subfraction which was highly enriched in microvillous membranes. 4. It was concluded that enterokinase is localized primarily to the microvillous membrane of the epithelial cell brush border in man, but that in addition a proportion of the enzyme may be present in a soluble or easily released form in the duodenal mucosa.


Abstract. In this paper, we propose a workflow for recreating places of cultural heritage in Virtual Reality (VR) using structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry. The unique texture of heritage places makes them ideal for full photogrammetric capture. An optimized model is created from the photogrammetric data so that it is small enough to render in a real-time environment. The optimized model, combined with mesh maps (texture maps, normal maps, etc.) looks like the original high detail model. The capture of a whole space makes it possible to create a VR experience with six degrees of freedom (6DoF) that allows the user to explore the historic place. Creating these experiences can bring people to cultural heritage that is either endangered or too remote for some people to access. The workflow described in this paper will be demonstrated with the case study of Myin-pya-gu, an 11th century temple in Bagan, Myanmar.


This article examines the role local financial markets play in the link between foreign direct investment (FDI) and economic activity. The article uses panel data methods on 32 African countries over the period 1997 to 2008. Our results show that FDI only has a significant effect on economic activity when interacted with financial market variables, namely, private-sector credit and savings. The results of this study imply that FDI is more productive in the presence of well-functioning local financial markets. African governments must therefore pay particular attention to developing further local financial markets to ensure full economic benefits of FDI inflows. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


For many years only few of the insurance companies in Nigeria were quoted on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE). Majority prefer to be outside the exchange where the duty of information disclosure is less stringent. However, in 2005 the regulatory authority raised the capital requirement by more than 1000 multiples of the previous level. Unlike the previous recapitalizations when insurance companies had always found a way to meet the recapitalization exercise without actually recapitalizing, the 2005 exercise forced a lot of the companies to either go to the stock exchange or else merge with those that did. Since then, investors' interest in insurance stocks seems to have been kindled. Using daily listing on the NSE to compare the pre-consolidation performance of Nigeria insurance companies with their post consolidation performance, the study shows that there is a stable and upward movement in price of insurance stock. Insurance might indeed be the next destination for Nigerian investors.

 Key words: Insurance stock, recapitalization, pre-consolidation, post-consolidation.


Sustainable educational development cannot be achieved by concentrating efforts on a single goal; it requires a systems approach. Certain development partners, in particular the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the World Bank, have recently placed high on their current agendas the strengthening of education in a holistic manner. Based on a review of relevant data, research results, and [UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning] IIEP-UNESCO field experience, this paper, which applies the perspective of system analysis, discusses recent strategies of major development agencies and governments in the area of education. It concludes that major education development goals - access/enrolment, quality, equity - have been pursued neither in an integrated manner (taking into account that they are interlinked and cut across different levels and sub-sectors), nor in close interaction with the environment of the education system. The paper recommends in particular the strengthening of certain regulatory mechanisms such as education sector planning, comprehensive quality management, social consultations, and policy research, which appear to play a highly relevant role in establishing interlinkages between quantitative, qualitative, and equity-related goals of education, and in maintaining effective exchanges between the education system and the surrounding society.


This paper presents an error concealment processor to increase the performance of the TV receiver while the decoding bit stream over error-prone channel suffers from damage. An efficient error-concealment algorithm is advised with the adaptation of the spatial interpolation and the temporal prediction to reduce the nonmatched error for high motion regions and achieve fine resolution for still or low motion regions. Based on the adaptive algorithm, we proposed a parallel VLSI architecture with pipeline scheduling for real time implementation. The error concealment processor consists of the computational core, RAM block and interface, and then is integrated to the video decoder by using a complex processing schedule. The computational sources are commonly used for various frame types processing to reduce the hardware cost. The chip occupies about 27 k gates and includes one on-chip line-buffer. The silicon area is about 9 mm2 and the throughput rate can achieve 50 Mpixels/s, when implemented by 0.35-mum CMOS technology.


Commercial swine waste lagoons are regarded as a major reservoir of natural estrogens, which have the potential to produce adverse physiological effects on exposed aquatic organisms and wildlife. However, there remains limited understanding of the complex mechanisms of physical, chemical, and biological processes that govern the fate and transport of natural estrogens within an anaerobic swine lagoon. To improve lagoon management and ultimately help control the offsite transport of these compounds from swine operations, a probabilistic Bayesian network model was developed to assess natural estrogen fate and budget and then compared against data collected from a commercial swine field site. In general, the model was able to describe the estrogen fate and budget in both the slurry and sludge stores within the swine lagoon. Sensitivity analysis within the model demonstrated that the estrogen input loading from the associated barn facility was the most important factor in controlling estrogen concentrations within the lagoon slurry storage, whereas the settling rate was the most significant factor in the lagoon sludge storage. The degradation reactions were shown to be minor in both stores based on prediction of average total estrogen concentrations. Management scenario evaluations demonstrated that the best possible management options to reduce estrogen levels in the lagoon are either to adjust the estrogen input loading from swine barn facilities or to effectively enhance estrogen bonding with suspended solids through the use of organic polymers or inorganic coagulants. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2014;10:511–521. © 2014 SETAC


That Goethe was also a translator is a well-kept secret. However, in this study the main focus lies on these translations. Especially on his five longest and most important ones, such as Diderot's Le Neveu de Rameau and Cellini's Vita.Not only will the translations be discussed but – and maybe even more importantly – also will this study try to give an answer to the motivation of Goethe. Why did he devote so much time to these translations? This volume offers a complete new perspective on Goethe and his works.


Over the course of the twentieth century, Paul Laurence Dunbar's reputation shifted between that of a "race man" and that of an embarrassment, before progressing to that of a forerunner and trickster, who possessed the dual, if contradictory, qualities of transgression and respectability. Much of this volatility originates in Dunbar's odd dual status as a writer and a symbol, in both popular representation and criticism. Although Dunbar's works were known among both whites and African Americans while he was alive, his fame peaked after his early death in 1906. In the three decades that followed, many performers, white and Black, enacted public recitations or sang musical settings of his dialect poetry. There was a powerful contrast, however, between the ways his work was represented in the white and Black worlds. (1) White drawing-room performers such as Kitty Cheatham and Clara Alexander made their careers reciting Dunbar's dialect poems, especially the perennial favorite "When Malindy Sings." During these society events, Dunbar's works would be paired with (non-dialect) poems by white authors or with "Negro" spirituals and plantation songs. (2) The fact of performance and the appropriated folk context is an ironic reflection of Dunbar's own self-presentation to the white world during his lifetime. Although Dunbar also performed standard English poems, his acting out of the dialect poems, his songs, and his work on such "coon" musicals as Clorindy, or the Origin of the Cakewalk, created in collaboration with Will Marion Cook, was an essential part of his popularity and acceptance among whites, even as they laid the basis for Black discomfort with--even condemnation of--both the performer and his productions. Their image of Dunbar as presenting a distorted or inauthentic face to white audiences was no doubt heightened by the curious fact that, within white circles, he was most often billed as Paul Lawrence Dunbar--Dunbar himself had wondered aloud why educated people could not learn to spell his name correctly (Brascher 6). After Dunbar's death, his poetry also became a central feature of Black community life, due in part to the public reading tours and other promotional activities of his ex-wife and "official widow," Alice Dunbar-Nelson. As columnist Sylvestre Watkins recalled in 1947, "When I was a boy, every church social program included a reading from Dunbar--"When the co'npone is Hot," "L'il Brown Baby," "When Malindy Sings", "L'il Gal," and many others. Everyone looked forward to this part of the program" (H10). Interviewed in his sixties, Chester Himes said that when he was growing up, "Every black schoolchild knew the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, which was recited in school" (Bandler BW2). The young A. Philip Randolph put himself through college by giving public readings in Black churches of Shakespeare, the Bible, and Dunbar's poetry (Anderson 47). Poets as diverse as Pauli Murray and Langston Hughes later spoke of how they had been brought up on Dunbar's works. Indeed, when a Black Chicago girl in the 1920s wrote down her first verses, her proud mama exclaimed that little Gwendolyn Brooks might grow up to be "the lady Paul Laurence Dunbar!" (Brooks 56). Much later, Michel Fabre noted that the content of Richard Wright's 1941 folk history Twelve Million Black Voices was an evocation of Dunbar's Lyrics of Lowly Life (190). (3) A number of African American musicians also claimed Dunbar as an inspiration. Paul Robeson commissioned and performed musical settings of "L'il Gal" and "Down Lover's Lane" ("Operetta on Program" 16). William Grant Still cited verses from Dunbar in the score of his 1935 Afro-American Symphony as epigraphs for the four movements. In the 1940s Thomas Kerr composed a song cycle of Dunbar's verse, and Janice Brown Johnson wrote orchestral settings of his poem "The Pool." (4) Yet Dunbar's symbolic presence as an exemplar of Black achievement--the first Black professional writer-- swiftly eclipsed what he actually wrote. …


INTRODUCTION Small businesses created 64 percent (14.5 million) of the net new jobs during the period of 1993-2008 (U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), 2009). Though they make significant contributions to the economy, these firms are especially vulnerable to economic downturns. U.S. SBA reports that the number of small business bankruptcies increases from 19,695 in 2006 to 43,546 in 2008. Business failures may be largely influenced by the firms' decisions to take on debt obligations. Accordingly, we focus on the capital structure decisions of small businesses with high levels of external loans. This distinguishes our study from prior studies that commonly assume consistent impacts of capital structure factors throughout the conditional distribution of debt. Further, we utilize data from a time period that resembles the period preceding the recent economic collapse in terms of small businesses' debt usage and economic conditions. Clarifying the factors of small businesses' debt decisions may help improve their survival during economic downturns given that such decisions in preceding economic expansion can have a long-term impact on business performance. Tax laws allow businesses to reduce their tax liability by deducting interest expense from taxable income. This lowers explicit costs of interest payments to creditors. The seminal work of Modigliani and Miller (1958; 1963) conjectures that the deductibility of interest expense makes debt a more attractive source of capital than equity. However, borrowings are associated with implicit costs. For example, bankruptcy can occur when a business is unable to meet required interest and/or principal payments. Small businesses often fail to fully factor in the implicit costs of debt during the periods of economic growth. This can be dangerous as these firms generally lack excess assets to survive declining sales revenue and/or higher interest rates during subsequent economic downturns. Among the suggestions on how to prevent future financial crises, one recommendation from Minneapolis Fed President is to limit the deductibility of interest payments of debt (Reuters, 2011). Similarly, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) presents the argument against the tax incentives of debt financing "given the large potential macroeconomic damage from excess leverage" (IMF, 2009). Though the suggestions on lowering the tax benefits of debt are not specific to small businesses, these firms could be affected by the potential changes in tax regulations. It is therefore necessary to examine whether tax savings from deducting interest payments have a significant influence on small businesses' decisions to take on high levels of debt. Such analysis is made possible through using the Censored Quantile Regression (CQR) that reports the effect of explanatory variables at various points in the conditional distribution of the dependent variable. Specifically, our CQR results of the 90th quantile apply to the firms with external loans that are higher than 90% of other small businesses. Closely-held small businesses can choose from multiple organizational forms; however, they can be broadly classified as either C-Corporations or flow-through entities based on the firms' tax status. C-Corporations pay income tax while flow-through entities do not. In this case, tax incentives for debt usage may be different between the two types of the entity forms. In addition, unlike C-Corporations, flow-through entities have limited access to equity capital and their owners may not have the protections for the liabilities. We thus study debt usage by different entity forms of small businesses. We find that marginal tax rates and profitability are subject to the changes in their explanatory power for the debt usage as the level of external loans increases. Otherwise, our results for high levels of external loans are similar to those for medium levels of the loans in terms of the impact of firm characteristics, industry factors, and owner characteristics. …


Background: Young people (18–25 years) during the adolescence/adulthood transition are vulnerable to weight gain and notoriously hard to reach. Despite increased levels of overweight/obesity in this age group, diet behaviour, a major contributor to obesity, is poorly understood. The purpose of this study was to explore diet behaviour among 18–25 year olds with influential factors including attitudes, motivators and barriers. Methods: An explanatory mixed method study design, based on health Behaviour Change Theories was used. Those at University/college and in the community, including those Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) were included. An initial quantitative questionnaire survey underpinned by the Theory of Planned Behaviour and Social Cognitive Theory was conducted and the results from this were incorporated into the qualitative phase. Seven focus groups were conducted among similar young people, varying in education and socioeconomic status. Exploratory univariate analysis was followed by multi-staged modelling to analyse the quantitative data. 'Framework Analysis' was used to analyse the focus groups. Results: 1313 questionnaires were analysed. Self-reported overweight/obesity prevalence was 22%, increasing with age, particularly in males. Based on the survey, 40% of young people reported eating an adequate amount of fruits and vegetables and 59% eating regular meals, but 32% reported unhealthy snacking. Based on the statistical modelling, positive attitudes towards diet and high intention (89%), did not translate into healthy diet behaviour. From the focus group discussions, the main motivators for diet behaviour were 'self-appearance' and having 'variety of food'. There were mixed opinions on 'cost' of food and 'taste'. Conclusion: Elements deemed really important to young people have been identified. This mixed method study is the largest in this vulnerable and neglected group covering a wide spectrum of the community. It provides evidence base to inform tailored interventions for a healthy diet within this age group.


Proper responses of platelets in the blood to various physiological signals are essential: Unresponsiveness prevents clotting at sites of wounds, but overactivity can contribute to heart attacks or stroke. Platelets respond to a number of factors, but the various signals all feed into activation of phospholipase C and consequent release of calcium from intracellular stores. Depletion of calcium from the intracellular stores then leads to influx of extracellular calcium. The STIM1 protein (stromal interaction molecule 1) functions in detection of store emptying and activation of store-operated channels that allow calcium entry. Varga-Szabo et al. used knockout mice in which the Stim 1 gene was disrupted to study the role of STIM1 in arterial thrombosis and ischemic brain infarction. The Stim 1–/– animals died a few hours after birth, but the authors were able to transplant bone marrow from the knockout animals to lethally irradiated host mice to study platelet function. In two in vivo models of arterial thrombosis induced by injury, formation of occlusive thrombi was inhibited in the Stim 1–/– animals. Similarly, in a model of ischemic brain infarction induced by restriction of blood flow through the middle cerebral artery, infarct size was reduced in the Stim 1–/– animals. Most animals with the Stim 1–/– platelets stopped bleeding from a wound at the tail tip within about 10 minutes, as did wild-type mice. The response was more variable in the Stim 1–/– animals, however, and about 35% of the animals showed longer bleeding. Because of this relatively mild effect on bleeding, the authors propose that inhibitors of Stim 1 might be attractive as antithrombolitics that could help treat stroke patients without the unacceptable side effect of increased intracerebral hemorrhage. As a caveat, the authors do note that results in the mouse models may not necessarily be directly comparable to the situation in humans. D. Varga-Szabo, A. Braun, C. Kleinschnitz, M. Bender, I. Pleines, M. Pham, T. Renné, G. Stoll, B. Nieswandt, The calcium sensor STIM1 is an essential mediator of arterial thrombosis and ischemic brain infarction. J. Exp. Med. 205, 1583-1591 (2008). [Abstract] [Full Text]


We report the results of a study focused on identifying and articulating an ''epistemic foundation'' underlying a pre-collegiate focus on engineering. We do so in the context of UTeachEngineering (UTE), a program supported in part by funding by the National Science Foundation and designed to develop a model approach to address the systematic challenges facing this work—from identifying learning goals, to certifying preand in-service teachers for engineering courses to developing a research-based high school engineering course. Given the systemic nature of the UTE approach, this model is positioned to serve as a starting point to further the conversation around two of the National Academy of Engineering Committee on Standards in K-12 Engineering Education (2010) central recommendations for future work in this area: (1) Identification of core ideas in engineering, and (2) creation of guidelines for instructional materials. Toward that end, project faculty and staff were interviewed and/or surveyed about their views on the goals and outcomes of engineering and engineering teacher education, as well as strategies design to reach these goals and the warrants for them. Data were analyzed following a grounded protocol. The results align well with previous efforts to identify ''core engineering concepts, skills, and dispositions for K-12 education'' (National Academy of Engineering Committee on Standards in K-12 Engineering Education, 2010, Annex to Chapter 3).


Two other cases might be described as fighting drunk." A policeman at the local gaol ran amok, armed with a carbine. I was the medical officer, and was relieved to find his colleagues had overpowered and disarmed him by the time I arrived. On another occasion there was an uproar on the hospital veranda. Running out from my house to see what was the matter I was in time to see a male charge nurse felled with a blow from a powerful man. Grateful for the mosquito screening which separated us I kept the patient humoured in conversation until reinforcements arrived. In other words, the effects of smoking Indian hemp can range from elation to manic violence.-I am, etc., E. GORDON WILKINS. St. Mary's Hospital, York.


The role of consumers has evolved over time, with consumers becoming more active contributors to the activities of firms (Kozinets et al., 2010). This blurring of boundaries has resulted in an evolution of firms' marketing strategies, in which many firms now desire deeper engagement from customers (Harmeling et al., 2017). Engagement is broadly understood as a genuine disposition of a customer towards a brand, associated with the voluntary contribution of resources (Jaakkola and Alexander, 2014). To this extent, accepted engagement antecedents are seen as representing genuine acts of consumers (Brodie et al., 2011). Consumer engagement is amplified through the ubiquity and functionality of social media platforms, which provide countless opportunities for a brand to continuously interact and develop relationships with consumers (Dessart, Veloutsou and Morgan-Thomas, 2015). However, this new form of brand engagement on social media may also cause a shift in the interactions of users. Rather than interaction with a brand to reflect a genuine disposition of a product or service, social media allows individuals to engage with brands as part of ideal self-construction through a self-presentation process. Thus, brand engagement on social media may not reflect consumers' genuine behaviour. This research explores of the potential for 'inauthentic engagement' within social media. Data were collected through thirty semi-structured interviews with Facebook users covering 11 nationalities, using the projective technique of asking interviewees to comment on their own Facebook news feed and posts. The findings identify three types of inauthentic engagement, reflecting varying degrees of inauthenticity and which include: staged engagement, spurious engagement and fake engagement, which come with diverse drivers – self-differentiation, self-enhancement, concern for others, group belonging and attention seeking. Given that most firms currently employ engagement marketing strategies that are perceived to reflect genuine brand engagement by consumers (Harmeling et al., 2017), this research implies that the results of firms' existing strategies could be questionable when consumer engagement is no longer based on a genuine disposition to engage. This research expands awareness of the nuances of consumer brand engagement within social media. The research diverges from traditional investigations of engagement, which assume a genuine disposition associated with long-term commitment to a focal object (Brodie et al., 2011; Harmeling et al., 2017). This research will have important implications for companies in terms of their ability to identify inauthentic engagement and design effective strategies to place greater emphasis on self-presentation to encourage consumers to engage through brand association. Consequently, when firms recognise this informed perspective, they are able to capture more engagement from every aspect of consumers' segmentation on social media. Indeed, inauthentic engagement could damage a firm's efforts because people are making decisions as a result. As existing research suggest that online engagement has an effect on brand performance, and ultimately sales (Malthouse et al., 2016; Yang et al., 2016); therefore, engagement that is inauthentic could also have some effect on this.


Irrigated farming is central to meeting the world's food and fodder needs and will be even more important in delivering on food security and water sustainability development priorities in the future. High population growth, climate change, increasing socio-economic growth, and water stress are key drivers of change. Although irrigation covers only 6.5 percent of the total land used for agriculture, it supports production of forty percent of the world's food and fodder output, with a gross value of fifty-five percent of global agricultural produce. Improving irrigation performance is a priority strategy in addressing rural poverty and in mitigating climate -change impacts, especially for the most vulnerable. Investment in irrigation has seen renewed interest in the past decade, and irrigation and drainage (I and D) governance emerging as a key focus for improved performance. Institutional failures and poor irrigation performance have been blamed on low capacity, perverse incentives, misdirected policies, and weak implementation but these are only contributing factors. Investments in institutions of the past have aimed to fix the institutions, with a focus on form and on organizational structure. The central message of this resource book is that functions, processes, and related capabilities must be the priority focus of all irrigation institutional interventions.


Abstract Scholarship and practitioners interested in civil society organizations (CSOs) around the world have drawn attention to the growing set of laws—both restrictive and permissive—governing CSO activities. To date, however, there have been limited efforts to typologize these regulations which hinders the ability to analyze their emergence and effects. This article seeks to move scholarship toward a coherent framework by first, introducing a broad typology of governance, formation, operations, and resources provisions that allows for a systematic study of CSO laws and policies across contexts; and second, proposing four ideal-types of regulatory regimes, rigid-conservatism, bureaucratic-illiberalism, permissionless-association, and legitimized-pluralism. These regulatory regimes are political institutions that consist of multiple laws and constitutional protections that govern and protect civil society. The article theorizes the effect of each ideal-type regulatory regime on CSOs' organizational ecology. To provide a concrete example, I apply the typology to the case of Kenya to show how its regulatory regime has changed incrementally over time. Methodologically, the article uses an iterative, inductive review and analysis of academic articles, book chapters, and practitioner reports contributing to our understanding of the laws and policies that regulate CSOs, or what I call CSO regulatory regimes.


This paper quantifies the direct impact of taxes on income distribution at the household level in Chile and estimates the distributional effect of several changes in the tax structure. We find that income distributions before and after taxes are very similar (Gini coefficients of 0.488 and 0.496, respectively). Moreover, radical modifications of the tax structure, such as raising the value added tax from 18 to 25% or substituting a 20% flat tax for the present progressive income tax affect the after-tax distribution only slightly. We present some arithmetic showing that the scope for direct income redistribution through progressivity of the tax system is rather limited. By contrast, for parameter values observed in Chile, and possibly in most developing countries, the targeting of expenditures and the level of the average tax rate are far more important determinants of income distribution after government transfers. Thus, a high-yield proportional tax can have a far bigger equalizing impact than a low-yield progressive tax. Moreover, a simple model shows that the optimal tax system is biased against progressive taxes and towards proportional taxes, with a bias that grows with the degree of inequality of pre-tax incomes. Our results suggest that to reduce income inequality, the focus of discussion should be on the amount to be redistributed, the targeting of public spending, and the relative efficiency of alternative taxes, and not on the progressivity of the tax system.