Stocks are continuously traded on the stock exchange, representing current and future prospects, whilst accounting reports are prepared periodically: quarterly, half yearly or on an annual basis inevitably giving rise to a difference between their market and book values. There are many approaches to explaining the difference. This thesis takes the approach of intellectual capital and seeks to assess and evaluate the explanatory power of its components on value creation and firm performance. In this research, data is collected from the financial reports of 90 quoted companies in Singapore, over a ten-year period from 2005-2014, covering the period pre and post effects of the global financial crisis. Companies were drawn from three sectors: manufacturing, services and other business activities. The research methodology adopts the positivist paradigm and a deductive approach with quantitative analysis. Two types of panel data regression models are estimated: static panel data analysis estimates the relationships of the components of intellectual capital, financial performance and share price; dynamic panel data analysis examines the changes in share price with the factors of intellectual capital. It emerged that the components of intellectual capital (i.e. human capital, relational capital, process capital and innovation capital) have significant impacts on financial performance, share price and change in share price. Empirically validated frameworks linking these factors were developed for each sector. Furthermore, the outcomes differ across industry sectors. This present research thus contributes theoretically to available academic literature on the development of competitive advantage and value creation. It could also be useful to practitioners who are focused on value creation.


To reduce the risk of another financial crisis, the Dodd-Frank Act requires that trading in certain derivatives be backed by clearinghouses. Critics mount two main objections: a clearinghouse shifts risk instead of reducing it; and a clearinghouse could fail, requiring a bailout. This Article's observation that clearinghouses engage in liquidity partitioning answers both. Liquidity partitioning means that when one of its member firms becomes bankrupt, a clearinghouse keeps a portion of the firm's most liquid assets, and a matching portion of its short-term debt, out of the bankruptcy estate. The clearinghouse then applies the first toward immediate repayment of the second. Economic value is created because creditors within the clearinghouse are paid much more quickly, and other creditors are paid no less quickly, than they would be otherwise. The rapid cash payouts for clearinghouse members reduce illiquidity and uncertainty in the financial sector, the main causes of contagion in a crisis. And because the clearinghouse holds only liquid assets, it avoids the maturity mismatch between short-term liabilities and long-term assets that characterizes the balance sheets of many financial institutions. A clearinghouse therefore is much less likely than its members to fail during a crisis. To ensure that clearinghouses remain stable and systemically valuable, rulemakers should require clearing of a wide variety of derivatives contracts, but should limit clearinghouse membership to dealer firms.


The concept of strict dominance provides a technique that can be used normatively to predict the play of games based only on the assumption of individual rationality. Such predictions, unlike those based on Nash equilibria, do not depend on players' beliefs about the behaviour of others. One strategy strictly dominates another if and only if the payoff from the first strategy is strictly greater than the payoff from the second, no matter how the opponent(s) plays. It is possible for iterated elimination of strictly dominated strategies to remove all but a single choice for each player, in which case we say that the game is strict-dominance solvable. Analysis of games with continuous strategy spaces reveals necessary and sufficient conditions on the payoff functions for strict-dominance solvability. These conditions will be identified first for symmetric two-player games with quadratic payoff functions, and then extended to higher-order payoff functions and asymmetric games. The conditions discovered can be applied to specific games, producing conclusions that can be compared to other solutions of those games.


Competition is a very important preconditionwhich affects the effectiveness of development of national economy under the conditions of globalization. In classical economics, the competitiveness of countries is determined through production inputs. In the modern era of globalization, it appears that, besides quantifiable factors, qualitative influences or 'soft' factors such as political stability, government policies, quality of education, etc., are all important in determining competiveness. The World Economic Forum's global competitiveness index and the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) are the two most widely used competitiveness indices. Using the same data as the WCY, Principal Components Analysis (PCA) is used in this analysis to develop indices of countries' competitiveness. The procedure deals with first transforming the original variables to a new set of uncorrelated variables called Principal Components (PC) . The new variables are linear combinations of the original variables, independent, and are derived in order of decreasing importance--the first PC accounts for as much as possible of the variation in the original data. We find that the WCY data collection methods could be simplified without compromising quality--which may encourage more countries to participate in the survey. Moreover, the approach developed in this study does not suffer from the same empirical limitations of past attempts to develop indices of the competitiveness of nations.


Abstract An effective solution of a number of boundary value and boundary contact problems of thermoelastic equilibrium is constructed for a homogeneous isotropic rectangular parallelepiped in terms of asymmetric and pseudo-asymmetric elasticity (Cosserat's continuum and pseudo- continuum). Two opposite faces of a parallelepiped are affected by arbitrary surface disturbances and a stationary thermal field, while for the four remaining faces symmetry or anti-symmetry conditions (for a multilayer rectangular parallelepiped nonhomogeneous contact conditions are also defined) are given. The solutions are constructed in trigonometric series using the method of separation of variables.


Self-censorship refers to the decision by an individual or group to refrain from speaking and to the decision by a media organization to refrain from publishing information. Whenever an individual or group or the media engages in self-censorship, the values of the First Amendment are compromised, because the public is denied information or the expression of ideas that the public would have received were it not for the self-censorship. It should not be surprising, therefore, that the principles, doctrines and precedents of what I have referred to as "the law of the First Amendment" are designed to prevent self-censorship due to the fear of governmental sanctions against expression. Self-censorship due to the fear of governmental sanctions against expression may be denominated "self-censorship bad."At the same time, the First Amendment also embodies a right to silence, and the right to remain silent is also a value of the First Amendment. The values embodied in the First Amendment right to silence support self-censorship in the sense that an individual or group may decide to refrain from speaking and the media may decide to refrain from publishing, because they believe that the public interest is better served by the decision to refrain from speaking than by the decision to speak and by the decision to refrain from publishing than by the decision to publish. This form of self-censorship may be denominated "self-censorship good."In this writing, we will first discuss "self-censorship bad." Here we will discuss the principles, doctrines and precedents of the First Amendment that are designed to prevent self-censorship due to the fear of governmental sanctions against expression. We will see that in their totality, these principles, doctrines and precedents comprise a major part of the "law of the First Amendment," and stand as a bulwark against "self-censorship bad." We will then discuss "self-censorship good" in the context of media organizations exercising their editorial discretion to refuse to publish certain information. Here will use two examples. The first is the refusal of the media to identify victims of rape and other sexual offenses. The second is the refusal of the media to disclose certain information on ground that the disclosure of the information would cause serious harm to the national security. In this connection, we will review at length the process by which the media makes the decision to refuse to disclose information on national security grounds. We will conclude by relating "self-censorship bad" and "self-censorship good" to the values of the First Amendment and the function of the First Amendment in the Nation's constitutional system.


This article uses national, quarterly data to examine U.S. meat demand using the Rotterdam model. We investigate the effect of multiple information indices linking different health concerns with diet, changes in household dynamics, and meat recall information. Medical journal articles linking iron, zinc, and protein with health and diet increase beef and poultry demand, whereas articles dealing with fat, cholesterol, and diet concerns reduce beef demand. Increasing consumption of food away from home enhances pork and poultry demand while reducing beef demand. Combined, these results provide a more complete and current understanding of the impact of multiple information factors faced by U.S. consumers.


REDUCING THE RISK OF SOFTWARE COST ESTIMATION by Shixian Yang Inaccurate cost estimation is a well-known problem in software development. The common cost estimation models are point estimates that are unable to quantify uncertainties. Furthermore, it is difficult to calibrate the uncertainties in cost estimation due to the lack of information. The purpose of this thesis is to prove that probability techniques could be synthesized into COCOMO (Constructive Cost Model) to quantify uncertainties. Another aim is to find out how to get more insight on reducing the risk of cost estimation. In this thesis, some historical data is presented to show the variance in factors of COCOMO. Monte Carlo simulation method is also introduced into COCOMO to quantify the uncertainties. Finally, a "What-if" study is facilitated to find the potential factor changes to affect the result of simulation. The result of the study reveals that process maturity has more influence than productivity on reducing variance of estimation. It indicates that synthesizing Monte Carlo simulation and "What-if" studies into COCOMO could produce insightful information to reduce the risk of software cost estimation. REDUCING THE RISK OF SOFTWARE COST ESTIMATION


An archetypal example of inverted metamorphism purportedly resulting from shear heating is found in the Pelona Schist of southern California (United States). Recent studies demonstrate that the Pelona Schist was subducted and accreted at the onset of Laramide fl at subduction under thermal and kinematic conditions not considered in earlier numerical models. To test the shear heating hypothesis under these conditions, we constructed a thermokinematic model of fl subduction initiation involving continuous accretion of the schist. A neighborhood algorithm inversion demonstrates that available metamorphic and thermochronologic constraints in the Sierra Pelona mountains are satisfi ed only if accretion rates were 0.2‐3.6 km/m.y and shear heating was minimal (shear stress 0‐19 MPa). Minimal shear heating is also consistent with an inversion of models constrained by thermochronology of the East Fork (of the San Gabriel River) exposure of the schist. Shear heating inhibits the formation of modeled inverted gradients during accretion and should not be considered an important factor in their generation.


Background & Objectives: Intra-hippocampal adminestration of origanum (ORG) improves spatial learning of rats. The aim of the present study was to investigate the possible mechanism for origanum extract on spatial learning and memory in the hippocampus. Methods: In this study 42 adult male Wistar rats were used. Animals were cannulated bilaterally in the posterior laterl of hippocampus. After the recovery period, the spatial learning and memory were assessed using Morris Water Maze (MWM). Saline, ORG (0.03μg/site) glutamate receptor antagonist MK801 (0.08, 0.2 and 0.4 μmol/site) and coinjected of MK + ORG was injected into the posterior lateral of hippocampus 20 minutes before the training and retrival sesions (for 5 consecutive days) (n=7). Results: The results showed that the intra-hippocampal injection of MK 801 significantly blocked the decreased distance and time of reaching (due to ORG injection) to find hidden platform of MWM (p<0.05). On the retrival tests, the average of time spent in the target area is reduced in the co-injected of MK801 + ORG group. Conclusion: The intra-hippocampal injection of aqueous extract of origanum may improve working memory in rats through glutamate-dependent NMDA receptors.


Data clustering plays an important role in many disciplines, including data mining, machine learning, bioinformatics, pattern recognition, and other fields, where there is a need to learn the inherent grouping structure of data in an unsupervised manner. There are many clustering approaches proposed in the literature with different quality/complexity tradeoffs. Each clustering algorithm works on its domain space with no optimum solution to all datasets of different properties, sizes, structures, and distributions. Challenges in data clustering include, identifying proper number of clusters, scalability of the clustering approach, robustness to noise, tackling distributed datasets, and handling clusters of different configurations. This thesis addresses some of these challenges through cooperation between multiple clustering approaches.
We introduce a Cooperative Clustering (CC) model that involves multiple clustering techniques; the goal of the cooperative model is to increase the homogeneity of objects within clusters through cooperation by developing two data structures, cooperative contingency graph and histogram representation of pair-wise similarities. The two data structures are designed to find the matching sub-clusters between different clusterings and to obtain the final set of cooperative clusters through a merging process. Obtaining the co-occurred objects from the different clusterings enables the cooperative model to group objects based on a multiple agreement between the invoked clustering techniques. In addition, merging this set of sub-clusters using histograms poses a new trend of grouping objects into more homogenous clusters. The cooperative model is consistent, reusable, and scalable in terms of the number of the adopted clustering approaches.
In order to deal with noisy data, a novel Cooperative Clustering Outliers Detection (CCOD) algorithm is implemented through the implication of the cooperation methodology for better detection of outliers in data. The new detection approach is designed in four phases, (1) Global non-cooperative Clustering, (2) Cooperative Clustering, (3) Possible outlier's Detection, and finally (4) Candidate Outliers Detection. The detection of outliers is established in a bottom-up scenario.
The thesis also addresses cooperative clustering in distributed Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks. Mining large and inherently distributed datasets poses many challenges, one of which is the extraction of a global model as a global summary of the clustering solutions generated from all nodes for the purpose of interpreting the clustering quality of the distributed dataset as if it was located at one node. We developed distributed cooperative model and architecture that work on a two-tier super-peer P2P network. The model is called Distributed Cooperative Clustering in Super-peer P2P Networks (DCCP2P). This model aims at producing one clustering solution across the whole network. It specifically addresses scalability of network size, and consequently the distributed clustering complexity, by modeling the distributed clustering problem as two layers of peer neighborhoods and super-peers. Summarization of the global distributed clusters is achieved through a distributed version of the cooperative clustering model.
Three clustering algorithms, k-means (KM), Bisecting k-means (BKM) and Partitioning Around Medoids (PAM) are invoked in the cooperative model. Results on various gene expression and text documents datasets with different properties, configurations and different degree of outliers reveal that: (i) the cooperative clustering model achieves significant improvement in the quality of the clustering solutions compared to that of the non-cooperative individual approaches; (ii) the cooperative detection algorithm discovers the nonconforming objects in data with better accuracy than the contemporary approaches, and (iii) the distributed cooperative model attains the same quality or even better as the centralized approach and achieves decent speedup by increasing number of nodes. The distributed model offers high degree of flexibility, scalability, and interpretability of large distributed repositories. Achieving the same results using current methodologies requires polling the data first to one center location, which is sometimes not feasible.


In this work, we address the challenges of designing interactive technologies that approach menstruation in a positive way. Building on a Research through Design approach, we underline the tensions emerging from first-hand experiences and reflections in a design workshop. In order to maintain a positive approach, rather than asking participants what problems they encountered while on their period, we asked them what desires they had, and what experiences might help them cope with it. The results of the workshop emphasized the need for reflecting critically on how we perceive menstruation when designing and how viewing menstruation as a problem might perpetuate taboos and distance women's experiences from their bodies. We aim to contribute to the ongoing discussion on designing for women's health in HCI by suggesting implications for researchers and practitioners.


The design of the green infrastructure in urban areas largely ignores how people's relation to nature, or human-nature connection (HNC), can be nurtured. One practical reason for this is the lack of a framework to guide the assessment of where people, and more importantly children, experience significant nature situations and establish nature routines. This paper develops such a framework. We employed a mixed-method approach to understand what qualities of nature situations connect children to nature (RQ1), what constitutes children's HNC (RQ2), and how significant nature situations and children's HNC relate to each other over time (RQ3). We first interviewed professionals in the field of connecting children to nature (N = 26), performed inductive thematic analysis of these interviews, and then further examined the inductive findings by surveying specialists (N = 275). We identified 16 qualities of significant nature situations (e.g., "awe," "engagement of senses," "involvement of mentors") and 10 abilities that constitute children's HNC (e.g., "feeling comfortable in natural spaces," "feeling attached to natural spaces," "taking care of nature"). We elaborated three principles to answer our research questions: (1) significant nature situations are various and with differing consequences for children's HNC; (2) children's HNC is a complex embodied ability; (3) children's HNC progresses over time through diverse nature routines. Together, these findings form the Assessment framework for Children's Human Nature Situations (ACHUNAS). ACHUNAS is a comprehensive framework that outlines what to quantify or qualify when assessing "child-nature connecting" environments. It guides the assessment of where and how children connect to nature, stimulating both the design of nature-connecting human habitats as well as pedagogical approaches to HNC.


Popular Education (PE) is an educational movement and pedagogical current that emerged in Latin America in the seventies. It was a result of Paulo Freire's pedagogical proposals in a context of radicalization of popular struggle and cultural and intellectual movements. During the past five decades, hundreds of groups, practices and projects have identified themselves as part of the PE movement. As a pedagogical current, PE is understood as an educational perspective and practice, which is critical of institutionalized education and identifies with emancipatory political perspectives. Its purpose is to help populations that experience oppression or discrimination to strengthen their capacity to change their conditions, relationships, practices and ways of thinking and feeling by means of cultural, educational, dialogical, participatory, interactive and expressive practices. With respect to the history of PE in Latin America, its social contexts and educational practices, four stages can be identified:
 1. The liberating pedagogy of Paulo Freire at the end of the sixties.
 2. The foundational stage PE in the seventies.
 3. The re-foundation and expansion of the PE in the eighties and nineties.
 4. The reactivation of the EP in the current context.
 During these periods, a constant interest in PE has been producing knowledge from and about its contexts, themes and practices. From its origins, it has created and incorporated qualitative research strategies in coherence with its political and epistemological options.
 As evidenced in each historical phase of the PE, the use of a qualitative methodology predominated: thematic research in Freire's pedagogical proposal; participatory action research (PAR) in its foundational stage; collective reconstruction of the history and critical ethnography in its expansion phase; systematization of practices since the 1990s; and the emergence of innovative and aesthetic strategies at the present century. A set of methodological principles derive from this historical path of qualitative research in PE:
 1. Maintaining a critical distance from institutionalized research modes in the scientific world, acknowledging their subordination to hegemonic powers.
 2. Assuming PE to be both critical and emancipatory. This option is identified with values, willpower, and projects that involve new meanings of the organization of collective life.
 3. Recognizing the place of the cultural and the intersubjective, both in social phenomena and in social research processes.
 4. Linking it to emancipatory organizational processes and collective actions.
 5. Not subordinating it to the institutional logic of disciplinary research.
 6. Promoting group and organization participation in research process decisions.
 7. Ensuring that it promotes formation of knowledge collectives.
 8. Maintaining a critical and creative use of the theory.
 9. Recognizing the plurality of subjects and promoting a "dialogue of knowledge."
 10. Incorporating diverse cultural practices within communities in order to produce and communicate their knowledge.
 11. Assuming methodology to be a flexible practice.
 12. Assuming research within PE is a permanent practice of critical reflection.


This article presents the results from an experimental evaluation of a voluntary health insurance program for informal sector workers in Nicaragua. Costs of the premiums as well as enrollment location were randomly allocated. Overall, take-up of the program was low, with only 20% enrollment. Program costs and streamlined bureaucratic procedures were important determinants of enrollment. Participation of local microfinance institutions had a slight negative effect on enrollment. One year later, those who received insurance substituted toward services at covered facilities and total out-of-pocket expenditures fell. However, total expenditures fell by less than the insurance premiums. We find no evidence of an increase in health-care utilization among the newly insured. We also find very low retention rates after the expiration of the subsidy, with less than 10% of enrollees still enrolled after one year. To shed light on the findings from the experimental results, we present qualitative evidence of institutional and contextual factors that limited the success of this program.


We study the problem of controlling a swarm of anonymous, mobile robots to cooperatively cover an unknown two-dimensional space. The novelty of our proposed solution is that it is applicable to extremely simple robots that lack run-time computation or storage. The solution requires only a single bit of information per robot—whether or not another robot is present in its line of sight. Computer simulations show that our deterministic controller, which was obtained through off-line optimization, achieves around 71–76% coverage in a test scenario with no robot redundancy, which corresponds to a 26–39% reduction of the area that is not covered, when compared to an optimized random walk. A moderately lower level of performance was observed in 20 experimental trials with 25 physical e-puck robots. Moreover, we demonstrate that the same controller can be used in environments of different dimensions and even to navigate a maze. The controller provides a baseline against which one can quantify the performance improvements that more advanced and expensive techniques may offer. Moreover, due to its simplicity, it could potentially be implemented on swarms of sub-millimeter-sized robots. This would pave the way for new applications in micro-medicine.


Justice systems around the world are increasingly turning to videoconferencing as a means to reduce delays and reduce costs in legal processes. This preliminary research examined whether interviewing a witness remotely – without physical co-presence of the witness and interviewer – could facilitate the production of quality facial composite sketches of suspects. In Study 1, 42 adults briefly viewed a photograph of a face. The next day they participated in Cognitive Interviews with a forensic artist, conducted either face-to-face or remotely via videoconference. In Study 2, 20 adults participated in videoconferenced interviews, and we manipulated the method by which they viewed the developing sketch. In both studies, independent groups of volunteers rated the likeness of the composites to the original photographs. The data suggest that remote interviews elicited effective composites; however, in Study 1 these composites were considered poorer matches to the photographs than were those produced in face-to-face interviews. The differences were small, but significant. Participants perceived several disadvantages to remote interviewing, but also several advantages including less pressure and better concentration. The results of Study 2 suggested that different sketch presentation methods offered different benefits. We propose that remote interviewing could be a useful tool for investigators in certain circumstances.


Learning a tree substitution grammar is very challenging due to derivational ambiguity. Our recent approach used a Bayesian non-parametric model to induce good derivations from treebanked input (Cohn et al., 2009), biasing towards small grammars composed of small generalisable productions. In this paper we present a novel training method for the model using a blocked Metropolis-Hastings sampler in place of the previous method's local Gibbs sampler. The blocked sampler makes considerably larger moves than the local sampler and consequently converges in less time. A core component of the algorithm is a grammar transformation which represents an infinite tree substitution grammar in a finite context free grammar. This enables efficient blocked inference for training and also improves the parsing algorithm. Both algorithms are shown to improve parsing accuracy.


Map units named for the Matapeake series (fine-silty, mixed, mesic Typic Hapludults) comprise one-third of the Coastal Plain in the soil survey of northern Delaware. The concept was one of well-drained soils formed in thin loess over coarse-textured fluvial sediments. This study uses characterization data from pedons within the loess-blanketed terrain of northern Delaware to assess the taxonomy and composition of Matapeake map units. All pedons are Alfisols rather than Ultisols, and this status has not been influenced by liming. Fine-loamy rather than fine-silty soils typically occur where loess is <80 cm thick. Much soil variability exists on interfluves where thin loess discontinuously blankets the irregular surface of the sandy Pensauken Formation. This results in an inability to map specific consociations, even for large-scale, detailed surveys. The existing soil survey used specific map units - consociations named for phases of soil series - that do not adequately depict the diversity on mappable landscapes. The Matapeake and associated series used in this area are too narrowly defined in ranges of characteristics, are too general in geographic setting, have loess thickness limits that are not concordant with particle-size classes, and leave gaps in the lithologic-hydrologic continuum. They therefore provide little utility for organizing knowledge, understanding relationships, or as objects for research. Soil survey in this area requires more generalized map units, greater emphasis on stratigraphy and geomorphology and their interaction to influence hydrology and lithology, and less emphasis on artificial conceptual groupings at the lowest taxonomic category, the series.


Creating Ourselves is a unique effort to lay the cultural and theological groundwork for cross-cultural collaboration between the African and Latino/a American communities. In the introduction, the editors contend that given overlapping histories and interests of the two communities, they should work together to challenge social injustices. Acknowledging that dialogue is a necessary precursor to collaboration, they maintain that African and Latino/a Americans need to cultivate the habit of engaging "the other" in substantive conversation. Toward that end, they have brought together theologians and scholars of religion from both communities. The contributors offer broadly comparative exchanges about the religious and theological significance of various forms of African American and Latino/a popular culture, including representations of the body, literature, music, television, visual arts, and cooking.

Corresponding to a particular form of popular culture, each section features two essays, one by an African American scholar and one by a Latino/a scholar, as well as a short response by each scholar to the other's essay. The essays and responses are lively, varied, and often personal. One contributor puts forth a "brown" theology of hip hop that celebrates hybridity, contradiction, and cultural miscegenation. Another analyzes the content of the message transmitted by African American evangelical preachers who have become popular sensations through television broadcasts, video distribution, and Internet promotions. The other essays include a theological reading of the Latina body, a consideration of the "authenticity" of representations of Jesus as white, a theological account of the popularity of telenovelas, and a reading of African American ideas of paradise in one of Toni Morrison's novels. Creating Ourselves helps to make popular culture available as a resource for theology and religious studies and for facilitating meaningful discussions across racial and ethnic boundaries.

Contributors . Teresa Delgado, James H. Evans Jr., Joseph De Leon, Cheryl Kirk-Duggan, Angel F. Mendez Montoya, Alexander Nava, Anthony B. Pinn, Mayra Rivera, Suzanne E. Hoeferkamp Segovia, Benjamin Valentin, Jonathan L. Walton, Traci C. West, Nancy Lynne Westfield, Sheila F. Winborne


This research characterises the structure and micro-structure of asphalt-silica composites heated to a temperature of 150 °C, as well as their physical and mechanical properties. The asphalt and silica mass ratios were varied into 10:90, 15:85, 20:80, 25:75, 30:70 and 35:65. The characterisation of the asphalt-silica composite was performed using Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR), X-ray Diffraction (XRD), and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The results of the XRD studies show that the main phases are amorphous silica and carbon, which are linked to the functional groups of silicon hydroxide, silicon dioxide and alkanes. The other results show that the reduced water absorption, compressive strength, and density are caused by the increased porosity and swelling thickness with an increasing amount of the added asphalt. Asphalt-silica composites with asphalt addition from 10 to 20 % experience insignificant changes in compressive strength, water absorption, and swelling thickness. These results prove that asphalt has a significant impact on the phase of silica, making it have the potential to replace light steel roofing devices.


We evaluated the semen quality and oxidative stress attack on spermatozoa nuclear DNA after men were exposed to a combination of electromagnetic radiation from an 1800-MHz 4G smartphone network and 2.45-GHz wi-fi. According to the daily network exposure time, the subjects involved were divided into three groups, namely group one: less than 30 min; group two: 31-120 min; and group three: more than 121 min. Routine semen tests, reactive oxygen species levels, total antioxidant capacity, glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) and superoxide dismutase, 8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine expression, and urine and comet assays were conducted for all participants and the results for the three groups were compared. With extended exposure time, reactive oxygen increased, while total antioxidant capacity, glutathione and superoxide dismutase, and superoxide dismutase decreased. Increased expression of 8-OHdG and sperm DNA fragments (head DNA% decreased while tail DNA% and Olive tail moment increased) was observed. Sperm count, vitality, and motility decreased significantly. Electromagnetic radiation may induce oxidative stress, damage sperm nuclear DNA, and eventually reduce sperm quality; these factors negatively affect male fertility.


Barth and Israeli (2013) raise five serious concerns regarding the research design and interpretation of Christensen, Hail, and Leuz (2013). They claim: (i) the evidence stands in stark contrast to Daske, Hail, Leuz, and Verdi (2008) and fails to replicate its prior findings; (ii) the research design using fixed effects leaves out main effects and two-way interactions which likely biases the estimated liquidity effects around IFRS adoption and changes in enforcement; (iii) the vast majority of sample observations do not contribute to the identification which is misleading in terms of the scope and the conclusions that can be drawn from the study; (iv) the timing of IFRS adoption and enforcement changes is measured imprecisely leading to low power tests; and (v) the evidence from Japan is irrelevant to the study. In this note, we show that all five claims are incorrect or misleading. Our discussion also more broadly describes how to properly interpret the fixed-effect specifications in Christensen, Hail, and Leuz (2013). Since studies in accounting, finance, and economics make extensive use of fixed-effect models, a correct understanding of this research design is important to avoid interpretational mistakes. More generally, we discuss that proper empirical identification and inferences are important to international accounting and IFRS studies so that this area of research does not become a market for excuses.


This article examines the modernisation of universities in the U.K., arguing that heterogeneous policy objectives and strategies have become condensed in the construction of higher education as a governable system and the university as a corporate enterprise. It argues that managerialism has displaced and subordinated professional and administrative logics for the coordination of universities, articulating them into supporting roles. Finally, it examines some of the cultural psychological states associated with the contradictory and uncomfortable assemblage that is the modernized university: identifying fantasy, dissociation and professional melancholia. It concludes with an argument that nostalgia for a lost academic community cannot be a foundation for political challenges to the present model


The two chalcones xanthoangelol (XA) and 4-hydroxyderricin (4HD) are major functional polyphenolic compounds in the edible herb Angelica keiskei, which is native to Japan. The compounds XA and 4HD are known to have anti-inflammatory and anti-diabetic functions although their beneficial effect on vascular disease is not clear. Atherosclerosis induced by lifestyle-related diseases such as obesity and hypertension is a serious vascular disease in which endothelial injury plays a major pathogenic role. Therefore, the healing of endothelial injury is considered important in preventing atherosclerosis. The present study examined whether XA and 4HD promote the wound healing of cultured porcine vascular endothelial cells (ECs) and analyzed the molecular mechanisms of their effect. Both compounds promoted endothelial wound healing, induced nitric oxide (NO) production, and increased heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) expression as well as the phosphorylation level of endothelial NO synthase (eNOS). The wound healing promoted by these compounds was inhibited by pretreatment with the NOS inhibitor L-NMMA and HO-1 inhibitor ZnPPIX, respectively. ZnPPIX inhibited the phosphorylation of eNOS as well. XAand 4HD-dependent wound healing was also blocked by hemoglobin, a carbon monoxide (CO) absorbent. A CO-releasing molecule facilitated the wound healing, which was suppressed by pretreatment with L-NMMA. These results suggest that XA and 4HD stimulate wound healing by increasing HO-1 expression with subsequent CO production, which activates eNOS followed by NO generation. Our findings indicate that the two chalcones in Angelica keiskeimay have a preventative effect against atherosclerosis.


The similarities and differences in traditional, contemporary and global/international cultures' development and use of institutions for the wise use of wetlands are explored across Western Australia. A process grounded in social anthropology is used to test a research hypothesis and to assess the structure and function of the diverse cultures' institutions and empathy for wetlands. Six thematic case studies were located in catchments on Perth's Ridge Hill, Perth's Eastern Hills, Perth, and Western Australia's Swan Coastal Plain, the Southwest, and its rangelands. Sources of evidence also include the literature on Aboriginal Australia, an extensive and detailed ethnographic review of regional and historic documents, the scientific literature of strategic water, wetlands and environmental management, and three decades of the author's professional work.
This analysis demonstrates that traditional Western Australian cultures have diverse and effective institutions for sustainable use, conservation, protection and a well-developed empathy for their inland waters. In contrast, contemporary Western Australian cultures with some important exceptions do not, and are more accepting of the continuing exploitation and systematic destruction of the remaining natural waters, particularly in urban and agricultural areas of the Southwest. This recent destruction of wetlands is moderated occasionally by the efforts of traditional cultures, community and heritage organizations, sometimes through the use of contemporary planning and environmental protection institutions, and more rarely because of Australia's obligations to global Conventions. The analysis explains why better use of these institutions is essential. Opportunities for improving wise use of wetlands in Western Australia are identified.
Particularly important is the need for the more transparent engagement and regular reporting by the State of Western Australia in support of Australia's obligations to the global Conventions. This includes reporting on progress towards the establishment of nature reserves on Swan Coastal Plain wetlands under Article 4 of the Ramsar Convention. It includes reporting the meeting of National targets for protecting priority biodiversity of inland water ecosystems, the protection of the buffers of wetlands and waterways as parts of ecological corridors, and State-wide progress towards use of traditional ecological knowledge to the Convention on Biological Diversity. Reporting is needed on progress made towards implementing relevant Articles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. All reports might valuably include progress on identified new priority initiatives such as distributed network of wetland education centres, the better protection of monument wetland sites and improved indigenous heritage conservation. Such work, carried out in conjunction with Perth's Whadjug peoples, the Southwest's Nyoongar peoples, and the rangeland's Kimberley, Yarnangu and Yamatji peoples, will help the conservation of the State's inland waters as a necessary condition of human and ecosystem existence, as well as provide valuable common ground in which to practise tolerance, respect and cooperation between cultures. The better recognition of traditional ecological knowledge, the provision of more support for Indigenous engagement in wetland conservation, and the implementation of a far broader range of effective institutions are all identified as essential requirements for moving towards the wise use of wetlands in Western Australia.


The present paper studies the growth and efficiency consequences of pension funding with individual retirement accounts in a general equilibrium overlapping generations model with idiosyncratic lifespan and labor income uncertainty. We distinguish between economies with rational and hyperbolic consumers and compare the consequences of voluntary and mandatory retirement plans. Three major findings are derived in our study: First, we quantify the commitment effect of social security for myopic individuals by roughly 1 percent of aggregate resources. It is possible to recapture this commitment technology in IRAs, if those are annuitized. Second, despite the fact that our consumers have an operative bequest motive, the welfare gain from the (implicit) longevity insurance of the pension system is significant and amounts to roughly 0.5 percent of aggregate resources. However, mandatory annuitization reduces unintended bequests so that future generations are significantly hurt. Finally, our results highlight the importance of liquidity effects for social security analysis. These efficiency gains are only attainable if accounts are voluntary and not mandatory.


A newly developed microscale ReactIR flow cell was used as a convenient and versatile inline analytical tool for Grignard formation in continuous flow chemical processing. The LiCl-mediated halogen/Mg exchange reaction was used for the preparation of functionalized arylmagnesium compounds from aryl iodides or bromides. Furthermore, inline IR monitoring was used for the analysis of conversion and possible byproduct formation, as well as a potential tool for elucidation of mechanistic details. The results described herein indicate that the continuous flow systems are effective for highly exothermic reactions such as the Grignard exchange reaction due to fast mixing and efficient heat transfer.


Automation and Robotics have been described as two of the enabling technologies for the Industry 4.0 paradigm, especially the use of autonomous and collaborative robot systems that can work together with humans and other machines. In manual assembly for example, these so-called co-bot systems (that also includes autonomous transportation and specialized machines) can improve the automation level, product quality, as well as human working conditions. However, in order to fully benefit from co-bot systems, many challenges need to be addressed before it can be introduced in complex industries e.g. the truck industry. This paper presents a number of challenges and requirements identified during an industrial use case, where autonomous co-bot systems have been introduced into an existing manual assembly station. These requirements are related to safe and intuitive interactions, smart tools, the need to manage variability as well as the need for highly flexible communication and control. During the use case, a number of initial solutions was developed where the implemented control architecture was based on the framework Robot Operation System (ROS) and Sequence Planner (SP).


China witnessed an admirable growth performance over the last three decades. It is claimed that such success was achieved by strong support from government expenditures. This study examines the relationship between government expenditures and GDP growth for China within the context of Adolph Wagner's Hypothesis. It covers the most recent time period between 1982 and 2011 and use advanced static and dynamic econometric models to test validity of the Hypothesis for Chinese economy. After determining the stationarity of the series and confirm the existence of the long term relationship between the variables by using the Bounds test approach, we examine the long and short run relationship between government expenditures and GDP using an ARDL model. The ARDL (1, 2) model suggests that 1 percentage point increase in GDP will lead to 1.63 percentage points surge in government expenditures. Finally, we use the Kalman filter to investigate the dynamic relationship between government expenditures and GDP. According to the Kalman filter model, the income elasticity of government expenditures remains between 1.32 and 1.38. Since the elasticity is found larger than 1 in both static and dynamic models, we conclude that Wagner's Hypothesis is valid for China during the 1982-2011 period.
Key words: Wagner's hypothesis, China, Government expenditures, ARDL,Kalman filter.JEL: E21, E43, E44, E52, E62.


Most query languages are designed to retrieve information from databases containing precise and certain data using precisely specified commands. Due to the advancements in various kinds of data repositories in the recent years, there is a steep increase in complex queries. Most of the complex Queries are uncertain and vague. The existing Structured Query Language exhibits its inefficiency in handling these complex Queries. This paper proposes a model to handle the complexities by using fuzzy set theory. In this model, the Fuzzy Query with linguistic hedges is converted into Crisp Query, by deploying an application layer over the Structured Query Language.


This article replicates and extends the Hille and Knill (2006) study on the implementation of the acquis communautaire in EU candidate countries. We use a different methodological approach, i.e. the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), and extend the analysis by incorporating EU-level factors (the intensity of EU conditionality). The fsQCA analysis shows that the bureaucratic effectiveness is systematically related to candidate countries' alignment performance whereas there is no systematic relationship between alignment performance, political constraints, financial capacities, government membership support and/or the absence of intensity of EU conditionality.


In this paper, models for understanding bird roosting will be considered for purposes of developing better Artificial Life models of complex behavior. Roosting involves multiple flocks of birds picking a single tree limb to rest on for the night, and can be considered an iterative, time-dependent process that unfolds over a 45-minute interval roughly corresponding to twilight. Two models will be used to better understand the main components of this behavior. The constrained dynamics model, which represents continuous random absorption on a one-dimensional lattice, will be used to characterize the dynamics of crowding in the tree structure over time. A second approach involves the relationships between complex networks and roosting behaviors, in particular the evolution of structured networks via rules of incorporation and interaction. Finally, the percolation model will be proposed as a way to bridge behaviors explained by the constrained dynamics and complex network models.


Abstract. Localization is one of the first steps in navigation. Especially due to the rapid development in automated driving, a precise and reliable localization becomes essential. In this paper, we report an investigation of the usage of dynamic ground control points (GCP) in visual localization in an automotive environment. Instead of having fixed positions, dynamic GCPs move together with the camera. As a measure of quality, we employ the precision of the bundle adjustment results. In our experiments, we simulate and investigate different realistic traffic scenarios. After investigating the role of tie points, we compare an approach using dynamic GCPs to an approach with static GCPs to answer the question how a comparable precision can be reached for visual localization. We show, that in our scenario, where two dynamic GCPs move together with a camera, similar results are indeed obtained to using a number of static GCPs distributed over the whole trajectory. In another experiment, we take a closer look at sliding window bundle adjustments. Sliding windows make it possible to work with an arbitrarily large number of images and to still obtain near real-time results. We investigate this approach in combination with dynamic GCPs and vary the no. of images per window.


The Federal Reserve has been criticized for not forestalling the financial crisis of 2007-09, and for its unconventional monetary policies that have followed. Its critics have raised questions as to whom, if anyone, reins in the Federal Reserve if and when its policies are misguided or abusive. This paper traces the principal changes in governance of the Federal Reserve over its history. These changes have, for the most part, developed in the wake of economic upheavals, when Fed policy has been challenged. The aim is to identify relevant issues regarding governance and to establish a basis for change, if needed. It describes the governance mechanism established by the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, traces the passing of this mechanism in the 1920s and 1930s, and assays congressional efforts to expand oversight in the 1970s. It also considers the changes in Fed policies induced by the financial crisis of 2007-09 and the impact of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. It concludes that the original internal governance mechanism, a system of checks and balances that aimed to protect all the important interest groups in the country, faded in the 1920s and was never adequately replaced. In light of the Federal Reserve's continued growth in power and influence, this deficiency constitutes a threat not only to "stakeholders" but also to the independence of the Federal Reserve itself.


"This welcome addition to the Linux bookshelf provides real insight into the black-art of debugging. All too often debugging books concentrate solely on the tools but this book avoids that pitfall by concentrating on examples. The authors dissect and discuss each example in detail; in so doing they give invaluable insight into the Linux environment."-Richard J Moore, IBM Advanced Linux Response Team-Linux Technology Centre"A plethora of Linux books exist but this guide offers a definitive overview of practical hints and tips for Linux users. Written by experts in the field, it will be extremely useful for system administrators and Linux enthusiasts."-Markus Rex, VP and General Manager, SUSE LINUX The indispensable troubleshooting resource for every Linux administrator, developer, support professional, and power user! Systematically resolve errors, crashes, hangs, performance slowdowns, unexpected behavior, and unexpected outputs Master essential Linux troubleshooting tools, including strace, gdb, kdb, SysRq, /proc, and moreThe indispensable start-to-finish troubleshooting guide for every Linux professionalNow, there's a systematic, practical guide to Linux troubleshooting for every power user, administrator, and developer. In Self-Service Linux®, two of IBM's leading Linux experts introduce a four-step methodology for identifying and resolving every type of Linux-related system or application problem: errors, crashes, hangs, performance slowdowns, unexpected behavior, and unexpected outputs. You'll learn exactly how to use Linux's key troubleshooting tools to solve problems on your own-and how to make effective use of the Linux community's knowledge.If you use Linux professionally, this book can dramatically increase your efficiency, productivity, and marketability. If you're involved with deploying or managing Linux in the enterprise, it can help you significantly reduce operation costs, enhance availability, and improve ROI. Discover proven best practices for diagnosing problems in Linux environments Leverage troubleshooting skills you've developed with other platforms Learn to identify problems with strace-the most frequently used Linux troubleshooting tool Use /proc to uncover crucial information about hardware, kernels, and processes Recompile open source applications with debug information Debug applications with gdb, including C++ and threaded applications Debug kernel crashes and hangs, one step at a time Understand the Executable and Linking Format (ELF), and use that knowledge for more effective debugging Includes a production-ready data collection script that can save you hours or days in debugging mission-critical Linux systems!Series Editor Bruce Perens' is an open source evangelist, developer, and consultant whose software is a major component of most commercial embedded Linux offerings. He founded or cofounded Linux Standard Base, Open Source Initiative, and Software in the Public Interest. As Debian GNU/Linux Project Leader, he was instrumental in getting the system on two U.S. space shuttle flights.© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.


This paper is concerned with interjections that have evolved from nouns. Looking at a subclass of interjections, so-called expletives like gee!, jeeze!, gosh!, crikey!, it will be shown how primary interjections regularly evolve from religious names (here Jesus, God, Christ) via secondary interjections (Jesus!, God!, Christ!). Four stages can be distinguished: I proper name Jesus II secondary interjection Jesus! III phonological modification of Jesus! IV primary interjection gee!The "standard" model for subjectification in grammaticalization, Traugott and Dasher's Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic Change (2002), which focuses on the speaker as initiator of change, suffices to explain the gradual process through which the secondary interjection Jesus! has evolved through the repeated use of Jesus in invocations, oaths and prayers. Moreover it is claimed that the syntactic position of Jesus in these uses — sentence-initial and separated from the rest of the sentence — played a crucial role in the emergence of the interjection. Invited inferencing, however, fails to explain the emergence of gee!. It will be shown with corpus data that gee! emerged rather abruptly. The meaning of gee! is different from the meaning of Jesus! from its very beginning, and — in contrast to the process through which the secondary interjection Jesus! emerged — there are no transitional stages attested where both the meaning of Jesus! and the meaning of gee! can be inferred. It will be argued that this change was hearer-based and that semantic stability and relationships between words are determined by aspects of phonological transparency. As a result of the clipping of Jesus! (speakers did not want to "take the name of the Lord in vain"), which yielded gee!, the semantic base of gee! became phonologically obscured. Accordingly the hearer had to infer the meaning of gee! from the context of its occurrence alone — consequently gee! differed in meaning from Jesus! straightaway. The OED will be used as a corpus for the diachronic study (cf. Fischer 1992 and Hoffmann 2004 for a discussion of how the OED can be used as a historical corpus). The synchronic use of the forms discussed will be illustrated with examples from the British National Corpus and from the GoogleGroups newsgroups (cf. Bergh 2005 for a discussion of whether and how the Internet can be used as corpus).


In Stillness and Speed, one of football's most enigmatic stars finally opens up about his life and career, revealing the things that motivate and inspire him. Viewed by many as one of the most influential figures in Premier League history, and scorer of the goal that Arsenal fans voted the best in the club's history, Dennis Bergkamp is a true giant of the game. As a youngster, Bergkamp learned from the Dutch master Johan Cruyff. By the time the pupil was ready to graduate from Ajax and move abroad, he was ready to spread the word, but in Italy he found few willing listeners. It was only when he moved to Arsenal and linked up with Arsene Wenger that he met someone else who shared his vision for football's possibilities. Bergkamp became central to everything the club did: now he had become the teacher, their creative genius, and the one who inspired some of the wayward old guard to new heights, helping them to seven major trophies. Few footballers' books make you think anew, but in Stillness and SpeedBergkamp presents a new vision for the game and how it might be played. He was a player like no other; his story is told like no other. It is a book that will inspire football fans everywhere, whatever their allegiance.


An exploration of the factors enabling educators to respond effectively to the work environment: Case studies of three participants within the context of a professional development programme for Southern African environmental educators This research project investigates the influence of, and interplay between, contextual and biographical factors on an educator's ability to respond to the work context. In particular, this study explores what factors a small number of educators believe were important, before, during and after their participation on one or other specific professional development programme in enabling them to develop (design and/or adapt) and implement a course curriculum in their work environments. Within the context of this research, the professional development programmes of interest are designed with/for environmental educators from the Southern African region. Although past educational research has often focused on the importance that programme participants give to the interactions between themselves and tutors , the materials used, the assignments tackled, etc. this research project did not set out to draw the research subjects' attention to programme-related factors. Rather , it was designed to broaden the focus to include factors before and after a programme as well. Within this enquiry, three research subjects were engaged in numerous, open-ended conversations throughout the course of the year during which the study unfolded. The above participants were also involved in semi-structured interviews where, again, relatively open-ended questions were asked. A small number of documents, such as the materials of the above professional development programmes, were also analysed. This research has provided a number of insights into the wide range of factors that might enable educators to respond effectively to their work environments. Specifically, it has indicated the importance of four broad families of factors perceived by the subjects of this research to have enabled them to develop and implement a meaningful course curriculum. The personal variables are highlighted in particular. Importantly, this study raises questions and challenges both for those involved in similar research as well as for those involved in the design and implementation of professional development programmes, particularly for educators.


Fossil fuels such as petroleum and coal will be exhaustible energy resources in the near future. From the point of view of the depletion of fossil resources, the development of renewable resources is required for a future sustainable society. Therefore, in recent years, renewable biomass, which is ubiquitous throughout the world, has attracted attention. Many studies on the application of waste woody biomass have been focused on non-edible biomass. Pyrolysis and gasification technologies have been known as the effective energy conversion technologies of biomass because of the various gases production such as synthesis fuel gases and chemical basic compounds. In the pyrolysis process, gases, condensable hydrocarbons so-called "tar" and solid carbon contents namely "char" will be produced. During the subsequent gasification process, char will usually react with the gasifying agents at a high temperature of above 900°C to produce the synthesis gases. However, there are many problems caused from generated tar during the pyrolysis process such as clogging of the piping and corrosion in the reactor. In order to perform efficient pyrolysis and gasification, there is still less information about the catalytic method although it has been widely used. In this study, we investigated the influence of iron and potassium as the catalysts on the pyrolysis process and the gasification process using an impregnation method to introduce these catalysts into the cellulose samples which is the major component of woody biomass. From the pyrolytic results, it was shown that the production of char and yields of gases were increased with the tar decrease in the presence of the catalytic metal species. Potassium catalyst seemed to especially increase the char yields. It may be caused by the decrease of crystal characteristics of the cellulose in the presence of catalytic metal species. According to the results of the gasification, a lower temperature for gasification from 800°C was found when an iron catalyst was introduced into the cellulose samples, whereas the higher temperature for gasification above 900°C was determined using the potassium catalyst introduced into the cellulose samples. Furthermore, with the help of the introduction of both potassium and iron catalysts, efficient pyrolysis and gasification were performed.


In May 2000, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Vermont Agency of Natural Resources v. U.S. ex rel. Stevens, a seemingly predictable 11th Amendment case. In upholding the plaintiff's Article III standing to bring that case, however, the Court suggested a theory of "representational standing" that holds the potential to radically transform the entire body of law governing the ability of private citizens to seek, through the federal courts, the vindication of broadly-held public interests. Over the past 30 years, the Court's increasingly restrictive standing jurisprudence has effectively precluded private citizens from playing a meaningful role in public law litigation. Properly understood, Stevens marks a significant shift in this jurisprudence. By proposing that Article III standing may, under certain circumstances, be based on the creation of partial assignments or true agency relationships between private citizens and the government, the Stevens Court, wittingly or not, has provided legislators with a roadmap for reintegrating private citizens in the enforcement of public laws. The goal of this article is to unpack the theory of representational standing suggested in Stevens. By discerning the rules that will govern the application of this theory, this article contemplates the potentially revolutionary implications of representational standing for public law litigation.


Modifications of an existing neural network called categorizing and learning module (CALM) that allow learning of temporal sequences are introduced in this paper. We embedded an associative learning mechanism which allows to look into the past when classifying present stimuli. We have built in the Euclidean metrics instead of the weighted sum found in the original learning rule. This improvement allows better discrimination in case of learning low dimensional patterns in the temporal sequences. Results were obtained from testing the enhanced module on simple artificial data. These experiments promise applicability of the enhanced module in a real problem domain.


Blockchain-enabled smart contracts that employ proof-ofstake validation for transactions, promise significant performance advantages compared to proof-of-work solutions. For broad industry adoption, other important requirements must be met in addition. For example, stable backwards-compatible smart-contract systems must automate cross-organizational information-logistics orchestration with lite mobile wallets that support simple payment verification (SPV) techniques. The currently leading smart-contract solution Ethereum, uses computationally expensive proof-of-work validation, is expected to hard-fork multiple times in the future and requires downloading the entire blockchain. Consequently, Ethereum smart contracts have limited utility and lack formal semantics, which is a security issue. This whitepaper fills the gap in the state of the art by presenting the Qtum smart-contract framework that aims for sociotechnical application suitability, the adoption of formalsemantics language expressiveness, and the provision of smart-contract template libraries for rapid best-practice industry deployment. We discuss the Qtum utility advantages compared to the Ethereum alternative and present Qtum smart-contract future development plans for industrycases applications.


While corroborating the fact that the majority of protesters attend demonstrations together with friends, family and/or fellow members of their organizations, this article shows that protesting alone remains an option for many people – under the right circumstances. Through multilevel analysis of survey data from participants in 69 demonstrations in eight Western European countries, the authors study lone protesters in different types of demonstrations. On the individual level, they show that protesting alone is closely linked to relative detachment from interpersonal mobilizing networks, as well as to short decision times. The authors also develop demonstration-level explanations for why lone protesters are more common in some demonstrations than in others. Precipitating events and inclusive social movement communities increase the proportion of lone demonstrators, which is also higher in static rallies than in moving demonstrations. These factors arguably make personal networks less crucial for protest mobilization.


BACKGROUND: When temporary arterial occlusion of the parent artery is difficult for anatomical reasons, or when inadvertent aneurysmal rupture occurs during surgical dissection, adenosine administration can be used to produce flow arrest and brief, profound systemic hypotension that can facilitate intracranial aneurysm clip ligation. There is a concern, however, that the flow arrest and profound hypotension produced by adenosine, although brief, may cause cerebral ischemia and therefore worsen neurologic outcome compared with other techniques to facilitate aneurysm clip ligation. Therefore, we performed a retrospective, case-control study to determine whether adenosine-induced flow arrest had negative effects on the neurologic outcome of our patients. METHODS: We reviewed the perioperative records of all patients in our intracranial aneurysm surgery outcomes database between August 1, 2006, and June 15, 2012. The primary outcome was the presence or absence of a poor neurologic outcome 48 hours after surgery, with a modified Rankin scale score >2 being defined as a poor neurologic outcome. The neurologic outcome at the time of hospital discharge was a secondary outcome. Secondary outcomes related to cardiac morbidity included atrial or ventricular arrhythmia requiring treatment and elevated cardiac biomarkers consistent with ischemia (i.e., Troponin-I). RESULTS: During the study period, adenosine-induced flow arrest was used in 72 of the 413 patients (17.4%) who underwent intracranial aneurysm clip ligation. The difference in the incidence of poor neurological outcome, with or without the use of adenosine, was no larger than 15.7% at 48 hours after surgery (P =0.524) or −12.7% at discharge (P = 0.741). In addition, the difference in the incidence of cardiac morbidity was no larger than −16.0% for persistent arrhythmia (P = 0.155) or −9.4% for biomarkers of myocardial ischemia (P = 0.898) in the initial 48 hours after surgery. CONCLUSION: When used to facilitate intracranial aneurysm clip ligation, adenosine-induced flow arrest was associated with no more than a 15.7% increase or a 12.7% decrease in the incidence of a poor neurologic outcome at either 48 hours or at the time of hospital discharge. In addition, adenosine use was not associated with cardiac morbidity in the perioperative period (i.e., persistent arrhythmia or biomarkers of cardiac ischemia).


The present contribution concerns a case study of open access scholarly publishing in Greece, its history and effect in helping the local researcher community transition from a print-only mode of work to online working environments and in rendering Greek publications and scholarship more relevant to the international scholarly community. The paper elaborates on the goals of the project and the challenges that were encountered and addressed during its implementation. The project, which started in 2007 with the transition of three print journals in the humanities to an online and print format and online working environment, culminated in the development of an online platform that provides access to content and services from a sin- gle point in the web, ePublishing.ekt.gr. As part of the National Documentation Centre (EKT)'s services, we systematize and upgrade the journals' policies according to international standards, provide an online working platform and training, digitize and release in open access academic articles (more than 3,500 articles in established journals, published by small, non-profit, academic/scholarly society publishers, so far), provide DOIs, as well as concentrate on electronic books and conference pro- ceedings - also to include purely online books in the future, starting with a born-digital monograph in a Humanities subject (onlineBook). In a nutshell, we have focused on providing publishers of scientific journals a range of comprehensive services which are constantly updated and improved in the light of the developments in scholarly communication, and which foster the internationalization, visibility, and preservation of research in these fields.


This paper reports on a preliminary acoustic description of high vowel syncope in one dialect of Lezgian, a NE Caucasian, Daghestanian language. Acoustic data from one speaker confirm the absence of a vowel in the syncope context, but traces of it remain visible (and audible) in the preceding stop release or fricative noise. This raises the question of possible vowel devoicing. It also suggests that a relevant account for the facts should be based on gestural overlap rather than deletion. In support of this hypothesis, two types of measurements are reported. First, vowel duration shows that even non-high vowels are considerably shortened when stress is shifted away from them, participating in a similar process as high vowels. Second, the duration of the inter-burst interval in resulting stop sequences varies depending on the stop place of articulation.


We conducted ichthyoplankton surveys on the east coast of the South Island, New Zealand, to address 2 questions: (1) Are certain types of reef fish larvae more likely to be dispersed on an exposed temperate coast? (2) Is larval dispersal more strongly associated with taxa that have pelagic eggs? Analyses were based on 492 plankton net samples collected perpendicular to the shore (0.05, 2, 4 and 6 km offshore) and parallel to the shore (0.05, 0.1, 0.3 and 1 km alongshore) from a rocky reef environment. We caught 60 taxa belonging to 32 families, but 11 taxa accounted for 97% of all larvae collected. Only these common taxa were considered further. Larvae from the 3 taxa with pelagic eggs (Sprattus spp., Aldrichetta forsteri and Rhombosolea plebeia) showed varying degrees of dispersal that ranged from increased abundance close to shore to no clear pattern with distance from shore or alongshore from a rocky reef environment. Larvae from the 1 viviparous taxon (un- identified scorpaenids) were more abundant close to shore. Larvae from the 2 taxa with freshwater demersal eggs (unidentified retropinnids and galaxiids) had disparate patterns of offshore and along- shore dispersal. Retropinnids occurred almost exclusively at the nearshore stations, but galaxiids were more abundant further from shore and were only found nearshore adjacent to a river mouth. Larvae from the 5 taxa that hatched from marine demersal eggs (unidentified tripterygiids, Forsterygion spp., Gilloblennius tripennis, Grahamina capito and Ruanoho decemdigitatus) were all more common further from shore. For the taxa in this study, we reject the hypothesis that reef fish larvae that hatch from non-pelagic eggs are retained mostly or exclusively near reefs on an exposed coast. Broad-scale dispersal of fish larvae may provide benefits in terms of predator avoidance, re- colonisation of habitats and risk-spreading, but it carries with it the increased risk of unfavourable advection that may delay or even prevent recruitment.


A hot issue in trade negotiations concerns the existence of stateowned firms and state subsidies. Disputes between the US and the EU and the issue of the recognition of the status of a market economy to China are often the epitome of that. In Germany the giant Volkswagen is state controlled, in China almost 1/3 of firms are state controlled and loom in almost all industries often with relevant or even dominant market shares. State enterprises maximize home social welfare. When they export or compete with foreign producers at home their specific objective function make them a useful vehicle for disguised trade policies. We investigate trade cases with oligopoly and state or quasi state owned firms. Increasing returns to scale come into the picture in some instances. Dumping and foreclosure of the domestic market emerge explaining both the possibility of having home prices higher or lower than export prices. Possible counteracting policies can be devised and an example of a production subsidy is presented.


Platform Embedded Security Technology Revealed is an in-depth introduction to Intels platform embedded solution: the security and management engine. The engine is shipped inside most Intel platforms for servers, personal computers, tablets, and smartphones. The engine realizes advanced security and management functionalities and protects applications secrets and users privacy in a secure, light-weight, and inexpensive way. Besides native built-in features, it allows third-party software vendors to develop applications that take advantage of the security infrastructures offered by the engine. Intels security and management engine is technologically unique and significant, but is largely unknown to many members of the tech communities who could potentially benefit from it. Platform Embedded Security Technology Revealed reveals technical details of the engine. The engine provides a new way for the computer security industry to resolve critical problems resulting from booming mobile technologies, such as increasing threats against confidentiality and privacy. This book describes how this advanced level of protection is made possible by the engine, how it can improve users security experience, and how third-party vendors can make use of it. It's written for computer security professionals and researchers; embedded system engineers; and software engineers and vendors who are interested in developing new security applications on top of Intels security and management engine. Its also written for advanced users who are interested in understanding how the security features of Intels platforms work. What youll learn The cyber security challenges behind the creation of the embedded security and management engine, and the solutions it presents The pros and cons of enforcing security in the embedded engine Basic cryptography and security infrastructure of the engine Security-hardening features of the engine Handling dynamically loaded applications How anonymous authentication works with enhanced privacy protection Content protection at the hardware level Secure boot with a hardware root of trust Firmware-based TPM Identity protection with a hardware-based, one-time password Who this book is for Computer security professionals and researchers; embedded system engineers; software engineers and vendors who are interested in developing new security applications on top of Intels security and management engine; OEM (such as Lenovo, HP, etc.) marketing and R&D staff.


Introduction: The population has not been investigated extensively about understanding and perception about obesity and its complications. The aim of the study was to investigate the understanding, recognition and practice between overall population in the selected areas of Lahore related to obesity and its complications. Methods: The descriptive study which involved 100 respondents. The respondents from Hussain Abad Lahore were conveniently approached and recruited. A pre-approved, questionnaire was used for data accumulation. SPSS version 20 was used both descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: From Out of the total 100 participants, 53% were females and 47% were males. Almost the half Participant 45% was in the age of 35years. Nearly 91% respondents don't have idea about normal body mass index of adults. While 89% participants don't know hormonal problems can lead the obesity. However 51% participants know that obesity can lead the heart problems. . Just about 52% participants were agreeing that when the person consumes extra calories than the individual burns obesity can occurs. 44% participants were agreed that psychological factors can influence the eating habits and obesity more over 36% are agreed that junk food takers are more susceptible to obesity. Only 3% participant checks their Body Mass Index (BMI) level. 26% change their eating habits, physical activity in order to maintain their physique and 11% takes of junk food. Conclusion: The respondents were more careful that obesity happens when a man expends a bigger number of calories than a man devours it. However the respondents know about obesity and its entanglements to some degree, their preparation towards weight isn't general which ought to be investigated later on for better human administrations, and prosperity comes about. Int. J. Soc. Sc. Manage. Vol. 5, Issue-3: 187-191


Abstract. Intensive livestock farms emit large concentrations of NH3, most of which is deposited very close to the source. The presence of trees enhances the deposition. Rates to downwind forests can exceed 40 kg N ha−1 y−1. The steep gradient in large NH3 concentrations of 34.3±20.4, 47.6±24.9, 21.7±16.8 µg NH3 m3 at the edge of a forest 15, 30 and 45 m downwind of the farm to near background concentrations within 270 m downwind (1.15±0.7 µg NH3 m3) provides an ideal site to study the effect of different rates of atmospheric NH3 concentrations and inferred deposition on biological and chemical processes under similar environmental conditions. We have investigated the effect of different NH3 concentrations and implied deposition rates on the flux of NO and N2O from soil in a mixed woodland downwind of a large poultry farm (160 000 birds) in Scotland, which has been operating for about 40 years. Measurements were carried out for a 6 month period, with hourly NO flux measurements, daily N2O fluxes close to the farm and monthly at all sites, and monthly cumulative wet and dry N deposition. The increased NH3 and NH4+ deposition to the woodland increased emissions of NO and N2O and soil available NH4+ and NO3− concentrations. Average NO and N2O fluxes measured 15, 25 and 45 m downwind of the farm were 111.2±41.1, 123.3±40.7, 38.3±28.8 µg NO-N m−2 h−1 and 9.9±7.5, 34.3±33.3 and 21.2±6.1 µg N2O-N m−2 h−1, respectively. At the background site 270 m downwind the N2O flux was reduced to 1.75±2.1 µg N2O-N m−2 h−1. NO emissions were significantly influenced by seasonal and daily changes in soil temperature and followed a diurnal pattern with maximum emissions approximately 3 h after noon. For N2O no consistent diurnal pattern was observed. Changes in soil moisture content had a less clear effect on the NO and N2O flux. In spite of the large NO and N2O emissions accounting for >3% of the N deposited to the woodland downwind of the farm, extrapolation to the entire British poultry flock suggests that these NH3 emissions contribute to less than 0.5% and 0.02%, respectively of the total annual UK NOx and N2O emissions.


As a general matter, the Constitution limits the government but not the private sector. Known as the "state action" doctrine, the idea that constitutional constraints apply only when public entities are primarily or substantially involved has been developed by the U.S. Supreme Court in scores of cases. This Article argues that the fundamental inadequacy of and dissatisfaction with the state action doctrine arises from the Court's unwillingness to admit that state action principles are not transsubstantive – that the principles play out differently depending on the particular constitutional claim being asserted. The Article surveys state action rulings to argue that functional considerations – rather than a formalistic, abstract, and uniform quality of "stateness" – should and do dictate when the state action requirement is satisfied and the Constitution's limits are held to apply. The Article then analyzes the Supreme Court's 1988 decision in NCAA v. Tarkanian to explore how a functionalist analysis might play out in the context of the NCAA and other athletic regulatory bodies.


A plethora of programming languages have been and continue to be developed to keep pace with hardware advancements and the ever more demanding requirements of software development. As these increasingly sophisticated languages need to be well understood by both programmers and implementors, precise specifications are increasingly required. Moreover, the safety and adequacy with respect to requirements of programs written in these languages needs to be tested, analyzed, and, if possible, proved. This dissertation proposes a rigorous approach to define programming languages based on rewriting, which allows to easily design and test language extensions, and to specify and analyze safety and adequacy of program executions.
To this aim, this dissertation describes the K framework, an executable semantic framework inspired from rewriting logic but specialized and optimized for programming languages. The K framework consists of three components: (1) a language definitional technique; (2) a specialized notation; and (3) a resource-sharing concurrent rewriting semantics. The language definitional technique is a rewriting technique built upon the lessons learned from capturing and studying existing operational semantics frameworks within rewriting logic, and upon attempts to combine their strengths while avoiding their limitations. The specialized notation makes the technical details of the technique transparent to the language designer, and enhances modularity, by allowing the designer to specify the minimal context needed for a semantic rule. Finally, the resource-sharing concurrent semantics relies on the particular form of the semantic rules to enhance concurrency, by allowing overlapping rule instances (e.g., two threads writing in different locations in the store, which overlap on the store entity) to apply concurrently as long as they only overlap on the parts they do not change.
The main contributions of the dissertation are: (1) a uniform recasting of the major existing operational semantics techniques within rewriting logic; (2) an overview description of the K framework and how it can be used to define, extend and analyze programming languages; (3) a semantics for K concurrent rewriting obtained through an embedding in graph rewriting; and (4) a description of the K-Maude tool, a tool for defining programming languages using the K technique on top of the Maude rewriting language.


This chapter focuses on describing the largest available on-line corpora (59 million words) of written specialized Spanish on four disciplines: Psychology, Social Work, Industrial Chemistry, and Construction Engineering. The corpora were collected in one Chilean university and in the corresponding professional settings. The corpus description shows that access to disciplinary knowledge is constructed, on the one hand, through a varying repertoire of nine written academic genres. On the other hand, a larger group of twenty-eight professional genres is detected. Interesting variations across the four disciplines under study are identified.


The aim of this study is to analyze the effect of meaning making based instruction regarding angular momentum conservation on the change of two 11th grade students" alternative ideas they have before instruction. Case study model is used in the research. Conceptual test (implemented before the instruction, right after the instruction and fifteen weeks after the instruction), semi-structured interviews and video recordings of the teaching process were used for data collection procedure. It is eventually seen that these two students do not have scientific ideas about angular momentum conservation before instruction whereas they have scientific ideas after the instruction. One student made scientific explanations in delayed post-test while the other student had an alternative idea. In the after instruction interviews, the student who had scientific ideas indicated that she found the new concept understandable, reasonable, and useful, whereas the student who had alternative ideas stated that he found the new concept understandable and reasonable but not useful. According to the results, durable conceptual change does not occur in the students" ideas who did not find the new concept useful. Based on our results, various studies can be performed regarding permanent conceptual change in students" ideas.


Grid-tied solar inverters continue to proliferate rapidly to tackle the growing environmental challenges. Nowadays, different smart sensors and transducers are tightly integrated with the grid-tied inverter. This integration opens the "Pandora's Box" of unknown threats that could come from very unconventional ways. This paper demonstrates a noninvasive attack that could come by spoofing the Hall sensor of an inverter in a stealthy way by using an external magnetic field. We demonstrate how an attacker can camouflage his/her attack tool and place it near a target inverter. In doing so, he/she can intentionally perturb grid voltage and frequency and can inject false real and reactive power to the grid. We also show the consequences of the attack on a scaled-down testbed of a power grid with a commercial 140 W grid-tied inverter from Texas Instruments. We are able to achieve a 31.52% change in output voltage, 3.16x (-6dB to -11dB) increase in lowfrequency harmonics power, and 3.44x increase in real power. Moreover, we introduce a duty-cycle variation approach for a noninvasive adversarial control that can change the inverter voltage up to 34% and real power up to 38%. We discuss the feasibility of using a 100 kW inverter through discussion. This provides insights behind the generalization of the attack model. In addition, the commercial power system simulation tool Etap 19.0.1 is used to simulate the impact of the attack on a 2.3 MW power grid. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first methodology that highlights the possibility of such an attack that might lead to grid blackout in a weak grid.


"Dermatologic and Cosmetic Procedures in Office Practice", by Drs. Richard Usatine, John Pfenninger, Daniel Stulberg, and Rebecca Small, provides you with the clear, step-by-step guidance you need to provide these options to your patients. Full-color photographs and drawings in combination with high-definition narrated videos clearly demonstrate key procedures, including skin biopsies, cryosurgery, electrosurgery, botulinum toxin injections, and more. Access to the full text, and a downloadable image bank online at our associated website make this an ideal reference for performing key dermatologic and cosmetic procedures in your practice.


Context. Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a time consuming effort that requires a lot of computational power as well. There are mainly two approaches to improving RL efficiency, the theoretical mathematics and algorithmic approach or the practical implementation approach. In this study, the approaches are combined in an attempt to reduce time consumption.\newline Objectives. We investigate whether modern hardware and software, GPGPU, combined with state-of-art Evolution Strategies, CMA-Neuro-ES, can potentially increase the efficiency of solving RL problems.\newline Methods. In order to do this, both an implementational as well as an experimental research method is used. The implementational research mainly involves developing and setting up an experimental framework in which to measure efficiency through benchmarking. In this framework, the GPGPU/ES solution is later developed. Using this framework, experiments are conducted on a conventional sequential solution as well as our own parallel GPGPU solution.\newline Results. The results indicate that utilizing GPGPU and state-of-art ES when attempting to solve RL problems can be more efficient in terms of time consumption in comparison to a conventional and sequential CPU approach.\newline Conclusions. We conclude that our proposed solution requires additional work and research but that it shows promise already in this initial study. As the study is focused on primarily generating benchmark performance data from the experiments, the study lacks data on RL efficiency and thus motivation for using our approach. However we do conclude that the GPGPU approach suggested does allow less time consuming RL problem solving.


In order to increase surface hardness of AISI 1045 steel, a new hybrid surface modification; combination of atmospheric-controlled induction-heating fine particle peening (AIH-FPP) and plasma nitriding, was developed. Surface microstructures of plasma nitrided specimens pre-treated with AIH-FPP using Cr shot particles were characterized by an optical microscope, a scanning electron microscope (SEM), an energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer (EDX) and X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD). As results, the nitrided layer was formed at the surface of the specimen with Cr diffused layer induced by AIH-FPP. This nitrided layer showed higher hardness than that of without AIH-FPP specimen. This was because CrN was formed at the surface of the AIH-FPP/Plasma nitriding treated specimen. And, the surface hardness of the nitrided layer tended to increase as the Cr concentration in the surface layer decreased. It was clarified that the pore formation during the AIH-FPP/Plasma nitriding treatment was inhibited by decreasing Cr concentration. These results suggest that the proposed hybrid surface treatment remarkably increases surface hardness of AISI 1045 steel. [doi:10.2320/matertrans.MBW201205]


Environmental microbiologists collect data, lots of data. However these data are not always the appropriate data to answer the questions the researchers are interested in. In this chapter we discuss what needs to be done to ensure that what you think you are discovering is in fact what the data are saying. We encourage a large amount of statistical thinking prior to the first data point being collected or before the first sample is obtained. Statistical thinking is not generally taught in introductory statistics classes. The nuts and bolts of what will be discussed in the chapter do find their way into statistic classes however not necessarily in a way that prepares scientists for the task of doing science. Here we discuss concepts such as defining the problem, experimental design, the weight of evidence, statistical power, and sources of variation, scope of inference, measurement scale, scale transformation and other topics. We show that environmental microbiology done without careful thinking before, during and after data collection rarely can answer any important question - regardless of how big the spreadsheet is. After reviewing countless papers for over three decades it is our experience that many studies in environmental microbiology are statistically weak and more importantly statistically flawed and that one need read no farther than the methods to decide whether to continue to forward.


The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the Stillwater Mining Company worked cooperatively with the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology to develop a system that would collect seismic data at the Stillwater and East Boulder mines. The purpose was to obtain baseline information on the magnitude and location of mining-induced seismicity to determine if the mines needed multi-channel in-mine monitoring systems. Seismic data recorded at field sites near the mines are being telemetered via FM radio through a series of repeaters to a central recording site where the seismic signals are digitized using an Earthworm data acquisition system. The Earthworm system performs several data analysis tasks in near-real time and places raw seismic data, preliminary hypocenter locations, and magnitudes on a Website within 5 min of a seismic event. Such rapid access to seismic data allows personnel at the Stillwater Mine, Spokane Research Laboratory, and Earthquake Studies Office to evaluate seismic events quickly and respond in ways that may improve the safety of mine personnel underground. Installation of the system also broadened earthquake coverage to south-central Montana, a region previously not covered by the seismograph network.


Our research examines information literacy education and resource use in significant and successful projects connecting technology with human need completed over a twelve year period between 2003 and 2014 by STEM undergraduates at a technical institute. We explain the evolution of collaborations between librarians, faculty project advisors, and research methods instructors during the preparation and completion of complex multidisciplinary projects completed mainly off-campus at project centers in the United States and around the globe. The projects we examine are completed as a mandatory graduation requirement for mainly third year undergraduates, 71% of whom will graduate with engineering degrees. We sought to understand not only how librarians teach students about information seeking and lifelong learning, but how faculty instructors and advisors approach teaching these critical professional skills. In addition we sought to understand what information sources students actually use by reviewing the works cited within five award winning project team reports per year of our study, for a total of 60 projects and almost 3000 works cited. We learned that student teams, despite year, project location, or discipline of study and faculty advisor use a broad range of sources, both peerreviewed and not, and that these sources only partially correlate to the sources recommended by faculty. Most advisors depend on the support of librarians to help students achieve learning outcomes, and view personalized librarian consultations with project teams as the most critical piece of that support.


Visual adaptation (and especially dark adaptation) has been studied extensively in the past, however, mainly addressing adaptation to fully dark backgrounds. At this stage, it is unclear whether these results are not too simple to be applied to complex situations, such as predicting adaptation of a motorist driving at night. To fill this gap we set up a study investigating how spatially complex backgrounds influence temporal dark adaptation. Our results showed that dark adaptation to spatially complex backgrounds leads to much longer adaptation times than dark adaptation to spatially uniform backgrounds. We conclude therefore that the adaptation models based on past studies overestimate the visual system's sensitivity to detect luminance variations in spatially complex environments. Our results also showed large variations in adaptation times when varying the degree of spatial complexity of the background. Hence, we may conclude that it is important to take into account models that are based on spatially complex backgrounds when predicting dark adaptation for complex environments.


Virtual reality (VR) and 360° video are reshaping the media landscape, creating a fertile business environment. In the past years, many new 360° cameras and VR headsets entered the consumer market. Distribution platforms are being established and new production studios are emerging. VR is a hot topic in research and industry, and many new and exciting interactive VR contents and experiences are emerging. The biggest gap we see in these experiences is the lack of social and shared aspects of VR usage, as today's VR applications tend to be an isolated endeavor. In this paper, we present TogetherVR, a web-based framework for the creation and evaluation of social and shared VR experiences in which users can communicate with a high degree of presence and in photorealistic video quality. We further elaborate on three multiuser VR cases: watching TV together in VR, social collaboration in VR, and social VR conferencing in a mixed reality setting. © 2002 Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, Inc.