Objective To determine the short-term outcomes of babies for whom clinicians or parents discussed the limitation of life-sustaining treatment (LST). Design Prospective multicentre observational study. Setting Two level 3, six level 2 and one level 1 neonatal units in the North-East London Neonatal Network. Participants A total of 87 babies including 68 for whom limiting LST was discussed with parents and 19 babies died without discussion of limiting LST in the labour ward or neonatal unit. Outcome measures Final decision reached after discussions about limiting LST and neonatal unit outcomes (death or survived to discharge) for babies. Results Withdrawing LST, withholding LST and do not resuscitate (DNR) order was discussed with 48, 16 and 4 parents, respectively. In 49/68 (72%) cases decisions occurred in level 3 and 19 cases in level 2 units. Following the initial discussions, 34/68 parents made the decision to continue LST. In 33/68 cases, a second opinion was obtained. The parents of 14/48 and 2/16 babies did not agree to withdraw and withhold LST, respectively. Forty-seven out of 87 babies (54%) died following limitation of LST, 28/87 (32%) died receiving full intensive care support, 5/87 (6%) survived following a decision to limit LST and 7/87 (8%) babies survived following decision to continue LST. Conclusions A significant proportion of parents chose to continue treatment following discussions regarding limiting LST for their babies, and a proportion of these babies survived to neonatal unit discharge. The long-term outcomes of babies who survive following limiting LST discussion need to be investigated.


This article analyses various e-threats that were expressed in media texts that focused on e-threat discourses concerning the Estonian identity card's security risk in 2017. The discourse of cyberthreats contains strong and controversial meanings because the peculiarities of cyberspace remain intangible for average readers who do not possess expert knowledge regarding ICT. The wider aim of the paper is to suggest how the topic of e-threats could be given public coverage without fuelling irrational anxiety and unwarranted threat scenarios. Our theoretical basis combines the frameworks of the Copenhagen School of security studies and ideas of cultural semiotics. We explain the semiotic logic of phobophobia (i.e. the abstract concern with the devastating impacts of the collective feeling of fear) and the discourse of fear that is characterized by a significant reliance on analogies, drawing vague demarcation line between reference objects and the dominance of negative emotional tonality. Our study demonstrates that the main actors of threat and the consequences of the identity card's security problems were associated with unknown hackers and the damaging of the reputation of Estonia as an e-state.


What's the best way to drive fundamental, transformative change within your organization? Envision your ideal solution: then, work backwards to where you are. It's called idealized design, and -- as executives in hundreds of organizations will testify -- it's one of the most powerful techniques you'll ever use. Authored by its legendary creator,i¾ Wharton Professor Emeritus Russell Ackoff, and leading practitioner Jason Magidson, Idealized Design covers every facet of this breakthrough methodology. You'll learn the fundamental differences between idealized design and traditional process re-engineering, andi¾ understand how idealized design eliminates many conventional obstacles to change. Start-to-finish techniques and examples drawn from hundreds of companies, non-profits, and government organizations will show you how to use idealized designi¾ to solve your own crisis of tomorrow...today.


The history of baseball is rife with colorful characters. But for sheer cantankerousness, fighting moxie, and will to win, very few have come close to Leo 'the Lip' Durocher. Following a five-decade career as a player and manager for baseball's most storied franchises, Durocher teamed up with veteran sportswriter Ed Linn to tell the story of his life in the game. The resulting book, "Nice Guys Finish Last", is baseball at its best, brimming with personality and full of all the fights and feuds, triumphs and tricks that made Durocher such a success - and an outsized celebrity. Durocher began his career inauspiciously, riding the bench for the powerhouse 1928 Yankees and hitting so poorly that Babe Ruth nicknamed him 'the All-American Out'. But soon Durocher hit his stride: traded to St. Louis, he found his headlong play and never-say-die attitude a perfect fit with the rambunctious 'Gashouse Gang' Cardinals. In 1939 he was named player-manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers - and almost instantly transformed the underachieving Bums into perennial contenders. He went on to manage the New York Giants, sharing the glory of one of the most famous moments in baseball history, Bobby Thomson's 'shot heard round the world', which won the Giants the 1951 pennant. Durocher would later learn how it felt to be on the other side of such an unforgettable moment, as his 1969 Cubs, after holding first place for 105 days, blew a seemingly insurmountable 8-1/2 game lead to the Miracle Mets. All the while, Durocher made as much noise off the field as on it. His perpetual feuds with players, owners, and league officials - not to mention his public associations with gamblers, riffraff, and Hollywood stars like George Raft and Laraine Day - kept his name in the headlines and spread his fame far beyond the confines of the diamond. A no-holds-barred account of a singular figure, "Nice Guys Finish Last" brings the personalities and play-by-play of baseball's greatest era to vivid life, earning a place on every baseball fan's bookshelf.


The gene coding for recA in the oral pathogen Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans SUNY 465 was cloned and sequenced. The DNA sequence coded for a 352-amino acid protein that was homologous to RecA of a variety of bacterial species. A derivative of a non-replicating mobilizable plasmid was constructed for directed mutagenesis in A. actinomycetemcomitans. A recA-deficient strain of A. actinomycetemcomitans was developed by homologous recombination of an internal recA fragment contained on the mobilizable suicide vector. The recA mutant strain was more sensitive to UV radiation and showed a reduced recombinatorial proficiency than the isogenic parent strain. These data suggest that recA of A. actinomycetemcomitans SUNY 465 is involved in the repair of DNA damage caused by UV irradiation and homologous recombination as determined for other bacteria.


Electronic voting systems (EVS) have enjoyed widespread use in university classrooms since the 1990s, primarily in disciplines such as the STEMM and business subjects. In this narrative account, I explore the adoption of this learning technology within the less well-documented domain of arts and humanities education, incorporating my motivation for starting to use EVS, the development of these teaching activities over time, and their impact on the student learning experience. It outlines several of the many different ways in which EVS has been employed within my classes, including multiple choice questions (MCQs), polls of audience opinion, questions for which there is more than one equally valid answer, and the use of Likert scales, multiple responses, priority ranking, conditional branching, demographic comparison, moment to moment, and text-based responses. It discusses pedagogies associated with EVS such as peer instruction and game-based/team-based learning, addresses some of the reasons that may hitherto have discouraged arts and humanities teaching from embracing EVS more wholeheartedly, and considers the use of EVS in tandem with other learning technologies including lecture capture, flipped teaching, and online discussion forums. Finally, it offers advice (much of it transferrable to disciplines beyond the arts and humanities, as well as beyond higher education itself) on a range of pedagogical and technological issues for the benefit of those contemplating the adoption of EVS in their teaching, and reflects on the future potential of EVS and some of its most recent developments.


In this article, the Book of Esther was interpreted in a way that was clearly not intended by the author. The article aimed to specifically concentrate on the motives and character traits of the personas, as revealed by their actions. The splendour and pomp of Ahasuerus's banquet reveals his ostentatious nature that Vasthi distances herself from. In spite of the apparent humiliation of losing her position as queen, she retains her dignity as a woman. Esther, on the other hand, deals with the king's appetite for pleasure by pleasing him with her sexual wiles and sumptuous meals. The royal power that she subsequently gains enables her to save her people from extinction. The male personas are shown up by their female counterparts as being obsessed by power and status. In a fierce political struggle, Haman is brought to a fall and Mordechai, a Diaspora Jew who risks his Jewishness for his ambition, replaces him as vice-roy of Persia. God's absence in the Book of Esther is explained in that God might perhaps speak through the weak, the insignificant and the humiliated or that God withdraws in silence from the political schemes of those in power.


A search for the decay to a pair of new particles of either the 125 GeV Higgs boson (h) or a second charge parity (CP)-even Higgs boson (H) is presented. The data set corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 20.3  fb−1 of pp collisions at √s=8  TeV recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC in 2012. The search was done in the context of the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model, in which the new particles are the lightest neutral pseudoscalar Higgs bosons (a). One of the two a bosons is required to decay to two muons while the other is required to decay to two τ leptons. No significant excess is observed above the expected backgrounds in the dimuon invariant mass range from 3.7 to 50 GeV. Upper limits are placed on the production of h→aa relative to the standard model gg→h production, assuming no coupling of the a boson to quarks. The most stringent limit is placed at 3.5% for ma=3.75  GeV. Upper limits are also placed on the production cross section of H→aa from 2.33 to 0.72 pb, for fixed ma=5  GeV with mH ranging from 100 to 500 GeV.


"Rene Magritte: Beyond Painting" offers an extended engagement with a rethinking of Magritte's art from a position informed by contemporary developments in art theory. It is the first monograph to extensively analyse Magritte's art through employing a wide range of literary and philosophical/cultural theoretical frameworks. It offers close readings of specific images, paying attention to neglected aspects of Magritte's work, discussing the significance of cabinets of curiosities and encyclopaedias, trompe l'oeil, framing and forgeries. It addresses a range of intertextual relations between Magritte's work and that of other Surrealist artists and the art-historical tradition. This book explores how Magritte's art challenges conventional notions of originality, canonicity and coherence, revealing his work as being shaped by co-operations and co-options. It demonstrates that, far from being the surrealist artist familiar from book-covers and t-shirts, uncertainty, incoherence and negation lie at the core of Magritte's oeuvre.


Abstract
The aim of this thesis is threefold: to investigate, from the viewpoint of the home country, the effects of macroeconomic variables and policies on the flow of remittances; and to investigate the microeconomic foundations of the effects of remittances on both household expenditure and the labour force, with a specific application to Kosovo. For the macroeconomic determinants of remittances, a unique dataset is assembled using World Bank data with policy variable data collected from individual countries in the sample. For the implications of remittances on household expenditure and the labour force the United Nations Development Program Remittances Survey is used.
The estimates suggest that the key determinants of remittances/GDP and remittances per capita are real living standards in both the home (negatively) and the main host country (positively). The effect of GDP in the host country is not linear, but increases at decreasing rate. An original contribution of this section is the inclusion of specific policies applied to migrants and their remittances. However, despite the support for such policies in the literature, the policy variables modelled are statistically insignificant across several specifications.
In considering the effect of remittances on consumption, whether the household receives remittances or not is interacted with the log of income to examine if the spending of remittances is different from other sources of income. This variable is statistically insignificant for the share of expenditure on current consumption and education. However, the effect for the share of expenditure on durable goods is positive, albeit small. The model extends the literature by considering the migrant"s involvement in various ways with the home family as possible control mechanisms for the use of remittances. The results give three significant effects suggesting that, compared to other households, when income increases: households who receive advice on spending remittances increase the share of expenditure on current consumption; households who get more visits decrease the share of expenditure on current consumption and increase the share of expenditure on education.
In addition, addressing the impact of remittances on the labour supply of individuals in Kosovo, the results suggests that remittances per capita are insignificant with regard to working age members being active in labour market and being employed for males and females. However, when the total value of remittances per household is used, the estimate suggests an increase in the probability of males becoming active in the labour market, though the effect is very small.
Overall, the findings suggest that the policies aimed at increasing remittances from migrants are not effective. Furthermore, there is little evidence that changes in income levels for households receiving remittances are spent very differently from the households not receiving them; small differences are found for the durable goods share and if the migrant has some direct involvement with the home family. Finally, contrary to expectations, remittances are not found to affect the labour supply in the majority of the empirical work in this thesis. Such findings may indicate that the policy relevance for remittances is not as important as suggested by the literature for developing countries, especially for those with a similar profile to Kosovo.


A recent onslaught of domestic natural disasters created acute, critical needs for legal services for people displaced and harmed by storms and fires. In 2017, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria and Michael struck much of Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico, displacing millions from their homes. Wildfires burned throughout California and tested the capacity of pro bono and legal aid systems across the state. In 2018, Hurricane Florence flooded North Carolina, and Hurricane Michael devastated the Florida Panhandle. California again suffered wildfires, the largest and most devastating in recorded history. Natural disasters are both more common and more destructive, the "new abnormal."

Social and economic inequities emerge sharply after each natural disaster. Low-income and vulnerable people both suffer more from disasters and experience heightened barriers to accessing the post-disaster resources necessary to survive, rebuild, and return home. Marginalized and vulnerable populations, in particular, need legal assistance and expertise to overcome these barriers.

Natural disasters also inspire law students, law clinics, law schools and law faculty to help. Law school responses to assisting with post-disaster legal needs have been diverse. Some efforts have been law student initiated, while several law school clinics have provided legal assistance in a variety of ways. Some law schools have launched clinics with a devoted budget and strict focus on disaster practice. Some took on disaster work because it was the greatest need for existing clients and communities. Others shifted the focus of existing clinics to disaster needs, and still others launched temporary clinics in various forms to respond to acute crises. Some wanted to help but did not have ready relationships or resources to be responsive.

Each of the authors has direct experience surviving natural disasters and providing legal assistance from within the academy. This article provides necessary information about the nature of natural disasters, the ecosystem of response systems, and common legal issues for law schools and clinical programs interested in providing legal assistance to disaster-affected communities. It then describes varying models of law school institutional responses to increasingly common natural disasters. Building on lessons learned through these experiences, law schools can develop a blueprint for community-engaged disaster response. Building a framework for institutional responses in the legal academy can advance and improve access to justice for vulnerable communities recovering after a disaster and can provide students with an opportunity to learn from this social justice engagement.


In Act No. 23 of 2014 there is a chapter that specifically regulates regional innovation. Mentioned that in the framework of improving the performance of Regional Government, Local Government can innovate. Innovation is all form of renewal in the implementation of Regional Government. Initiatives of innovation can come from regional heads, members of parliament, civil state apparatus, regional apparatus, and community members. This regulation becomes a door for the region to make innovations become increasingly clear. Article 386 of the Regional Government Law expressly states, in the framework of improving the performance of local government administration, local government can innovate. Conceptually Rogers (1961) explains that innovation is an idea, practice, or object that is considered new by the individual one unit of other adoption. The variables affecting the innovation diffusion stage include (1) innovation attributes, (2) types of innovation decisions, (3) communication channels, (4) social system conditions, and (5) the role of change agents. West Java Province serve as an example of a region that successfully implemented local innovation. There are three categories of innovation, namely Governance Governance Innovation, Public Service Innovation, and Sectoral Product Innovation. Governance Innovation Governance, aimed at improving Government performance, apparatus professionalism, and expansion of public participation. While Public Service Innovation is designed to build a quality society and competitive. The Sector Product Innovation is designed to build a robust and equitable economy. This success led to the Governor of West Java awarded as Head of Innovative Region 2017. If West Java Province can apply successful regional innovation, why other regions are still afraid to apply it.


Portable systems such as cell phones and portable media players commonly use non-volatile RAM (NVRAM) to hold all of their data and metadata, and larger systems can store metadata in NVRAM to increase file system performance by reducing synchronization and transfer overhead between disk and memory data structures. Unfortunately, wayward writes from buggy software and random bit flips may result in an unreliable persistent store. We introduce two orthogonal and complementary approaches to reliably storing file system structures in NVRAM. First, we reinforce hardware and operating system memory consistency by employing page-level write protection and error correcting codes. Second, we perform on-line consistency checking of the filesystem structures by replaying logged file system transactions on copied data structures; a structure is consistent if the replayed copy matches its live counterpart. Our experiments show that the protection mechanisms can increase fault tolerance by six orders of magnitude while incurring an acceptable amount of overhead on writes to NVRAM. Since NVRAM is much faster and consumes far less power than disk-based storage, the added overhead of error checking leaves an NVRAM-based system both faster and more reliable than a disk-based system. Additionally, our techniques can be implemented on systems lacking hardware support for memory management, allowing them to be used on lowend and embedded systems without an MMU.


Tension infiltrometry is a useful in situ technique that is commonly used to determine hydraulic conductivity of the soil near saturation; however, the measurements are time consuming and costly. The aim of this study was to develop a fully automated tension infiltrometer for field use based on already existing designs. Differential pressure transducers were used to automate water level measurements, and the tension settings were automated by a set of solenoid valves. The effects of different design parameters on water level measurement fluctuations created by bubble disturbances (noise) were studied in the laboratory. The differential transducer provided less noisy measurements than the single transducer. The measurement noise was significantly smaller when a large‐diameter reservoir was used. The measurement noise was further reduced by using a reservoir system made of two tubes of different diameters slotted into each other. The effect of an increasing flow rate on the water level fluctuations was also investigated. Based on the design parameters tested, three identical tension infiltrometers connected to a single Mariotte bottle were built and tested under laboratory and field conditions. The pressure‐dependent hydraulic conductivity, K(h), values for all three replicates applied in the laboratory did not significantly differ from each other. In the field, the infiltration experiments were performed on a sandy loam soil on sites with and without wheel tracks. A significant reduction of K(h) values for most of the applied pressure heads was observed in the wheel track. The improved automated tension infiltrometer requires only a little operator intervention.


Abstract. An estimate of monthly 3-D aerosol solar heating rates and surface solar fluxes in Asia from 2001 to 2004 is described here. This product stems from an Asian aerosol assimilation project, in which a) the PNNL regional model bounded by the NCEP reanalyses was used to provide meteorology, b) MODIS and AERONET data were integrated for aerosol observations, c) the Iowa aerosol/chemistry model STEM-2K1 used the PNNL meteorology and assimilated aerosol observations, and d) 3-D (X-Y-Z) aerosol simulations from the STEM-2K1 were used in the Scripps Monte-Carlo Aerosol Cloud Radiation (MACR) model to produce total and anthropogenic aerosol direct solar forcing for average cloudy skies. The MACR model and STEM-2K1 both used the PNNL model resolution of 0.45°×0.4° in the horizontal and of 23 layers in the troposphere. The 2001–2004 averaged anthropogenic all-sky aerosol forcing is −1.3 Wm−2 (TOA), +7.3 Wm−2 (atmosphere) and −8.6 Wm−2 (surface) averaged in Asia (60–138° E and Equator–45° N). In the absence of AERONET SSA assimilation, absorbing aerosol concentration (especially BC aerosol) is much smaller, giving −2.3 Wm−2 (TOA), +4.5 Wm−2 (atmosphere) and −6.8 Wm−2 (surface), averaged in Asia. In the vertical, monthly forcing is mainly concentrated below 600 hPa with maximum around 800 hPa. Seasonally, low-level forcing is far larger in dry season than in wet season in South Asia, whereas the wet season forcing exceeds the dry season forcing in East Asia. The anthropogenic forcing in the present study is similar to that in Chung et al. (2005) in overall magnitude but the former offers fine-scale features and simulated vertical profiles. The interannual variability of the computed anthropogenic forcing is significant and extremely large over major emission outflow areas. Given the interannual variability, the present study's estimate is within the implicated range of the 1999 INDOEX result.


INTRODUCTION In 2004, in a review essay, Lisa Anderson found that most of the authors of the books she reviewed on September I I attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., considered these attacks as some sort of assaults on Modern, Western, American, and Liberal values. (1) But most certainly those attacks were not as simple as that. Therefore, Anderson admits "in reality, the impacts of September 11 were far more complex and contested than most of them [the authors] individually would likely recognize." (2) Daniel Philpott argued that the assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the killing of some three thousand civilians on September 11, 2001, was motivated by a political theology that regards the Westphalian synthesis as despicably secularized. (3) This political theology, described by Philpott as "radical Islamic revivalism," began in the early twentieth century as an internal moral critique of Islamic civilization, one that regards it as having decayed to a state of barbarism. (4) This is reflective of the theory of "clash of civilizations" propounded by Samuel P. Huntington. This theory argues that the post-Cold War era would be dominated by conflicts involving civilizations rather than nation states. (5) In this literature Islamic civilization emerges as the most potent remaining threat to building a liberal international order. (6) It may still be debated whether September 11 attacks were an assault on Western values or the rejection of a secularized international system, but there is no doubt that since those tumultuous events of September 11 much have been said and made about the role of Islam and Muslims in the contemporary international system. Evans points out that it has become a common-place theme in European and North American society that Islam is dedicated to changing Western values. (7) In this regard, he notes that Islam is presented as a monolithic, proselytizing creed dedicated to undermining, overturning, and eventually replacing the values that have sustained capital growth on a global scale. (8) However, the fact remains that Muslims around the world also joined the chorus of condemnation of September 11 attack. Leading Muslim clerics in Egypt, Iran, and other parts of the Middle East publicly and in stern language denounced the September attacks, declaring them to be blatantly incompatible with Islamic religion and indeed with any conceivable standards of ethics. (9) In spite of these denunciations, negative views of Muslims among sections of Westerners persist. In 2007, a Pew Center survey found that about 43% of Americans viewed Muslims in positive light but 30% Americans used negative words to describe their impressions of Muslims. Muslims were described as fanatic, violent and terrorists. (10) Hence the observation that not much has changed since Lapidus wrote in 1996, that to the Westerners, Islam calls to mind puritanical holy warriors, fanatics, dervishes, suicide bombers, hijackers, and human waves thrown into battle. (11) Therefore, it is not surprising that an exasperated Aslam Syed writes, "Muslim history, culture, religion, and politics are judged not through history or proper context of their Holy Book but through the dusty clouds that followed the destruction of the twin towers of the New York City and the attack on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C." (12) Two members of President George W. Bush's now infamous "Axis of Evils" were Muslim majority states--Iran and Iraq. Syria has been placed on U.S. State Department's list of states sponsoring terrorism. Libya also shared a place on that list until the Tripoli authorities gave up their nuclear weapons and technology in 2003 and handed them over to the United States. Pakistan has been described as a dishonest partner of the U.S. in the Afghanistan War. (13) Such views give rise to a general impression that the Muslim majority states are not playing a positive role in international relations. …


A micromanipulation setup allowing comparative tests of manipulation micro tools has been developed. Repeatability measurements of positioning as well as optimization of manipulation conditions can be run with parts of typically 5 to 50μm over a large set of parameters including environment conditions, substrate and tip specifications, and different strategies (robot trajectories at picking and releasing time). The workstation consists of a high precise parallel robot, the Delta3, to position the gripper, linear stages to place the parts in the field of view and two microscopes for the visual feedback and position measurement. The setup is placed in a chamber for controlling relative humidity and temperature. An interface was developed to integrate every kind of tool on the robot. Automated operations and measurement have been carried out based on localization and tracking of micro objects and gripper. Integration of micro tools was successfully accomplished and comparative tests were executed with micro tweezers. Sub micrometer position repeatability was achieved with a success rate of pick and pick operations of 95%.


Stratal Optimality Theory posits constraint evaluation at three distinct levels or strata: stem, word and phrase level. This multi-level variation of the original OT model may provide more economical and elegant explanations of problems involving opacity, derived environment effects and paradigmatic effects than other Parallel OT theories that have been developed to address these issues. Alternations of pitch accent placement within the Vedic Sanskrit nominal inflectional and derivational paradigms provide evidence supporting Stratal OT. First, two major accentual patterns surface upon inflection; accent may remain fixed on a stem syllable in all cases or may shift to the inflectional ending in "weak" cases only. Second, for all nominals, the vocative is not accented, except when it appears at the beginning of a phrase; in that case, the accent is always on the initial syllable, regardless of the position of the accent on the stem or other inflected forms. Finally, accentual variation of primary and secondary derived stems and words is seen; accent may remain on the root (or primary stem) or may fall on the derivational ending; in either case, accent remains fixed throughout inflection (i.e., no accent shift). In this analysis, a system of well-grounded morphological, prosodic, identity and alignment constraints are proposed for the stem, word and phrase levels to explain these alternations. It is argued that inflection takes place at the word level while derivation occurs at the stem level. Constraints at the three levels follow a consistent ranking pattern, while remaining relevant to the prosodic and morphological requirements of the specific level. The highest ranked identity constraint at the stem and word levels are substantively identical: MAXIO(Accent)HEAD. Crucially, however, the head is different at each level, with the derivational suffix being the head at the stem (derivational) level, while the stem or root is the head at the word (inflectional) level. This allows for a principled explanation of the various accentual phenomena and, additionally, provides evidence for the operation of distinct stem and word levels. Numerous constraint tableaux are presented; in each case, the winner is the correct surface form. These data indicate that Stratal OT effectively captures the Sanskrit nominal accentual paradigms using a small number of well-grounded constraints. Importantly, it is demonstrated that Parallel OT is unable to generate the correct surface forms for all the relevant alternations without the introduction of exotic and otherwise unnecessary constraints. Further cross-linguistic and theoretical research into the Stratal OT model is needed to establish its universality and superiority to other models.


Imagine a reference survey instrument that is very simple to administer, requires only a pencil to fill out, and gathers data specifically on whether users get the help they need and are satisfied with reference service, and whether in the process they learn about how to find and evaluate information. If you are interested, read on. This third article in the new Management column is written by Jonathan Miller about the reference survey he and his colleagues developed at the University of Pittsburgh. I first met and heard Miller at the 2006 American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference when he presented his research at the Reference Research Forum. I found it a fascinating and practical approach to obtaining user input; a survey that combined some of the strengths of the Wisconsin Ohio Reference Evaluation Project (WOREP) survey while overcoming some of the shortcomings of that standard workhorse instrument. I was especially interested because this new survey was developed to build upon the survey data libraries gathered from LibQUAL+. LibQUAL+ does not specifically measure reference quality; this survey provides a way of gathering useful evaluation of reference service. A future column will be about a mid-life librarian who changed careers from a special librarian to an academic librarian, including a discussion of the ups and downs of such a change and the energizing effect of the change. This is of timely interest to administrators and managers because within the next few years a large number of librarians will retire, opening up many higher level positions. Mid-career librarians will be in the prime position to apply for these jobs, if they are willing to make some career changes. For future columns I am looking for articles on new approaches to managing reference service, such as outreach services in non-library locations, or the use of expert systems, or using instant messaging (IM) as a way of communicating with high school or college students. If you have experiences with any of these or other practical ideas for providing reference service, please e-mail me.--Editor This research grew from my concern as a public services librarian-manager to find a quick and easy way to evaluate reference service. Most, perhaps all, libraries measure how much reference assistance we provide. Usually we simply count the number of transactions sometimes classifying these transactions by complexity directional, ready reference, and so on) or in terms of medium (in-person, phone, and online). Sometimes we even collect information on how long it takes to complete the transaction. As a profession we have developed a variety of definitions of what constitutes a reference transaction to help with the collection of data. (1) RUSA has developed reference behaviors guidelines that I have found to be very useful during training and development of reference providers (my preferred, if awkward, term for all those employees--librarians, staff, interns, and student employees--who may provide reference service). (2) It is more difficult to measure the quality of the reference service we provide, particularly if we want to avoid overburdening our reference providers and our users. The LibQUAL survey of library service quality asks about "employees who have the knowledge to answer user questions," "employees who deal with users in a caring fashion," and "employees who understand the needs of their users." (3) All of these statements could be related to reference providers, but LibQUAL does not single out individual library services, such as reference. Instead, quite rightly, it asks for users' perceptions of library service quality as provided by the whole library. These perceptions could be formed on the basis of interactions with any library personnel with whom the user interacts. REFERENCE EVALUATION LITERATURE The literature on reference evaluation is huge, and this column is not the place to review it. …


Background— Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are bone marrow stromal cells that are in phase 1 clinical studies of cellular cardiomyoplasty. However, the electrophysiological effects of MSC transplantation have not been studied. Although improvement of ventricular function would represent a positive outcome of MSC transplantation, focal application of stem cells has the potential downside of creating inhomogeneities that may predispose the heart to reentrant arrhythmias. In the present study we use an MSC and neonatal rat ventricular myocyte (NRVM) coculture system to investigate potential proarrhythmic consequences of MSC transplantation into the heart. Methods and Results— Human MSCs were cocultured with NRVMs in ratios of 1:99, 1:9, and 1:4 and optically mapped. We found that conduction velocity was decreased in cocultures compared with controls, but action potential duration (APD80) was not affected. Reentrant arrhythmias were induced in 86% of cocultures containing 10% and 20% MSCs (n=36) but not in controls (n=7) or cocultures containing only 1% MSCs (n=4). Immunostaining, Western blot, and dye transfer revealed the presence of functional gap junctions involving MSCs. Conclusions— Our results suggest that mixtures of MSCs and NRVMs can produce an arrhythmogenic substrate. The mechanism of reentry is probably increased tissue heterogeneity resulting from electric coupling of inexcitable MSCs with myocytes.


Land management practices provide the basis for evaluating sustainability and monitoring environmental impacts. In Calabar, the current land management practice of grass planting along major routes as a way of beautifying and managing degraded areas has not received much research attention. The study examined the dynamics in soil physical and chemical properties under different land use covers in parts of Odukpani in Cross River State, Nigeria. The quadrat approach was used to randomly collect soil samples from fifteen plots of 5m x 5m across three identified land use covers: roadside soil, 16 year-old rubber plantation soil and a secondary forest soil. Result showed that the contents of CEC, available phosphorus, Ca, Mg and K were considerably higher in the roadside soil than in the rubber and secondary forest soils as a result of road construction and landscaping activities resulting in the introduction of soil with high quantity of clay. The result further revealed that organic carbon and total nitrogen contents were higher in the secondary forest soil than in other land cover soils due to the dense canopy cover that helped in nutrient accretion in the soil by minimizing the loss of nutrients through soil erosion and leaching. To maintain soil nutrient for ecological sustainability in line with the changing landscape in the area, trees along with grasses are encouraged to be planted, instead of grasses alone as can be seen along major routes in the state.


This paper is evaluating the two popular community development approaches; the Top-down and the Bottom-up with their divergent differences in application and the influence each has in developmental projects/ programmes. The authors then proposes a new model / approach "MIXED METHOD". The works of John Cohan and Norman Uphoff, Robert Chambers as earlier advocates of participatory development comes to mind as they tried to deviate from the previous and most popular top –down approach. Considering the fact that there has been arguments on the choice of one against the other, this paper proposes the "mixed method" as the most appropriate approach, as a new approach to balance the dichotomy thereby filling the research gap in search of most appropriate community development method. This advocates the application of both methods as there is need for a mix of both top-down and bottom-up for effective community development. This view of mixed method is borrowed from the supportive and effective empirical evidence for the adoption of mixed methods research in recent time. The review of previous articles, books, conference proceedings, and other internet publications were utilized as the methodological approach hence, the study used secondary data. The paper concludes that there should be a systematic blending or mixing of both top-bottom and bottom-up so as to achieve a holistic and appreciable sustainable development that carries every one along. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n4p266


We investigate the space complexity of refuting $3$-CNFs in Resolution and algebraic systems. No lower bound for refuting any family of $3$-CNFs was previously known for the total space in resolution or for the monomial space in algebraic systems. We prove that every Polynomial Calculus with Resolution refutation of a random $3$-CNF $\phi$ in $n$ variables requires, with high probability, $\Omega(n/\log n)$ distinct monomials to be kept simultaneously in memory. The same construction also proves that every Resolution refutation $\phi$ requires, with high probability, $\Omega(n/\log n)$ clauses each of width $\Omega(n/\log n)$ to be kept at the same time in memory. This gives a $\Omega(n^2/\log^2 n)$ lower bound for the total space needed in Resolution to refute $\phi$.
The main technical innovation is a variant of Hall's theorem. We show that in bipartite graphs $G$ with bipartition $(L,R)$ and left-degree at most 3, $L$ can be covered by certain families of disjoint paths, called $(2,4)$-matchings, provided that $L$ expands in $R$ by a factor of $(2-\epsilon)$, for $\epsilon < \frac{1}{23}$.


Rule of law has emerged as an essential objective in assistance to post-conflict and post-crisis societies such as Somalia, Kosovo, Liberia and Egypt. This has led to a host of externally promoted programmes and projects on law reform, constitutional development and judicial training, and security sector transformation. Through UN Security Council resolutions and other means of conditionality, the rule of law is not simply promoted in post-conflict and crisis settings, but also enforced. A failure to adhere to the rule of law can result in donors withholding funds and political support. The employment of the concept as a standard and condition in state-building has national legal and political consequences. Clarity in communication on the rule of law is of great importance. This book provides a critical analysis of past and current rule of law promotion, and argues that despite past experiences of development and technical assistance, rule of law reform in war-torn and crisis societies operates in an autonomous field where best practices and lessons learned are rarely or only superficially acknowledged. Furthermore, there is a need for a reorientation of rule of law assistance to the core values of the concept in order to retain its independent and 'analytical bite', and to develop criteria that can guide reformers in the field. The author provides a comparative and systematic overview of how rule of law promotion has been put into effect and identifies challenges and opportunities for enhancing and strengthening norms, ideologies and methods for legal and judicial reform after war and crisis.


This is a book that can be highly recommended to all students of medical ethics. The editors have assembled a diverse group of contributors who are all highly respected in the field of death and brain death and whilst there is a distinct North American flavour to most of the articles, there are contributions from other countries including the UK. All forms of brain death (brain stem death, whole brain death and neocortical death) are discussed from a variety of viewpoints but there is an unfortunate tendency to link brain death with organ transplantation. This link is most obvious in the article by Rix about the problems with brain death in Denmark. Although much of the book concentrates on the definition of death (especially in the USA) there is an excellent section on the attitude towards brain death of a variety of mainstream religions, including fundamentalist Christianity. Such discussion is not commonly seen and is a welcome addition to the text. For readers approaching the topic of brain death for the first time, much of this book seems daunting but a thorough reading will provide an excellent overall view of the debate that has been in progress for some time. The historical development of brain death is well discussed, as is the public attitude to the development of the concept, along with international perspectives covering the USA, Europe and Japan. It ends with a consideration of possible future developments. Many of the fundamental questions associated with debates on brain death are covered—what constitutes the death of a person, are the tests for brain death appropriate and has brain death been irrevocably established. The single most important question, ie does brain death of any description actually constitute death or is it merely predictive of death, is also addressed. Answers to questions of this nature, of course, underlie both treatment decisions in a small group of patients and the uses to which the organs of the "deceased" patient may be put (transplantation). This book makes it obvious that there are no simple or easy answers to these questions and the diVerences of opinion between experts is well demonstrated in the earlier articles. My only criticism of the book is that the concept of brain death is repeatedly linked with organ donation and transplantation without qualification. Failure to separate these two issues constitutes a fundamental flaw in the development of the concept of brain death. Whilst this link may represent historical actuality, there is no suggestion in any article that such a link should be broken and that the debate about the definition of death should proceed without any reference to organ transplantation. That criticism apart, this book is an excellent compilation of articles stating the present position in relation to brain death and clearly demonstrates the ethical dilemmas surrounding the concept of death and its determination in practice. It can be wholeheartedly recommended to those interested in brain death from almost any perspective.


Abstract. Air pollution resulting from rapid urbanization and associated human activities in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal has been leading to serious public health concerns over the past 2 decades. These concerns led to a multinational field campaign SusKat-ABC (Sustainable atmosphere for the Kathmandu Valley – Atmospheric Brown Clouds) that measured different trace gases, aerosols and meteorological parameters in the Kathmandu Valley and surrounding regions during December 2012 to June 2013 to understand local- to regional-scale processes influencing air quality of the Kathmandu Valley. This study provides information about the regional distribution of ozone and some precursor gases using simultaneous in situ measurements from a SusKat-ABC supersite at Bode, Nepal, and two Indian sites: a high-altitude site, Nainital, located in the central Himalayan region and a low-altitude site, Pantnagar, located in the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP). The diurnal variations at Bode showed a daytime buildup in O3 while CO shows morning and evening peaks. Similar variations (with lower levels) were also observed at Pantnagar but not at Nainital. Several events of hourly ozone levels exceeding 80 ppbv were also observed at Bode. The CO levels showed a decrease from their peak level of about 2000 ppbv in January to about 680 ppbv in June at Bode. The hourly mean ozone and CO levels showed a strong negative correlation during winter (r2 = 0.82 in January and r2 = 0.71 in February), but this negative correlation gradually becomes weaker, with the lowest value in May (r2 = 0.12). The background O3 and CO mixing ratios at Bode were estimated to be about 14 and 325 ppbv, respectively. The rate of change of ozone at Bode showed a more rapid increase ( ∼ 17 ppbv h−1) during morning than the decrease in the evening (5–6 ppbv h−1), suggesting the prevalence of a semi-urban environ. The lower CO levels during spring suggest that regional transport also contributes appreciably to springtime ozone enhancement in the Kathmandu Valley on top of the local in situ ozone production. We show that regional pollution resulting from agricultural crop residue burning in northwestern IGP led to simultaneous increases in O3 and CO levels at Bode and Nainital during the first week of May 2013. A biomass-burning-induced increase in ozone and related gases was also confirmed by a global model and balloon-borne observations over Nainital. A comparison of surface ozone variations and composition of light non-methane hydrocarbons among different sites indicated the differences in emission sources of the Kathmandu Valley and the IGP. These results highlight that it is important to consider regional sources in air quality management of the Kathmandu Valley.


This paper analyses social policy reforms that have been adopted recently in Southern European countries (Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece). Such measures are aimed partially at adapting to the restrictions impinged on their national economies by the creation of the European Economic and Monetary Union and by the process of globalization. Social policy innovation is also influenced by the arguments and pressure capacities of the different socio-political actors in each country. The paper includes, in the first place, a conceptual clarification of the term "social dumping". Secondly, the study focuses on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the actual reform processes that have taken place and their impact on both public revenues and expenditure. Finally, an assessment is offered of the factors shaping recent policy patterns.


Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is perceived as an important tool to achieve industrial development and growth if Bangladesh wants to improve socio-economic indicators. This study analyzes the major determinants and hindrances of FDI inflow in Bangladesh. FDI related policies are discussed to identify the objectives of these policies. Qualitative research method is used in this study. Primary and secondary data are employed to address the research objectives. There are two target groups: foreign investors in Export Processing Zones (EPZs) in Dhaka and Chittagong and Public policy makers. The data reveals that after adopting the liberalized policy measures in 1990s there has been a significant increase in the FDI inflow. Both foreign investors and policy makers identified low cost labour as the major determinant of FDI inflow in Bangladesh and shown their satisfaction regarding the outcomes of FDI related policies. In terms of barrier to FDI inflow the most significant barrier identified is infrastructural constraint. The study further revealed that in spite of having investment-friendly policies there are some implementation problems at the levels of facilitating agencies. As Bangladesh is facing infrastructural constraints, special incentives packages can be offered as policy incentive to the investors for certain period who will invest in this sector. Beside this necessary logistic support, more simplified bureaucratic procedure, prioritized investment according to the need of the regional area/ sector can contribute to increased FDI inflow to Bangladesh. Further research need to focus on the combination of market seeking and export oriented FDI in Bangladesh.


Abstract This paper discusses the issue of copyright, especially as it pertains in Ghana. It also examines the extent of literary piracy and its impact on authors and the book industry in Ghana. Remedies proposed to curb this activity include resourcing of the Copyright Office; creation of copyright awareness; and strict prosecution of offenders. Introduction According to Harrods Librarians' Glossary (1984), copyright is a procedure whereby the originator of a piece of intellectual property (books, articles, piece of music etc.) receives due recompense for the inventiveness or the imagination expended. The law of copyright has had a rather slow evolution dating back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with the introduction of the art of printing from movable type. Increase in the number of printers resulted in the assumption of the prerogative of granting printing privileges, usually by the monarch. A congress which deserves special mention is the Universal Copyright Convention held in 1952. Forty countries from both developed and developing areas were represented. Prior to this, in 1886, a convention was held in Berne which aimed at protecting the rights of authors. The main international agreement on copyright is the Berne Convention of 1886, administered by World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), to which most countries in Africa have fashioned their own copyright laws. The WIPO is an international organization tasked with promoting the intellectual property of works. It is a UN specialized agency based in Geneva and has a country membership of 179. The Berne Convention stipulates that copyright usually lasts for the life of the author, plus an additional 50 years. After that the work is then in the public domain. To most people, the author is a person who writes or produces a book. In all fields of human endeavour, initiative and originality are primary values associated with authorship. In the specific context of the book industry, and particularly in the authorship of literary works, an author is also expected to have a creative turn of mind, a distinctive vision of society and a restless passion to communicate. In order for an author to contribute to knowledge and the advancement of his fellow men, he should reveal a distinctive quality of mind, reveal creative originality in his total being and a willingness to share something of value with posterity. One may therefore confidently assert that, without authorship of some kind, books cannot be produced. Copyright law in Ghana The Copyright Act, 1961 Act 85 is the main copyright law in Ghana. This law gives protection to the authors of literary, dramatic, musical, artistic and other intellectual works. The owner of a copyright is granted by law certain exclusive rights in his work such as: * the right to print, reprint and copy the work; * the right to sell or distribute copies of the work; * the right to transform or revise the work by means of dramatisation, translation, musical arrangement or the like; * the right to record the work; * the right to perform publicly, if it is a literary, dramatic or musical work Before this Act, all copyright issues in Ghana were covered by the Copyright Act, 1911 of the United Kingdom. The Book Industry In Ghana, the book industry is a relatively young industry. Before independence, almost all the textbooks used in schools were imported from Britain. But it was soon discovered that this was not helpful to the nation. Hence the need to encourage the development of the local book industry. This is necessary because a buoyant local book industry has the following advantages: * It promotes cultural and educational enrichment; * It provides opportunities for academics and the nation's thinkers to express themselves in writing and publishing; * It fosters the development of a sense of national history, tradition and unity; * It directs the industry to priority areas in publishing so that critical national needs for books can be satisfied. …


Websites (e.g. intervention websites targeting health risk behaviors) can be effective in achieving their goals if they are used. The actual use, however, is often very low. This study aimed to assess the effect of visual complexity on intention to use websites, by using within-subjects manipulations of visual complexity and cognitive load (1097 trials, N = 93). The results indicate that high visual complexity has a negative effect on intention to use websites (F(1, 1095) = 14.81, p < .001), but this is fully mediated through attitude towards the website based on the first impression (F(1, 1094) = 13.41, p < .001). This clearly demonstrates the powerfulness of a first impression before interacting with a website and stresses the need for evidence-based insight into how this first impression is constituted. Keywords: visual complexity; websites; intention to use


Road pricing is a popular congestion reduction strategy. However, there may be wider impacts associated with a road toll. We consider a factor which is sometimes overlooked, namely that workers and firms may choose to change location in response to changes in the travel costs. A spatial equilibrium model is used to analyse suboptimalities in road pricing which may occur if relocations are ignored. We show that such suboptimalities can be substantial. The advantage of the model we use over many existing approaches is that it is easy to implement, and requires very little data.


It's almost impossible to sue a foreign government in U.S. courts. The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, the court-created "act of state" doctrine, and other common law immunities shield foreign officials and governments from most lawsuits. For instance, courts have dismissed claims against China, Cuba, Venezuela, and Russia over allegations of torture, detentions, and election interference. Yet, foreign governments have unfettered access to U.S. courts as plaintiffs. And foreign dictatorships, including Russia, China, Turkey, and Venezuela, have leveraged this access to harass political dissidents, critics, and even newspapers in the United States. These doctrines create an asymmetry at the heart of this Article: foreign dictators and their proxies can access our courts as plaintiffs to harass their opponents, but their regimes are, in turn, immune from lawsuits here.

This Article exposes this asymmetry and argues that U.S. courts and Congress should make it harder for foreign dictators to abuse our legal system. The Article offers three novel contributions. First, the Article provides the first systematic assessment of foreign dictatorships in U.S. court. While much of the literature is siloed by substantive area of law—focusing on contexts like human rights or property expropriations—this Article treats dictators as a trans-substantive category of litigants, worthy of special analysis. Second, the Article exposes how foreign dictators are increasingly taking advantage of U.S. courts and comity doctrines, especially as plaintiffs. In a misguided effort to promote harmonious foreign relations, courts have provided foreign dictators an array of protections and privileges that dictators are eagerly exploiting. Finally, the Article demonstrates that there is no historical, constitutional, or statutory obligation on U.S. courts to give foreign dictators these legal protections and unfettered access to our courts. Because of that, I offer four concrete proposals to both stymy dictators' access to U.S. court as plaintiffs—through a proposed foreign sovereign anti-SLAPP statute—and weaken the protections that dictators enjoy as defendants. Simply stated, U.S. courts should not be instruments of foreign authoritarian oppression.


This paper presents the first application of an EBG structure to improve the B1 efficiency of strip-line coils used for 7-Tesla Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). The proposed offset multilayer electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structure is utilized as a high impedance surface behind an extended half-wavelength (meandered) dipole. It operates at 300MHz, the magnetic resonance frequency at 7 T, and comprises of electrically small cells of only 7.5% of the free-space wavelength. The reflection phase coefficient and the dispersion diagram were used to characterize the EBG structure. The MRI strip-line coil backed by our EBG structure is successful in exhibiting a stronger B1-field inside a phantom than the original design using a metallic conductor (PEC) ground plane for the coil. The quantitative improvement in B1 efficiency amounts to 47%.


This paper reviews recent 5-years application researches using online sample preconcentration (OSP) methods in capillary electrophoresis (CE) coupled with mass spectrometry (MS). CE-MS has excellent analytical features such as high-resolution separation, rapid analysis time, low sample consumption, and small consumption of organic solvents. Recently, low flow-rate interface for electrospray ionization has been developed and zmol-level sensitivity has been achieved. However, application of CE-MS has still been prevented due to small capacity of sample injection volume. OSP methods have been developed to address this issue and up to 5,000-fold sensitivity improvement was obtained so far. Various application has been carried out such as proteomics, metabolomics, and glycomics, and CE-MS attracts much attention as the highest-performance analytical tool for small-volume bioanalysis. Taking account of further progress in CE-MS, smart and practical application of OSP methods will be more important in various analytical fields.


Tourmalinites from the Svratka Unit form stratiform layers
hosted in mica schists. The chemical composition of tourmaline
from tourmalinites varies from Al-rich schorl to dravite. The
tourmaline usually exhibits three compositional domains, which
are, from centre to the rim: a chemically inhomogeneous
brecciated core (zone I), a volumetrically minor internal rim
zone II, and a dominant outermost zone III. The compositional
variability of tourmaline in all the zones is controlled by the
(X YAl WOH) (XNa Y Mg WF)-1 and YFeYMg-1 substitutions. The
tourmaline of the zone I corresponds to highly vacanced X-site,
Al-rich schorl with lower F (up to 0.43 apfu), which is
interpreted as an older, low-temperature hydrothermal
tourmaline. Tourmaline of the zone II corresponds to dravite
rich in F (reaching up to 0.66 apfu) crystallizing during the
prograde metamorphism. Lastly, the Al-rich schorl-dravite of
the zone III, grew most likely during retrograde metamorphism.
The tourmaline from the host mica schists has a similar
chemical composition. The central dravite part corresponds to
the zone II, and the predominant schorl-dravite rim to the zone
III, in tourmalines from tourmalinites. Overall, the dravite
exhibits compositional characteristics of the prograde,
amphibolite-facies metamorphic event characterised by the
mineral assemblage Qtz + Ms + Bt + Tu +/- Ky +/- St +/- Grt.
The second generation of tourmaline (schorl-dravite), as well
as the rim of garnets present in both the mica-schists and
tourmalinites, formed during exhumation of the Svratka Unit
accompanied by decreasing pressure and temperature. In the mica
schists, this event resulted in decompression breakdown of
staurolite, according to the reaction St + Ms + Qtz = Grt + Sil
+ Bt + H2O. Breakdown of muscovite could have released B and F
used for tourmaline formation. The P-T conditions of this
retrograde metamorphism were calculated at 600-640 oC and 5-6
kbar. Tourmalinites are interpreted as a part of a
metamorphosed volcano-sedimentary complex primarily rich in F
and B, however, the derivation of all the F- and B-rich fluids
from the neighbouring migmatites and metagranites is unlikely.
Similarities in the chemical composition of the tourmalinites
and the mica schists suggest a similar protolith to both rock
types. The variation in most of the elements reflects the
mineral composition associated with the transition from mica
schist to tourmalinite.


This paper explores headteachers' and teachers' perceptions of foreign languages (FL) and cultural learning in three primary schools in areas of disadvantage in England. Drawing upon a new theoretical frame for primary languages – Critical Cosmopolitanism (Delanty, 2006; Beck and Sznaider, 2006) and The Grammar of Culture (Holliday, 2018), we argue that the grand narrative of a target language inhabited by a target culture is outdated and approaches to cultural learning in primary schools could lead the way. There is substantial evidence that most learners find language lessons fun, particularly activities such as songs, stories and intercultural events (Driscoll et al.,2004, 2014; Cable et al. 2010). The discourse on conditions for inclusive practice is less commonplace and little is known about FL learning in areas of high deprivation (Nikolov & Mihaljevic Djigunovic, 2011). Teachers and headteachers in this study were committed to cultural learning and staff adopted creative approaches to teaching. The findings, however, also indicate that traditional notions of a mono or homogenised national culture with associated stereotypes linger in teachers' framing of FL. There exists a need for a more personalised approach to cultural learning drawing upon children's own cultural experiences. Data was analysed thematically following strict ethical guidelines and all names were anonymised to ensure confidentiality.


Beliefs about the importance of ethical behavior to competent practice have prompted major shifts in psychology ethics over time. Yet few studies examine ethical beliefs and behavior after training, and most comprehensive research is now 30 years old. As such, it is unclear whether shifts in the field have resulted in general improvements in ethical practice: Are we psychologists "ships in the rising sea," lifted by changes in ethical codes and training over time? Participants (N = 325) completed a survey of ethical beliefs and behaviors (Pope, Tabachnick, & Keith-Spiegel, 1987). Analyses examined group differences, consistency of frequency and ethicality ratings, and comparisons with past data. More than half of behaviors were rated as less ethical and occurring less frequently than in 1987, with early career psychologists generally reporting less ethically questionable behavior. Recommendations for enhancing ethics education are discussed.


In the wake of the Taliban nightmare, Afghanistan must tackle serious problems before it can emerge as a confident, independent nation. Security in this battered state continues to deteriorate; suicide bombings, convoy ambushes, and insurgent attacks are all too common. Effective state building will depend upon eliminating the national security crisis and enhancing the rule of law. This book offers a blueprint for moving the embattled nation toward greater democracy and prosperity. Robert Rotberg and his colleagues argue that the future success of state building in Afghanistan depends on lessening its dependence on opium and enhancing its economic status. Many of Afghanistan's security problems are related to poppy growing, opium and heroin production, and drug trafficking. Building a New Afghanistan suggests controversial new alternatives to immediate eradication, which is foolish and counter-productive. These options include monetary incentives for growing wheat, a viable local crop. Greater wheat production would feed hungry Afghans while reducing narco-trafficking and the terror that comes with it. Integrating this land-locked country into the Central Asia or greater Eurasia economy would open up trading partnerships with its northern and western neighbors as well as with Pakistan, India, and possibly China. Developing a sense of common purpose among citizens would benefit the economy and could help to unite the nation. Perhaps most important, bolstering better governance in Afghanistan is necessary in order to eliminate chaos and corruption and enact nationwide reforms. Fresh and insightful, Building a New Afghanistan shows what the country's leadership and the international community should do to resolve dangerous issues and bolster a still fragile state. Contributors include Cindy Fazey (University of Liverpool), Ali Jalali (former minister of the interior, Afghanistan, and National Defense University), Hekmat Karzai (Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies, Afghanistan, and Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, Singapore), Alistair J. McKechnie (World Bank Country Director for Afghanistan), Paula Newburg (Skidmore College), and S. Frederick Starr (Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University).


The ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka represented a major threat to the livelihoods of all people in the country and especially those in the conflict zones. Conflict-related violence was not limited to Sinhalese and Tamils; there were also sporadic clashes among Tamil militant groups and between Tamil and Muslim civilians. Based on fieldwork in six case study villages in conflict zones of Ampara District in eastern Sri Lanka between 2007 and 2010, the thesis analyses the access to livelihood assets, causes and dynamics of livelihood activities and strategies of households in different ethnic groups mainly focusing on the different opportunities and constraints faced by them when making their livelihoods in the context of conflict. The thesis is intended to achieve this through addresses the following research questions: How do different households access and make use of assets? What are the impacts of conflict on households' livelihood activities? What type of livelihood strategies are formulated by different households in situations of conflict? How can the dynamics of livelihoods in a conflict setting be incorporated into sustainable livelihood framework? The research used a qualitative methodology, whereby in-depth interviews, life histories, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and observations enabled the livelihood experiences of those living in the study areas to be captured. The information has been organized into manageable categories using the DFID's sustainable rural livelihoods framework with modifications to fit the research complexities. The key dynamic processes of the livelihood systems are identified and discussed based on the framework. The study demonstrates that households' livelihoods were inextricably linked with the conflict. The different elements of households' livelihoods were affected both directly and indirectly through the conflict's impact on livelihood entitlement, people's lives, and creating new forms of social inequality. Conversely, the livelihood changes which households made were a cause of further conflict. Furthermore, conflict changed households' priorities. The impact of the conflict on access to livelihood assets and activities varied according to households' ethnic group, socio-economic status, location of residence, relations with political and military power holders, and relationships with people living in non-conflict zones in both in Sri Lanka and abroad. The conflict situation forced many people from all three ethnic groups, although relatively more Tamils, to abandon their traditional resources and livelihood activities in order to search for alternative forms. The findings also indicate that although most of the households were losers in the conflict, there were a few winners, even at the micro level. In terms of theory, the livelihood framework adopted in the study contributes to an understanding of how a livelihoods approach to the impact of conflict can be analysed comprehensively and by incorporating the different phases of the conflict. The research revealed that various livelihood strategies were used by households classified as survival, coping, and adaptation. One remarkable finding is that a given strategy was used for different purposes, which in turn were categorized based on ethnic groups. Further, the reasons behind using certain strategies differed according to people's socio-economic status and their political affiliations


This study investigates the form, function, and organization of features at the Late Paleoindian through Middle Archaic site of Dust Cave, Alabama (US), using a multidisciplinary approach combining macromorphological, micromorphological, and chemical analyses. Previous studies have relied on observations made at the macroscopic level using morphological and/or content attributes, severely masking the diversity of activities they represent. A more robust method conceptualizes features as sedimentary deposits and reconstructs their depositional history as a means of identifying feature function. At Dust Cave, an integrated method combining micromorphology and geochemistry with more traditional studies of morphology and content highlights the importance of several activities not previously recognized, including broiling, smoking, nut processing, storage, and refuse disposal. Use of Dust Cave as a place in the hunter-gatherer landscape of the Middle Tennessee Valley did not remain constant through time, but rather changed over the millennia. During the Late Paleoindian and early Early Archaic, Dust Cave functioned as a short term residential camp which was occupied fairly intensively during the late summer through fall. During the late Early Archaic, the site shifted to a residential base camp. During the Middle Archaic, the site shifted again to a logistical extraction camp where groups processed hickory nuts on such a large scale that the copious amounts of refuse generated give one the impression of a longer term base camp. The changes seen at Dust Cave mirror changes at other regional cave and rockshelter sites at which numerous nut processing pits, nutting stones, and enormous quantities of nut charcoal indicate a general shift in site use as plant extraction camps-sites where nuts were boiled and parched for transport to base camps located at lower elevations. The increased reliance on mast resources corresponds to warming and drying associated with the middle Holocene. These vegetation changes played a key role in the increasingly logistical mobility strategy of Middle Archaic hunter-gatherer groups.


ABSTRACT Mental retarded children become the subject of this research. They get difficulties in comprehending the multiplication concept since they only get static learning process and they are not given meaningful context. This causes their academic failure, especially in the mathematics learning. An appropriate learning strategy which can accommodate the whole students in the class, clever students, average students, or teacher is needed. That strategy is contextual learning model. The research problem in this research is the lack of mathematics study result because of the third grade students at Sinar Harapan Inclusive primary School C Probolinggo get difficulties in multiplication concept. Therefore contextual learning method is used in this research. This research aims to improve the third grade students' multiplication concept at Sinar Harapan Inclusive Primary School C Probolinggo through Contextual Teaching and Learning. This research is a classroom action research. The steps of this research are as follows: a) planning, b) action, c) observation, d) evaluation and reflection. It needs 2 cycles to improve the mathematics study result for 72.5%. In the pre cycle, the students' mathematics study result is 53.7%. It becomes 63.1% in the first cycle. It is because the contextual learning model has not been applied well and the students need to adapt the new method. it needs to be brought to the second cycle to maximize the guidance giving for the group by focusing on the cooperation. The children can adapt the new method and can study in their group. Therefore, it can improve the students' study result as 72.5%. The research setting is the third grade of Sinar Harapan inclusive primary school Probolinggo. The subjects of the research are 8 students. The result of the research shows that contextual teaching and learning method can improve mental retarded children's mathematics study result. Based on the research, it is suggested that contextual teaching and learning can be used as the mathematics learning strategy for mental retarded children. It is because this method can improve students' study result multiplication skill successfully. Keywords: concept comprehantion, multiplication, contextual teaching and learning.


The linear ultrasonic technique has been extensively used as a powerful, non-destructive test tool for reliability testing and failure analysis of electronic packaging. This is used most often in the inspection of defects such as delaminations, voids, or cracks through use of a SAM (Scanning Acoustic Microscope). Then, as the reliability level that is required of electronic packaging becomes higher and the thickness of package becomes thinner, the possible defect which needs to be detected becomes smaller. In the conventional SAM, however it is very difficult to detect small defects less than m µ 1 . 0 , such as micro-delaminations. In order to solve such a problem, this paper proposes a nonlinear ultrasonic method, where the nonlinearity caused by the effect of crack-face interactions is considered. The basic concept of this method involves harmonic frequencies that are generated in the transmitted ultrasonic wave due to the partial contact at the interface of micro-delamination. As an evaluation index, the nonlinear parameter dependent on the amplitude of the second order harmonic frequency component is obtained by spectral analysis of the transmitted signal. Experimental results show that the nonlinear parameter has good correlation with the micro-gap and the proposed method can detect the micro-delamination even less than nm 1 .


In order to design effective disaster emergency management systems, a number of factors, including not only accident/disaster phenomena but also human behaviours such as coordination and communication between different organisations, should be considered in an integrated and comprehensive manner. In this paper, we propose the basic design of MASTERD: a Multi-Agent Simulation sysTem of Emergency Response in Disasters. The chief characteristics of MASTERD are (1) its system extensibility, allowing for easy integration of various simulations, and (2) its behavioural simulation of many different individuals and organisations in emergency response. We present the development of a prototype of MASTERD for nuclear disasters and discuss possible applications of MASTERD for various social safety and security issues.


FABRICATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF SUPERCONDUCTOR YBCO JOSEPHSON JUNCTIONS A well-controlled, high-yield Josephson junction production process forms the basis of superconducting electronic device and circuit technology. In order to use the Josephson junctions effectively and fabricate them reproducibly, their structural and electrical characterization should be performed. This study concentrates on the fabrication and characterization of high temperature bicrystal grain boundary Josephson junctions fabricated onto 24-dand 30degree SrTiO3 bicrystal substrates using high quality YBa2Cu3O7-δ (YBCO) thin-films. 200 nm thick YBCO thin films were deposited using a dc Inverted Cylindrical Magnetron Sputtering technique by investigating the thin film deposition conditions in order to obtain device quality films. The superconducting properties of the thin films were determined by electrical characterizations, consisting of resistance versus temperature and magnetic susceptibility versus temperature measurements. Structural properties were analyzed by Atomic Force Microscope, Scanning Electron Microscope and X-Ray Diffraction. Prepared thin film samples were patterned as bicrystal grain boundary Josephson junctions by standard photolithography and chemical etching processes. The currentvoltage characteristics of the Josephson junctions were performed at 77 K under zero and non-zero applied field in magnetically shielded environment. The critical current values (Ic), normal resistance (Rn) and IcRn product of the output signals were determined, and the values were discussed as function of the film growth conditions. The optimization of the Josephson junctions was performed in order to improve both the signal performance and the stability of our devices against thermal cycling.


The 20th century witnessed tremendous breakthroughs in medical research by virtue of a plethora of discoveries and advances in fundamental biology and disease management. The 21st century is taking medicine to unprecedented heights. Clinical research sponsored by a flourishing industry shaped our understanding of modern medicine. However, industry funded clinical research cannot answer all medical questions. In this review, we look at the growing impetus on investigator initiated studies, their impact on deeper understanding of real world needs, involvement of pharmaceutical, devices and imaging industry in supporting investigator or institution initiated research and instances of such successful endeavours that has changed the way medicine is practised. We also delve into the changing landscape of clinical research ecosystem in the light of recent advances in technologies like genomics, biologics, companion diagnostics and precision medicine system and the urgent need of creating and supporting a culture of research among individual clinicians, institutions, public and Government bodies in alleviating global disease burden. We recommend structural and functional models of association between the industry and investigator-initiated research in order to overcome the traditional challenges of such research and pave the way for a fruitful and collaborative approach towards inclusive and comprehensive patient centric disease management.


This study made a fundamental consent: that all learning and teaching styles are key factors in setting up programs that will advance the quality of the learning process. In this context, the aim of this study was to establish the basic principles, concepts, criteria and specifications of learning quality based on Kolb's model of learning styles, which , it has been assumed, not only has a diagnostic application, but it also has a practical utility. The proposed approach to the improvement of the quality of the learning process, having considered all learning styles of those educated (i.e. all learners), sought to compile an individualized learning method through a clear acknowledgment of the goals and the results of learning in the frame of a holistic approach; this approach combines the goals, the context, the methodology, the evaluation and the progress of those educated.


As many as 98,000 people die each year as a result of medical error. According to law and economics scholars, the solution to this problem is straightforward: When calibrated correctly, medical malpractice liability will force healthcare providers to internalize the cost of their negligence, incentivizing improvements to patient safety that will reduce medical error. Debate has raged for decades over the coherence of deterrence theory, but little attention has been paid to the erosion of one of its bedrock assumptions: that the procedural mechanism through which claims are to be resolved is litigation. Arbitration has become pervasive in the healthcare context, but its effects on medical malpractice liability's ability to deter medical error have been largely overlooked by public health and legal scholars. This Note argues that the adoption of arbitration will not, as law and economics scholars assume, improve the medical malpractice regime's ability to deter error. In addition to drawing on existing law and economics and public health scholarship to advance this descriptive claim, this Note studies the experience of Kaiser Permanente, the nation's largest integrated healthcare consortium, in using arbitration to resolve medical malpractice disputes with its seven million members in California.


In the transatlantic world of the late eighteenth century, easterly winds blew radical thought to America. Thomas Paine had already arrived on these shores in 1774 and made his mark as a radical pamphleteer during the Revolution. In his wake followed more than 200 other radical exiles English Dissenters, Whigs, and Painites; Scottish "lads o'parts"; and Irish patriots who became influential newspaper writers and editors and helped change the nature of political discourse in a young nation. Michael Durey has written the first full-scale analysis of these radicals, evaluating the long-term influence their ideas have had on American political thought. "Transatlantic Radicals" uncovers the roots of their radicalism in the Old World and tells the story of how these men came to be exiled, how they emigrated, and how they participated in the politics of their adopted country. Nearly all of these radicals looked to Paine as their spiritual leader and to Thomas Jefferson as their political champion. They held egalitarian, anti-federalist values and promoted an extreme form of participatory democracy that found a niche in the radical wing of Jefferson's Republican Party. Their divided views on slavery, however, reveal that democratic republicanism was unable to cope with the realities of that institution. As political activists during the 1790s, they proved crucial to Jefferson's 1800 presidential victory; then, after his views moderated and their influence waned, many repatriated, others drifted into anonymity, and a few managed to find success in the New World. Although many of these men are known to us through other histories, their influence as a group has never before been so closely examined. Durey persuasively demonstrates that the intellectual ferment in Britain did indeed have tremendous influence on American politics. His account of that influence sheds considerable light on transatlantic political history and differences in religious, political, and economic freedoms. Skillfully balancing a large cast of characters, "Transatlantic Radicals" depicts the diversity of their experiences and shows how crucial these reluctant emigres were to shaping our republic in its formative years."


A major element in the religious practice of believers in prophetic Christianity is the sharing of religious testimonies. Focusing on prophetic ministries in Botswana, this paper examines the nature and function of religious testimonies and the dynamics of their digitisation and online circulation. It explores the ways in which religious testimonies mediate or extend the reach of prophetic ministries. Using data collected through fieldwork observation, in-depth interviews and digital ethnography, I argue that the sharing of testimony within Pentecostal Christian circles can be described as a system of institutional performance that aims to direct the spiritual development of believers, reinforce the central place and authority of a prophet and advance the institutional identity of a prophetic ministry.


This thesis is a study of the relationship between deontological liberal principles and consequentialism in legal rhetoric. The argument developed is that these supposedly separate bases for judgment are actually mutually defining in cases involving an apparent ethical dilemma. The content of a principle cannot be known a priori, since its interpretation gains its persuasive force from a calculation of the benefit and detriment of a potential decision. We argue that, in order to prevent the deontological authority of liberal principles from being undermined by such a mixing, consequentialist calculations are themselves made by appealing to an interpretation of principled arguments. The effect of this symbiosis of principle and consequential ism is that ethical problems are resolved in legal rhetoric by assigning conflicting parties a higher or lower status within a moral hierarchy that prioritises those that assimilate more closely to the liberal ideal of the reasonable, responsible individual. This assignation itself requires the weighing up the possible consequences of this or that interpretation of the relevant Principles and the 'facts' of the parties' moral status. The characterisation of judicial rhetoric as a narrative of what we might call moral consequential ism leads on to a deconstructive turn in the second half of the thesis. We seek to show that the relationship between principle and consequence is not simply one of binary opposition, but rather of undecidability. The implications of such a destabilisation of the line between apparently distinct concepts for political and ethical theory is recognised and addressed in the final chapters. We consider how deconstruction both poses dangers and also creates new possibilities for critique. The final move of the thesis is to consider the ethical implications of our critique of law's moral hierarchy. We argue that emphasising the undecidability of law's moral hierarchies allows for new perspectives on ethical problems.


In this chapter we investigate the role of family-specific factors in facilitating or constraining business exit in family firms. Family business literature seems to have an implicit bias toward continuity and persistence in the founder's business. This is explained by heavy emotional involvement and development of path-dependent core competences over generations. However, several long-lived family firms were able to successfully exit the founder's business. Exit allowed them to free significant strategic resources, which were later reinvested in exploiting novel entrepreneurial opportunities. Our aim is to investigate the process of exit from the founder's business in family firms, to explain both triggers and obstacles to decommitment and de-escalation. We address this issue through the study of the Italian Falck Group's exit from the steel industry in the 1990s, followed by successful startup of a renewable energy business. By carefully triangulating different data sources and different voices within and outside the controlling family, we develop a framework describing family-specific facilitators and inhibitors of business exit, and subsequent startup of a new business. Three types of family-specific factors emerge as relevant in shaping a family firm's likelihood and speed of exit from a failing business: family-related psychological triggers and obstacles to business exit; family-specific components of the structural de-escalation context; family responses to ensuing de-escalation and exit needs. The emerging framework offers a more nuanced interpretation of decommitment activities in family firms, pointing to the differential role family-specific factors may play as facilitators or inhibitors of business exit. We also suggest how these family-specific results may contribute to a deeper understanding of exit in nonfamily firms. Our results also have practical implications for family business entrepreneurial management. Actively managing the different determinants of exit choices that emerged from our study will set the stage for de-escalation from a failing course of action – a dynamic capability all family firms should learn and practice if they intend to transfer their entrepreneurial orientation to next generations.


The color of prints is mainly determined by the light absorption of the inks deposited on top of paper. In order to predict the reflectance spectrum of prints, we use a spectral prediction model in which each ink is characterized by its spectral transmittance. In the present paper, we consider two classical reflectance prediction models: the Clapper-Yule model and the Williams-Clapper model. They rely on a same description of multiple reflection-transmission of light, but use a different description of the attenuation of light by the inks. In the Clapper-Yule model (non-orientational ink attenuation), the orientation of light traversing the ink is not taken into account. In the Williams-Clapper model, it is taken into account (orientational ink attenuation). In order to determine experimentally which of these two models is the more suitable for a given type of print, we propose a method using the reflectance and the transmittance of prints. We introduce a bimodal model, enabling spectral reflectance and transmittance predictions. Depending whether the direction of light into the ink is taken into account, we obtain a non-orientational bimodal model or an orientational bimodal model. Using these two models, we deduce the ink transmittance spectrum from various reflectance and transmittance measurements performed on a same print, and compare the different deduced spectra. The model which is the most adapted to the considered print is the one where the deduced spectra best match each other.


Among foragers, men's foods are often shared widely outside the household, undercutting variation in the benefit their wives and children receive. This means polygyny may not be due to variation in household provisioning. Some have even suggested that bonds in general, whether polygynous or monogamous, may have less to do with male provisioning than male-male contest competition. However, an analysis of foragers in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample reveals that male provisioning does affect the mating system. Societies with higher male contribution to subsistence are more monogamous. The author argues that women value male provisioning less where males bring in less food, which results in greater polygyny. Where it is difficult for women to acquire food, they value male provisioning more, forcing males to compete via food acquisition. Food sharing prevents the polygyny threshold from being reached but does not completely erase the benefit of pair bonding with a good forager.


ABSTRACT Child abuse is addressed through a complicated design of federal, state, and local funds. Congress approved a new round of waivers permitting states to flexibly use funds, otherwise limited to foster care reimbursement, for other child welfare needs. Conducted in Ohio, this longitudinal study examined flexible funds from child welfare directors' perspectives, including key informant interviews, a survey, and semi-structured interviews. Directors noted that improved discretion results in better child health outcomes and better community partnerships; community partnerships are essential to promoting the health and safety of vulnerable children; and federal child welfare success measures do not reflect directors' perceptions of success.


This paper discusses a model corporate tax system based on the application of the residence principle. This tax system, while preserving national sovereignties, minimizes the distortions from international capital mobility. The paper is motivated by an analysis of European capital income tax systems, and of the distortions they might give rise to as obstacles to international capital flows diminish. The alternative system we analyze has two main properties: it exploits the territoriality of law enforcement, and allows countries to set the corporate tax rate - and the extent of double taxation of corporate income - independently from their partners. The paper concludes with some suggestive evidence of the potential revenue effects among European countries of this tax system.


Amino acids are organic compounds that can be found all around us in the world in the building blocks of proteins and peptides. One class of compounds which can be synthesized from amino acids are amino alcohols, another critical compound in society. Amino alcohols are key components in agricultural products and pharmaceutical products. Therefore, developing an efficient and cost-effective method for performing this transformation is an important area of research. The currently used industrial process is to reduce petroleum-derived amino acids with NaBH4. However, this process is timeconsuming and costly because of the need for an intermediate stage esters and further processing afterwards to produce the amino alcohols. A proposed alternative to NaBH4 is hydrogenation using ruthenium supported on carbon catalyst in the presence of phosphoric acid. The advantage of this reaction over the currently used industrial process is that Ru-catalyzed hydrogenation has been shown to have high selectivity to amino alcohols and can maintain the optical purity, a critical component in the use of amino alcohols in pharmaceuticals. Unfortunately, this process is not currently cost-effective or reproducible on an industrial scale because of the expense of the catalyst and the fact that the acid co-catalyst cannot be recycled, adding to the cost. Our proposed solution was to impregnate the catalyst with a polymer that can created acidic active sites within the catalyst pores, eliminating the need for the acid. By impregnating 2.9 wt% polyacrylate onto a Ru supported by alumina catalyst, we were successful in converting 51.8% of our alanine to alaninol without the addition of any acid co-catalyst. The catalyst can then be filtered out and reused, adding a major economic and environmental advantage for hydrogenation versus the current industrial process.