The research reported in this thesis had two aims. To investigate how the variability and
complexity of the mobile context of use should be addressed when capturing user needs
for mobile products and to explore the role of indirect methods of data capture as tools
for eliciting user needs in a form appropriate for informing the scenario based design of
mobile products during the. earliest stages of product development.
This research presents a novel scenario-based approach to eliciting and representing user
needs in a form suitable for informing the earliest exploratory stages of mobile product
design. Within this approach scenarios are used to provide snapshots of actual or
envisaged product use that can be used to find a starting point for design when there is no
clearly defined focus for innovation. Scenarios are organized into sets using scenario
tables to structure consideration of key variables within the mobile context of use. These
key variables are identified as: mobility, emotion, social relationship and communication
purpose.
Three user studies were conducted using UK undergraduate students as the study
population. Study One explored use of schematic representations ('maps') of each
participant's social communications and mobility as tools for eliciting user needs, both in
relation to existing mobile product use and in relation to projected use of future mobile
product concepts. Study Two used a diary study method to explore existing mobile
communications use. Ways of structuring consideration of the mobile context of use were
explored and the effectiveness of the diary as a tool for eliciting user needs and for
scenario generation was assessed. Study Three extended the diary study approach to
include consideration ofthe emotional context of product use and to include pictorial
feedback of diary entries to study participants. These personal representations of product
use were used to further explore user needs and to prompt participants to generate
narratives describing motivations for product use suitable for presentation in scenario
form.


PURPOSE
Focal radiosurgery is a common treatment modality for trigeminal neuralgia (TN), a neuropathic facial pain condition. Assessment of treatment effectiveness is primarily clinical, given the paucity of investigational tools to assess trigeminal nerve changes. The efficiency of radiosurgery is related to its highly precise targeting. We assessed clinically the targeting accuracy of radiosurgery with Gamma knife. We hypothesized that trigeminal tractography provides more information than 2D-MR imaging, allowing detection of unique, focal changes in the target area after radiosurgery.

METHODS
Sixteen TN patients (2 females, 4 male, average age 65.3 years) treated with Gamma Knife radiosurgery, 40 Gy/50% isodose line underwent 1.5Tesla MR trigeminal nerve . Target accuracy was assessed from deviation of the coordinates of the target compared with the center of enhancement on post MRI. Radiation dose delivered at the borders of contrast enhancement was evaluated RESULTS: The median deviation of the coordinates between the intended target and the center of contrast enhancement was within 1mm. The radiation doses fitting within the borders of the contrast enhancement the target ranged from 37.5 to 40 Gy. Trigeminal tractography accurately detected the radiosurgical target. Radiosurgery resulted in 47% drop in FA values at the target with no significant change in FA outside the target, suggesting that radiosurgery primarily affects myelin. Tractography was more sensitive, since FA changes were detected regardless of trigeminal nerve enhancement CONCLUSION: The median deviation found in clinical assessment of gamma knife treatment for TN Is low and compatible with its high rate of efficiency. DTI parameters accurately detect the effects of focal radiosurgery on the trigeminal nerve, serving as an in vivo imaging tool to study TN. This study is a proof of principle for further assessment of DTI parameters to understand the pathophysiology of TN and treatment effects.


The aim of the present poster board proposal is to introduce new pathways in pedagogy and language in higher education concerning the teaching of Swedish as a foreign language. Five universities in the Baltic-Scandinavian region initiated a project called "One step toward Sweden", running from 2013 to 2016, financed by the Nordic Council. The five universities are the University of Daugavpils in Latvia, University of Klaipeda in Lithuania, University of Tallinn in Estonia, Turku University of Applied Science in Finland and University of Gavle in Sweden. The primary purpose of the project is to develop educational materials for teaching the Swedish language, culture, literature and social life. The material will be developed specifically for young people in the Baltic region among whom the interest for the Swedish language and culture is increasing. Ten chapters will be outlined, centered around themes which are easily accessible for young people, relating to real life situations and containing natural dialogue. All chapters will be associated with a sound file containing natural speech of different speech genres (formal and informal for example). The teaching material will primarily be made accessible digitally, and will be made available free of charge. A second purpose of the project is to create an innovative network for cooperation within the field of teaching Swedish as a foreign language between the teachers and researchers of the universities participating in the project. The project will stimulate student and teacher mobility and enable the implementation of technology in foreign language teaching.


This study demonstrates the effect of correlation between volatility and statistical properties of realized volatility measured using the daily high-frequency exchange rate data of four representative currencies of the US dollar (Japanese yen, British pound, European euro, Canadian dollar) Respectively. The validity of the distributional and dynamic attributes of realized volatility is consistent with the results of previous studies. In the case of the Japanese yen, however, the correlation between the volatility and the correlation was not observed. This is due to the negative result of the exchange rate and the negative exchange rate during the Japanese government's continuous intervention in the foreign exchange market. These results show that the relationship between volatility and correlation (+) is not a general phenomenon in the presence of foreign exchange market intervention, and that foreign exchange market intervention can distort market efficiency. The results of this study indicate that multivariate measures of real volatility using day - to - day high frequency data can be a useful tool for identifying external interventions to the foreign exchange market.
This paper empirically examines the statistical properties of realized volatility and the relationship between volatility and correlation measurements realized by using intraday high-frequency foreign exchange (FX) rates. Results regarding the distributional and dynamic properties of the volatility are in agreement with the findings of previous studies. However, the positive correlation is present in previous studies. On trading days with low volatility in the FX market, the correlation coefficients between JPY and other currencies have positive values, while the correlation coefficients on trading days with high volatility show negative values. These results are due to the Japanese government's intervention in the FX market, especially during trading days with high volatility. In this regard, our results suggest that the positive relationship between volatility and correlations is not a general phenomenon in the case of government intervention and government intervention. In addition, we show that the multivariate measurement of volatility based on intraday high-frequency data is a useful tool for determining the occurrence of external intervention in the FX market.


Wykoff and colleagues determined whether 2.0 mg intravitreal aflibercept as therapy for exudative age-related macular degeneration could maintain or even improve upon the visual acuity and anatomic gains of the Super-dose Anti-VEGF (SAVE) Trial in patients who had received 2.0 mg intravitreal ranibizumab for recalcitrant exudative age-related macular degeneration. The study included 46 patients with a mean of 42 prior intravitreal treatments. At 6 months after baseline, BCVA had not changed significantly (P=0.71), while central subfield thickness had improved significantly. At 6 months after baseline, ten of 45 (22%) patients had no retinal fluid and no patient lost >15 letters. The authors conclude that aflibercept 2.0 mg treatment maintained the improvements in visual acuity previously achieved with high-dose 2.0-mg ranibizumab injections in patients with recalcitrant wet age-related macular degeneration. In a retrospective clinical-histopathological case series study, Rootman and colleagues examined the clinical, imaging, histologic and flow dynamic characteristics of orbital cavernous haemangioma. They found and concluded that cavernous haemangioma demonstrate clinical features and growth characteristics of a benign mass. Dynamic imaging highlights their slow flow vascular nature, while histology demonstrates hypercellularity and stromal changes which may be due to thrombosis and recanalisation in organised lesions. Iverson and colleagues examined the frequency of abnormal retinal nerve fibre layer thickness and ganglion cell complex measurements among healthy and glaucoma suspect and preperimetric glaucoma eyes in a prospective longitudinal study. Using spectral-domain optical coherence tomography, retinal nerve fibre layer thickness and ganglion cell complex parameters were measured annually. The authors found that during serial follow-up, 100% and 91% of normal eyes had all measured parameters within the normal limits indicating a high specificity of the method. About one third of the glaucoma suspect or glaucoma preperimetric eyes showed measurements out of the normal range. A high percentage of them, however, were not replicated on subsequent tests. The authors concluded that confirmation of suspected measurements of the retinal nerve fibre layer and ganglion cell layer complex are recommended to differentiate reproducible loss from long-term variability. The use of intraoperative online optical coherence tomography for improving deep anterior lamellar Keratoplasty (DALK) surgery was described by Steven et al. The retrospective case series included 6 patients with keratokonus, corneal dystrophy or herpetic stromal scars. The authors found that intraoperative online optical coherence tomography enabled real-time visualisation of all surgical steps of the DALK procedure, including the placement of an air bubble above Descemet's membrane and the presence of bare Descemet's membrane and potential interface fluid. The authors concluded that intraoperative online optical coherence tomography is helpful for the procedure. Eriksson and colleagues validated the newly developed WINROP (weight (W), insulin-like growth factor 1 (I), neonatal (N), retinopathy of prematurity (ROP)) algorithm aimed at detecting retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) requiring treatment at an early stage. The study included 104 children with a mean gestational age at birth of 28.7 weeks (range, 23.6–32.1 weeks) and a mean birth weight of 1208 g (range, 477–2340 g). Weekly weight measurements were used in WINROP to calculate the risk of developing ROP. Out of the whole study population, 16 (15%) children developed mild ROP (stage 1 or 2), 5 (5%) children severe ROP, and 2 (2%) were treated for ROP. The authors found that WINROP identified all infants at risk for developing stage 3 ROP (100% sensitivity), while the specificity was 59%. Chiam et al examined the reduction of choroidal melanoma thickness at 6 months after ruthenium 106-brachytherapy in dependence of the chromosome 3 status. The latter generally correlates strongly with metastatic death. The diagnosis was substantiated by transscleral fine needle aspiration biopsy or by transretinal biopsy with a 25-gauge vitreous cutter. The chromosome 3 status was determined by fluorescence in situ hybridisation from 2002 until 2006, and by either multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification and/or microsatellite analysis after this period until the end of the study. The study included 149 patients and the median follow-up duration medians were 6.3 months for disomy 3 and 6.4 months for monosomy 3 tumours. The rates of thickness reduction (6.7% and 7.0% per month, respectively) did not significantly correlate with chromosome 3 loss. It suggested that tumour thickness reduction at 6 months after treatment was unlikely to predict survival.


Most crop simulation models that incorporate environmental conditions estimate leaf area development. The grain sorghum growth simulation model, SORKAM, calculates individual leaf area based on leaf number and maturity class. The objective of this study was to generalize present leaf growth routines in SORKAM to be independent of maturity since there are no generally accepted maturing classes. Modified relationships between leaf number and leaf growth parameters were developed from existing studies and were tested against independent detailed leaf growth data sets. The revised relationships improved the r2 between simulated and actual individual leaf areas from 0.80 to 0.88, reduced the bias from 32 cm2 to 9 cm2, and the RMSE from 80 cm2 to 52 cm2. With the improved simulation, estimated leaf area index through the season was also improved from the original SORKAM estimate (RMSE decreased from 0.77 to 0.63; RMSE: root mean square error). Although simulation of individual leaf areas was improved, total leaf area produced over the season was not. grain sorghum / leaf area / modeling


The deteriorated security situation in Europe has contributed to a renewed focus on Nordic defence cooperation. Recent political statements indicate an increased interest among the Nordic states to strengthen regional security cooperation in times of peace, crisis and conflict. Nonetheless, the main obstacles preventing close integration remain in place, in particular the different strategic orientations when it comes to NATO and EU-membership among the Nordics. While this is well known among scholars, less emphasis has been on the lower-level challenges Nordic defence cooperation initiatives has met. Bureaucratic mismatches and diverging industrial interests can have an important negative impact on politically endorsed projects. Governance entrepreneurs can not only undermine a specific project, but may also contribute negatively to the larger political climate between states. This article will illustrate the argument with several cases of botched Swedish-Norwegian cooperation, with particular emphasis on the Archer artillery project. This was a politically prestigious joint procurement project which failed, with significant souring of political relations as a result.


A definitive measure for assessing the energy contribution of anaerobic pathways during exhaustive exercise remains inconclusive. The accumulated oxygen deficit (AOD) has been used in several studies to estimate energy contribution. The underlying assumptions of the AOD measure have been criticized for underestimating the true contribution of anaerobic metabolism in high intensity exercise. Indeed, the AOD measure has been the subject of much controversy. Several of the physiological exercise responses of children may lead to an even greater underestimation of the anaerobic energy contribution to high intensity exercise in children than adults when AOD measures are calculated.


MR blood velocity measurements were performed by the RACE technique in a plane perpendicular to the flow of the pulmonary arteries. MR findings were correlated with those of perfusion scintigraphy, Doppler US and right heart catheter (thermodilution). The ratio of MR blood flow measurements of right and left pulmonary arteries correlated well with the results of perfusion scintigraphy (RPA to LPA) and Doppler. Poor correlation was found when comparing MR blood flow measurements with right heart catheter since absolute flow measurements can be superimposed by neighboring blood vessels in complex anatomic situations.


Analysis of dynamics of indicators of the state and the state-guaranteed debt in Ukraine in recent years is carried out and imperatives of the growth of public debt are determined. It is found out that its primary factors were the expansion of financing of the state budget for budget support of the state sector of economy, banking system, as well as the financing of the budget deficit. It is concluded that the solving of such tasks was carried out under conditions of aggravation of financial risks, namely: revenue mobilization, attraction of an additional resource for the purpose of financing the budget deficit and deficit-debt adjustment, under-fulfilment of privatization plans, admission of high inflation, as well as depreciation of the national currency. It is noted that the growth of public debt was due to an increase in the state borrowings, which were used to repay obligations, cover the costs of conducting the active operations and shift part of the borrowings of corporations and institutions to the state budget. The conduct of active operations was aimed at providing the financial support to the state banks and state institutions, DGF and capitalization of some private banks. Changes in the volume of the state borrowings are disclosed in terms of the ratio of their internal and external components. The reasons and consequences of growth of costs of deficit-debt adjustment (active operations within the framework of the state budget) are determined. Under conditions of non-fulfillment of revenue plans from privatization of the state property, such a policy will lead to aggravation of fiscal risks (retention of high indicators of the state borrowings and debt financing at the expense of the NBU and the state banks). The policy of state borrowings (in terms of internal and external components) turned out to be inconsistent: sharp changes were allowed in attracting the resource from internal and external sources, and the implementation of debt policy was marked by significant peak load on the state budget as well as their high profitability both in domestic and foreign markets. The volume of loan servicing continued to grow, which became a factor of increasing budget expenditures. Financing of borrowings using the resources of the NBU and the state-owned banks were reaching high rates. The author proposes the directions of fiscal policy aimed at restraining and restricting the state and the state-guaranteed debt by introducing changes to fiscal policy in Ukraine.


The six main-stem reservoirs of the Missouri river system are operated by the Corps of Engineers for flood control, navigation, irrigation, power, water supply, water quality control, recreation, and fish and wildlife protection. Changes in supplies and changes in demands motivated a review of system operation policy. To provide information for decision making in this review, a prescriptive model was developed. Goals of and constraints on system operation are represented for this model with cost-based and non-cost-based penalty functions. Prior to application as a decision-making tool in the review, the model was validated subjectively by comparing prescribed operation with operation following current rules for a historical period. In application, the model helps Corps staff understand the consequences of proposed courses of action. It demonstrates clearly the penalty for constraints on operation. It demonstrates what will happen if a particular policy is adopted, and it identifies the policy preferred, given a set of priorities for operation.


Economic theory suggests that it is optimal for governments to use precautionary saving as a countercyclical tool. However, the availability of surplus funds often triggers political pressure for tax cuts and spending increases. Mechanisms for alleviating that pressure include limiting the transparency of slack resources and limiting politicians' discretion to use slack resources for purposes other than stabilization. This article investigates the extent to which these two mechanisms are substitutes. In particular, the authors examine whether the widespread adoption of budget stabilization funds (BSFs) in the U.S. states over the past several decades has been accompanied by a decline in conservative revenue forecast bias. Using panel data from 47 states over a 22-year period, they find that the adoption of a BSF reduces revenue underestimation by approximately two-thirds; however, the size of the effect depends in part on how much a state saves in the BSF and the rules governing BSF deposits and withdrawals. The results suggest that BSFs have the unintended effect of increasing fiscal transparency.


Heart dysfunction, represented by conditions such as myocarditis and arrhythmia, has been reported in COVID-19 patients. Therapeutic strategies focused on the cardiovascular system, however, remain scarce. The Sigma-1 receptor (S1R) has been recently proposed as a therapeutic target because its inhibition reduces SARS-CoV-2 replication. To investigate the role of S1R in SARS-CoV-2 infection in the heart, we used human cardiomyocytes derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC-CM) as an experimental model. Here we show that the S1R antagonist NE-100 decreases SARS-CoV-2 infection and viral replication in hiPSC-CMs. Also, NE-100 reduces cytokine release and cell death associated with infection. Because S1R is involved in cardiac physiology, we investigated the effects of NE-100 in cardiomyocyte morphology and function. We show that NE-100 compromises cytoskeleton integrity and reduces beating frequency, causing contractile impairment. These results show that targeting S1R to challenge SARS-CoV-2 infection may be a useful therapeutic strategy but its detrimental effects in vivo on cardiac function should not be ignored.


Abstract Recent work suggests that multilateral security institutions, such as the UN Security Council, can influence foreign policy through public opinion. According to this view, authorization can increase public support for foreign policy, freeing domestic constraints. Governments that feel constrained by public opinion may thus alter their foreign policies to garner external authorization. These claims challenge traditional realist views about the role of international organizations in security affairs, which tend to focus on direct enforcement mechanisms and neglect indirect channels of influence. To examine these claims, this article investigates the first link in this causal chain—the effect of institutional statements on public opinion. Strategic information arguments, as opposed to arguments about the symbolic legitimacy of specific organizations or the procedural importance of consultation, posit that the effect of institutional statements on public opinion is conditional on public perceptions of member states' interests. This article tests this conditional relationship in the context of changes in presidential approval surrounding military disputes, using a measure of preference distance between the United States and veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council. Findings indicate that short-term changes in presidential approval surrounding the onset of military disputes in the United States between 1946 and 2001 have been significantly larger when accompanied by a positive resolution for a Security Council that is more distant in terms of foreign policy preferences. The article also discusses polling data during the 1990s and 2000s that support the strategic information perspective.


Origen of Alexandria was an early Christian theologian who stands out as an anomaly amongst Church Fathers. He is considered to have entertained heretical views, yet is still held in high esteem by the Church today. The church Fathers were theologians whose writings and debates helped forge an approach for articulating the doctrines of Christianity. Why should Origen stand among these esteemed figures? Why should a heretic hold such acclaimed standing in the heart of the Church?


This article addresses three problems and suggests ways to address these problems. First, Christian theology has often been supersessionist, especially in Christology and Mariology. Claims about Jesus and Mary being exceptional (in different ways) often involve forms of supersessionism. I report on two theological works that attempt to be orthodoxly Catholic and to avoid supersessionism. Second, I address the conflict between affirming the irrevocable covenant God made with Israel and the universality of salvation God wrought in Jesus. I argue herein that the key problem is logical, not theological. Hence, we should not seek to resolve this problem theoretically, but to dissolve it logically in a manner analogous to the way philosophers of religion have dissolved the logical problem of evil. Third, some have suggested that a commitment to true interreligious dialogue should weaken our commitment to our own tradition. I disagree and show that interreligious dialogue can, in practice, strengthen, not weaken, our commitments to our home tradition.


Background: Fish is one of the major components of a balanced healthy diet, and it is a good source of several beneficial compounds. Cultural and socioeconomic factors such as financial status of people, awareness about the health benefits of fish, and cost and availability of fish in the market plays an important role in fish consumption among Omani population. Methodology: This study was designed to assess the fish consumption in terms of purchase, storage, cooking methods, and consumption patterns of selected 240 convenient Omani populations. The mailed survey enabled to collect the data about the cultural, socioeconomic, health, and nutritional factors which might influence the consumption of fish in Oman. Results and Conclusion: Exploration of cultural and socioeconomic factors was done with the help of descriptive and inferential statistics. The outcome of this study might be useful in promoting fish consumption among Omani people. However, the sample size used in this study is less, and may not be the representation of Oman.


Graph neural networks (GNNs) have emerged as a powerful tool for learning software engineering tasks including code completion, bug finding, and program repair. They benefit from leveraging program structure like control flow graphs, but they are not well-suited to tasks like program execution that require far more sequential reasoning steps than number of GNN propagation steps. Recurrent neural networks (RNNs), on the other hand, are well-suited to long sequential chains of reasoning, but they do not naturally incorporate program structure and generally perform worse on the above tasks. Our aim is to achieve the best of both worlds, and we do so by introducing a novel GNN architecture, the Instruction Pointer Attention Graph Neural Networks (IPA-GNN), which achieves improved systematic generalization on the task of learning to execute programs using control flow graphs. The model arises by considering RNNs operating on program traces with branch decisions as latent variables. The IPA-GNN can be seen either as a continuous relaxation of the RNN model or as a GNN variant more tailored to execution. To test the models, we propose evaluating systematic generalization on learning to execute using control flow graphs, which tests sequential reasoning and use of program structure. More practically, we evaluate these models on the task of learning to execute partial programs, as might arise if using the model as a heuristic function in program synthesis. Results show that the IPA-GNN outperforms a variety of RNN and GNN baselines on both tasks.


Background In elite athletics, epidemiological studies covering cross-discipline populations of athletes have reported a heavy burden of injuries related to overuse. Many athletes continue to expose themselves to extensive training and competition loads while suffering from partial time loss injuries (forcing them to change their practice schedules). Objective To examine risk indicators associated with sustaining a secondary (subsequent) injury while recovering from a primary (index) injury. Design Prospective epidemiological study using web-based data collection. Setting Swedish elite youth (U17) and adult athletics athletes. Data were collected between March 2009 and March 2010. Participants 292 youth and adult athletes (91%) responded regularly to web-based questionnaires from an eligible study population of 321 athletes. Risk factor assessment Athlete's sex, age, event group and training load. Main outcome measures Secondary new injury during recovery from a primary (index) injury. Results A total of 122 (42 %) of the athletes reported more than one injury during the study period. Multiple Cox proportional hazards regression analyses revealed risk differences with regard to event group (P=.006) and training load (P=.047) for athletes who sustained a secondary new injury during recovery from a first injury; athletes in the combined events group (hazard ratio (HR) 4.14; 95% CI 1.82–9.40) had almost a fourfold increased risk compared to jumpers and throwers and athletes in the third TLRI quartile (HR=2.02; 95% CI 1.29–3.63) a twofold risk for sustaining a secondary injury compared with their peers. Conclusions The risk for sustaining a new secondary injury while recovering from a primary injury is high among athletics athletes. Competing in combined events and a high score in the training load index (combining hours and intensity) are associated with particularly increased risk. Further studies measuring training content during the rehabilitation period and development of protocols for safe return to athletics are warranted.


Contents: Preface. Contributors. Part I: Perception. Vision. S.S. Valenti, L. Sconzo, A. Costall, Perception Of Lifted Weight In Photographs and Stick-Figure Displays. R. Hoeger, Stimulus Complexity Determined By Fractal Geometry. G.M. Redding, A.J. Kramen, J.L. Hankins, The Muller-Lyer Illusion As a Consequency of Picture Perception. J.M. Kennedy, C.D. Green, Inference and Pattern in Perception Theory. T.R. Alley, A.M. Olson, "Body-Image" Distortion and Accurancy of Size Perception for Inanimate Objects. I. Kumazawa, J.M. Kennedy, K. Suzuki, Blur Selectively Affects the Bases for Alignment: Position and Orientation. C.H. Liu, A. Chaudhuri, Learning Faces Through Bi-Quantised Pictures. T.R. Alley, Can Temporal Direction Affect Memory for Pictures of Events? S.H. Creem, M. Wraga, D.R. Proffitt, The Relevance of Imagined Self-Rotations. B. DeBruyn, M.F. Bardshaw, Predicting Where and When Hidden Moving Objects Reappear. M.M. Muchisky, Trajectory Forms as Visual Information in Bounce Events. S. Runeson, P. Juslin, H. Olsson, Evidence for the Directness of Advanced Information Pickup. S.B. Flynn, H.F. Russell, D.M. Deron, Magnitude Production of Relative Mass: A Preliminary Study. C.M. Burns, Measuring Visible Information In Mediated Environments. F.T.J.M. Zaal, R.C. Schmidt, Visual Perception of Relative Phase and Phase Variability. G. Huper-Graff, J. Meyer, Judging Coordinatedness Of Stimuli. L. Li, W.H. Warren, Heading Perception During Combined Observer Translation and Rotation. B.R. Fajen, N.G. Kim, Robustness of Heading Perception Along Circular Paths. K.L. Anderson, A.J. Peck, C. Carello, Rotational Inertia Constrains Perception of Object Length by Sound. K. Ito, Auditory Interceptive Timing and Familiarity With Acoustic Environment. M.K. Russell, Acoustic Perception of Aperture Passability. M.K. Russell, Acoustic Perception of Sound Source Occlusion. L. Brancazio, C.T. Best, C.A Fowler, Constraints on a Nonspeech Effect. C. Dent-Read, Metaphor in the Surround: Adult Metaphoric Utterances and the Emergence of Metaphor. J. Pittenger, J. Jordan, A. Belden, P. Goodspeed, F. Brown, Auditory and Haptic Information Support Perception of Size. S.C. Pont, A.M.L. Kappers, J.J. Koenderink, Local Attitudes are the Effective Stimuli for Haptic Curvature Discrimination. I.M.L.C. Vogels, A.M.L. Kappers, J.J. Koenderink, Influence of Orientation on the Haptic After-Effect of Cylindrical Survaces. B. Hughes, The Perceptual Recovery of Texture Gradients By Active Touch. E.L. Amazeen, Effects of Volume On Perceived Heaviness. G. Mirabella, Haptic Perception of Block Letters in the Horizontal Plane. Part II: Perception-Action Coupling. T.A Stoffregen, K. Gorday, Y. Sheng, S.B. Flynn, Kinematic Specification of Affordances. G. Pepping, F. Li, Perceiving Action Boundaries in the Volleyball Block. K.M. Gorday, Perceiving Action Capabilities of Others: Age Effects. J.R. Pijpers, F.C. Bakker, F. Holsheimer, Fatigue and Reachability. D. Heffernan, J.A. Thomson, Perceiving What is Reachable During Rapid Growth in Adolescence. A. Szokolszky, Using an Object as if it Were Another. The Perception and Use of Affordances in Pretend Object Play. P. Zukow-Goldring, Words Are Not Enough: How Educating Effectivites and Affordances Fosters the Early Lexicon. J.C. Rutkowska, E. Baines, Perceiving, Discovering and Constructing Affordances. S.S. Valenti, K. Wagner, M. Sobel, Possible Informational Bases For the Perception of Rapport. A. Yonas, R. Ross, M. Erdahl.The Functional Division of Visual Information Under Induced Motion. A. Blumental, A. Rouse, K.Grandt, L. Mark, Preferred Citical Boundaries for Reaching in the Vertical Plane. C.C. Pagano, A Haptic Perturbation To Visually-Guided Reaching. J.K. Graham, M.F. Bradshaw, A.M. Davis, The Effect of Temporal Delay on Pointing Accuracy in Adults and Children. P. Magne, Y. Coello, The Influence of Visual Context on Movement Accuracy is Dependent on Its Location in the Environment. I. Flascher, F. Zaal, G. Bingham, Measuring Shape and Egocentric Distance Perception Through Reaching. D.L. Gardner, J. Paasche, H. Edkins, T. Hirons, L.S. Mark, M.J. Dainoff, Task Constraints on the Preferred Critical Boundary for Visually-Guided Reaching. E.A. Wickelgren, D.S. McConnell, G.P. Bingham, Monocular Distance Perception via Forward Versus Lateral Head Movements. J. van der Kamp, T. Planinsek, G. Savelsbergh, Timing of Interceptive Action in Children. W.H. Warren, B.A. Kay, The Focus of Expansion is Used To Control Walking. A.P. Duchon, W.H. Warren, An Ecological Approach to Mobile Robotics. C.S. Stergiou, K.E. Adolph, M.W. Alibali, A.M. Avolio, C. Cenedella, Social Expressions in Infant Locomotion: Vocalizations and Gestures on Slopes. M. Eppler, T. Satterwhite, J. Wendt, K. Bruce, Infants' Responses to a Visual Cliff and Other Ground Surfaces. J. Wendt, M.Eppler, K. Bruce, Infants' Ability to Detour Around Apertures and Obstacles. R.P. Grutzmacher, J.T. Andre, D.A. Owens, Gaze Inclination: A Source of Oculomotor Information for Distance Perception. M.A. Schmuckler, H.Y. Tsang, Visual-Movement Interaction in Infant Search. J.A. Stevens, Processing Specificity in Visual and Motor Imagery. M. Butwill, Is Haptic Space Isotropic? K.G. Donahue, C.C. Pagano, Perceiving Lengths of Roads Wielded in Different Mediums. M.M. Burke, E.L. Amazeen, Object Visibility and the Inertia Tensor as Factors in the Size-Weight Illusion. A. Post, P.J. Beek, Measuring Entropy in Cascade Juggling. L.J. Smart, R.J. Pagulayan, Motion Sickness Without Imposed Motion. Part III: Action. J.F. Stins, C.F. Michaels, Intention Determines Oscillatory Tracking Performance. C.E. Peper, P.J. Beek, The Role of Amplitude in Frequency-Induced Transitions in Rhythmic Tracking. H. Park, Continuous Frequency Modulation of Symmetric and Asymmetric Coordination Dynamics. P.J. Treffner, J.A.S. Kelso, Scale-Invariant Memory During Functional Stabilization. D.R. Collins, Relative Coordination Reconsidered: A Stochastic Account. C. Button, S. Bennett, K. Davids, Comparing Discrete and Cyclical Movement Coordination of Prehension. J.J. Temprado, M. Della-Grasta, M. Farell, M. Laurent, Expert-Novice Comparison of Coordination Patterns in the Volleyball Serve. P.G. Amazeen, Learning a New Phase Relation Modifies the Intrinsic Dynamics. C.M. Craig, D.N. Lee, Control of Sucking in Term and Preterm Infants. R.C. Schnidt, K. McGregor, The Auditory Coordination of Between-Person Rhythmic Movements. F. Li, Effect of Dynamic Constraints in Interceptive Actions. P. Cesari, T. Shiratori, the Active Troque-Angle Relation During Arm Motion Shows Linearity Even with Changes in the External Load. B. Pavis, M. Broderick, K. Newell, The Adiabatic Transformation Hypothesis in a Ball-Bouncing Task. M.A. Riley, S. Mitra, Active Degrees of Freeedom of Oscillatory Hand Movements. U. Stroop, P. Fitzpatrick, Inertial Tensor Manipulations of Length Perception by Static Holding. M. Santana, Minimal Movement and Selective Perception by Dynamic Touch. B.G. Bardy, L. Marin, R.J. Botsma, The Emergence of Postural Coordination Modes. L. Marin, Biomechanics as a (Limited) Constraint on Postural Coordination. F. Fouque, B.G. Bardy, Effects of Postural Stability on Perception-Movement Coupling. T.A. Stoffregen, L.J. Smart, Postural Stabilization of Visual Fixati


The purpose of the study was to identify the challenges in setting up and operating a CRS in Kenya. The theoretical framework used was participatory communication approach. A descriptive survey research design was used where questionnaires and interviews were tools for data collection. The research site was Nairobi County where the sampled radio stations Koch FM, Ghetto FM and Pamoja FM are located. Purposive sampling technique was used to select 49 respondents for interviews, that is, the 3 station managers, 6 workers, 36 listeners, 3 engineers and 1 CCK personnel. The data was analyzed by the use of computer software called SPSS. According to the findings, some of the major challenges facing the community radio stations are lack of salary or poor remuneration, inadequate equipment, low capacity generators, insufficient working space, unprofessional productions and high staff turnover. These challenges are due to lack of finances since the CRS are not allowed to advertise to make money. The major ways to » tackle these challenges are to get funding and get other ways of raising money like promotions. Most of the challenges facing the community radio stations are financial in nature. The outcome of this study indicates that the CRS are in need of financial support. Alternative means should be found to support CRS including government funds, and permits to advertise in order to raise money for operations. The donors, sponsors and the local community should put more effort in supporting these stations.


Background : There is evidence that abnormal scapular position and movement (scapular dyskinesis) is associated with shoulder pathology. However, the clinical and laboratory assessment of scapular dyskinesis, in particular the repeatability of tests used, has not been well described.
Research question : What is the repeatability of three tests that can be used for the evaluation of scapular displacement during arm abduction?
Type of study : Repeatability study.
Methods : Ten non-injured subjects (20 shoulders) performed three arm abduction tests to 45° and 90° on two separate occasions. The three tests were (1) a previously described Lateral Scapular Slide Test (LSST) measuring medio-lateral displacement of the inferior scapular angle from the midline, (2) a novel modification of the Lateral Scapular Slide Test (MSST) measuring medio-lateral displacement of the inferior scapular angles and the superior medial border of the scapula, and (3) a novel test of Scapular Mapping (SM) using a three-dimensional (3-D) motion analysis system measuring antero-posterior displacement of the inferior and superior scapula.
Results : The repeatability (intra-class correlation coefficient : ICC) for the LSST was 0.86 at 45°, and 0.85 at 90° abduction. The ICC for the MSST (superior medial border) was 0.65 from 0-45° and 0.79 from 0-90° abduction. The ICC for the MSST (inferior angle) was 0.73 from 0-45° and 0.56 from 0-90° abduction. The ICC for SM (superior marker) was 0.90 from 0-45° and 0.91 from 0-90° abduction, and SM (inferior marker) was 0.94 from 0-45° and 0.63 from 0-90° abduction.
Conclusion : The LSST is a repeatable test for determining medio-lateral inferior scapular angle displacement (r=0.85), the MSST is repeatable for superior scapular angle medio-lateral displacement (r=0.65-0.79), and SM is highly repeatable at 45° arm abduction for measuring antero-posterior scapular displacement (r=0.90-0.94).


Among the Germanic tribes who ruled the fragments of the western Roman empire, the Ostrogoths enjoyed the greatest wealth and splendour. Conquering Italy itself from the warlord Odoacer, they inherited the buildings, traditions, and administrative apparatus of imperial rule, and revived the empire in Spain, southern Gaul and the northwest Balkans. Aspects of their history and empire examined here include their ethnic identity in Italy and relations (as Asian heretics) with the Catholic Church; the vicissitudes of sixth century Rome, the monuments of the period in Ravenna; their influence on the economy, settlements, and social structures throughout Italy; the interweaving of society and administration with their internal and external politics; and the history of their Spanish empire. There are also studies of the Goths in eastern Europe before the emergence of the Ostrogoths, and under Hunnic rule. The whole significantly advances an understanding of how medieval Europe evolved from the combination of Roman civilisation with Germanic outsiders. The contributors include: S. Barnish, G.P. Broglio, T.S. Brown, P.C. Diaz, D.H. Green, W. Haubrichs, P. Heather, M. Kazanski, A. Kokowski, F. Marazzi, G. Noye, I. Wood.


This inventive and lucid book sheds new light on topics as diverse as crime, authority, and retailing in eighteenth-century Britain, and makes a major contribution to broader debates around consumerism, popular culture, and material life. The material lives of ordinary English men and women were transformed in the years following the restoration of Charles II in 1660. Tea and sugar, the fruits of British mercantile and colonial expansion, altered their diets. Pendulum clocks and Staffordshire pottery, the products of British manufacturing ingenuity, enriched their homes. But it was in their clothing that ordinary people enjoyed the greatest change in their material lives. This book retrieves the unknown story of ordinary consumers in eighteenth-century England and provides a wealth of information about what they wore. John Styles reveals that ownership of new fabrics and new fashions was not confined to the rich but extended far down the social scale to the small farmers, day laborers, and petty tradespeople who formed a majority of the population. The author focuses on the clothes ordinary people wore, the ways they acquired them, and the meanings they attached to them, shedding new light on all types of attire and the occasions on which they were worn.


Summary

1. Revegetation can provide major environmental benefits in degraded landscapes, but there is also potential for negative impacts from genetic change in local native populations. Broad areas of revegetation may provide a large source of foreign genes in landscapes where small remnant native populations act as a sink. Genetic change from hybridisation can threaten population persistence and contribute to species extinction through genetic assimilation or demographic swamping.

2. Implementation of revegetation within a risk management framework allows identification of risk factors, analysis and evaluation of risk to inform decision-making and management to minimise and mitigate the risk. Informed analysis and evaluation of genetic risk is important in revegetation because it will be difficult to control or reverse the impacts in natural ecosystems and they are often not expressed until the second generation or later.

3. A risk assessment protocol is presented based on evaluation of factors that influence the likelihood and consequences of adverse genetic change from revegetation arising through pollen dispersal.

4. The assessment is applicable to a broad range of revegetation activities and contributes to the development of informed decision-making processes in implementation of revegetation systems and land use practices that protect and enhance biodiversity in degraded landscapes.

5. Synthesis and applications. Implementation of revegetation programmes within a risk management framework will help to ensure that significant environmental benefits are captured with minimal concomitant negative impacts on the surrounding biodiversity. A genetic risk protocol provides a tool for evaluation of potential adverse genetic impacts on native populations from revegetation and can be implemented in conjunction with weed risk assessment. Risk assessment as an integral part of evaluation of environmental impact for large-scale revegetation programmes will contribute to the development of informed decision-making processes in the implementation of revegetation systems, and ultimately, it will aid in the development of land uses that protect and enhance biodiversity in degraded landscapes.


By frequently rewriting his short stories and novels, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-73) created challenges for his bibliographers, editors, and interpreters. W. J. McCormack and Robert Tracy have traced some of the features and phases of Le Fanu's reworking process, in which, for example, stories from The Purcell Papers (1838-40) were revised, renamed, and reframed for Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery (1851) and In a Glass Darkly (1872). However, the tangled textual trail left by Le Fanu and a few of his editors has occasionally led even astute explicators astray. (2) In their readings of two of Le Fanu's most acclaimed stories--"Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter"/"Schalken the Painter" (1839; 1851) and Carmilla (1869; 1872)--McCormack and other critics inadvertently reveal how contingencies of textual transmission and editorial interpolation can lead to incorrect interpretations. By taking a rhetorical hermeneutics approach, we can discover what happens when theoretical desire overcomes empirical discretion. (3) THE MYSTERY OF THE NARRATEE IN CARMILLA The identity of the narratee in Le Fanu's vampire tale Carmilla has proved to be a hermeneutic puzzle for several scholars. The story, first published in The Dark Blue journal between December 1871 and March 1872, reappeared as the last of the five stories comprising In a Glass Darkly. In Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery, his earlier anthology of previously published short fiction, Le Fanu had created a unifying device by affixing a biblical epigraph to each story. (4) A similar unifying device for In A Glass Darkly was provided by Dr. Hesselius and the anonymous editor of his papers; both characters appeared in the collection's first story, "Green Tea," which had been previously published in 1869 in Charles Dickens's All the Year Round. Le Fanu created new prefaces, supposedly written by Hesselius's editor, for "The Familiar," "Mr. Justice Harbottle," "The Room in the Dragon Volant," and Carmilla, none of which had possessed these paratexts in their previous incarnations. (5) In the new prologue to Carmilla, the fictional editor states that Hesselius had "commenced" a "correspondence [ ... ] many years before" with Laura, the narrator of Carmilla, who was a youthful victim of the eponymous vampire and barely survived the ordeal (Le Fanu, Carmilla 243). Describing Laura as "the intelligent lady, who relates [ ... ] the Narrative" and as Hesselius's "clever and careful [ ... ] informant," the editor mentions that "she had died in the interval" between corresponding with Hesselius and theeditor's publication of her account (243). Despite the editor's description of Laura in the paratext as Hesselius's "informant," however, Laura tells her narratee in the main text that "[t]he nearest inhabited village is about seven of your English miles to the left" and that Carmilla's "habits" are "[p]erhaps not so singular in the opinion of a town lady like you, as they appeared to us rustic people" (Carmilla 244 and 265; emphasis mine). Since Hesselius is neither English nor female, it thus appears that he is not the narratee. McCormack introduces and speculates upon this conundrum as follows: Sexuality doubles up for religion [in In A Glass Darkly]--but that's hardly rare. What is more curious is that the narrator of Carmilla addresses herself to a woman ("a town lady like you") while we are officially led to believe that Martin Hesselius is her correspondent. At the structural or narrative level this reproduction of transferred gender ("[W]hat if a boyish lover had found his way into the house ... ?" [Le Fanu, Carmilla 265]) echoes the narrated substance of the tale. But whether it echoes by way of confirmation or mockery is less clear. "Boyish" still implies the lover's femaleness even as it insinuates the word "boy." (Dissolute 146)6 We should first note that although the editor states Laura and Hesselius exchanged letters, he does not specifically say that Hesselius was the narratee, the "you," of her narrative. …


It started with punk. Hip-hop, rave, graffiti, and gaming took it to another level, and now modern technology has made the ideas and innovations of youth culture increasingly intimate and increasingly global at the same time.In "The Pirate's Dilemma," "VICE" magazine's Matt Mason -- poised to become the Malcolm Gladwell of the iPod Generation -- brings the exuberance of a passionate music fan and the technological savvy of an IT wizard to the task of sorting through the changes brought about by the interface of pop culture and innovation. He charts the rise of various youth movements -- from pirate radio to remix culture -- and tracks their ripple effect throughout larger society. Mason brings a passion and a breadth of intelligence to questions such as the following: How did a male model who messed with disco records in the 1970s influence the way Boeing designs airplanes? Who was the nun who invented dance music, and how is her influence undermining capitalism as we know it? Did three high school kids who remixed Nazis into Smurfs in the 1980s change the future of the video game industry? Can hip-hop really bring about world peace? Each chapter crystallizes the idea behind one of these fringe movements and shows how it combined with technology to subvert old hierarchies and empower the individual.With great wit and insight -- and a cast of characters that includes such icons as the Ramones, Andy Warhol, Madonna, Russell Simmons, and 50 Cent -- Mason uncovers the trends that have transformed countercultural scenes into burgeoning global industries and movements, ultimately changing our way of life.


Utopias, those ideals both revered and disdained, inhabit crucial corners of the literary canon. One can certainly remember the elaborate utopias that filled the advent of cultural modernity, from the delusional dreams of El Dorado and the New Jerusalem, passing through Thomas More's excessively normative world, all the way to Jonathan Swift's brilliant but ultimately obnoxious archipelago. Still, those comprehensive utopias are only a part of the complex history of the idea, particularly when one considers that, at least in many cases, it carried nothing less than colonialism in its underbelly. Still, more promising utopias remain in the forgotten corners of textual traditions, buried in the marginal writings of major figures, ignored by the critical whirlwind that monumentalizes their authors. I want to start this note by one such moment, a striking assertion that promises a utopia without describing it, and an engagement with centuries of political and literary thinking that leads to a crucial statement: El estado normal puede ser el de pasividad; pero el estado frecuente, constante, el que da su sello a la humanidad, y que, por lo mismo, merece llamarse--siquiera practicamente--el estado humano, es el de protesta. Si el hombre no hubiera protestado, no habria historia --historia en el sentido comun de la palabra. El albor de la historia es un desequilibrio entre el medio y la voluntad humana, asi como el albor de la conciencia fue un desequilibrio entre el espectaculo del mundo y el espectador humano. El hombre sonrie: brota la conciencia. Y el hombre se nutre de los elementos que le da el miedo. ?Sonrie por segunda vez? Protesta, no le basta ya la naturaleza. ?Emigra, o siembra, o conquista, o forma las carretas en circulo como una trinchera de la tribu contra los ataques de las fieras? Pues entonces funda la civilizacion y empieza con ella la historia. Mientras no se duda del amo no sucede nada. Cuando el esclavo ha sonreido comienza el duelo de la historia. (Reyes III, 242). The master and the slave in this passage come from a familiar source, Hegel's Phenomenology (111-19), except that in here the consciousness of the slave does not emerge at the end of the dialectic, but at its outset, a smile that marks the consciousness of the slave as the foundational act not only of civilization, but of history itself. In this assertion we do not see utopia defined, but the necessary gesture at the beginning of every utopian intervention. The source of this paragraph is a little-known essay entitled "La sonrisa," originally published in a 1917 book called El suicida. Its author is Alfonso Reyes, a foundational figure of the tradition of thinking known as Latin Americanism, which may be defined as the constant assertion of Latin America as a site of critical thinking and as an articulation of projects of emancipation vis-a-vis modernity and colonialism. The historical background of Reyes's essay is not trivial either: "La sonrisa" was written in the wake of the Mexican Revolution, from a self-imposed exile in Spain and France, as one of the first attempts to theorize the emergence of a large array of social sectors into a form of historical agency and subjectivity previously denied by the national elites. The historical implications go even further: it is important to note that Reyes, the son of a prominent Porfirian general who died in the revolt that overthrew the first Revolutionary regime in 1913, was nonetheless ideologically sympathetic to the Revolution. Being a man of letters, Reyes was part of a group of intellectuals, the "Ateneo de la Juventud," strongly committed to translate the social force of the Revolution into a spiritual transformation of Mexico at large. In these terms, "La sonrisa" is an almost unique effort to understand the Mexican Revolution as a philosophical event of ontological emancipation, thus departing from the work of many of his contemporaries, like Jose Vasconcelos, who understood it in racial terms, as the triumph of the mestizo. …


Robots, artificial intelligence and automation are going to fundamentally change the way we work, play and live in the 21st Century.
Or will they?
In this provocative new book, Krook questions the dominant ideology that automation and A.I. will make our lives easier and give us more freedom than ever before. Instead, he argues the opposite is the case, and that this new technology is set to make our lives much worse.
In a series of essays, Krook discusses the automation of job applications, the robot revolution, the nature of free will, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, the 9-5 work day, modern consumerism and the new project-based economy.
In each essay, he identifies various challenges facing the modern worker, pressed to adapt and rapidly learn new skills in the face of rapid technological change.


Wireless communication technologies, although emerged only a few decades ago, have grown fast in both popularity and technical maturity. As a result, mobile devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) or smart phones equipped with embedded wireless cards have seen remarkable growth in popularity and are quickly becoming one of the most widely used communication tools. This is mainly determined by the flexibility, convenience and relatively low costs associated with these devices and wireless communications. Multimedia applications have become by far one of the most popular applications among mobile users. However this type of application has very high bandwidth requirements, seriously restricting the usage of portable devices. Moreover, the wireless technology involves increased energy consumption and consequently puts huge pressure on the limited battery capacity which presents many design challenges in the context of battery powered devices. As a consequence, power management has raised awareness in both research and industrial communities and huge efforts have been invested into energy conservation techniques and strategies deployed within different components of the mobile devices.

Our research presented in this thesis focuses on energy efficient data transmission in wireless local networks, and mainly contributes in the following aspects:

1. Static STELA, which is a Medium Access Control (MAC) layer solution that adapts the sleep/wakeup state schedule of the radio transceiver according to the bursty nature of data traffic and real time observation of data packets in terms of arrival time. The algorithm involves three phases– slow start phase, exponential increase phase, and linear increase phase. The initiation and termination of each phase is self-adapted to real time traffic and user configuration. It is designed to provide either maximum energy efficiency or best Quality of Service (QoS) according to user preference.

2. Dynamic STELA, which is a MAC layer solution deployed on the mobile devices and provides balanced performance between energy efficiency and QoS. Dynamic STELA consists of the three phase algorithm used in static STELA, and additionally employs a traffic modeling algorithm to analyze historical traffic data and estimate the arrival time of the next burst. Dynamic STELA achieves energy saving through intelligent and adaptive increase of Wireless Network Interface Card (WNIC) sleeping interval in the second and the third phase and at the same time guarantees delivery performance through optimal WNIC waking timing before the estimated arrival of new data burst.

3. Q-PASTE, which is a quality-oriented cross-layer solution with two components employed at different network layers, designed for multimedia content delivery. First component, the Packet/ApplicaTion manager (PAT) is deployed at the application layer of both service gateway and client host. The gateway level PAT utilizes fast start, as a widely supported technique for multimedia content delivery, to achieve high QoS and shapes traffic into bursts to reduce the wireless transceiver's duty cycle. Additionally, gateway-side PAT informs client host the starting and ending time of fast start to assist parameter tuning. The client-side PAT monitors each active session and informs the MAC layer about their traffic-related behavior. The second component, dynamic STELA, deployed at MAC layer, adaptively adjusts the sleep/wake-up behavior of mobile device wireless interfaces in order to reduce energy consumption while also maintaining high Quality of Service (QoS) levels.

4. A comprehensive survey on energy efficient standards and some of the most important state-of-the-art energy saving technologies is also provided as part of the work.


With the advent of the new millennium, survey findings confirmed a high degree of educational emphasis with projective techniques in both clinical/professional psychology programs and internship settings (Belter & Piotrowski, 2001; Childs & Eyde, 2002; Meyer et al., 2001; Mihura & Weinle, 2002). However, more recent survey data, on the extent of training emphasis in assessment in graduate professional training programs, point to a precipitous decline in instruction with projective techniques within the last 5 years (Neukrug et al., 2013). In fact, Ready and Veague (2014), in a survey of APA-accredited programs regarding training in assessment, found that no projective methods were ranked in the top 10 most popular tests. These findings clearly indicate a very recent de-emphasis in graduate-level instruction with projective techniques. At the same time, extensive review of studies of applied settings indicate that projective techniques continue to be relied upon and considered a valuable clinical tool by practicing psychologists. For example, Piotrowski (2015), in an analysis of 28 survey-based studies worldwide, reported that at least one projective test was noted among the top 5 tests used in practice in 50% of these reports. Additionally, the Rorschach, H-F-Ds, sentence completion methods, and the TAT were ranked among the top 15 tests in all but 3 of these 28 studies. Despite these disparate findings of training versus practice settings, bibliometric analysis of the recent psychological literature (conducted in the database PsycINFO) reveals a total of 2,943 references on projective techniques, including 1,746 articles in academic and professional journals (from 2008-2012). Thus, what could account for this apparent moribund state with regard to the rapid decline in educational emphasis with projective assessment in clinical/professional training programs? This commentary aims to discuss several pedagogic, editorial preference, critical review, and professional practice factors that can be attributed to the diminutive status of projective techniques in professional graduate-level instruction. Managed Care Policy By the mid-1990s, changes in mental health care policies had a profound impact on professional psychology practice (Phelps et al., 1998). The untoward effect was that reimbursement and time constraints significantly impacted the extent and availability of psychological testing, particularly reliance on traditional assessment batteries (Wood et al., 2002). Research has shown a stark shift in focus on 'brief and short-form testing instruments, with a concomitant decrease in the clinical use of projective techniques (Piotrowski, 1999; Stedman et al., 2001). Most projective tests are individually administered and, moreover, protocol scoring, interpretation, and assessment report integration can be rather time-consuming for the clinician. Thus, faculty members responsible for clinical training in assessment have gradually shifted away from tests that do not meet a time-sensitive threshold in practice. With the exception of specialty-based practice such as forensic assessment (Weiner & Otto, 2013), restrictive mental health administrative policies have limited authorized clinical use of projective assessment over the past 20 years. Professional Psychology Curriculum At the turn of the century, studies of APA-accredited professional doctoral training programs revealed that projective testing was a major required clinical competency, although training emphasis in this area was expected to decline in the near future (Belter & Piotrowski, 2001; Cashel, 2002; Handler & Smith, 2013). At the same time, attitudes toward projective tests by directors of internship training were relatively positive and opportunities for advanced training on select projective tests was an expected function of the internship experience (Piotrowski & Belter, 1999; Stedman et al., 2002). …


The Precambrian-Cambrian boundary global stratotype is the base of the Phycodes pedum Zone at Fortune Head, southeastern Newfoundland. The initial, two-stage radiation of the Phanerozoic fauna (the appearance of Phanerozoic-aspect trace producers and subsequent origin of diverse skeletalized metazoans) was earliest Cambrian. Fossil assemblages with deep, complex burrows or originally mineralized skeletal fossils (with exception of Cloudina ) are Early Cambrian or younger. Correlation into Avalon indicates that strata once referred to the Proterozoic (e.g., Manykaian [or Nemakit-Daldynian] and Rovno stages) are lowest Cambrian and that the Siberian Tommotian Stage is middle Lower Cambrian. The thick sequence and complex epeirogenic history of the Placentian Series, as compared with the trilobite-bearing Branchian Series, suggest that most Early Cambrian time is represented by the subtrilobitic Lower Cambrian.


The new 55,000 seat National Stadium is the centrepiece of the Singapore Sports Hub project, due to be completed in early 2014. The roof structure for the stadium is a highly efficient dome spanning 310 m with an elevation of 85 m from the ground level. When complete, the fixed roof will be the largest clear span dome roof in the world and supports a symmetrical movable roof in two halves. The fixed roof structure is formed by a series of steel arch trusses varying in depth from 5 m at the centre to 2.5 m at the base and is supported by a post-tensioned concrete ring beam. The trusses are constructed from circular hollow section (CHS) elements and span in multiple directions to form a highly efficient braced dome structure. Due to the movable roof there is a regularly varying load on the structure. Whilst the structure is not highly fatigue sensitive, fluctuating loads had to be carefully considered in the design to ensure that they could be accommodated within the design of the connections. The construction design was based on S355 steel using cold-formed CHS members with hot finished S355 CHS elements used only for thicker sections. Whilst serviceability issues such as deflection and fatigue were design considerations, the structure was predominantly strength governed. This paper considers the potential savings in material use that could have been made if higher strength, high elongation steel had been economically viable and could have been competitively tendered. It is shown that it could be possible to make a significant saving on element steelwork if hot finished niobium grain-refined S500 can be adopted for similar projects in the future. 213 Proceedings of the Value-Added Niobium Microalloyed Construction Steels Symposium CBMM and TMS, 2015


Our work introduces a semi-immersive environment for conceptual design where virtual mockups are obtained from gestures we aim to get closer to the way people conceive, create and manipulate three-dimensional shapes. We present on-and-above-the-surface interaction techniques following Guiard's asymmetric bimanual model to take advantage of the continuous interaction space for creating and editing 3D models in a stereoscopic environment. To allow for more expressive interactions, our approach continuously combines hand and finger tracking in the space above the table with multi-touch on its surface. This combination brings forth an alternative design environment where users can seamlessly switch between interacting on the surface or in the space above it depending on the task. Our approach integrates continuous space usage with bimanual interaction to provide an expressive set of 3D modeling operations. Preliminary trials with our experimental setup show this as a very promising avenue for further work.


We present VeriStar, a verified theorem prover for a decidable subset of separation logic. Together with VeriSmall [3], a proved-sound Smallfoot-style program analysis for C minor, VeriStar demonstrates that fully machine-checked static analyses equipped with efficient theorem provers are now within the reach of formal methods. As a pair, VeriStar and VeriSmall represent the first application of the Verified Software Toolchain [4], a tightly integrated collection of machine-verified program logics and compilers giving foundational correctness guarantees. VeriStar is (1) purely functional, (2) machine-checked, (3) end-to-end, (4) efficient and (5) modular. By purely functional, we mean it is implemented in Gallina, the pure functional programming language embedded in the Coq theorem prover. By machine-checked, we mean it has a proof in Coq that when the prover says "valid", the checked entailment holds in a proved-sound separation logic for C minor. By end-to-end, we mean that when the static analysis+theorem prover says a C minor program is safe, the program will be compiled to a semantically equivalent assembly program that runs on real hardware. By efficient, we mean that the prover implements a state-of-the-art algorithm for deciding heap entailments and uses highly tuned verified functional data structures. By modular, we mean that VeriStar can be retrofitted to other static analyses as a plug-compatible entailment checker and its soundness proof can easily be ported to other separation logics.


Ionic microgel particles, when dispersed in a solvent, swell to equilibrium sizes that are governed by a balance between electrostatic and elastic forces. Tuning of particle size by varying external stimuli, such as pH, salt concentration, and temperature, has relevance for drug delivery, microfluidics, and filtration. To model swelling of ionic microgels, we derive a statistical mechanical theorem, which proves exact within the cell model, for the electrostatic contribution to the osmotic pressure inside a permeable colloidal macroion. Applying the theorem, we demonstrate how the distribution of counterions within an ionic microgel determines the internal osmotic pressure. By combining the electrostatic pressure, which we compute via both Poisson-Boltzmann theory and molecular dynamics simulation, with the elastic pressure, modeled via the Flory-Rehner theory of swollen polymer networks, we show how deswelling of ionic microgels with increasing concentration of particles can result from a redistribution of counterions that reduces electrostatic pressure. A linearized approximation for the electrostatic pressure, which proves remarkably accurate, provides physical insight and greatly eases numerical calculations for practical applications. Comparing with experiments, we explain why soft particles in deionized suspensions deswell upon increasing concentration and why this effect may be suppressed at higher ionic strength. The failure of the uniform ideal-gas approximation to adequately account for counterion-induced deswelling below close packing of microgels is attributed to neglect of spatial variation of the counterion density profile and the electrostatic pressure of incompletely neutralized macroions.


Discussions of parental liability by courts and legal scholars are often tinged with fear: fear that government interference will chill parental autonomy; fear that parents will be held liable for their children's every misdeed; and, recently, fear that a new generation of so-called "helicopter parents" who hover over their children's every move will establish unrealistically high legal standards for parenting. However, in the context of common law suits against parents, these fears are misguided. To the contrary, courts have consistently shielded wealthier parents — those most likely to be defendants in civil suits — from exposure to liability for conduct related to their parenting practices. This Article critically examines the common law of parental (non-) liability, both historically and in light of current cultural trends. Parental liability takes two forms: liability for parents' harm to their children, and liability of parents for harms caused to others by their children. Individually these subjects have received remarkably little scholarly attention; together they have received none. Yet both types of parental liability are central to ongoing cultural debates about parenting, as well as to current controversies about the role of courts in establishing legal duty. A thorough re-consideration of parental liability is particularly timely in light of the new Restatement (Third) of Torts, which speaks directly to issues that are central to both forms of parental liability. This Article concludes that courts should hold parents to a standard of reasonable care. The American common law's squeamishness about parental liability is understandable, but unnecessary. Just as helicopter parents overreact to unsubstantiated fears of stranger abduction based on anecdotes and media hype, limits on common law parental liability are overreactions to unsubstantiated fears of collusion, government interference and biased juries. To be sure, aspects of parental liability raise significant concerns, but courts can and should address them narrowly using established tort law principles, without imposing blanket no-duty rules. Juries, in short, should be allowed to judge parents.


CO-OPERATIVE LOCATION UPDATES FOR MOBILE NODES FOR CELLULAR NETWORKS by Samir Shah In current pure cellular networks, each and every mobile node updates it's location to the particular base station separately following certain algorithms, say timer based, mobility based or both. For the next generation wireless networks, which we can consider as a highly dense network, such location update algorithms prove to be very costly in the terms of overall location update traffic to the base station and average battery usage by each mobile node for location updates due to large number of mobile nodes for particular base station area. Instead of using such one-to-one link for location updates, this report describes a new algorithm called Co-operative Location Updates' in which many mobile nodes give their location details to one neighboring node and that node gives information to the base station. In this way, the traffic congestion to the base station due to location updates can be reduced drastically and also at the same time the average battery power used by the mobiles for location updates can be increased. Finally the work is proved by showing view graphs in the results section. CO-OPERATIVE LOCATION UPDATES FOR MOBILE NODES IN CELLULAR NETWORKS


Abstract. Recently, Visual Odometry (VO) using cameras for navigation is known as an alternative solution in GNSS-hostile environments. VO is a process of estimating the egomotion based on consecutive frames captured by the camera. 3D Motion including the attitude and position can be described as the exterior orientation parameters (EOPs) in photogrammetry. The advantage of VO compared with wheel odometry is that VO is not affected by wheel slip in uneven terrain or other adverse conditions. Since VO computes the camera path incrementally, the errors are accumulated as well according to the motion of each new frame-to-frame over time. That would cause the drift in the estimated trajectory compared to the real path. To solve this issue, this research proposes the network adjustment model based on relative orientation parameters (ROPs) for monocular VO. The fundamental idea originates from the traverse in the field of surveying. A traverse is a series of consecutive lines whose ends have been marked in the field and whose lengths and angles have been determined from observations. Consequently, ROPs are adopted as observations in the model that would update the states of image sequence furthermore. In this research, it is worth mentioning that the coordinates of object points are not necessary to be calculated, and more accurate ROPs are improved automatically during the process. In the future, VO with this proposed method could be integrated with GNSS/INS to a navigation system.


The Natural Hazards Review stands on the realization that natural disaster losses result from interactions between the physical world, the constructed environment, and the character of the societies and people who occupy them. The journal is dedicated to bringing together the physical, social, and behavioral sciences; engineering; and the regulatory and policy environments to provide a forum for cutting edge, holistic, and cross-disciplinary approaches to natural hazards loss and cost reduction. The journal offers a means for researchers and practitioners working together to publish the results of truly interdisciplinary and partnered approaches to loss reduction and long-term disaster resiliency. Engineering topics covered include the characterization of hazard forces and the planning, design, construction, maintenance, performance, and use of structures in the physical environment. Social and behavioral sciences topics addressed include a range of issues related to hazard mitigation and human response as well as significant issues related to the built environment such as land use, building standards, and the role of financial markets and insurance. The specific physical science topics covered include those pertinent to understanding the hazardous character of the world and the performance of the structures that we build to accommodate our way of life. More importantly, the journal features papers co-authored by people from a variety of specializations who bring a cross-disciplinary perspective to the complex factors that contribute to disasters in today's -- and especially tomorrow's -- world.


Service standards in the provision of health and education in the states in India are low on average and also characterized by large inter-state disparities. These disparities are due to differences in fiscal capacity, differences in revenue effort and differences in priority accorded to the concerned sectors. The transfers from the central to state governments in many federations are guided by the equalization principle. Two important examples are Canada and Australia. When unconditional transfers are made, equalization transfers aim to neutralize deficiency in fiscal capacity but not that in revenue effort. Sometimes adjustment affecting cost and need factors may also be accommodated. Both in Canada and Australia, apart from general purpose and unconditional transfers, there are also specific purpose transfers. Considering the fact that it is important not only to improve the average levels of provisions of health and education services, but also to reduce disparities across states, the Twelfth Finance Commission has recommended special grants for health and education to selected states. In determining these grants, the TFC had kept the equalization principle in perspective and has not underwritten deficiency in expenditure if it arises because states accord less than average priority to the concerned sector. Recommended grants however only partially meet the requirement of resources for these sectors. For meeting the needs fully, much larger amounts would be involved. TFC's initiative should be taken only as a beginning that requires supplementation by plan grants. After gaining experience in implementing these grants, larger grants and a more comprehensive approach can be developed.


"This thesis provides a method for finding a location of a mobile robot based on the signal strengths obtained from the IEEE 802.11 standard wireless Access Points. In this method a set of eight signal loss functions is proposed to enable the robot to determine its current distance and direction using its known location of the Access Points. Recently a series of techniques have been proposed to address this problem, however they require a significantly larger number of data signals to determine the robot's current location. The experimental results show that the proposed approach provides better or equal accuracy of location to the existing approaches with an added advantage of the reduced computational complexity. Another advantage is that this positioning system can also be applied to the standard mobile clients using the wireless network."--Abstract from author supplied metadata.


Annual pollen deposition per unit area measured in sediment traps is two to four times greater than deposition measured in surface sediment cores. The difference is due to repeated redeposition of pollen from the sediment surface during seasons of water circulation. This process reduces variations in the percentages of different pollen types in sediment, but causes differences in the total amount of pollen accumulated in various parts of the lake basin.


AIM
To evaluate the anatomical disposition of the renal hilar structures in human cadavers of south Indian origin, considering their antero-posterior distribution.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
Ninty-six renal hila of the isolated kidneys from adult south Indian cadavers were observed for the branching patterns and the distributions of the renal hilar structures. The number of branches of the renal artery and the divisions of the renal vein in the pre hilar region were noted, along with their pattern of arrangement with respect to the renal pelvis.

RESULTS
In the present study on the pre hilar region, we observed that the highest division of the renal artery was 8 and that the highest incidence was of 4 divisions of the renal artery in 30.2% cases. The highest number of venous divisions which was observed was 7. The highest incidence of 40.6 % cases showed 2 divisions of the veins. Regarding the patterns of arrangement of these structures, we observed 12 patterns of arrangement, with a higher incidence (45.8%) of the classical arrangement (V-A-P), as has been described in the standard text books of anatomy, which was followed by the A-V-P pattern (28.1%).

CONCLUSION
An anatomical knowledge on the possible variant topography of the renal hilar structures is of great importance when urological surgical procedures are performed.


To open any new business in a foreign country, especially a restaurant, it must be attainable, in a centralized location, and suited for the culture, traditions, and customs, it must cater to all age groups and generations, and the decor should communicate beautiful smiles with an impeccable customer service. Who can give us all this and more but a brand new McDonald's Franchise Restaurant being introduced for the very first time in Bangalore, India? As a life time member of the Girl Scouts of the USA, the first author is jubilant with the memory of a song taught to the girls at their very first troop meeting: "make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, and the other, gold …" (Girl Scout troop 47, personal conversation, September 1992); therefore, keeping with tradition of the Indian McDonald's menu, new items will be added to turn the silver into gold, continuing with the authenticity of McDonald's history of customer service, and team effort in building a McDonald's to the satisfaction of the clientele of the host country. The paper offers strategies for effectively expanding into new territories across borders.


We examine the effect of toxic exposure on U.S. infant and fetal mortality rates between 1989 and 2002 from toxic pollution released by facilities reporting to the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI). Unlike previous studies, we control for toxic pollution from mobile sources and from non-TRI reporting facilities. We find significant adverse effects of TRI exposure on infant mortality. There is evidence that health effects vary across media: air and water having a larger impact than land pollution. And, within air, we find that releases of carcinogens are particularly problematic for infant health outcomes. We estimate that the average county-level decreases in TRI concentrations between 1988 and 2002 saved in excess of 13,800 infant lives.


Abstract This paper presents an experimental study on the rheological properties of heavy crude oil containing sand to determine the effects of sand size distribution and mass concentration on apparent viscosity, thixotropic behavior, yield stress and viscoelastic properties. The results of these analyses demonstrate that heavy crude oil containing sand shows strong shear-thinning behavior and a certain degree of thixotropic properties. After blending heavy crude oil with sand, the apparent viscosity and the area of the thixotropic loop first decrease and then steadily increase with increasing sand mass concentration. At a fixed mass concentration, apparent viscosity appears to increase with increasing particle size, while yield stress decreases. Moreover, adding sand generally enhances the elastic modulus of heavy crude oil, while the complex viscosity remains slightly less than the apparent viscosity. These results provide new information helpful for removing sand from heavy crude oil.


This paper presents a practical implementation of a 2D flood simulation model using hybrid distributed-parallel technologies including MPI, OpenMP, CUDA, and evaluations of its performance under various configurations that utilize these technologies. The main objective of this research work was to improve the computational performance of the flood simulation in a hybrid architecture. Modern desktops and small cluster systems owned by domain researchers are able to perform these simulations efficiently due to multicore and GPU computing devices, but lack the expertise needed to fully utilize software libraries designed to take advantage of the latest hardware. By leveraging knowledge of our experimentation environment, we were able to incorporate MPI and multiple GPU devices to improve performance over a single-process OpenMP version up to 18x, depending on the size of the input data. We discuss some observations that have significant effects on overall performance, including process-to-device mapping, communication strategies and data partitioning, and present some experimental results. The limitations of this work are discussed, and we propose some ideas to relieve or overcome such limitations in future work.


In this thesis, I examine the ways in which the 'memory' of contacts between Yolngu (Aborigines from north-east Arnhem Land) and Indonesian fishermen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is relevant today in the way certain Elcho Islanders are negotiating for the recognition of Aboriginal rights within the broader Australian community. In particular I look at one proposal for Aboriginal reconciliation from one group of Yolngu (Aborigines from north-east Arnhem Land). Called the Warramiri Flag Treaty proposal, its aim was to encourage dialogue on the subject of a treaty between Aborigines and non-Aborigines. Inspired and initiated by the late David Burrumarra M.B.E. of Elcho Island, the proposal called for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders Australia-wide to construct their own reconciliation flags, each containing sacred symbols relevant to the lands in which they were living, combined with symbols representing the non-Aboriginal world. This study contends that for the Warramiri, the flag proposal is a necessary outcome of a particular way of looking at themselves and at their past. For a very long time, the Yolngu have attempted to negotiate their place in relation to outsiders. Diverse narratives referring to the non-Aboriginal 'Other' ( eg. Sama-Bajau, Macassans and Europeans) have traditionally been viewed as secret/sacred, but now, the Australian Government is speaking of reconciliation and a merging of histories. Consequently in recent times there has been a re-focussing of attention by the Warramiri on previously unrecorded bodies of Rom (Aboriginal law), and what I present for analysis has been framed in the light of changing historical and social realities. This thesis deals with the ways in which such knowledge is re-oriented, re-emphasised and revealed both within Aboriginal society and in the wider Australian community. I explore how and why the Warramiri leaders have come to understand the way they see their relationship with the 'Other'; why they see themselves as having a mandate for mediation between outsiders and Aborigines; and why the flag, which means different things to different peoples, has been chosen as an appropriate symbolic device for facilitating the reconciliation process. Three main areas are covered in the study. Firstly, it is concerned with Burrumarra's perception of his and Yolngu people's place in the contemporary world, (and my understanding and presentation of it). Secondly, it is about the nature of the experience of change in a broad sense, ie. how cosmology is matched with experience, and experience with cosmology. Lastly, in dealing with the former, it is about the representation of Aboriginal culture and cosmology in contemporary circumstances. It is concerned with the problems of representing an Aboriginal 'Other' when that 'Other' has represented non-Aborigines as such in complex and often ambiguous and now anachronistic forms.


This thesis presents research on the epidemiology and transmission dynamics of
healthcare-associated infections (HCAI) and focuses on the antibiotic resistant
hospital pathogen methicillin-resistant Staphylococcits aureus (MRSA).
First, a stochastic mathematical model of MRSA transmission dynamics is
developed in which patient movement within and between both hospital and
community populations is considered. The effects on transmission of both
surveillance and control within this setting are explored. Significant interplay is
found to exist between surveillance and control; surveillance is shown to be
essential to control success and in addition allows quantification of the level of
control achieved. Furthermore, patient movement between hospital and
community populations is shown to have a considerable impact on transmission
dynamics and on the success of infection control strategies.
Analyses of the demographics of a hospital population using a real hospital
dataset are presented and the heterogeneous nature of the patient population
described. Differences in admission patterns and length of hospital stay between
age groups, gender and speciality are explored. Combining these analyses
highlights the patient groups constituting the majority of patient days. Further to
this, the heterogeneous nature of patient readmissions is described and the
existence of a 'core group' of most frequently readmitted patients is illustrated.
Overall, readmissions are found to be far more likely than previously thought,
with the majority of patient admissions to hospital being readmissions.
Given this finding of increased readmission, the hospital admission data is used to
inform the development of a model in which real patient movements between the
hospital and community are simulated and transmission within this setting
explored. Endemic behaviour results and the change in movement patterns is
found to influence control strategy success. Further to this, the model is extended
to simulate transmission within a multi-centre setting where patient movements
within a three-hospital and community network are simulated. This increase in
heterogeneity within the patient population appears to allow endemic behaviour
throughout all hospitals 11 within the network.


The same low participation rates which plague many welfare programs have been observed among the elderly eligible for Supplemental Security Income (SSI). A number of hypotheses have been offered to explain the low enrollment, but none has attracted universal acceptance. In this paper I use the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to examine the participation of the elderly in SSI. Because of the high quality of the data, I am able to determine eligibility more accurately than in most previous studies. In this sample, only 56 percent of those whom I determine to be eligible for SSI are presently receiving benefits. I model the decision to participate as a probit equation, but modify the likelihood function to account for measurement error in the expected benefit. The results indicate that participation is primarily determined by the financial situation of the eligible individuals. Although all those eligible for SSI are poor, those with little in the way of other resources are significantly more likely to participate. This finding differs from widespread beliefs that eligible individuals are discouraged by the difficulty of the application process, or that many are uninformed about the program.


The Sprite and Upper Atmospheric Lightning Imager (ISUAL) on board the Taiwanese satellite Formosat-2 accomplished its first decade operating in orbit. A comprehensive method defining the standardized elve anomaly occurrence rate using limb-viewed observation is demonstrated. We revisit the occurrence of elves during El Niño and La Niña and extend the time series analysis to November 2015. The variation in the enhanced elve anomalies occurrence density (AEOD) follows the change in sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) in the SSTA-Horseshoe, SSTA-Pacific, and SSTA-Indian Ocean during the warm and cold phases. However, the variation in lightning flash density anomalies (ALFD) is rather ambiguous. The Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) correlation with the Elve Anomaly Index (EAI) remains significant in Tahiti, while the best correlation between SOI and elves is found in the western/central Pacific Ocean with a correlation coefficient as high as 0.7. In the Indian Ocean the 10-year time frame correlation is moderate, but the relation is obvious during the transition phase between a strong El Niño following La Niña in the region where the synoptic circulation is affected. The weaker convection available potential energy (CAPE) in the upwelling synoptic circulation region provides an environment conducive to the development of elve-producing thunderstorms. This work substantiates the relation between elves/lightning and ENSO in a longer10-year time frame in which elves are more sensitive than lightning to ENSO and the variation in the synoptic circulation. Article history: Received 29 February 2016


We live in a time of profound and justified anxiety about economic opportunity. The number of Americans facing poverty is growing, opportunities for middle-class livelihoods are shrinking, and economic clout is becoming concentrated at the top to a degree that recalls the last Gilded Age. For reformers throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, economic circumstances like these posed not just an economic, social, or political problem but a constitutional one. A society with a "moneyed aristocracy" or a "ruling class," these reformers understood, was an oligarchy, not a republic. This understanding was rooted in a constitutional discourse we have largely forgotten — one that this essay suggests we ought to reclaim. From the beginning of the Republic through roughly the New Deal, Americans vividly understood that the guarantees of the Constitution are intertwined with the structure of our economic life. This understanding was the foundation of a powerful constitutional discourse that today, with important but limited exceptions, lies dormant: a discourse of constitutional political economy. A powerful tradition of arguments, from the founding era through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, sounded in this tradition: arguments that we cannot keep our constitutional democracy — our "republican form of government" — without (a) constitutional restraints against oligarchy, and (b) a political economy that maintains a broad middle class, accessible to everyone. These are two of the central strands of what we call the democracy of opportunity tradition.Today, when we speak of "equal opportunity" and the Constitution, we usually think of a different idea, one more recognizable today as constitutional law: the idea of inclusion, which has its roots in Reconstruction and animates arguments that the Constitution requires us to include, on equal terms, those who have previously been excluded from important opportunities on grounds such as race and sex. This is the third strand of the democracy of opportunity tradition as we understand it.This essay, forthcoming in the journal NOMOS, tells the story of the democracy of opportunity tradition and the relations among its three principles--which have been fraught and often tragic. Generation after generation of white male champions of the first two principles of the democracy of opportunity tradition refused to include women and racial others. Later, the great triumphs of the principle of inclusion in the mid-twentieth century — the Civil Rights Revolution, the Great Society — were largely disconnected from the democracy of opportunity tradition. This was for a different reason: The Civil Rights Revolution and Great Society unfolded in an unprecedented moment of broadly shared prosperity; what remained to be done, it seemed, was to open the nation's abundant middle-class opportunities to black America, women and other excluded "minorities." Thus, the moment that marked the rebirth and greatest triumphs of the idea of inclusion also signaled the eclipse of the democracy of opportunity tradition of which it had been a part, and more generally of any constitutionalism not centered on the judiciary — an eclipse whose consequences have been far-reaching. In this essay and in a larger book project, we aim to recover the idea that inequality and unequal opportunity, oligarchy and aristocracy, have a constitutional dimension. In the end, we argue that the democracy of opportunity tradition can only succeed with its three strands intertwined. Here, we begin to sketch how a revived democracy of opportunity tradition, and a revived discourse of constitutional political economy, might matter both inside and outside the courts.


Abstract : The problem of minimax robust source coding under a fidelity criterion for sources whose statistics belong to uncertainty classes determined by 2- alternating Choquet capacities is examined. We consider (i) single-letter difference distortion criteria for discrete memoryless sources whose probability distributions belong to capacity classes and (ii) the mean- square error distortion criterion for stationary Gaussian sources whose spectral measures belong to capacity classes. Both block source codes and trellis source codes are considered. It is shown that there exists an ensemble of block source codes and an ensemble of trellis codes such that for all rates larger than a critical rate and all sources in the class the average distortion converges to any prescribed fidelity level exponentially with increasing block length or constraint length, respectively Besides the rate distortion function, the distortion exponent of the class is also evaluated.