A short aerial gamma ray survey was conducted in the vicinity of the Springfields site and Ribble Estuary from 1st-5th September 1992, to define existing background radiation levels, against which any future changes can be assessed. A twin engine AS 355 "Squirrel" helicopter chartered from Dollar Helicopters was used for this work. It was loaded with a 16 litre NaI(Tl) gamma ray detector and spectroscopy system on the 31st August and during the following days over 2700 separate spectra were recorded within a survey area of 20 x 12 km. Gamma ray spectra were recorded every 5 seconds at survey speed and altitude of 120 kph and 75 m respectively. A flight line spacing of 0.3km was chosen for the main survey area. On the 3rd September a low altitude, high spatial resolution (flight line spacing 100m and altitude 30m) was made over Banks Marsh (an area frequented by local wild fowlers). Survey results have been stored archivally and used to map the naturally occurring radionuclides 40K, 214Bi and 208Tl together with 137Cs and total gamma ray flux. In addition, for the first time, estimates of 234mPa in terms of deconvoluted count rate (normalised to 100m altitude) were made in the presence of 228Ac interference probably in disequilibrium with its parent thorium series. The maps provide a clear indication of the distribution and sources of environmental radioactivity in the Ribble at the time of the survey. The Ribble estuary is subject to regular and ongoing ground based studies by BNF, MAFF, HMIP, and University based groups, as a result of the authorised discharges of low level radioactivity from the Springfields site. The results of this survey complement this ground based work, and add to confidence that the estuarine system, it's associated sediments, tide washed pastures, salt marshes and river banks, have been thoroughly examined. There is support for earlier conclusions that the Cs on the salt marshes is the dominant source of external gamma exposure, and that the Springfields contribution to these locations is minor in comparison with this, Sellafield derived, signal. Upstream the situation is more complex, particularly where the dynamic sources of beta radiation are considered. As far as critical group assessments are concerned the survey provides clear evidence that the areas affected by 137Cs, where external gamma dose and possible food chain effects are of greatest interest, are in the lower reaches of the Ribble, whereas, at the time of the survey the 234mPa distribution was in the upper reaches of the river. This not only confirms the findings of ground based work, but provides some assurance that the different exposure paths (external gamma dose, skin dose) are not entirely synergistic. The discovery of possible transient sources of natural 228Ac in the salt marsh environment as a consequence of Th series disequilibrium immediately following spring tides is extremely interesting. If substantiated by further studies using semiconductor detectors this provides a new insight into the dynamic radiation environment of tide washed contexts. Aerial survey can potentially provide a rapid and cost effective means of studying environmentally dynamic sources such as 234mPa. In the case of the Ribble it would be necessary to reduce survey height to below 50m ground clearance to improve spatial resolution. Possible inconvenience to residents and property owners of such low altitude flights would have to be considered in addition to the potential value of environmental knowledge of the behaviour of short lived nuclides in a dynamic system such the Ribble estuary. There is nonetheless considerable potential for time series studies of this location.
Recent flight trials by SURRC incorporating high efficiency germanium semiconductor detectors have verified the feasibility and potential a hybrid scintillation⁄ semiconductor spectrometer. Such a device can resolve any ambiguities arising from overlapping gamma ray peaks. This is particularly relevant to the confirmation of 228Ac in salt marshes. Ground based sampling at the time of measurement would enable concentration calibrations to be made for these dynamic sources. Further ground based measurements would be desirable to establish the extent to which low energy photons contribute to external gamma ray dose rates from sources with pronounced subsurface activity maxima.


We propose a sparsity-based simplification method for Spectral Domain Optical Coherence Tomography (SD-OCT) images of cardiac samples, displaying layers of tissue. Inspired by the Compressed Sensing (CS) theory, we implement a dedicated sparse sampling of SD-OCT samples achieving image simplification suited for layers segmentation, which is the target application. We compare our simplified images to state of the art denoising approaches. We also validate a straightforward segmentation approach on the variance map of the simplified images against manual delineation on raw SD-OCT images of in-vitro biological samples from four human hearts. Finally, we correlate average layer thickness with histopatho-logical measures.


This technical report contains all technical information and results from experiments where Mixture Density Networks (MDN) using an RBF network and fixed kernel means and variances were used to infer the wind direction from satellite data from the ersII weather satellite. The regularisation is based on the evidence framework and three different approximations were used to estimate the regularisation parameter. The results were compared with the results by `early stopping'.


Social tags are user-generated keywords associated with some resource on the Web. In the case of music, social tags have become an important component of "Web2.0" recommender systems, allowing users to generate playlists based on use-dependent terms such as chill or jogging that have been applied to particular songs. In this paper, we propose a method for predicting these social tags directly from MP3 files. Using a set of boosted classifiers, we map audio features onto social tags collected from the Web. The resulting automatic tags (or autotags) furnish information about music that is otherwise untagged or poorly tagged, allowing for insertion of previously unheard music into a social recommender. This avoids the "cold-start problem" common in such systems. Autotags can also be used to smooth the tag space from which similarities and recommendations are made by providing a set of comparable baseline tags for all tracks in a recommender system.


Collective movements are ubiquitous in biological systems, occurring at all scales; from the sub-organismal movements of groups of cells, to the far-ranging movements of bird flocks and herds of large herbivores. Movement patterns at these vastly different scales often exhibit surprisingly similar patterns, suggesting that mathematically similar mechanisms may drive collective movements across many systems. The aims of this study were three-fold. First, to develop mechanistic movement models capable of producing the observed wealth of spatial patterns. Second, to tailor statistical inference approaches to these models that are capable of identifying drivers of collective movement that could be applied to a wide range of study systems. Third, to validate the approaches by fitting the mechanistic models to data from diverse biological systems. These study systems included two small-scale in vitro cellular systems, involving movement of groups of human melanoma cells and Dictyostelium discoideum (slime mould) cells, and a third much larger-scale system, involving wildebeest in the Serengeti ecosystem.

 I developed a series of mechanistic movement models, based on advection-diffusion partial differential equations and integro-differential equations, that describe changes in the spatio-temporal distribution of the study population as a consequence of various movement drivers, including environmental gradients, environmental depletion, social behaviour, and spatial and temporal heterogeneity in the response of the individuals to these drivers. I also developed a number of approaches to statistical inference (comprising both parameter estimation and model comparison) for these models that ranged from frequentist, to pseudo-Bayesian, to fully Bayesian. These inference approaches also varied in whether they required numerical solutions of the models, or whether the need for numerical solutions was bypassed by using gradient matching methods. The inference methods were specifically designed to be effective in the face of the many difficulties presented by advection-diffusion models, particularly high computational costs and instabilities in numerical model solutions, which have previously prevented these models from being fitted to data. It was also necessary for these inference methods to be able to cope with data of different qualities; the cellular data provided accurate information on the locations of all individuals through time, while the wildebeest data consisted of coarse ordinal abundance categories on a spatial grid at monthly intervals.

 By applying the developed models and inference methods to data from each study system, I drew a number of conclusions about the mechanisms driving movement in these systems. In all three systems, for example, there was evidence of a saturating response to an environmental gradient in a resource or chemical attractant that the individuals could deplete locally. I also found evidence of temporal dependence in the movement parameters for all systems. This indicates that the simplifying assumption that behaviour is constant, which has been made by many previous studies that have modelled movement, is unlikely to be justified. Differences between the systems were also demonstrated, such as overcrowding affecting the movements of melanoma and wildebeest, but not Dictyostelium, and wildebeest having a much greater range of perception than cells, and thus being able to respond to environmental conditions tens of kilometres away.

 The toolbox of methods developed in this thesis could be applied to increase understanding of the mechanisms underlying collective movement in a wide range of systems. In their current form, these methods are capable of producing very close matches between models and data for our simple cell systems, and also produce a relatively good model fit in the more complex wildebeest system, where there is, however, still some room for improvement. While more work is required to make the models generalisable to all taxa, particularly through the addition of memory-driven movement, inter-individual differences in behaviour, and more complex social dynamics, the advection-diffusion modelling framework is flexible enough for these additional behaviours to be incorporated in the future. A greater understanding of what drives collective movements in different systems could allow management of these movements to prevent the collapse of important migrations, control pest species, or prevent the spread of cancer.


Business-to-consumer online auctions form an important element in the portfolio of mercantile processes that facilitate electronic commerce activity. Much of traditional auction theory has focused on analyzing single-item auctions in isolation from the market context in which they take place. We demonstrate the weakness of such approaches in online settings where a majority of auctions are multiunit in nature. Rather than pursuing a classical approach and assuming knowledge of the distribution of consumers' valuations, we emphasize the largely ignored discrete and sequential nature of such auctions. We derive a general expression that characterizes the multiple equilibria that can arise in such auctions and segregate these into desirable and undesirable categories. Our analytical and empirical results, obtained by tracking real-world online auctions, indicate that bid increment is an important factor amongst the control factors that online auctioneers can manipulate and control. We show that consumer bidding strategies in such auctions are not uniform and that the level of bid increment chosen influences them. With a motive of providing concrete strategic directions to online auctioneers, we derive an absolute upper bound for the bid increment. Based on the theoretical upper bound we propose a heuristic decision rule for setting the bid increment. Empirical evidence lends support to the hypothesis that setting a bid increment higher than that suggested by the heuristic decision rule has a negative impact on the auctioneer's revenue.


As a result of the significant growth of wind turbines in size, blade load control has become the main challenge for large wind turbines. Many advanced techniques have been investigated aiming at developing control devices to ease blade loading. Amongst them, trailing edge flaps have been proven as effective devices for load alleviation. The present study aims at investigating the potential benefits of flaps in enhancing the energy capture capabilities rather than blade load alleviation. A software tool is especially developed for the aerodynamic simulation of wind turbines utilising blades equipped with flaps. As part of the aerodynamic simulation of these wind turbines, the control system must be also simulated. The simulation of the control system is carried out via solving an optimisation problem which gives the best value for the controlling parameter at each wind turbine run condition. Developing a genetic algorithm optimisation tool which is especially designed for wind turbine blades and integrating it with the aerodynamic performance evaluator, a design optimisation tool for blades equipped with flaps is constructed. The design optimisation tool is employed to carry out design case studies. The results of design case studies on wind turbine AWT-27 (Aerodynamic Wind Turbine-27) reveal that, as expected, the location of flap is a key parameter influencing the amount of improvement in the power extraction. The best location for placing a flap is at about 70% of the blade span from the root of the blade. The size of the flap has also significant effect on the amount of enhancement in the average power. This effect, however, reduces dramatically as the size increases. For constant speed rotors, adding flaps without re-designing the topology of the blade can improve the power extraction capability as high as of about 5%. However, with re-designing the blade pretwist the overall improvement can be reached as high as 12%.


ABSTRACT The modern shoreface and inner-shelf sediments off the east Texas coast on the Gulf of Mexico were examined using sediment cores and high-resolution seismic data. Low sediment input and low effective accommodation space resulted in the overall thinness of the modern marine sediment cover in the region. Erosion on the inner shelf during historic ( 100 yr) times produced patches of sand in a predominantly mud-dominated environment. Storm beds are scarce on the inner shelf. The shoreface succession off Galveston Island is characterized by offshore-directed crosscutting storm channels of varying sizes. The existence of these channels and the relatively high frequency of storms and hurricanes that have affected the region during historical imes are inconsistent with the paucity of storm deposits on the inner shelf. The offshore-directed channelized flows may have been prevented from going beyond the shoreface by strong along-shelf storm currents that impinged on the shoreface. In contrast to the storm record on the east Texas shelf, the central Texas shelf shows a greater frequency of and more laterally persistent storm sand beds due to greater effective accommodation space and higher sediment supply there.


Purpose: One of the major challenges in electromagnetic navigated bronchoscopy is the navigation accuracy. An initial rigid image‐to‐patient registration may not be optimal for the entire lung volume, as the lung tissue anatomy is likely to have shifted since the time of computer tomography (CT) acquisition. The accuracy of the initial rigid registration will also be affected throughout the procedure by breathing, coughing, patient movement and tissue displacements due to pressure from bronchoscopy tools. A method to minimize the negative impact from these factors by updating the registration locally during the procedure is needed and suggested in this paper. Methods: The intraoperative local registration method updates the initial registration by optimization in an area of special interest, for example, close to a biopsy position. The local registration was developed through an adaptation of a previously published registration method used for the initial registration of CT to the patient anatomy. The method was tested in an experimental breathing phantom setup, where respiratory movements were induced by a robotic arm. Deformations were also applied to the phantom to see if the local registration could compensate for these. Results: The local registration was successfully applied in all 15 repetitions, five in each of the three parts of the airway phantom. The mean registration accuracy was improved from 11.8–19.4 mm to 4.0–6.7 mm, varying to some degree in the different segments of the airway model. Conclusions: A local registration method, to update and improve the initial image‐to patient registration during navigated bronchoscopy, was developed. The method was successfully tested in a breathing phantom setup. Further development is needed to make the method more automatic. It must also be verified in human studies.


BACKGROUND The use of antipsychotics can result in elevated prolactin levels or hyperprolactinemia. An increasing number of studies suggests that prolactin plays a role in mammary carcinogenesis, leading to concerns about a possible relationship between antipsychotics and breast cancer. AIM To provide an overview of recent literature regarding the relationship between prolactin, antipsychotics and breast cancer and an association between schizophrenia and breast cancer. METHOD We used PubMed to search for English- or Dutch-language articles concerning breast cancer risk (factors), prolactin, antipsychotics and schizophrenia. RESULTS Studies have not shown any causal link between antipsychotics and the development of breastcancer. Moreover, antipsychotic medication seems to have no influence on locally produced prolactin - which some experts believe plays a role in the tumor genesis - and certain antipsychotics actually provide protection against breast cancer. There are conflicting reports on the prevalence of breast cancer among patients with schizophrenia. Nevertheless, research has revealed that several well-known risk factors for breast cancer (such as an unhealthy lifestyle) are more prevalent in patients with schizophrenia. CONCLUSION There is no conclusive evidence that antipsychotic medication that raises prolactin levels increases the risk of breast cancer. Nevertheless, clinicians should always be cautious about prescribing antipsychotics for breast cancer patients. In our view, clinicians should always treat breast cancer risk factors as efficiently as possible, particularly when attending to patients who have schizophrenia.


A microcystin degradative bacteria was isolated from natural lakes and its phylogenetic position was confirmed. The 16 s rRNA of the bacteria exhibited 98.5% homology with the 16 s rRNA of Sphingomonas stygia belonging to the alpha subdivision on proteobacteria. The bacteria could degrade microcystins as a sole carbon source, therefore the bacteria utilizes microcystin. The bacteria could degrade microcystins LR, YR and RR, and their specific degradation rates were 0.66 h−1, 1.25 h−1 and 1.90 h−1, respectively. The degradation activity and growth rate of the bacteria was decreased under alkaline pH conditions.


The rise of Spain from obscurity to the position of one of Europe's greatest powers is centrally important in the history of Western Europe in the sixteenth century. Spain 1474-1598 explores key themes including the unification of Spain and the domestic and foreign policies of each of the monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, Charles V and Philip II. This book also examines whether the sixteenth century was a 'golden century' for Spain culturally with its art and literature, as well as its society and economy.


Elemental analysis of solutions can be achieved by concentrating and immobilizing the metal ions into a commercially available ion exchange polymer membrane followed by laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy. Two methods of sample preparation were investigated: filtering the solution through the ion exchange membrane with suction, and placing the membrane in the solution and allowing the ions to equilibrate with the membrane. The membrane was then ablated with the focused energy of a Nd:YAG laser at 1064 nm. The emitted light was collected by an echelle spectrometer through a fiber-optic cable and detected with an intensified charge-coupled device (CCD). Ten different metals, most covered by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), were studied. The concentrations of barium, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, silver, lead, mercury, nickel, and zinc can be measured simultaneously with limits of detection ranging from 2 μg/mL to 4 ng/mL. The linear range is 2–6 orders of magnitude depending upon the element and sampling method. The major advantages of the technique are the multielement capability and the ease of sample preparation.


The Antiquities Museum in Iași was founded in 1916 as an annex to the University of Iași, whose main objective was the valorisation of the archaeo-logical heritage from the researches carried out at Cucuteni. At the same time, he established himself as a study laboratory for the students of the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, by creating an Archeology Seminar, which was coordinated by the director of the institution, Oreste Tafrali. The historical recovery of the functioning and organization of this Museum is possible today by consulting the Archival Fund kept at the County Service of the National Archives in Iași. Documents created during the operation of the Antiquities Museum include both received and issued correspondence, as well as infor-mation on how to build its patrimony. This form of recovering the history of an institution through the docu-ments created during its operation is one of the easiest, compared to the other cases when the history consists of unconstitutional documents in a fund or not provided to public institutions. The manner in which the story of this Museum is related, in conjunction with the well-known information about the organi-zation of other similar institutions in the country, can today be a good opportunity to rewrite the main stages and actions that the Antiquities Museum in Iași has revealed in the time. The information can be related to the articles dedicated to the Antiquities Museum in Iași by its founder, Oreste Tafrali, with the passages captured in the memoirs works of contemporaries, or with the analyzes in the scientific articles, aimed at presenting the situation of the museums in Romania in the first half of the twentieth century.


Online writers and journalism media are increasingly combining visualization (and other multimedia content) with narrative text to create narrative visualizations. Often, however, the two elements are presented independently of one another. We propose an approach to automatically integrate text and visualization elements. We begin with a writer»s narrative that presumably can be supported with visual data evidence. We leverage natural language processing, quantitative narrative analysis, and information visualization to (1) automatically extract narrative components (who, what, when, where) from data-rich stories, and (2) integrate the supporting data evidence with the text to develop a narrative visualization. We also employ bidirectional interaction from text to visualization and visualization to text to support reader exploration in both directions. We demonstrate the approach with a case study in the data-rich field of sports journalism.


Empirical studies show that cruising for car parking accounts for a non-negligible amount of the daily traffic, especially in central areas of large cities. Therefore, mechanisms for minimizing traffic from cruising directly affect the dynamics of traffic congestions. One way to minimizing cruising traffic is efficient car-parking-slot assignment. Usually, the related design problems are combinatorial and the worst-case complexity of optimal methods grows exponentially with the problem sizes. As a result, almost all existing methods for parking slot assignment are simple and greedy approaches, where each car or the user is assigned a free parking slot, which is closer to its destination. Moreover, no emphasis is placed to optimize any form of fairness among the users as the a social benefit. In this paper, the fairness as a metric for modeling the aggregate social benefit of the users is considered. An algorithm based on Lagrange duality is developed for car-parking-slot assignment. Numerical results illustrate the performance of the proposed algorithm compared to the optimal assignment and a greedy method.


This paper applies a diffuse-interface model to simulate the deformation of single drops in steady shear flows when one of the components is viscoelastic, represented by an Oldroyd-B model. In Newtonian fluids, drop deformation is dominated by the competition between interfacial tension and viscous forces due to flow. A fundamental question is how viscoelasticity in the drop or matrix phase influences drop deformation in shear. To answer this question, one has to deal with the dual complexity of non- Newtonian rheology and interfacial dynamics. Recently, we developed a diffuse-inter-face formulation that incorporates complex rheology and interfacial dynamics in a unified framework. Using a two-dimensional spectral implementation, our simulations show that, in agreement with observations, a viscoelastic drop deforms less than a comparable Newtonian drop. When the matrix is viscoelastic, however, the drop deformation is suppressed when the Deborah number $De$ is small, but increases with $De$ for larger $De$. This non-monotonic dependence on matrix viscoelasticity resolves an apparent contradiction in previous experiments. By analysing the flow and stress fields near the interface, we trace the effects to the normal stress in the viscoelastic phase and its modification of the flow field. These results, along with prior experimental observations, form a coherent picture of viscoelastic effects on steady-state drop deformation in shear.


My goal in engaging in this project was to design a hardware system to solve the stereo correspondence problem in real-time.

Consequently, this work describes and analyzes an algorithm for stereo correspondence, its extension to an analog VLSI architecture, and the results obtained from its hardware implementation as a chip.

The first chapter, titled Introduction, describes the stereo correspondence problem. Therein, I discuss biological and psychophysical mechanisms of stereo vision, and include a brief history of ideas to date on the subject. I wrote this chapter to introduce the problem to the reader without assuming any previous knowledge about vision. I believe that reading it with the aid of definitions in the glossary can equip most any reader with information regarding the basics of stereo vision.

The second chapter, titled In Search of the Correct Similarity Measure, expands, first by a simple example, later in mathematical terms, the issues involved in the selection of a similarity measure. The similarity measure is a key component in the solution of the stereo correspondence problem. My main approach is a statistical one, using probability distributions and Bayesian analysis. The chapter motivates the two-sided approach of the algorithm, by using a disparity and a confidence metric for each image region.

The third chapter, titled Simulating the Hardware Algorithm, describes my stereo correspondance algorithm in detail. Simulation results that include both disparity and confidence values obtained with a variety of images are presented. Experiments are conducted to demonstrate the effect of parameter adjustments. In addition, the algorithm is compared with other correspondence schemes which use various different similarity measures.

The fourth chapter, titled Analog VLSI Implementation, is devoted fully to the hardware implementation. First, the details of the hardware architecture are described. Then, results are presented with two unique implementations. As in the previous chapter, experiments are conducted, this time using the chips themselves. Their results are compared with simulation. Again a variety of images are used.

The fifth chapter, titled Conclusions and Future Work, summarizes the work and explores future expansions.


This paper presents the design of HIDOORS, an integrated development environment suitable for embedded distributed real-time systems, based on the Java programming language. HIDOORS will cover all the life-cycle of real-time software development with extensions to existing tools (UML modeling, Java compiler Java Virtual Machine, and a worst case execution time analysis tool) that will all be integrated into a single integrated development environment. The system will also assist the developer in distributing the application, by providing faster RMI and a distributed event manager that provides strict timing guarantees. This paper is written at the beginning of HIDOORS development, and as such, it presents only, the defined objectives and the early, architecture of the system; further developments will be the Subject of future works.


Introduction: Decreased insulin action (insulin resistance) is crucial in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes. Decreased insulin action can even be found in normoglycaemic patients, and they still bear increased risks for cardiovascular disease. In this study, we built models using data from metabolic syndrome (Mets) components and the oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) to detect insulin resistance in subjects with normal glucose tolerance (NGT). Materials and Methods: In total, 292 participants with NGT were enrolled. Both an insulin suppression test (IST) and a 75-g OGTT were administered. The steady-state plasma glucose (SSPG) level derived from the IST was the measurement of insulin action. Participants in the highest tertile were defi ned as insulin-resistant. Five models were built: (i) Model 0: body mass index (BMI); (ii) Model 1: BMI, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, triglyceride; (iii) Model 2: Model 1 + fasting plasma insulin (FPI); (iv) Model 3: Model 2 + plasma glucose level at 120 minutes of the OGTT; and (v) Model 4: Model 3 + plasma insulin level at 120 min of the OGTT. Results: The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (aROC curve) was observed to determine the predictive power of these models. BMI demonstrated the greatest aROC curve (71.6%) of Mets components. The aROC curves of Models 2, 3, and 4 were all substantially greater than that of BMI (77.1%, 80.1%, and 85.1%, respectively). Conclusion: A prediction equation using Mets components and FPI can be used to predict insulin resistance in a Chinese population with NGT. Further research is required to test the utility of the equation in other populations and its prediction of cardiovascular disease or diabetes mellitus. Ann Acad Med Singapore 2014;43:113-9


That Africa has become a net importer of food and of agricultural products, despite its vast agricultural potential, is puzzling. Using data mainly for the period 1960-2007, this report seeks to explain Africa's food-trade deficit since the mid-1970s. The core finding is that population growth, low and stagnating agricultural productivity, policy distortions, weak institutions and poor infrastructure are the main reasons. A typology of African countries based on data between 2000 and 2005 reveals that the state of food import dependency is different across the continent and varies according to countries' levels of income. Although the few and relatively rich countries in Africa had the highest net food imports per capita (USD 185 per year in real terms), they had ample means to pay for their food import bills using revenue from non-agricultural sources. Conversely, the majority of the Africa's low-income countries (mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa), where twothird of its population lives, had been net food importers; they imported far less food per capita (USD 17 per year) but had difficulty covering their food imports bills, as their export revenues were limited. Overall, between 1980 and 2007, Africa's total net food imports in real term grew at 3.4 percent per year, but this growth was mostly fuelled by population growth (2.6 percent per year); the increase in per capita food import was only about 0.8 percent per year. Food consumption on per capita basis grew only at about 1 percent per year, while food production grew at an even smaller rate of less than 0.1 percent per year. The slow growth of food consumption and imports per capita is consistent with the weak economic growth and unchanged dietary pattern in the continent. Food import share, regardless of income levels, is relatively small and represents less than 5 percent of per capita income (GDP per capita). Because the share of food expense in household income is generally high in Africa, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, that the share of food imports over GDP is small implies that domestic production has largely contributed to feeding Africa's population. Still, domestic food production has remained relatively low and increased only by 2.7 percent per year, just barely above population growth rate. This implies that any increase in per capita consumption had to be met by an increase in imports. The weak growth in food production arises from various constraints including those linked directly to agricultural productivity. Data and evidence from literature highlight that technical, infrastructural and institutional constraints share the blame. Likewise, distortions arising from both internal and external economic and agricultural policies (especially the protection and subsidies from developed countries and taxation on food production within Africa) have affected food productivity, production and trade in Africa. However, the examples of a few successful practices in African agriculture and the fact that the domestic food production has managed to keep up with population growth inspire optimism that the future is not all dark. There is a lot of room for improvement for agricultural productivity in these low-income countries to the point at which production growth outpaces the growth of population and per capita consumption. David Hallam Director Trade and Markets Division A c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s v This report benefits from the valuable contributions and comments made by Nikos Alexandratos, Aziz ElBehri, David Hallam, Suffyan Koroma, Jamie Morrison, Alexander Sarris, Josef Schmidhuber, Ramesh Sharma, and Marcela Villarreal. Technical support from Rita Ashton and Claudio Cerquiglini is gratefully acknowledged.


This issue invites ten cultural critics to explore how they might remember the 1990's. Is it possible to historicize the immediate past? Can we yet pick through the density of informational overload and discern larger patterns of significance? Is this the role of cultural criticism in addressing the contemporary? Implicit in these questions is the sense that the 1990's were partly about the changing significance not only of the category of culture, but also of memory itself. How to remember an era marked by an obsession with amnesia, attention deficit, lost and recovered memory?

Essays include work on art history, avant-garde poetry, marginal sciences, the computer's transformation of intimacy and reading, the melancholia of critical theory, the fate of feminism, the rise of traumaculture, the fortunes of independant music, and the sociology of globalisation. What emerges is a complex weave of arguments and ideas that make a start at writing a cultural history of the 1990's.


Infrared-to-visible upconversion fluorescence of Er(3+)/Yb(3+) co-doped lithium-strontium-lead-bismuth (LSPB) glasses for developing potential upconversion lasers has been studied under 975-nm excitation. Based on the results of energy transfer efficiency and upconversion spectra, the optimal Yb(3+)-Er(3+) concentration ratio is found to be 5:1. Intense green and red emissions centered at 525, 546, and 657 nm, corresponding to the transitions 2H_(11/2)-->4I_(15/2), 4S_(3/2)-->4I_(15/2), and 4F_(9/2)-->4I_(15/2), respectively, were observed. The quadratic dependence of the 525-, 546-, and 657-nm emissions on excitation power indicates that a two-photon absorption process occurs under 975-nm excitation. The high-populated 4I_(11/2) level is supposed to serve as the intermediate state responsible for the upconversion processes. The intense upconversion luminescence of Er(3+)/Yb(3+) co-doped LSPB glasses may be a potentially useful material for developing upconversion optical devices.


When using normalized dispersion method for the dispersion design of photonic crystal fibers (PCFs), it is vital that the group velocity dispersion of PCF can be seen as the sum of geometrical dispersion and material dispersion. However, the error induced by this way of calculation will deteriorate the final results. Taking 5 ps/(km·nm) and 5% as absolute error and relative error limits, respectively, the structure parameter boundaries of PCFs about when separating total dispersion into geometrical and material components is valid are provided for wavelength shorter than 1700 nm. By using these two criteria together, it is adequate to evaluate the simulated dispersion of PCFs when normalized dispersion method is employed.


The COVID-19 crisis is having strong impacts on the Egyptian economy, but these impacts differ strongly across sectors.1 Based on scenarios run using a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) multiplier model of Egypt's economy, COVID-19 is estimated to have resulted in an 8.6 percent decline in Egypt's GDP during the 4th quarter of FY 2019/20 (April to June). The services sector was hit hardest, falling by 10.9 percent, followed by industry, which contracted by 8.3 percent. Agriculture was the most resilient sector, although there are large differences in the relative impact of COVID across agricultural subsectors.


The technique of single crystal synchrotron X-ray diffraction is applied in the study of solid state proton transfer processes in hydrogen bonded molecular complexes. Proton transfer processes are of interest where they are responsible for a number of physical and chemical properties within solid state functional materials; their study gives insight into the occurrence of such properties and where they may be targeted and tuned in future materials. The synchrotron X-ray diffraction technique has been trialled with respect to the potential it offers for high throughput capability for studying proton transfer processes as a function of an external stimulus or across a number of molecular systems. Chapter 1 contains a review of the literature of the hydrogen bond, including its role in crystal engineering and proton transfer effects. In Chapter 2, the theory behind the analytical techniques used in the study of hydrogen bonded molecular complexes, in which crystallographic methods are fundamental, are described. In Chapter 3 the research project aims and objectives are presented; these objectives are targeted at the use of single crystal synchrotron X-ray diffraction in the study and rationalisation of solid state proton transfer processes. In Chapter 4, the experimental methods implemented in this research project to achieve these research goals are reported. Chapter 5 is the first of the result chapters and applies the synchrotron single crystal X-ray diffraction technique in the study of variable temperature proton disorder in centrosymmetric hydrogen bonded carboxylic acid dimers. Chapter 6 focuses on the design of proton transfer systems implementing a number of crystal engineering strategies in the design of short strong hydrogen bonds (SSHBs) for potential proton migration studies. Chapter 7 applies a combination of diffraction methods (synchrotron and laboratory X-ray diffraction) and refinement strategies in the study of temperature dependent proton migration across SSHBs, allowing the potential of these methods in the study of proton migration to be assessed. Chapter 8 is the final application of the synchrotron technique in studies of proton transfer behaviour investigating static proton transfer behaviour in molecular complexes of the proton sponge 1,8-bis(dimethylamino)naphthalene with organic acids. The urea-acid inclusion materials presented in Chapter 9 additionally allow the investigation of the hydrogen bond as a crystal engineering tool in the design of hydrogen bonded solvent-inclusion networks. In the last chapter, Chapter 10, conclusions from the findings in Chapters 5 to 9 are pulled together and patterns explored. Drawing on these overall findings, some suggestions for future work are also made.


The aim of the present study was to determine the frequency of skin neoplasms in dogs in the Lima Metropolitan area, based on a retrospective analysis of the diagnostic work carried out in the Laboratory of Veterinary Pathology of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima, Peru. Histopathological reports of canine neoplasms from January 2, 1999 until December 21, 2012 were reviewed (n=789). Malignant neoplasms represented 62.5% of the total skin neoplasms. Among the malign and benign epithelial neoplasms, the squamous cell carcinoma (50.0%, 72/147) and papilloma (26.8%, 33/123) were the most frequent respectively. In the case of malignant and benign mesenchymal neoplasms, mastocytoma (23.7%, 70/295) and cutaneous extramedullary plasmacytoma (39.5%, 68/172) were the most prevalent, respectively.


This thesis presents improved area and capital cost targets for synthesis of heat exchanger networks (HEN) for fixed operating conditions, and a new resilience target for synthesis of HENs for changing, uncertain operating conditions. In addition, methods are presented to predict, before synthesis, the trade-off between cost and resilience.

A pair of "transshipment" nonlinear programs (NLP) is formulated to calculate the area and capital cost targets for HEN synthesis with unequal heat transfer coefficients and different capital cost laws (for different materials of construction, pressure ratings, etc.) when there are constraints on the number of matches, forbidden matches, and required matches with specified areas (for revamp synthesis). With these NLPs, the trade-off between area and number of units can be evaluated before synthesis. In addition to the targets themselves, solution of the NLPs yields "ideal" temperature profiles (much like the composite curves) for a HEN achieving the targets, and a selection of stream matches and their heat loads which provide an excellent starting point for synthesis of HENs achieving (within a few percent) the area and capital cost targets.

For changing or uncertain operating conditions, a Class 1 resilience target is presented which predicts, given the nominal operating conditions, the largest uncertainty range for which a "practical" HEN (with few more units and stream splits than that required for nominal conditions) can be synthesized. This resilience target also predicts whether trade-offs (in utilities, number of units, or size of uncertainty range) must be made to achieve resilience, and the operating condition and constraint most likely to limit resilience.

A nonlinear program is formulated to calculate the Class 1 HEN resilience target. Trade-offs with minimum approach temperature, utility consumption, and nominal network area are presented. The use of the Class 1 resilience target as a synthesis tool is discussed.

Finally, a simple procedure to predict the trade-off between cost and resilience is introduced so that a process engineer can design for an economically "optimal" amount of resilience.


The ever-increasing need for displaying in-vehicle visual information in a non-distracting way requires a high visual performance of automotive displays. For their procurement, deep technical and supply-chain knowledge is required. Therefore, based on our comparisons of in-vehicle and laboratory visual-performance measurements, we propose a certification system for automotive display panels.


Critically-ill patients may have their abdomens opened as a result of primary pathology (damage-control laparotomy in trauma, soiled peritoneum from perforated hollow viscus, necrotizing pancreatitis), or as treatment for abdominal compartment syndrome (defined as new organ dysfunction associated with intra-abdominal hypertension). The incidence and implications of intra-abdominal hypertension and abdominal compartment syndrome (ACS) in particular, are currently debated. Intra-abdominal hypertension (IAH) is defined as a sustained intra-abdominal pressure ≥ 12 mmHg. Grading is possible; Grade I = IAP 12 to 15 mmHg, Grade II = IAP 16 to 20 mmHg, Grade III = IAP 21 to 25 mmHg, Grade IV = IAP >25 mmHg. Management principles include reduction of intra-abdominal gas (NGT and flatus) and intra-abdominal fluid (the latter may be interstitial or intra-peritoneal), and ensuring the abdominal wall is as compliant as possible. Definitive management is to open the abdomen however, the benefits and use of the open abdomen (OA) approach are unclear. The rates of OA appear to be reducing worldwide. The reduction in the incidence of ACS requiring laparostomy may be related to global changes in resuscitation targets1, rather than changes in surgical techniques. In particular, the notion of 'fluid de-resuscitation' may be implicated in improved outcomes. The decision to leave the abdomen open after emergent laparotomy seems to be dependent on the surgical specialty of the operating surgeon, and is a common approach applied in victims of blunt abdominal trauma2. Complications of the open abdomen relate mainly to nutritional status and long-term abdominal complications. The most feared abdominal complication relates to the inability to close the abdominal fascia, with associated increases in mortality, fistula formation, and ventral hernias. Current critical care focus is on the prevention of the open abdomen. For intra-abdominal hypertension and acute compartment syndrome, medical management aimed at reduction of abdominal wall pressure and evacuation of intra-abdominal contents (including fluid) are cornerstone strategies. The use of neuromuscular blocking agents is controversial; short-term benefit may be outweighed by long-term complications. For the de novo open abdomen, current research suggests a possible role for more aggressive early closure (primary or before day 5, latest day 8). Further research is required to confirm whether primary closure is safe. Temporary closure techniques using a combination of negative abdominal wall pressure in combination with partial mesh reduction seems to be helpful in increasing successful abdominal closure rates3. Aggressive infection control and nutritional support after 72 hours is key. Common to both scenarios is the need for careful, judicious fluid management; organ perfusion must be optimized, but not at the expense of massive bowel and abdominal wall edema. The latter complicates healing and closure4. A final question is whether extubating patients with an open abdomen is safe and feasible. The literature provides a resounding yes to this issue5.


Two diverse manufacturing techniques for building 3-D integrated systems are vertical integration with Through-Silicon-Vias (TSVs), also referred as 3-D TSV integration, and 3D monolithic integration. In this paper, we present a hybrid integration scheme that combines these two approaches, taking into account their existing technology limits, into a disruptive paradigm called 3.5-D integration. Our novel integration supports circuit-partitioning both at the gate and block level with unprecedented benefits in cost. To demonstrate the effectiveness of 3.5-D integration, we chose as case study a 288-core MPSoC and we made hypothesis on the manufacturing and test cost. We argue a potential 20% decrease in the manufacturing cost and 30% decrease in the test cost when compared to 3-D TSV integration. In order to study the performance improvement of the MPSoC, we benchmarked various blocks of the core and the on-chip interconnection network, connecting all the cores. Our study shows large improvement in performance of the core (average of 11.5%) and latency (average of 24%) of the Network-on-Chip (NoC) for the 3.5-D integration when compared to the corresponding 3-D TSV implementation.


Most marketers think they know how their advertising affects consumer behavior and drives revenue. They correlate sales data with a few dozen discrete variables, and they rely on consumer surveys, focus groups, media-mix models, and online last-click attribution. But to treat advertising touch points as if each works in isolation is to misrepresent the way today's complex combination of marketing efforts influences purchasing outcomes. MarketShare CEO Wes Nichols explains how many big companies are now deploying analytics 2.0, a set of capabilities that can chew through terabytes of data and hundreds of variables in real time to accurately reveal how advertising touch points interact dynamically. The results: 10% to 30% improvements in marketing performance. Firms of various sizes can make the shift to analytics 2.0 by engaging in three broad activities: Attribution: quantifying the contribution of each element of advertising Optimization: using predictive- analytics tools to run scenarios for business planning Allocation: redistributing resources across marketing activities in real time Nichols argues that implementing analytics 2.0 means building the required infrastructure and entwining it in organizational culture, strategy development, and operations. Any company can begin that journey; businesses that don't will be overtaken by those that do. HBR Reprint R13O3C INSETS: Idea in Brief;Get Out of Your Swim Lanes;How One Company Attributed, Optimized, and Allocated;How Ads Interact to Boost Sales.


In our target article, we discussed the standards of evidence that could be used to identify adaptations, and argued that building an empirical case that certain features of a trait are best explained by exaptation, spandrel, or constraint requires the consideration, testing, and rejection of adaptationist hypotheses. We are grateful to the 31 commentators for their thoughtful insights. They raised important issues, including the meaning of "exaptation"; whether Gould and Lewontin's critique of adaptationism was primarily epistemological or ontological; the necessity, sufficiency, or utility of design evidence, phylogenetic analyses, homology, and molecular genetics in distinguishing exaptations from adaptations; whether adaptationists accept adaptationist hypotheses too quickly; and the real utility of adaptationism to human behavioral science. We organize our response along the major points of the target article, in some situations defending our original claims and in others modifying them. While debate on these issues will undoubtedly continue, we are cautiously optimistic that the main points of the target article (as modified by our response) will help move the debate in a positive direction.


We propose and experimentally demonstrate a digital holographic camera which can be attached to the camera port of a conventional microscope for obtaining digital holograms in a self-reference configuration, under short coherence illumination and in a single shot. A thick holographic grating filters the beam containing the sample information in two dimensions through diffraction. The filtered beam creates the reference arm of the interferometer. The spatial filtering method, based on the high angular selectivity of the thick grating, reduces the alignment sensitivity to angular displacements compared with pinhole based Fourier filtering. The addition of a thin holographic grating alters the coherence plane tilt introduced by the thick grating so as to create high-visibility interference over the entire field of view. The acquired full-field off-axis holograms are processed to retrieve the amplitude and phase information of the sample. The system produces phase images of cheek cells qualitatively similar to phase images extracted with a standard commercial DHM.


Benchmarking investment performance is a critical tool for managers, plan sponsors, trustees, and consultants to measure both the skill and the risk taken by an active approach. Plan sponsors and others can effectively measure the risk a manager assumes in deviating from traditional passive indexes. Yet, the evolution of directionally long strategies has confused some in the investment community into perceiving these strategies to be more exotic than they are. Specifically, the shorting component of 1X0/X0 strategies has led some to believe—incorrectly—that the directionally long approach is akin to an alternative strategy. By this flawed reasoning, these managers should be treated and measured differently than traditional long-only managers. We wholeheartedly disagree.


The following research was carried out to explore the transitional experiences of those who were graduating from university into their next step. The current research reviews previous transitional literature – from early educational transitions, to the transition to retirement – but focuses the analysis on the transition out of university. The development of the Model of Transition Success in the current study enables the realisation that previous transition successes serve as a useless guide for the transition out of university for most graduates. This is because the progression into the next step is not as simple as succeeding at their current level of education to guarantee progression into a higher level of study. Findings show how graduates making this transition face the challenges of transitioning into adulthood, comparisons between peers, and unmet expectations. The analysis explores why this may be the case. The analysis also explores ways in which graduates facilitated their transition. Facing the transition with a perception of ease (developed through their transitional history) these graduates are often facing the transition unprepared. Implications for future research is discussed, as well as practical implications that can help both the universities and the students themselves, better prepare their students/ themselves to make the transition.


This is an archived post from the BU Libraries' Uncommon Discussion blog. The blog itself can be found at .


This paper describes in detail the dense matcher developed since years by Vexcel Imaging in Graz for Microsoft's Bing Maps project. This dense matcher was exclusively developed for and used by Microsoft for the production of the 3D city models of Virtual Earth. It will now be made available to the public with the UltraMap software release mid-2012. That represents a revolutionary step in digital photogrammetry. The dense matcher generates digital surface models (DSM) and digital terrain models (DTM) automatically out of a set of overlapping UltraCam images. The models have an outstanding point density of several hundred points per square meter and sub-pixel accuracy and are generated automatically. The dense matcher consists of two steps. The first step rectifies overlapping image areas to speed up the dense image matching process. This rectification step ensures a very efficient processing and detects occluded areas by applying a back-matching step. In this dense image matching process a cost function consisting of a matching score as well as a smoothness term is minimized. In the second step the resulting range image patches are fused into a DSM by optimizing a global cost function. The whole process is optimized for multi-core CPUs and optionally uses GPUs if available. UltraMap 3.0 features also an additional step which is presented in this paper, a complete automated true-ortho and ortho workflow. For this, the UltraCam images are combined with the DSM or DTM in an automated rectification step and that results in high quality true-ortho or ortho images as a result of a highly automated workflow. The paper presents the new workflow and first results.


In the present study we have made observations of eye closure duration of Common Eider Somateria mollissima in the field, to determine the amount of time devoted to sleep during the incubation period, both in breeding and non-breeding females. Breeding females started to incubate with a higher level of vigilance than non-breeding females, and increased progressively the duration of sleep over the course of incubation. At the end of the incubation period, breeding females reached a sleep time comparable to that of the non-breeding females . The data are in accordance with the hypothesis that sleep time could be modified in relation to the deterioration of body condition . Accordingly, we suggest that sleep might play a key role in saving energy when the birds experience a prolonged negative energy balance . Consequently, since female eiders can be threatened by terrestrial predators during incubation, they would therefore have to found a compromis e ---between energy conservation while sleeping and maintenance of a threshold vigilance. Incubating female eiders could thus face conflicting priorities y í , during incubation : that is sleeping to save energy and wakefulness for predator detection


Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) consist in the application of electrical current of small intensity through the scalp, able to modulate perceptual and motor learning, probably by changing brain excitability. We investigated the effects of these transcranial electrical stimulation techniques in the early and later stages of visuomotor learning, as well as associated brain activity changes using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We applied anodal and cathodal tDCS, low-frequency and high-frequency tRNS (lf-tRNS, 0.1–100 Hz; hf-tRNS 101–640 Hz, respectively) and sham stimulation over the primary motor cortex (M1) during the first 10 minutes of a visuomotor learning paradigm and measured performance changes for 20 minutes after stimulation ceased. Functional imaging scans were acquired throughout the whole experiment. Cathodal tDCS and hf-tRNS showed a tendency to improve and lf-tRNS to hinder early learning during stimulation, an effect that remained for 20 minutes after cessation of stimulation in the late learning phase. Motor learning-related activity decreased in several regions as reported previously, however, there was no significant modulation of brain activity by tDCS. In opposition to this, hf-tRNS was associated with reduced motor task-related-activity bilaterally in the frontal cortex and precuneous, probably due to interaction with ongoing neuronal oscillations. This result highlights the potential of lf-tRNS and hf-tRNS to differentially modulate visuomotor learning and advances our knowledge on neuroplasticity induction approaches combined with functional imaging methods.


The elaborate design of folded finite-impulse response (FIR) filters based on pipelined multiplier arrays is presented in this paper. The design is considered at the bit-level and the internal delays of the pipelined multiplier array are fully exploited in order to reduce hardware complexity. Both direct and transposed FIR filter forms are considered. The carry-save and the carry-propagate multiplier arrays are studied for the filter implementations. Partially folded architectures are also proposed which are implemented by cascading a number of folded FIR filters. The proposed schemes are compared as to the aspect of hardware complexity with a straightforward implementation of a folded FIR filter based on the pipelined Wallace Tree multiplier. The comparison reveals that the proposed schemes require 20%-30% less hardware. Finally, efficient implementation of partially folded FIR filter circuits is presented when constraints in area, power consumption and clock frequency are given.


A common design for cooling the combustor liner of gas turbines is a double wall composed of impingement jets that feed effusion cooling holes. An important cooling mechanism associated with the effusion hole is the convective cooling provided to the liner wall, which is in contact with the hot main gas flowing through the combustor. While the combination of impingement jets and effusion holes has been studied earlier, mostly in terms of cooling effectiveness, investigators have not fully evaluated the effect the impingement jet has on the local internal convection within the effusion hole. This study evaluates the detailed effects of the impingement geometry on the local convective heat transfer coefficients within the effusion hole, which provides insights as to the design decisions for cooling combustor liners. Using a scaled-up, 3D-printed effusion hole with a constant heat flux boundary condition, local convective heat transfer coefficients were measured for a range of impingement geometries and positions relative to the effusion holes. Results showed a strong influence on the convective heat transfer resulting from the placement of the impingement hole relative to the effusion hole. In particular, the results showed a strong sensitivity to the circumferential and radial placement of the impingement jet with little sensitivity to the jet-to-effusion distance.


Recommender systems are becoming increasingly important to individual users and businesses for providing personalized recommendations. However, while the majority of algorithms proposed in recommender systems literature have focused on improving recommendation accuracy (as exemplified by the recent Netflix Prize competition), other important aspects of recommendation quality, such as the diversity of recommendations, have often been overlooked. In this paper, we introduce and explore a number of item ranking techniques that can generate substantially more diverse recommendations across all users while maintaining comparable levels of recommendation accuracy. Comprehensive empirical evaluation consistently shows the diversity gains of the proposed techniques using several real-world rating datasets and different rating prediction algorithms. Keywords— Recommender systems, recommendation diversity, ranking functions, evaluation of recommender systems.


The Internet and finance are accelerating into integration in the 21 Century. Internet Finance was firstly proposed by Ma Weihua, the former president of China Merchants Bank in July 2012. On the basis of 74 latest research literatures selected from CSSCI Journals, Chinese Core Journals, authoritative magazines and related newspapers, this paper summarizes the current domestic research progress and trend about Internet Finance according to three dimensions, such as the sources of journals, research subjects and research contents. This research shows that the current domestic researches are not only shallow and superficial, but also lack the theoretical analyses and model applications; and the wealth-based and bank-based Internet Finance will be the research focus in the future.


This research investigates the relationship between guanxi and Corporate Community Involvement (CCI) in the Chinese business environment. The thesis provides valuable insights into the motivation and management of CCI in China where the institutional and cultural context is radically different from the Western contexts. This thesis also places CCI in the context of guanxi and thus bridges the literatures on CCI and guanxi. Strategic motivation and management of CCI has been studied extensively in the context of Western countries. However, the extant literature offers limited insights into the motivation and management of CCI in the Chinese business environment. The Chinese business environment is characterised by a comparatively poor legal system and weak property rights. In such an environment guanxi – a system of personal connections that carry long-term social obligations – are held to play a significant role in business relationships in China. Earlier studies have found that guanxi is able to influence a variety of corporate behaviours. Nevertheless, no attempt has been made to investigate how CCI may have been influenced by guanxi in China. This research develops a conceptual model and six propositions, which explain how CCI is strategically tailored to initiate guanxi, and furthermore, facilitate inter-organisational relationship development through such guanxi in China. Based on an empirical case analysis of 148 CCI projects from three types of company; foreign, state-owned, and private, this research explores the relationship between CCI and guanxi and tests the conceptual model and propositions. The empirical data was collected deploying face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with 65 companies (30 foreign companies, 9 state-owned companies, and 26 private companies) in China. The findings indicate that foreign companies' and private companies' CCI are motivated by guanxi development. Their CCI behaviours are strategically tailored to initiate guanxi with key stakeholders, and in particular with stakeholders who possess strong governmental backgrounds; and Chinese state-owned companies' CCI behaviours are subject to little influence of guanxi development. While foreign companies used guanxi to facilitate their inter-organisational relationship development, private companies used guanxi to obtain formal institutional supports. From the findings, the conclusion is drawn that guanxi plays a significant role in motivating CCI engagement and shaping CCI behaviours in China, and, through such guanxi, CCI can be employed to facilitate inter-organisational relationship building and obtain formal institutional support.


Language endangerment is a global tragedy that has prompted a surge in research and advocacy on behalf of those communities whose languages have been diagnosed as endangered. Indigenous languages in the Americas and Australia are the most at risk of becoming extinct by the end of this century. Graded scales from "safe" to "extinct" present diagnostic frames of reference that influence the kinds of approaches toward documentation and revitalization that community activists/advocates and language experts develop and initiate. Those languages deemed "extinct" and/or "severely endangered" are hampered by the prevailing metaphors that unduly constrain possible actions for language vitality. This paper offers a re-conceptualization of the metaphors regarding language endangerment away from "death" and "extinct" to "sleeping" and from documentation toward "emergent vitalities". This is especially critical for indigenous communities living in their ancestral homelands where remembering ancestral voices plays a significant role in possible futures for indigenous languages.


Introduction Corresponding to the process of globalization, the so-called information capitalism is also developed, initiating new forms of social divide and class polarizations (Castells, 1996). This type of divide is nowadays called digital divide. This complex term implies different types of polarizations. On one side, that is polarization between highly developed, usually wealthy countries and regions that are connected to a global computer network and poorly developed and very often poor parts of the world, that are due to their elementary problems still far away from that kind of connection. That is also a kind of polarization, which is monitored within a given society on different levels: between highly educated elite and low educated parts of population, gender polarization, polarization of the young regarding to the older population, as well as the polarization of the rich at one side and the poor at the other. These polarizations are monitored and analyzed by setting and comparing the level of ICT accessibility, the level of ICT use, the level of ICT literacy etc. in different social groups or in different countries and regions. Studying and measuring of digital divide between countries and regions is significant from the aspect of discovering the capacity of one nation to participate in the global information society. When digital divide is monitored within one country, it is possible to affect the design and the change of the current developing strategies, by measuring the gap between different socio-economic groups in the context of their potentials to participate in ICT application. The precise indicators and appropriate measures of this complex social phenomenon enable quantitative expression of its movement in time or space. Using them, the preconditions for its regular monitoring and affecting its further course are provided. The paper offers suggestion of one methodology, by which the social polarization on population, induced by different opportunities of social groups to participate in transition towards information society, is quantitatively expressed. Digital Divide: The Meaning, Types, and Measurement The term digital divide denotes the gap between individuals, households, enterprises or geographical regions that are on different levels of socio-economic development, which is monitored through their possibilities for the access to ICT, as well as their use of Internet in private, social and business activities (OECD, 2001). The achievement of "information society for all" presents one of political priorities of the European Union, which is emphasized in the European Union project, with the same name (European Commission, 2000, 2002). This political priority determines setting clear goal of minimizing all forms of digital divide. As opposed to digital divide, the terms participation and inclusion are introduced. In the working documents of European Union bodies these terms are used when defining goals such as designing rightful society, with such socio-economic environment in which all citizens, or at least the majority, will be able to enjoy the advantages of information society (European Commission, 2001). Digital divide presents a complex, multidimensional social phenomenon that is noticed at different levels of monitoring and that causes many consequences on society (Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, 2005). Its effect is seen in international context, when it is monitored and measured among different countries, as well as in national framework, within a particular country. It is noticed through differences concerning availability of ICT infrastructure, ways of its use and possibility of enjoying the advantages that ICT use provides. Digital divide usually refers to population domain. However, it is also possible to measure and express digital divide among business entities, applying the appropriately defined criteria and measuring models. …


Weather risk perception research lacks multihazard and transcultural datasets. This hypothesis-generating study used a cognitive behavioral approach and Brunswik's lens model for subjective risk parameters across eight countries. In Germany, Poland, Israel, the United States, Brazil, India, Malaysia, and Australia, 812 field interviews took place with a uniform set of 37 questions about weather interest, media access, elementary meteorological knowledge, weather fear, preparedness, loss due to weather, and sociodemography. The local randomized quota samples were strictly tested for sample errors; however, they cannot be considered representative for individual countries due to sample size and methodology. Highly rated subjective risks included flood, heat, tornado, and lightning. Weather fear was most prominent in the Malaysian sample and lowest in the German.
 Subjective elements were further explored with bivariate correlations and a multivariate regression analysis. Sociodemography correlated with psychological variables like knowledge, interest, and fear. Fear was related with subjective risk; less educated and informed people were more fearful. A linear regression analysis identified interest, gender, housing type, education, loss due to weather, and local weather access as the significant predictors for preparedness. The level of preparedness was highest in the United States and Australia and lowest in the Malaysian and Brazilian samples. A lack of meteorological training and infrequent loss experiences make media communication important and emphasize the value of repetition for basic information. Elements of this survey can serve to monitor weather-related psychological orientations of vulnerable population groups. Finally, this survey provides a template with which larger representative transcultural multihazard perception studies can be pursued.


"The largest Ebola outbreak to date—first detected in December 2013 and still ongoing as of April 2015—has cast new light on the shortfalls of international public health systems.1 As in previous health crises, scrutiny has reemerged over the pharmaceutical industry's ability and willingness to innovate new medicines for underserved disease areas. The public debate has intensified following revelations that promising drug candidates to treat Ebola had gone undeveloped despite compelling preclinical results.2 This lack of development is especially troubling because it occurred after a recently implemented U.S. incentive scheme—the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) tropical disease priority review voucher program—designed to counteract exactly this problem. Taking Ebola as a case in point, it is useful to examine the short history and ongoing refinement of this voucher program, since it represents one of the most significant legislative efforts to systematically address the relative absence of com- mercial rewards for drugs targeting tropical diseases. This analysis evaluates the voucher program's effectiveness for both stimulating private sector innovation and achieving positive health impacts among populations most severely burdened by tropical diseases. It then proposes specific recommendations for how law- makers can improve the program's legislation to better achieve these objectives. "


The chemical characteristics of formaldehyde make it widely used and important in the global economy. It has applications in the health area and in various industrial sectors. However, formaldehyde is considered toxic substance and is classifed as a persistent organic pollutant. Direct and prolonged contact with formaldehyde can cause serious damage to the body and may even lead to death. It is classifed by several agencies as a human carcinogen and may exhibit mutagenic/teratogenic efects and/or damage the endocrine system. Various matrices have been found to contain formaldehyde at concentrations higher than those per‐ mited by global health regulatory agencies. To this end, mass spectrometry can provide a very useful tool, enabling the identifcation and quantifcation of formaldehyde. Although various analytical techniques can be used for the determination and quantifcation of volatile organic compounds, chromatography is one of the most widely used methods due to its precision. Coupled to a detection system such as mass spectrometry, it can be employed for the determination of compounds potentially toxic to humans, including formaldehyde. The purpose of this chapter is to summarize some recent and important studies concerning the quantifcation of formaldehyde using mass spectrometry as a powerful analytical tool.


Small-scale systems and integrated concepts are currently being explored by researchers to promote widespread application of solar cooling technologies in buildings. Chapter 7 presented a qualitative evaluation of these technologies in terms of their potential for façade integration. Moreover, this chapter expands the assessment of application possibilities by exploring the feasibility of solar cooling integrated façades, as decentralised self-sufficient cooling modules, on different warm climate contexts. The climate feasibility of solar electric and solar thermal concepts is evaluated based on solar availability and local cooling demands to be met by current technical possibilities.

Numerical calculations are employed for the evaluation, considering statistical climate data; cooling demands per orientation from scenarios simulated in Chapter 6; and state-of-the-art efficiency values as reference for current performance limits of solar cooling technologies, from Chapter 7. Main results show that in general, warm-dry climates and east/west orientations are more suited for solar cooling façade applications. Results from the base scenario show promising potential for solar thermal technologies, reaching a theoretical solar fraction of 100% in several cases. Application possibilities expand when higher solar array area and lower tilt angle on panels are considered, but these imply aesthetical and constructional constraints for façade design. Finally, recommendations are drafted considering prospects for the exploration of suitable technologies for each location, and façade design considerations for the optimisation of the solar input per orientation.


Abstract Agates with spectacular micro-structural features were found in volcanic rocks at several occurrences in the Saar-Nahe region (Germany). These agates include spirals of several tens up to several hundreds of μm in size within zones lacking the characteristic structural agate banding. A combined mineralogical study by polarising microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, cathodoluminescence microscopy and spectroscopy, and electron backscatter diffraction provided evidence that the spirals consist of well-ordered trigonal α-quartz, whereas the surrounding matrix is composed of strongly disordered or amorphous SiO2 phases. The quartz micro-crystals show a systematic rotation of the crystal orientation perpendicular to the direction of the spiral loops indicating helical growth. It is assumed that the spiral growth is initiated by dislocations with a screw component. The lacking symmetry of the strongly disordered or amorphous matrix initiated a curved development by a screw dislocation in a system far from equilibrium. The atoms/molecules are packed into spiral layers, which is energetically favoured in comparison with the incorporation into plane crystal faces. Such self-organisation growth and polymerisation initiated by a screw dislocation can produce variable spiral morphologies sometimes resembling living forms.


Despite the current easing in demand for increased oil production linked to the global downturn in crude prices, energy demand continuously increases and the long-term demand will require maximizing the productivity of reservoirs and a search into the exploitation of new resources in increasingly challenging environments. In this study, we present the results from the monitoring of the very first multistage stimulation experiment at a shale gas reservoir in Saudi Arabia, presenting an analysis of the microseismicity induced during the treatment. Our aim was to analyse microseismic events to better understand fracture growth and the role of pre-existing fractures in these reservoirs. Microseismic (MS) event monitoring is used to track the creation of fractures during and after the stimulation, and therefore to evaluate the effect of the reservoir stimulation. The monitoring includes a downhole array of 12 3C-sensors that were deployed in a vertical well with a 30.5 m level spacing. A total of 415 MS events were located and analysed, with the results outlining induced fractures extending consistently with an average azimuth of N335° E, normal to the horizontal section of the treatment well. This implies that there are no changes in the local stress direction along the treatment well either in situ or induced along the treatment. There are significant changes in total length and aspect ratio (length/width) of the fractures induced in the different stages. These variations could be attributed to in situ fracturing, local rock heterogeneity or the influence of the treatment parameters. In general, early and late stages of stimulation show the longest fracture networks, with events induced further away from the initiation point. We found no immediate relationship between treatment parameters (peak pressure and pumping rates) and fracture extension. Sensitivity analysis using Monte Carlo simulation methods shows a higher location uncertainty for events located at the early stages, thus limiting the interpretation from monitored seismicity in the early stages. An analysis of magnitude distribution with distance shows a decrease in sensitivity of one degree of magnitude for every 375 m, and a maximum viewing distance of approximately 700 m for the current set-up. The low number of located events does not provide a complete enough dataset for a robust analysis of changes in b-value (slope in linear part of magnitude distribution) during the treatment: however, magnitude distributions, corrected for array sensitivity, provide a useful variable for the validation of geomechanical models currently being developed for the reservoir.


Real world applications such as hands-free dialling in cars may have to perform recognition of spoken digits in potentially very noisy environments. Existing state-of-the-art solutions to this problem use feature-based Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), with a preprocessing stage to clean the noisy signal. However, the effect that the noise has on the induced HMM features is difficult to model exactly and limits the performance of the HMM system. An alternative to feature-based HMMs is to model the clean speech waveform directly, which has the potential advantage that including an explicit model of additive noise is straightforward. One of the most simple model of the clean speech waveform is the autoregressive (AR) process. Being too simple to cope with the nonlinearity of the speech signal, the AR process is generally embedded into a more elaborate model, such as the Switching Autoregressive HMM (SAR-HMM). In this thesis, we extend the SAR-HMM to jointly model the clean speech waveform and additive Gaussian white noise. This is achieved by using a Switching Linear Dynamical System (SLDS) whose internal dynamics is autoregressive. On an isolated digit recognition task where utterances have been corrupted by additive Gaussian white noise, the proposed SLDS outperforms a state-of-the-art HMM system. For more natural noise sources, at low signal to noise ratios (SNRs), it is also significantly more accurate than a feature-based HMM system. Inferring the clean waveform from the observed noisy signal with a SLDS is formally intractable, resulting in many approximation strategies in the literature. In this thesis, we present the Expectation Correction (EC) approximation. The algorithm has excellent numerical performance compared to a wide range of competing techniques, and provides a stable and accurate linear-time approximation which scales well to long time series such as those found in acoustic modelling. A fundamental issue faced by models based on AR processes is that they are sensitive to variations in the amplitude of the signal. One way to overcome this limitation is to use Gain Adaptation (GA) to adjust the amplitude by maximising the likelihood of the observed signal. However, adjusting model parameters without constraint may lead to overfitting when the models are sufficiently flexible. In this thesis, we propose a statistically principled alternative based on an exact Bayesian procedure in which priors are explicitly defined on the parameters of the underlying AR process. Compared to GA, the Bayesian approach enhances recognition accuracy at high SNRs, but is slightly less accurate at low SNRs.


This article focuses on gradient-based backpropagation algorithms that use either a common adaptive learning rate for all weights or an individual adaptive learning rate for each weight and apply the Goldstein/Armijo line search. The learning-rate adaptation is based on descent techniques and estimates of the local Lipschitz constant that are obtained without additional error function and gradient evaluations. The proposed algorithms improve the backpropagation training in terms of both convergence rate and convergence characteristics, such as stable learning and robustness to oscillations. Simulations are conducted to compare and evaluate the convergence behavior of these gradient-based training algorithms with several popular training methods.


This article offers a comparative lens on intercultural and interreligious encounter in urban contexts in France and the UK, focusing on the commonalities and specificities of different national and municipal contexts. It offers an account of three forms of encounter, based on extensive fieldwork in two neighbourhoods of Paris and London: commercial interdependencies embedded in early phases of immigration; voluntaristic 'interfaith-from-above' policies shaped by state agendas developed since the beginning of the twenty-first century; and still emerging 'interculturalism-from-below' generated by second and third generation children of immigrants, which is marked by nostalgia and selective reading of local heritage. In doing so, it bypasses the sharp disciplinary and methodological divides that separate research on Jewish histories and cultures, Muslim communities, immigrant quarters, and postcolonial/minority ethnic contexts. It aims instead to show how intercultural and interfaith encounters often occur in mundane spaces, and operate through and despite forms of ambivalence, and in this respect offer a context in which to displace the terms of spectacular accounts of racial and civilizational conflict.


Emodin and aloe-emodin are the main bioactive components of anthraquinones found in Chinese herbal medicine, Rhubarb (Rheum palmatum), and aloe-emodin is also abundant in the leaves of aloe vera. Although emodin and aloe-emodin are capable of inhibiting cancer cell proliferation or inducing apoptosis, the recent studies suggest that the molecular targets of these two anthraquinones are different. Emodin has been reported to suppress HER-2-overexpressing breast cancer cells proliferation through decreasing HER-2 tyrosine kinase activity. Besides, emodin affected androgen receptor (AR) transcriptional activity by preventing AR nuclear translocation and promoted AR degradation. Aloe-emodin has been found the antiproliferative effects on breast cancer cells which is through estrogen receptor (ER)-modulating ability. Interestingly, emodin and aloe-emodin share similar structure with different functions by hitting different targets. Therefore, the molecular mechanisms of aloe-emodin causing cancer cell death are interesting to explore. Here, three cancer cell lines were used in our experiments: LNCaP, a human prostate cancer cell line with AR expression; two human breast cancer cell lines: MDA-MB-453 with high expressions of HER-2 and AR; MCF-7 with low expressions of HER-2 and AR. In which, MCF-7 cells contain high expression level of ERα. Cells were treated with emodin or aloe-emodin for different time intervals and proliferation was determined. The results indicated that emodin decreased the proliferation of LNCaP and MDA-MB-453 which express high AR protein; however, MCF-7 with low AR protein were relatively insensitive to emodin treatment. Oppositely, aloe-emodin decreased cell proliferation in ER-positive MCF-7 cells but had no effects on LNCaP and MDA-MB-453 cells. Furthermore, the morphology of MCF-7 was dramatically changed after aloe-emodin treatment and cell death was apparently observed. The protein levels of HER-2, phospho-HER-2, and ErbB3 were decreased after aloe- emodin treatment while ERK was unaffected. In addition, the protein levels of ERα were reduced by aloe-emodin in dose-dependent manner; however, AR protein seems unaffected. In conclusion, our findings indicate that aloe-emodin selectively attacks targets in cancer cells and had potentials to treat HER-2/ER-positive breast cancer in the future. Citation Information: Clin Cancer Res 2010;16(14 Suppl):B46.


Peptide-based complex biomacromolecules are now optimally assembled by sequential ligation of unprotected peptide segments. However, this approach is still limited by the laborious chromatographic purification and handling steps needed for multiple successive chemoselective couplings, which leads to loss of material. An efficient alternative is solid phase chemical ligation (SPCL) initially developed for native chemical ligation. We report here an extension of this approach to iterative oxime ligation reactions, and describe a streamlined approach for the modular preparation of oxime-containing polypeptides. In particular, we determined optimal conditions to remove the Aloc group in the presence of aminooxy and oxime ether groups, and we extended the applicability of iterative C-to-N SPCL through simplification of the access to a C-terminally-grafted, unprotected peptide segment, using solid supported chemical transformations only. The high purity of the crude oxime-containing polypeptides highlights the efficiency of our approach.


Periods with high financial distress and uncertainty are characterized by increased co-movement in corporate bond markets. In this paper, we study the dynamic interactions among corporate bond returns in a period from 2004 to 2016 that covers important macroeconomic, financial and political events. In particular, we provide a framework for the evaluation of contagion among corporate bonds in different regions during a period with increased financial turmoil. We measure contagion in terms of dynamic spillovers, which capture the degree of homogeneity in bond returns. Our specification distinguishes two sources of bond risk: the systematic risk and the idiosyncratic risk. To account for a market-level analysis of co-movement, we employ a panel VAR model in which the variables (bond markets) are treated as endogenous. Based on our results, the systematic risk component accounts for a larger portion of variation in bond returns relative to the idiosyncratic component, indicating the existence of homogeneity in global corporate bond markets. The emerging markets are also net receivers of international shocks, whereas innovations in U.S. bond markets contribute importantly to the instability in global bond markets.


ABSTRACT Emissions from traditional cookstoves are a major health concern in developing world households. Improved cookstoves can reduce fuel use and pollutant emissions and here we compare three types of improved cookstoves widely used in Sub-Saharan Africa. These are a raised-bed charcoal stove, a rocket-type stove using wood and straw, and a gasifier stove. Laboratory measurements were made of the main gaseous pollutants, particle size distribution and composition. The genotoxicity of the particles was assessed using a comet assay. The rocket-type stove using dry wood had the highest emission factors for particulate matter and NOX. Emissions of CO and CH4 were a factor of 6–7 higher from the charcoal stove compared with the other stoves tested in this work, and also higher for burning high moisture wood. Fuel properties were critical for emitted particle size, and for the emissions of NOX, black carbon and organic matter.


Tolerance measure is an important part of engineering, however, to date the system of
applying this important technology has been left to the assessment of the engineer using
appropriate guidelines. This work offers a major departure from the trial and error or random
number generation techniques that have been used previously by using a knowledge-based
system to ensure the intelligent optimisation within the manufacturing system. A system to
optimise manufacturing tolerance allocation to a part known as Knowledge-based Automatic
Tolerance Analysis (KATA) has been developed. KATA is a knowledge-based system shell
built within AutoCAD. It has the ability for geometry creation in CAD and the capability to
optimise the tolerance heuristically as an expert system. Besides the worst-case tolerancing
equation to optimise the tolerance allocation, KATA's algorithm is supported by actual
production information such as machine capability, types of cutting tools, materials, process
capabilities etc. KATA's prototype is currently able to analyse a cylindrical shape workpiece
and a simple prismatic part. Analyses of tolerance include dimensional tolerance and
geometrical tolerance. KATA is also able to do angular cuts such as tapers and chamfers. The
investigation has also led to the significant development of the single tolerance reference
technique. This method departs from the common practice of multiple tolerance referencing
technique to optimise tolerance allocation. Utilisation of this new technique has eradicated
the error of tolerance stackup. The retests have been undertaken, two of which are cylindrical
parts meant to test dimensional tolerance and an angular cut. The third is a simple prismatic
part to experiment with the geometrical tolerance analysis.
The ability to optimise tolerance allocation is based on real production data and not imaginary
or random number generation and has improved the accuracy of the expected result after
manufacturing. Any failure caused by machining parameters is cautioned at an early stage
before an actual production run has commenced. Thus, the manufacturer is assured that the
product manufactured will be within the required tolerance limits. Being the central database
for all production capability information enables KATA to opt for several approaches and
techniques of processing. Hence, giving the user flexibility of selecting the process plan best
suited for any required situation.


This thesis investigates the characteristics of the Blazhko effect using data from the SuperWASP archive. The SuperWASP instrument combines wide-field coverage with a short cadence, providing time-series analysis on a range of timescales for a large number of stars. The Blazhko effect is the amplitude and frequency modulation of RR Lyrae variable pulsating stars. Its physical causes are still unexplained by stellar structure and evolution models. The stellar pulsation mechanism and modulation are introduced before comparing the WASP project to other wide-field surveys.

The aim of this research is to identify correlations between the basic pulsation and Blazhko effect characteristics that may provide clues to its origins. To accomplish this, the Blazhko effect is investigated in temporal, frequency and phase spaces.

A catalogue of 4963 RRab class RR Lyrae objects was created through the classification of phase-folded light curves. Blazhko periods were calculated for 18 out of 20 highly modulated objects by phase-folding the amplitude modulation induced upper envelope function of their light curves.

983 Blazhko objects have been identified using coincident low frequency peaks and sidebands, or equidistant sidepeaks, in frequency spectra created using the CLEAN algorithm. Analysis of pulsation and Blazhko attributes within this large sample shows no correlation between them.

140 Blazhko candidates were also identified by short-term periodic trends in their O-C diagrams. This phase domain analysis also led to the identification of 17 candidates for rare binary objects, due to their sinusoidal O-C curves. 73 objects had quadratic O-C curves, suggesting binary candidates with periods longer than the duration of SuperWASP observations.

The classification and investigation of Blazhko effect and binary candidates contained herein provide the opportunity for further study with both existing, and future, ground- and space-based missions such as Gaia, the LSST and PLATO.


Recent publications and news items from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) are listed in this section. Interested readers may obtain copies of MHRA publications by enquiring directly to MHRA. All publications listed are available free of charge and may be downloaded from https://www.gov.uk/government/ organisations/medicines-and-healthcare-products-regulatory-agency or obtained from 0044 (0)20 7084 3272.