Why would anyone want to waste time and not get the most out of a free program that not many students have a chance to be a part of? AVID (Advance Via Individual Determination) helps low socio-economic status students get ready for college. Many students like to take the easy route when it comes to schoolwork, but then we have those students that really want to get the most of high school and continue on to college. Students' wasting their time during AVID period is an important issue, because resources are limited and not everyone has the opportunity to be part of the program. Five AVID students and the AVID coordinator where interviewed about what they though about the program and what should be done to better use their AVID period. The researcher created a brochure that was handed out to students and teachers with ideas on how they can maximize their time during their AVID period. There is always time to get students' input and do what they want to learn about college.


This thesis explores nurses' conceptualisation of dementia and discusses the relationship between these understandings and nursing practice. Using the reflexive sociological approach of French scholar Pierre Bourdieu, the study seeks to advance practice through the enhancement of theoretical understandings. Data were collected in a range of inpatient clinical areas in Scotland using focus groups, individual interviews and observation. A range of nurses contributed, reflecting views and understandings from inpatient areas run by both general medical and mental health services. Nurses were found to conceptualise dementia in four main ways; as a disease, as a memory problem, as confusion and finally as a journey. These four conceptualisations are addressed in turn and the ways in which they inform and relate to practice are discussed. Limitations to practice arising from the nurses conceptualisations are also highlighted. Dominant approaches to care are outlined throughout the thesis, with the medical model, individualised care, person-centred dementia care and palliative care all being discussed in light of the nurses' understandings of dementia. Throughout the thesis the work of Pierre Bourdieu shapes the analysis and presentation of data. Relationships within the social world, structures of society and of inpatient settings along with explicit reflection on the personal experiences and position of the researcher inform the work. Concepts of field, capital and habitus permeate the discussion and help to explore issues and understandings from both practice and theory. While literature on specific approaches to dementia care, treatments and relationships between patients, carers and family members form a substantial and growing body of dementia literature, information about nurses and their understandings of dementia has previously been unexplored. This study demonstrates the range of views held by nurses and the influences of education, structures of the clinical setting and ward culture in shaping those understandings. The importance of nurses' conceptualisations of dementia in shaping their care of patients is demonstrated through the analysis and has the potential to inform and enhance practice development for dementia patients in a variety of inpatient settings.


Interviews with Nomakitha Bavuma and Vuyile Voyiya. Bavuma was a theatre student (full-time) at the Community Arts Project (late 1980s). Voyiya was a visual arts student (full-time) and child arts educator (part-time) at the Community Arts Project (1985-1993) The interviews were conducted by Heidi Bolton and commissioned by Mario Pissarra for Community Arts Project 'Histories of CAP' project.


Recently attention has been directed to Machine to Machine (M2M) wireless communications by a number of stakeholders which include device manufacturers, applications developers and mobile network operators across the globe. As voice revenues for most mobile operators enter a decline due to the new data oriented networks and services being availed into the market, there is growing need to adopt new revenue models through adoption of wireless connectivity in a wide range of devices. With the introduction of these new applications and services, new stakeholders come into play in the M2M communications value chain. A way to market these M2M devices can thus involve creating a platform of services that adds value and functionality to the devices and is a result of a combination of synergies between device manufacturers, application developers and mobile operators. This paper discusses several value chain scenarios which form the M2M ecosystem wherein all stakeholders assume different levels of control over the customer relationship and the assets that make up the value proposition.


As the global communication network matures, the systems and procedures for regulating the growing network and its use are being challenged. The general proliferation of services or the specific demand for electronic transactions require guidance and control which the market alone cannot supply. Meanwhile, traditional regulatory regimes remain far from global or coherent. This article distinguishes between coordination and regulation to clarify areas where government intervention is unnecessary and where indispensable. It explores the current patchwork of regulatory approaches, reviews different regulatory areas and strategies, identifies trends, and highlights problem areas particular to electronic commerce and third party protection.


In Architectures of Knowledge . Ash Amin and Patrick Cohendet argue that the time is right for research to explore the relationship between two other dimensions of knowledge in order to explain the innovative performance of firms: between knowledge that is 'possessed' and knowledge that is 'practised' generally within communities of like-minded employees in a firm. The impetus behind this argument is both conceptual and empirical. Conceptually, there is a need to explore the interaction of knowledge that firms possess in the form of established competences or stored memory, with the knowing that occurs in distributed communities through the conscious and unconscious acts of social interaction. Empirically, the impetus comes from the challenge faced by firms to the hierarchically defined architecture that bring together specialized units of (possessed) knowledge and the distributed and always unstable architecture of knowledge that draws on the continuously changing capacity of interpretation among actors.

In this book, these questions of the dynamics of innovating/learning through practices of knowing, and the management of the interface between transactional and knowledge imperatives, are approached in a cross-disciplinary and empirically grounded manner. The book is the synthesis of an innovative encounter between a socio-spatial theorist and an economist. The book results from the delicate interplay between two very different epistemologies and consequent positions, but which progressively converged towards what is hoped to be a novel vision.

The book begins by explaining why knowledge is becoming more of a core element of the value-generating process in the economy, then juxtaposes the economic and cognitive theorisations of knowledge in firms with pragmatic and socially grounded theorisations and a critical exploration of the neglected dimension of the spatiality of knowledge formation in firms. The book concludes by discussing the corporate governance implications of learning based on competences and communities, and a how national science and technology policies might respond to the idea of learning as a distributed, non-cognitive, practice-based phenomenon.


Photo-curable resins based on multifunctional acrylate monomers are commonly applied as thin films (e.g. protective coatings, printing inks, etc.) and in recent years are also used for the fabrication of bulk objects such as dental fillings and 3D-printed parts. While rapid curing and good spatial resolution are advantages to these systems, brittleness and poor impact resistance due to inhomogeneous polymer architecture and high crosslink density are serious drawbacks. By comparison, epoxy thermoset resins suffered many years ago from similar problems, but since then are found in ever demanding applications thanks to a variety of approaches to increase polymer toughness. Based on these successes, researchers have tried to translate strategies for toughening epoxy resins to photopolymer networks. Therefore, this review surveys relevant scientific papers and patents on the development of crosslinked epoxy-based polymers and also photo-curable polymers based on multifunctional acrylates with improved toughness. Strategies developed to reduce brittleness include working with monomers, which intrinsically give tougher polymers, particulate additives, and alternate forms of polymerization and polymer architecture (e.g., dual-cure networks, interpenetrating networks, thiol–ene chemistry). All of these strategies have advantages and yet application specific rigours must also be considered before and during formulation development.


Retail Industry is taking new shape every now and then as per the trend especially due to informational technologyboom the concept of business, customer, shopping has taken a steep turn in all aspects from sourcing till making the products available in retail outlet reaching till final customer .experiential marketing is one of the happening concept as shoppers at malls always expect new & exciting experience after every attempt of shopping they make. shoppers tend to introspect themselves as what they gained out of every action & step made for shopping from experience point of view as how they felt, realized, experienced, enjoyed, benefited etc after visiting a particular mall. Hence thinking and action is an attempt made by the shopper calculatedly in order to maximize their shopping experience after every next visit. 'thinking and action' are the interrelated factors as they tend to happen simultaneously during the course of shopping products, services, experiencing movie, gaming, dinning, etc. this article spotlight on the side of experiential marketing being one of the strong factor which will impact upon shoppers 'thinking and action' during the course of shopping at malls.


Boron vacancies at the Si( 111):B-root 3 surface are model systems in the comprehension of strongly correlated semiconductor surfaces. By using scanning tunneling spectroscopy, the origin of the single-vacancy electronic structure is addressed. It is shown to originate from the localization of a well-identified dangling-bond surface state with significant B character. The bivacancy defect, which is characterized by energy-split bonding and antibonding states, is interpreted within the textbook diatomic molecule picture. From the hopping parameter, we determine the bandwidth of the surface state from which the impurity state derives and evaluate the strength of many-body effects. Our analysis supports the realization of the Mott-Hubbard insulator state in half-filled dangling-bond surface states on root 3-reconstructed surfaces, as proposed recently for SiC(0001), Sn/Ge(111), and Sn/Si(111). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.87.075427


Even with falling divorce rates, between 30 and 40 percent of new marriages end in divorce. Recent divorcees – especially men but increasingly also women – tend to remarry very quickly. To the extent that marriage provides consumption insurance, and security to undertake costly investments such as raising children, the phenomenon of divorce and rapid remarriage prompts re-examination of the gains to marriage in terms of risk sharing. This paper explores marriage and divorce when individuals can engage in on-the-marriage search. Introducing on-the-marriage search allows us to match the rapid remarriage rates seen in US microdata as well as to explore the connections between infidelity, divorce, and remarriage that have attracted much attention in the sociology literature. In a second-best contracting world, the ability to search on the marriage (OTMS) has ambiguous and potentially important implications for the marriage as a consumption smoothing device and as a platform for making investments in children. We find that allowing for OTMS has variable effects on the first and second moments of consumption for different parts of the population, with women slightly worse off and men slightly better off when OTMS is allowed. Perhaps counterintuitively, OTMS also has a positive effect on fertility because it increases the attractiveness of having children for men in mediocre marriages.


Since 1980 the population of women inmates has increased by more than 200 percent (Gabel & Johnston, 1995). Women inmates currently account for 9 percent of the entire prison population and of this group, 57 percent are women of color. The majority of women are arrested for nonviolent crimes. Typical offenses include fraud, use of illegal drugs, and prostitution (Singer, Bussey, Song, & Lunghofer, 1995). Many women inmates also contend with mental health issues. As many as two-thirds of women inmates require mental health services at or soon after their initial incarceration (James, Gregory, Jones, & Rundell, 1985). One in five women inmates report that they were physically or sexually abused as children (U.S. Department of Justice, 1991). In a recent study of women inmates in New York, 64 percent of the sample fell within the clinical range for mental health problems, 83 percent were in the substance abuse range, and 81 percent had been victimized at some point in their lives (Singer et al., 1995). Twenty-five percent of all women inmates are HIV positive (Stephan & Jankowski, 1991). Despite the mental health problems facing the ever-increasing population of women inmates, only minimal research has been conducted regarding interventions developed and implemented by social workers with women in the prison system (Harris, 1993). This article describes a pilot study of a psychoeducational group conducted with women inmates and the effectiveness of this program. DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM The goal of this psychoeducational group intervention was to reduce perceived stress, anxiety, depression, and trauma experienced by women inmates with the long-term goal of reducing the recidivism rate of women reentering the jail system. To test the effectiveness of this intervention, a pilot study was conducted with women drawn from the population of women incarcerated at a large jail facility in Orange County, Florida. The project included a treatment group and a comparison group. Participants in the project were recruited by announcements of the group in the day areas of the units where the women were allowed to congregate outside their cells. The first 12 women to volunteer were placed in the treatment group and the remaining volunteers were placed in the comparison group. Women in the comparison group were allowed to participate in the second treatment group, which consisted of 10 inmates. Because of transfers or releases, nine of the 22 women in the two treatment groups did not complete the program. In sum, the experimental group comprised 13 women and the comparison group seven women. Because random assignment was not possible as a result of agency constraints, the study used a quasi-experimental, nonequivalent control group design. Ninety-minute group sessions were held three times per week for five weeks for a total of 15 sessions. The groups were conducted by a licensed master's level social worker experienced in group facilitation, with assistance from two second-year clinical MSW students. The authors developed a training manual that included information on the educational and emotional support sections of each group session. The students received training in group processes before the group began. Each group member was contacted by one of the group facilitators who explained the confidential nature of the research as well as the voluntary participation agreement. Each woman who understood and agreed signed an informed consent form. Before the group began, women inmates in both the experimental and comparison groups completed pretest scales that examined depression, anxiety, trauma, and stress. Posttests using the same measures were given at the end of the last group session to the women in experimental group. Comparison group members completed the same scales after the last group session was completed. At the end of the five-week group, the women were given referral sources and encouraged to contact these sources following discharge from jail. …


The aim was to assess the impact of milk somatic cell count (SCC) during the first lactation on the lifetime milk production of cows, and therefore estimate potential savings through heifer mastitis control. Cow level SCC over the first lactation was summarised as SCC between 5 and 30 days in milk (SCC1), and the geometric mean and variance of first lactation SCC. The impact of SCC1 on cumulative milk yield over different time periods was assessed for cows in Irish, English, and Welsh dairy herds. The impact of SCC1 and the geometric mean and variance of first lactation SCC on lifetime milk yield, and the association between SCC1 and disposal risk were assessed for cows in Irish dairy herds. Increase in SCC throughout the first lactation was associated with large reductions in the milk yield of cows, and increased disposal risk. Bayesian micro-simulation was used to demonstrate the impact in different herd scenarios. This was extended to synthesise evidence on potential savings using previous research, to estimate the economic impact of specific interventions to reduce the prevalence of cows with high SCC1. There was considerable variation between herds in the apparent impact of SCC1 on SCC throughout the first lactation, indicating the importance of a herd specific approach to control. 'Cost effectiveness' of interventions to reduce the prevalence of cows with high SCC1, was found to be highly dependent on the willingness of decision makers to pay for control measures. Increase in herd size was associated with increase in cow SCC, highlighting a need for improved management of mastitis when expansion is planned. An important component of this should be through monitoring and control of mastitis in heifers, especially those in spring-calving Irish dairy herds.


This study analyzes the whole-group interaction between preservice teachers (N = 15) and ESL speakers during conversation groups that were organized as part of the requirements of a TESL methods course. Analysis of the teacher-led interactions focused on the occurrence of language production opportunities provided to the ESL speakers as reflected through the amount of talk and questioning styles that occurred in four interactional contexts: communication, content, management and language. The findings indicate that the participants generated less talk than the teachers, management and content segments occurred most often, and referential questions were most frequent during content segments. Implications are discussed in terms of strategies for helping conversation group facilitators create language production opportunities.


A new approach to model media expansion during filter backwash is presented. The proposed approach is based on the assumption that the Ergun equation remains valid after fluidization. Mathematical formulas are derived for predicting expanded porosity for a given backwash velocity or backwash velocity for a given expanded porosity. These formulas can be easily used by the engineer. Values predicted using the proposed approach are in good agreement with experimental measurements.


Diseases of blood vessels (referred in this article as vascular dysfunction) cause more morbidity and mortality, than combined impact of any other major non-communicable disease including cancer. We strongly feel that the development of a therapy system based on the management of disease of the vessel than management of the risk factors will yield better results and provide greater opportunity for individualized therapy. Detection of early vascular changes before clinical manifestations of endothelial dysfunction, hardening of the arteries, increased intima-media thickness, is of great importance for early identification of individuals with increased risk of accelerated atherosclerosis. Currently, the methods available for the detection of vascular dysfunction include ultrasound measurements of carotid artery, and altered flow measurements due to deep vein thrombosis. Metabolic diseases such as hypertension, excess weight, obesity, and diabetes, also induce altered flow and vascular dysfunction. There are several devices available for monitoring hardening of the arteries (endothelial dysfunction). These devices have not been clinically validated for specificity and accuracy. There is a great interest in the clinical use of imaging and photography. Portable cameras have been developed with appropriate software analytics and algorithms for imaging as well as photography. Forus Health of Bengaluru, India, has developed a portable fundus camera, which can acquire, display, store, and transmit images of the posterior and anterior surfaces of human eye. The inventors claim, that this camera with its software applications, can monitor the progress of glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and other disorders of the eye. There is a great need for non-invasive devices that can monitor flow dynamics in large, medium, small arteries, microvessels, and specific regional vascular beds. In this overview, we have discussed the importance of monitoring blood flow velocity, flow patterns, and a novel thermal imaging technology for diagnosis of vascular dysfunction in diabetic patients. We have described the changes in thermal pattern of hands, feet, and face of a low-risk and a moderate risk patient.


Doing the work : Books, films, and other resources to aid your antiracist journey. A reading list compiled in collaboration with the MSMU Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.


Climate change has strong potential to modify the structure and functioning of ecosystems, but experimental field studies into its effects are rare. On rocky shores, grazing limpets strongly affect ecosystem structure and their distribution in NW Europe is changing in response to climate change. Three limpet species co‐occur in SW Britain (Patella vulgata, Patella ulyssiponensis and Patella depressa) on open rock and in pools. Shores in Ireland are similar, but currently lack P. depressa. It is anticipated that P. depressa will expand its range into Ireland as the climate warms, but we currently lack an empirical basis to predict the consequences of this change. Recent studies show that increasing abundance of P. depressa on British shores has been accompanied by a decline of P. vulgata suggesting interspecific competition. In this study, a new experimental framework was used to examine the potential for P. depressa to affect P. vulgata on Irish shores. P. vulgata was experimentally transplanted into enclosures on open rock and in pools in both Ireland and Britain. In pools, treatments also included transplanted P. ulyssiponensis to mimic natural assemblages. Growth and mortality of P. vulgata were measured over 6 months with no differences between Ireland and Britain. In Britain, P. vulgata caged in pools with transplanted P. depressa and P. ulyssiponensis showed reduced growth, compared with when caged in pools with P. ulyssiponensis alone. There was no effect of P. depressa on the growth rate of P. vulgata on open rock. Results indicate that if the range of P. depressa extends into Ireland, it would reduce the growth of P. vulgata where it co‐occurs with P. ulyssiponensis in pools. The framework used here provides a field‐based approach that could be used to examine the impacts of climate‐induced range expansions on the structure and functioning of other ecosystems.


Horizontal inequalities (HIs) are inequalities among groups with common felt cultural identities. These identities follow different lines across societies and across time. They include ethnic, religious, racial, or regional affiliations. HIs are multidimensional, including inequalities in access to political, economic and social resources, as well as in cultural recognition and status. Not only does unequal access to political, economic, and social resources and inequalities of cultural status have a serious negative impact on the welfare of members of poorer groups, but the presence of severe HIs, especially where consistent across dimensions and across salient group identities, has also been shown to increase the likelihood of the emergence of violent conflict in multiethnic societies. In this paper, we analyse and discuss the prevailing HIs in the three West African countries in which CRISE has done research for the past four years: Nigeria, Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire. In addition to discussing the nature and extent of the prevailing HIs, we review a range of country-specific policy recommendations that could contribute to reducing both actual and perceived HIs in the political, economic and cultural status dimensions in each of these countries. Many of the policy suggestions stem from successful experiences in one or other of the countries.


This paper presents the development and implementation of an automatic sustainable assessment prototype using functional databases. For the practical purpose, we use Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) as the exemplar standard to demonstrate the integrative process from building information aggregation to final evaluation. We start with a Building Information model, and use Construction Operations Building Information Exchange (COBie) as a bridge to integrate LEED requirements. At present, the process of sustainable building assessment requires information exchange from various building professionals. However, there is no procedure to manage, or use, information pertaining to sustainability. In our research, we translate rules from LEED into computable formulas and develop a prototype application to produce templates for LEED submission.


Objectives: Intestinal failure (IF) is a common consequence of neonatal small bowel pathology. In our experience, bowel dilatation is often responsible for the IF state in patients who fail to adapt despite adequate residual bowel length. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of surgery to reduce bowel dilatation, and thus favour PN independence, for these children. Methods: Data were collected prospectively for all of the patients referred to our unit for a 7-year period (2004–2011). Eight patients (2 congenital atresia, 2 gastroschisis with atresia, 1 simple gastroschisis, 3 necrotising enterocolitis) with gut dilatation who failed adaptation despite a bowel length >40 cm were identified. Preoperatively, all patients were totally dependent on parenteral nutrition (PN). Patients were managed by longitudinal intestinal lengthening and tailoring (n = 3), serial transverse enteroplasty (n = 2), or tapering enteroplasty (n = 3). Results: Median age at time of surgery was 273 days (103–1059). Mean gut length increased from 51 (35–75) to 73 cm (45–120) following surgery (P = 0.02). Incidence of sepsis (P = 0.01) and peak serum bilirubin levels (P = 0.005) were reduced postoperatively. PN was discontinued after a median of 110 days (35–537) for 7 patients; 1 patient remains on PN 497 days after surgery. Conclusions: These data indicate that reconstructive surgery to reduce bowel diameter may be an effective technique for treating IF in patients with short bowel syndrome, without sacrificing intestinal length. We suggest that this technique may reduce the need for bowel transplantation in this group of patients.


Component Analysis (CA) comprises of statistical techniques that decompose signals into appropriate latent components, relevant to a task-at-hand (e.g., clustering, segmentation, classification). Recently, an explosion of research in CA has been witnessed, with several novel probabilistic models proposed (e.g., Probabilistic Principal CA, Probabilistic Linear Discriminant Analysis (PLDA), Probabilistic Canonical Correlation Analysis). PLDA is a popular generative probabilistic CA method, that incorporates knowledge regarding class-labels and furthermore introduces class-specific and sample-specific latent spaces. While PLDA has been shown to outperform several state-of-the-art methods, it is nevertheless a static model; any feature-level temporal dependencies that arise in the data are ignored. As has been repeatedly shown, appropriate modelling of temporal dynamics is crucial for the analysis of temporal data (e.g., videos). In this light, we propose the first, to the best of our knowledge, probabilistic LDA formulation that models dynamics, the so-called Dynamic-PLDA (DPLDA). DPLDA is a generative model suitable for video classification and is able to jointly model the label information (e.g., face identity, consistent over videos of the same subject), as well as dynamic variations of each individual video. Experiments on video classification tasks such as face and facial expression recognition show the efficacy of the proposed method.


The phenotype of two Andropogon gerardii subspecies, big bluestem and sand bluestem, varies broadly throughout the Great Plains of North America, giving rise to ecotypes within the species. This study sought to discriminate between genetic and environmental variation of big bluestem and sand bluestem by examining gas exchange and leaf anatomy in common gardens across a climatic gradient of the Great Plains. Thirteen populations of big bluestem and one population of sand bluestem, constituting five ecotypes, were planted in community plots and a single plant plots in a common garden at each of four sites ranging from western Kansas to southern Illinois. Photosynthesis, stomatal conductance, intercellular CO2, transpiration, and intrinsic water use efficiency were measured three times in the 2010 growing season. In addition, leaf thickness, midrib thickness, bulliform cells, interveinal distance, and vein size were assessed by light microscopy. Abundant phenotypic variation exists among ecotypes within community plots. At all planting sites, big bluestem ecotypes from xeric environments had higher photosynthesis, stomatal conductance, and transpiration compared to mesic ecotypes. Single plant plots also had abundant phenotypic variation; ecotypes native to xeric environments also had higher photosynthesis, stomatal conductance, and transpiration, but differences were more distinct. In addition, sand bluestem, which was only planted in single plant plots, had similar photosynthesis, stomatal conductance, and transpiration to the big bluestem ecotype native to the most xeric environment. Sand bluestem also had higher water use efficiency and lower intercellular CO2 than any big bluestem ecotype. Leaf anatomy assessments indicated xeric ecotypes of A. gerardii had thicker leaves and fewer bulliform cells. Environmental variation was as important as genetic variation for gas exchange and leaf anatomy in both community and single plant plots. Compared to xeric sites, mesic sites had higher photosynthesis, stomatal conductance, and water use efficiency and lower intercellular CO2 and transpiration in community and single plant plots. Leaves from mesic sites also had thicker midribs, larger veins, and a greater proportion of bulliform cells. Ecotypes of A. gerardii across the Great Plains are adapted to water availability. Drought-adapted ecotypes of A. gerardii were shorter in stature and had smaller, thicker, narrower leaves, which reduced the evaporative surface area of these plants. Evidently, A. gerardii controls water loss by reducing evaporative surface area more than it does by increasing the proportion of bulliform cells. This allows drought-adapted ecotypes to have higher photosynthetic rates, stomatal conductances, and transpiration rates in both mesic and xeric environments compared to ecotypes native to mesic environments. This study brings to light potential responses of big bluestem ecotypes to climate change. This study also indicates the phenotypic variation among big bluestem could prove useful in the restoration of native prairies.


While data privacy is a human right, it is challenging to enforce it. For example, if multiple retailers execute a single order at Amazon Marketplace, each retailer can use different agencies for shipment, payment etc., resulting in unmanageable flows of personal data. In this work, we present the Privacy 2.0 system, which enables people to share experiences, observations, and recommendations regarding the privacy practices of data collectors. The basis of Privacy 2.0 is a folksonomy where a user community tags web sites on the Internet with privacy-related labels, e.g., "no privacy policy" or "collects too much personal data". Privacy 2.0 evaluates this folksonomy, and issues a warning if a user is about to enter a web site that has been marked with alarming tags by the majority of users. We have evaluated an operative implementation of our approach by means of a user study. The study indicates that the Privacy 2.0 system helps to assess the privacy practices of service providers and adapts well to a wide range of privacy threats.


On July 7, 2010, Los Angeles police announced the arrest of a suspect in the Grim Sleeper murders, so called because of a decade-long hiatus in killings. The break in the case came when California searched its state DNA database for a genetic profile similar, but not identical, to the killer's. DNA is inherited in specific and predictable ways, so a source-excluding partial match might indicate that a close genetic relative of the matching offender was the Grim Sleeper. California's apparent success in this case has intensified interest in policymaking for source-excluding partial matching. To date, however, little information about existing state policies, and the wisdom of those policies, has been available. This Article reports the results of a survey of state policies governing source-excluding partial matching — the most complete survey of its kind. The Article also dismantles a distinction drawn by more than a dozen states between partial matches that arise fortuitously during the course of routine database searches and partial matches that are deliberately sought, exposing this distinction as harmful and illogical. In examining this feature of state policies, this Article is immediately relevant to determining how states ought to address the ever-expanding scope of uses to which DNA databases may be put.


Theorizing profiles on mobile dating applications (apps) as self-presentation, this study examines how men who have sex with men (MSM) presented themselves on Jack'd, a dating app tailored to this population. This research takes a cross-cultural perspective by comparing 204 profiles from the United States and 204 profiles from China. The results show that Chinese MSM were less likely to show their faces on Jack'd than American MSM because of the stronger stigma of homosexuality in China. In addition, the average number of relational goals mentioned by Chinese MSM was smaller than that mentioned by American MSM, supporting the low- and high-context cultural difference. However, more Chinese MSM mentioned looking for relationships specifically, suggesting that they seem to regard Jack'd as a non-romance-seeking platform and have to make their goals explicit. Sex was not often mentioned as the relational goal in both countries, implying "slut-shaming" is in force. This study demonstrates the value of examining online self-presentation of MSM to understand sociocultural differences between the United States and China regarding homosexuality.


Rumen contents obtained from 30 domesticated cattle (Bos taurus L.), slaughtered at abattoirs in the vicinity of Izmir, were surveyed for ciliates belonging to the genus of Ophryoscolex. Results of this survey suggested that the ciliates in this two genus should not be classified to the species level on the basis of caudal spination characteristics or the number of the rings of secondary caudal spines, as previously proposed (1, 2). Populations intermediate in these characteristics were detected in Turkish cattle and analysis of the morphometrical data for all criteria did not indicate significant differences for establishing separate species. It appears that these features, which show continuous variation, are more appropriate for classification as formae. Therefore, this genus has been revised. O. purkynjei and O. caudatus, previously described as two different species, are now considered as the same species, O. purkynjei, according to the priority in Systematic Zoology. Three new formae (O. p. f. purkynjei n. f., O. p. f. bifidobicinctus n. f. and O. p. f. bifidoquadricinctus n. f.), all belonging to O. purkynjei are described and a new key proposed for identification (p. 28).


Six models (Simulators) are formulated and developed with all possible combinations of pressure and saturation of the phases as primary variables. A comparative study between six simulators with two numerical methods, conventional simultaneous and modified sequential methods are carried out. The results of the numerical models are compared with the laboratory experimental results to study the accuracy of the model especially in heterogeneous porous media. From the study it is observed that the simulator using pressure and saturation of the wetting fluid (P(W), S(W) formulation) is the best among the models tested. Many simulators with nonwetting phase as one of the primary variables did not converge when used along with simultaneous method. Based on simulator 1 (P(W), S(W) formulation), a comparison of different solution methods such as simultaneous method, modified sequential and adaptive solution modified sequential method are carried out on 4 test problems including heterogeneous and randomly heterogeneous problems. It is found that the modified sequential and adaptive solution modified sequential methods could save the memory by half and as also the CPU time required by these methods is very less when compared with that using simultaneous method. It is also found that the simulator with P(NW) and P(W) as the primary variable which had problem of convergence using the simultaneous method, converged using both the modified sequential method and also using adaptive solution modified sequential method. The present study indicates that pressure and saturation formulation along with adaptive solution modified sequential method is the best among the different simulators and methods tested.


Books Aren't Us? The Year's Work in Collection Development, 1990 The literature of collection development in 1990 is selectively surveyed. Topics covered include general works on collection development; library materials budgets; serials and the economics of scholarly publishing; collection evaluation; cooperative arrangements; selection, deselection, housing, and preservation of library; staffing and organization; and the impact of nonbook formats on collection developers. Collection administration is moving into new partnerships with systems librarians, academic computing specialists, and network planners as the library begins to become an address, not a place. The director of academic computing on my campus remarked, as of a distant age, that in the 1970s calculators with the power of those now housed on pocket-size bits of plastic were kept chained to desktops. Recalling the chained tomes of monastic libraries, I reflected that it took books about a millennium to make the same transition from carefully guarded rarities to cheap, ubiquitous mass-market commodities. The point of the anecdote, and its pertinence to the question posed in my title, is not the comparative speed with which microprocessors have infiltrated our lives, but the collocation of two images powerfully reminding us that the functional convergence of books and computers as tools for storing, disseminating, and manipulating texts is close at hand; that, though books will long be with us and will long engage most of the attention of collection developers, this convergence will in our lifetimes change not only how we do our work, but what the work is and what the institutional context will be in which we perform it. These are not novel observations, but they are observations that resonated through the literature of collection development in 1990. The literature itself is spreading into new channels as collection administrators find themselves in the same forums as networking experts, electronic publishers, and computer visionaries. Some of us, indeed, must become collection visionaries if the mission of getting the right source to the right user (with all the implications this entails relating to the organization and preservation of the historic record) is not to pass into other hands. What is new rarely supplants what is old, at least in libraries, and the traditional concerns and activities of collection development have not gone away. Rather, they continue their own evolution as well as absorb ideas from the emerging culture of information. At the same time, adverse economic conditions affecting higher education in general have prompted a rebirth of the literature concerning the economics of scholarly publishing (last seen in quantity during the serial boom of the mid-1970s) and brought renewed attention to the problems of predicting and justifying the costs of building library collections. In this article. I will first survey these more traditional areas, adapting slightly and supplementing the useful rubrics devised by Schmidt, and return finally to work that is stretching the definition of what collection development is and does. This survey is selective by design; like our colleagues in academe, we probably publish too much, to put it bluntly. I have omitted much, in the interest of throwing themes into higher relief, by concentrating on work presenting original results, methods, or observations; new ways of thinking about our field; or important trends. The survey is also largely limited to the U.S. scene, less by design than because collection management and development as a distinct specialization is only beginning to be recognized outside this country. Lastly, most original work in collection development is currently produced in research libraries or library schools. This is ironic in away, since, as Osburn notes, the literature of collection management grew out of that concerning selection for public libraries. …


The "Fed Model" has become a very popular yardstick for judging whether the U.S. stock market is fairly valued. The Fed Model compares the stock market's earnings yield (E/P) to the yield on long-term government bonds. In contrast, traditional methods evaluate the stock market purely on its own without regard to the level of interest rates. My goal is to examine the theoretical soundness, and empirical power for forecasting stock returns, of both the "Fed Model" and the "Traditional Model". The logic most often cited in support of the Fed Model is that stocks should yield less and cost more when bond yields are low, as stocks and bonds are competing assets. Unfortunately, this reasoning compares a real number to a nominal number, ignoring the fact that over the long-term companies' nominal earnings should, and generally do, move in tandem with inflation. In other words, while it is a very popular metric, there are serious theoretical flaws in the Fed Model. Empirical results support this conclusion. The crucible for testing a valuation indicator is how well it forecasts long-term returns, and the Fed Model fails this test, while the Traditional Model has strong forecasting power. Long-term expected real stock returns are low when starting P/Es are high and vice versa, regardless of starting nominal interest rates. I also examine the usefulness of the Fed Model for explaining how investors set stock market P/Es. That is, does the market contemporaneously set P/Es higher when interest rates are lower? Note the difference between testing whether the Fed Model makes economic sense, and thus forecasts future long-term returns, versus testing whether it explains how investors set current P/Es. If investors consistently confuse the real and nominal, high P/Es will indeed be contemporaneously explained by low nominal interest rates, but these high P/Es lead to low future returns regardless. I confirm that investors have indeed historically required a higher stock market P/E when nominal interest rates have been lower and vice versa. In addition, I show that this relationship is somewhat more complicated than described by the simple Fed Model, varying systematically with perceptions of long-term stock and bond market risk. This addition of perceived risk to the Fed Model also fully explains the previously puzzling fact that stocks "out yielded" bonds for the first half of the 20th century, but have "under yielded" bonds for the last 40 years. Finally, I note that as of the writing of this paper, the stock market's P/E (based on trend earnings) is still very high versus history. A major underpinning of bullish pundits' defense of this high valuation is the Fed Model I discredit. Sadly, the Fed Model perhaps offers a contemporaneous explanation of why P/Es are high, but no true solace for long-term investors.


With every organization increasingly becoming technology-obsessed to effectively manage business operations, HR leaders have no choice but to acclimatize to innovations in processes like recruitment, benefits management and payroll. One fascinating topic that is garnering loads of media attention these days is the so-called "Internet of Things" (IoT). Today, "The Internet of Things" (IoT) is becoming an increasingly delightful topic of discussion in the workplace and outside of it. Indisputably, the growth and expansion in technology has considerably enhanced the way we lead our lifestyle. Practically, in all the areas of life, technology has made its remarkable impact including different modes of communication using various types of electronic gadgets like laptops, mobile phones, tablets, smart phones etc., Today, it is a reality that gadgets and domestic appliances can be connected to the internet and invariably send and/or receive information from/to your smartphone and this scenario is just a preamble to an infinitely connected world in the near future. However, it is a known fact that people spend most of their time in doing office work and as such, it is high time to know how the world of Internet of Things (IoT) will change the workplace environment in future and to understand how it is already showing the signs of the impacting the way businesses are run today. From the progression of the mobile job seeker, to embedding microchips to manage employees, the growing nature of Internet of Things (IoT) appears to impact the way human resources work in organizations' and also the way organizations run their business operations.


Despite the reported clinical benefits of checkpoint blockade in some cancers, a large proportion of patients fail to respond, and insights from preclinical and clinical studies have indicated that therapy failure may stem from cues emanating from the tumor microenvironment. Strikingly, resistance to PD-1 immunotherapy in patients with metastatic melanoma has been associated with the presence of a transcriptional signature which includes genes connected to wound healing and angiogenesis, suggesting that targeting stromal elements of the tumor microenvironment has the potential to extend the therapeutic window of immunotherapies. The development of strategic therapeutics, however, is likely to depend on the identification of the cellular and molecular mechanisms governing stromal-imposed immune paralysis. In an effort to gain a better understanding on how stromal elements can modulate antitumor immune responses, we have conducted a comprehensive transcriptomic and functional analysis of stromal cells from murine tumors, which enabled the identification of a discrete population of mesenchymal cells bearing striking similarities to fibroblastic reticular cells of lymphoid organs, including expression of podoplanin and high fibrogenic potential. Our data revealed that within tumors, the reticular matrix laid by myofibroblasts promotes the compartmentalization of tumor-infiltrating leukocytes in peritumoral areas and the establishment of a dynamic interplay between T cells and stroma. Functionally, these interactions prompt stromal secretion of nitric oxide that hinders proliferation of lymphocytes, supporting that tumor fibroblasts contribute to immunosuppression by creating and restraining lymphocytes in non-permissive domains of the tumor microenvironment. Accordingly, displacement of T cells from peritumoral areas through the targeting of stroma-deposited collagen fibers augments natural antitumor immune responses and delays tumor progression in immune-competent mice, but not in lymphopenic mice. Collectively, these data shed light on the mechanisms of stroma-mediated immunomodulation in tumors, highlighting a population of lymphoid-like mesenchymal cells with fibrogenic and immunosuppressive potential. Perhaps more importantly, our study suggests that modulating the extracellular matrix has profound consequences on the spatial and functional fate of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, supporting that targeting tumor fibrotic responses may represent a valuable approach to complement current immunotherapies and extend their clinical benefits. Citation Format: Viviana Cremasco, Angelo Grauel, Michael Wu, Jillian Astarita, Matthew Woodruff, Zohreh Amoozgar, Lotte Spel, Flavian Brown, Michael Carroll, Kenzie MacIsaac, Glenn Dranoff, Shannon Turley. Microenvironmental regulation of antitumor immune responses: A lesson from fibroblastic cells [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Second CRI-CIMT-EATI-AACR International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference: Translating Science into Survival; 2016 Sept 25-28; New York, NY. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Immunol Res 2016;4(11 Suppl):Abstract nr IA23.


In Kuuk Thaayorre, ergative marking is of both syntactic and pragmatic import. Syntactically, ergative inflection marks a noun phrase as the subject of a transitive clause. Though this may be considered definitional of an ergative morpheme, Kuuk Thaayorre joins a growing number of languages in which ergative marking is documented to be "optional"; not obligatorily present in all transitive clauses. Conversely – and more unusually – the subject of a Kuuk Thaayorre intransitive clause may in some cases be ergative-marked. This chapter proposes that as well as signifying the ergative case relation, the ergative morpheme's presence in an intransitive clause signals that the subject referent is "unexpected", and its absence from a transitive clause signals that the subject referent is "expected".


The goal of data mining is to extract or "mine" knowledge from large amounts of data. However, data is often collected by several different sites. Privacy, legal and commercial concerns restrict centralized access to this data. Theoretical results from the area of secure multiparty computation in cryptography prove that assuming the existence of trapdoor permutations, one may provide secure protocols for any two-party computation as well as for any multiparty computation with honest majority. However, the general methods are far too inefficient and impractical for computing complex functions on inputs consisting of large sets of data. What remains open is to come up with a set of techniques to achieve this efficiently within a quantifiable security framework. The distributed data model considered is the heterogeneous database scenario with different features of the same set of data being collected by different sites. This thesis argues that it is indeed possible to have efficient and practical techniques for useful privacy-preserving mining of knowledge from large amounts of data. The dissertation presents several privacy preserving data mining algorithms operating over vertically partitioned data. The set of underlying techniques solving independent sub-problems are also presented. Together, these enable the secure "mining" of knowledge.


Due to the increased interest in the aerodynamics of truck / trailer combinations as a means to reduce their fuel consumption, experiments have been conducted on a model of a trailer to study possible changes in its near wake arising form attached aft-flaps. The model was fitted with vertical flaps on both sides of the back plate, which were set to oscillate at given frequencies and amplitudes. Experiments were carried out using the PIV system in a Water Channel at Monash University. The oscillation of the flaps perturbed the flow in such a way that the shear layer was significantly changed and the roll up of vortices was moved further upstream, causing a rise in the rate of entrainment and a shorter reattachment length. It also had the effect of a reduced wake size and higher velocities within the wake. These are all effects that are consistent with an increase in the base pressure at the back plate of the trailer and therefore also a reduced drag coefficient, since they are strongly connected.Copyright © 2010 by ASME


Angiogenesis, which plays a significant role in a variety of physiological processes, such as embryonic growth and wound healing, is strictly delimited and finely tuned by a balance of proangiogenic and antiangiogenic factors. Cardiac rhythm disorders are diseases that are often accompanied by vascular pathologies. As such, the purpose of this study was to investigate the antiangiogenic effects of Amiodarone HCl in the chorioallantoic membrane model. In this study, the antiangiogenic effect of Amiodarone HCl was compared with a positive control group that was given pure paraffin and the vascular endothelial growth factor inhibitor Bevacizumab, as well as a negative control group in which clearly antiangiogenic activity was shown in this model previously. Concentrations of 10-4, 10-5, and 10-6M of each drug were administered. For the purpose of determining the antiangiogenic effects of the drugs, blood vessels of the chorioallantoic membranes were evaluated using a stereoscopic microscope. The antiangiogenic effect scores of Amiodarone HCl at the dose of 10-4 molar (M) were higher than those of 10-5M and 10-6M, but that result was statistically insignificant. The antiangiogenic effect scores of Bevacizumab at the concentrations of 10-4M and 10-5M were significantly higher than that of 10-6M. This effect of Amiodarone may be important for determining routine antiarrhythmic doses.


The outcomes of health interventions are co-constructed through negotiation between the competing knowledges of different stakeholders. In such a context, local implementing partners – who mediate between international donors/programme managers and local beneficiary communities – have a critical 'knowledge brokering' role to play. With appropriate support, they can facilitate integration of internationally established knowledge with local beliefs and practices in ways that support health-enhancing behaviour change. This paper focuses on the local field officers of an HIV prevention programme with Cambodian military couples. The paper asks: (1) what are the outcomes of knowledge encounters between international organizations and local field officers, as expressed in field officers' interpretation of programme goals, strategies and messages? (2) To what extent does the intervention context support the field officers' knowledge brokering efforts? Data collected includes semi-structured interviews, observations of programme meetings and activities, and textual materials. The findings demonstrate that field officers privilege international knowledge, particularly in interactions with international manager–partners. However, in the field, they both hybridize programme messages and struggle to resolve dilemmas provoked by conflicting international and local knowledges. Material and symbolic asymmetries within the intervention context are shown to undermine their knowledge brokering efforts, as field officers attempt to claim identities and futures as health development professionals. Implications for programme practices and accountability systems are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Literary criticism has debated the usefulness of the trauma paradigm found in much post-9/11 fiction. Where critiqued, trauma is sometimes understood as a domesticating concept by which the events of 9/11 are incorporated into sentimental, familial dramas and romances with no purchase on the international significance of the terrorist attacks and the US's response to them; or, the concept of trauma is understood critically as the means by which the boundaries of a nation or "homeland" self-perceived as violated and victimized may be shored up, rendered impermeable – if that were possible. A counterversion of trauma argues its potential as an affective means of bridging the divide between a wounded US and global suffering. Understood in this way, the concept of trauma becomes the means by which the significance of 9/11 could be deterritorialized. While these versions of trauma, found in academic theory and literary practice, invoke the spatial – the domestic sphere, the homeland, the global – they tend to focus on the time of trauma rather than on the imbrication of the temporal and the spatial. If, instead, 9/11 trauma could be more productively defined as the puncturing of national fantasies of an inviolable and innocent homeland, fantasies which themselves rest on the (failed) repression of foundational violence in the colonial and settler creation of that homeland, and on subsequent notions of American exceptionalism at home and, in the exercise of foreign policy, abroad, then the traumatic can be spatialized. In other words, understood in relation to fantasy, trauma illuminates the terroritalization and deterritorialization of American history. After working through various examples of post-9/11 fiction to demonstrate parochial renditions of trauma and trauma's unrealized global resonances, this article turns to Cormac McCarthy's 9/11 allegory The Road for the way in which its spaces, places and territories are marked by inextricable traumas of the past and present – and therefore for the way in which it models trauma's relation to national fantasy.


This paper examines the strategies and techniques researched and implemented by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in villages in the vicinity of Doi Mae Salong in Chiang Rai Province, Thailand. The strategies revolve around the paradigm linking poverty alleviation , conservation and landscape restoration. IUCN and its partners specifically researched and implemented schemes directed toward diversification of the household economy through alternative and sustainable intensified agriculture techniques based on balancing conservation and livelihood objectives. The projects aimed to reduce poverty and build the resilience of smallholders through decentralised governance arrangements including land use planning schemes and stakeholder negotiation. Considering the agro-ecological system on a catchment-wide scale enhances the conceptual understanding of each component, collectively forming a landscape matrix with requisite benefits for biodiversity, smallholder livelihoods and ecosystem services. In particular, the role of enhancing ecosystem services and functions in building socio-ecological resilience to vulnerabilities such as climate and economic variability is paramount in the process. Keywords: Poverty alleviation, diversification, conservation, governance, vulnerabilities, Doi Mae Salong Data of the article  First received:  19 September 2014 | Last revision received:  07 January 2015 Accepted: 12 January 2015 | Published online: 12 March 2015 urn:nbn:de:hebis:34-2014033145278


Background: A biotooth is defined as a complete living tooth, made in laboratory cultures from a spontaneous interplay between epithelial and mesenchymal cell‐based frontal systems. A good solution to these problems is to use induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). However, no one has yet formulated culture conditions that effectively differentiate iPSCs into dental epithelial and dental mesenchymal cells phenotypes analogous to those present in tooth development. Results: Here, we tried to induce differentiation methods for dental epithelial cells (DEC) and dental mesenchymal cells from iPSCs. For the DEC differentiation, the conditional media of SF2 DEC was adjusted to embryoid body. Moreover, we now report on a new cultivation protocol, supported by transwell membrane cell culture that make it possible to differentiate iPSCs into dental epithelial and mesenchymal cells with abilities to initiate the first stages in de novo tooth formation. Conclusions: Implementation of technical modifications to the protocol that maximize the number and rate of iPSC differentiation, into mesenchymal and epithelial cell layers, will be the next step toward growing an anatomically accurate biomimetic tooth organ. Developmental Dynamics 248:129–139, 2019. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


In this article, we discuss the strong relationship between affect and cognition and the importance of emotions in multimodal human computer interaction (HCI) and user-modeling. We introduce the overall paradigm for our multi-modal system that aims at recognizing its users' emotions and at responding to them accordingly depending upon the current context or application. We then describe the design of the emotion elicitation experiment we conducted by collecting, via wearable computers, physiological signals from the autonomic nervous system (galvanic skin response, heart rate, temperature) and mapping them to certain emotions (sadness, anger, fear, surprise, frustration, and amusement). We show the results of three different supervised learning algorithms that categorize these collected signals in terms of emotions, and generalize their learning to recognize emotions from new collections of signals. We finally discuss possible broader impact and possible applications of emotion recognition for multimodal intelligent systems


An In/n-AgGa0.5In0.5Se2/p-Si/Al heterostructure was produced by thermal sequential stacked layer deposition method and the device characteristics were investigated. The compositional analysis showed that the depositions of the intended stoichiometric composition of AgGa0.5In0.5Se2 structure were obtainable by controlling and providing the necessary deposition conditions during the deposition processes. By means of the room temperature Hall effect and transmission measurements, the carrier concentration and optical band gap values were determined as 9 × 10 15 ?> cm−3 and 1.65 eV, respectively. In addition, temperature-dependent current-voltage (I–V) and the room temperature capacitance-voltage (C–V) measurements of this heterostructure were carried out. The rectification factor was obtained as about 104 at 1.20 V for all sample temperatures. Depending on the change in the temperature, the series and shunt resistances were calculated as 101 and 106 Ω, respectively. The studies on the current transport mechanisms showed that there were two different mechanisms at two different voltage regions: tunneling enhanced recombination mechanism in the voltage range of 0.08 and 0.30 V and the space charge limited current mechanism in the voltage range of 0.30 and 0.60 V. The barrier height, built-in potential and interface states density of the deposited heterostructure were also calculated and discussed.


This study encourages an increased focus on managerial and organisational issues in manufacturing strategy formulation. The study investigates the relationship between manufacturing strategy formulation, leadership style and organisational culture in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Manufacturing strategy formulation is studied in three cases, and it is found that the formulation is different in each case. Leadership style is more visible than organisational culture in manufacturing strategy formulation in the case companies. Owing to the small number of employees in SMEs, the top manager's decisions influence the whole organisation and the organisational culture. The leadership style and organisational culture are closely aligned in SMEs owing to the managers and to the centralised decision-making.


Porosity in cast metals often leads to cracking of components due to stress concentration and leakage, and as the result, the castings need be repaired or rejected. Disharmony in casting process was resulting in porosity. Prediction of porosity in the casting is necessary as a step to avoid the waste products and reduce costs. But to ensure whether these predictions are accurate and precise, it is still necessary to validate the test trials and testing. This paper aims to provide early information when, where, and how large a defect occurs in particular foundry casting porosity on duralumin. The analytical study of porosity formation based analytic equilibrium wt% of element, the behavior of the thermodynamic, hydrodynamic, and rules of metallurgical on vacuum casting of duralumin. Experiments as a validation study are conducted by duralumin remelting on stainless-steel bowl in a vacuum casting furnace. Analytical simulation and experiments of the casting that has been vacuumed by melting 10 cmHg pressures higher than the pressure solidification, and duralumin melt is poured automatically into permanent mold carbon steel. In the study cast duralumin created five different thicknesses. Both these studies assume the addition of copper (2.5%, 3.0%, 3.5 %, 4.0%, and 4.5% Cu) and vacuum pressure (76, 50, 40, cmHg), as independent variables, while dependent variable in the studies is porosity characteristics, which includes morphology, number and dimensions of the porosity. Optical emission spectrometry test, Reynold's and Niyama numbers, Sievert's law, Archimedes' principle (Pycnometry and Straube-Pfeiffer tests), and Eichenauer equation are instruments which are used to determine the characterization of duralumin casting porosity. Duralumin ingots remelting process was performed by the control pressure (p1) and temperature (T1). Vacuuming process performed after the smelting room temperature reaches 600 °C. Once melted, it followed by duralumin into a permanent mold (p2, T2). As a control parameter is the height of pouring (7 cm), pour temperature and mold temperature respectively at 750 °C and 300 °C. The porosity characteristics studies of two models produce two types of porosity (gas and shrinkage), the quantity dimension and porosity, and distribution of porosity in the cast duralumin.


Background: Infection with Helicobacter pylori infection is widespread in our environment. However, whether this fact has any bearing on the prevalence and pattern of symptoms referable to the upper gastrointestinal (GI) system in our population of diabetes mellitus (DM) patients has not been much studied. Aim: We embarked on this study to evaluate if H. pylori infection played any significant role in the prevalence and patterns of upper GI symptoms in type 2 DM patients in Lagos, Nigeria. Materials and Methods: A case–control design was employed. One hundred consecutive, consenting, and ambulant type 2 DM patients were recruited from the Lagos University Teaching Hospital and 100 age- and sex-matched nondiabetic controls were drawn from medical outpatient clinics of the same hospital. All subjects were investigated for a marker of active infection with H. pylori via stool antigen testing, had anthropometric measurements taken, and completed a structured questionnaire administered to elicit for the presence of various upper GI symptoms over the preceding 3 months prior to the time of the study. The controls were further tested for DM. For analysis, the symptoms were divided into dyspepsia, gastroesophageal reflux (GER), and others. Results: H. pylori infection status was neither significantly associated with dyspepsia in either cases or controls (χ2 [1] = 2.198, P = 0.138) nor significantly associated with the symptomatic suggestion of GER in either cases or controls (χ2 [1] = 3.742, P = 0.053). Moreover, the same held for the other upper GI symptoms in cases or controls (χ2 [1] = 0.157, P = 0.203). H. pylori infection was detected in 18% of DM patients and 13% of controls, but there was no statistical significance in this difference (χ2 [1] = 0.954, P = 0.329). Conclusion: Infection with H. pylori does not appear, from the results of this study, to influence the prevalence and patterns of upper GI symptoms in patients with DM in Nigeria.


The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC) relies on Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) as one of the main pillars of its risk-informed regulatory and oversight functions. In 2011, the South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Company (STPNOC) initiated a risk-informed project to resolve Generic Safety Issue 191 (GSI-191), which is related to the performance of the emergency core cooling system (ECCS) following a loss of coolant accident (LOCA). This paper summarizes the results of collaborative work on this project by teams of experts from industry and academia. The progress of the research and its implementation have also significantly benefitted from the discussions and feedback received from regulatory representatives. This method of analysis has used an integrative framework to explicitly provide failure probabilities for the post-LOCA PRA basic events associated with the concerns raised in GSI-191. These basic event probabilities are estimated using a program called CASA Grande, which was developed as part of the project. This program encompasses the time-dependent modeling of the underlying physical phenomena of the basic events and the propagation of the uncertainties in the physical models. This paper summarizes the elements of the integrative framework including both the PRA and the CASA Grande program, as well as the input parameters, assumptions, methodology, and results of the STPNOC analysis. The results show that the risk of core damage or large early release related to the concerns raised in GSI-191 in the asbuilt, as-operated design for STPNOC is very small (as defined in Regulatory Guide 1.174).


About 7.4 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) work in the United States, making up 5.3 percent of the total U.S. workforce. About 7.1 million of these AAPI workers are Asian Americans; about 300,000 are Pacific Islanders. The AAPI workforce is almost 20 times larger today than it was in 1960. Meanwhile, the share of AAPIs in the total workforce has increased about tenfold over the same period. Three broad themes emerge from our analysis of the data: The first is that AAPI workers are highly diverse. The second theme is that AAPI workers face many challenges in the labor market. The final theme is that the trends in the economic circumstances of AAPI workers have closely mirrored those of the broader workforce.


Background Clinical laboratory reference intervals have not been established in many African countries, and non-local intervals are commonly used in clinical trials to screen and monitor adverse events (AEs) among African participants. Using laboratory reference intervals derived from other populations excludes potential trial volunteers in Africa and makes AE assessment challenging. The objective of this study was to establish clinical laboratory reference intervals for 25 hematology, immunology and biochemistry values among healthy African adults typical of those who might join a clinical trial. Methods and Findings Equal proportions of men and women were invited to participate in a cross sectional study at seven clinical centers (Kigali, Rwanda; Masaka and Entebbe, Uganda; two in Nairobi and one in Kilifi, Kenya; and Lusaka, Zambia). All laboratories used hematology, immunology and biochemistry analyzers validated by an independent clinical laboratory. Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute guidelines were followed to create study consensus intervals. For comparison, AE grading criteria published by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Division of AIDS (DAIDS) and other U.S. reference intervals were used. 2,990 potential volunteers were screened, and 2,105 (1,083 men and 1,022 women) were included in the analysis. While some significant gender and regional differences were observed, creating consensus African study intervals from the complete data was possible for 18 of the 25 analytes. Compared to reference intervals from the U.S., we found lower hematocrit and hemoglobin levels, particularly among women, lower white blood cell and neutrophil counts, and lower amylase. Both genders had elevated eosinophil counts, immunoglobulin G, total and direct bilirubin, lactate dehydrogenase and creatine phosphokinase, the latter being more pronounced among women. When graded against U.S.-derived DAIDS AE grading criteria, we observed 774 (35.3%) volunteers with grade one or higher results; 314 (14.9%) had elevated total bilirubin, and 201 (9.6%) had low neutrophil counts. These otherwise healthy volunteers would be excluded or would require special exemption to participate in many clinical trials. Conclusions To accelerate clinical trials in Africa, and to improve their scientific validity, locally appropriate reference ranges should be used. This study provides ranges that will inform inclusion criteria and evaluation of adverse events for studies in these regions of Africa.


Recently there has been a lot of interest in learning common representations for multiple views of data. Typically, such common representations are learned using a parallel corpus between the two views (say, 1M images and their English captions). In this work, we address a real-world scenario where no direct parallel data is available between two views of interest (say, $V_1$ and $V_2$) but parallel data is available between each of these views and a pivot view ($V_3$). We propose a model for learning a common representation for $V_1$, $V_2$ and $V_3$ using only the parallel data available between $V_1V_3$ and $V_2V_3$. The proposed model is generic and even works when there are $n$ views of interest and only one pivot view which acts as a bridge between them. There are two specific downstream applications that we focus on (i) transfer learning between languages $L_1$,$L_2$,...,$L_n$ using a pivot language $L$ and (ii) cross modal access between images and a language $L_1$ using a pivot language $L_2$. Our model achieves state-of-the-art performance in multilingual document classification on the publicly available multilingual TED corpus and promising results in multilingual multimodal retrieval on a new dataset created and released as a part of this work.


Statistically-based banding is often considered a viable method for minimizing adverse impact in test-based decisions. By utilizing the standard error of the difference (SED), scores are equated based on the assumption that there is substantial unreliability in any single observed score. However, as noted by Dudek (1979), the current procedure for calculating the standard error of measurement (SEM), which is used when calculating SED, is erroneous. Concurrently, the tendency of score to regress to the mean with multiple administrations of a test is a problem that is often overlooked in literature (Smith & Smith, 2005). This study compares the differences between banding based selection decisions when these corrections are applied. In general, results suggest that applying these corrections to methods of calculating SED can produce variations in the decisions. These potential legal and ethical implications of these discrepancies are discussed.


This study is set in a university context. It is divided into two parts: ethnography and pedagogy. It draws on extended interviews with nine indigenous students studying at the Northern Territory University to examine the parallel relation between the informant and the ethnographer, and the student and the teacher. Different theoretical positions are taken, including crosscultural and critical theories as well as Lacanian psychoanalysis, in an endeavour to explore how a relation is actually produced in a crosscultural pedagogy. I began the research as a crosscultural ethnographer. Accordingly, I assumed that I had access to the informants' knowledge and that I could transmit this knowledge to readers. After I wrote my first interpretation of the data (see Preface and Appendix One) I had to reassess these two assumptions. The research then is a critique of transmission-based theories of knowledge and learning where indigenous students are trained in the knowledge and power of the pedagogue. While most research in crosscultural education has been directed at finding out how an indigenous student can learn from the non-indigenous teacher, this study focuses on a different question: How does an indigenous student learn outside the non-indigenous pedagogue's knowledge and power in the crosscultural classroom? The study turns to critical pedagogic theories for some insight. These theories bring us to the point of understanding that knowledge and learning are produced through a crosscultural relation but they do not show us how this relation is actually produced in the classroom nor how a student can learn outside transmission-based theories of education. This research compares the interview data and critical pedagogic theories to investigate the disparity between what the pedagogue wants in the theories and what the informants want in classroom practice at the Northern Territory University. This raised another key question for the research: What does the student want? The research examines how a discourse of negotiation is always already at work, albeit hidden, in the relation between the student and the pedagogue in the classroom. Intersubjective knowledge and a type of learning are produced through this relation between them. The thesis examines how the relation is produced through speech and dialogue.


Understanding how to implement software process improvement (SPI) successfully is arguably the most challenging issue facing the SPI field today. The SPI literature contains many case studies of successful companies and descriptions of their SPI programs. However, the research efforts to date are limited and inconclusive and without adequate theoretical and psychometric justification. This paper extends and integrates models from prior research by performing an empirical investigation of the key factors for success in SPI. A quantitative survey of 120 software organizations was designed to test the conceptual model and hypotheses of the study. The results indicate that success depends critically on six organizational factors, which explained more than 50 percent of the variance in the outcome variable. The main contribution of the paper is to increase the understanding of the influence of organizational issues by empirically showing that they are at least as important as technology for succeeding with SPI and, thus, to provide researchers and practitioners with important new insights regarding the critical factors of success in SPI.


Every photographer using a digital SLR camera needs to master exposure in order to achieve the highest quality results in their photographs. "Mastering Exposure and the Zone System for Digital Photographers" is a complete guide to both the technical and creative aspects of exposure in digital photography. This guide uses a combination of discussion, examples, and hands-on exercises that lead the reader through a progression of skills development covering the full range of photographic lighting situations. Topics covered include basic metering, outdoor and indoor available light photography, fill flash, night, and low-light conditions, as well as advanced topics like action and sports, close-up, high-key and low-key lighting, multiple light sources. In conclusion, the author shows how to use the Zone System, developed by Ansel Adams for film, with today's digital cameras to achieve stunning results with exceptional tonal range and clarity.


A key conclusion of recent bibliographical scholarship is that William Langland's Piers Plowman (c. 1370–90) circulated as political prophecy in manuscript and print in the sixteenth century. Evidence for prophetic Piers Plowman includes an early sixteenth-century manuscript presenting the poem as "The Prophecies of Piers Plowman," complete with glosses and a table of contents; excerpts of two prophetic Piers Plowman passages (B.6.321–31 and 10.322–35) in sixteenth-century manuscripts; sixteenth-century annotations of these and other prophetic passages in earlier Piers Plowman manuscripts; sixteenth-century verse prophecies alluding to the same two Piers Plowman passages; and Robert Crowley's anxiety about a prophetic interpretation of Piers Plowman in the preface to his 1550 printed edition of the poem. This essay registers five new entries in the sixteenth-century archive of Langlandiana, representing two textually distinct excerpts. I present transcriptions of the five texts and discuss their textual relationship to one another and to other texts of Piers Plowman. All five items derive from the "two monks' heads" prophetic set-piece (Piers Plowman B.6.321–31), the focus of many other manifestations of prophetic Piers Plowman in the sixteenth century. In George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson's critical edition of Piers Plowman B, these lines read (caesura represented by a tabbed space):


Whereas subject-area specialization is common practice in secondary grades, little is known about its incidence and impact in elementary schools. In this study we use data from North Carolina elementary schools to assess which teachers specialize and estimate whether specialization is associated with teacher effectiveness and school achievement. We find that specialization is prevalent in upper-elementary grades—approximately 25 percent of fourth-grade teachers and 37 percent of fifth-grade teachers specialize—and schools assign relatively more effective teachers to specialize. Analyses indicate that specialization is not leading to its theorized benefits in mathematics and reading. Teachers are less effective than they were before specializing and school-level achievement is not associated with more specialization. However, science results suggest benefits to subject-area specialization. These findings question the use of specialization in elementary grades but invite continued research to more fully assess its impact.


Sparse approximation using redundant dictionaries is an efficient tool for many applications in the field of signal processing. The performances largely depend on the adaptation of the dictionary to the signal to decompose. As the statistical dependencies are most of the time not obvious in natural high-dimensional data, learning fundamental patterns is an alternative to analytical design of bases and has become a field of acute research. Most of the time, the underlying patterns of a class of signals can be found at any time, and in the design of a dictionary, this translation invariance property should be present. We present a new algorithm for learning short generating functions, each of them building a set of atoms corresponding to all its translations. The resulting dictionary is highly redundant and translation invariant.


Network Coding Opportunistic Routing (NCOR) methods are novel routing methods which can fit the broadcast nature of wireless mesh networks better. They can use the multi-user diversity advantage of the wireless channel and throughput gain of network coding method to alleviate the problems of reliability and capacity of Wireless Mesh Networks. This paper investigates and compares throughput and delay performance of NCOR methods and traditional routing method against varying network load based on NS2 network simulator. The fairness between NCOR and traditional routing methods when they coexist is also investigated. Pointing at problems found in simulations, an optimized rate control method for NCOR method is presented to improve throughput, delay performance and fairness of Wireless Mesh Networks.


Extensive research has been carried out on adult education, although no single study exists which adequately covers foreign language instruction in liberal adult education institutions. At adult education centers (AECs) learners differ in many aspects, creatinga complex environment for teaching. This paper presents research which was designed to study adult learners' attitude towards the language programs/courses; it describes adults' learning experience at liberal AECs. The research was conducted in 2013 within the operating foreign language courses at the AECs in Turku, Finland. The data was gathered by a semi-structured interview. Twenty three AEC language learners participated in the survey. The main issues addressed in this paper are: a) adult learners' attitude toward the language courses, b) AEC language classroom practices (success factors and obstacles). The current study found that the language courses were in demand. Along with these positive findings the study disclosed that adult learners had some problems that could be solved by educators and administrators' intervention. These problematic areas were: 1) teaching methods and approaches, 2) teaching materials 3) course/ class management 4) teaching resources. The AEC educational environment is extremely diverse and thismakes teaching tremendously complex. Only through a constant dialogue between an instructor and learners it is possible to create a productive, satisfying environment.


We estimate the world distribution of income by integrating individual income distributions for 125 countries between 1970 and 1998. We estimate poverty rates and headcounts by integrating the density function below the $1/day and $2/day poverty lines. We find that poverty rates decline substantially over the last twenty years. We compute poverty headcounts and find that the number of one-dollar poor declined by 235 million between 1976 and 1998. The number of $2/day poor declined by 450 million over the same period. We analyze poverty across different regions and countries. Asia is a great success, especially after 1980. Latin America reduced poverty substantially in the 1970s but progress stopped in the 1980s and 1990s. The worst performer was Africa, where poverty rates increased substantially over the last thirty years: the number of $1/day poor in Africa increased by 175 million between 1970 and 1998, and the number of $2/day poor increased by 227. Africa hosted 11% of the world's poor in 1960. It hosted 66% of them in 1998. We estimate nine indexes of income inequality implied by our world distribution of income. All of them show substantial reductions in global income inequality during the 1980s and 1990s.


This  article  focuses  on  a  frequently  neglected  part  of  the Norwegian author  Inger Hagerup's (1905-1985) work: her occupation with the popular genre of radio play. Based  upon  Ernst  Cassirer's dynamic  approach  to formative  cultural  work  and expressive meaning, the article investigates two of Hagerup's works produced for the Norwegian  Broadcasting Corporation (NRK):  Firstly her own radioplay Hilsen fra Katarina  (1949), secondly  her  translation  of  Ingeborg Bachmann's Der  gute  Gott von Manhattan  (1957).  Through  a juxtaposition  of  the  two,  Hagerup's  own radio play stands out as an innovative contribution to the particular Norwegian development of this genre, and as a modern, far more experimental, work than her poems from the same period. Her translation of Bachmann's work appears as surprisingly reductive  with  respect  to  the complexity  of  Bachmann's original  text.  The  article points out how the translation of Bachmann's play to a Norwegian context can also be viewed as a cultural transfer highlighting different ideas of a popular genre during the first decades after World War II.


In this paper, a multi-objective energy management strategy with an adaptive equivalent factor is proposed to improve the fuel economy, system durability, and charge-sustenance performance of fuel cell hybrid electric vehicles. Firstly, the total hydrogen consumption and degradation cost of power sources can be calculated by flexible empirical models. Then, the multi-objective optimization problem can be transformed into an objective function, which can be solved by quadratic programming to improve the real-time performance. Furthermore, an adaptive Unscented Kalman filter is designed to estimate the aging state of the fuel cell system. The equivalent factor in the objective function can be adaptively updated by the estimated aging state, which can balance the conflict between the fuel economy and the system durability while keeping the state-of-charge in an ideal range. Finally, simulation results show that when the fuel cell system is obviously damaged during the operation, the proposed energy management strategy still can minimize the total cost and maintain the charge-sustenance performance under different driving cycles compared with other methods.


Anyone who has been paid attention to developments in the world of business over the past quarter century can attest to the fact that intellectual property (IP) is a hot commodity. Indeed, in contrast to the companies that emerged out of the Industrial Revolution, the companies that have spawned as part of the so-called "Information Age" attribute much of their value and future prospects to intangible, rather than tangible, assets. Unfortunately, while bankruptcy courts have generally recognized the need to distinguish between tangible and intangible assets, particularly when determining whether a claim is secured or unsecured, they often fail to acknowledge the practical and legal differences between the various forms of IP. Not all forms of IP are created equal. Trade secrets, in particular, present a challenge for the bankruptcy courts because, by definition, they must be "secret." Thus, the very act of identifying and attempting to place a value on trade secrets may result in the loss of such rights.A number of recent articles have addressed the treatment of IP assets in bankruptcy proceedings. Typically, these articles focus on two important aspects of bankruptcy law as it relates to intellectual property generally: (1) how to perfect a security interest in intellectual property assets, i.e., "general intangibles" in the parlance of Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code ("the U.C.C".), and (2) the treatment of executory contracts involving intellectual property assets. While both of these issues are important, they are meaningless with respect to trade secrets unless the trade secrets continue to exist after the bankruptcy petition is filed. Thus, rather than jump to a discussion of security interests and executory contracts as they relate to trade secrets, this article begins with a discussion of trade secret law and how various trade secret issues may arise in the bankruptcy context. Because the nature of the relationships in which trade secrets are disclosed is a key aspect of trade secret law, the article then proceeds to explore the interests and objectives of the various players in a bankruptcy proceeding, including the debtor, the trustee, creditors, licensees, and other third parties. The article concludes with a discussion of the interests of the unsecured creditors, employees of the debtor, and the buyer of estate assets.


The role of the civil engineering estimator within the contractor's organisation has been
well documented. Whilst this role and the estimators' tasks within the estimating and
tendering process are well understood, little attention has been paid to estimators'
expertise, how they make decisions at various stages within the tender period, the
education and training needed to become an estimator and the psychological make-up of
those whose work is fundamental to the survival and growth of the civil engineering
contractor. Computer aided estimating systems have, for the last decade, been available
to assist the work of the estimator. However, there remains debate concerning their
contribution to the tasks of civil engineering estimators. The research incorporated: a detailed survey of the member companies of the Federation
of Civil Engineering Contractors; semi-structured interviews of practising estimators; a
study of career attributes by questionnaire and self assessment exercise; an empirical
study of decision making based upon the technique of protocol analysis; and the
development of a prototype expert system to assist estimators in the task of selecting
subcontractors. The analysis of the estimators' decision making processes showed that 'expert,
estimators operate within a hierarchy of goals and utilize mental checklists and templates
to make decisions. Novice estimators repetitively collate information and then summarise
on a general basis.
Protocol analysis was demonstrated to be a suitable technique for studying the decision
making processes of estimators. The technique was also found to make a significant
contribution to the process of knowledge elicitation for expert system production.
The study of estimators' past careers and experience established typical career profiles for
the civil engineering estimator. These show both the formal education received and the
practical experience gained before becoming an estimator. The attributes required by
construction personnel wishing to take up a career in estimating were identified and a
composite personality profile of the civil engineering estimator produced.
The survey confirmed the importance of estimators' experience and expertise within the
estimating and tendering process and showed that some 56% of the survey respondents
currently used some form of computer aided estimating. The reasons for user
dissatisfaction with current computer aided estimating systems were also identified.
A prototype expert system developed to vet prospective subcontractors for construction
work. This was shown to provide considerable assistance to estimators.


Though well-intentioned, the current system of tax deferral for retirement contributions undermines public policy aimed at strengthening retirement security for all Americans. In fact, it has become a regressive policy that contributes to wealth inequality. This policy note illustrates how two employees who are identical savers and investors in every way except for income receive different rates of return due only to the effects of the tax code. Converting the current system of tax deductions for defined contribution retirement plans to a refundable tax credit would solve this problem and treat all retirement savers the same.


The Internet offers a promising channel to conduct smoking cessation research. Among the advantages of Internet research are the ability to access large numbers of participants who might not otherwise participate in a cessation trial, and the ability to conduct research efficiently and cost-effectively. To leverage the opportunity of the Internet in clinical research, it is necessary to establish that measures of known validity used in research trials are reliable when administered via the Internet. To date, no published studies examine the psychometric properties of measures administered via the Internet to assess smoking variables and psychosocial constructs related to cessation (e.g., stress, social support, quit methods). The purpose of the present study was to examine the reliability of measures of previous quit methods, perceived stress, depression, social support for cessation, smoking temptations, alcohol use, perceived health status, and income when administered via the Internet. Participants in the present study were enrolled in a randomized controlled trial of the efficacy of Internet smoking cessation. Following baseline telephone assessment and randomization into the parent trial, participants were recruited to the reliability substudy. An email was sent 2 days after the telephone assessment with a link to the Internet survey and instructions to complete the survey that day. Of the 297 individuals invited to participate, 213 completed the survey within 1 week. Results indicate that the internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the measures examined are comparable when self-administered via the Internet or when interviewer-administered via telephone.


How black electronic dance music makes it possible to reorganize life within the contemporary city.

Teklife, Ghettoville, Eski argues that black electronic dance music produces sonic ecologies of blackness that expose and reorder the contemporary racialization of the urban--ecologies that can never simply be reduced to their geographical and racial context. Dhanveer Singh Brara makes the case for black electronic dance music as the cutting-edge aesthetic project of the diaspora, which due to the music's class character makes it possible to reorganize life within the contemporary city.

Closely analysing the Footwork scene in South and West Chicago, the Grime scene in East London, and the output of the South London producer Actress, Brar pays attention to the way each of these critically acclaimed musical projects experiment with aesthetic form through an experimentation of the social. Through explicitly theoretical means, Teklife, Ghettoville, Eski foregrounds the sonic specificity of 12" records, EPs, albums, radio broadcasts, and recorded performances to make the case that Footwork, Grime, and Actress dissolve racialized spatial constraints that are thought to surround black social life.

Pushing the critical debates concerning the phonic materiality of blackness, undercommons, and aesthetic sociality in new directions, Teklife, Ghettoville, Eski rethinks these concepts through concrete examples of contemporary black electronic dance music production that allows for a theorization of the way Footwork, Grime, and Actress have--through their experiments in blackness--generated genuine alternatives to the functioning of the city under financialized racial capitalism.