Increasingly, domestic violence victims are turning to the courts for protection, too often with poor results. Many lawyers view the relevance and scholarship of domestic violence law as prosaic, although it is an issue of profound social significance, and will impact their professional and personal lives. It is not surprising then that many attorneys, ignorant of domestic violence issues, mishandle the full spectrum of its legal applications. The American Bar Association's Commission on Domestic Violence reports that, overwhelmingly, the technical assistance calls they receive indicate that abuse victims are not receiving adequate representation. States' gender bias reports, including The Gender Bias Task Force of Texas, Final Report, verify that improper handling, at all levels of the legal system, can be traced to attorneys' lack of knowledge about domestic violence. Deficient education on the issue can have catastrophic consequences for the parties involved. A Maryland battered woman was murdered by her partner after a judge denied her a protective order. In another case, a judge gave custody to a father who had not only battered the child's mother, but also had a conviction for his previous wife's murder.4 In Austin, Texas, a battering father was convicted of molesting his own child, as well as several of those in his wife's day care center, yet a judge gave him custody of all three of the couple's children. The legal and social challenges faced by battered women must inform the scholarship and pedagogy of law. Some students, like some lawyers, find it uncomfortable to hear details of abuse, as so often victims live with such unimaginable terror, the likes of which lawyers and courts have no concept. Batterers subject victims to a degrading regimen of humiliation, shame and loss of esteem, often demanding total obedience.10 In addition to the emotional abuse, American women are in nine times more danger of physical abuse in their own homes than they are in the street. Sadly, the legacy of this violence is often passed from one generation to the next. Frequently overlooked, but critical to address throughout the academy's efforts, is a fundamental understanding of the ways in which race and class impact ethical practice, in part by impeding access to legal remedies. Weaving themes of domestic violence, race and class together, we can offer an expansive menu of options, hoping to ultimately reach every law student. It is likely that among our own law students exists the same proportion of victims and offenders as in the larger community.Currently, there is little recognition of this phenomenon, and few, if any, coordinated interventions with those involved. Thus, our concerted efforts will undoubtedly increase the safety of our law students, as well as that of the survivors we serve. Law schools, bar associations, law firms and foundations should also be encouraged to fund student and attorney practice of domestic violence law.


Primordial non-Gaussianity is a potentially powerful discriminant of the physical mechanisms that generate the cosmological fluctuations observed today. Any detection of non-Gaussianity would have profound implications for our understanding of cosmic structure formation. In this paper, we review past and current efforts in the search for primordial non-Gaussianity in the large-scale structure of the Universe.


The 99 superhero comics were first published in 2006 by Teshkeel Comics, a division of the Teshkeel media group, in Kuwait. Deeb's essay covers this comics phenomenon within the context of contemporary Arab society. It analyzes the importance of the historical framework within which the story of the "99" superheroes unfolds, namely the burning of Dar al-Hikma and the great library of Baghdad by the Mongols in AD 1258. While looking at the character of the superheroes, their backgrounds, and the obstacles they face, this article studies the relevance of these fictional and historical protagonists to the problems faced by youth in the Arab world today.


The Botsotso literary journal started in 1996 as a monthly 4 page insert in the New Nation, an independent anti-apartheid South African weekly and reached over 80,000 people at a time ? largely politisized black workers and youth ? with a selection of poems, short stories and short essays that reflected the deep changes taking place in the country at that time. Since the closure of the New Nation in 1999, the journal has evolved into a stand-alone compilation featuring the same mix of genres, and with the addition of photo essays and reviews. The Botsotso editorial policy remains committed to creating a mix of voices which highlight the diverse spectrum of South African identities and languages, particularly those that are dedicated to radical expression and examinations of South Africa's complex society.

Botsotso 17 reflects the depth and creative range of the South African cultural and emotional environment, as well as the broader social currents in which they were spawned; and that the coexisting phenomena of love and violence, alienation and precious comings-together mingle to create a unique, if familiar, panorama as streams of words reveal the inner meanings of so many different lives.


Usage of gait biometric in individual identification is a rather new and encouraging research area in biometrics. Requiring no cooperation from the observed individual, and functionality from distance, using non-expensive low resolution cameras, are the benefits that have been dragging enormous attention to gait biometric. However, it should be noted that, gait pattern in humans can be greatly affected by changing of clothes, shoes, or even emotional states. This natural variability, which is absent in other biometrics being used for identification, such as fingerprint and iris, decreases the reliability of recognition. In this paper, a mixture of experts, in form of an LVQNN ensemble was employed to improve recognition rate and accuracy. Majority voting fusion method was used to combine the results of LVQNNs. First, local motion silhouette images (LMSIs) were generated from silhouette walking frame sequences. Then using PCA, lower dimensional features were extracted from LMSIs, and were fed to classifiers as inputs. Experiments were carried out using the silhouette dataset A of CASIA gait database, and the effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated.


Today, in the interconnected and interdependent world in which we live, the constant innovations and emergence of terminology demand a common and harmonic language among the authorities in charge of civil registration, identification, biometric systems, and vital statistics in Latin America and the Caribbean. This Glossary of Civil Registration and Identification has its origin in this growing demand and seeks to strengthen the communication and increase the knowledge of the valuable vocabulary in this field. The Inter-American Development Bank accompanies the initiatives of the region's governments to modernize their civil registries and to ensure that they are capable of facing the challenges of the twenty-first century.


Participants included 46 European American, 33 Asian American, 91 Japanese, 160 Indian, and 80 Hispanic students (N = 416). Discrete emotions, as well as pleasant and unpleasant emotions, were assessed: (a) with global self-report measures, (b) using an experience-sampling method for 1 week, and (c) by asking participants to recall their emotions from the experience sampling week. Cultural differences emerged for nearly all measures. The inclusion of indigenous emotions in India and Japan did not alter the conclusions substantially, although pride showed a pattern across cultures that differed from the other positive emotions. In all five culturalgroupsandforbothpleasantandunpleasantemotions,globalreportsof emotionpredictedretrospective recall even after controllingforreportsmadeduringthe experiencesamplingperiod,suggestingthat individuals' general conceptions of their emotional lives influenced their memories of emotions. Cultural differences emerged in the degree to which recall of frequency of emotion was related to experience sampling reports of intensity of emotions. Despite the memory bias, the three methods led to similar conclusions about the relative position of the groups.


Psychological perspective determines how people will intervene into problems, issue, cases and define their reasoning. It became more essential to study the psychological perspectives of medical students because they have to deal with human beings. In learning process, a teacher takes part in the learning process as a role model and becomes the greatest source of inspiration. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to investigate the impact of psychological viewpoints of teachers on Health and Rehabilitation Sciences College students' viewpoints. Method: Study was conducted during Sep 2016-Jan 2017, into two-time point intervention. The sample of this study comprised of (n=143) students and (n=8) teachers of college of health and rehabilitation sciences, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University. Measures included were sociodemographic information data sheet and psychological view point scale. Results: Indicated that scores of students enrolled within traditional lecture based programs were significantly correlated (p<0.05) with behavioural perspective. In contrast, students' score of PBL based programs were correlated (p<0.05) with psychoanalytical perspective. Teachers of both programs scored high on behavioural and psychoanalysis and it increased average scores of students at the end of semester. Conclusion: The methods used for teaching and teaching teachers both can influence the students point of view.


Pastoralism, which is the main source of livelihood to about 120 million pastoralists worldwide, is practiced in the drylands that are characterized by low rainfall and frequent droughts. In the semi arid and arid lands of Kenya (88% of the Kenya landmass), pastoralism accounts for 90% of the employment and 95% of the family incomes and livelihood security. It contributes to about 10% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) and 50% of the agricultural GDP. However, frequent droughts have threatened this important sector which offers a viable production system in the vast drylands of the country. This paper highlights on the effects of droughts on pastoralism and the coping and adaptive strategies employed by the Maasai pastoralists of northern Kenya with special reference to Mukogodo Division of the semi arid Laikipia District.


This project aims to evaluate the effect of using web accessible recorded lectures and slides as a supplement to traditional face-to-face teaching for International students. Specifically, we examine whether the use of blended learning has an impact on students' exam results. In our study, held in accounting classes, we have used traditional teaching methods (lectures and seminars) during the first half of a semester and during the second half we recorded lectures using SMIRK (Simple Media Integrating Resource Creator) and made them available on the University's Managed Learning Environment, StudyNet, and used the face-to-face time in the classroom for seminars only. We have evaluated the association between the availability of SMIRK lectures and the students' performance in tests under the traditional and blended learning modes to test whether students' performances are increasing as a result of using SMIRK. We also collect information on attendance, students' StudyNet activities, other demographic details, and grade point average (GPA) at enrolment, to ascertain whether or not alternative explanations are driving our results. We find that students are performing better when taught using blended learning. Students achieved a significantly higher mark with the average mark in the first in-class test increased from 0.45 to 0.61 (one-tailed p-value 0.006) and the average mark in the end of semester comprehensive in-class test increased from 0.45 to 0.56 (one-tailed p-value 0.055).


The water content of unsaturated soils influences soil properties like shear strength, elasticity, and the velocity of acoustic waves. They are also suited to investigate the spatial–temporal variations of soil water. In this study we present noninvasive two‐dimensional tomography based on acoustic pulse transmission with a spatial resolution of 60 by 60 mm. Ten acoustic transducers were placed in a horizontal plane along the wall of a soil column of an undisturbed loess soil. Acoustic pulses were emitted into the soil and monitored after traveling through the soil column. Two infiltration experiments followed by water redistribution were performed while acoustic signals were monitored at 60‐s intervals. The water content was measured with a time domain reflectometer (TDR). Travel times of the acoustic signals were converted to acoustic velocity distributions using a tomography algorithm. The acoustic velocities were transformed to water contents, resulting in 21 time series. Some of the measurements indicated fast (i.e., preferential) flow paths, whose positions varied between the two infiltration experiments.


The tasks of writing and translation show several similarities in the challenges they pose and the processes they include. In translation studies, the fuzzy edges between these tasks have been studied in many ways. To compare the processes of writing and translating in the field, we observed a freelance translator in the workplace for two working days (1 day of writing, 1 day of translating) and interviewed her on her work processes. We analysed the data with regard to the process phases, strategies, contextual features, and creativity dimensions of text production (Dam-Jensen and Heine 2013). In addition to the many similarities in the processes, our findings also show substantial differences in the text production dimensions.


Although it is certainly possible to design a workable admissions policy that does not include standardized tests, it is not sound policy to eliminate admissions tests in the hope of indirectly furthering a social policy goal, Ms. Zwick maintains. COLLEGE enrollment figures aren't ordinarily big news, but the 1998 freshman enrollment numbers for the University of California's most prestigious campuses were startling enough to warrant headlines. At the University of California, Berkeley, African American enrollment dropped by more than 60% from 1997 levels, and Latino enrollment dropped by nearly 50%. UCLA experienced dramatic decreases as well.1 Since the passage in 1996 of California's Proposition 209, which banned consideration of race or ethnicity in admissions decisions at public colleges and universities, University of California educators have feared just such a plunge in minority representation and have been considering ways to counteract it. In 1997 the university settled on an apparently simple solution: eliminate the SAT as a criterion for admissions. "We . . . have evidence that the SAT loses us 2,000 Latino students this year alone," said Eugene Garcia, dean of the School of Education at Berkeley in a 1997 interview.2 Although the university's enthusiasm for eliminating the SAT may have faded, admissions testing remains a source of controversy. A new document from the U.S. Department of Education, "Nondiscrimination in High-Stakes Testing" (still in draft form), advises that colleges may be in legal jeopardy if they rely too heavily on standardized test scores in making admissions or financial aid decisions. The president of the University of California, Richard Atkinson, said in a March 1999 interview that he "would be prepared to forget the SAT" if the newly approved California high school exit examination proves to be a good test.3 And a bill that would deemphasize the role of standardized testing in admissions decisions (S.B. 145), introduced for the second time in January 1999, awaits action in the California senate. (An earlier version of the bill, introduced in 1998, passed both houses of the legislature but was vetoed by the outgoing governor, Pete Wilson.) Meanwhile, Texas has been grappling with the effects of the Hopwood decision, which banned the use of race in admissions programs, and the state of Washington has been faced with the consequences of Initiative 200, a Prop 209 clone that was passed in 1998. These political developments have provoked a reconsideration of the role of tests in college admissions and have focused serious attention on two questions: Are standardized admissions tests biased against minorities, as is often argued? Would eradicating these tests produce a more ethnically diverse freshman class? The Question of Bias Differences between racial and ethnic groups in their performance on standardized tests & including the SAT (from the Educational Testing Service) and its competition, the ACT (from ACT, Inc.) & have been analyzed extensively both in academic journals and in the popular press. Researchers, social theorists, and politicians have offered an array of reasons for these score differences, ranging from socioeconomic, cultural, linguistic, and genetic factors to test bias. A recent inflammatory contribution to this literature was The Bell Curve, by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, which was published in 1994 and encouraged consideration of genetic explanations for group differences in test scores.4 But the controversy has not been limited to the reasons for the differences in performance. Even the matter of determining which groups are advantaged by standardized tests is less straightforward than it first appears. In the popular press, the existence of bias in admissions tests is typically assumed to be demonstrated by the persistent pattern of differences between racial groups in average test scores. …


Today, American public opinion is having more influence than ever on how U.S. leaders respond to international crises and formulate foreign policy. Yet at the same time, there is evidence that Americans are increasingly ill-informed of international affairs. This paradox raises many serious questions: What information about the world are we given by the mainstream media? How much? How good? By whom? Through what means? And how much foreign news is really enough?In this fifth volume of his highly acclaimed Newswork series, Stephen Hess addresses these questions and offers a revealing look at how the print and broadcast media cover international affairs and how foreign correspondents do their work.Hess contends that the United States is a nation of two media societies. One is awash in specialized information, available to those who have the time, interest, money, and education to take advantage of it. The other encompasses the vast majority of Americans, who rely on the top stories of TV networks' evening news programs and their community's daily newspaper. For them, Hess says, the current diet of international news offered is not adequate considering its potential importance to their lives.When the world imposes itself on the U.S. media, it does so in a big waythe Gulf War, the coup in Moscow, the fall of the Berlin Wall. But there are remarkable peaks and valleys in international news coverage. According to Hess, TV in particular shrinks the globe geographicallywith Asia underrepresented and the Middle East overrepresented, for example. And much of TV's focus on international violence is gratuitous, telling us where and how, but very rarely why. Hess concludes with suggestions for improving international coverage."


The rolling shear modulus is very low, leading to rolling shear failure in the cross layer of cross-laminated timber (CLT). The overall objective of this thesis work was to develop an appropriate methodology for measuring the rolling shear properties of CL T. This research consists of three article format chapters, which were aimed at: 1) obtaining a better understanding of advantages and disadvantages of using the bending test and twoplate shear test for determining the rolling shear properties of 3-layer CLT, 2) investigating the influence of growth ring orientation and laminates thickness of cross layer on the rolling shear properties, and 3) verifying the feasibility of two-plate shear test method for measuring the rolling shear properties of 3-layer CL T beam. It is recommended that the two-plate shear test be used as a testing method for measuring the rolling shear modulus of a cross layer, which can be used to calculate the deflection of a 3-layer CLT beam using the shear analogy method at a given span-to-depth ratio ranging from 6 to 50. An adjustment factor (a) was proposed to predict the deflection under the centre-point bending test at various span-to-depth ratios. The two-plate shear test method can also be used to measure the rolling shear strength, and can provide a reasonable estimate of the load-carrying capacity of 3-layer CLT beam at a relatively large span-to-depth ratio, but a conservative estimate at a small span-to-depth ratio. In summary, it shall be feasible to adopt the two-plate shear test for determining the rolling shear modulus and strength of cross layer in CLT. ii


AbstractThis study aims to compare the effect of low-level laser therapy (LLLT) and ozone therapy on the bone healing. Thirty-six adult male Wistar albino rats were used for this study. Monocortical defects were shaped in right femur of all rats. Defects were filled with nano-hydroxyapatite graft. The animals were divided into 3 groups and each group was than divided into 2 subgroups. Then, LLLT with a diode laser was applied to the first group (G1), ozone therapy was applied to the second group (G2), and no treatment was applied to the third group as a control group (G3). Animals were sacrificed after 4th and 8th weeks and the sections were examined to evaluate the density of the inflammation, the formation of connective tissue, the osteogenic potential, and osteocalcin activity. As a result, there were no significant differences among the groups of 4 weeks in terms of new bone formation. In the immunohistochemical assessment, the number of osteocalcin-positive cells was higher in the laser group compared to the other group of 4 weeks; this difference was statistically significant in the LLLT and ozone groups (P < 0.05). Histomorphometric assessment showed that the new bone areas were higher in the LLLT and ozone groups; furthermore, there was a statistically significant difference in the LLLT in comparison with the control group at 8th week (P < 0.05). At the same time immunohistochemical assessment showed that osteocalcin-positive cells were considerably higher in G2 than G1 at 8th week (P < 0.05). The findings of this study may be the result of differences in the number of treatment sessions. Further studies are therefore needed to determine the optimal treatment modality.


A computational model is presented which will help guide and interpret an upcoming series of experiments on nonlinear compressional waves in marine sediments. The model includes propagation physics of nonlinear acoustics augmented with granular Hertzian stress of order 3/2 in the strain rate. The model is a variant of the time domain NPE (McDonald and Kuperman , 1987) supplemented with a causal algorithm for frequency-linear attenuation. When attenuation is absent, the model equations are used to construct analytic solutions for nonlinear plane waves. The results imply that Hertzian stress causes a unique nonlinear behavior near zero stress. A fluid, in contrast, exhibits nonlinear behavior under high stress. A numerical experiment with nominal values for attenuation coefficient implies that in a water saturated Hertzian chain, the nonlinearity near zero stress may be experimentally observable.


This volume covers the Isin-Larsa and Old Babylonian periods, a period marked initially by the struggle of two city-states, Isin and Larsa, for control over the land of Sumer in southern Babylonia. In the end the city-state of Babylon, under its energetic ruler Hammurabi, intervened. At an opportune moment, Hammurabi struck swiftly, defeated Larsa, and incorporated the southern domains into his own realms, thereby creating an empire that for a short time united the lands of Sumer and Akkad. The inscriptions in this volume are grouped by dynasties and arranged in order by ruler within each dynasty. Further, the inscriptions are arranged chronologically within each king's reign. A short introduction for each inscription gives its general contents, place of origin, and relative dating. Also included are a detailed catalogue of exemplars, a brief commentary, bibliography, and text in transliteration facing an English translation. The appended microfiches contain a transliteration of each individual exemplar displayed in a format reminiscent of a musical score.


An estimated 60% of smartphones sold in 2018 were equipped with multiple rear cameras, enabling a wide variety of 3D-enabled applications such as 3D Photos. The success of 3D Photo platforms (Facebook 3D Photo, Holopix, etc) depend on a steady influx of user generated content. These platforms must provide simple image manipulation tools to facilitate content creation, akin to traditional photo platforms. Artistic neural style transfer, propelled by recent advancements in GPU technology, is one such tool for enhancing traditional photos. However, naively extrapolating single-view neural style transfer to the multi-view scenario produces visually inconsistent results and is prohibitively slow on mobile devices. We present a GPU-accelerated multi-view style transfer pipeline which enforces style consistency between views with on-demand performance on mobile platforms. Our pipeline is modular and creates high quality depth and parallax effects from a stereoscopic image pair.


The traditional forestry education schemes are no longer sufficient to train professional foresters to manage the forest resources in a changing world. Even in forest-rich nations such as Malaysia, the challenges faced by forestry education are growing. The declining student enrolment and interests in the field must be stopped, if the field is to remain viable. The roles played by the forest have shifted from purely commercial products exploitation to environmental and social centric. In this context, forestry education will need to be restructured to impart the necessary knowledge and skills to the foresters to enable them to perform up to expectation in the field.


Nearly eight decades ago, Taqizadeh, in one of his seminal articles, set forth the suggestion that in order to overcome Iran's backward and still decaying state of affairs, "Iranians must in substance and appearance, physically and spiritually, become westernized." This single sentence has been the topic of discussion and various interpretations by Iranian intellectuals and politicians ever since. Most critics have suggested, incorrectly, that these words sum up Taqizadeh's general definition of modernity for Iran and have, therefor, made him the subject of their scathing attacks. However, Taqizadeh's ideas about modernity and its application to Iranian society were gradually formed in a long period of exposure to modern ideas and practices in the West. It was during the constitutional movement in Iran and in the Democrat Party, that Taqizadeh began developing and expressing his views on the subject. Later on, during his sojourn in Imperial Germany and as one of the founders of, and contributors to, Kaveh, he further refined his ideas on modernity. Finally, in the last two decades of his life, he slightly revised and summed up his views on the issue.
Contrary to the claim of his critics, Taqizaheh, did not advocate the adoption of western values and institutions at the expense of the essential components of Iranian national identity. In fact, he forcefully argued for preservation and promotion of the Persian language, appreciation for Iranian cultural values and upholding the best of Iran's millennial traditions. His numerous scholarly articles and essays on Ferdowsi's Shahnahmeh , Iran's ancient history, old Iranian languages and calendars attest to his abiding interest in Iranian national identity. Nevertheless, he argued that adoption of the best elements of more advanced civilizations has throughout history been the wellspring of the cultural and material growth of all human societies. In his opinion, centuries long isolation of Iran from the western world had greatly set back Iran's cultural and scientific advancement and material development.


This article questions the traditional privileging within the judicial system of creditors over occupiers following default on mortgage payments and the repossession of family homes. It does this within the context of the 2007 financial crisis, one cause of which lay within the heart of the housing financial (creditor) sector. In particular it argues that the circumstances associated with repossession are heightened during periods of economic decline. Families are at increasing risk of losing their home where economic conditions put pressure on household budgets and options for re-mortgaging are constrained. This is compounded where political ideology positions owner-occupation as the preferred tenure. Whilst houses are bought, homes are repossessed. However, the meaning or value of 'home' is often lacking in legal disputes concerning defaulted mortgage payments. The article provides evidence of the circumstances which put families at risk of losing their home and importantly considers the devastating psychological and social consequences of repossession on families and their children.


The volume contains a selection of articles on current theoretical issues in Translation Studies and literary translation. The authors are experts in their fields from renowned universities in the world. The book will be an indispensable aid for trainers and researchers, but may be of interest to anyone interested or active in translation and interpreting. A companion volume in this series contains articles on audiovisual translation, translator training and domain-specific issues.


The scientific literature has widely shown that hydraulic modelling is affected by many sources of uncertainty (e.g. model structure, input data, model parameters). However, when hydraulic models are used for engineering purposes (e.g. flood defense design), there is still a tendency to make a deterministic use of them. More specifically, the prediction of flood design profiles is often based on the outcomes of a calibrated hydraulic model. Despite the good results in model calibration, this prediction is affected by significant uncertainty, which is commonly considered by adding a freeboard to the simulated flood profile. A more accurate approach would require an explicit analysis of the sources of uncertainty affecting hydraulic modelling and design flood estimation. This paper proposes an alternative approach, which is based on the use of uncertain flood profiles, where the most significant sources of uncertainty are explicitly analyzed. An application to the Po river reach between Cremona and Borgoforte (Italy) is used to illustrate the proposed framework and compare it to the traditional approach. This paper shows that the deterministic approach underestimates the design flood profile and questions whether the freeboard, often arbitrarily defined, might lead to a false perception of additional safety levels.


Background. Advanced basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is often treated by surgery or X-ray therapy. The consequences of X-ray therapy on the patients' health-related quality-of-life (HRQOL) have so far not been described. Objectives. To quantify quality of life in BCC patients before and after X-ray therapy compared with matched healthy controls. Materials. Twenty-five patients (mean age 69) with BCC completed the Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) before and two weeks and three months after X-ray therapy and their results were compared with the DLQI scores for 25 matched controls. Results. Compared to the healthy controls the patients' DLQI score was significantly higher before and 2 weeks after X-ray therapy (P = 0.005; P = 0.000). The patients' DLQI score decreased significantly from baseline to three months after X-ray therapy (P = 0.024), when it became similar to that of the healthy controls (P = 0.819). Three months after X-ray therapy eight patients had no skin reactions, 11 had slight atrophy, pigmentation change, and/or some hair loss, four had patch atrophy, moderate telangiectasia, and/or total hair loss. Conclusions. BCC has a negative effect on patients' quality of life. The study shows that HRQOL normalises shortly after X-ray therapy, despite minor skin manifestations.


Depression is a serious mood disorder afflicting millions of people around the globe. Medications of different types and with different effects on neural activity have been developed for its treatments during the past few decades. Due to the heterogeneity of the disorder, many patients cannot achieve symptomatic remission from a single clinical trial. Instead they need multiple clinical trials to achieve remission, resulting in a multiple stage treatment pattern. Furthermore those who indeed achieve symptom remission are still faced with substantial risk of relapse. One promising approach to predicting the risk of relapse is censored regression. Traditional censored regression typically applies only to situations in which the exact time of event of interest is known. However, follow-up studies that track the patients' relapse status can only provide an interval of time during which relapse occurs. The exact time of relapse is usually unknown. In this paper, we present a censored regression approach with a truncated $l_1$ loss function that can handle the uncertainty of relapse time. Based on this general loss function, we develop a gradient boosting algorithm and a stochastic dual coordinate ascent algorithm when the hypothesis in the loss function is represented as (1) an ensemble of decision trees and (2) a linear combination of covariates, respectively. As an extension of our linear model, a multi-stage linear approach is further proposed to harness the data collected from multiple stages of treatment. We evaluate the proposed algorithms using a real-world clinical trial dataset. Results show that our methods outperform the well-known Cox proportional hazard model. In addition, the risk factors identified by our multi-stage linear model not only corroborate findings from recent research but also yield some new insights into how to develop effective measures for prevention of relapse among patients after their initial remission from the acute treatment stage.


Based on the results of the large, international, phase III VISTA trial in previously untreated MM patients ineligible for high-dose therapy with stem cell transplantation (HDT-SCT), bortezomib (VELCADE®) was approved by the US FDA for the initial treatment of multiple myeloma (MM). Data from VISTA showed that bortezomib plus melphalan–prednisone (VMP) was superior to melphalan–prednisone (MP) across all efficacy end points, including response rates (overall and complete response [CR] rates), time to progression (TTP), time to subsequent therapy (TTNT), and overall survival (OS). Patients (N=682) from 151 centers in 22 countries in Europe, North and South America, and Asia were randomized (1:1) to 54 weeks treatment with VMP (N=344) or MP (N=338). Patients received nine 6-week cycles of bortezomib 1.3 mg/m2 (days 1, 4, 8, 11, 22, 25, 29, 32 in cycles 1–4 and days 1, 8, 22, 29 in cycles 5–9) with melphalan 9 mg/m2 and prednisone 60 mg/m2 (days 1–4 in cycles 1–9), or melphalan plus prednisone, per the dose and schedule described above. The primary end point was TTP, with progression determined using European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) criteria. Median age was 71 years; 30% of patients were aged ≥75 years. At baseline, 34% of patients had Karnofsky Performance Status (KPS) ≤70%, 33% had β2-microglobulin >5.5 mg/L, and 34% had International Staging System (ISS) Stage III disease. An Independent Data Monitoring Committee recommended the trial be stopped based on a protocol-specified interim analysis as the statistical boundary for the primary end point had been crossed. VMP was well tolerated, with patients remaining on VMP therapy for a median of 46 weeks (8 cycles) versus 39 weeks (7 cycles) with MP; median total dose of bortezomib received was 38.5 mg/m2. Collection of tumor assessment data was stopped after presentation of the positive interim analysis. Collection of survival data, subsequent therapy data and safety/recovery data continued. Updated follow-up through April 25, 2008 confirms a statistically significant survival benefit for VMP versus MP (HR=0.64, P=0.0032) after a median follow-up of 25.9 months. Three-year survival rates were 72% versus 59%, respectively. TTNT and treatment-free interval (TFI) were also significantly longer in the VMP arm (TTNT 28.1 vs 19.2 months, HR=0.53, P<0.000001; TFI 16.6 vs 8.4 months, HR=0.54, P<0.00001). Fewer patients in the VMP versus MP arm (38% vs 57%, respectively) required subsequent therapy. Of the patients receiving subsequent therapy in the VMP and MP arms, 16% and 43% received bortezomib, 49% and 44% received thalidomide, and 19% and 6% received lenalidomide, respectively. Re-treatment with bortezomib was effective in the VMP arm (6% CR) (Table); a 10% CR rate was reported in the MP arm after bortezomib-based therapy. Peripheral neuropathy (PN) in the VMP treatment arm improved or resolved in 79% of events (median 1.9 months), with 60% of PN events resolving completely (median 5.7 months). VMP is an active and well-tolerated treatment option for previously untreated MM patients and significantly prolongs survival and time to subsequent therapy. Patients can be successfully treated with subsequent immunomodulatory-based combination therapy and can also be retreated with bortezomib, achieving high response rates with manageable toxicity.

Table. Investigator-reported best responses with subsequent therapies per treatment arm

| | VMP arm (n=129)* | MP arm (n=194) |
|:----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------:| --------------------- | -------------------- | --------------------- |
| Subsequent therapy and number of patients who received therapy* | Complete response (%) | Partial response (%) | Complete response (%) | Partial response (%) |
| * Other agents were used as subsequent therapy including dexamethasone; patients could receive multiple-agent regimens |
| Bortezomib or bortezomib combination (n=105) | 6 | 33 | 10 | 45 |
| Thalidomide combination (n=149) | 4 | 44 | 3 | 52 |
| Lenalidomide Combination (n=37) | 4 | 52 | | 55 |


Pioglitazone (PIO) is a peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ (PPARγ) agonist in clinical use for treatment of type 2 diabetes (T2DM). Accumulating evidence suggests PPARγ agonists may be useful for treating or delaying the onset of Alzheimer's disease (AD), possibly via actions on mitochondria, and that dose strengths lower than those clinically used for T2DM may be efficacious. Our major objective was to determine if low doses of pioglitazone, administered orally, impacted brain activity. We measured blood-oxygenation-level dependent (BOLD) low-frequency fluctuations in conscious rats to map changes in brain resting-state functional connectivity due to daily, oral dosing with low-dose PIO. The connectivity in two neural circuits exhibited significant changes compared with vehicle after two days of treatment with PIO at 0.08 mg/kg/day. After 7 days of treatment with a range of PIO dose-strengths, connections between 17 pairs of brain regions were significantly affected. Functional connectivity with the CA1 region of the hippocampus, a region that is involved in memory and is affected early in the progression of AD, was specifically investigated in a seed-based analysis. This approach revealed that the spatial pattern of CA1 connectivity was consistent among all dose groups at baseline, prior to treatment with PIO, and in the control group imaged on day 7. Compared to baseline and controls, increased connectivity to CA1 was observed regionally in the hypothalamus and ventral thalamus in all PIO-treated groups, but was least pronounced in the group treated with the highest dose of PIO. These data support our hypothesis that PIO modulates neuronal and/or cerebrovascular function at dose strengths significantly lower than those used to treat T2DM and therefore may be a useful therapy for neurodegenerative diseases including AD.


Activity of the c-jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) has been shown in hematopoietic cells transformed by p210 BCR-ABL. However, analysis has not been reported for hematopoietic cells on the consequences of this activity for c-jun promoter regulation within its distinctive proximal 8-base consensus CRE-like element, an element linked to JNK-mediated increase in c-jun transcription. In the present study, regulation of the proximal c-jun promoter was studied in murine myeloid cells transformed by p210 BCR-ABL. Promoter regulation in p210 BCR-ABL transformed cells was compared with regulation of the promoter in nontransformed interleukin-3 (IL-3)-dependent parental cells. The composition of nuclear AP-1 proteins contained within cells with p210 BCR-ABL, and their binding to the c-jun promoter proximal CRE-like element, was compared with the composition and binding of AP-1 proteins in IL-3-treated parental cells without p210 BCR-ABL. The present analysis found fivefold increased c-jun transcription occurring in p210 BCR-ABL transformed murine myeloid cells possessing a corresponding magnitude of increased kinase activity of JNK, compared with IL-3-stimulated parental cells. Augmented JNK activity was accompanied by increased nuclear abundance of c-jun and c-fos proteins that bound specifically to the proximal c-jun promoter CRE element. Also, representative human leukemic cell lines expressing p210 BCR-ABL and possessing abundant kinase activity of JNK, when compared with parental cells that were deficient in JNK activity, had increased c-jun and c-fos proteins. Finally, to show the relevance of these observations in model systems, we studied blast cells from patients with Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute leukemic transformation, and observed comparable activities of JNK catalysis and c-jun/AP-1 protein relative to the cell lines that possessed p210 BCR-ABL and JNK activity. These studies provide a basis for investigating the set of downstream genes which augmented c-jun/AP-1 activity enlists in the process of transformation by p210 BCR-ABL.


There is a paucity of literature on the application of client-centered play therapy to diverse cultures. In this regard, the purpose of the article is to discuss considerations related to using Axline's eight principles of play therapy with Mexican-American children. The principles involve multicultural acceptance and understanding, relationship building, expression of feelings, and issues of control. Implications for play therapy practice with this population are provided. ********* Despite the growing recognition of cultural issues in play therapy (Cochran, 1996; Coleman, Parmer, & Barker, 1993; Hinman, 2003; Landreth, 2001), there is a paucity of literature on the application of play therapy theories to children of diverse cultural backgrounds, especially Mexican-American children. The child/client-centered (hereafter referred to as client-centered) approach to play therapy has been recommended when the child and therapist are from culturally different backgrounds (Ramirez, 1999; Trostle, 1988). Specifically, goals of client-centered play therapy have the therapist continually strive to see the child's point of view, understand and accept the child, not impose beliefs or solutions on the child, and work within the framework of the family's values and beliefs to ensure a better chance of cooperation and positive outcomes (Ramirez, 1999). Axline's (1947) eight principles of play therapy are commonly cited guidelines for client-centered play therapy (e.g., Harris & Landreth, 2001). The principles are the following (Axline, 1947, pp. 73-74): 1. The therapist must develop a warm, friendly relationship with the child, in which good rapport is established as soon as possible. 2. The therapist accepts the child exactly as he is. 3. The therapist establishes a feeling of permissiveness in the relationship so that the child feels free to express his feelings completely. 4. The therapist is alert to recognize the feelings the child is expressing and reflects those feelings back to him in such a manner that he gains insight into his behavior. 5. The therapist maintains a deep respect for the child's ability to solve his own problems if given an opportunity to do so. The responsibility to make choices and to institute change is the child's. 6. The therapist does not attempt to direct the child's actions or conversation in any manner. The child leads the way; the therapist follows. 7. The therapist does not attempt to hurry the therapy along. It is a gradual process and is recognized as such by the therapist. 8. The therapist establishes only those limitations that are necessary to anchor the therapy to the world of reality and to make the child aware of his responsibilities in the relationship. The use of Axline's principles with Mexican-American children has not been addressed systematically in the literature. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to discuss Axline's eight play therapy principles as they may relate to traditional Mexican-American culture. It is important, however, to first define key terms used in this article. Mexican-American refers to individuals of Mexican descent, regardless of their country of origin (the United States or Mexico). Culture is "the ever-changing values, traditions, social and political relationships, and worldview created and shared by a group of people bound together by a combination of factors (which can include a common history, geographic location, language, social class, and/or religion), and how these are transformed by those who share them" (Nieto, 1996, p. 390). Worldview pertains to the subjective reality of both the child and therapist, and involves their "beliefs, values, and assumptions about people, relationships, nature, time, and activity" in their world (Ibrahim, Roysircar-Sodowsky, & Ohnishi, 2001, p.429). Ethnicity refers to membership in a group that has an historic origin, shared heritage and tradition, and characteristics that set it apart from other groups (Banks, 2003). …


Children and adolescents in low and middle income countries (LAMIC) constitute 35-50% of the population. Although the population in many such countries is predominantly rural, rapid urbanisation and social change is under way, with an increase in urban poverty and unemployment, which are risk factors for poor child and adolescent mental health (CAMH). There is a vast gap between CAMH needs (as measured through burden of disease estimates) and the availability of CAMH resources. The role of CAMH promotion and prevention can thus not be overestimated. However, the evidence base for affordable and effective interventions for promotion and prevention in LAMIC is limited. In this review, we briefly review the public health importance of CAM disorders in LAMIC and the specific issues related to risk and protective factors for these disorders. We describe a number of potential strategies for CAMH promotion which focus on building capacity in children and adolescents, in parents and families, in the school and health systems, and in the wider community, including structural interventions. Building capacity in CAMH must also focus on the detection and treatment of disorders for which the evidence base is somewhat stronger, and on wider public health strategies for prevention and promotion. In particular, capacity needs to be built across the health system, with particular foci on low-cost, universally available and accessible resources, and on empowerment of families and children. We also consider the role of formal teaching and training programmes, and the role for specialists in CAMH promotion.


This study is a longitudinal examination of the impact of therapist stage of training on client outcomes in psychotherapy. The study included 22 PhD-level psychologists who work in a university counseling center (8 female, 14 male) who had completed at least 2 training periods in the center where data were gathered. Therapists worked with 4,047 clients, and 40,271 sessions were included in our analyses. Clients were given the Outcome Questionnaire-45 (OQ-45) on a session-by-session basis, tracking treatment response. The effect of stage of training on both the magnitude and speed of OQ-45 change was examined through hierarchical linear modeling. Therapists were found to achieve the same amount of change or less change on average in their later stages of training. Therapists were also found, on average, to achieve the same rate of change or a slower rate of change in later stages of training. Findings suggest that as therapists progress through formal stages of training, they do not improve in their ability to effect change in their clients. Given these findings, a better understanding of expertise in psychotherapy practice and how to develop it may be an important area for future theory development, research, and training program development. We call for further work examining if and how an individual therapist can become more effective with time.


Let (M,F) be a compact codimension-one foliated manifold whose leaves are equipped with Riemannian metrics, and consider continuous functions on M that are harmonic along the leaves of F. If every such function is constant on leaves we say that (M,F) has the Liouville property. Our main result is that codimension-one foliated bundles over compact negatively curved manifolds satisfy the Liouville property. Related results for R-covered foliations, as well as for discrete group actions and discrete harmonic functions, are also established.


As the teaching professions face rapidly changing demands, educators require an increasingly broad and more sophisticated set of competences than before. In particular the ubiquity of digital devices and the duty to help students become digitally competent requires educators to develop their own digital competence. On International and national level a number of frameworks, self-assessment tools and training programmes have been developed to describe the facets of digital competence for educators and to help them assess their competence, identify their training needs and offer targeted training. Analysing and clustering these instruments, this report presents a common European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu). DigCompEdu is a scientifically sound background framework which helps to guide policy and can be directly adapted to implement regional and national tools and training programmes. In addition, it provides a common language and approach that will help the dialogue and exchange of best practices across borders. The DigCompEdu framework is directed towards educators at all levels of education, from early childhood to higher and adult education, including general and vocational training, special needs education, and non-formal learning contexts. It aims to provide a general reference frame for developers of Digital Competence models, i.e. Member States, regional governments, relevant national and regional agencies, educational organisations themselves, and public or private professional training providers.


Commercial 1.55-µm extended-cavity semiconductor lasers provide single-mode operation that can be continuously tuned over a range larger than 100 nm without mode hopping. But, such performances require delicate factory adjustments and a high mechanical stability of the external cavity. Furthermore, at high emission power, the tuning range is limited to smaller values because of annoying multimode operations. Previously, we showed that the alignment constraints can be relaxed by use of an intracavity photorefractive filter. Here, we present new results obtained using a crystal with low absorption and high photorefractive gain. We demonstrate that, without inducing excessive additional loss, single-mode emission is preserved at output power higher than the maximum power obtained in the absence of crystal, in the full tuning range of the laser.


The air traffic control industry is highly regulated, with stringent processes and procedures to ensure that IP (Intellectual Property) and workplaces are kept secure. The training of air traffic controllers (ATCs) and other roles relating to air traffic services is a lengthy and expensive process. The rate in which trainees can be trained is projected to fall significantly short of the demand for staff to work in the air traffic industry. This paper focuses on two prototype mobile training applications—Location Indicators (LI) and the Aircraft Control Positions Operator (ACPO) Starter Pack. LI and the ACPO Starter Pack have been produced to explore how air traffic control training could be improved and supported using digital applications. Each application explores a key learning area for trainees in the air traffic control industry and presents an alternative to the equivalent training that is currently in use. The two prototypes that have been designed focus on producing a succinct user experience alongside gamified elements to improve engagement. As part of this paper, usability testing has been undertaken with LI and the ACPO Starter Pack. A total of nine usability tests have been undertaken at four different locations. These usability tests consisted of participants from differing demographics, varying experience with the current training and differing amounts of time with both applications. The System Usability Scale (SUS) was adapted and used to quantify participant's reactions to the usability of each application. Usability scores for both applications were collected and then averaged to produce an overall score for each application. We can conclude from both usability scores and qualitative feedback that digital applications have the potential to engage future trainees in the air traffic services industry.


Hydrocarbon resources represent cumulative wealth of a country because they form for many millions of years. At the same time, the use of such resources is taking place all the time, from year to year. These two circumstances have predetermined two aspects of the hydrocarbon market research – a tactical aspect connected with the annual use by a country of its resources, and a strategic aspect connected with accounting for the remaining the raw material given exploration of new deposits. The undertaken study of the qualities of resource prices confirmed the synchronization effect of international countries-exporters' losses because of unfavourable prices at the international raw materials markets. The scientific research offers to use indicators of tactical, strategic and integral dependence of a national economy on natural resources, taking into consideration the fact that emerging countries are multiresource producers. Taking a comprehensive strategic resource assessment of a country's dependence as a basis, we are offering an order of weighing local resource characteristics, which, in turn, will help a wider practical use of monitoring of emerging countries' resource dependence.


Till the early-1990s the collectively-bargained labor contract (between the trade-union that presented the employees, and the employer or the employers'-association) was the norm, granting salaried workers a stable and protected labor contract. Thereafter, and more significantly after 1995, the share of unionized workers dropped constantly, to almost half of its peak level (of more than 80 percent). In parallel, two other types of contracts became more common: personal temporary contracts (between an individual worker and his employer), and contracts between a labor-contractor and employees who are employed in a triangular mode of employment (employee-contractor-client). The latter involves precarious employment and is more common among the more vulnerable sub-populations of new-immigrants, disabled individuals, Israeli-Arabs, foreign-workers and women. The contractual changes resulted in work instability, growth of the secondary labor market and segmentation. Efforts to protect the disadvantaged secondary labor-market workers include legislation, reforms, new regulations, and enforcement of all the above.


A new interpretive technique called "corpus linguistics" has exploded in use over the past five years from state supreme courts and federal courts of appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court. Corpus linguistics involves searching a large database, or corpus, of text to identify patterns in the way in which a certain term is used in context. Proponents of the method argue that it is a more "empirical" approach than referencing dictionaries to determine a word's public meaning, which is a touchstone in originalist approaches to legal interpretation. This Article identifies an important concern about the use of corpus linguistics in legal interpretation that courts and scholarship have overlooked: bias. Using new machine learning techniques that analyze bias in text, this Article provides empirical evidence that the thousands of documents in the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), the leading corpus currently used in judicial opinions, reflect gender bias. Courts and scholars have not considered that the COHA is sexist, raising the possibility that corpus linguistics methods could serve as a vehicle for infecting judicial opinions with longstanding prejudices in U.S. society. In addition to raising this important new problem, this Article charts a course for dealing with it. It explains how hidden biases can be made transparent and introduces steps for "debiasing" corpora used in legal interpretation. More broadly, it shows how the methods introduced here can be used to study biases in all areas of the law, raising the prospect of a revolution in our understanding of how discriminatory biases affect legal decisionmaking.


Poly(methacrylic-co-acrylonitrile) (p(MAc-co-AN)) microgels were prepared and nitrile groups were converted to amidoxime groups by chemical modification. Amidoximated microgels, amid-p(MAc-co-AN) microgels were used for in situ synthesis of cobalt–iron (Co–Fe) bimetallic magnetic nanoparticles by simultaneous reduction of Co(II) and Fe(II) ions within microgel. The prepared magnetic microgels as amid-mag-p(MAc-co-AN) microgel were found to be very effective adsorbents for the removal of metal ion such as Cd(II), Cr(III), and organic dyes e.g., methylene blue (MB), rhodamine 6G (R6G) and a herbicide, paraquat (PQ). A tremendous increase in the adsorption capacities of amid-p(MAc-co-AN) microgels was found as 88.1, 89.9, 190.0, 334.5 and 166.5 mg g−1 from 40.2, 37.4, 75.3, 57.4, and 56.3 for MB, R6G, PQ, Cd(II), and Cr(III), respectively. Moreover, a further increase in adsorption capacity of amid-mag-p(MAc-co-AN) microgel composites were also accomplished with the existence of magnetic particles. Adsorption of these contaminants from tap, river and seawater was also studied. The effects of different parameters i.e., pH, concentration of adsorbent solution and amount of adsorbate was also studied. Langmuir, Freundlich and Temkin adsorption models were applied, and the adsorption of Cd(II) and Cr(III) was found to obey Langmuir adsorption isotherm better.


Based on the channel measurement in a typical indoor environment, wideband multi-input multi-output (MIMO) channel capacity analysis result is reported in this paper. A series of non line-of-sight (NLOS) and LOS measurement positions are planned for capacity comparison in different propagation conditions. For fixed received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), slight average capacity loss in LOS cases is observed compared to NLOS cases. However, the capacity in presence of LOS component appears more position-sensitive than that in NLOS cases. When considering the large scale path loss difference introduced by the receiver movement, the capacity in LOS cases greatly exceeds the NLOS cases. A key finding is that the measured maximum channel eigenvalue fits t Location-Scale distribution rather than Gamma distribution in indoor scenario. Finally, Ricean K-factor and spatial correlation results are presented.


The experience of pain is a complex, multifaceted unpleasant sensory and emotional experience. Pain has been recognised as a global burden, and postoperative pain is one of the most common types. Postoperative pain is a complication of surgery, which, in turn, complicates recovery. Lack of appropriate postoperative analgesic management has a significant impact on clinical and economic outcomes. A multimodal approach, that incorporates different drugs and techniques, has been demonstrated as being the most effective way of reducing postoperative pain.


THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 'This book is about a whole new way of studying the mind ... Endlessly fascinating' Steven Pinker 'A whirlwind tour of the modern human psyche' Economist Everybody lies, to friends, lovers, doctors, pollsters - and to themselves. In Internet searches, however, people confess the truth. Insightful, funny and always surprising, Everybody Lies explores how this huge collection of data, unprecedented in human history, could just be the most important ever collected. It offers astonishing insights into the human psyche, revealing the biases deeply embedded within us, the questions we're afraid to ask that might be essential to our well-being, and the information we can use to change our culture for the better.


Describes the lexical access component of the Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU) continuous speech recognition system. The word recognition algorithm operates in a left to right fashion, building words as it traverses an input network. Search is initiated at each node in the input network. The score assigned to a word is a function of both arc phone probabilities assigned by the acoustic phonetic module and knowledge of expected phone duration and frequency of occurrence of different word pronunciations. The algorithm also incorporates knowledge-based strategies to control the number of hypotheses generated by the matcher. These strategies use criteria external to the search. Performance characteristics are reported using a 1029 word lexicon built automatically from standard pronunciation base forms by context-dependent phonetic rules. Lexical rules are independent of specific lexicons and are derived by examination of transcribed speech data. The lexical representation now includes juncture rules that model specific inter-word phenomena. A junction validation module is also described, whose task is to evaluate the connectivity of words in the word hypotheses lattice.<<ETX>>


Abstract : Superstorm Sandy illustrated the economic and human impact that severe weather can have on urban areas such as New York City. While flooding and wind damaged or destroyed some of the energy infrastructure, all installed microgrids in the New York City region remained operational during Sandy, including those at Princeton University, Goldman Sachs, New York University, and Co-op City. The resilience provided by these microgrids sparked renewed interest in pursuing more microgrid deployments as means to increase resiliency throughout the nation and in the face of many potential threats including severe weather events, and potentially terrorism. MIT Lincoln Laboratory has been engaged with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Energy (DoE), and the City of Boston in this Community Energy Study to explore the potential for microgrid deployment within Boston's thriving neighborhoods. Using hourly simulated building energy data for every building in Boston, provided by the Sustainable Design Lab on MIT campus, MIT Lincoln Laboratory was able to develop an approach that can identify zones within the city where microgrids could be implemented with a high return on investment in terms of resiliency, offering both cost savings and social benefit in the face of grid outages. An important part of this approach leverages a microgrid optimization tool developed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, with whom the MIT Lincoln Laboratory is now collaborating on microgrid modeling work. Using the microgrid optimization tool, along with building energy use data, forty-two community microgrids were identified, including ten multiuser microgrids, ten energy justice microgrids, and twenty-two emergency microgrids.


ABSTRACT Thermal history is an important control on generation of gas and oil in source rocks. Therefore, a realistic treatment of thermal conductivity in rocks is essential for hydrocarbon generation modelling in sedimentary basins. We present two different techniques for thermal conductivity estimation: (1) upscaling, based on arithmetic, geometrical and harmonic mean values of averaged conductivity from anticipated mineral composition; (2) infometric regression of thermal conductivity and anisotropy from measurements in rocks of known porosity and mineral composition. The accuracy of the estimate depends on the technique and we expect that the most precise way to predict thermal conductivity of sedimentary rocks leads to considerable improvement in the accuracy of basin modelling and hydrocarbon prospect identification. Various thermal conductivity models based on porosity and lithology are used for modelling temperature history for sensitivity purposes. Models where matrix conductivity is determined from measured thermal conductivities based on the mineralogy give considerably lower strata temperatures than models where geometrically averaged matrix conductivity are determined from mineralogy. This is assumed to be caused by deficiency in the mixing laws not taking into account the texture effect of the sediments. The temperature histories estimated by the three mixing law models – arithmetic, geometrical and harmonic mean – are considerably different. We show that the mixing law models give a temperature history and predicted hydrocarbon maturation far off even if we have temperature measurement at the same location. For example the harmonic model predicts the onset of the maturation of the Jurassic formations 20 million years later than does the model based on measured conductivities.


Recent advances in transfer learning have improved the performance of virtual assistants considerably. Nevertheless, creating sophisticated voice-enabled applications for new domains remains a challenge, and meager training data is often a key bottleneck. Accordingly, unsupervised learning and SSL (semi-supervised learning) techniques continue to be of vital importance. While a number of such methods have been explored previously in isolation, in this paper we investigate the synergistic use of a number of weakly supervised techniques with a view to improving NLU (Natural Language Understanding) accuracy in low-resource settings. We explore three different approaches incorporating anonymized, unlabeled and automatically transcribed user utterances into the training process, two focused on data augmentation via SSL and another one focused on unsupervised and transfer learning. We show promising results, obtaining gains that range from 4.73% to 7.65% relative improvements on semantic error rate for each individual approach. Moreover, the combination of all three methods together yields a relative improvement of 11.77% over our current baseline model. Our methods are applicable to any new domain with minimal training data, and can be deployed over time into a cycle of continual learning.


The song "There's a kind of hush all over the world", made famous worldwide by the Herman Hermits' cover version in 1967 comes to mind after the last year's hype of the "MOOC"-phenomenon. The hush – or peculiar silence after the "big noise" is less of a silence than a counter attack from the more sober participants in the discourses of lifelong learning. The editor of this journal took part in the 25Th ICDE World Conference in Tianjin, China in mid-October. We experienced the excited audience that is optimistic for when the MOOCs will swipe over the higher education sector in the developing world and provide access to top quality higher education. However, we also heard the voices of the experienced group of providers of higher education who have worked intensely for the same purpose for as long as the ICDE has existed: 75 years. The irony they express is that while authorities and politicians in all industrialized countries have urged higher education institutions to move in this direction, the adoption of policies and practices has been slow. Many countries have set up their own "Open universities" to bypass some of the most obstructive forces. The most obstructive ones have been institutions that are prestigious, private or simply too protective of their own privileges. The lifelong learning entrepreneurs have always emerged from social agents who primarily argue for the humanist values of education and- gradually - more and more intertwined by human capital arguments. And suddenly – inspired by the social media, by YouTube, Khan and a number of emerging new technologies, the previously most obstructive higher education institutions are on the pathway to "revolutionize" learning, make the best teaching available to everybody and "save" the rest of the world. Five of the highest ranked Chinese universities have now contracted "Coursera" software to "deliver" their Chinese courses to the "masses". Many, many other universities, world wide, are about to follow their example. Main universities, who traditionally have failed to take interest in provide mass education, are now, all of a sudden, at the front of "the development".In the aftermath – or hush – second thoughts start to come to the fore. One of the main entrepreneurs of "MOOC"s, Sebastian Thrun, named "the Godfather" of MOOC, and CEO of Udacity, admits the failure of the project ran with San Jose State University. He blames the poor academic quality of the students for the failure. Rebecca Schuman, a widely acclaimed columnist and educational experts comments that the MOOCs seem to fail exactly the group of students who, allegedly, would benefit the most from this way of teaching and learning. This brings us all back to square one, and underlines what veterans in the field always have said. This is a difficult enterprise. There is no salvations provided by a new technology. I would like to add: thanks for the enthusiasm, and I look forward to what comes after "the hush".In this issue we bring a new article from Professor Theo Hug from the University of Innsbruck, Austria. This is an analytical paper that provides us with profound perspectives about what communication related to teaching and learning with media is all about. It claims that when enthusiasts, such as the those providing MOOCs, go about and introduce new trends, they are often helpless in understanding the elementary dimension of media education, or the epistemological issues of the field. Hug sums up his contribution by arguing for polylogical design principles for an educational knowledge organization.In the paper by Michaela Rizzolli, also from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, we bring another contribution aiming at shedding light on the very foundations of media education. Ms. Rizzolli studies online playgrounds and introduces us to the problems we encounter when we stick to dichotomies in our thinking about this phenomenon. She argues for the need to think wider and inclusively when describing phenomena theoretically and empirically.In the third paper, Professors Kari Nes and Gerd Wikan of Hedmark University College, Norway report from a project involving interactive whiteboards (IWB) in teaching in schools. In analyzing closely how seven teachers go about their interactive boards when teaching, they see that the IWBs have potentials that not all teachers are able to realize. They discuss what teachers need in order to develop their ability to stage "exploratory talks" with students.Last we bring a brief research report from Jacques Kerneis, who is a professor at ESPE (École Superiéure du Professorate et de l'éducation Bretagne), France, who outlines experiences from three differents projects aiming at defining digital-, media- and information literacy in a French speaking context. Using a particular vocabulary of « apparatus », « phenomenotechnique » and « phenomenographie » the projects aimed at providing a framework of the evolving interpretations of these phenomena.


This dissertation aims to develop statistical methodologies for estimating the effects of timefixed and time-varying factors in recurrent events modeling context. The research is motivated by the traffic safety research question of evaluating the influence of crash on driving risk and driver behavior. The methodologies developed, however, are general and can be applied to other fields. Four alternative approaches based on various data settings are elaborated and applied to 100-Car Naturalistic Driving Study in the following Chapters. Chapter 1 provides a general introduction and background of each method, with a sketch of 100-Car Naturalistic Driving Study. In Chapter 2, I assessed the impact of crash on driving behavior by comparing the frequency of distraction events in per-defined windows. A count-based approach based on mixed-effect binomial regression models was used. In Chapter 3, I introduced intensity-based recurrent event models by treating number of Safety Critical Incidents and Near Crash over time as a counting process. Recurrent event models fit the natural generation scheme of the data in this study. Four semi-parametric models are explored: Andersen-Gill model, Andersen-Gill model with stratified baseline functions, frailty model, and frailty model with stratified baseline functions. I derived model estimation procedure and and conducted model comparison via simulation and application. The recurrent event models in Chapter 3 are all based on proportional assumption, where effects are constant. However, the change of effects over time is often of primary interest. In Chapter 4, I developed time-varying coefficient model using penalized B-spline function to approximate varying coefficients. Shared frailty terms was used to incorporate correlation within subjects. Inference and statistical test are also provided. Frailty representation was proposed to link time-varying coefficient model with regular frailty model. In Chapter 5, I further extended framework to accommodate multi-type recurrent events with time-varying coefficient. Two types of recurrent-event models were developed. These models incorporate correlation among intensity functions from different type of events by correlated frailty terms. Chapter 6 gives a general review on the contributions of this dissertation and discussion of future research directions.


The clinical and pathological findings of two canary flocks (Serinus canaria) experiencing mortalities due to infections with Salmonella typhimurium are described. Flock 1 was a group of birds that had been shipped by air to a pet shop in Western Australia and had experienced high mortalities. Flock 2 was an unrelated aviary flock of 40 canaries with high nestling and fledgling mortality. The main clinical feature in affected birds was rapid onset of depression, fluffed plumage and polyuria. Gross abnormalities detected at necropsy in acutely affected canaries which died in good body condition were a moderate to markedly enlarged reddish-purple spleen, congested intestinal tract and mild to moderately swollen liver. The most consistent finding in more chronically affected birds in moderate body condition was marked splenomegaly and diffusely slightly tanned hepatomegaly. Cytological examinations of liver and splenic impression smears demonstrated abundant Gram negative bacilli free and within macrophages. Histological examination demonstrated acute to chronic granulomatous splenitis and hepatitis in all birds examined. A severe necrotising heterophilic cloacitis was also demonstrated in one female bird. Heavy growths of Salmonella typhimurium were isolated from the coelomic cavity, liver, spleen and intestinal tracts


The small energy exchange via nucleon recoils in neutrino–nucleon scattering is now supposed to be one of the important factors for successful explosions of core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe), as they can change neutrino spectra through accumulation of a large number of scatterings. In deterministic methods employed for neutrino transport in CCSN simulations, we normally cannot afford to deploy a large enough number of energy bins needed to resolve this small energy exchange, and subgrid techniques are employed one way or another. In this paper, we study quantitatively with the Monte Carlo (MC) method how well such a treatment performs. We first investigate the effects of nucleon recoils on the neutrino spectra and confirm that the average energy is reduced by ∼15% for heavy-lepton neutrinos and much smaller amounts for other types of neutrinos in a typical postbounce situation. It is also observed that the nucleon scattering dominates the electron scattering in the thermalization of neutrino spectra in all flavors. We then study possible artifacts that the coarse energy grid may produce in the deterministic methods. In order to mimic the latter calculation, we redistribute MC particles in each energy bin after a certain interval in a couple of ways and study how the results are affected, depending on the energy resolution. We also discuss the possible implications of our results for the deterministic methods.


This paper demonstrates how our sense of identity can emerge out of mere markers of social distinction that may have no innate significance, but, nevertheless, spread to various aspects of our lives and be the root of conflict. The basis of such conflicts could arise from the use of race to form conditional judgments about people's behavior. Moreover, there are contexts where racial conflict is inevitable even though, if individuals had common knowledge of one another's preferences, there would be no conflict. It is argued that this kind of conflict, where many individuals have no innate aggressive preference, is widespread and understanding the process that gives rise to such conflict is the key to crafting effective policy that contains it.


Coastal stratigraphy from the Pacific Northwest of the United States contains evidence of sudden subsidence during ruptures of the Cascadia subduction zone. Transfer functions (empirical relationships between assemblages and elevation) can convert microfossil data into coastal subsidence estimates. Coseismic deformation models use the subsidence values to constrain earthquake magnitudes. To test the response of foraminifera, the accuracy of the transfer function method, and the presence of a pre-seismic signal, we simulated a great earthquake near Coos Bay, Oregon, by transplanting a bed of modern high salt-marsh sediment into the tidal flat, an elevation change that mimics a coseismic subsidence of 0.64 m. The transplanted bed was quickly buried by mud; after 12 mo and 5 yr, we sampled it for foraminifera. Reconstruction of the simulated coseismic subsidence using our transfer function was 0.61 m, nearly identical to the actual elevation change. Our transplant experiment, and additional analyses spanning the A.D. 1700 earthquake contact at the nearby Coquille River 15 km to the south, show that sediment mixing may explain assemblage changes previously interpreted as evidence of pre-seismic land-level change in Cascadia and elsewhere.


The first edition of Sound Art Revisited (published as Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories) served as a groundbreaking work toward defining this emerging field, and this fully updated volume significantly expands the story to include current research since the book's initial release. Viewed through a lens of music and art histories rather than philosophical theory, it covers dozens of artists and works not found in any other book on the subject.
 Locating sound art's roots across the centuries from spatialized church music to the technological developments of radio, sound recording, and the telephone, the book traces the evolution of sound installations and sound sculpture, the rise of sound art exhibitions and galleries, and finally looks at the critical cross-pollination that marks some of the most important and challenging art with and about sound being produced today.


Using data from the 2011 Census, we estimate quality of life across Australia. With mobile households, utility will be equalised across regions, so those regions with high real incomes must have a compensating low quality of life and vice versa. There are significant differences in quality of life across the 56 regions we examine. The top-ranked region in our study is the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, while the Western Australian Outback has the lowest quality of life. The drivers of quality of life are explored, and climate appears to be important as well as certain human-made cultural amenities.


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CREDIT: ALAN LESHNER

As we enter the fourth International Polar Year (IPY), we honor the fact that although the poles are among the most desolate places on Earth, they are also among the most scientifically rich and important to the future of the planet. The first of these "geophysical years" was 1882–1883; the most recent was 1957–1958. By now, most people know that the poles are ideal places to study the effects of global climate change. Indeed, some have called polar glaciers and ice sheets the "canaries in the mine" of climate change.

Because the impacts of climate change are disproportionately felt at high latitudes, polar ecosystems will continue to bear careful watching. Cores through the polar ice shelves into the underwater sediment provide a record of Earth's biological and geological history over millions of years. The Arctic has also given us a history of human settlement and associated climate records that span thousands of years and offer an outstanding base for integrated research on global systems and human adaptation. The poles are also home to some of the most unusual species, living successfully in incredibly cold and dark water hundreds of meters under the ice.

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The air is so pristine that scientists at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, poised atop a constantly shifting ice sheet several miles thick, give out little vials labeled "cleanest air on earth." That air provides a matchless environment in which cosmologists and astronomers can study the origins and evolution of the universe. Their work will be accelerated by a brand-new 10-meter telescope, transported to the South Pole in sections on turboprop freight planes and assembled outside at −60°C. Work also continues on the world's largest neutrino detector, called IceCube, which after 6 years of work will occupy a cubic kilometer of ice beneath the South Pole Station. Antarctic polar ice turns out to be an ideal medium for detecting neutrinos because it is exceptionally pure, transparent, and free of radioactivity.

The IPY epitomizes the globalization of science. Organized by the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the World Meteorological Organization, over 60 nations will contribute thousands of scientists to it to work together on over 200 projects. According to the organizers, "The fundamental concept of the IPY 2007–2008 is of an intensive burst of internationally coordinated, interdisciplinary, scientific research and observations focused on the Earth's polar regions." The IPY focuses on new ways to both understand the polar regions and develop enhanced, long-lasting observational facilities and infrastructure. It also aims to recruit a new generation of polar scientists and engineers. The IPY offers the scientific community a superb opportunity to reach out to citizens around the world with the wonders of science and its applicability to crucial issues affecting them and generations to come.

IPY research projects will include mathematical, physical, biological, behavioral, and social scientists and a wide range of engineering researchers. This mix of disciplines makes this polar year initiative unique, because the earlier ones were strictly geophysical. This IPY specifically includes research directed at the human elements of polar regions "to investigate the cultural, historical, and social processes that shape the sustainability of circumpolar human societies." Its multidisciplinary character underscores how much society depends on the full array of sciences—mathematics; the physical, life, and social sciences; and engineering—to fully understand the natural world, how to preserve it, and how to make sure humans will continue to have a secure, productive, and fulfilling place in it.

Reaping the benefits of this grand IPY initiative is not only up to the global scientific community. It also will depend on the wisdom of policymakers around the world to provide enough resources to ensure its success. The recent budget frenzies in the United States came dangerously close to compromising, or at least substantially delaying, this country's participation. We all need to be vigilant and make certain that the great opportunities inherent in the IPY are not forsaken.

 [1]: pending:yes


This paper explores the meaning and significance of the term `social practice' and its relation to strategy-as-practice research from the perspective of social theory. Although our remarks are also applicable to other practice-based discussions in management, we discuss strategy practices as a case in point and thus contribute to the strategy-as-practice literature in three ways. First, instead of simply accepting the existence of a unified `practice theory', we outline a genealogical analysis revealing the historical-contingent conditions of its creation. This analysis shows that social practices in general and strategy practices in particular can be approached from either a neo-structuralist and/or neo-interpretative perspective. Second, based on this theoretical argument, we discuss different characteristics of strategy practices and emphasize those aspects not yet fully considered by strategy-as-practice research (e.g. the physical nature of practices). Third, we show that, when studying strategy practices, given an understanding of the alternative theoretical approaches available, the practice of strategy research itself needs to be adjusted so as to accommodate a stronger emphasis on an ethnographic approach that is directed towards uncovering the contextual and hidden characteristics of strategy-making.


The execution of hydraulic models at large spatial scales has yielded a step change in our understanding of flood risk. Yet their necessary simplification through the use of coarsened terrain data results in an artificially smooth digital elevation model with diminished representation of flood defense structures. Current approaches in dealing with this, if anything is done at all, involve either employing incomplete inventories of flood defense information or making largely unsubstantiated assumptions about defense locations and standards based on socioeconomic data. Here, we introduce a novel solution for application at scale. The geomorphometric characteristics of defense structures are sampled, and these are fed into a probabilistic algorithm to identify hydraulically relevant features in the source digital elevation model. The elevation of these features is then preserved during the grid coarsening process. The method was shown to compare favorably to surveyed U.S. levee crest heights. When incorporated into a continental‐scale hydrodynamic model based on LISFLOOD‐FP and compared to local flood models in Iowa (USA), median correspondence was 69% for high‐frequency floods and 80% for low‐frequency floods, approaching the error inherent in quantifying extreme flows. However, improvements versus a model with no defenses were muted, and risk‐based deviations between the local and continental models were large. When simulating an event on the Po River (Italy), built and tested with higher quality data, the method outperformed both undefended and even engineering‐grade models. As such, particularly when employed alongside model components of commensurate quality, the method here generates improved‐accuracy simulations of flood inundation.


PurposeDue to the convergence of rapid business developments and digitization challenges, service orientation is back on the research agenda as a concept to improve firms' business services. Yet, little is known about the type of determinants that are relevant and to what degree they affect a firm's service-oriented strategy.Design/methodology/approachBuilding on structural equation modeling (SEM) and a unique data set of 131 international firms from different continents, the authors identify and analyze the key determinants in the context of a firm's service-oriented strategy.FindingsThe findings show that in order to cater for changes, organizations have to manage and adapt the coherence of the determinants' business services, business processes and knowledge sharing continuously. Moreover, the results show that a service-oriented strategy is not only influenced by business services as such, but business services mediate the relationships between business processes, governance and process-aware information systems to a service-oriented strategy.Research limitations/implicationsA limitation is imposed by the limited sample size and the unbalanced response of participants (executive management). In future research, a more extensive survey among a broader group of participants will help the authors to develop their model further in order to generalize the results, as well as more finely grained research related to geography and size might be pursued. Future empirical research is necessary to identify and test the relationships between other constructs and study their effect on a firm's service-oriented strategy.Practical implicationsOn a practical level, the authors postulate that an organization's executive management should pay attention to invest in an organizational entity (department) that manages business services continuously. This organizational entity has to ensure that related processes and knowledge sharing are in place to establish and maintain a service-oriented strategy.Originality/valueThis research contributes to service-oriented literature by operationalizing the implementation of an organization's service-oriented strategy. The authors' insights go beyond the findings of Aieret al.(2011). The authors found that a service-oriented strategy influences service-oriented project success positively. The authors extended these findings, based on a unique data set, by studying business services and influencing determinants (i.e. business processes, governance, PAIS and knowledge sharing) within the context of service orientation. The renewed attention to the concept of service orientation provides insights into critical determinants that influence the implementation of a service-oriented strategy.


Why is Japanese linguistic politeness characterized by wakimae? This paper argues that wakimae, or linguistic politeness, can be traced back to two roots. First, the Japanese language has abundant modal expressions from the morpheme level to the discourse level that index the context in order to show the speaker's attitude toward the contextual elements involved. The structure of utterances consists of the proposition and the modality, and it is this modality expression that shows the speaker's attitude toward the context of speaking. Second, the Japanese 'sense of self' consists of two layers of interactional domains: uchi (ingroup) and soto (outgroup). The use of modal expressions such as addressee honorifics is required to index the interactional domains of soto to observe wakimae. Finally, in this paper the moral aspiration for the pursuit of wakimae is discussed in light of historical development of Japanese philosophy.


Type 2 diabetes is a serious condition that often leads to complications and increases the risk of a number of other diseases. The prevalence of type 2 diabetes is rising and is associated with western lifestyles; overconsumption of high calorie foods and predominantly sedentary daily routines. However, recent advances in genomic research has established that some individuals are more 'at risk' from behavioural risk factors than others. Type 2 diabetes therefore reflects multifactorial inheritance in which susceptibility is determined by the complex interaction of multiple genes with environmental and lifestyle factors. There has been considerable debate in the literature about whether genetic information could undermine healthy lifestyle decisions particularly for conditions like type 2 diabetes with multifactorial aetiology. The evidence that personalised genetic risk information engenders feelings of fatalism is mixed. Optimising lifestyle responses to genetic susceptibility to diabetes requires not only an appreciation of the complexity of disease aetiology by health professionals, but also an understanding of how individuals interpret and respond to this genetic risk.

Key Concepts:

Type 2 diabetes is a complex multifactorial disease.

Although type 2 diabetes is considered a 'lifestyle' disease it has a strong genetic component.

Information about genetic aetiology has the potential to influence lifestyle choices.

Understanding that type 2 diabetes has a genetic aetiology may increase fatalism in individuals.

Communication of genetic risk is important to ensure that healthy lifestyles are supported.

Keywords:

Type 2 diabetes;
genetic risk;
Fatalism;
family history;
lifestyle change;
perceived aetiology


This ground-breaking documentary history contains over 150 primary sources originally written in 15 languages by or about Sephardi Jews-descendants of Jews who fled medieval Spain and Portugal settling in the western portions of the Ottoman Empire, including the Balkans, Anatolia, and Palestine. Reflecting Sephardi history in all its diversity, from the courtyard to the courthouse, spheres intimate, political, commercial, familial, and religious, these documents show life within these distinctive Jewish communities as well as between Jews, Muslims, and Christians.Sephardi Lives offer readers an intimate view of how Sephardim experienced the major regional and world events of the modern era-natural disasters, violence and wars, the transition from empire to nation-states, and the Holocaust. This collection also provides a vivid exploration of the day-to-day lives of Sephardi women, men, boys, and girls in the Judeo-Spanish heartland of the Ottoman Balkans and Middle East, as well as the emigre centers Sephardim settled throughout the twentieth century, including North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. The selections are of a vast range, including private letters from family collections, rabbinical writings, documents of state, memoirs and diaries, court records, selections from the popular press, and scholarship.In a single volume, Sephardi Lives preserves the cultural richness and historical complexity of a Sephardi world that is no more.


This study developed a hydrodynamic reduced-order model (ROM) to regenerate surface currents in Gorgan Bay, Iran. The developed ROM was based on linking a three-dimensional hydrodynamic model, MIKE3-FM, with a data reduction technique, proper orthogonal decomposition (POD). The MIKE3-FM model was first run to simulate surface currents in the bay under a real wind scenario for two years starting July 1, 2010. Thereafter, time and space steps of 6 hours and 500 m, respectively, were chosen to capture 2,920 snapshots of the simulated surface currents using the MIKE3-FM model on 1,937 grids in the bay. The snapshots were then used as input for the POD model to develop the ROM. By applying the POD on the snapshots, necessary spatial and temporal components of surface currents used to develop the ROM were calculated. Having spatial and temporal terms, two ROMs for regeneration of surface currents U and V in two directions x and y, respectively, were developed. Analysis of ROM results revealed they accurately regenerated surface currents using only the first ten modes (among 2,920 modes). Comparison of MIKE3-FM and ROMs developed by the first ten modes revealed there were only negligible differences between their results when they simulated and regenerated, respectively, U and V, in the bay.