Most of the studies that describe the building of innovation capability in emerging and developing economies have focused on the ways in which latecomer firms develop continuously towards advanced capability levels along existing technological trajectories, particularly for the assembled products industries, especially in Asia. A slightly different approach is adopted herein by focusing on pathways of discontinuous capability building of firms in natural resource-processing industries. By drawing on evidence from a variety of case studies taken from 13 forestry, pulp, and paper firms in Brazil in the period 1950-2007, it was found that: (1) in contrast with the majority of case studies reported in the literature, the pathways followed by firms in their accumulation of innovation capability involved a qualitative departure from the established technological trajectory at an early stage in the development of their capability; (2) the pathways of firms along the new technological trajectories were nevertheless characterised by a high degree of variability (from world leader to laggard) in terms of the levels and speeds of the accumulation of innovation capability; (3) firms that have attained progressively higher levels of innovative performance have more rapidly developed a combination of internal and external research-based arrangements in order to undertake increasingly complex, but firm-centred innovation efforts. This paper sheds some light on some of the discussions that relate to the role of natural resources in the patterns of industrial progress and growth in those countries endowed with particular natural resource-based industries. It also provides a methodological contribution to the study of the long-term innovation strategies that make use of the dynamics of capability building, especially within natural resource-processing industries.


This paper describes a device for separating a laser radiation beam in the reference channel of a Fourier spectrometer into two beams, shifted in phase by π/2. This make it possible to constantly monitor the sign of the rate of change of the optical path difference. A plane-parallel glass plate tilted at a definite adjustable angle and overlapping half the laser radiation beam is mounted in one arm of the interferometer.


Ewing tumors are characterized by reciprocal translocations involving the EWS gene on 22q12 fused to ETS transcription‐factor family members. Little is known about further aberrations contributing to tumor development and progression. Sixty‐two frozen tumors with known EWS rearrangements (52 primary tumors, 10 relapses) of ET patients registered in the EICESS protocol were analyzed by comparative genomic hybridization (CGH). The median number of changes in 52 primary and 10 relapsed cases was 2.5 and 5.0 per tumor (P = 0.153). Frequent abnormalities included gains of chromosomes 8, 12, 20, and 1q and losses of 16q and 19q. Neither number nor type of aberration was associated with histology, tumor size, disease stage, tumor localization, or histologic tumor response to chemotherapy. Among the 52 primary tumors, 26 with Type I fusion (EWS exon 7 to FLI1 exon 6) and 26 with other fusion types had a median of 2.0 and 3.0 aberrations per tumor, respectively (P = 0.031). Combinations of gains of chromosomes 8 and 12, gains of chromosome 20, and either gains of 8q or 18q and losses of 16q and 17p frequently occurred. The cumulative overall survival (OAS) was different between 35 patients with <5 aberrations and 13 patients with ≥5 aberrations (P = 0.009). Univariate analysis showed that patients with gains of 1q, 2q, 12, and 20 or losses of 16q and 17p had significantly lower OAS than those without aberrations. By multivariate analysis, loss of 16q (relative risk [RR] = 5.3; P = 0.0006) was an independent prognostic factor. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Passerines maintain low levels of fat in winter even though larger fat reserves would provide better insurance against starvation. This is believed to be a result of predation risk and/or metabolic expenditure increasing with the amount of fat carried. Recent empirical studies indicate that the effect of increased mass on predation risk is small, but the effect on metabolic expenditure is large. Using dynamic modelling, I investigated how mass-dependent costs affect the pattern of fat gain. I found that increases in metabolic expenditure were sufficient to explain strong regulation of the level of fat, but that increases in direct predation risk cannot be excluded. A plausible explanation for the increase in metabolic expenditure is if the extra weight is compensated for by a parallel gain in flight muscle. Such compensation means that an increase in instantaneous predation risk can be avoided, but that costs depending on an increase in energy intake may occur instead. For example more time spent foraging increases exposure to predators. Hence, one form of predation risk (impaired ability to escape from an attacking predator) may be traded for another (more time spent foraging). This will be beneficial if this extended foraging is not risky, whereas failure to compensate for the extra mass would mean the risk of being caught by a predator increasing considerably. Besides the widely recognized trade-off between starvation and predation, this means that there may also be a trade-off between different forms of predation in wintering birds.


The tribological study of Bonded Solid Lubricants, BSLs is reviewed, this includes a review of the constituent components of a BSL including a table of publications which presents a list of papers containing detailed data about the friction and wear of BSL coatings. The general theories of friction for metals in sliding contact and the friction theory applied to solid film lubrication are reviewed. A section is also included on Herzian contact theory and its application to solid films.

A screening test is described for 12 BSLs applied to commercial components. This programme provided information on the friction coefficient and allowed the selection of one of these finishes for a further more in depth study. In general the friction coefficients obtained were higher than those quoted by the material manufacturers, it was presumed that this was due as the consequence of differences in test methods. Three test programmes are described that were conducted on a new pin on disc facility, a major programme to study the performance under various conditions at pressures above the yield pressure of the film. The information was used in the formulation of an empirical equation that can be used to predict the friction coefficient. This programme also demonstrated: that there were three distinct phases of performance, contact life increased with high loads and increased velocity, the friction coefficient in the steady state phase was between 0.18 and 0.22.

The second programme examined the evolution of the wear scar on the ball and wear track on the disc. The programme illustrated the development of a transfer film on the ball and the steady increase in friction coefficient to a point where it became stable and the wear scar on the ball changed to a circular flat.

The third programme investigated the friction coefficient at very low loads that produced pressures below or close to the yield pressure of the film. The results from this programme demonstrate that as the load increases, the friction coefficient decreases, this can be attributed to the Hertzian contact area being proportional to the load 213 and the friction force is proportional to the area, then the friction coefficient F/W is proportional to the load W-1/3.

In the penultimate chapter theoretical predictions for the friction coefficient under various contact conditions are compared with the experimental results obtained, in general the calculated results are higher and some possible causes are given for the discrepancies.


The abstraction of "energy" emerged in the second third of the nineteenth century amid attempts to disentangle human, animal, hydro, and carbon powers, seeking to thereby transform them into manageable and docile forces. This simplification still animates the notion of "energy regimes," so prevalent in analytic attempts to make sense of historical shifts involving these powers. Barak's essay probes the development of this abstraction as well as the continuities and entanglements it obfuscated by attending to the imperial context of the increasing reliance on carbon-based energy, focusing on the British textile spinning and weaving sector and the carbon fibers it extended to Egypt's agricultural periphery and urban centers. Instead of the advent of a new energy regime, coal inserted itself into existing systems and changed them from within. This rearrangement was characterized, surprisingly, by the intensification of existing forces: if animal- or waterpower gradually became relatively less central with the advent of coal, in absolute terms and in terms of their social significance their importance often grew.


Ecologists commonly use grouped or clustered count data to estimate temporal trends in counts, abundance indices, or abundance. For example, the U.S. Breeding Bird Survey data represent multiple counts of birds from within each of multiple, spatially defined routes. Despite a reliance on grouped counts, analytical methods for prospectively estimating precision of trend estimates or statistical power to detect trends that explicitly acknowledge the characteristics of grouped count data are undescribed. These characteristics include the fact that the sampling variance is an increasing function of the mean, and that sampling and group-level variance estimates are generally estimated on different scales (the sampling and log scales, respectively). We address these issues for repeated sampling of a single population using an analytical approach that has the flavor of a generalized linear mixed model, specifically that of a negative binomial-distributed count variable with random group effects. The count mean, including grand intercept, trend, and random group effects, is modeled linearly on the log scale, while sampling variance of the mean is estimated on the log scale via the delta method. Results compared favorably with those derived using Monte Carlo simulations. For example, at trend = 5% per temporal unit, differences in standard errors and in power were modest relative to those estimated by simulation (< or = /11/% and < or = /16/%, respectively), with relative differences among power estimates decreasing to < or = /7/% when power estimated by simulations was > or = 0.50. Similar findings were obtained using data from nine surveys of fingernail clams in the Mississippi River. The proposed method is suggested (1) where simulations are not practical and relative precision or power is desired, or (2) when multiple precision or power calculations are required and where the accuracy of a fraction of those calculations will be confirmed using simulations.


The article supplements the two classic legislative histories of ERISA: (1) James A. Wooten, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 — A Political History (2004) and (2) Staff of S. Comm. on Labor and Public Welfare, Leg. History of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (1976). The article, however, also focuses on the development and evolution of the ERISA preemption principles in interpretations of the Supreme Court, and the major amendments to ERISA, particularly the Retirement Equity Act of 1984. The article seeks to give the reader the tools to reaches his or her own conclusions about the issues discussed, particularly the significance of the ERISA General Preemption Rule (the "Rule" that ERISA preempts all state laws that relate to any ERISA plan, and the explicit and implicit exclusions from the Rule. Thus, the reader may answer the essential question that arises about any federal preemption provision for ERISA preemption. What undue interference with the ERISA regulatory regime does ERISA preemption seek to prevent, and which interference is, in fact, prevented? The article proposes that three principles may be used to decide when state benefit laws determine ERISA benefit rights. First, ERISA permits state laws that do not diminish or enhance (a) ERISA benefit entitlements; (b) ERISA enforcement mechanisms; or (c) ERISA mandates. Second, ERISA preempts any state law that diminishes or enhances any of these ERISA protections unless the diminution or enhancement was needed to implement a state law that is not otherwise preempted, in which case the law is not preempted if the diminution or enhancement is limited to the extent needed for the effective administration of such state law. Third, a law is not otherwise preempted if the law (1) is described in an implicit or explicit exclusion from the ERISA General Preemption Rule, or (2) does not diminish or enhance any of the three above benefit protections other than with a reporting or disclosure mandate that is used to implement the law. Neither the courts nor other commentators have thoroughly explored these principles. The article applies these three principles to five kinds of state laws: (1) generally applicable criminal laws, which are explicitly excluded from the Rule; (2) tax laws, which are explicitly included in the Rule, but to a large extent are implicitly excluded from the Rule; (3) creditor laws, which are explicitly and implicitly preempted by specific provisions of ERISA, unless plan terms provide for their inclusion, as may be done, to some extent, for certain plans; (4) domestic relations laws, some of which are explicitly excluded from the ERISA General Preemption Rule, and some of which are implicitly included in the Rule; and (5) transfer on death laws, all of which ERISA preempts, unless plan terms provide for their inclusion, as may be done, to some extent, for certain plans. The article also discusses (1) the definition of a plan for purposes of determining whether an arrangement is an ERISA plan; and (2) the extent to which ERISA, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended, whose dominating purpose is the protection of ERISA plan participants and beneficiaries rather than the protection of ERISA plans and their sponsors, protects the benefit entitlements of a plan participant or beneficiary from state-law claims after the participant or beneficiary has received a distribution of their benefit entitlements.


A Hypertext system is a text data base where the units of information are interlinked using pointers that the user can follow. We call the pointers "explicit links" (as opposed to computed or virtual links.) HyTeK provides a set of tools designed to help the user explore the information contained in the system.
The information contained in the system is represented using at least one of the three following methods: fragments of full text, explicit links between fragments and a collection of frame-like objects organized in a taxonomy.
Explicit links are used to represent discourse relationships between fragments of text. The frame-like objects, called "Topics", represent concepts in the domain of the text contained in the fragments. Topics are used to index the fragments for retrieval.
The taxonomy of Topics represents some of the relationships between fragments that a traditional Hypertext System would represent using explicit links. HyTeK's query system uses the taxonomy of Topics in order to implement tools that allow the user to retrieve fragments selectively by their contents.
A user queries the system by building a set of Topics in an interactive process of reformulation. Query reformulation is supported by a set of tools that allow the user to explore the space of Topics.
The relationships between the Topics are used to define a similarity measure which is used to rank the target set of the query.
This work describes an automatic indexing scheme, a query system and an extension of the Knowledge Representation (KR) system NIKL (KLONE) that was used in HyTeK to implement the taxonomy of Topics.
A prototype of HyTeK was implemented in Common-Lisp in a Symbolics 3645 running Genera 7.2.
The system has been extensively tested on several test collections of a total of 1000 fragments of text about AIDS treatments.
The results indicate clear advantages over traditional Information Retrieval systems and suggest that the use of a KR system for the implementation of a query module for a Hypertext System is promising.


This paper documents the relationships between bank size and measures of charter value and insolvency risk in a sample of publicly traded banks in 21 industrialized countries for the 1988-1998 period. With the exception of small U.S. bank holding companies, charter values decrease in size and insolvency risk increases in size for most banks in the countries considered. Size-related diversification benefits and/or economies of scale in intermediation are either absent or, if they exist, are more than offset by banks' higher risk taking. Furthermore, banks operating in countries with more developed financial markets exhibit lower insolvency risk, and those operating in countries with either stricter regulation on banks' permissible activities or larger banks' state ownership exhibit higher insolvency risk. Overall, our evidence is at variance with some broad implications of modern financial intermediation theory, and suggests that absent future structural changes in banking markets of developed countries, bank consolidation is likely to result in an average increase in banks' insolvency risk.


This guide provides an overview of the 16mm films located in the Pratt Libraries collection and how to care for them.


Suppose one sets up a sequence of less and less valuable objects such that each object in the sequence is only marginally worse than its immediate predecessor. Could one in this way arrive at something that is dramatically inferior to the point of departure? It has been claimed that if there is a radical value difference between the objects at each end of the sequence, then at some point there must be a corresponding radical difference between the adjacent elements. The underlying picture seems to be that a radical gap cannot be scaled by a series of steps, if none of the steps itself is radical. We show that this picture is incorrect on a stronger interpretation of value superiority, but correct on a weaker one. Thus, the conclusion we reach is that, in some sense at least, abrupt breaks in such decreasing sequences cannot be avoided, but that such unavoidable breaks are less drastic than has been suggested. In an appendix written by John Broome and Wlodek Rabinowicz, the distinction between two kinds of value superiority is extended from objects to their attributes.


Managers often use music as a marketing tool. For example, in advertising, they use music to intensify emotions; in service settings, they use slow music to boost relaxation and classical music to convey sophistication. In this article, the authors posit a novel effect—higher-pitched music can boost healthier choices. Recognizing that many perceptual characteristics of higher pitch (e.g., lighter, elevated) are conceptually associated with morality, they theorize that listening to higher- (vs. lower-) pitched music can cue morality. Furthermore, thoughts about morality can prompt moral self-perceptions and, in turn, thoughts about "good" behaviors, including healthy choices. Thus, listening to higher-pitched music may increase healthier choices. Employing field settings and online studies, the authors find that listening to higher-pitched music increases consumers' likelihood to choose healthy options (Studies 1, 3, and 5), choose lower-calorie foods (Study 2), and engage in health-boosting activities (Study 4). This effect arises because high pitch raises the salience of morality thoughts (Studies 4 and 5). The article concludes with a discussion of theoretical and managerial implications.


Notes from the Temporary City takes you on a tour of a neighbourhood on the cusp of change. It provides a complex picture of the dynamics reshaping contemporary London, from the pressure of market forces to new structures of governance and the ingenuity of its residents. Ferreri and Lang's Hackney Wick has the power of synecdoche – it speaks of a wider metropolitan condition where temporary uses are entangled in the desire to both break from capitalist urbanisation and profit from it. Rather than a catalogue of good practices, this book provides something much more compelling and necessary for the analysis of temporary use – a trajectory of disagreements, deviations and paths not taken. Isaac Marrero-Guillamon


Opioid receptors have been shown to dimerize or oligomerize among themselves and each other, affecting their functional properties. This study used bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (BRET) between the μ, δ, and κ opioid receptors to study opioid receptor aggregation in transfected human embryonic kidney 293 cells. Titration of receptor levels indicated that all three opioid receptors have a similar affinity to form homo- or hetero-oligomers in combination with any other opioid receptor type. In contrast, none of the opioid receptors formed detectable oligomers with the muscarinic M2 receptor, indicating that interactions among opioid receptors are selective. The formation of opioid receptor dimers, rather than higher order oligomers, is supported by binding kinetics in competition experiments between labeled and unlabeled receptors. Opioid receptor dimerization occurred at physiological temperatures upon receptor biosynthesis, before trafficking to the plasma membrane. Moreover, using BRET, coimmunoprecipitation, receptor binding, and G protein coupling, we demonstrate for the first time functional μ opioid receptor-κ opioid receptor heterodimerization. These combined results demonstrate that opioid receptors can undergo homo- and heterodimerization, a process with potential implications for opioid physiology and pharmacology.


SUMMARY
Three-year-old beech trees were exposed to episodes of ozone pollution over a period of 128 d beginning in May 1991. The episodes were artificially created to correspond with the meteorological conditions under which ozone pollution normally occurs. The target concentrations were 60, 80, 100 and 120 ppb, and the cumulative dose was slightly greater than that in the UK at the present time, but not above that on parts of the European mainland.

The effects of ozone on stomatal behaviour were observed both for trees that were well watered and others that were deprived of water for a period of time. In the well-watered trees there was increased stomatal resistance in the presence of ozone, but in the unwatered trees ozone reduced the increase in stomatal resistance that occurred as water stress developed. These data suggest that the effects of ozone on beech might be deleterious in two respects: (1) when the trees are well supplied with water there may be reduced CO2 uptake for photosynthesis; (2) if the stomata remain partially open when drought occurs, it may be difficult for the trees to control their water economy at critical times.

It is emphasized that these findings apply to young trees under semi-controlled conditions, and further research will be needed to explore the responses of mature trees in the field.


Since the 1980s, departments of corrections have sharply increased the use of segregation as a discipline and management tool. In effect, segregation is a secondary sentence imposed by the correctional facility—one that follows long after and usually is unrelated to the conviction for which the person is incarcerated. The consequences of holding an individual in these conditions over time may include new or exacerbated mental health disturbances, assaultive and other antisocial behaviors, and chronic and acute health disorders. In fact, studies show that prisoners who are released from segregation directly to the community reoffend at higher rates than general-population prisoners. Policy changes that will reduce the use and long-term impact of segregation will benefit not only the staff and prisoners in these units but also ultimately the well-being of facilities, systems, and the community.


Let P be a property of graphs. An -test for P is a randomized algorithm which, given the ability to make queries whether a desired pair of vertices of an input graph G with n vertices are adjacent or not, distinguishes, with high probability, between the case of G satisfying P and the case that it has to be modied by adding and removing more than n 2 edges to make it satisfy P . The property P is called testable, if for every there exists an -test for P whose total number of queries is independent of the size of the input graph. Goldreich, Goldwasser and Ron [8] showed that certain individual graph properties, like k-colorability admit an -test. In this paper we make a rst step towards a complete logical characterization of all testable graph properties, and show that properties describable by a very general type of coloring problem are testable. We use this theorem to prove that rst order graph properties not containing a quantier alternation of type \ 89" are always testable, while we show that some properties containing this alternation are not.


Hearing aids are electronic, battery-operated sensing devices which aim at compensating various kinds of hearing impairments. Recent advances in low-power electronics coupled with progresses made in digital signal processing offer the potential for substantial improvements over state-of-the-art systems. Nevertheless, efficient noise reduction in complex listening scenarios remains a challenging task, partly due to the limited number of microphones that can be integrated on such devices. We investigate the noise reduction capability of hearing instruments that may exchange data by means of a rate-constrained wireless link and thus benefit from the signals recorded at both ears of the user. We provide the necessary theoretical results to analyze this collaboration mechanism under two different coding strategies. The first approach takes full benefit of the binaural correlation, while the second neglects it, since binaural statistics are difficult to estimate in a practical setting. The gain achieved by collaborating hearing aids as a function of the communication bit rate is then characterized, both in a monaural and a binaural configuration. The corresponding optimal rate allocation strategies are computed in closed form. While the analytical derivation is limited to a simple acoustic scenario, the latter is shown to capture many of the features of the general problem. In particular, it is observed that the loss incurred by coding schemes which do not consider the binaural correlation is rather negligible in a very noisy environment. Finally, numerical results obtained using real measurements corroborate the potential of our approach in a realistic scenario.


Knowledge distillation is classically a procedure where a neural network is trained on the output of another network along with the original targets in order to transfer knowledge between the architectures. The special case of self-distillation, where the network architectures are identical, has been observed to improve generalization accuracy. In this paper, we consider an iterative variant of self-distillation in a kernel regression setting, in which successive steps incorporate both model outputs and the ground-truth targets. This allows us to provide the first theoretical results on the importance of using the weighted ground-truth targets in self-distillation. Our focus is on fitting nonlinear functions to training data with a weighted mean square error objective function suitable for distillation, subject to $\ell_2$ regularization of the model parameters. We show that any such function obtained with self-distillation can be calculated directly as a function of the initial fit, and that infinite distillation steps yields the same optimization problem as the original with amplified regularization. Furthermore, we provide a closed form solution for the optimal choice of weighting parameter at each step, and show how to efficiently estimate this weighting parameter for deep learning and significantly reduce the computational requirements compared to a grid search.


The cooling system of a DC-motor is examined in this thesis. A change of direction of the cooling air is desired to prevent the generated coal dust from entering into the windings of the machine. Ultimately this will have a negative effect on the cooling in the machine and the loss of cooling needs to be compensated through other ways. The purpose of this thesis is to work for an improved operational safety and performance of the DC-motor and to make it more competitive in the market. By modelling the interior geometry of the machine and defining the boundaries in the software programs Gambit and FLUENT respectively, the motion and the heat transfer of the airflow could be simulated. The simulation results would give us an understanding of the flow pattern which later could be used to develop design modifications on the cooling system of a DC-motor. In this thesis the main focus lies on creating a simulation model with a sufficiently fine mesh size.


This article aims to describe the experience of the course "Open Data and Social Movements", conceived as a tool for research on open data engagement. While it focuses on training activists to understand and use open data, it enables observation on why people want to use open data, the main impediments to it, and the desired improvements, configuring as research method on community informatics. The pedagogic inspirations of this research and course lie in Popular Education and Participatory Action Research.


Background: Our previous studies have shown that dietary xylitol supplementation protects against the loss of bone mineral after ovariectomy. The ovariectomy-induced decrease in trabecular bone volume is significantly retarded by dietary xylitol. Objective: To study whether dietary xylitol can protect against bone loss also during aging, a long-term experimental study was performed with rats. Methods: Twenty-four male Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into two groups. The rats in the control group were fed a basal RM1 diet, while the rats in the experimental group were continuously fed the same diet supplemented with 10% (w/w) xylitol. The rats were killed after 20 months. Their tibiae were used for the analyses of bone density and trabecular bone volume, and their femurs were used for the scanning analyses with peripheral quantitative computed tomography (pQCT). Results: The tibial density of the xylitol-fed aged group (1.73 ± 0.14 g/mm3) was significantly greater than that of the aged group without xylitol (1.56 ± 0.14 g/ mm3). The trabecular bone volume of the xylitol-fed rats was 21.2 ± 4.0%. It was significantly greater than that of the rats not receiving xylitol (9.3 ± 4.3%). The pQCT-measured cortical bone mineral density and the pQTC-measured cortical bone mineral content of the femoral diaphysis were significantly greater in the xylitol-fed group than in the control group. The trabecular bone mineral density and the trabecular bone mineral content of the femoral distal metaphysis were also significantly greater in the xylitol-fed group than in the non-xylitol group. The total bone mineral density and the total bone mineral content of the femoral neck in the xylitol-fed aged group significantly exceeded those in the aged group without xylitol supplementation. Conclusions: A continuous moderate dietary xylitol supplementation leads to increased bone volume and increased bone mineral content in the long bones of aged rats. This indicates a xylitol-induced protection against aging-related osteoporotic changes.


This report offers new insights into the drivers of inventor productivity at the individual level. It includes well-known drivers, such as inventor age and education, and controls for inventor team size, and firm/applicant information, as well as period and technology field effects derived from patent data. In addition, it adds inventor characteristics that have been largely neglected in existing studies on inventor productivity, such as the breadth of work experience, divergent thinking skills, cognitive problem-solving skills, the use of knowledge sourced from networks within and outside of the inventors' field of expertise, and personality traits. The empirical model draws on a new dataset that matches information about inventors' human capital, such as creative skills, personality traits, networks, and career biographies (collected with a self-administered survey) with patenting histories for 1932 German inventors between the years 1978 and 2012 for clean technology, nanotechnology, and mechanical elements. Our results indicate that the additional inventor characteristics double the proportion of total variation of productivity explained by individual characteristics. Furthermore, we find differences in the importance of individual characteristics across industries and along the productivity distribution, between more and less productive inventors.


The focus is effects of investments in airports and runways on the market for air travel and more in general for the production possibilities of the economy. In the case of Greenland two types of impacts can be sorted out. One is more efficient production of air transport due to increased density in the utilization of the net because of no use or less use of the airport in Kangerlussuaq. The other effect, connected to the first, is that resources are set free by avoidance of double work receiving the same passengers (and goods) in Kangerlussuaq and especially in Nuuk. Transformation curves are used to illustrate both effects and the first is dealt with also in an ordinary price quantity diagram. Using previous calculations and estimates done by the author two specific scenarios are treated in the theoretical framework presented: one is a lengthening of the runway in Nuuk to 1799 m and less intensive use of Kangerlussuaq, the other is the building of an airport south of Nuuk with a 3000 m runway in combination with abandoning Kangerlussuaq. Profitability and amortisation of the investments are reviewed in transformation curve diagrams. On the assumptions of the calculations both scenarios are profitable, but by far the most profitable is the big investment south of Nuuk. Concluding remarks stress the preliminary character of my calculations, but they also point out that decision makers' choice of scenarios to be discussed and compared is unstable.


Hypothesis We investigated whether inflammatory biomarkers and stress are involved in the pathophysiology of idiopathic sensorineural hearing loss (ISHL). Study Design Individual cohort study. Setting Two tertiary centers. Patients Forty-three ISHL and 10 non-ISHL patients seen in our ENT departments from 2004 to 2010 within a week from the onset of new symptoms and without steroid administration before visiting our departments. Intervention Multiple audiologic evaluations, blood tests including leukocyte counts, natural killer cell activity (NKCA), interleukin 6 (IL-6), tumor necrosis factor, high-sensitivity CRP (hCRP), and the General Health Questionnaire were used to evaluate the systemic stress and inflammatory response. Main Outcome Measures Correlations between biomarkers and ISHL severity and prognosis were evaluated by statistical analysis. Results In the ISHL patients, a neutrophil count above the reference range was associated with severe hearing loss and poor prognosis, and was accompanied by low NKCA and high IL-6. In the non-ISHL patients, these associations were not present. The abnormal neutrophil count was independent of preexisting vascular diseases. The abnormal counts responded to treatment and decreased into the reference range. Conclusion Neutrophil counts above the reference range of a facility will be a useful indicator of poor prognosis of ISHL. Synchronism of different types of NF-&kgr;B activation pathways could be required to cause severe ISHL. An NKCA decrease, an acute neutrophil count increase, and an IL-6 increase can induce NF-&kgr;B activation in the cochlea and cause severe ISHL. Further epidemiologic surveys should be conducted to evaluate whether stressful life events increase the risk of severe ISHL onset.


Numerical assessment of a high-throughput electrorefining concept for a spent metallic fuel was carried out by using a commercial computational fluid dynamics code, CFX. An electrorefiner concept equipped with a graphite cathode bundle was designed to recover a high-purity uranium product continuously without a noble metal contamination. The performance of the process for the decontamination of a noble metal in a uranium product was evaluated as a function of the process parameters, such as the rotation speeds of the stirrer and the anode basket. The effects of the void fraction of the anode basket cavity and the morphology of the uranium dendrite on the molten-salt flow and collection behavior were also evaluated with the calculated results.


Everyday work frequently involves coordinating and collaborating with others, but the structure of collaboration is largely invisible to conventional desktop applications. We are exploring ways to support everyday collaboration by allowing applications access to the social, organizational, and temporal settings within which work is conducted. In this paper, we present two generations of systems supporting everyday collaboration, focusing on ways to recover and represent the temporal and social structures of online activity.


Aim: To evaluate the efficacy of M two, Protaper D Files, and R endo retreatment files to remove filling from root canal using stereomicroscope. Materials and Methods: Thirty extracted human single rooted teeth, having a single canal were selected. The teeth were cleaned and shaped using a crown-down technique to a size 40 and filled with guttapercha and a zinc oxide-eugenol-based sealer using a lateral compaction technique. Teeth was assigned into three group according to the system used for removing the root filling material Group 1M Two Files, Group-II Protaper D files and Group III R Endo files. The amount of remaining filling material after the retreatment procedure was assessed utilizing a stereomicroscope. Result: Statistical analysis revealed that Group 2 (Protaper D Files) showed highest efficiency in removing guttapercha.


Controlled growth of nanometer-scale multilayered coatings of negatively charged sulfonated poly(benzobisimidazole) (SPBI), complexed with positively charged poly(2-vinylpyridine) (P2VP) on quartz, and Nafion membrane as substrates has been explored. Both polymers, SPBI and P2VP, possess a net charge in methanol as a result of the dissolution of SPBI by complexation with triethylamine (TEA) and the protonation of P2VP with HCl, respectively, and thereby can form a multilayered molecular composite of alternating anionic SPBI and cationic P2VP via an electrostatic layer-by-layer (LbL) self-assembly. UV-vis absorption spectrophotometry was used to monitor the buildup and growth rate of such SPBI/P2VP multilayer films. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to determine the roughness and thickness of the resulting SPBI/P2VP multilayers. As a result, it was found that a steady-state linear growth regime for the LbL self-assembled SPBI/P2VP multilayer films and coatings onto quartz and Nafion membranes was observed after completion of the first few deposition cycles, indicating the successful formation of the SPBI/P2VP multilayered assembly in methanol solutions. In addition, the SPBI/P2VP multilayer films in the perpendicular direction (flat view) demonstrated isotropic orientation distribution on the Nafion membrane, while the SPBI/P2VP multilayer films examined by X-ray scattering in the parallel direction (edge view) revealed anisotropic orientation, the combined observations indicating confinement of SPBI rods to the plane of the coating. We further found that the SPBI/P2VP multilayer coated Nafion possesses good thermal stability, as indicated by isothermal gravimetric analysis at 310 °C, and it was further observed that SPBI/P2VP multilayer coatings using the LbL self-assembly technique on Nafion membrane significantly increased the membrane stiffness, despite the small coating thickness employed.


N-Nitro-L-arginine Methyl Ester Hydrochloride Contrast-induced acute kidney injury (CI-AKI) is an iatrogenic complication frequently developed after cardiac catheterization procedures with the administration of iodinated contrast medium. However, the precise pathological mechanisms remain obscure. Thus, the establishment of a reproducible rat model following intra-arterial contrast medium (CM) injection to simulate the process of arteriography is of great importance. Here, a detailed protocol for establishing a CI-AKI model was describe. Three-month-old male Sprague-Dawley rats, weighing approximately 300~400g at the start of the experiment, were used. The rats were pretreated with water dehydration for 48 hours, plus indomethacin and N- ω nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME) injection, before intra-arterial contrast medium (CM) administration. Levels of serum creatinine (SCr) were measured and histopathological assessment of the kidney tissue by H&E staining were conducted. As expected, the administration of CM, following the pretreatment by indomethacin and L-NAME, induced remarkable renal dysfunction at 12 hours post-procedure in comparing with controls. The pronounced histopathological alterations in the tubular epithelial cells of the inner medulla and outer medulla were also observed in the CI-AKI rats. Thus, this rat model was reliable as a valuable tool for exploring the pathogenesis of CI-AKI.


Cryptographic systems are the most widely used techniques for information security. These systems however have their own pitfalls as they rely on prevention as their sole means of defense. That is why most of the organizations are attracted to the intrusion detection systems. The intrusion detection systems can be broadly categorized into two types, Anomaly and Misuse Detection systems. An anomaly-based system detects com-puter intrusions and misuse by monitoring system activity and classifying it as either normal or anomalous. Misuse detection systems can detect almost all known attack patterns; they however are hardly of any use to de-tect yet unknown attacks. In this paper, we use Neural Networks for detecting intrusive web documents avail-able on Internet. For this purpose Back Propagation Neural (BPN) Network architecture is applied that is one of the most popular network architectures for supervised learning. Analysis is carried out on Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) server 2000 log for finding out the web documents that should not be accessed by the unau-thorized persons in an organization. There are lots of web documents available online on Internet that may be harmful for an organization. Most of these documents are blocked for use, but still users of the organization try to access these documents and may cause problem in the organization network.


Context. —Approximately 9% of prostate cancer cases have been estimated to result from inheritance of mutated prostate cancer susceptibility genes. Few data exist as to whether there are clinical differences between prostate cancers that are inherited and those that occur in the general population. Objective. —To investigate phenotypic characteristics of families potentially linked to the hereditary prostate cancer 1 ( HPC1 ) locus on chromosome 1q24-25. Design. —Retrospective case study in which clinical data were extracted from medical and pathological records. Families. —A total of 74 North American families with hereditary prostate cancer. Prostate cancer cases from the National Cancer Data Base were used as a reference population for comparison. Main Outcome Measures. —The families were divided into 2 groups: either potentially linked (33 families with 133 men with prostate cancer), and thus likely to be carrying an altered HPC1 gene, or potentially unlinked (41 families with 172 men with prostate cancer), on the basis of haplotype analysis in the region of HPC1 . The age at diagnosis of prostate cancer, serum prostate-specific antigen levels, digital rectal examination status, stage, grade, primary treatment of prostate cancers, and occurrence of other cancers were compared between the groups. Rresults. —The mean age at diagnosis of prostate cancer for men in potentially linked families was significantly lower than for men in potentially unlinked families (63.7 vs 65.9 years, respectively, P =.01; mean age at diagnosis in the reference population was 71.6 years). Higher-grade cancers (grade 3) were more common in potentially linked families, and advanced-stage disease was found in 41% of the case patients in potentially linked families compared with 31% in both the potentially unlinked families and the reference groups ( P =.03 for the latter comparison). In the other clinical parameters, we found no significant differences between the groups. A modest excess of breast cancer and colon cancer was found in potentially linked families in comparison with potentially unlinked families, but this difference was not statistically significant. Conclusions. —Families that provide evidence for segregation of an altered HPC1 gene are characterized by multiple cases of prostate cancer that, in most respects, are indistinguishable from nonhereditary cases. However, 3 characteristics were observed: younger age at diagnosis, higher-grade tumors, and more advanced-stage disease. Our study shows that a significant fraction of hereditary prostate cancers are diagnosed in advanced stages, emphasizing the clinical importance of early detection in men potentially carrying prostate cancer susceptibility genes. These findings support the current recommendations to screen men with a positive family history of prostate cancer beginning at age 40 years.


Scholarship on the European Community (EC) focuses particular attention on how formal voting rules and institutional reform condition decision-making outcomes. The predominant view of EC history holds that decision making remained paralyzed until institutional reforms in 1987 and 1992 restored and expanded adherence to majority voting rules, which in turn unblocked and expedited EC legislative efforts. In this study I challenge these fundamental assumptions using comprehensive data for 1974–95 and a series of quantitative assessments, including event history analysis. I show that decision making in the 1970s was anything but paralyzed, that the impact of the Luxembourg Compromise has been greatly overstated, that institutional reforms actually encumbered rather than eased the EC legislative process, and that institutional effects are mediated by the underlying distribution of member state preferences. The findings have important implications for our understanding of the history and future trajectory of European integration and highlight the applicability of standard political science theories and methods to the study of the EC.


An investigation of the local environment of rare-earth doped lead silicate glasses, using molecular dynamics simulation techniques and crystal-field theory, is presented. The primary focus of the research was to develop a more realistic potential model to better describe the environment surrounding the rare-earth ion. The configurations generated from the MD simulations were used in a point-charge crystal-field model, using C 1 symmetry, to generate the emission spectra of the rare-earth ions. By refining both the aforementioned methods, we have developed a model that can isolate the individual geometrical RE 3+ environments and calculate the individual emission spectra corresponding to each of the different geometrical arrangements. This in turn has allowed us to obtain a more complete description of the local structure of the RE 3+ ion with respect to the overall emission spectrum. Molecular dynamics techniques were employed to simulate undoped and rare-earth doped lead silicate glasses, using both two- and three-body potential models. Structural features of the simulations of undoped PbO·SiO 2 glass were found to be in excellent agreement with published experimental results, and the three-body potential model produced a marked improvement over the two-body potential model. The simulations using the three-body potential showed the presence of two networks in the glass; a silicate network and a lead network. In order to obtain a better description of the effect of the lead ions in silicate glasses, a concentration study on undoped lead silicate glass was performed. At low modifier concentrations (22 mol% PbO) the lead ion was found to behave as a typical modifier. As the concentration of PbO was increased to 70 mol%, the lead ions behaved more as network formers, and an increase in PbO coordination was observed due to the lead ions sharing neighbouring oxygens. The presence of lead rich regions predominated in the glass and the two networks (silicon and lead) were found to be connected via edge-sharing oxygens. Simulations of the Eu 3+ -lead silicate glass, using the three-body potential model, showed that the Eu 3+ ions were found primarily in the lead network, with only a modest presence in the silicate network, showing that the two cations (Pb 2+ , Eu 3+ ) share similar environments. The average coordination number of Eu 3+ was found to be 6.5. Furthermore, two main geometrical arrangements were found to exist for Eu 3+ , a six-coordinated distorted octahedral and a seven-coordinated distorted pentagonal bipyramid. Since the spectroscopic properties of the dopant ions are dependent on the local environment, an in depth investigation on first coordination sphere of three different rare-earth ions (Eu 3+ -, Er 3+ - and Yb 3+ ) doped in lead silicate was performed using the three-body potential model. Although the differences in ionic radii, interionic distance and average coordination number between the three rare-earths was quite small, the three-body potential model successfully reproduced these differences in the bulk structural features, and the results were found to be in excellent agreement with experimental data.


A long-standing tradition within biblical scholarship sets the Greek text of the Septuagint constantly in relationship with its supposed Hebrew or Aramaic Vorlage , examining the two together in terms of their grammatical alignment as a standard. Yet another tradition frames the discussion in different terms, preferring instead to address the Septuagint first of all in light of its contemporary Greek linguistic environment and only then attempting to describe its language and style as a text. It is this latter approach that William A. Ross employs in this textually based study of the Greek versions of Judges, a so-called double text in the textual history of the Septuagint. The results of his study offer a window into the Old Greek translation and its later revision, two distinct stages of Greek Judges with numerous instances of divergent vocabulary choices that reflect deliberateness in both the original selection and the subsequent change within the textual development of the book. Ross's study illustrates the practicalities and payoff of a Greek-oriented lexicographical method that situates the language of the Septuagint squarely within its contemporary historical and linguistic context. William A. Ross is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte). He is a coeditor of the T&T Handbook for Septuagint Research (2021) and Septuaginta: A Reader's Edition (2018).


This paper presents an energy efficient selection of cooperative nodes with respect to their geographical location and the number of nodes participating in cooperative communications in wireless sensor networks. The cooperative communication in wireless sensor networks (WSN) gives us leverage to get the inherent advantages of its random node's locations and the direction of the data flow. Depending on the channel conditions and the transmission distance, the number of cooperative nodes is selected, that participate in an energy efficient transmission/reception. Simulation results show that increasing the cooperative receive diversity, decreases the energy consumption per bit in cooperative communications. It has also been shown that the network backbone capacity can be increased by controlled displacement of antennas at base station at the expense of energy per bit.


Abstract The paper deals with the role of ICT and the related infrastructures to induce innovations for sustainable rural development. In particular, it focuses on the innovations induced by ICT in farms and in new rural firms, and on how digital infrastructures support and generate social innovation mechanisms, leading to the consolidation of entrepreneurship and dissemination of ICT-based innovation in rural areas. The hypothesis is that the presence of digital infrastructures generates a double effect: overcoming the concept of geographical proximity (relevant for remote rural areas) and promoting social innovation. In particular, this paper examines the role of social innovation to create a new demand for products, services and organisational models for farms and rural enterprises, promoting further innovation. To target the objectives, the work analyses three case studies of new business models (BMs) based on ICT innovation. The analysis focuses on the most important interactions, learning and organisational processes within the new enterprises and among the new farms/enterprises and the other economic and institutional actors, and on how they were shaped and changed by the use of ICT, relating them to a conceptual model. These three cases, although pioneering, are important since they give an original response to some of the main problems and needs of remote and inner rural areas, as for the access to high value segment of food market, the information deliveries about attractiveness of landscape and countryside for foreigners, investors and tourists and the creation of new stable relation with consumers/citizens in the urban areas. The three cases have been analysed with the aim to identify how the ICT, and the related innovations, create an interconnection between four characteristic elements of the BMs (value creation, supply chain, customer interfaces, financial model) and the restructuring of proximity dimensions (cognitive, institutional, social, geographical, organizational). The work shows how these three cases have several communalities, but also different aspects with respect to our objective of analysis: there are different ways in which the four characteristic elements of the BM are constructed and also different in the role that the different dimensions of proximity play in structuring the innovation process in each one of them. More generally, the results of the work also lead to consider a new role for public investments in ICT infrastructures: public administrations should intervene in order to create a coherence within projects of public and private initiatives.


Abstract Introduction The lack of suitable veins in children with critical central venous access requirements is a major obstacle to optimal care and is potentially life-threatening. We present outcomes following the use of vein-preserving (VP) surgical techniques, notably the sheath exchange for tunneled lines (SETL). Materials and Methods A retrospective, single observer analysis of a prospectively maintained departmental logbook as well as the medical records of patients. Two broad groups of central line replacements were identified; those inserted following removal of a previous line and a traditional "plastic-free" (PF) period and those exchanged without such an interval. Results Overall, 19 lines were directly exchanged during the study period and compared with 34 inserted after a PF period. Similar catheter life spans and infection rates were demonstrated in each group; 125 (range, 78–173) days in VP exchanges versus 122 (range, 70–175) days in PF replacements (p = 0.41). Line Sepsis resulting in removal or change of line occurred at 103 (range, 60–147) days in VP group versus 104 (range, 45–164) days in PF (p = 0.73). Conclusion For children with critical venous access requirements, direct line exchange procedures are a robust and reproducible means of vein preservation. The outcomes compare favorably with those following the more traditional removal, a PF period and reinsertion.


Parkinson's disease is a progressive and chronic disorder that causes motor system dysfunction due to a lack of dopamine in the central nervous system. Although this disorder has been researched extensively, the etiology of Parkinson's disease remains unknown. Paraquat, a commonly used pesticide, is a known neurotoxin and is used extensively worldwide. In order to determine if people who live in agricultural regions that use paraquat are more susceptible to Parkinson's disease I examined a possible link between paraquat, the fibrillation of the protein alpha-synuclein and neurodegeneration. To conduct this review, I analyzed epidemiological studies on the correlation between pesticides and Parkinson's disease, research on the link between pesticides and the protein alpha-synuclein and research on the link between alphasynuclein and Parkinson's disease. From this review, I found that areas that are exposed to high levels of paraquat experience elevated rates of Parkinson's disease in their populations, that paraquat is positively correlated with the aggregation of alphasynuclein, and that an increase in alpha-synuclein causes neurodegeneration due to an imposed neurotoxicity or through an oxidative stress pathway. This review clearly points to a strong correlation between paraquat exposure and the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease. This review leads to the recommendation of future research that solely tests the effect of paraquat on alpha-synuclein fibrillation and neurodegeneration in mice. This work would clarify the definitive link between paraquat and the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease thus informing the practices of those who use pesticides.


This article intends to show the distance between work-life balance as a political and social issue at the EU and Romanian level, through the lens of the local gender equality policies following the process of EU accession. The article provides, in its first part, a brief presentation of the main theoretical axes structuring the available literature, followed up by the analysis of the occurrence of the work-life balance issue at the European level. Then the study examines the normative dimension of work-life balance in post-communist Romania, seeking to understand to what extent work-life balance policies have been designed and implemented in the last 25 years.


Abstract White Portland cement can be used such as decorative coatings, masonry regularization as the skin coat, and many other applications mainly due to the ease of association with pigments to confer coloring to the applied products for aesthetic purposes. Despite of the evaluation of the hardened stage properties to be more commonly found in literature, just a few published works monitored the transition from fluid-to-solid stage, but this is an important step because it defines the performance of products over time. The main purpose of this work was to compare the consolidation of different types of white Portland cement during the hardening stage, i.e. using a combined evaluation of the chemical and physical phenomena. Isothermal conduction calorimetry was the method used to monitor the heat release during the hydration reaction and oscillatory and compressive rheometry were applied to monitor the changes in workability over time. The setting time, measured by Vicat test represents the open time of each composition and was evaluated because it is affected by the physicochemical changes of the cement. Despite the obtained results are standardized, they are empirical/arbitrary by nature. Three brands of white Portland cements (Cauê, Aalborg, and Tolteca) were chosen and their suspensions were prepared to achieve a constant water-cement ratio of 0.5. All suspensions presented shear thinning behavior, but different levels of yield stress and apparent viscosity. The Tolteca cement presented the fastest heat release, which impacted the gain on consistency as measured by oscillatory rheometry or the loss of workability as measured by the squeeze flow test. The combined evaluations, i.e. physical and chemical results indicated that despite the fact that the changes during the hardening process had been affected: Correlations were only observed in the physical parameters indicating that the hydration reaction promotes random changes in the microstructure development.


The glycolytic enzyme hexokinase is a pattern recognition receptor for the NLRP3 inflammasome. The NRLP3 inflammasome produces the proinflammatory cytokines interleukin (IL)–1β and IL-18 in response to activation of pattern recognition receptors on macrophages and dendritic cells by microbial components, such as peptidoglycan, and small molecules that act as danger signals. Peptidoglycan is a polysaccharide that is part of the cell wall in Gram-positive bacteria, and its backbone is composed of the sugars N-acetylmuramic acid (NAM) and N-acetylglucosamine (NAG). Wolf et al. found that production of IL-1β was increased by NAG, but not by NAM, when these sugars were delivered into the cytosol of macrophages. The authors confirmed previous reports that NAG inhibits the glycolytic enzyme hexokinase. Both the increase in IL-1β production and inhibition of hexokinase required the acetylation of NAG. The interaction of hexokinase with the voltage-dependent anion channel (VDAC) tethers the enzyme to the mitochondrial outer membrane, an interaction that is affected by signaling pathways or feedback inhibition by its end product, glucose-6-phosphate. The cytosolic pool of either endogenous or GFP-tagged hexokinase increased in macrophages treated with peptidoglycan or NAG but not in those treated with NAM. These results suggested that NAG disrupted the interaction of hexokinase with VDAC and that disruption of this interaction could activate the NLRP3 inflammasome. Indeed, delivery into macrophages of a peptide that disrupts the association of hexokinase with VDAC activated the NLRP3 inflammasome as assessed by various measures, including an increase in IL-1β and IL-18 secretion. Intraperitoneal injection of this peptide into mice triggered neutrophil infiltration into the peritoneal cavity. Furthermore, delivery of glucose-6-phosphate into the cytosol of macrophages increased IL-1β secretion and dissociated hexokinase from mitochondria, and the increase in IL-1β secretion was mimicked by manipulations that result in the buildup of glucose-6-phosphate. Thus, hexokinase acts as a pattern recognition receptor for both peptidoglycan and high amounts of glucose-6-phosphate, suggesting that it may mediate inflammatory immune responses to metabolic perturbations. A. J. Wolf, C. N. Reyes, W. Liang, C. Becker, K. Shimada, M. L. Wheeler, H. C. Cho, N. I. Popescu, K. M. Coggeshall, M. Arditi, D. M. Underhill, Hexokinase is an innate immune receptor for the detection of bacterial peptidoglycan. Cell 166, 624–636 (2016). [PubMed]


Abstract. In our study, according to the statistical results of standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI), we chose two drought events which occurred in the North China during 2001 and in the Southwest China from 2009 to 2010. And two of the Global Land Surface Satellite (GLASS) products had been used to evaluate the impacts of drought on vegetation, including the leaf area index (LAI) and the fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FAPAR). The results show that: (1) In the development process of a drought event, the anomaly of remote sensing parameters (LAI and FAPAR) usually falls firstly and then rises as the drought changes from moderate to severe and then to moderate. This indicates that the effects of drought on vegetation remote sensing parameters are closely related to the severity of drought disaster. (2) The response of different vegetation types to the drought disaster is different. Compared with the forests, the response of grasslands to drought disaster is earlier. For example, the duration affected by drought disaster in grassland is longer 1/3 than the forests in the Southwest China. (3) Irrigation is an effective measure to mitigate the effects of drought. Irrigated croplands are less affected by drought than non-irrigated croplands and grasslands. In the North China, the decrease amplitude of irrigated croplands' remote sensing parameters is about half of non-irrigated croplands'.


The Event of the Last upper of Jesus Christ has always been considered as one of the most important events in Christianity. Many artists have addressed this event in their artwork; the most important and best-known representation of this event was addressed in Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper fresco that is displayed in the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The importance of this painting emerges from the fact that new readings and interpretations of this work have been made even in the contemporary era. Multiple images represented have The Last Supper in the contemporary era, with changes in the concept and content according to the features and the problems of contemporary society. The goal here is to study the represented works of Da Vinci's The Last Supper in the era of postmodernism by following the period's characteristics and conditions of this time. The content and meanings of the represented works of the Last Supper have changed. There are many represented examples of da Vinci's The Last Supper of which, in this study, two sample images of artistic means (abstract-minimalism) have been analyzed and described. Data in this study has been collected by using documentations from the library, and finally, the images which represent the cultural aspects and the features of the society for audiences have been analyzed and described. In fact, these images are contemporary cultural objects which express new concepts. The wordtypes used were different, but meanings such as spirituality and holiness have been expressed by several signs in both works. By placing a timeless work of art in different positional contexts, therefore, new meanings are created.


The First International Little Owl Symposium took place in Champ–sur–Marne (France) in November 2000, organized by the International little owl Working Group (ILOWG). It was the first international meeting regarding a sole owl species in Europe. Since then, efforts have been made to improve our knowledge and develop management plans for little owl conservation, and every new advance has been shared among all of us, owl researchers and owl friends, at regular international meetings. The Fifth Symposium gave continuity to the series of previous meetings held in France, England and Belgium. The most recent meeting was held in Herzele, Flanders, and the highlight was the presentation of the latest little owl monograph of Van Nieuwenhuyse et al., 2008. This meeting demonstrated the need to promote future gatherings of researchers.


Today, numerous applications require the ability to monitor a continuous stream of fine-grained data for the occurrence of certain high-level activities. A number of computerized systems-including ATM networks, web servers, and intrusion detection systems-systematically track every atomic action we perform, thus generating massive streams of timestamped observation data, possibly from multiple concurrent activities. In this paper, we address the problem of efficiently detecting occurrences of high-level activities from such interleaved data streams. A solution to this important problem would greatly benefit a broad range of applications, including fraud detection, video surveillance, and cyber security. There has been extensive work in the last few years on modeling activities using probabilistic models. In this paper, we propose a temporal probabilistic graph so that the elapsed time between observations also plays a role in defining whether a sequence of observations constitutes an activity. We first propose a data structure called "temporal multiactivity graph" to store multiple activities that need to be concurrently monitored. We then define an index called Temporal Multiactivity Graph Index Creation (tMAGIC) that, based on this data structure, examines and links observations as they occur. We define algorithms for insertion and bulk insertion into the tMAGIC index and show that this can be efficiently accomplished. We also define algorithms to solve two problems: the "evidence" problem that tries to find all occurrences of an activity (with probability over a threshold) within a given sequence of observations, and the "identification" problem that tries to find the activity that best matches a sequence of observations. We introduce complexity reducing restrictions and pruning strategies to make the problem-which is intrinsically exponential-linear to the number of observations. Our experiments confirm that tMAGIC has time and space complexity linear to the size of the input, and can efficiently retrieve instances of the monitored activities.


This essay, a Comment for the Harvard Law Review's November issue on the 2011 Supreme Court term, offers two alternative accounts of Chief Justice Roberts's opinion in NFIB v. Sebelius. On one account, his opinion is predominantly motivated by institutionalist concerns with preserving the legitimacy and stature of the Court. From this perspective, the analytic contrasts in the Chief Justice's treatment of the commerce, tax, and spending powers reflect two conflicting institutionalist imperatives: pulling the Court out of the political fray and underscoring the Court's role as enforcer of constitutional limits on Congress. On the other account, the different parts of the Chief Justice's opinion are closely linked and all share a libertarian resistance to compulsory measures in favor of choice and incentives. Both accounts are true and NFIB's future impact will turn on which impulse — institutionalism or anticompulsion — proves more ascendant in the Chief Justice's approach to federal power. Moreover, despite appearing to signal new judicial scrutiny of federal spending and regulatory measures, NFIB's judicial import will likely be more limited. Instead, its prime impact will be felt in federal-state negotiations in the administrative sphere.


The majority of the current building stock in Turkey is composed of buildings that are not insulated. One of the most important items of the agenda is insulating these buildings in time to use energy efficiently (to create energy efficiency). Due to the increase of residential energy consumption related to heating and cooling, suggestions to speed up the transformation of uninsulated buildings to insulating buildings are needed. Similar to the rest of the world "Measures to Increase Energy Efficiency of Buildings" are among the future goals of administrational policies. Taking into consideration all the research in this area the residential Ataevler Quarter in the Nilufer district of the city of Bursa - the 4th largest city in Turkey - was selected for the analysis in the scope of this paper. There are a total of 2891 apartments in the research area, which is composed of 16 building complexes and 254 building blocks. The research will first analyze the current situation of the residential area. After the initial analyses CO 2 emissions (tons), heating energy need (kWh/m 2 ) and heat loss amount (kWh) that will have acquired after insulating uninsulated buildings will be presented. The analyses have shown that insulating walls and roofs of the current buildings will reduce CO 2 emissions and fuel consumption almost by 30%. The contribution of this savings to the national economy, budget of the users, and protection of the buildings and the environment is significant. It is believed that the data should be presented to and evaluated by relevant parties in order to contribute to the development of future strategies that aim to reduce energy consumption of current buildings to the minimum. Keywords : Energy efficiency, heat insulation, insulation of buildings


Benlate at 0.5 and 1.0 lb, Dyrene, Bravo and RH 3928 at 1.0 Ib and Mertect were significantly better than all other treatments in these tests for the control of Septoria leaf-spot of celery. Topsin M and Dithane M-45 provided intermediate control. RH 3928, Mertect, and Topsin M are not registered for use on celery at the present time and therefore cannot be recommended.


Lebanon's Ministry of Environment initiated a project in 2009 to determine low-cost reforestation techniques for stone pine (Pinus pinea) and Lebanon cedar (Cedrus libani) for large-scale land rehabilitation activities in the arid Middle East. Irrigation (several techniques vs. no water), planting (8- to 18-month-old seedlings), seeding, and soil preparation methods were evaluated in three sets of adaptive management field trials. The aim was to reduce reforestation costs while still achieving sufficient regeneration. A key result for management was that non-irrigated seed planting of stone pine and possibly of Lebanon cedar showed promise for cost-effective reforestation and could be competitive with seedlings, given correct seed source and planting conditions. Stone pine seeds collected from nearby mother trees and planted without irrigation on sandy soil showed 35% survival for <600 USD/ha; seedlings planted without irrigation cost about 2500 USD/ha and achieved 50–70% survival (costs based on 800 seedlings/ha). Water supplements increased establishment costs over 2 years without concomitant improvements to survival. Future studies should evaluate how soil texture and soil preparation interact with other factors to affect seed germination and survival for each species.


The anchor of most integral membrane proteins consists of one or several helices spanning the lipid bilayer. The WALP peptide, GWW(LA)n (L)WWA, is a common model helix to study the fundamentals of protein insertion and folding, as well as helix-helix association in the membrane. Its structural properties have been illuminated in a large number of experimental and simulation studies. In this combined coarse-grained and atomistic simulation study, we probe the thermodynamics of a single WALP peptide, focusing on both the insertion across the water-membrane interface, as well as folding in both water and a membrane. The potential of mean force characterizing the peptide's insertion into the membrane shows qualitatively similar behavior across peptides and three force fields. However, the Martini force field exhibits a pronounced secondary minimum for an adsorbed interfacial state, which may even become the global minimum-in contrast to both atomistic simulations and the alternative PLUM force field. Even though the two coarse-grained models reproduce the free energy of insertion of individual amino acids side chains, they both underestimate its corresponding value for the full peptide (as compared with atomistic simulations), hinting at cooperative physics beyond the residue level. Folding of WALP in the two environments indicates the helix as the most stable structure, though with different relative stabilities and chain-length dependence.


Top Notch is a dynamic communicative course. Through multiple exposures to language and systematic, intensive recycling, English becomes unforgettable. Top Notch, now in a Third Edition, is a dynamic communicative course that makes English unforgettable through multiple exposures to language and systematic, intensive recycling. Goals- and achievement-based lessons with can-do statements enable students to confirm their progress. Top Notch builds confidence for successful oral expression through an expanded speaking pedagogy and prepares students for academic work through the development of critical thinking skills and reading and listening strategies.


This thesis is an observational and experimental study of the vocal behaviour in the grey seal (Halichoerus grypus). It provides the first comprehensive description of in-air and underwater vocalisations for the eastern Atlantic population of grey seals and compares it to the western Atlantic population. Two out of 6 in-air call types were very similar to underwater vocalisations and of the 10 eastern Atlantic underwater vocalisations 5 were comparable to the western Atlantic repertoire described earlier. Most calls were found to occur on their own, while some were preferentially associated in time with other call types. In addition, the number of particular types of underwater vocalisation did not display any diurnal variation, but did vary' across the breeding season. Experimental studies were also carried out on the role of pup vocalisations in mother-pup vocal recognition at two reproductively isolated colonies: the Isle of May, Scotland and Sable Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. Pup vocalisations were found to be both stereotyped and individually distinctive, features normally associated with a system of individual recognition. Allo-suckling was observed to be widespread on the Isle of May but was absent on Sable Island. Playback experiments revealed that mothers on the Isle of May did not respond more to vocalisations of their own pup than to those of non-filial pups. In contrast, on Sable Island, mothers were able to discriminate between their own and other pup calls. This suggests that different selective pressures may be affecting the two colonies, and possible reasons are discussed.


This paper explores how representations of technologicalconcepts may be designed to help students with visuallearning styles achieve successful comprehension in thefield of electronics. The work accepts a wide definition ofwhat is understood by the visualisation of a model in thatit can take different external forms, but also include aninternal representation in a person's mind. We are of theopinion that to acquire scientific or technologicalknowledge there is a requirement for abstract models toexhibit particular features that complement the nature oftheir fields, and that their effectiveness is dependent onthe context in question. This work reports on thedevelopment of experimental materials which are novelteaching aids in the context of electronics education. Itproposes design principles based on congruent,schematised, symmetrical spatial metaphors of circuitsincorporating interactivity by the use of gesture,scaffolding, learning by topological, analogical andconceptual resemblances. We conclude that qualitativemethods may be employed with a significant measure ofsuccess even for a field such as electronics that is oftenconsidered to be difficult due to the necessity of abstractexplanations.


ABSTRACT In the second part of the taxonomic revision of Phyllanthus L. in Madagascar and the Comoro Islands the subgenera Anisonemoides (Jean F. Brunel) Ralim. & Petra Hoffm., stat. nov. and Menarda (Müll. Arg.) Ralim. & Petra Hoffm., stat. nov. are described. The subgenera are characterised by pinnatiform or bipinnatiform phyllanthoid branching, stamens are (2-4)5(-6) free or fused in Anesonemoides but 5, free stamens in Menarda; dehiscent fruits and tricolporate or trisyncolporate pollen with a macro-microreticulate exine, with muri bordering colpi, and one or two pores. They are endemic to Madagascar with most taxa being of limited geographic distribution. The subgenus Anisonemoides, stat. nov. comprises fifteen species and two species are belonging to Menarda, stat. nov. Four species from the Eastern floristic domain are newly described: Phyllanthus bemangidiensis Ralim., sp. nov., P. coodei Ralim. & Petra Hoffm., sp. nov., P. gordonii Ralim. & Petra Hoffm., sp. nov., and P. mantadiensis Ralim. & Petra Hoffm., sp. nov. Distribution maps and IUCN conservation assessment status are provided for each taxon. The circumscription of several species within Anisonemoides stat. nov. and Menarda stat. nov. has been revised.


Fluid dynamics applications require a good understanding of the underlying physical phenomena. Therefore, effective procedures are necessary for analyzing and visualizing the various physical fields. Beside interactive and perceptually efficient techniques for visualizing flow fields directly, there is strong demand for methods that uncover hidden flow structures. Some recently developed feature based visual analysis methods are exemplarily presented. Fluid flow data typically are large and often are stored remotely or distributedly. The interactive visual analysis of such large data sets requires new software architectures – ideally utilizing emerging Grid standards. We discuss such architectures and report on specific realizations in the framework of the visualization system Amira.


Bigrams and trigrams are commonly used in statistical natural language processing; this paper will describe techniques for working with much longer n-grams. Suffix arrays (Manber and Myers 1990) were first introduced to compute the frequency and location of a substring (n-gram) in a sequence (corpus) of length N. To compute frequencies over all N(N+1)/2 substrings in a corpus, the substrings are grouped into a manageable number of equivalence classes. In this way, a prohibitive computation over substrings is reduced to a manageable computation over classes. This paper presents both the algorithms and the code that were used to compute term frequency (tf) and document frequency (df) for all n-grams in two large corpora, an English corpus of 50 million words of Wall Street Journal and a Japanese corpus of 216 million characters of Mainichi Shimbun. The second half of the paper uses these frequencies to find interesting substrings. Lexicographers have been interested in n-grams with high mutual information (MI) where the joint term frequency is higher than what would be expected by chance, assuming that the parts of the n-gram combine independently. Residual inverse document frequency (RIDF) compares document frequency to another model of chance where terms with a particular term frequency are distributed randomly throughout the collection. MI tends to pick out phrases with noncompositional semantics (which often violate the independence assumption) whereas RIDF tends to highlight technical terminology, names, and good keywords for information retrieval (which tend to exhibit nonrandom distributions over documents). The combination of both MI and RIDF is better than either by itself in a Japanese word extraction task.


The West Chester community is a growing suburb of Cincinnati that never had a downtown district. The township wanted a prominent community gathering place and hired McGill Smith Punshon, Inc. (MSP) to create the Square at Union Centre, an urban park with pedestrian walkways, fountains and a clock tower. A retention pond already existed on the park site, designed with narrow sections where a pedestrian bridge could be installed. The stackable retaining wall along one-third of its shoreline presented several design challenges for MSP when considering a new pedestrian bridge. "The retaining wall is designed to hold back the soil and not support any load. If we were to put the bridge on the typical pads, it would sit back 30' from the waterway and would have to be over 100' long," said Richard Beckman, project designer for MSP. MSP and Contech worked to design a bridge that would place the support piers in the pond away from the retaining wall foundation. This approach offered significant cost savings in addition to aesthetics. The result was a Continental® Archway style pedestrian truss bridge painted to coordinate with the clock bell tower and other park features. There are also custom posts with caps at the ends of the bridge that match the brickwork found throughout the park. "The crane lowered the bridge onto the supports and it fit. It went well," said Brian Burnette, SK Construction Job Supervisor. His crew was responsible for installing the new structure.


Two lessons from the 2000 presidential election stand out in particular. The first is that rules affect results. Elections are highly organized mechanisms of citizen participation. Established rules specify who can vote, where and when they can vote, what ballot form registers their vote, and what outcome constitutes winning. Rules, moreover, determine which officials count the votes, certify the victor, and declare the election to be legitimate. The rules governing election contests are not neutral in their effects. Each variant generally tends to advantage some given set of claimants and interests; therefore, the choice among election rules is often controversial, especially when the outcome hangs in the balance. The second, related lesson is that votes intended do not necessarily equal votes cast, that votes cast do not necessarily equal votes recorded, and that votes recorded do not necessarily equal the official vote total. In each case, there is the matter of translation, part of which is technical and depends on the ballot apparatus and part of which is political and depends on the discretionary decisions of those responsible for managing the electoral process. Problems of translation do not ordinarily affect who wins, but they can – and have during certain controversial episodes of U.S. electoral history.


When homeostasis in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is disrupted, a stress signal is transduced to the nucleus to turn on the expression of numerous genes including gadd153, a leucine zipper transcription factor. Gadd153 expression is also thought to signal the onset of apoptosis. McCullough et al. report that overexpression of Gadd153 sensitizes cells to ER stress-inducing agents, resulting in enhanced cell death and caused decreased expression of the anti-apoptotic protein Bcl2. The authors speculate that this might occur through negative regulation of another transcription factor. Gadd153 overexpression also reduced amounts of cellular glutathione, a molecule that not only maintains protein integrity through regulation of cellular redox states, but also scavenges damaging reactive oxygen species (ROS). The authors speculate that Gadd153 may regulate the synthesis of cellular glutathione and may provide a mechanistic link between stress in the ER and cell death. K. D. McCullough, J. L. Martindale, L.-O. Klotz, T.-Y. Aw, N. J. Holbrook, Gadd153 sensitizes cells to endoplsmic reticulum stress by down-regulating Bcl2 and perturbing the cellular redox state. Mol. Cell. Biol. 21: 1249-1259 (2001). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Planar silica-based optical waveguides have been deposited by a plasma helicon-activated reactive evaporation system, at a low temperature and with reduced hydrogen contamination, on thermally oxidized silicon wafers. The transmission loss of the rib waveguides, formed on the deposited films by etching with hydrofluoric acid, is determined to be lower than 0.1 and 0.7 dB/cm at wavelengths of 1310 and 1510 nm, respectively, for TE polarization. The influence of substrate leakage on propagation loss is determined numerically and compared with experimental results for TE and TM polarizations. The presence of the OH vibrational overtone band in the fabricated waveguides, at a wavelength of around 1385 nm, is discussed in terms of the waveguide structure.


Eigenvalue problems are of immense interest and play a pivotal role not only in many fields of engineering but also in pure and applied mathematics. An in-depth understanding of this class of problems is a pre-requisite for vibration and buckling analyses of structures. Design optimization of structures to prevent failure due to instability (bucking) and vibration introduces the problem of determining optimal physical parameters such that load carrying capacity or the fundamental natural frequency is maximized. A classical example of such problems is the Lagrange problem of determining the shape of the strongest column against buckling. The primary objective of this research is to develop discrete models for column buckling and to solve the problem of finding the strongest column by applying fundamental principles of optimization. The physical parameters of optimal discrete link-spring models, which maximize the buckling loads, are reconstructed. It is shown that the optimal system can be determined recursively by using a one parameter iterative loop. The mathematical problem of determining parameters of an affine sum such that the system has extremum eigenvalues was derived and solved. Numerical techniques were developed to aid in the optimization process and were utilized to optimize mass-spring systems. The more complicated problem of finding the shape of the strongest column was also defined as an affine sum by applying finite difference schemes to both the second and fourth order governing differential equations. Optimization techniques and numerical methods were developed to arrive at the shape of the strongest clamped-free and pinned-pinned column. Unimodal solutions of the Lagrange problem were also obtained for the special case where minimum area constraints were given. A mathematical model for columns on elastic foundation also was derived and transformed to an affine sum problem. Unimodal solution of shape of the strongest pinned-pinned column on an elastic foundation was obtained. In addition the application in vibration and buckling, it is believed that the optimization principles and numerical methods developed in this research will be applicable in other fields such as optimal control.


Several single factors have been identified as related to coping with trauma and as protective factors. Several studies emphasize the importance of personality, core beliefs, coping strategies and social support. However little attention has been paid to resiliency. The aim of the study was to identify some determinants of an individual's resiliency after experienced traumatic life events, and to address the issue of its relationship to personality characteristics, psychopathology, coping resources and strategies, social support, sense of coherence and quality of life. In the present study, a convenience sample of 100 Iranian refugees, 66 males and 34 females in the age range of 18-65 were investigated. All the subjects have experienced one or several traumatic life events as soldiers, political prisoners or have been victims of torture or have escaped from the country in a stressful way. At the time of the present investigation the mean time living in Sweden was for male subject's 12.8 years and for female 11.8. Nine instruments were administered during individual sessions, Temperament, Character Inventory (TCI), The EMBU (Swedish acronym for own memories concerning upbringing), The Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90 – R), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Interview Schedule of Social Interaction (ISSI), Coping Resources Inventory (CRI), The Dysfunctional Attitude Scale (DAS), WHOQoL Group, 1995 (WHOQoL-100), The Sense of Coherence Scale (SoC). Several significant associations were found between personality temperament and character, parental rearing and psychopathology. When experiences of parental rearing were investigated in relation to psychopathology, male subjects scored high on parental rejection and were also more depressed compared to females. Although the individuals in the sample suffered from depression or anxiety, there were individuals that had adapted them-self well with the new life in Sweden and its demands. Nineteen percent of subjects who had low harm avoidance and high self directedness received more social support, had better coping strategies, higher sense of coherence and finally a better quality of life. This dissertation underscores the importance of multiple indicators when trying to understand resiliency. Personality traits, parental rearing, coping resources, social support and sense of coherence were the strongest predictors for resiliency. Having a systemic perspective helps to explain why some individuals are healthy and resilient despite traumatic life events, escaping from home country, applying for asylum, establishing a new home, learning new languages, to study and stablish and develop new bonds.


I INTRODUCTION In 1989, the United States imposed an embargo on the importation of shrimp from countries that used fishing methods harmful to marine turtles. The shrimp were not a protected endangered species, but the marine turtles were. The embargo was thus motivated by the rightful concern to protect an animal species from extinction. Claiming this embargo to be a violation of Article XI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 (GATT 1994), which provided for the general elimination of quantitative restrictions on trade, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Thailand commenced proceedings on the basis of the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) of the World Trade Organization (WTO). In United States--Import Prohibition of Certain Shrimp and Shrimp Products (Shrimp-Turtle), (1) the WTO Appellate Body concluded that Section 609 of Public Law 101-162 (2) "has been applied by the United States in a manner which constitutes arbitrary and unjustifiable discrimination between Members of the WTO ...[:]" (3) [W]ith respect to neither type of certification under Section 609(b) (2) is there a transparent, predictable certification process that is followed by the competent United States government officials. The certification processes under Section 609 consist principally of administrative ex parte inquiry or verification by staff of the Office of Marine Conservation in the Department of State with staff of the United States National Marine Fisheries Service. With respect to both types of certification, there is no formal opportunity for an applicant country to be heard, or to respond to any arguments that may be made against it, in the course of the certification process before a decision to grant or to deny certification is made. Moreover, no formal written, reasoned decision, whether of acceptance or rejection, is rendered on applications for either type of certification, whether under Section 609(b)(2)(A) and (B) or under Section 609(b)(2)(C). Countries which are granted certification are included in a list of approved applications published in the Federal Register; however, they are not notified specifically. Countries whose applications are denied also do not receive notice of such denial (other than by omission from the list of approved applications) or of the reasons for the denial. No procedure for review of, or appeal from, a denial of an application is provided. (4) This decision was made pursuant to Article XX of the GATT 1994, according to which "such measures are not [to be] applied in a manner which would constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination between countries where the same conditions prevail, or a disguised restriction on international trade...." (5) It follows that for states to respect the prohibition on arbitrary discrimination between countries where the same conditions prevail, as required by the GATT norm, they must respect the principle of due process. Though usually established by national laws, the principle of due process also can enter national administrative law through another door: by being established at the international level and then applied at the national one. The Shrimp-Turtle case concerning the U.S. import prohibition is not the only case in which an international treaty or international organization imposed procedural principles upon state administrations. (6) This article will examine some of these principles and evaluate the way they operate in the global context. This topic illustrates the degree to which global law penetrates national legal systems by dictating principles and criteria that national administrations must respect and that private actors may wield in their own interest. Though belonging to different national legal systems, these rules are nevertheless subject to the global system. We have come to expect and accept international organizations that set substantive standards (establishing, for example, legal levels of pollution or limiting the genetic manipulation of agricultural products), so it is easy to argue that national administrations ought to respect global substantive goals, standards, and criteria. …