In this paper the author strives for the more intensive inclusion of phraseological learning content in the teaching of foreign languages. Arguments, due to which at all levels of teaching languages should systematically provide for acquiring and respectively developing the passive and active phraseology competence, are as follow: the commonness and range of phraseological methods of expression, empirically proved acquisition of phraseological competence in the very early phase of mastering the native language and a relatively high degree of inter-language accordance of phraseological structure. In the planning of language education and the training of language teachers many consecutive changes will be necessary. Among others it will be necessary to synchronically plan teaching of the native and foreign languages, bring into force phraseology as a compulsory subject in higher education programs for the training foreign language teachers, and materially and professionally enable more intensive development of special phraseological learning material.


Our project uses ideas first presented by Alan Turing. Turing's immense contribution to mathematics and computer science is widely known, but his pioneering work in artificial intelligence is relatively unknown. In the late 1940s Turing introduced discrete Boolean artificial neural networks and, it has been argued that, he suggested that these networks be trained via evolutionary algorithms. Both artificial neural networks and evolutionary algorithms are active fields of research. Turing's networks are very basic yet capable of complex tasks such as processing sequential input; consequently, they are an excellent model for investigating the application of evolutionary algorithms to artificial neural networks. We define an example of these networks using sequential input and output, and we devise evolutionary algorithms that train these networks. Our networks are discrete Boolean networks where every 'neuron' either performs NAND or identity, and they can represent any function that maps one sequence of bit strings to another. Our algorithms use supervised learning to discover networks that represent such functions. That is, when searching for a network that represents a particular function our algorithms use input-output pairs of that function as examples to aid the discovery of solution networks. To test our ideas we encode our networks and implement the algorithms in a computer program. Using this program we investigate the performance of our networks and algorithms on simple problems such as searching for networks that realize the parity function and the multiplexer function. This investigation includes the construction and testing of an intricate crossover operator. Because our networks are composed of simple 'neurons' they are a suitable test-bed for novel training schemes. To improve our evolutionary algorithms for some problems we employ the symmetry of the problem to reduce its search space. We devise and test a means of using subgroups of the group of permutation of inputs of a function to aid evolutionary searches search for networks that represent that function. In particular, we employ the action of the permutation group S2 to 'cut down' the search space when we search for networks that represent functions such as parity.


With over 25,000 words and phrases, the Oxford English-Hindi Dictionary offers comprehensive coverage of everyday vocabulary. Each English headword is translated into Hindi, and expressions and phrases illustrate how words are used in context. Words are labelled in Hindi according to subject, and whether the language is formal or informal, and there is plenty of useful information on the usage of various English words. Other helpful features include grammatical information on irregular verbs, nouns, and adjectives, and easy-to-understand pronunciations in Hindi script for every headword. The dictionary also contains useful appendices on Roman numerals, weights and measures, and chemical elements. All of these features are packed into a compact, portable format, making this the ideal dictionary for learners and teachers of English, and those who want to improve their command of the English language.


The Internet's dominant role in recent years has caused a change in the relationship between media producers, suppliers and consumers in the traditional media landscape. The cultural sector must therefore decide what to do with today's digital media in response to the general public's changing role, and for the purpose of improving accessibility. The use of multiple media resources and particularly resources like the Internet and mobile telephony seems to be inevitable. The only question that remains is: how? This paper addresses this question by focussing on social tagging and storytelling, and reports the results of an empirical study on tagging behaviour using the social tagging platform (see also Van Vliet et al., 2010).


World mass migration began in the early nineteenth century, when advances in transportation technology and industrial revolutions at home enabled increasing numbers of people to set off for other parts of the globe in search of a better life. Two centuries later, there is no distant African, Asian, or Latin American village that is not within reach of some high-wage OECD labor market. This book is the first comprehensive economic assessment of world mass migration taking a long-run historical perspective, including north-north, south-south, and south-north migrations. Timothy Hatton and Jeffrey Williamson, both economists and economic historians, consider two centuries of global mobility, assessing its impact on the migrants themselves as well as on the sending and receiving countries. Global Migration and the World Economy covers two great migration waves: the first, from the 1820s to the beginning of World War I, when immigration was largely unrestricted; the second, beginning in 1950, when mass migration continued to grow despite policy restrictions. The book also explores the period between these two global centuries when world migration shrank sharply because of two world wars, immigration quotas, and the Great Depression. The authors assess the economic performance of these world migrations, the policy reactions to deal with them, and the political economy that connected one with the other. The last third of Global Migration and the World Economy focuses on modern experience and shows how contemporary debates about migration performance and policy can be informed by a comprehensive historical perspective.


..................................................................................................................... ii DEDICATION .................................................................................................................. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... v NOMENCLATURE ........................................................................................................ vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................... viii LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................ x LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................... xii CHAPTER


The main purpose of this Handbook is to provide overviews and assessments of the state-of-the-art regarding research methods, approaches and applications central to economic geography. The chapters are written by distinguished researchers from a variety of scholarly traditions and with a background in different academic disciplines including economics, economic, human and cultural geography, and economic history. The resulting handbook covers a broad spectrum of methodologies and approaches applicable in analyses pertaining to the geography of economic activities and economic outcomes.


Normal residual is one of the usual assumptions of autoregressive models but in practice sometimes we are faced with non-negative residuals case. In this paper we consider some autoregressive models with non-negative residuals as competing models and we have derived the maximum likelihood estimators of parameters based on the modified approach and EM algorithm for the competing models. Also, based on the simulation study, we have compared the ability of some model selection criteria to select the optimal autoregressive model. Then we consider a set of real data, level of lake Huron 1875-1930, as a data set generated from a first order autoregressive model with non-negative residuals and based on the model selection criteria we select the optimal model between the competing models.


The paper describes results on two components of a research program focused on motion-based communication mediated by the dynamics of a control system. Specifically we are interested in how mobile agents engaged in a shared activity such as dance can use motion as a medium for transmitting certain types of messages. The first part of the paper adopts the terminology of motion description languages and deconstructs an elementary form of the well-known popular dance, Salsa, in terms of four motion primitives (dance steps). Several notions of dance complexity are introduced. We describe an experiment in which ten performances by an actual pair of dancers are evaluated by judges and then compared in terms of proposed complexity metrics. An energy metric is also defined. Values of this metric are obtained by summing the lengths of motion segments executed by wheeled robots replicating the movements of the human dancers in each of the ten dance performances. Of all the metrics that are considered in this experiment, energy is the most closely correlated with the human judges' assessments of performance quality. The second part of the paper poses a general class of dual objective motion control problems in which a primary objective (artistic execution of a dance step or efficient movement toward a specified terminal state) is combined with a communication objective. Solutions of varying degrees of explicitness can be given in several classes of problems of communicating through the dynamics of finite dimensional linear control systems. In this setting it is shown that the cost of adding a communication component to motions that steer a system between prescribed pairs of states is independent of those states. At the same time, the optimal encoding problem itself is shown to be a problem of packing geometric objects, and it remains open. Current research is aimed at solving such communication-through-action problems in the context of the motion control of mobile robots.


The cotton basis is examined graphically and statistically to determine if the basis differs across U.S. production regions and within the crop year as economic theory predicts. The analysis indicates the basis differs for some, but not all, regions consistent with the theory. Results also show that the typical seasonal pattern is not apparent for regions which export most of their cotton, most likely because demand in these regions is seasonal.


According to many observers, one of the critical factors accounting for the unprecedented economic growth that the United States enjoyed during the past decade is a regulatory regime that places few restrictions on an employer's ability to shed unwanted employees. Similarly, the slower economic growth that Germany and Europe experienced during this period often is attributed to elaborate employment protection schemes that restrict the ability of employers to discharge undesired workers. These protections are blamed for making countries like Germany less attractive places for foreign investment. This piece examines in comparative perspective the restrictions the American and German regulatory schemes place on an employer's ability to dissolve the employment bond. Although the two systems proceed from opposite suppositions (i.e., employment-at-will vs. discharge only for just cause), we find there is far less divergence between the two regimes than typically is assumed. Though distinctive, each system provides a set of protections against unfair dismissal which differ only in their focal points and areas of emphasis. Among other things, we find that in contrast to the United States, the German scheme permits an employer to calculate with comparative reliability the cost associated with any termination. Even though legal insurance and other institutional features makes bringing an unfair dismissal action very inexpensive in Germany, highly-compensated employees seek legal protection against terminations with significantly greater frequency than do lower-level employees. Less qualified workers also have distinctly worse prospects of success in both legal systems. In the United States, the validity of terminations typically is challenged through an employment discrimination action. Although discriminatory discharges also are prohibited by German law, the Unfair Dismissal Act has made discrimination actions substantially irrelevant in practice. We also note that the spectacular growth in job creation the United States enjoyed during the 1990s came at a time when we had more peace-time employment regulation than any period in our history. We find some evidence for the hypothesis that unfair dismissal protections do not slow employment growth, but may instead stimulate productivity.


In 1921, Hugh MacRae, a Wilmington businessman, launched his campaign to
build Farm City. A fusion of country living and urban amenities, Farm City was to be a
demonstration in community planning, an experimental solution to what many
conservation-minded reformers saw as the problem of rural life. Based on his experience
in colonizing the Wilmington countryside with European immigrants, MacRae undertook
a thirteen-year lobbying campaign to build Farm City in hopes that it would show
reluctant southern farmers how greater cooperation in economic, social, and intellectual
affairs could make rural community life more attractive. Along the way, he enlisted the
help of a variety of reformers, writers, and politicians, both northern and southern, who
came to believe that the concept of Farm City could point the United States toward a
more sustainable future. In 1933, MacRae finally received his chance to build Farm City
when the New Deal's Division of Subsistence Homesteads placed him in charge of
Penderlea Homesteads.
This thesis chronicles the story of the idea of Farm City through more than a
decade of ever-growing popularity and explores the reasons why this particular group of
Americans, specifically MacRae, championed such a utopian ideal. The idea of Farm City was born in the mind of a southern progressive who was concerned with making
agriculture more socially and environmentally sustainable. Influenced by the prevailing
intellectual trends of the conservation movement, including the Country Life Movement,
MacRae held a deep conviction that healthy national development required the
establishment of a happy, stable, yeomanry that could effectively husband the nation's
resources, but his vision for the countryside was skewed by southern progressive notions
of race and class, and he came to see Farm City as a way to simultaneously strengthen the
South's racial and social order and pave the way for more efficient resource development.
MacRae's campaign initially attracted support from elements of the national
conservation movement, including New South advocates, who largely shared his agrarian
convictions. However, throughout the 1920s, as national conservation ideology drifted
further away from securing the yeomanry, MacRae increasingly turned to his fellow
southerners for support. By the onset of the Great Depression, Farm City had become a
southern cause, but it was no longer part of the New South vision. Rather, its supporters
now embraced the idea as a way to preserve an agrarian way of life against the onslaught
of northern industrialism. In tracing the story of the Farm City idea, this thesis will shed
valuable light on the relationship between agrarianism and conservation and illuminate
some hidden corners of progressive conservation ideology in the South.


As die sizes are shrinking, and circuit complexities are increasing, the PCB routing problem becomes more and more challenging. Traditional routing algorithms can not handle these challenges effectively, and many high-end designs in the industry require manual routing efforts. In this paper, we propose a problem decomposition that distinguishes routing within dense components from routing in the intermediate area. In particular, we propose an effective methodology to find the escape routing solution for multiple components simultaneously such that the number of crossings in the intermediate area is minimized. For this, we model the problem as a longest path with forbidden pairs (LPFP) problem, and propose two algorithms for it. The first is an exact polynomial-time algorithm that is guaranteed to find the maximal planar routing solution on one layer. The second is a randomized algorithm that has good scalability characteristics for large circuits. Then we use these algorithms to assign the maximal subset of planar nets to each layer, and then distribute the remaining nets at the end. We demonstrate the effectiveness of these algorithms through experiments on industrial circuits.


This volume carefully traces the rise of the Toyota system from its take-off point in Ford's mass production system to its spread across the world, starting with the NUMMI joint venture with General Motors in California and now advancing in Europe, Latin America, and East Asia as well. It then identifies and describes the advantages of this system, which needs less of everything including time, human effort, inventories, and investment to produce products with fewer defects in smaller volumes at lower costs for fragmenting markets. The Machine That Changed the World even gave the system its name: lean.In the decade since its launch in the fall of 1990, The Machine That Changed the World has sold more than 600,000 copies in 11 languages and has introduced a whole generation of managers and engineers to lean thinking. No lean library is complete without this groundbreaking book. "The fundamentals of this system are applicable to every industry across the globea[and] will have a profound effect on human society. It will truly change the world." - New York Times Paperback / 1990 / 323 pages


English Stylistics: A Bibliography is designed to aid students and teachers of linguistics and literature who wish to effect a rapprochement between these two disciplines. It surveys existing theories of style, methods of style analysis, and particular applications of theories and methods to individual authors or literary works.Enphasizing a linguistic approach to the study of style, the entries exhaust all studies that take a grammatical approach to the text (focusing on syntax, rhythm, meter, other sound structures) and that employ a linguistic theory in discussing style analysis.The bibliography concentrates on English stylistics, including all relevant literature from 1500 to the present. A section on history gives the major rhetorics, grammars, and treatises on style and language from the classical Greek period through the nineteenth century. The entries are designed to be of maximum descriptive use. Extensive annotations indicate the content of each article and the assumptions and attitudes brought to the article by its author. Methodology is described where relevant and reviews of books are given.This work answers a great need for a detailed bibliography of studies in English and general stylistics. It is scholarly and comprehensive, a reference of lasting value to linguists and to students and teachers of English literature. It will be of especial interest to those concerned with historical linguistics, the history of linguistics, and the application of linguistic techniquest to the study of literature. Specialists in style, metrics, translation, stylostatistics, and literary theory will find it an invaluable research tool.


The great need for cooling combined with Mexico's large availability of low
enthalpy geothermal energy, makes it very attractive to utilize this resource for
cooling using heat driven absorption systems. Mexico posseses large amounts of
brine at temperatures which are too low to enable electricity to be generated
efficiently and economically. Of the possible non electric uses of low and medium
enthalpy geothermal energy are, to provide cold storage facilities for perishable
foods and produce ice using the heat driven absorption cooling systems.
The main purpose of the work described in the thesis is to obtain experimental data
on heat driven absorption cooling systems using geothermal energy for the design
of large scale systems.
An experimental study on the performance of the ammonia-water absorption
cooler operating on low enthalpy geothermal energy at the Cerro Prieto
Geothermal Field was made. The system was used to cool a small storage unit at
below freezing temperatures, during 8 hour tests and 24 hour tests.
An experimental study on the performance of the ammonia-water absorption cooler
operating on low enthalpy geothermal energy at the Cerro Prieto Geothermal
Field, has been made in order to operate it as an ice-making machine. Some
prototypes of ice generators were designed, installed and operated. An experimental study of a fluidized bed heat exchanger prototype connected to
the ammonia-water absorption cooler was made in order to use the geothermal
brine at the Cerro Prieto Geothermal Field.
Computer models based on LOTUS 123 worksheet were developed. These models
were developed to calculate quickly and accurately the thermodynamic data from
the water-ammonia absorption systems.


Introduction Intensive or semi-intensive rearing of improved and unimproved stocks of chickens, guinea fowls, ducks, turkeys and pigeons in relatively small numbers for food (meat, eggs) and cash has potential to reduce poverty, malnutrition and food insecurity among rural and peri-urban farm families. However, little is known about rural poultry production systems in the Africa RISING intervention communities in Ghana. IITA, University for Development Studies and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology are working with farmers to raise and sustain productivity of the rural poultry production systems in the Africa RISING project intervention communities.


The current study was undertaken to determine whether receptors in the left ventricle are capable, when stimulated, of inhibiting plasma arginine vasopressin (AVP) in the conscious dog. Dogs were instrumented to measure aortic pressure and heart rate. In addition, a catheter was implanted in the left circumflex coronary artery. Left ventricular receptors were stimulated by the intracoronary infusion of veratrine, which evoked a hypotension and bradycardia. Control experiments consisted of intravenous infusion of veratrine. Plasma AVP, osmolality, and sodium and potassium concentrations were measured at intervals following the infusion. Similar experiments were done during the intravenous infusion of sodium nitroprusside (NP) to lower aortic pressure to the same extent as that seen with intracoronary infusion of veratrine. Experiments were also performed in chronic sinoaortic-denervated dogs. Intracoronary infusion of veratrine resulted in a significant decrease in aortic pressure from 93.9 +/- 2.8 to 70.5 +/- 4.5 mmHg. Control plasma AVP averaged 2.13 +/- 0.25 pg/ml and did not change significantly during this time. NP infusion lowered aortic pressure to a similar degree, and plasma AVP rose to 21.17 +/- 3.79 pg/ml after 5 min. There were no significant changes in any other plasma constituents. The results were similar in sinoaortic-denervated dogs. We conclude from the results of this study that receptors in the left ventricle are not capable of decreasing plasma AVP from low basal levels or from augmented levels.


This commentary explores the decision of House of Lords in Re B (Children) (Sexual Abuse: Standard of Proof). In discarding the gloss imposed by the earlier decision of Re H (Minors) (Sexual Abuse: Standard of Proof) to the standard of proof to be applied in care proceedings, the House of Lords has acted in a way that is unreservedly to be welcomed. The commentary also examines their Lordships' rejection of the argument that the threshold criteria could be satisfied on 'evidence' that raises a real possibility of significant harm but which cannot be proven to the level of 'fact' and its implications for child protection.


The present work addressed the determination and visualization of the direction and extent of polymerization shrinkage in the light-initiated composite. Hypotheses about the light-cured composite contraction patterns are controversial. With high resolution µCT images, the displacement vector fields are examined and calculated two-dimensionally via an elastic registration algorithm using vector-spline regularization and three-dimensionally with a local rigid registration (block matching) following images segmentation (corresponding traceable fillers in composite). It appears that the light-initiated resin composites do not always shrink toward the light source. Two major contraction patterns were observed: either shrink toward the top-surface (free surface), or toward one side of the cavity wall, in which the bonding was stronger or remained intact. With the proposed methods, it is possible to describe the contraction patterns in great detail. We could demonstrate that the bonding quality to the tooth affects the material movement more than described so far. In addition, the geometry of the cavity also acts as a factor. The continuation of the studies into the interaction of tooth-adhesive-composite indicated the shortcomings and limitations of the current FEA simulation studies. This meant that the assumption of FEA, especially in adhesive systems (i.e., bonding situations and hybridizations), is too perfect and simplificative to interpret the real condition in clinical. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of the shrinkage vector field along with the µCT datasets supply more insight into the shrinkage behavior in real teeth with all their variations of the boundary conditions than with any currently available method. This new approach has the potential to reevaluate and hopefully unify all the currently available hypotheses concerning the extent and orientation of polymerization shrinkage.


Objective Utilization of the Pipeline embolization device (PED) in complex ruptured aneurysms has not been well studied. We evaluated the safety and effectiveness data from five participating US centers. Methods Records of patients with ruptured cerebral aneurysms who underwent PED treatment between 2011 and 2013 were retrospectively reviewed. Results 26 patients with ruptured aneurysms underwent PED treatment (mean age 51.4±13.2 years;16 women). At presentation, 8 patients (30.8%) had a Hunt–Hess grade of IV or above; 11 required extraventricular drain placement. Aneurysm morphologies were: 8 dissecting, 8 blister-like, 6 fusiform, and 4 saccular. There were 22 anterior circulation and 4 posterior circulation aneurysms. PED deployment was successful in all patients, with adjunctive coiling utilized in 12. Periprocedural complications occurred in 5 (19.2%), including 3 inhospital deaths. 23 patients (88.5%) had postoperative angiography at a mean of 5.9 months: 18 aneurysms (78.3%) were completely occluded, 3 (13.0%) had residual neck filling, and 2 (8.7%) had residual dome filling. All blister-type aneurysms were completely occluded at follow-up. Clinical follow-up was available for an average of 10.1 months (range 2–21 months), with one asymptomatic in-stent stenosis and one asymptomatic thromboembolic stroke noted. Good outcome (modified Rankin Scale (mRS) score of 0–2) was achieved in 20 patients (76.9%), fair (mRS 3–4) in 3 (11.5%), and 3 died (11.5%). Conclusions The PED can be utilized for ruptured aneurysms and is a good option for blister-type aneurysms. However, due to periprocedural complications, it should be reserved for lesions that are difficult to treat by conventional clipping or coiling.


Purpose – This paper targets the development of comprehensive approaches to prequalifying teams for Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). Design/methodology/approach – Research outcomes from a study into "relationally integrated project teams" (RIPTs) were applied to necessarily longer-term PPP scenarios. A force field model was developed to visualise the importance of stronger relational forces between the many PPP participants for "sustainable RIPTs" (SRITs). A framework was conceptualised to show linkages from relational contracting approaches, through sustainable relationships to sustainable infrastructure. This framework and a basic model for evaluating relational performance, were assessed by a panel of international PPP experts. Findings – The results encouraged the collection of factors facilitating successful relationships to build the proposed knowledge base. Literature review and initial interviews provide examples of priorities and lessons learned in relationship building in ongoing PPPs. Research limitations/implications – Being an integrative theory-building type exercise bringing together relational contracting, teambuilding and PPP performance research streams, this paper summarises and refers to, rather than provides details of, feeder research. Fleshing out the conceptual framework and model will next proceed beyond the initial testing and sample knowledge elements conveyed herein. Practical implications – Selecting good teams is essential for successful projects, and more so for PPP projects, given their complexities and longer timeframes. Increasing reliance on PPPs for infrastructure development and asset management enhances this significance. Originality/value – Synergies are derived from linking relationship-building and sustainability thrusts in the context of PPP performance. Concepts of "sustainable relationships" and "sustainsivity" (sensitivity to sustainability issues) are introduced.


Industrial "clusters" and free trade zones (maquiladoras in Mexico, EPZ in Asia, Manaus Free Trade Zone in Brazil…) are a practice used in many countries and represent a large part of trade in emerging and developing countries. Such enclaves benefit from tax, customs and legal exemptions. They present higher levels of employment, FDI, technology transfers and externalities. Using case studies, we assess their real contribution to the reduction of multidimensional poverty, especially in matters of quality and quantity of jobs, social behaviour and discrimination, internal migration, repercussions of these "enclaves" on the "policy space" and exacerbation of "South-South" competition possibly leading to a "race-tothe-bottom" process.


Due to the velocity shear imposed by the solar wind flowing around the magnetosphere, the magnetopause flanks are preferred regions for the development of a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. Since its efficiency for momentum transfer across the magnetopause has already been established, we investigate its efficiency for mass transfer. Using nonresistive magnetohydrodynamic simulations to describe the magnetic field shape in the instability region, we use test-particle calculations to analyse particle dynamics. We show that the magnetopause thickness and the instability wave-length are too large to lead to nonadiabatic motion of thermal electrons from the magnetosphere. On the other hand, the large mass of H + , He + and O + ions leads to such nonadiabatic motion and we thus propose the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability as a mechanism for either magnetospheric ion leakage into the magnetosheath or solar wind ion entry in the magnetosphere. Test-particle calculations are performed in a dimensionless way to discuss the case of each type of ion. The crossing rate is of the order of 10%. This rate is anti-correlated with shear velocity and instability wavelength. It increases with the magnetic shear. The crossing regions at the magnetopause are narrow and localized in the vicinity of the instability wave front. As a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability allows for mass transfer through the magnetopause without any resistivity, we propose it as an alternate process to reconnection for mass transfer through magnetic boundaries. Key words. Magnetospheric physics (magnetopause, cusp and boundary layers; MHD waves and instabilities) – Space plasma physics (numerical simulation studies)


When Cuba's centralized system for providing basic social services began to erode in the early 1990s, Christian and Afro-Cuban religious groups took on new social and political responsibilities. They began to work openly with state institutions on projects such as the promotion of Afro-Cuban heritage to encourage tourism, and community welfare initiatives to confront drug use, prostitution, and housing decay. In this rich ethnography, the anthropologist Adrian H. Hearn provides a detailed, on-the-ground analysis of how the Cuban state and local religious groups collaborate on community development projects and work with the many foreign development agencies operating in Cuba. Hearn argues that the growing number of collaborations between state and non-state actors has begun to consolidate the foundations of a civil society in Cuba.

While conducting research, Hearn lived for one year each in two Santeria temple-houses: one located in Old Havana and the other in Santiago de Cuba. During those stays he conducted numerous interviews: with the historian of Havana and the conservationist of Santiago de Cuba (officials roughly equivalent to mayors in the United States), acclaimed writers, influential leaders of Afro-Cuban religions, and many citizens involved in community development initiatives. Hearn draws on those interviews, his participant observation in the temple-houses, case studies, and archival research to convey the daily life experiences and motivations of religious practitioners, development workers, and politicians. Using the concept of social capital, he explains the state's desire to incorporate tightly knit religious groups into its community development projects, and he illuminates a fundamental challenge facing Cuba's religious communities: how to maintain their spiritual integrity and internal solidarity while participating in state-directed projects.


Many recent efforts have been devoted to designing sophisticated deep learning structures, obtaining revolutionary results on benchmark datasets. The success of these deep learning methods mostly relies on an enormous volume of labeled training samples to learn a huge number of parameters in a network; therefore, understanding the generalization ability of a learned deep network cannot be overlooked, especially when restricted to a small training set, which is the case for many applications. In this paper, we propose a novel deep learning objective formulation that unifies both the classification and metric learning criteria. We then introduce a geometry-aware deep transform to enable a non-linear discriminative and robust feature transform, which shows competitive performance on small training sets for both synthetic and real-world data. We further support the proposed framework with a formal (K, ϵ)-robustness analysis.


Following an analysis of the forces behind the "global capital flows paradox" observed in the era of advancing financial globalization, this paper sets out to investigate the opportunity costs of self-insurance through precautionary reserve holdings. We reject the idea of reserves as low-cost protection against the vagaries of global finance. We also deny that arrangements giving rise to their rapid accumulation might be sustainable in the first place. Alternative policy options open to developing countries are explored, designed to limit both the risks of financial globalization and the costs of insurance-type responses. We propose comprehensive capital account management as an alternative to full capital account liberalization. The aims of a permanent regulatory regime of capital controls, with respect to both the aggregate size and the composition of capital flows, are twofold: first, to maintain sufficient macro policy space; second, to assure a good micro fit of external expertise incorporated in foreign direct investment as part of a country's development strategy.


Abstract. The hydrogen isotopic composition (δ2H) of lipid biomarkers has diverse applications in the fields of paleoclimatology, biogeochemistry, and microbial community dynamics. Large changes in hydrogen isotope fractionation have been observed among microbes with differing core metabolisms, while environmental factors including temperature and nutrient availability can affect isotope fractionation by photoautotrophs. Much effort has gone into studying these effects under laboratory conditions with single species cultures. Moving beyond controlled environments and quantifying the natural extent of these changes in freshwater lacustrine settings and identifying their causes is essential for robust application of δ2H values of common short-chain fatty acids as a proxy of net community metabolism and of phytoplankton-specific biomarkers as a paleohydrologic proxy. This work targets the effect of community dynamics, temperature, and productivity on 2H∕1H fractionation in lipid biomarkers through a comparative time series in two central Swiss lakes: eutrophic Lake Greifen and oligotrophic Lake Lucerne. Particulate organic matter was collected from surface waters at six time points throughout the spring and summer of 2015, and δ2H values of short-chain fatty acids, as well as chlorophyll-derived phytol and the diatom biomarker brassicasterol, were measured. We paired these measurements with in situ incubations conducted with NaH13CO3, which were used to calculate the production rates of individual lipids in lake surface water. As algal productivity increased from April to June, net discrimination against 2H in Lake Greifen increased by as much as 148 ‰ for individual fatty acids. During the same time period in Lake Lucerne, net discrimination against 2H increased by as much as 58 ‰ for individual fatty acids. A large portion of this signal is likely due to a greater proportion of heterotrophically derived fatty acids in the winter and early spring, which are displaced by more 2H-depleted fatty acids as phytoplankton productivity increases. Smaller increases in 2H discrimination for phytol and brassicasterol suggest that a portion of the signal is due to changes in net photoautotrophic 2H fractionation, which may be caused by increasing temperatures, a shift from maintenance to high growth, or changes in the community assemblage. The fractionation factors for brassicasterol were significantly different between the two lakes, suggesting that its hydrogen isotope composition may be more sensitive to nutrient regime than is the case for fatty acids or phytol.


Little evidence is available on how juvenile fishes utilise seagrass beds and adjacent mangroves as feeding habitats. In this study we tested the degree to which Caribbean mangroves are utilised as feeding grounds by the fish community from adjacent seagrass beds. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses were performed on several potential food items from seagrass beds and adjacent mangroves, on muscle tissue of 23 fish species from seagrass beds on a Caribbean island (Curacao, Netherlands Antilles), and on juveniles of 2 common reef fish species, Haemulon flavo- lineatum and Ocyurus chrysurus, from seagrass beds in 7 bays on 5 Caribbean islands. Only the herbivore Acanthurus chirurgus and the carnivore Haemulon chrysargyreum appeared to feed predominantly in the mangrove habitat, whereas the carnivores Mulloidichthys martinicus and O. chrysurus (only on 2 islands) showed a stable carbon signature suggestive of food intake from the mangrove as well as the seagrass habitat. The piscivore Sphyraena barracuda foraged on fish school- ing at the mangrove/seagrass interface. For the other 18 seagrass fish species, which contributed 86% of the total seagrass fish density, the contribution of food sources from the mangroves was minor to negligible. The same was true for H. flavolineatum and O. chrysurus on most of the other Caribbean islands. The results contrast with the situation in the Indo-Pacific, where intertidal mangroves serve as important feeding habitats for fishes from adjacent systems during high tide. This difference is most probably explained by both the absence of large tidal differences on Caribbean islands and the greater food abundance in seagrass beds than in mangroves.


Standard surgical training consists of the acquisition of theoretical knowledge complemented with practical observation during surgery and, at some advanced stage,
performing the surgical procedures on live patients under the supervision of qualified surgeon. Also, experienced surgeons still require training to perform rare and complex cases.
However, a potentially contradictory situation exists whereby patients' expectations of surgical experience are obviously high, whereas clinical governance requires surgeons' track records to be established before they move to operate on live patients. There is increasing fear
of litigation among healthcare professionals, along with worktime legislation which limits the hours available for training. Therefore there is a need for surgical simulation systems for training to overcome the initial lack of experience and for planning of rare and complex procedures.
In this thesis we have developed a Cataract Eye Surgery Simulation system (CESS) with the capability to simulate, in addition to the basic surgical interaction, the main steps of cataract eye surgery, and which can be used as a teaching and training method to train medical students in a realistic environment. The CESS, in its present form, provides users with an interactive, affordable, easy to learn, risk-free, reusable and adaptable means for
training in cataract eye surgery procedures.
In this thesis we have presented and examined different modelling techniques that have been used for soft tissue simulations. In particular, we have been interested in the
computation complexity of the models, numerical stability, and physical realism. Within this context, we proposed the Circular Wave Model (CWM) which is capable of modelling
homogeneous, surface objects and is fast enough for applications such as surgery simulations.
The CWM algorithm is derived using the analogy of water waves produced when water is hitby stone. Two dimensional (2D) and three dimensional (3D) objects can interactively be
deformed with the CWM. We have put forward a new technique to assign stiffness and damping coefficients to springs of the mesh being manipulated and the spring that connects
the virtual surgical instrument to its manipulated mesh.


More than any period in recorded history, today's heterogeneity of emergent technology has transformed daily life, particularly the lives of the many fascinated by it. The American educational system and its sense of direction have not been spared from the chaos and distress that accompanies this unprecedented era. Many educators await the promise of technology's power to improve the educational system. The purpose of this paper is not to validate the pros or cons of technology, but to explore current issues facing the American educational system and to better use technologies in a productive and a creative manner. This article explores contemporary issues of technology in education, investigating its impact upon the American educational system, and examining the nature of its unprecedented relationship to the posthaste changes of the information age. This article also suggests systematic procedures that may be used to assess the needs of an institution's educational information system (EIS), and the dimension of building creative educational climate to better meet instructional goals and to sustain the continual needs of a quality educational system.


The Advanced CANDU Reactor (ACR) is an evolutionary advancement of the current CANDU 6® reactor, aimed at producing electrical power for a capital cost and at a unit-energy cost significantly less than that of the current reactor designs. The ACR retains the modular concept of horizontal fuel channels surrounded by a heavy water moderator, as with all CANDU reactors. However, ACR uses low enriched uranium fuel, compared to the natural uranium used in CANDU 6. This achieves the twin goals of improved economics (e.g., via reductions in the heavy water requirements and the use of a light water coolant), as well as improved safety. This paper presents the approach used in developing two phenomena identification and ranking tables (PIRTs) for selected ACR-700 events and their results. One of the two selected events is a large loss-of-coolant accident, which is an ACR design basis event, while the other is a severe flow blockage, which is proposed to be classified as a limited core damage event (beyond design basis event). The paper outlines the design characteristics of the ACR-700 reactor that impact the PIRT process and computer code applicability, lists all components and systems that have an important role during the event, discusses the PIRT process and results, and presents the finalized PIRTs. The ACR-1000 reactor design is currently in detailed design at AECL, and it retains similar design features as the ACR-700 design. Although the PIRTs presented in this paper were developed for the ACR-700 design, they are generally applicable to the ACR-1000 design.


The usefulness of ambulatory, home, and casual/clinic blood pressure measurements to predict subclinical cerebrovascular diseases (silent cerebrovascular lesions and carotid atherosclerosis) was compared in a general population. Data on ambulatory, home, and casual/clinic blood pressures and brain MRI to detect silent cerebrovascular lesions were obtained in 1007 subjects aged ≥55 years in a general population of Ohasama, Japan. Of the 1007 subjects, 583 underwent evaluation of the extent of carotid atherosclerosis. Twenty-four–hour, daytime, and nighttime ambulatory and home blood pressure levels were closely associated with the risk of silent cerebrovascular lesions and carotid atherosclerosis (all P<0.05). When home and one of the ambulatory blood pressure values were simultaneously included in the same regression model, each of the ambulatory blood pressure values remained a significant predictor of silent cerebrovascular lesions, whereas home blood pressure lost its predictive value. Of the ambulatory blood pressure values, nighttime blood pressure was the strongest predictor of silent cerebrovascular lesions. The home blood pressure value was more closely associated with the risk of carotid atherosclerosis than any of the ambulatory blood pressure values when home and one of the ambulatory blood pressure values were simultaneously included in the same regression model. The casual/clinic blood pressure value had no significant association with the risk of subclinical cerebrovascular diseases. Although the clinical indications for ambulatory blood pressure monitoring and home blood pressure measurements may overlap, the clinical significance of each method for predicting target organ damage may differ for different target organs.


The world's fish species are under threat from habitat degradation and over-exploitation. In many instances, attempts to bolster stocks have been made by rearing fish in hatcheries and releasing them into the wild. Fisheries restocking programmes have primarily headed these attempts. However, a substantial number of endangered species recovery programmes also rely on the release of hatchery-reared individuals to ensure long-term population viability. Fisheries scientists have known about the behavioural deficits displayed by hatchery-reared fish and the resultant poor survival rates in the wild for over a century. Whilst there remain considerable gaps in our knowledge about the exact causes of post-release mortality, or their relative contributions, it is clear that significant improvements could be made by rethinking the ways in which hatchery fish are reared, prepared for release and eventually liberated. We emphasize that the focus of fisheries research must now shift from husbandry to improving post-release behavioural performance. In this paper we take a leaf out of the conservation biology literature, paying particular attention to the recent developments in reintroduction biology. Conservation reintroduction techniques including environmental enrichment, life-skills training, and soft release protocols are reviewed and we reflect on their application to fisheries restocking programmes. It emerges that many of the methods examined could be implemented by hatcheries with relative ease and could potentially provide large increases in the probability of survival of hatchery-reared fish. Several of the necessary measures need not be time-consuming or expensive and many could be applied at the hatchery level without any further experimentation.


Adolescence is a formative phase for social development. The COVID-19 pandemic and associated regulations have led to many changes in adolescents' lives, including limited opportunities for social interactions. The current exploratory study investigated the effect of the first weeks of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown on Dutch adolescents' (N = 53 with attrition, N = 36 without attrition) mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior. Longitudinal analyses comparing pre-pandemic measures to a three-week peri-pandemic daily diary study showed (i) decreases in empathic concern, opportunities for prosocial actions, and tension, (ii) stable levels of social value orientation, altruism, and dire prosociality, and (iii) increased levels of perspective-taking and vigor during the first weeks of lockdown. Second, this study investigated peri-pandemic effects of familiarity, need, and deservedness on giving behavior. To this end, we utilized novel hypothetical Dictator Games with ecologically valid targets associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Adolescents showed higher levels of giving to a friend (a familiar other, about 51% of the total share), a doctor in a hospital (deserving target, 78%), and individuals with COVID-19 or a poor immune system (targets in need, 69 and 63%, respectively) compared to an unfamiliar peer (39%) This suggests that during the pandemic need and deservedness had a greater influence on adolescent giving than familiarity. Overall, this study demonstrates detrimental effects of the first weeks of lockdown on adolescents' empathic concern and opportunities for prosocial actions, which are important predictors of healthy socio-emotional development. However, adolescents also showed marked resilience and a willingness to benefit others as a result of the lockdown, as evidenced by improved perspective-taking and mood, and high sensitivity to need and deservedness in giving to others.


This study reports on how student teachers' workplace experiences were transformed into learning experiences. In total, 26 stories from 10 student teachers were collected by means of digital logs and in-depth interviews and unraveled using a new technique of reconstructing stories into webs. In these webs, the factors that played a role in student teachers' learning processes, the relationships between these factors, and the chains of student teachers' activities and experiences in their learning processes were visualized. The results show that student teachers' learning from experiences is a process involving many interrelated personal and social aspects, including past and present experiences gained in multiple situations and contexts over time. Four chains of activities and experiences could be distinguished in their learning processes. The findings indicate that reconstructing stories into webs is a promising technique for unraveling the complexity of learning from workplace experiences.


The basic puzzle about the so-called Fisher effect, in which movements in short-term interest rates primarily reflect fluctuations in expected inflation, is why a strong Fisher effect occurs only for certain periods but not for others. This paper resolves this puzzle by reexamining the relationship between inflation and interest rates with modern time-series techniques. Recognition that the level of inflation and interest rates may contain stochastic trends suggests that the apparent ability of short-term interest rates to forecast inflation in the postwar United States is spurious. Additional evidence does not support the presence of a short-run Fisher effect but does support the existence of a long-run Fisher effect in which inflation and interest rates trend together in the long run when they exhibit trends. The evidence here can explain why the Fisher effect appears to be strong only for particular sample periods, but not for others. The conclusion that there is a long-run Fisher effect implies that when inflation and interest rates exhibit trends, these two series will trend together and thus there will be a strong correlation between inflation and interest rates. On the other hand, the nonexistence of a short-run Fisher effect implies that when either inflation and interest rates do not display trends, there is no long-run Fisher effect to produce a strong correlation between interest rates and inflation. The analysis in this paper resolves an important puzzle about when the Fisher effect appears in the data.


The article presents the opinion of Lithuanian civil servants on the need for the ongoing national civil service reform. Detailed assessment of reform content is presented with the highlight on respondents' attitude towards different aspects of reform ( in the areas of civil servants recruitment, work organization of selection committees, career management, change of leadership roles, performance evaluation). According to the distribution of respondents' answers, the article also reviews the areas where political connections are used the most, and analyses possible changes of the relationship between top-level civil servants and politicians in the process of ongoing reforms. The article is based on the data of quantitative survey carried out on April – May 2011 and qualitative research with top-level public officials and politicians. During the research a questionnaire survey of civil servants was carried out with 400 respondents in total. Moreover, 50 top-level public officials and politicians were interviewed.


For the first time in over six decades, recent Supreme Court decisions confirm that federal regulatory authority under the Commerce Clause truly is limited. These decisions coincide with an increasing appreciation among scholars and jurists for the concept of competitive federalism. This paper derives the implications of competitive federalism for federal antitrust jurisdiction under the Sherman Act. It provides a clear and substantively reasoned jurisdictional test based on the concept of geographic market power familiar to antitrust scholars, practitioners, and regulators in evaluating horizontal mergers. According to this test, to be subject to federal antitrust jurisdiction Sherman Act defendants must have a sufficiently large share of the geographic antitrust market that they can plausibly exercise market power that has a substantial effect on prices "in more states than one." This test reflects a natural progression in the evolution of Sherman Act and Commerce Clause jurisdiction. It resolves a number of troubling inconsistencies in the case law and also provides a useful roadmap for the direction the Court's general Commerce Clause jurisprudence might take in other areas of federal regulation.


The purpose of this research was to determine how the role of the principal in the Catholic school could be redesigned so that more quality applicants are prepared to seek principalship and principals already in the role could be retained. The catalyst for this study derived from the shortage of suitable applicants for the position of principal, a problem that exists not only in Australia, but also in many Western countries. An exploratory mixed method design was chosen for the study with the data gathering divided into two phases. The first phase was the qualitative phase during which the data were gathered using focus group interviews and analysed using QSR N6. The second phase was the quantitative phase, where the data were collected using a survey constructed from the data gathered and analysed in the first phase. This research project asked the question, how can the principalship be redesigned to attract more quality applicants to the role and retain incumbents already in the role? The research revealed that, to answer the question a fundamental rethinking of the principalship is necessary and that such momentous change requires nothing less than a paradigm shift. The new paradigm would be based on sharing leadership rather than on an hierarchical approach. It would have structures that are flexible and customised to the local needs of the school and school community. Learning would be central and a work/life balance would be essential, for all principals. The new paradigm would also offer enough flexibility to encourage women to both take up, and remain in, principalship. The findings from this research led to the development of nine propositions, which, it is suggested, should inform and influence the new paradigm of principalship. Together with the recommendations, they provide a scaffold and a guide to action for redesigning the principalship.


The observed uneven distribution of economic activity across space is influenced by variation in exogenous geographical characteristics and endogenous interactions between agents in goods and factor markets. Until recently, the theoretical literature on economic geography had focused on stylized settings that could not easily be taken to the data. This paper reviews more recent research that has developed quantitative models of economic geography. These models are rich enough to speak to first-order features of the data, such as many heterogenous locations and gravity equation relationships for trade and commuting. Yet at the same time these models are sufficiently tractable to undertake realistic counterfactuals exercises to study the effect of changes in amenities, productivity, and public policy interventions such as transport infrastructure investments. We provide an extensive taxonomy of the different building blocks of these quantitative spatial models and discuss their main properties and quantification.


This is the first study to explore the forensic science testimony by prosecution experts in the trials of innocent persons, all convicted of serious crimes, who were later exonerated by post-conviction DNA testing. Trial transcripts were sought for all 156 exonerees identified as having trial testimony by forensic analysts, of which 137 were located and reviewed. These trials most commonly included testimony concerning serological analysis and microscopic hair comparison, but some included bite mark, shoe print, soil, fiber, and fingerprint comparisons, and several included DNA testing. This study found that in the bulk of these trials of innocent defendants - 82 cases or 60% - forensic analysts called by the prosecution provided invalid testimony at trial - that is, testimony with conclusions misstating empirical data or wholly unsupported by empirical data. This was not the testimony of a mere handful of analysts: this set of trials included invalid testimony by 72 forensic analysts called by the prosecution and employed by 52 laboratories, practices, or hospitals from 25 states. Unfortunately, the adversarial process largely failed to police this invalid testimony. Defense counsel rarely cross-examined analysts concerning invalid testimony and rarely obtained experts of their own. In the few cases in which invalid forensic science was challenged, judges seldom provided relief. This evidence supports efforts to create scientific oversight mechanisms for reviewing forensic testimony and to develop clear scientific standards for written reports and testimony. The scientific community can through an official government entity promulgate standards to ensure the valid presentation of forensic science in criminal cases and thus the integrity and fairness of the criminal process.


There are many family business in Indonesia that cannot survive after the third generation. One of the factors affecting the inability to survive after the third generation can be attributed to process of succession. Ther are several stages involved in the arrangement of a successor. The successor induction, followed by the phasing out of the predecessors\' role, until the successor is ready to take a full leadership are factors which play an important role and they are also part of other important elements of ownership behavior. Ownership behavior is a factor to balance the privileges of ownership, such as wealth, power, joy, source of motivation, related to the task and ownership risks, including proper concern for the corporate wellbeing and accountability for corporate success. This study explores the factors regarding ownership behavior, which is professionalism, active governance, owner as a resource and basic duty. The sample of this research is 49 respondents of family business owners. The research uses factor analysis to prove that all indicators developed professionalism, active governance, owners as resources and basic duties, which at the end, proves that professionalism, active governance, owners as the resources and basic duties significantly develop the ownership behavior family business factor in Indonesia producing four new factors, namely professional governance, main duties, owner responsibility and professional activities.


So far, the system of the mathematics study is still focused on giving speech, task, and question-answer methodologies, or it is known as the conventional study. In this study, teacher is more dominant in the studying activity while students become his listeners and passive audiences. This case causes the students' creativities never grow and the students' mathematical thinking could be stuck, so it causes the system of the study become meaningless. To handle the mathematics study's problems, teacher should be more capable in selecting the exact system of the mathematics study, whether it is good for the material or the situation and the condition of the study at the time. One of the alternative study models that could be applied by the teacher is the open-ended system, in order to creating some creative activities and the students' way of thinking through doing some problem solving activities simultantly.
This study was conducted in SMP Negeri 3 Kertosono, Nganjuk in class VII A on the angles and lines materials in the purpose to know the practical of the open-ended study model, to identify the studying process done by the students after learning by using the open-ended study model.
The appliance of the open-ended study model was done four times, at the first meeting the students were trying to find out solutions from several problems that have many answers, the second meeting the students were learning to solve solved the problems which served by the teacher that has many answers and the solving ways, the third meeting the teacher tried to use the open-ended "mathematics tree", and the fourth meeting was having a pop-quiz and spreading
some questionnaire to see the respond of the open-ended study activity.
This study is using the qualitative-quantitative approach without statistical test with the kind of the descriptive study. The data was taken from the observation results in applying the open-ended study model which used the practical observation sheets, the students' study research after the appliance of the open-ended study model, and the questionnaire results that served the students' respond through the activity of the open-ended study. Based on the result of the research, it showed that the activity of the open-ended study was pretty good, this was suitable with the percentage of the study activity between the teacher and the students such as at the first meeting done by the teacher was 60,7% and the done by the students was 60% that included as a pretty good category, the second meeting was 64,2% done by the teacher and 60% done by the students which both of were pretty good, the third meeting was 71,4% by the teacher while 70% for the students which is categorized as good level. The students' study results showed that from 44 students who following the test, the 36 of them were passed, and the rest (8 students) were
failed, so that the classical passed result was 81,8%. The questionnaire results showed that most of the students shared a positive respond to the open-ended study, this result could be seen in the students' percentage who supporting the study was 81,4%. The open-ended study could be used as an alternative for the teacher to apply it in the mathematics study in the class because it could be motivated the students to be more actively and creatively in learning mathematics.


Lead-free perovskite Ba(Al1/2Nb1/2)O3 was prepared by conventional ceramic fabrication technique at 1350°C/5 h in air atmosphere. The crystal symmetry, space group and unit cell dimensions were determined from the experimental results using FullProf software whereas crystallite size and lattice strain were estimated from Williamson-Hall approach. X-ray diffraction analysis of the compound indicated the formation of a single-phase monoclinic structure with the space group P2/m. EDAX and SEM studies were carried out in order to evaluate the quality and purity of the compound. Permittivity data showed low-temperature coefficient of capacitance (TCC=14%) up to 100°C. To find a correlation between the response of the real system and idealized model circuit composed of discrete electrical components, the model fittings were presented using the impedance data. Complex impedance analyses suggested the dielectric relaxation to be of non-Debye type. The correlated barrier-hopping model was used to successfully explain the mechanism of charge transport in Ba(Al1/2Nb1/2)O3.


Peak plasma concentrations of lignocaine were recorded in 41 patients receiving topically applied lignocaine for fiberoptic bronchoscopy. Adequate anaesthesia was achieved in all patients with an average dose per unit weight of 9.3 +/- 0.5 mg/kg (SEM) giving a mean peak plasma concentration of 2.9 +/- 0.5 mg/l-1 (SEM) (+/- SEM 0.5). The plasma concentration exceeded toxic levels of 5.0 mg/l-1 in only two patients, and no complications were observed. Peak concentrations were influenced only by dose per unit weight administered and not by factors considered likely to influence mucosal absorption from the bronchial tree, such as sputum production, airflow obstruction, or cigarette smoking. A major proportion of the total dose of lignocaine was required to anaesthetise the nose, pharynx, and larynx, only a small proportion being needed for the bronchial tree. Lignocaine gel (2% w/v) was preferred by patients, and in a study of 10 volunteers, produced lower plasma concentrations when used as a topical anaesthetic than did lignocaine aerosol (10% w/v) or lignocaine solution (4% w/v).


New active materials are needed to improve the performance and reduce the cost of non-aqueous redox flow batteries (RFBs) for grid-scale energy storage applications. Efforts to develop better performing materials, which have largely been empirical, would benefit from a better understanding of relationships between structural, electronic and RFB-relevant functional properties. This paper focuses on metal-acetylacetonates, a class of metal coordination complexes that has shown promise for use in RFBs, and describes correlations between their experimentally measured standard potentials, solubilities, and stabilities (cycle lifes), and selected chemical, structural and electronic properties determined from Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations. The training set consisted of 16 complexes including 5 different metals and 11 different substituents on the acetylacetonate ligand. Standard potentials for those compounds were calculated and are in good agreement with experimentally measured results. A predictive equation based on the solvation energies and dipole moments, two easily computed properties, reasonably modeled the experimentally determined solubilities. Importantly, we were able to identify a descriptor for the stability of acetylacetonates. The experimentally determined stability, quantified as the cycle life to a given degree of degradation, correlated with the percentage of the highest occupied (HOMO) or lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) on the metal of the complex. This percentage is influenced by the degree of ligand innocence (irreducibility), and complexes with the most innocent ligands yielded the most stable redox reactions. To this end, VO(acetylacetonate)2 and Fe(acetylacetonate)3, with nearly 80% of the HOMO and LUMO on the metal, possessed the most stable oxidation and reduction half-reactions, respectively. The structure–function relationships and correlations presented in this paper could be used to predict new, highly soluble and stable complexes for RFB applications.


As Malaysia aims to becoming as Islamic finance global hub, thus the evaluation to determine global hub country is somehow valuable to bring into a research. Other Islamic finance countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and even London, have clearly declared to become as Islamic finance Global hub. The evaluation of Islamic finance global hub country could benefit Islamic finance industry which among others could indicate the standard of Islamic finance global hub and the determination of exact countries eligible as Islamic finance global hub. Hence, this study examines three assessment bodies as a sample namely; The Global Competitiveness Report, The Global Financial Index and Ernst & Young (E& Y) Globalization Index as a comparative study to find the suitable method in global hub evaluation. Simultaneously, this study will examine Malaysia's economic competitiveness among other countries around the world to determine positive factors that could position Malaysia as Islamic finance global hub. Then, some recommendations will be proposed for a new framework for Islamic finance global hub assessment.


This article, the first of two parts, is an update of one which appeared in the IFLAjournal in 2007 (Stilwell 2007a). Progress since 2007 is mapped in terms of the fit between the library and information services available and the national transformation agenda. It reviews information policy and describes information sources, systems and services in South Africa as part of the wider national information system. It stops short of describing the situation pertaining to school libraries, archives, record centres and museums, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), embassies, commercial data-base industry and indigenous knowledge which are covered in Part II. The sectors concerned with the dissemination of information and information technology are also described in Part II, as well as the library and information education and training sector and the organised profession. This overview is based on literature retrieved from the available, mostlye/ec-tronic, databases.


We report a unique way to measure the energy band offset of a heterojunction by exploiting the light absorption profile in the heterojunction under visible-ultraviolet internal photoemission. This method was used to determine the band alignment of W/Al2O3/n+InAs/p+Al0.45Ga0.55Sb heterojunctions that are of interest for tunnel field-effect transistors. The barrier heights from the InAs and Al0.45Ga0.55Sb valence band maxima to the Al2O3 conduction band minimum are found to be 3.24 eV± 0.05 eV and 2.79 eV± 0.05 eV, respectively, yielding a 0.4 eV± 0.1 eV offset at the InAs/AlGaSb interface. This approach can readily be applied to characterize a wide range of other semiconductor heterojunctions.


Country ratings of human rights conditions are now quite popular in macro comparative research. However, little is known as to whether (or to what extent) these scores correspond with mass sentiment in each country. Do local ratings issued by the public correspond with third party ratings, such as those produced by the Cingranelli-Richards index (CIRI), the Political Terror Scale (PTS), and Freedom House (FH)? In this study, I address this question, drawing from the most recent wave of the World Values Survey (2010 – 2014), in which respondents from 59 countries are asked to assess the level of respect for individual human rights in their country. The findings generally suggest a positive association between local and third party ratings, and that local raters appear to be particularly responsive to the most severe violations of physical integrity rights. CIRI's torture scale, PTS, and Fariss' event-based measure (emphasizing the most extreme forms of repression) explain more of the between-country variation in local ratings than any of the other third party ratings analyzed. Nevertheless, there is also significant variation in human rights ratings within countries. In particular, survey respondents who are male, wealthy, politically conservative, and citizens offer significantly higher ratings than other individuals. Thus, while these results highlight between-country differences in human rights conditions, the local ratings illustrate the wide range of opinions that exist within countries.


Background Myoclonus and tremor are common movement disorder phenomenologies in steroid-responsive encephalopathy associated with autoimmune thyroiditis (SREAT). Pure ataxia without encephalopathy has rarely been reported. Case report We report 21- and 40-year-old females who presented with subacute pure ataxia without encephalopathy. After immunotherapies, both exhibited initial improvement of ataxia, and subsequently remained in plateau phase. Discussion This treatable disorder should be added to the differential diagnoses of progressive cerebellar ataxia, and anti-thyroid peroxidase and anti-thyroglobulin should be considered as part of the workup. It is crucial not to misdiagnose SREAT presenting with pure cerebellar ataxia as degenerative or spinocerebellar ataxia.


The atmospheric organic aerosol composition is characterized by a great diversity of functional groups and chemical species challenging simple classification schemes. Traditional off-line chemical methods identified chemical classes based on the retention behavior on chromatographic columns and absorbing beds. Such approach led to the isolation of complex mixtures of compounds such as the humic-like substances (HULIS). More recently, on-line aerosol mass spectrometry (AMS) was employed to identify chemical classes by extracting fragmentation patterns from experimental data series using statistical methods (factor analysis), providing simplified schemes for oxygenated organic aerosols (OOAs) classification on the basis of the distribution of oxygen-containing functionalities. The analysis of numerous AMS datasets suggested the occurrence of very oxidized OOAs which were postulated to correspond to the HULIS. However, only a few efforts were made to test the correspondence of the AMS classes of OOAs with the traditional classification from the off-line methods. In this paper, we consider a case study representative for polluted continental regional background environments. We examine the AMS factors for OOAs identified by positive matrix factorization (PMF) and compare to chemical classes of water-soluble organic carbon (WSOC) analysed off-line on a set of filters collected in parallel. WSOC fractionation was performed by means of factor analysis applied to H-NMR spectroscopic data, and by applying an ion-exchange chromatographic method for direct quantification of HULIS. Results show that the very oxidized low-volatility OOAs from AMS correlate with the NMR factor showing HULIS features and also with true "chromatographic" HULIS. On the other hand, UV/VIS-absorbing polyacids (or HULIS sensu stricto) isolated on ion-exchange beds were only a fraction of the AMS and NMR organic carbon fractions showing functional groups attributable to highly substituted carboxylic acids, suggesting that unspeciated low-molecular weight organic acids contribute to HULIS in the broad sense.


Aims. We report the discovery of five new dwarf novae that were spectroscopically identified in the Hamburg Quasar Survey (HQS),and discuss the properties of the sample of new dwarf novae from the HQS.
Methods. Follow-up time-resolved spectroscopy and photometry have been obtained to characterise the new systems.
Results. The orbital periods determined from analyses of the radial velocity variations and/or orbital photometric variability are Porb 105.1min or Porb 109.9min for HS 0417+7445, Porb = 114.3 ± 2.7min for HS 1016+3412, Porb = 92.66 ± 0.17 min for HS 1340+1524, Porb = 272.317 ± 0.001 min for HS 1857+7127, and Porb = 258.02 ± 0.56 min for HS 2214+2845. HS 1857+7127 is found to be partially eclipsing. In HS 2214+2845 the secondary star of spectral type M3 ± 1 is clearly detected, and we estimate the distance to the system to be d = 390 ± 40 pc. We recorded one superoutburst of HS 0417+7445, identifying the system as a SUUMatype
dwarf nova. HS 1016+3412 and HS 1340+1524 have rare outbursts, and their subtype is yet undetermined. HS 1857+7127 frequently varies in brightness and may be a ZCam-type dwarf nova. HS 2214+2845 is a UGem-type dwarf nova with a most likely cycle length of 71 d.
Conclusions. To date, 14 new dwarf novae have been identified in the HQS. The ratio of short-period ( 3 h)systems of this sample is 1.3, much smaller compared to the ratio of 2.7 found for all known dwarf novae. The HQS dwarf novae display typically infrequent or low-amplitude outburst activity, underlining the strength of spectroscopic selection in identifying new
CVs independently of their variability. The spectroscopic properties of short-period CVs in the HQS, newly identified and previously known, suggest that most, or possibly all of them are still evolving towards the minimum period. Their total number agrees with the predictions of population models within an order of magnitude. However, the bulk of all CVs is predicted to have evolved past the minimum period, and those systems remain unidentified. This suggests that those post-bounce systems have markedly weaker Hβ emission lines compared to the average known short-period CVs, and undergo no or extremely rare outbursts.


Acting as hosts, cationic cyclophanes, consisting of π-electron-poor bipyridinium units, are capable of entering into strong donor-acceptor interactions to form host-guest complexes with various guests when the size and electronic constitution are appropriately matched. A synthetic protocol has been developed that utilizes catalytic quantities of tetrabutylammonium iodide to make a wide variety of cationic pyridinium-based cyclophanes in a quick and easy manner. Members of this class of cationic cyclophanes with boxlike geometries, dubbed Ex(n)Boxm(4+) for short, have been prepared by altering a number of variables: (i) n, the number of "horizontal" p-phenylene spacers between adjoining pyridinium units, to modulate the "length" of the cavity; (ii) m, the number of "vertical" p-phenylene spacers, to modulate the "width" of the cavity; and (iii) the aromatic linkers, namely, 1,4-di- and 1,3,5-trisubstituted units for the construction of macrocycles (ExBoxes) and macrobicycles (ExCages), respectively. This Account serves as an exploration of the properties that emerge from these structural modifications of the pyridinium-based hosts, coupled with a call for further investigation into the wealth of properties inherent in this class of compounds. By variation of only the aforementioned components, the role of these cationic receptors covers ground that spans (i) synthetic methodology, (ii) extraction and sequestration, (iii) catalysis, (iv) molecular electronics, (v) physical organic chemistry, and (vi) supramolecular chemistry. Ex(1)Box(4+) (or simply ExBox(4+)) has been shown to be a multipurpose receptor capable of binding a wide range of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), while also being a suitable component in switchable mechanically interlocked molecules. Additionally, the electronic properties of some host-guest complexes allow the development of artificial photosystems. Ex(2)Box(4+) boasts the ability to bind both π-electron-rich and -poor aromatic guests in different binding sites located within the same cavity. ExBox2(4+) forms complexes with C60 in which discrete arrays of aligned fullerenes result in single cocrystals, leading to improved material conductivities. When the substitution pattern of the Ex(n)Box(4+) series is changed to 1,3,5-trisubstituted benzenoid cores, the hexacationic cagelike compound, termed ExCage(6+), exhibits different kinetics of complexation with guests of varying sizes-a veritable playground for physical organic chemists. The organization of functionality with respect to structure becomes valuable as the number of analogues continues to grow. With each of these minor structural modifications, a wealth of properties emerge, begging the question as to what discoveries await and what properties will be realized with the continued exploration of this area of supramolecular chemistry based on a unique class of receptor molecules.


Studying various parameters of an engine through experimentation consumes lot of time and funds. By devising ways to simulate the engine and virtually test the performance of the output parameters leads to resource saving. In this work a four stroke SI engine has been modelled on grounds of various established mathematical theories and by referring previous research. The paper investigates the pressure and temperature variation inside an SI engine at compression and combustion phases with respect to the crack rotation at a constant speed, considering the variation of properties with temperature, all this done to proximate the real processes.


Magnetic characteristics observed in BiSrCaCuO superconductor were studied. In the measurement of differential conductance, it was cleared that the mechanism of magnetic memory effect couldn't be explained by using conventional flux flow model. By changing the density of external magnetic flux, changes in inductance of a coil in which a superconducting bar inserted were also measured. The results showed that the filament model was valid to explain the mechanism of the occurrence of a voltage in superconducting sample. It was concluded that the electromagnetic characteristics arose from the interaction between the trapped magnetic flux and weak link of the filament formed in the superconducting bulk.


The current practices of the UK steel foundry industry have been described and a review has been made of the fracture characteristics and mechanisms which commonly occur in steel castings. Emphasis has been placed on intergranular embrittlement phenomena caused by segregation and precipitation effects, and in particular the role of aluminium nitride has been considered. The problem of A1N-induced intergranular fracture (I. F.) has been examined using experimental 0.30C-1.50bh castings with varying Al and N contents, and commercially-produced material. The mechanism of fracture has been studied using various optical and electron optical techniques and the existence of two forms of A1N (a plate-like form and a dendritic form) has been confirmed. Directional solidification work has shown that the dendritic A1N forms in the residual liquid at a late stage of solidification. The plates are precipitated at a later stage when the casting is fully solidified. The plates nucleate at the grain boundaries and grow into the adjacent austenite grains with an orientation relationship of the form (0001)// // {111} Y A1N Y. The effects of some processing variables on the susceptibility to IF have been examined. IF is favoured by a high Al and N content and a slow cooling rate. The state of heat treatment was also found to be important, with quenched and lightly-tempered samples being more susceptible to IF. A model has been proposed which is based on a comparison of the relative yield strength, cleavage strength and intergranular strength of a casting. This can be used to explain the variation in fracture behaviour with testing temperature. A programme of mechanical testing has shown that different testing techniques and conditions can influence the severity of IF observed quite significantly. Although there may be a considerable decrease in Charpy impact energy as a result of intergranular embrittlement, there is little effect on the initiation value of the crack opening displacement (Si). The C. O. D. at maximum load, (o), however, max is decreased and the implications with regard to engineering design practices are considered.


Linguistic and cultural needs of non-English Speaking background graduates in science and technology fields are currently not being met due to the lack of specific language and communication programs. This paper discusses the development of an innovative Scientific and Technical English curriculum to be offered in university as well as industrial settings, with the aim of providing language and acculturation bridging programs for the overseas qualified professionals, to satisfy Australia's educational and industry requirements. It describes the aims, design and outcomes of a modular, socio-cultural, negotiated curriculum, written from a perspective of training in its broad sense with education playing an integral part. The acquisition of communicative skills in English which will enable the learners to access and function in positions commensurate with their overseas qualifications and experience is seen as the ultimate objective of the program.


We present PRACTI, a new approach for large-scale replication. PRACTI systems can replicate or cache any subset of data on any node (Partial Replication), provide a broad range of consistency guarantees (Arbitrary Consistency), and permit any node to send information to any other node (Topology Independence). A PRACTI architecture yields two significant advantages. First, by providing all three PRACTI properties, it enables better trade-offs than existing mechanisms that support at most two of the three desirable properties. The PRACTI approach thus exposes new points in the design space for replication systems. Second, the flexibility of PRACTI protocols simplifies the design of replication systems by allowing a single architecture to subsume a broad range of existing systems and to reduce development costs for new ones. To illustrate both advantages, we use our PRACTI prototype to emulate existing server replication, client-server, and object replication systems and to implement novel policies that improve performance for mobile users, web edge servers, and grid computing by as much as an order of magnitude.


Our study is set to investigate the way critical events influence social capital of family firms. We focus on macro-economic shocks (Hoffman et al., 2001; Ramey, 2016) that can trigger organisational transformation (Fligstein, 1991; Tan & See, 2004). We examine this phenomenon in the context of family-owned SMEs (Gersick et al., 1997; Lansberg, 1999), experiencing and dealing with a financial crisis as an instance of such shock. We consider family businesses as businesses in which the family has a hand-on involvement in the management of the business (Astrachan et al., 2002; Shanker & Astrachan, 1996). We examine social capital at the organisational level, which refers to resources an organisation accumulates as part of relations within and beyond its boundaries (Fischer & Pollock, 2004; Herrero & Hughes, 2019; Zahra, 2010). We consider the structural and relational properties of social capital (Moran, 2005; Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998). Structural social capital relates to the configuration of linkages between actors such as individuals and organisations upstream or downstream the value chain (Burt, 1992; Granovetter, 1985). Relational social capital focuses on the normative conditions that drive the relationships between actors in networks (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998). Considering the above, we address the following research question: How do critical events influence a family firm's structural and relational social capital?


Abstract The radioactive contaminant plume in groundwater at the Karachai Lake site has been examined further. The source of pollution is the Karachai Lake which was used as a reservoir for liquid radioactive waste (LRW) from the Radiochemical Production Association ''Mayak'' (South Urals, Russia). Taking into account that colloid-facilitated transport of radionuclides can substantially increase the contaminant migration velocity, the composition and structure of colloid particles from the groundwater within the contaminant plume were studied. Sampling of groundwater was carried out in the observation well within the contaminant plume. Different fractions of colloid particles were extracted from the groundwater samples by sequential filtration through membranes with decreasing pore size. Chemical and mineralogical compositions of the colloid particles were determined by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy in combination with ion etching of the particle surfaces. The host rocks were studied using characteristic samples from the surface outcrop nearest to the observation well. The analysis showed that the colloid particles consisted of an inorganic core with a discontinuous organic cover. The inorganic core was close in composition to the host rocks along the flow path with a predominance of layered hydrosilicates.


This work describes a conceptually simple method for structured sparse coding and dictionary design. Supposing a dictionary with K atoms, we introduce a structure as a set of penalties or interactions between every pair of atoms. We describe modifications of standard sparse coding algorithms for inference in this setting, and describe experiments showing that these algorithms are efficient. We show that interesting dictionaries can be learned for interactions that encode tree structures or locally connected structures. Finally, we show that our framework allows us to learn the values of the interactions from the data, rather than having them pre-specified.


In the field of professional team sports, anecdotal reports about athletes who experience disturbed sleep in the night prior to away games due to changes in the sleep environment have been published. Ten semi-professional female volleyball players participated in the study. Subjective sleep quality was psychometrically recorded prior to a home game, an away game, and two training days. The night before the away game the players slept in a hotel. The players reported poor sleep quality and a higher frequency of nocturnal awakenings for the night prior to the away game in comparison to the nights prior to the home game and the training days. One might speculate that the poor sleep quality reported during nights spent away from home interferes with performance during sports games, and therefore contributes to the so-called home advantage. Future studies should correlate sleep parameters with performance to corroborate this assumption.


Abstract A non-linear regression model describing the mass-balance distribution of the whole Vatnajökull ice cap, Iceland, for the years 1992–2000 is presented. All available data from some 40 locations over this 9 year period were used to determine the parameters of the model. The regression model uses six adjustable parameters which all have a clear physical interpretation. They are the slope, direction and the height of the equilibrium-line altitude (ELA) plane, two altitude mass-balance gradients, and a maximum value of the surface mass balance. It is found that the temporal variation of the observed mass-balance distribution can be accurately described through annual shifts of the ELA. Annual shifts in ELA are on the order of 100 m, which is of the same magnitude as the change expected to be caused by the climate variation predicted during the next decades. A slight trend towards a more negative mass balance is detected during this 9 year period.


The contrast enhancement of gray-level digital images is considered in this paper. In particular, the mean image intensity is preserved while the contrast is enhanced. This provides better viewing consistence and effectiveness. The contrast enhancement is achieved by maximizing the information content carried in the image via a continuous intensity transform function. The preservation of image intensity is obtained by applying gamma-correction on the images. Since there is always a trade-off between the requirements for the enhancement of contrast and preservation of intensity, an improved multiobjective particle swarm optimization procedure is proposed to resolve this contradiction, making use of its flexible algorithmic structure. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is illustrated by a number of images including the benchmarks and an image sequence captured from a mobile robot in an indoor environment.


A Project report submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the Degree of Master of Science in Computer Science of Makerere University.


We analyse determinants of bank credit losses in Australasia. Despite sizeable credit losses over the past two decades, ours is the first systematic study to do so. Analysis is based on a comprehensive dataset retrieved from original financial reports of 32 Australasian banks (1980-2005). Credit losses rise when the macro economy is weak. Asset markets, particularly the equity market, are also important. Larger banks provide more for credit losses while less efficient banks have greater asset quality problems. Strong loan growth translates into significantly higher credit losses with a lag of 2-4 years. Finally, the results show strong evidence of income smoothing activities by banks.


Advances in microelectronics, communication and signal processing have enabled the development of inexpensive sensors that can be networked to collect vital information from their environment to be used in decision-making and inference. The sensors transmit their data to a central processor which integrates the information from the sensors using a socalled fusion algorithm. Many applications of sensor networks (SNs) involve hypothesis testing or the detection of a phenomenon. Many approaches to data fusion for hypothesis testing assume that, given each hypothesis, the sensors' measurements are conditionally independent. However, since the sensors are densely deployed in practice, their field of views overlap and consequently their measurements are dependent. Moreover, a sensor's measurement samples may be correlated over time. Another assumption often used in data fusion algorithms is that the underlying statistical model of sensors' observations is completely known. However, in practice these statistics may not be available prior to deployment and may change over the lifetime of the network due to hardware changes, aging, and environmental conditions. In this dissertation, we consider the problem of data fusion in heterogeneous SNs (SNs in which the sensors are not identical) collecting dependent data. We develop the expectation maximization algorithm for hypothesis testing and model estimation. Copula distributions are used to model the correlation in the data. Moreover, it is assumed that the distribution of the sensors' measurements is not completely known. we consider both parametric and non-parametric model estimation. The proposed approach is developed for both batch and online processing. In batch processing, fusion can only be performed after a block of data samples is received from each sensor, while in online processing, fusion is performed upon arrival of each data sample. Online processing is of great interest since for many applications, the long delay required for the accumulation of data in batch processing is not acceptable. To evaluate the proposed algorithms, both simulation data and real-world datasets are used. Detection performances of the proposed algorithms are compared with well-known supervised and unsupervised learning methods


In general equilibrium models the reference scenario is important, as the evaluation of the alternative policies modelled is based on their deviation from the reference scenario. The reference scenario relates to the development of an economic outlook for each region and sector of the model. This means that assumptions are made about the main drivers of growth, e.g. population growth and technical progress. This report provides the main assumptions used for the development of the reference scenario in the MEDPRO project. The report also provides a brief country and sectoral overview for each of the southern and eastern Mediterranean countries covered by the MEDPRO project.


Abstract In the wake of the USA's refusal to ratify the Kyoto agreement on curbing greenhouse gas emissions, this article pledges for a national energy policy beyond Kyoto, based on local external effects stemming from the combustion of fossil fuels. Due to varying external effects a national policy will differentiate energy taxes between fuels. Using Swiss estimates of external effects, it is shown that a national policy would fulfill the Kyoto goal as a secondary benefit. Moreover, a nationally based fossil fuel policy would affect the scope for an international trade of CO2 emission rights, as a net-buyer of emission rights will lose from participating in such a trade.