This research embodies conventional and next generation genetic analysis of the causative agent of Melioidosis, the gram-negative bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei. Melioidosis is a disease of public health importance for hyperendemic areas in northern Australia and Southeast Asia, where B. pseudomallei is ubiquitous in the environment. This disease is contracted when individuals are exposed to soil or water containing the bacterium, which typically enters the body via abrasions in the skin, inhalation, or ingestion. Despite 100 years of research since the discovery of this bacterium, knowledge gaps remain; particularly surrounding B. pseudomallei strain diversity in the environment, and as a result, what ramifications extend to human melioidosis cases. The Northern Territory, Australia, has the highest incidence of melioidosis globally (50.2 cases per 100,000); in the first research chapter we aim to explore the biogeography of B. pseudomallei in this region, i.e. the dispersal of this bacterium in the environment. Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) was performed on a large dataset of (n=953) B. pseudomallei isolates collected over the past two and a half decades in the Northern Territory, and the adjacent state Queensland. These isolates originated from both humans and environmental samples, and were assigned geographic regions of origin from detailed collection data. We generated diversity indices (Simpson's index and evenness) and compared them between these regions using MLST data. B. pseudomallei strains diversified as our geographic sampling area increased. In addition, we found only few dominant STs in smaller sampling regions, and the inverse in larger areas, suggesting that strains radially expand throughout the environment over time. Further, the environmental and clinical B. pseudomallei isolates didn't have any ST bias, suggesting environmental strains are all potentially invasive. Case clusters of melioidosis have been previously noted in the Northern Territory, chiefly underground water systems that are used for domestic water supplies. In 2012, two melioidosis cases over a three-month period were suspected of originating from a water supply in the rural Darwin region. We aimed to investigate this property by sampling soil surrounding the dwelling and the water supply. Quantitative culture of B. pseudomallei was performed to ascertain the levels of contamination if the bacterium was present. B. pseudomallei was isolated from both soil and the water supply, whereas high concentrations of the bacterium were found in the water supply (500CFU/mL). Clinical and environmental samples were subjected to MLST, which found the two cases, and all water supply B. pseudomallei isolates were ST325. Soil isolates were a different ST and therefore disregarded as the probable infecting source. As a measure to protect the occupants in the household, and to inform strategies to protect occupants in future high-risk households, a UV filter was installed in the water supply. The UV filter was found to be effective, reducing B. pseudomallei contamination to undetectable levels using both culture and sensitive Real-Time PCR. B. pseudomallei has recently been classed a Tier 1 select agent, the highest ranking for a biological agent, and shares the category with the Ebola virus, Bacillus anthracis (Anthrax), and Yersina pestis (Plague). There are fears that microorganisms in this category may be used as a bioweapon. The ability to trace deliberately released pathogens has been facilitated by an advance in genome sequencing technology for forensic purposes. A melioidosis case has never been linked to an environmental source using these genomic tools. In this final research chapter we aimed to describe an environmental B. pseudomallei strain that likely infected two occupants of the household detailed in the previous chapter. Whole genome sequencing was applied to B. pseudomallei strains from the two occupants and their water supply, and also unrelated strains from human cases and water supplies in the nearby area that served as out-groups to validate our findings. We also used a novel approach of analyzing whole genome data; combining single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with insertion/deletions (indels). Phylogenetic analysis of the genomes revealed a probable infecting strain in the occupant's water supply. SNP and indel data were concordant, and accurately described the epidemiological events, more so than using each analysis separately. These results are important for informing attempts to trace outbreaks of melioidosis, and contribute to the forensic tracing tools available for tracing organisms of biosecurity importance. These three chapters describe the use of conventional, and next generation DNA sequencing technology to study B. pseudomallei in the hyper-endemic region northern Australia. We have explored the biogeography of this bacterium finding high levels of diversity, and evidence to suggest strains radially spread in the environment over time. In the Darwin region of the Northern Territory, we have responded to a human case cluster, finding high concentrations of B. pseudomallei in the household water supply. A UV filtration system was trialed and found to effectively decontaminate the water supply, a cost effective strategy to prevent melioidosis cases in this region. Furthermore the probable infecting environmental B. pseudomallei strain was identified for the first time in a human melioidosis case. A novel approach was used combining SNP and indel data, an important addition to the genotyping tools used for pathogens of biodefense interest. These data contribute to our knowledge of B. pseudomallei in the environment of a hyper-endemic region, means to decontaminate water supplies that pose a risk to human health, and guide efforts to trace strains that may be used for nefarious purposes.


Background Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and its therapy are associated with increased aortic stiffness and metabolic syndrome (MetS) phenotype in Caucasian patients. We hypothesized that, independently of antiretroviral therapy, HIV infection in native black African patients is associated with increased burden of cardiometabolic risk factors that may accelerate arterial structural damage and translate into increased aortic stiffness. Patients and methods Ninety-six apparently healthy Cameroonian subjects (controls) were compared to 108 untreated Cameroonian HIV+ patients (HIV-UT) of similar age. In each participant, pulse wave velocity (Complior), aortic augmentation index (SphygmoCor), brachial blood pressure (Omron 705 IT), fasting plasma glucose (FPG), and lipids were recorded, as well as the prevalence and severity of MetS, based on the American Heart Association/National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute score ≥3/5. Results Prevalence of impaired fasting glucose (FPG 100–125 mg · dL−1) and of diabetes (FPG > 125 mg · dL−1) was higher in HIV-UT than in controls (47% versus 27%, and 26% versus 1%, respectively; both P < 0.01). Fasting triglycerides and the atherogenic dyslipidemia ratio were significantly higher in HIV-UT than in controls. Hypertension prevalence was high and comparable in both groups (41% versus 44%, respectively; not significant). HIV-UT patients exhibited a twice-higher prevalence of MetS than controls (47% versus 21%; P = 0.02). Age- and sex-adjusted pulse wave velocity was higher in HIV-UT than in controls (7.5 ± 2.2 m/s versus 6.9 ± 1.7 m/s, respectively; P = 0.02), whereas aortic augmentation index was significantly lower (6% ± 4% versus 8% ± 7%, respectively; P = 0.01). Conclusion Similar to Caucasian populations, native Cameroonian HIV-UT patients showed a higher prevalence of MetS and its phenotype, associated with increased aortic stiffness, an early marker of atherosclerosis.


Despite substantial evidence that problem gambling is associated with a wide range of family difficulties, only limited effort has been devoted to studying family coping styles as a direct impact of problem gambling on families. In particular, studies on the above issues amongst Chinese communities are non-existent. During March 2011 to February 2012,a study on "Problem gambling and family violence in Chinese help-seeking clients: prevalence, impact and coping" was conducted. A total number of 182 gamblers and 103 family members were interviewed. Results showed significant correlations between family coping styles and family impacts. As recommended by the study, a family treatment group focusing on enhancement of family coping ability was developed. The purpose of this study was to measure the effectiveness of this family coping treatment group.10 family members of gamblers were recruited voluntarily from Tung Wah Group of Hospitals Even Centre, which is a treatment centre for pathological gambling in Hong Kong. The family coping treatment group consisted of ten weekly sessions. The group was designed to help family members identify the development of their particular coping styles, and to provide psycho-education on how different ways of family coping styles would impact on problem gamblers and the family. The group aimed to enhance their family coping abilities through exercises of exploration, self-reflection and skill rehearsal. Results from post-test evaluation indicated that participants showed significant improvement on coping skills and reduction on their stress levels. The family coping treatment group showed promising results as an effective treatment programme. As the current service provision is fragmented with little attention paid to family impacts and coping, the findings of this research will provide the basis of for further development of family coping programme in gambling treatment.


The Ministry of Education, Malaysia has reformed the school curriculum in accordance with the aspirations of the general public and economic development of the country. The new curriculum for secondary schools was introduced in stages beginning in 1989. The agricultural science subject had its new syllabus starting from 1993. The new syllabus was supposed to be more technological and integrative as compared to the old one. The purpose of the study was to
obtain feedback from supervisors, teachers and students regarding the teaching of agricultural science subject based on the new syllabus. Specifically, the study sought the perceptions of respondents with regard to various aspects of agricultural science teaching in upper secondary
schools. The research was a descriptive survey, employing a mailed questionnaire as the research instrument. The study included all teachers and supervisors of agricultural science. On the other hand, student respondents were purposively sampled. The instrument was pretested, yielding a reliability coefficient of .80. A total of 511 (61 %) usable questionnaires were received and analyzed. The response rate was 194 (57.4%) from teachers, 85 (63.9%) from supervisors, and 232 (58%) from students. The results revealed that all respondents were in agreement in term of their perceptions of the agricultural science project. However, the respondents were in less agreement.in their perceptions of the accomplishment of objectives, subject content, subject performance, implementation, students and evaluation. The study also revealed significant differences and associations between selected background variables of respondents with their perceptions. The research contributes significantly in providing insights regarding the present status of the agricultural science subject at upper secondary schools. The research findings are also useful as a basis for furthering development of the agricultural science subject.


During the 1930s, the Land-Utilisation Survey (LUS) of Great Britain, directed by Professor L. Dudley Stamp, created a detailed record of the major land uses in England, Wales and southern Scotland. They published this information on a set of 169 map sheets, 135 of which cover England and Wales, using Ordnance Survey 1" maps as a base, and displaying land uses via a colour overlay. This report describes a project to source, scan, geo-reference and disseminate a full set of the (170) published LUS maps of Great Britain. Scanning and geo-referencing of the maps has been successful, despite the lack of a printed grid and coordinate system on the maps. The lack of printed coordinates has been overcome by using an existing, out of copyright, geo-referenced series of scanned maps to geo-reference LUS maps. The original scanned material and geo-referenced scans have been written to DVD and deposited with both the Environment Agency and DEFRA. The maps have also been made freely available to anyone via a Web Map Server at http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk.


This dissertation interrogates the boundary between scalarity and modality, two phenomena which have lengthy but largely independent histories in natural language semantic analysis. Particularly this dissertation examines cases in which the strength of a modal expression may vary across lexical or discourse contexts, where that variation can be analyzed as correlating with a conceptual scale of some kind. The upshot of this is that this kind of scalarity can occur in many different ways; this dissertation examines three. First, gradable modality, in which scalarity is an inherent semantic property of the modal. Second, imprecise modality, in which scalarity is a pragmatic property of use of the modal in communication. Third, modified modality, in which scalarity is induced extrinsically by another expression. None of these kinds of scalarity is special to modality; this is the major point of this thesis. A given modal may, or may not, exhibit these properties. Gradable modality has seen a recent focus in the literature, with many challenges to traditional models of modality. Against this background I argue that the existence of gradable modality does not fundamentally challenge the prevailing view of non-gradable modality. Imprecision, on the other hand, has not previously been argued to have an effect of modality, so this dissertation makes a novel claim: That modals are in fact subject to imprecision, which should be modeled as a pragmatic phenomenon, and that moreover this can be used to explain several long contested puzzles about modality. Finally, modification of modality has received very little treatment; I argue that modification of a modal can induce scalarity despite a lack of inherent scalarity in said modal, both by semantic and pragmatic means – a microcosm of the larger picture of scalarity in modality. The analysis therefore is heterogeneous – and this is just as we should expect. There is nothing about modals that should make us think that they are especially likely to be gradable or ungradable, precise or imprecise, mod-


Conservation of architecture - and the conversation of modern architecture in particular - has assumed new challenges. Rather than attempting to return a modern building to its resumed original state, the challenge of these proceedings is to revalue the essence of the manifold manifestations of modern architecture and redefine its meanings in a rapidly changing world of digital revolution, worldwide mobility and environmental awareness. This volume aims to provide a variety of platforms for the exchange of ideas and experience. A large, international group of architects, historians, scholars, preservationists and other parties involved in the processes of preserving, renovating and transforming modern buildings has been invited to investigate the paradox of the modern monument, and to reflect on the manifold dilemmas of change and continuity. The general theme is elaborated through five sub-themes. The sub-theme 'Change and Continuity' addresses the tensions between change and continuity from a historical-theoretical perspective. 'Restructuring Cities and Landscapes' focuses on the larger scale of city and landscape, while 'Shifts in Program and Flexibility' draws attention to the scale of the building or building complex, and questions limits of re-use and flexibility. The fourth sub-theme deals with education and the fifth sub-theme 'Progress, Technology and Sustainability' considers specific issues of techniques and materials.


The interest for Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicles (FWMAV) is growing. With this comes a need for future users to test and evaluate these vehicles with simulations. This study presents a first iteration of an implementation of a FWMAV in FLAMES Simulation Framework. An aerodynamic model based on the widely used quasi-steady blade element approach is presented and a first linearised version is implemented in FLAMES. The simulation model is capable of both manual and autonomous flight. With the first person view a pilot can investigate buildings and objects. The study gives an idea of how FLAMES can be used for this type of simulations. FLAMES provides a good environment for testing the vehicle both individually and in a context with other units.


The emerging scientific field of synthetic biology offers an array of technical and scientific approaches new to the biological sciences. In addition, the community of scientists leading synthetic biology tends to agree on an ethos of openness and collaboration that marks a departure from the previous proprietary norm predominant in biology. While traditional biologists have long relied upon the patent system to protect and foster commercialization of their inventions, the synthetic biology community has tended to promote the very different ethos of open innovation and has created knowledge commons governance institutions to support that ethos. In fact, many in the field suspect patents of chilling research and believe that patenting ought to be avoided. Instead, many synthetic biologists prefer to contribute the new strands of DNA that they create to a commons, whose contents are available to all. This chapter first provides some background on the field of synthetic biology. It next describes some of the institutions that synthetic biologists have put in place to create and maintain a synthetic biology commons. It then shares the first empirical evidence from synthetic biology that in the synthetic biology commons, giving behavior is overwhelmingly more frequent than taking behavior. In other words, instead of being dominated by free riders, the synthetic biology knowledge commons appears to offer free rides.


In a recent essay entitled 'Ex and the City': on cosmopolitanism, community and the 'curriculum of refuge', Molly Quinn (2010) introduces her readers to a poetic exploration of cosmopolitanism and curriculum change. She begins and inconclusively ends her essay with poetic language and affirmation of cosmopolitan justice through convincing arguments in defence of a curriculum of refuge. She derives her notion of a curriculum of refuge from Derrida's (2002) idea of a 'city of refuge' which builds on both an 'acceptance of human vulnerability' and a capacity for 'imagining community anew'. For Quinn a curriculum of refuge should in fact be a haven for hospitality and multicultural, intercultural, transcultural and postcultural community, thus making room for imaginative transformation of a 'not-yet', 'yet-to-come' child / children-centred curriculum (Quinn 2010, 33). It is hoped that this curriculum would entertain encounters with otherness, difference and forgiveness - the latter being by far the most pronounced piece of poetic justice that a curriculum of refuge, in my mind, has to offer. In this essay I want to extend Quinn's idea of a 'curriculum of refuge' to one which also connects with democratic iterations and 'forgiveness of the improbable'.


Much research has been done on the concept of aequitas, while the sense in which Roman jurists used the terms iustitia and iustus has until now received surprisingly little attention, even though these terms are definitely to be found in classical law. As regards their meaning, aequitas and iustitia can scarcely be distinguished at first glance. However, the Romans of the first century AD apparently did see a difference, for they struck separate coins for the goddess Iustitia on the one hand and the goddess Aequitas on the other; the latter invariably carried a pair of scales, while the former was never depicted in this way. Similarly, Roman jurists distinguished between iustitia in the broader sense of multilateral justice and aequitas in the restricted sense of a bilateral balancing of interests. Thus the concept of iustitia led to a consideration, not only of the relevant bilateral relationships but of all facts and all aspects of law and justice that affected the persons involved in the case. From this perspective, iustitia may be regarded as synonymous with aequitas totius rei.


ABSTRACT The 18 April 2008 Mt. Carmel earthquake ( M w  5.2) was the largest event in the central United States in 40 years. This Wabash Valley earthquake had hundreds of aftershocks delineating of a left‐lateral northwest–southeast‐trending strike‐slip fault in contrast to the north–south (N–S)‐trending faults dominating the Wabash Valley fault zone. The sequence suggests conjugate faulting as part of the associated intraplate tectonics. 20 November 2012 saw another earthquake ( m b  3.6) occurring near the same location. The EarthScope Transportable Array, active in Illinois from May 2011 to May 2014, provided an opportunity to obtain high‐quality seismic data to study this event in its regional context. Mt. Carmel and its largest aftershock were largely strike slip in nature; they both have N–S extension as secondary components of their moment tensors. Likewise, body‐wave polarities show that the focal mechanisms of the 2012 earthquakes are primarily strike slip with orientations similar to those of the Mt. Carmel earthquakes. The 2012 mainshock and its aftershock ( m b  2.1) do not lie on the east–west trend of the main Mt. Carmel aftershock sequence, but rather align with an N–S‐trending sequence made of the Mt. Carmel mainshock and a handful of early aftershocks. The two distinct sequences suggest continuing conjugate faulting, with the more southerly trending group denoting possible reactivation of one of the N–S‐trending faults making up the Wabash Valley fault zone.


In recent years the role of submesoscale activity is emerging as being more and more important to understand global ocean properties, for instance, for accurately estimating the sources and sinks of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) at the air-sea interface. The scarcity of oceanographic cruises and the lack of available satellite products for GHG concentrations at high resolution prevent from obtaining a global assessment of their spatial variability at small scales. In this work we develop a novel method to reconstruct maps of CO2 fluxes at super resolution (4km) using SST and ocean colour data at this resolution, and CarbonTracker CO2 fluxes data at low resolution (110 km). The responsible process for propagating the information between scales is related to cascading properties and multiscale organization, typical of fully developed turbulence. The methodology, based on the Microcanonical Multifractal Formalism, makes use, from the knowledge of singularity exponents, of the optimal wavelet for the determination of the energy injection mechanism between scales. We perform a validation analysis of the results of our algorithm using pCO2 ocean data from in-situ measurements in the upwelling region of Namibia.


This paper presents a real-time adaptive video streaming system based on the latest standardized video codec H.264/MPEG-4 AVC scalable extension (SVC). The system provides a full MPEG-21 media access framework over heterogeneous networks and terminals with end-to-end QoS control and multimedia adaptation based on SVC. This adaptive streaming system is composed of a server with a real-time SVC encoder, an adaptive network node, and a terminal with appropriate feedback of perceptual quality, network conditions and user preferences for adaptation support. The system facilitates a general content adaptation solution to achieve the end-to-end QoS control.


"Essential reading for people in disciplines ranging from philosophy to biology. It is simply the best general book that I know on the question of the origin of life." --Michael Ruse, author of Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social Construction? "Fry has fashioned a masterful account of the history, philosophy, and science of the origin of life and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Her story weaves profound Western ideas of who we are and where we came from, from Aristotle to Gould, from Kant to NASA." --Woodruff Sullivan, University of Washington "A rich source for the specialist and thought-provoking reading for the lay person." Gunter Wachtershauser, University of Regensburg, Germany How did life emerge on Earth? Is there life on other worlds? These questions, until recently confined to the pages of speculative essays and tabloid headlines, are now the subject of legitimate scientific research. This book presents a unique perspective--a combined historical, scientific, and philosophical anaylsis, which does justice to the complex nature of the subject. The book's first part offers an overview of the main ideas on the origin of life as they developed from antiquity until the twentieth century. The second, more detailed part of the book examines contemporary theories and major debates within the origin-of-life scientific community. Topics inclue: - Aristotle and the Greek atomists' conceptions of the organism - Alexander Oparin and J.B.S. Haldane's 1920s breakthrough papers - Possible life on Mars? - The search for extraterrestrial intelligence - Recent discoveries of extrasolar planets Iris Fry teaches at the Cohn Institute for the History of Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University, and in the department of humanities and arts at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. Her book The Origin of Life: Mystery or Scientific Problem? was published in Israel in 1997.


While it is generally acknowledged that entrepreneurship as well as export activity may both be important strategies for achieving national economic growth, it has remained unclear how export activity among new ventures is related to economic growth. This paper investigates whether the presence of export-oriented entrepreneurs is a more important determinant of economic growth than entrepreneurial activity in general. We focus on the national or macro-level and use data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor for a sample of 36 countries. An important advantage of using the macro-level is that indirect effects of exporting entrepreneurs that reach further than the performance of these firms themselves (e.g. spillovers) are captured in the analysis. To our knowledge, no attempt has been made thus far to link international activity of early-stage ventures to macro-economic out-comes. Our results suggest that export-oriented entrepreneurship is indeed more important for achieving high economic growth rates than entrepreneurial activity in general. This suggests that international activity by small and new firms strongly contributes to higher levels of competition and, consequently, to the emergence of highly dynamic economies and higher levels of economic growth.


A timely addition to the understanding of IMT-Advanced, this book places particular emphasis on the new areas which IMT-Advanced technologies rely on compared with their predecessors. These latest areas include Radio Resource Management, Carrier Aggregation, improved MIMO support and Relaying.Each technique is thoroughly described and illustrated before being surveyed in context of the LTE-Advanced standards. The book also presents state-of-the-art information on the different aspects of the work of standardization bodies (such as 3GPP and IEEE), making global links between them.Explores the latest research innovations to assess the future of the LTE standardCovers the latest research techniques for beyond IMT-Advanced such as Coordinated multi-point systems (CoMP), Network Coding, Device-to-Device and Spectrum SharingContains key information for researchers from academia and industry, engineers, regulators and decision makers working on LTE-Advanced and beyond


Niblick, David K. M.S., Purdue University, December 2019. Comparison of Deep Learning and Feature Matching Methods For Homography Estimation. Major Professor: Avinash C. Kak. Planar homography estimation is foundational to many computer vision problems, such as Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) and Augmented Reality (AR). However, conditions of high variance confound even the state-of-the-art algorithms. In this report, we analyze the performance of two recently published methods using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) that are meant to replace the more traditional feature-matching based approaches to the estimation of homography. Our evaluation of the CNN based methods focuses particularly on measuring the performance under conditions of significant noise, illumination shift, and occlusion. We also measure the benefits of training CNNs to varying degrees of noise. Additionally, we compare the effect of using color images instead of grayscale images for inputs to CNNs. Finally, we compare the results against baseline feature-matching based homography estimation methods using SIFT, SURF, and ORB. We find that CNNs can be trained to be more robust against noise, but at a small cost to accuracy in the noiseless case. Additionally, CNNs perform significantly better in conditions of extreme variance than their feature-matching based counterparts. With regard to color inputs, we conclude that with no change in the CNN architecture to take advantage of the additional information in the color planes, the difference in performance using color inputs or grayscale inputs is negligible. About the CNNs trained with noise-corrupted inputs, we show that training a CNN to a specific magnitude of noise leads to a "Goldilocks Zone" with regard to the noise levels where that CNN performs best.


The hedge fund industry is starting to recognize that the main component of its returns corresponds to risk premia rather than market inefficiencies, i.e. from "beta" instead of "alpha". This has some implication for the industry and investors, among which is the endeavor to construct investable benchmarks for hedge funds on the basis of an analysis of the underlying systematic risk factors. This issue is closely linked to the rationale for constructing investable versions of hedge fund indices. An important question is whether investable benchmarks based on risk factor analysis offer a valid, more theoretically sound and cheaper alternative to the hedge fund index products currently available? This article reflects on this most recent discussion within the global hedge fund industry about the "beta versus alpha" controversy, investable hedge fund indices, and finally, capacity issues. It illustrates how the current research might turn the hedge fund industry upside down in coming years.


Ten years ago, Somalia suffered its first outbreak of piracy. In early 2005, pirates began appearing hundreds of nautical miles out at sea, attacking and hijacking vessels off the shores of central Somalia. However, the circumstances of this outbreak remain poorly understood. Why did pirate groups originate from an area with a negligible history of maritime predation? The present study explored the environment within which Somalia's first outbreak of piracy occurred, and offers a critical re-think of its origins. Drawing on the author's own extensive fieldwork as well as contemporary reports, the study explored how pirate ventures were launched after the Indian Ocean tsunami on 26 December 2004 had obliterated the coastal economy. The tsunami coincided with the eruption of a deadly and highly destabilising conflict, unprecedented for a coastal area that had remained relatively peaceful since the state collapse in 1991. The tsunami and the establishment of the South Mudug piracy model in Harardhere and Hobyo in 2005 laid the foundation for a decade of ransom piracy.


5 Iranian Fisheries Research Organization (IFRO), No. 297, Fatemi St., Tehran, Iran ABSTRACT: Riparian countries of the Caspian Sea have been evaluating the pros and cons of the predatory ctenophore Beroe ovata as a control agent against the invasive ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi, which has enormous adverse impacts on the fishery resources as well as on the biodiversity in this once fertile sea. To assess the viability of B. ovata establishment in the Caspian Sea, the survival and some physiological characteristics (feeding, respiration, reproduction and growth) of the preda- tory ctenophore were studied in Caspian Sea water (12.6 ppt salinity) conditions using animals trans- ported from the Black and Marmara Seas to a laboratory on the Iranian Caspian coast. The findings of the study showed that when salinity was gradually decreased from 22 to 12.6 ppt, B. ovata were able to adapt well to Caspian Sea water. Most of the predatory ctenophores began to swim actively and to feed on M. leidyi within 15 to 30 min following each step of acclimation. The feeding rate of B. ovata ranged from 14 to 765% of body wet weight and was highest for smaller individuals (i.e. 13 to 16 mm). Over the measured weight range of 0.23 to 3.87 g wet wt, the weight-specific respiration rate was independent of weight. The daily specific growth rate of adult ctenophores was 7 to 11% of body wet wt. B. ovata specimens were spawned and their eggs were hatched in Caspian Sea water, but the larvae survived for only a few hours. The energy budget of B. ovata calculated from food consump- tion, respiration and growth rates revealed a mean assimilation efficiency of 0.72 ± 0.1, a gross growth efficiency (K1) of 0.48 ± 0.12 and a net efficiency (K2) of 0.66 ± 0.06. Based on these physio- logical data, we suggest that in the Caspian Sea, B. ovata will be able to ingest M. leidyi intensively. However, concerning the reduction of the M. leidyi population and consequently the reversal of its adverse impact on this ecosystem, the failure of larval growth observed under experimental condi- tions (most probably due to poor handling) remains the main obstacle to overcome in the successful establishment of B. ovata in the Caspian Sea.


The task of determining item similarity is a crucial one in a recommender system. This constitutes the base upon which the recommender system will work to determine which items are more likely to be enjoyed by a user, resulting in more user engagement. In this paper we tackle the problem of determining song similarity based solely on song metadata (such as the performer, and song title) and on tags contributed by users. We evaluate our approach under a series of different machine learning algorithms. We conclude that tf-idf achieves better results than Word2Vec to model the dataset to feature vectors. We also conclude that k-NN models have better performance than SVMs and Linear Regression for this problem.


Web-enabled applications for business-to-business (B2B) procurement are not only expected to reduce the cost of purchasing process but also to alter the activities of purchasing, transform the purchasing process from an operational into a strategic activity, and provide opportunities for improving market coordination by reducing asset specificity and by making additional partners available. From organizational and inter-organizational perspectives, this study proposes a performance impact model of implementing Web-based e-procurement system for direct procurement. In the performance impact model, the strategic dimension is about partner relationship, and the operational efficiency dimension includes supplier performance, buyer performance, process integration, and process automation. Based on a survey of Taiwanese manufacturing firms, the results of this study show that the electronic execution of purchasing activities improves both of the operational efficiency dimension and the strategic dimension. The results demonstrate implementing Web-based e-procurement system not only could enhance the performance of the buyer organization but also could enhance the performance of the supplier organization and improve partner relationship management.


Relational topic models have shown promise on analyzing document network structures and discovering latent topic representations. This paper presents three extensions: 1) unlike the common link likelihood with a diagonal weight matrix that allows the-same-topic interactions only, we generalize it to use a full weight matrix that captures all pairwise topic interactions and is applicable to asymmetric networks; 2) instead of doing standard Bayesian inference, we perform regularized Bayesian inference with a regularization parameter to deal with the imbalanced link structure issue in common real networks; and 3) instead of doing variational approximation with strict mean-field assumptions, we present a collapsed Gibbs sampling algorithm for the generalized relational topic models without making restricting assumptions. Experimental results demonstrate the significance of these extensions on improving the prediction performance, and the time efficiency can be dramatically improved with a simple fast approximation method.


Recently, metal–organic framework (MOF) derived porous carbon-based composites have become one of the most advanced electrode materials for high performance energy storage systems. In this work, zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF) types of MOF strung by MnO2 NWs, forming an interesting structure like Chinese candied hawthorn fruit on a stick, are used as precursors to prepare C/Co-coated MnO nanowires (C/Co-MnO NWs). It is interesting and exciting to observe that the simultaneously formed carbon coating derived from the ZIFs significantly promotes the cyclic and rate performances of manganese oxide because of the synergistic effect of the highly conductive uniform carbon coating and the high capacity contribution from the MnO NWs. The obtained C/Co-MnO NWs could deliver 848.4 and 718 mA h g−1 at 500 and 5000 mA g−1 after 40 charge/discharge cycles, respectively, which is superior to other reported MOF-derived nanostructured materials, and makes it a very promising candidate anode material for future high-power lithium ion batteries.


Resonant frequencies and Chladni patterns of different types of classical guitar bodies were investigated to continue and further develop the understanding of the tonal qualities of guitars. The acoustic boxes with four types of strutting systems were analyzed. For this, a B&K mini-shaker, to excite the structures, and three B&K 4517-002 accelerometers located on top, at the back and on the sides of the sound box were used. The input and output signals were collected with a Data Acquisition device (DAQ) and processed to discover resonant frequencies and harmonics. During the experiments, Chladni patterns were obtained using powder sand on the surface. The method used does provide some insight regarding the vibrations of classical guitar bodies such as the influence of the strutting system on the modal shapes and dynamic response. The paper carries on the theoretical studies presented in works [4], [5], [6], [14], [15], [16], with experimental research.


Objective: Obtaining a diet history on children is difficult and often inaccurate. This study utilized the Child and Diet Evaluation tool to conduct a 24-diet history on preschoolaged children.
Methods: One-hundred and twenty-six mother/child dyads participated in the study. Each mother competed a demographic data sheet and the Child and Diet Evaluation tool.
Results: The DADET provided a great deal of descriptive data as to what food choices mothers offered their preschool-aged child during a 24- hour period. None of the mothers in the study offered their child the recommended numbers of servings from each food group during the 24 hour-period.
Conclusion: The Child and Diet Evaluation Tool provided a great deal of descriptive data about the food mothers offered their children during a 24-hour period. Mothers found the tool easy to use. The tool lacks the ability to determine the portion sizes.


Objectives Quality and safety review for performance improvement is important for systems of care and is required for US academic emergency departments (EDs). Assessment of the impact of patient safety initiatives in the context of increasing burdens of quality measurement compels standardized, meaningful, high-yield approaches for performance review. Limited data describe how quality and safety reviews are currently conducted and how well they perform in detecting patient harm and areas for improvement. We hypothesized that decades-old approaches used in many academic EDs are inefficient and low yield for identifying patient harm. Methods We conducted a prospective observational study to evaluate the efficiency and yield of current quality review processes at five academic EDs for a 12-month period. Sites provided descriptions of their current practice and collected summary data on the number and severity of events identified in their reviews and the referral sources that led to their capture. Categories of common referral sources were established at the beginning of the study. Sites used the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's definition in defining an adverse event and a modified National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (MERP) Index for grading severity of events. Results Participating sites had similar processes for quality review, including a two-level review process, monthly reviews and conferences, similar screening criteria, and a grading system for evaluating cases. In 60 months of data collection, we reviewed a total of 4735 cases and identified 381 events. This included 287 near-misses, errors/events (MERP A–I) and 94 adverse events (AEs) (MERP E–I). The overall AE rate (event rate with harm) was 1.99 (95% confidence interval = 1.62%–2.43%), ranging from 1.24% to 3.47% across sites. The overall rate of quality concerns (events without harm) was 6.06% (5.42%–6.78%), ranging from 2.96% to 10.95% across sites. Seventy-two–hour returns were the most frequent referral source used, accounting for 47% of the cases reviewed but with a yield of only 0.81% in identifying harm. Other referral sources similarly had very low yields. External referrals were the highest yield referral source, with 14.34% (10.64%–19.03%) identifying AEs. As a percentage of the 94 AEs identified, external referrals also accounted for 41.49% of cases. Conclusions With an overall adverse event rate of 1.99%, commonly used referral sources seem to be low yield and inefficient for detecting patient harm. Approximately 6% of the cases identified by these criteria yielded a near miss or quality concern. New approaches to quality and safety review in the ED are needed to optimize their yield and efficiency for identifying harm and areas for improvement.


The paper presents first results of the documentation of Tuu languages regarding information structure, based on the analysis of coherent texts, partly supplemented by elicitated utterances. Unmarked clauses display a fairly strict verb-medial structure; the clause-initial subject can be characterized as a conflation of topic function and agent role-complex and the material after it contains the assertive focus. Pragmatically more marked clauses display an initial nominal which is morphosyntactically set off from the rest of the sentence. These cleft-like constructions are typical for utterances involving contrastively focused items as well as constituent question words. At least in some languages, these structures are also associated with another pragmatic function, namely the expression of so-called entity-central thetic statements in the sense of Sasse (1987). This polyfunctionality of cleft-like sentences is motivated, because both of these functions need to expose a nominal: while it must be more salient than the predicate in the case of term focus, it must be "up-graded" from the status of topical predication base in the case of thetic utterances


This paper traces the impact of six major RFID-relevant events in Europe since May 2009. It outlines the findings relevant to RFID and privacy in healthcare as published in the June 2009 RAND report and relates them to subsequent developments including the explicit inclusion in November 2009 of RFID in the E-Privacy Directive of 2002. The paper focuses on the process of implementation of the European Commission's May 2009 Recommendation of Privacy and RFID and especially the implications for healthcare providers in the form of the new requirement (in Europe) for Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs). The paper indicates three main areas of concern highlighted by the July 2010 Opinion of the EU's Art 29 Working Party which may be relevant to healthcare providers considering deployment of RFID. Following a comparison with the situation obtaining in North America, the paper concludes that PIAs will form part of the likely scenario for legal requirements or at the very least impact the actual design of RFID deployed in the healthcare sector in both Europe and North America.


Attributed context-free grammars provide a rigorous basis for the semantic analysis and translation of tree-structured objects and have been used to build a variety of systems. A number of programming language compilers, compiler generators, and language-based editor generators employing attribute grammars have been described in the literature. Many of these systems make use of l-ordered attribute grammars, attribute grammars for which particularly efficient methods for attributing derivation trees have been described.
Derivation trees representation constructs of only moderate size may contain thousands of nodes and tens of thousands of attribute instances, and attribution of such trees on uniprocessor systems may require a significant amount of time. One possibility for reducing this time is to find techniques that exploit opportunities for parallelism in the attribution process and allow attribution to be performed on multiprocessor systems. Such techniques would permit attribute grammars to serve as a rigorous foundation for the development of parallel compilation systems and other parallel applications.
We present several methods for the parallel attribution of trees derived from l-ordered attribute grammars. These methods take advantage of parallelism implicit in the attribution process and, thus, do not require any special considerations to be taken when constructing grammars. Methods appropriate for use on tightly- and loosely-coupled multiprocessor architectures and for use when complete and incremental tree attribution are required are presented.
We present preliminary performance results obtained from implementations of some of the methods on a simple shared-memory multiprocessor simulator embedded within an attribute grammar-based editor generator system. The results suggest that the methods may provide useful reductions in attribution time in some cases.


Abstract Biological invasion remains a major threat to biodiversity in general and a disruptor to mutualistic interactions in particular. While a number of empirical studies have directly explored the role of invasion in mutualistic pollination networks, a clear picture is yet to emerge and a theoretical model for comprehension still lacking. Here, using an eco‐evolutionary model of bipartite mutualistic networks with trait‐mediated interactions, we explore invader trait, propagule pressure, and network features of recipient community that contribute importantly to the success and impact of an invasion. High level of invasiveness is observed when invader trait differs from those of the community average, and level of interaction generalization equals to that of the community average. Moreover, multiple introductions of invaders with declining propagules enhance invasiveness. Surprisingly, the most successful invader is not always the one having the biggest impact on the recipient community. The network structure of recipient community, such as nestedness and modularity, is not a primary indicator of its invasibility; rather, the invasibility is best correlated with measurements of network stability such as robustness, resilience, and disruptiveness (a measure of evolutionary instability). Our model encompasses more general scenarios than previously studied in predicting invasion success and impact in mutualistic networks, and our results highlight the need for coupling eco‐evolutionary processes to resolve the invasion dilemma.


Current research and theorizing on housework in families has emphasized technical, economic, and political dimensions. Little theorizing on is subject has recognized the moral dimensions of housework stemming from its familial/relational context. Following an overview of historical and current orientations to the study of housework, we critically examine the prevailing assumptions that underlie this research, with special attention to those that limit or exclude the possibility of moral discourse. We point to ways in which the current literature might lend itself to an expanded moral discourse, and consider the potential benefits of such discourse. Finally we suggest reconceptualizing housework as family work with its basis in moral obligation. In the past 2 decades the study of household labor or housework, formerly notable by its absence from family research, has emerged as a mature specialty in the social science literature. Presumably its emergence is associated with the continuing increase in women's paid employment, political appeals for gender equality, and the rise of women's studies devoted to illuminating women's subordination and domination (e.g., Smith, 1987). However, while much of the motivation to study housework may have been timely, postmodern, and even revolutionary, the writing itself has represented paradigmatic continuity rather than innovation, in that it has generally applied prevailing "scientific" methods and dominant theoretical orientations to work in the home, as if work in family settings were no different from work in other contexts. Often building on the assumption that housework and child care are drudgery, to be avoided if possible, this body of literature has framed the study of family work in issues of efficiency and productivity, power and equity. When the discourse has included a moral element, typically it has been an appeal to fairness and gender equity, or an affirmation of the often-implicit norm that everyone should do their share of undesirable work. Rarely has a recognition that families provide a special context for work, and generate unique "products." led to moral discourse on the meaning and social importance of family work. Instead, the family has been just one more context where modern technologies, theories, and research modes have been applied with little regard to the social impacts of that application or to the lack of fit between scientific paradigms and the special milieu of normative nurturance and commitment represented in much family work (Beutler, Burr, Bahr, & Herrin, 1989). In this article, we are proposing a moral discourse that recognizes that housework in families or family work is "human action undertaken in regard to other human beings...[and where] matters of what is fair, right, just and virtuous are always present" (Fenstermarker, 1990, p. 133). While the existing literature on this subject sometimes includes considerations of fairness and justice, issues of the virtue, goodness, or transcendent value of the human interaction associated with family work have usually been neglected. Yet family work is the essential labor of life, the activity of nurturing and caring for that makes social life possible. "Our moral lives are based in particular loyalties and relations," stated Hauerwas (1981), and "if we are to learn to care for others, we must first learn to care for those we find ourselves joined to by accident of birth" (p. 165). Since "human relationships, whatever else they may be, are moral in character and consequence" (Clark, 1990, p. 265), words that carry the "burdens of morality," namely "trust, care, obligation and responsibility," must have a place in the discourse (Thomas, 1990, p. 267). It is our intent to call attention to their rarity in the current dialogue, and to create a space for an expanded discussion on the positive aspects of family work. We emphasize at the outset that our interest is in the ways family professionals have studied family work, the research questions that have been asked, and the paradigms that have been applied. …


Physical colors, defined as unique combinations of photon populations whose wavelengths lie in the visible range, occupy an infinite-dimensional real Hilbert space. Any number of photon populations from the continuous spectrum of monochromatic wavelengths may be present to any positive amount. For normal vision, this space collapses to three dimensions at the retina, with any physical color eliciting just three sensor values corresponding to the excitations of the three classes of cone photoreceptor cells. While there are many mappings and visualizations of three-dimensional perceptual color space, attempts to visualize the relationship between infinite-dimensional physical color space and perceptual space are lacking. We present a visualization framework to illustrate this mathematical relation, using animation and transparency to map multiple physical colors to locations in perceptual space, revealing how the perceptual color solid can be understood as intersecting surfaces and volumes. This framework provides a clear and intuitive illustration of color metamerism.


This course explains least squares optimization, nowadays a simple and well-mastered technology. We show how this simple method can solve a large number of problems that would be difficult to approach in any other way. This course provides a simple, understandable yet powerful tool that most coders can use, in the contrast with other algorithms sharing this paradigm (numerical simulation and deep learning) which are more complex to master.


Short thermalization times of less than 1 fm/c for quark and gluon matter have been suggested by recent experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). It has been difficult to justify this rapid thermalization in first-principle calculations based on perturbation theory or the color glass condensate picture. Here, we address the related question of the decoherence of the gluon field, which is a necessary component of thermalization. We present a simplified leading-order computation of the decoherence time of a gluon ensemble subject to an incoming flux of Weizsäcker-Williams gluons. We also discuss the entropy produced during the decoherence process and its relation to the entropy in the final state which has been measured experimentally.


Exploiting Tangshan 1976 the deadliest earthquake in the 20th century as a source of exogenous variation, we estimate the cohort-specific effects of a historical shock on contemporary socio-economic outcomes. While cohorts born after the earthquake were considerably larger, the adverse post-disaster conditions did not translate into lasting impacts on schooling and labour market outcomes. Cohorts at schooling age during the earthquake, however, exhibit considerably lower education levels today, particularly among the female. Despite lower education, there is no evidence for adverse labour market outcomes. We conduct extensive robustness checks and argue that the effect is causal.


In this paper, the fuzzy technique of order performance by similarity to ideal solution (FTOPSIS) is employed to evaluate some well-known project management standards (PMSs) based on the criteria introduced by European foundation for quality management model (EFQM) to have a new framework to compare standards as a new comprehensive method. To do this end, a brief review on some of the PMSs is introduced based on their frameworks, concepts and critical areas. The crucial index are extracted based on the EFQM model areas and because of multiplicity of the criteria, the TOPSIS is employed to assess the standards. In addition, fuzzy logic is applied to encounter with the vagueness of judgment about the coverage level of each PMS in each of the nine basic criteria of the EFQM model in order to evaluate them. Computational results which are shown in the following sections indicate the applicability and usefulness of the method.


The mean–variance model is widely acknowledged as the foundation of portfolio allocation because it provides a framework for analyzing the trade-off between risk and return for gaining diversification benefits. Despite the well-known shortcomings of the model, it is often the starting point for making asset allocation decisions. In this article, the authors briefly review mean–variance optimization and approaches for resolving its limitations by demonstrating backtest results on asset allocation. Feedback from asset managers is also included to explain how optimization methods are applied in practice. TOPICS: Quantitative methods, statistical methods, portfolio construction, performance measurement Key Findings ▪ Mean–variance optimization provides a framework for analyzing risk–return trade-offs when making asset allocation decisions. ▪ Sensitivity of the mean–variance model can be addressed with robust models, and the model generates candidate asset allocations that are informative in practice. ▪ Feedback from asset managers suggests that mean–variance optimization along with simulation and various robust methods are being applied in practice for asset allocation.


The main aim of this paper is to propose a probability model to describe the distnbution of females accordmg to age at menarche. The suitability of the proposed model has been tested with the real data set. Expected waiting time at blrth for attaining menarche has also been computed by using life table technique. The data have been taken from a sample survey in Palpa and Rupandehi districts. The proposed logistic distribution was found well fit for describing the dstribution of age at menarche in Nepal. It was found that the estimated mean age at menarche was 14.6 years. The expected waiting time at bxth for getting menarche was found to be 14.7 years, whch is more or less consistent result. The findmgs may give useful information for policy implications to design the policies and programmes especially in fertility and reproductive health related issues of a country.


A new framework of compressive sensing (CS), namely statistical compressive sensing (SCS), that aims at efficiently sampling a collection of signals that follow a statistical distribution and achieving accurate reconstruction on average, is introduced. For signals following a Gaussian distribution, with Gaussian or Bernoulli sensing matrices of O(k) measurements, considerably smaller than the O(k log(N/k)) required by conventional CS, where N is the signal dimension, and with an optimal decoder implemented with linear filtering, significantly faster than the pursuit decoders applied in conventional CS, the error of SCS is shown tightly upper bounded by a constant times the best k-term approximation error, with overwhelming probability. The failure probability is also significantly smaller than that of conventional CS. Stronger yet simpler results further show that for any sensing matrix, the error of Gaussian SCS is upper bounded by a constant times the best k-term approximation with probability one, and the bound constant can be efficiently calculated. For signals following Gaussian mixture models, SCS with a piecewise linear decoder is introduced and shown to produce for real images better results than conventional CS based on sparse models.


This study presents a loss-of-life (LoL) analysis for electric vehicle (EV) batteries, when they are being used as smart energy storage (SES) systems in a typical solar photovoltaic (PV) system installed in building environment. EVs can be considered as ideal energy storage for solar PV system installed in commercial/office buildings. This is attributable to the fact that the idle time-period of the EVs during the daytime, and the time-period during which the solar PV requires the energy storage intersect perfectly. However, it is to be demonstrated that using EVs as SES for solar PV system in commercial/office buildings would not have a significant impact on the battery lifetime and driving range of EVs. Hence, LoL analysis is essential to get a clear picture on the expected LoL for the EV batteries when EVs are used as SES for solar PV. Furthermore, the LoL of the individual EV batteries depends on the priority criteria used for charging/discharging the EVs, namely time coordinated and power coordinated vehicle-to-grid (V2G) algorithms. Hence, a comparison of LoL for different types of EVs while using different priority criteria in both the types of V2G is presented.


Background: The college setting offers public health educators and exercise scientists a favorable environment to implement wide-spread change in levels of physical activities. With over two-thirds of all adults in the U.S. now categorized as obese or overweight (CDC, 2015), it has become necessary to increase physical activity levels on college campuses. Exercise is Medicine® on Campus (EIM®-OC) is a national initiative to increase physical activity on college campuses by creating an environment to change the subjective norm of diminished exercise movement and fitness among adults. The purpose of the present study was to use the EIM®-OC platform to assess college students' beliefs and practices of physical activity by implementing this program in a rural setting. Methods: Implementation of EIM®-OC was conducted over a one-week period. More than 1,000 participants joined in the events led by a multi-disciplinary team. Data collected included self-reported daily physical activities, campus commuting, and level of exercise intensity. Descriptive statistics and chi-square reported frequencies and statistical differences. Results: Overall, the campus turnout for EIM®-OC events was 7.6% higher than national norms. Physical inactivity was statistically different between racial groups (P=0.04). Males reported engagement in physical activity primarily for enjoyment and social interactions. Active transport was lower in the rural community than in urban counterparts. Conclusions: Findings from this study described the successful engagement of a midsized rural campus population in an EIM®-OC campaign. The study revealed self-reported physical activity patterns of students comparable to national averages; however there was a disproportionate number of African Americans who did not participate in any vigorous physical activity.


The structural as well as electronic properties of PtPd nanoparticles (NPs) were investigated by using molecular dynamics simulations and density functional theory calculations. A wide range of NPs of different sizes (from 1.5 to 4 nm), structures (core–shell, alloy, Janus), and compositions were taken into consideration. It was shown that PtPd NPs of less than ∼2.0 nm are prone to structural transformations to icosahedral (Ih) shape, regardless of their initial structure and composition. On the other hand, for NPs of size ∼2.5 nm, the increase of temperature up to 700–900 K leads to structural changes only for compositions close to 40% Pt, which corresponds to energetic minimum for Pt@Pd NPs. The Ih form of Pd@Pt NPs with monolayer thickness of Pt on the surface appears to have the most negatively charged surface which makes this kind of NPs the best candidate for catalysis application.


Subaquatic canyons in deltas are major pathways for the transport of particles from land to the deep basins. They represent active environments with frequent deltaic failures and mass-movement deposits potentially leading to hazardous (tsunami waves) and economic (infrastructure damages) implications. Understanding sedimentary processes and mass-movement triggering mechanisms is crucial to assess related consequences and to carry out geological risk assessments. The Rhone River delta in Lake Geneva (Switzerland, France) is a complex underwater structure with several active and inactive subaquatic canyons, similar to marine deltas but at a smaller scale. The difference between two bathymetric surveys in 1986 and 2002 revealed an inversion in the topography of the distal active canyon, as a former distal canyon was transformed into a mound-like structure. A 12 m-thick layer was deposited in the canyon and modified the sediment transfer conduit. Sediment cores from this deposit were retrieved in-situ in 2002 and 2011 via the "F.-A. Forel" and Russian MIR submersibles, respectively. These cores contained a homogeneous, sandy material. Its sediment texture, grain-size, high density and shear strength, and low water content suggests that it corresponds to a debris-flow deposit that possibly took place after the initiation of a mass movement due to a scarp failure in proximal areas of the canyon. In addition, in-situ geotechnical tests on the modern canyon floor have shown a soft top layer above a stiffer substratum. This soft layer, which increases in thickness towards distal areas, may act as a basal surface for hydroplaning, and might have allowed the debrite to be transported  9 km away from the source of the scarp failure. Similarities in textures and grain-size of the debris flow and levee deposits hints at proximal northern levee as the source of this material. Rapid sediment loading in this area, at the rate of >3cm/yr, steep slopes in the canyon walls and increased pore pressure due to high methane concentrations may have reduced the stability of the canyon wall in this area. Discrete sandy intervals show very high methane concentrations and thus could correspond to potentially weak layers prone to scarp failures. Nevertheless, the probable cause for the 2000 AD Rhone delta event was an exceptional flood in October 2000 which undercut the slope, and subsequently decreased the stability by increasing the shear stress and triggered the mass failure in the already unstable canyon walls. Besides economic and hazardous implications, such mass failures represent significant and underestimated causes in morphological evolution of underwater canyons by damming the channel and, eventually, forming short-term meanders susceptible to further erosion.


The U.S. government guarantees a majority of residential mortgages, which is often justified as a means to promote homeownership. In this paper we use property-level data to estimate the effect of government mortgage guarantees on homeownership, by exploiting variation of the conforming loan limits (CLLs) along county borders. We find substantial effects on government guarantees, but find no robust effect on homeownership. This finding suggests that government guarantees could be considerably reduced with modest effects on homeownership, which is relevant for housing finance reform plans that propose to reduce the government?s involvement in the mortgage market by reducing the CLLs.


The seed is the carrier of the genetic improvements brought about by modern plant breeding, and seed production is carried out in accordance with certification systems to guarantee consistent high quality. In forage legumes, breeding efforts are primarily related to the vegetative development of the plant, although the commercial success of an agronomically superior cultivar is dependent on a reliable supply of competitively priced seed. In seed production of the three most important forage legumes, alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.), white clover (Trifolium repens L.), and red clover (Trifolium pratense L.), crop management techniques are applied to stimulate reproductive development in order to obtain high seed yields. These include a low plant density, manipulation of canopy size to avoid lodging and shading of fruiting organs, synchronization of flowering with pollinating insects as well as controlling pests. High seed yield is correlated to inflorescence density and seed yield per inflorescence, traits which should be selected for in breeding populations as moderate to high heritability has been found. However, seed yield is a genetically complex trait and in the perennial, insect-pollinated forage legumes it is further highly influenced by environmental conditions and crop management factors. Further investigations into the use of plant growth regulators and an improved understanding of the interaction between pollinators and the seed crop might improve future seed yields. There is likely to be an increasing emphasis on the role of forage legumes in producing high-quality meat and milk, combined with the requirement to reduce the environmental footprint of grassland agriculture. A high forage legume seed yield is a prerequisite to meet market requirements for new, improved cultivars and hence achieve the economic impacts of modern plant breeding for a better livelihood and environment.


It is important yet challenging to adequately describe heterogeneous flow processes in soils. The objectives of this study were to "visualize" heterogeneous processes of water flow and solute transport in soils by using multiple tracers and to quantify heterogeneities of soil water flow and solute transport by using a discrete random cascade model. Field tracer experiments on two soils were conducted with sequences of iodine–nitrate and iodine–bromide mixtures. On the basis of the experimental data, a random cascade model, an annular histogram, and a similarity index were applied to characterize the heterogeneous flow and transport processes in the soils. Results showed that water and solute penetrated into deep soil preferentially mainly because of the macropore flow. At the beginning of infiltration, the solute transport heterogeneity was mainly related to the saturation process of soil macropores. As more water infiltrated into the soil, the solute transport heterogeneity was mainly attributable to the change of flow paths. After the macropores were saturated, unstable infiltration fronts resulted in the transport heterogeneity. The experimental data and analyses of the random cascade model demonstrated that the solute transport process included more heterogeneous information than the heterogeneous water flow, which was related to the soil heterogeneity, water flow heterogeneity, and the heterogeneity of the solute transport itself.


As the world anticipates receiving helper robots into their homes there are still a few more hurdles that the robotics field must leap over in order for us to reach such a goal. The main issues that the discipline faces are the snowflake robot designs (no two are alike) and the large learning curve for robot programming. These issues create a difficulty and an inconsistency in design and usability. To resolve these issues, a language structure has been designed to communicate with the programming language of any robot enabling the robot to manipulate any object. Thus, the hypothesis submitted in this proposal states that any robot is capable of interacting with any real world object to the robots optimality and within its limitations.


The diversity of the Insecta is reflected in the large and varied microbial communities inhabiting the gut. Studies, particularly with termites and cockroaches, have focused on the nutritional contributions of gut bacteria in insects living on suboptimal diets. The indigenous gut bacteria, however, also play a role in withstanding the colonization of the gut by non-indigenous species including pathogens. Gut bacterial consortia adapt by the transfer of plasmids and transconjugation between bacterial strains, and some insect species provide ideal conditions for bacterial conjugation, which suggests that the gut is a "hot spot" for gene transfer. Genomic analysis provides new avenues for the study of the gut microbial community and will reveal the molecular foundations of the relationships between the insect and its microbiome. In this review the intestinal bacteria is discussed in the context of developing our understanding of symbiotic relationships, of multitrophic interactions between insects and plant or animal host, and in developing new strategies for controlling insect pests.


Seeming Knowledge: Shakespeare and Skeptical Faith. By John D. Cox. Studies in Christianity and Literature 1. (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2007, Pp. xvii, 348. $39.95.) Critical interest in the possible religious beliefs and allegiances of William Shakespeare is far from a new phenomenon within that amorphous field of scholarly enquiry known as "Shakespeare Studies." There has been a resurgence of critical interest in Shakespeare and religion, most particularly in the relationship between Shakespeare and Roman Catholicism. Such a resurgence is almost inevitable given the dual, and perhaps at times contradictory, imperatives provided by almost three decades of critical ascendancy enjoyed by new historicism and cultural materialism and the so called "religious turn" in theory. Rather than offering arguments or evidence for Shakespeare's Roman Catholic or Protestant beliefs or applying anachronistic theoretical understandings and insights to Shakespeare's plays, John D. Cox's impressive contribution in Seeming Knowledge instead presents a much more suggestively nuanced understanding of the relationship between Shakespeare's works and Christian faith (s) via a re-examination of the bard's assumed skepticism. Cox's magisterial volume questions traditional understanding of sixteenth-century skepticism as "a narrative about a deluge of disbelief" (1). He traces a history of skepticism that emphasizes its paradoxical inextricability from faith. Cox demonstrates the existence of a sixteenthcentury tradition - encompassing figures as diverse as John Foxe, John Bale, Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas More - within which faith and skepticism were mutually enabling discourses. Although in agreement widi the general assumption that Shakespeare's philosophical position was one of skepticism, Cox's historically grounded re-assessment of traditional narratives of sixteenth-century skepticism lead him to propose "suspicion" rather than "scepticism" as more germane to the assessment of Shakespeare's diought. Cox argues that while the application of doubt to the knower was an innovation of the advanced skepticism of the nineteenth century, it has important affinities with a much older category of doubt: the suspicion of (fallen) human nature that is intrinsic to Christian thought, and that gave rise to early modern skepticism in the first place. Cox shows that Christian ideas as to the impossibility of perfection for the fallen human self, self-deception and self-division were widely available cultural images via their literal embodiment in the medieval morality plays. Such plays stage the drama of the self-divided within an explicitly Christian narrative. This tradition of religiously inspired doubt is shown to be available to Shakespeare not only in its theatrical incarnations, but, crucially, also in the work of Erasmus and More. These are exemplars of what Cox denotes "skeptical faith." As he argues, "Skepticism for these two did not supplant their faith; rather, skepticism and faith complemented one another as essential aspects of the same vision of the human situation. …


A mid-1960s proposal to create a National Data Center has long been recognized as a turning point in the history of privacy and surveillance. This article shows that the story of the center also demonstrates how bureaucrats and researchers interested in managing the American economy came to value personal data stored as "data doubles," especially the cards and files generated to represent individuals within the Social Security bureaucracy. The article argues that the United States welfare state, modeled after corporate life insurance, created vast databanks of data doubles that later became attractive to economic researchers and government planners. This story can be understood as helping to usher in our present age of personal data, one in which data doubles have become not only commodities, but the basis for a new capitalism. This essay is part of a special issue entitled Histories of Data and the Database edited by Soraya de Chadarevian and Theodore M. Porter.


Abstract. Dry deposition of peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) is known to have a phytotoxic impact on plants under photochemical smog conditions, but it may also lead to higher productivity and threaten species richness of vulnerable ecosystems in remote regions. However, underlying mechanisms or controlling factors for PAN deposition are not well understood and studies on dry deposition of PAN are limited. In this study, we investigate the impact of PAN deposition on a nutrient-poor natural grassland ecosystem situated at the edge of an urban and industrialized region in Germany. PAN mixing ratios were measured within a 3.5 months summer to early autumn period. In addition, PAN fluxes were determined with the modified Bowen ratio technique for a selected period. The evaluation of both stomatal and non-stomatal deposition pathways was used to model PAN deposition over the entire summer–autumn period. We found that air masses at the site were influenced by two contrasting pollution regimes, which led to median diurnal PAN mixing ratios ranging between 50 and 300 ppt during unpolluted and between 200 and 600 ppt during polluted episodes. The measured PAN fluxes showed a clear diurnal cycle with maximal deposition fluxes of ~−0.1 nmol m−2 s−1 (corresponding to a deposition velocity of 0.3 cm s−1) during daytime and a significant non-stomatal contribution was found. The ratio of PAN to ozone deposition velocities was found to be ~0.1, which is much larger than assumed by current deposition models. The modelled PAN flux over the entire period revealed that PAN deposition over an entire day was 333 μg m−2 d−1 under unpolluted and 518 μg m−2 d−1 under polluted episodes. Additionally, thermochemical decomposition PAN deposition accounted for 32% under unpolluted episodes and 22% under polluted episodes of the total atmospheric PAN loss. However, the impact of PAN deposition as a nitrogen source to the nutrient-poor grassland was estimated to be only minor, under both unpolluted and polluted episodes.


Given a knowledge base or KB containing (noisy) facts about common nouns or generics, such as "all trees produce oxygen" or "some animals live in forests", we consider the problem of inferring additional such facts at a precision similar to that of the starting KB. Such KBs capture general knowledge about the world, and are crucial for various applications such as question answering. Different from commonly studied named entity KBs such as Freebase, generics KBs involve quantification, have more complex underlying regularities, tend to be more incomplete, and violate the commonly used locally closed world assumption (LCWA). We show that existing KB completion methods struggle with this new task, and present the first approach that is successful. Our results demonstrate that external information, such as relation schemas and entity taxonomies, if used appropriately, can be a surprisingly powerful tool in this setting. First, our simple yet effective knowledge guided tensor factorization approach achieves state-of-the-art results on two generics KBs (80% precise) for science, doubling their size at 74%–86% precision. Second, our novel taxonomy guided, submodular, active learning method for collecting annotations about rare entities (e.g., oriole, a bird) is 6x more effective at inferring further new facts about them than multiple active learning baselines.


Abstract We conducted an 11-year comparative study on temporal variation in rodent density, biomass, and species composition dynamics from adjacent grassland and shrubland environments in the Chihuahuan Desert of North America, in relation to rainfall and plant production. We found that rodent assemblages from those environments were only 14% similar in overall species composition, but consisted of different species in the same genera with similar ecological attributes. Each rodent community was numerically dominated by a different species of granivorous kangaroo rat, and the 2 rodent communities paralleled each other in body sizes and trophic structure. Rodent species compositions changed little over the 11-year period, despite considerable variation in rodent densities and biomass and in rainfall and plant production. Rodent abundance and biomass from both communities increased in relation to temporally variable rainfall and plant production, especially resulting from a series of El Niño and La Niña Southern Oscillation events. However, the grassland rodent community exhibited more rapid within-1-year lag-time responses to plant production, and prolonged high densities for 1 year before declining, whereas the shrubland rodent community exhibited primarily 1-year lag responses and immediate rapid decline in densities. Changes in rodent densities and biomass from both communities were significantly predicted by the production of annual grasses and forbs. Measured rodent reproductive activity was greater and happened sooner after rain and plant production events at the grass site than at the shrub site, and differences in the timing of rodent bottom-up responses between the grassland and shrubland habitats appeared to result from differences in the reproductive potentials of the 2 dominant rodent species. Dipodomys ordii, the dominant grassland rodent species, is known to produce more offspring than Dipodomys merriami, the dominant rodent in the shrubland community. We conclude that differences in the reproductive potentials of these 2 dominant rodent species likely accounted for the quicker and prolonged response of the grassland rodent community to bottom-up influences, rather than differences in the timing of plant production between the sites. Variation in reproductive potentials among rodent communities is likely a key factor affecting the timing of overall rodent community dynamics relative to changes in environmental resources.


"What is the biggest challenge of graduate school?" an undergrad asked the panel of graduate students at an event I helped organize last summer. "Not letting the support from my community turn into pressure," one panelist responded. That answer might have surprised some, who probably expected to hear about experiments that didn't work or trudging through literature reviews. But I understood exactly what she meant. The speaker was an African-American woman. I am a member of an underrepresented minority group myself, pursuing a doctoral degree in chemistry, so her comment resonated with me. With my oral candidacy exam approaching, I needed to find a way to keep well-meaning support from adding to my stress.

![Figure][1]

ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER

Throughout my education, friends and family have expected me to take advantage of every opportunity I come across because I may not get the same chance again. Members of my community expect me to give outstanding performances everywhere I go because I represent them and our culture. Mentors expect that I will never give up. This has been a great source of motivation, but also of pressure. And when I heard the panelist echo my experience, I understood that I needed to educate my community about how their comments made me feel—and how to keep their support from becoming oppressive.

I remembered a conversation with a mentor that illustrated how the right language can make all the difference. At the end of my first year of graduate school, I wrestled with an overwhelming desire to leave the program with a master's degree. I was accustomed to hearing "Don't give up" and "You have to finish"—words that were meant to be motivational. Instead, they made me feel I would be a disappointment if I left, and that I owed it to all the people who had helped me get there to stick with it.

After discussing the pros and cons of leaving with my mentor, she offered a response that was completely different from what I expected. "I support any decision you make," she said. "I will always be proud of you and your achievements." Hearing this simple, explicit statement of support, I felt every muscle of my body loosen. I hadn't realized that the prospect of disappointing her was causing me so much stress. Perhaps counterintuitively, knowing that she was behind me no matter what helped me decide to stick with my Ph.D. program.

My mentor knew the right thing to say, but we can't expect the same from everyone. Now, when people in my community—always with the best intentions—say something that creates pressure and stress and makes me feel bad, I tell them and we talk about it. This was a bit awkward at first. But they want to support me, so I need to give them the tools to do that.

Sometimes, friends and family ask me, "How long until you get your degree?" As many grad students will agree, this question is a stress trigger. Now, I respond by telling them that I prefer to be asked "How is your progress in your program?" and I explain why. When I tell my supporters about the challenges I'm experiencing in grad school, they frequently say things like "You'll be OK. Don't stress out," thinking that this is what I need to hear. I now explain to them that it has the opposite effect of what they intended. It makes me feel I'm doing something wrong or that my feelings are invalid. Instead, I tell them that I prefer to hear, "Do you need someone to talk to? How can I help you through this rough time?" I've started to notice a change. It has required a lot of patience and reminders, but these days, I get fewer stress-inducing questions and comments.

All graduate students, but especially those of us who are members of underrepresented groups, carry a weight of expectations from family, friends, and community. Being explicit about our needs and opening up the lines of communication with supporters is a starting point for making the journey less stressful.

 [1]: pending:yes


My work attempts intimacy with power. In this poem, "A Matter of National Security," my love is the one who claims to know best. He may be white America. He may be a politician. He may even be the one who shares my bed. Poetry forces me to come close to the hand that pulls the trigger. I can see in his violence a desperation for love. But it is a sick kind of love. He conquers. He kills. He touches. He touches everything: Black bodies, colonized bodies, women and children, the poor, and the veiled. We all die under his touch, but he knows nothing else.
Today it is a critical time for Asian Americans. On what side do we stand? This country's hand is on our backs. He says, "My love, if you really care about me, you will honor and obey. In sickness and in health, until death do us part. Amen."
But I write of an allegiance that once demanded a vow the moment our ancestors flew over the Pacific Ocean and arrived with nothing but a thousand tongues. I'm talking to you, Asian America. Do you really want this country's love?
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A cattle welfare index was estimated through 14 visual indicators in the cow-calf system in northern Mexico. The study was carried out at 25 ranches in Chihuahua, Mexico. The indicators were rangeland forage availability; rangeland plant diversity; ease of walking owing to terrain slope; ease of walking owing to presence of rocks; water availability; water distribution; water distance; water appearance; heat protection through vegetation; cold protection through vegetation; cold protection through topography; cold protection through management; cattle docility and cattle body condition. A score of 1 to 4 was given to each indicator, rated as poor, fair, good and excellent, respectively. Ranches under study were classified according to their dominant vegetation type. Noticeable differences were obtained among animal welfare indexes, depending on rangeland type. The lowest index of 2.82 was recorded for the desert shrublands, while indexes above 3.0 were observed for the shortgrass prairie and oak-bunchgrass rangelands. Indicators with high values were water availability and distribution. The lower cattle welfare scores were related to natural factors rather than to management indicators.


Abstract. The methodology used in wind resource assessments often relies on modeling the wind-speed statistics using a Weibull distribution. In spite of its common use, this distribution has been shown to not always accurately model real wind-speed distributions. Very few studies have examined the arising errors in power outputs, using either observed power productions or theoretical power curves. This article focuses on France, using surface wind measurements at 89 locations covering all regions of the country. It investigates how statistical modeling using a Weibull distribution impacts the prediction of the wind energy content and of the power output in the context of an annual energy production assessment. For this purpose it uses a plausible power curve adapted to each location. Three common methods for fitting the Weibull distribution are tested (maximum likelihood, first and third moments, and the Wind Atlas Analysis and Application Program (WAsP) method). The first two methods generate large errors in the production (mean absolute error around 5 %), especially in the southern areas where the goodness of fit of the Weibull distribution is poorer. The production is mainly overestimated except at some locations with bimodal wind distributions. With the third method, the errors are much lower at most locations (mean absolute error around 2 %). Another distribution, a mixed Rayleigh–Rice distribution, is also tested and shows better skill at assessing the wind energy yield.


Abstract: This workshop implemented SAS2 community-based research methods to facilitate direction for the Peterborough Centre for Social Innovation (PCSI) on their governance, operations, collaborations and finance strategies during their pilot project. The results will be used to provide direction on the selection of two or three case studies for interview to understand how successful social innovation organizations have connected to the community need. The results of the governance models workshop demonstrated that the PCSI should remain flexible to be reactive to the environment as many participants supported a hybrid governance and collaboration model. In addition, the operation and collaboration workshop showed that there was strong support for work space, kitchen space and programming that would provide outreach opportunities to the community. Facilitating a locally-focused social innovation centre was also a key foundation for the participants. This workshop report outlines phase one's literature review on social innovation governance and strategies, workshop results and discussion, as well as recommendations and the conclusions of this community-based research.
Prepared by Sara Fralin,Andreina Pulido and Elizabeth Teleki


Opportunities in transnational education have been growing across the higher education sector. The incentive for institutions to explore opening offshore satellite campuses includes access to more students and building the institutions reputation across the globe. A number of risks are also associated with transnational education, especially in terms of quality. It is important that students across all campuses receive the same high standard of education. That is, students at offshore campuses should not be placed at a disadvantage compared to students studying at the institutions main campus. This paper explores the possibility of providing students from offshore campuses better access to teaching staff from the institutions main campus. An immersive video augmented platform called iSee is used to simultaneously connect students from Singapore and Malaysia with teaching staff in Wollongong. The students undertook an exam revision session using video avatars in a virtual lecture theatre. The pilot showcased the opportunities of implementing this technology to improve student engagement and reduce academic workload. It also reinforced the need for more research in the transnational education field to ensure the same graduate outcomes are being achieved across campuses.


Computer based assessments (CBA) have increasingly become a popular tool for educators to test students' knowledge of course material because of the many advantages it confers. However, research on its perceived value and satisfaction among students has found mixed results, with some test takers' attitudes ranging from enthusiasm at being able to complete exams and retrieve test results whenever they want, to others actively disliking its use. As yet, the reasons for the same remain unclear. What is clear is that unmotivated or discontented students' negative evaluations of CBA could overtime lead to a discontinuance of its usage in classrooms. Understanding the drivers of students' continued usage of CBA is therefore key to the future use of this technological innovation and the goal of this research. To this end, the study utilized the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT)—a model specifically built to understand the adoption of software technology—to the classroom adoption of technology context. Using quantitative survey data from 111 students who were assessed using CBAs, the study examined the role of the UTAUT constructs of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions in predicting students' continuance intention for CBA. Findings found a direct effect of UTAUT's core constructs of performance expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions on continuance CBA intention. Interestingly, students' perceived value of CBA partially mediated the effect of these constructs on continuance intention. The results of the study, therefore, point to a single, new, global construct—perceived value of CBA— that predicts whether students prefer classroom technology.


Background Children born to mothers who had malaria in pregnancy have an increased risk of malaria infection in the first 24 months of life and they also experience earlier episodes of malaria compared to their counterparts. This study compared the pre- and post-seasonal prevalence of P. falciparum infection and anti-malarial antibodies among children whose mothers received either intermittent preventive treatment in pregnancy using sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine (IPTp-SP) plus community-based scheduled screening and treatment (CSST) of malaria in pregnancy or standard IPTp-SP. Methods In 2015, two cross-sectional surveys were conducted before and after the malaria transmission season among children aged 0–24 months, born to women who participated in a 2-arm cluster-randomised trial to compare CSST plus IPTp-SP vs IPTp-SP alone in the Upper River Region of The Gambia. For each survey, finger prick samples were collected for slide microscopy and indirect ELISA to compare prevalence of malaria parasitaemia and IgG antibodies to 19-kDa merozoite surface protein 1. Results Of 905 children recruited in the pre malaria transmission survey, the prevalence of malaria in the overall population, IPTp-SP alone and CSST plus IPTp-SP arms were 1.07%, 2.30% and 0%, respectively. Nearly 70% of children with parasitaemia were aged 1–5 months old. The seroprevalence in children whose mothers received CSST plus IPTp-SP compared to IPTp-SP alone was 10.54% vs 11.85%. Seroprevalence analysis and reading of slide microscopy for 1172 children recruited in the second survey as well as final statistical analysis are currently on-going. Final results will be available by November 2016. Conclusions Infants whose mothers received CSST plus 1PTp-SP appear to be less likely to have malaria infection compared to those whose mothers received IPTp-SP only. Community scheduled screening and treatment of malaria in pregnancy may also be protective against malaria in children.


Mentha is a medicinal and aromatic plant belonging to the Lamiaceae family, which is widely used in food, flavor, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. Recently, it has been found that the use of Mentha as a pharmaceutical source is based on its phytochemical constituents that have far been identified as tannins, saponins, phenolic acids and flavonoids. This study was designed to evaluate the mutagenic and antimutagenic activities of apigenin 7-O-glucoside (A7G), a flavonoid isolated from Mentha longifolia (L.) Hudson subspecies longifolia (ML). The possible antimutagenic potential of A7G was examined against mutagens ethyl methanesulfonate and acridine in an eukaryotic cell system Saccharomyces cerevisiae and sodium azide in Salmonella typhimurium TA1535 and 9-aminoacridine in S. typhimurium TA1537. According to our findings, any concentrations of the A7G used did not show mutagenic activity but exerted strong antimutagenic activities at tested concentrations. The inhibition rates for the Ames test ranged from 27.2% (S. typhimurium TA1535: 0.4 μM/plate) to 91.1% (S. typhimurium TA1537: 0.2 μM/plate) and for the yeast deletion assay from 4% to 57.7%. This genotoxicological study suggests that a flavonoid from ML owing to antimutagenic properties is of great pharmacological importance and might be beneficial to industries producing food additives, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals products.