In the nine years that have passed since Spotify launched its service in the fall of 2008, the industry for recorded music has experienced a streaming revolution where the industry's model for consumption and monetization has been turned around. This disruptive change is likely to have caused substantial changes in the strategies and business models for the industry, and especially so for the indie sector of the industry who due to their limited amount of income generating catalogue, has been deemed to be affected negatively by the exogenous change. Building on a literature review of some of the most well-known and established literature on frameworks for business models and business model innovation, an overarching model for business model classification has been synthesized. Through a multiple-case study on four Norwegian indie record labels conducted with semi-structured interviews, the model is employed to facilitate a descriptive analysis of the four indie labels' business models which take aim at highlighting the main variable components the labels can change or manipulate to innovate and thus achieve a competitive advantage in their markets. Despite having clear limitations, the model proved itself applicable for analysis of the indie sector of the recorded music industry, and was successful in highlighting some developmental trends that are likely to drive changes in strategy and business model innovation. The main challenge for the sector is deemed to be the pro-longed timeline for income generation and recoupment of costs. In a short-term perspective, the sector has mainly coped with this challenge through vertical integration and scope integration. In a long-term perspective, it is also met with what seems to be a shift in the industry standard for contract durations. Another developmental trend that was uncovered through the analysis is a shift in who the labels identify as their customers (from end consumer to the artist), which can open up for multisided business models. It can be argued that this has made way for a re-evaluation of the offerings of indie labels. This has led to business models with a strong focus on selected core activities, while most support activities are being outsourced to a small selection of suppliers being governed through relational or network based governance systems.


This paper describes edge detection as a composition of four steps: conditioning, feature extraction, blending, and scaling. We examine the role of geometry in determining good features for edge detection and in setting parameters for functions to blend the features. We find that: (1) statistical features such as the range and standard deviation of window intensities can be as effective as more traditional features such as estimates of digital gradients; (2) blending functions that are roughly concave near the origin of feature space ran provide visually better edge images than traditional choices such as the city-block and Euclidean norms; (3) geometric considerations ran be used to specify the parameters of generalized logistic functions and Takagi-Sugeno input-output systems that yield a rich variety of edge images; and (4) understanding the geometry of the feature extraction and blending functions is the key to using models based on computational learning algorithms such as neural networks and fuzzy systems for edge detection. Edge images derived from a digitized mammogram are given to illustrate various facets of our approach.


Modelling strategies for predicting the potential impacts of climate change on the natural distribution of species have often focused on the characterization of a species' bioclimate envelope. A number of recent critiques have questioned the validity of this approach by pointing to the many factors other than climate that play an important part in determining species distributions and the dynamics of distribution changes. Such factors include biotic interactions, evolutionary change and dispersal ability. This paper reviews and evaluates criticisms of bioclimate envelope models and discusses the implications of these criticisms for the different modelling strategies employed. It is proposed that, although the complexity of the natural system presents fundamental limits to predictive modelling, the bioclimate envelope approach can provide a useful first approximation as to the potentially dramatic impact of climate change on biodiversity. However, it is stressed that the spatial scale at which these models are applied is of fundamental importance, and that model results should not be interpreted without due consideration of the limitations involved. A hierarchical modelling framework is proposed through which some of these limitations can be addressed within a broader, scale-dependent


The hospitality industry in recent years has become intensely competitive. Better communication between industry professionals and educators is important for university programs to provide relevant learning experiences for students. The purpose of this study was to determine competencies that hotel and restaurant professionals deem necessary for the success of graduates in the industry. Thirty supervisors of hotel and restaurant management majors who graduated from the University of North Texas from 1990 through 1992 responded to the research questionnaire. The supervisors were given 36 competencies and asked to rate their level of importance. Percentages were used to identify the most important competencies. The skills most frequently identified as important by the industry professionals surveyed were leadership skills, professional ethics, personnel management, and understanding the different laws that affect hospitality operations and management.


Generally, the accurate determination of the stress in surrounding rock mass of underground mining area has an important role in stability and ground control. In this paper stress redistribution around the longwall face has been studied using passive seismic velocity tomography based on Simultaneous Iterative Reconstructive Technique (SIRT) and Sequential Gaussian Simulation (SGS). The mining-induced microseismic events are used as a passive source. Since such sources are used, the ray coverage is insufficient and in order to resolve this deficiency, the wave velocity is estimated in a denser network and by the SGS method. Consequently the three-dimensional images of wave velocity are created and sliced into the coal seam. To analyze the variations of stress around the panel during the study period, these images are interpreted. Results show that the state of stress redistribution around the longwall panel can be deduced from these velocity images. In addition, movements of the stressed zones, including front and side abutments and the goaf area, along the longwall face are evident. The applied approach illustrated in this paper can be used as a useful method to monitoring the stress changes around the longwall face continuously. This can have significant safety implications and contribute to improvements in operational productivity.


This essay explores the emergence of civil society in Imperial Russia in the 1840s and 1850s through an analysis of the role of the public in the preparation for the emancipation of the serfs before the government made the commitment to manumit the serfs. To do so, the essay considers the role of the Westerners, specifically one of the leading Westerners, the legal historian Konstantin Kavelin, from archetypical abstract thinker into political activist within the circumscribed parameters of autocracy in Imperial Russia. Kavelin and his allies, both within and without the bureaucracy, developed reform programs in the harsh years in Russia from 1848 until 1855 in the hope that a time more propitious for reform would come thereby enabling them to act in concert with the government. The Westerners played a vital role in providing the necessary intellectual underpinnings for the Great Reforms, in disseminating these ideas to the public, and in working closely with reformist bureaucrats in their specific preparations. Kavelin's efforts, primarily his proposed drafts and contacts, proved pivotal in facilitating the emancipation preparations that led to the legislation and implementation of the reform. This preparatory work of the late 1840s and 1850s bore fruit when the Russian state emancipated the serfs in 1861. The aspirations for a partnership with the government however failed to materialize.


In recent years, existing research and industry studies have noted that, whilst there has been significant progress in the performance of built environment teams, scant attention has been paid to the behavioural aspects of collaborative design. These recent performance improvements also tend to respond to a techno-operational and positivist dominance within the architecture, engineering, construction (AEC) domain. This has resulted in tools, technologies, and guidance which fail to address the socio-behavioural context of collaborative design in AEC. Alternatively, generic socio-behavioural management theories are applied with the aim of improving collaborative practices, despite operation in an industry that has critical differences to mainstream business.
This thesis aims to counterbalance that positivist and techno-operational dominance, by conducting an exploratory study which expands and deepens knowledge relating to the social aspects of design collaboration in the built environment. To this end, the study begins with a systematic review of literature from the field of social psychology. This field maintains a long history of experimental and field study in relation to group interaction. The social psychology literature is examined to identify areas of knowledge and key themes which are likely to hold relevance for built environment design teams and may be supplanted within the AEC sector-specific research frame.
Themes emerging from this review are: (1) motivation and reward, (2) risk attitudes, and (3) social climate. These themes, and the social phenomena described within them, are subsequently investigated in a series of studies. First, an exploratory survey of industry perceptions has been conducted. Findings from this survey direct and inform two further, complementary studies, which include focus group interviews and observations of a live design team in a case-study project. Resulting data sets are qualitatively analysed using a thematic analysis complemented by quantitative social network analysis. The proposed framework synthesises the findings from these studies. The framework comprises thematic content which is specific to collaborative practice in the built environment, rooted within a social psychology perspective. Findings detail a multiplicity in the role agency of project team members as actors in industry, discipline, company, and individual contexts. Normative and adaptive responses within the team interaction space, thus, transforms agency and thought to collective systems of meaning, within which creative thinking can flourish, and from which innovation can thrive.
The framework enables the built environment sector to make progress in detailing its own critical success factors for effective collaboration. The framework can now be applied in research and practice, to establish clear directions for new research; development of interdisciplinary industry and practice guidance; and, industry-specific curricula content for professional practice training, teaching, and learning for cognisant disciplines. Thus, the current practice of applying generic theory to AEC collaborative practice can now be repealed in favour of a directed and industry appropriate approach.


Background:  There are many kinds of tropical fruit available in Venezuela. Two of these fruits are the focus of our study: blackberry ("mora") and soursop ("guanábana"). These fruits have extraordinary bioactive components. For example, blackberry has antioxidant compounds such as anthocyanins, which are characteristic of the Rosaceae family. Acetogenins present in the Annonaceae family have been shown to possess cytotoxic properties that act against different types of tumor cells. In previous research, we have discovered how lyophilized soursop pulp has an elevated cytotoxic effect with a IC50 of 7.1940±1.06 in human cervix carcinoma cells (HeLa) and 0.8460±1.29 in human prostate carcinoma cells (PC3).Objective: This study focused on the health benefits and properties of the soursop and the blackberry. Our main focus was to determine the antioxidant and cytotoxic properties in a formulated beverage based on blackberry, soursop, and yogurt containing probiotics and prebiotics.Methods: The research includes the study of soursop pulp (SP), blackberry pulp (BP), and two formulations of the functional beverage selected through a sensorial analysis, F2 (BP + SP + Yogurt + Truvía® + Sacarose) and F3 (BP + SP + Yogurt + Truvía® + Sacarose + Sodium tripolyphosphate). Cell viability of prostate carcinoma cells (PC3), breast carcinoma without over-expression of the HER2/c-erb-2 gene (MCF-7), breast carcinoma in which the HER2/c-erb-2 gene is over-expressed (SKBr3) and healthy cells of human connective tissue used as control (Fibroblasts).  The previous indicated samples were assessed using MTT (3- (4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl-2H-tetrazolium bromide). The antioxidant activity of the functional beverage was also done using a freshly preparation of 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH). Results: The BP demonstrated the highest cytotoxicity for both lines of breast cancer cell lines, MCF-7 and SKBR3. The values of the minimum concentration required to inhibit 50 % of the cell population (IC50) was 0.12 ± 1.10 and 1.81 ± 1.68% v / v respectively, followed by SP in MCF-7 and PC3 with values of 1.40 ± 1.03 and 1.34 ± 1.06 respectively. At the same time, the effectiveness of the formulations used found that 3.60 ± 1.04% v / v of F2 beverage was necessary to achieve 50 % inhibition of cell viability of MCF-7 line. For the formulation F3, it was necessary to use a concentration of 5.21 ± 1.04% v / v for that tumor cell line. However, the F2 and F3 formulations demonstrated IC50 values of 3.69 ± 1.08% v / v and 2.50 ± 1.08% v / v respectively for the PC3 cell line. On the other hand, the antioxidant capacity of BP and SP reached elevated values at 30 minutes of exposure to DPPH, obtaining a rate of 85.28 ± 0.11 and 80.94 ± 0.07 % respectively by using a concentration of 12.5 %, F2 and F3 formulations also reached values of 83.97 ± 0.46 and 85.62 ± 0.11 % at 100 % concentration of both drinks respectively.Conclusion: We discovered that the cytotoxic activity of both formulations prepared as well as the pulps were fairly good, revealing highly effective consequences for the inactivation of breast tumor cells MCF-7 and prostate tumor cells PC3. Moreover, BP and SP demonstrated a high antioxidant activity, with a synergistic effect accomplished by the mixture on F2 and F3.Keywords: Functional beverage, cytotoxic, antioxidant, soursop, blackberry, yogurt.


This RFC describes IBM's support of Data Link Switching over TCP/IP. The RFC is being distributed to members of the Internet community in order to solicit their reactions to the proposals contained in it. While the issues discussed may not be directly relevant to the research problems of the Internet, they may be interesting to a number of researchers and implementors.


This paper will discuss the likely changes in the composition of the population by age, sex, level of education, and health status for the whole region of Southeast Asia over the coming decades, and will show specific projections for Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. The future population trends will depend on future trends in fertility, mortality, and migration. We start by presenting population projections that explicitly consider the uncertainty in all three factors. Next, we present projections that add educational attainment as a further dimension, thus providing an outlook for human capital by age and sex. Finally, we match these projections with recently collected data from the Future of Retirement, a global ageing survey carried out by the Oxford Institute of Ageing in collaboration with HSBC on health and disability indicators by age, sex, and level of education for the four countries concerned. Together, these different pieces of analysis will give us important background information about the challenges and opportunities facing these countries in terms of the financing of ageing populations.


The prospect that global oil demand will gradually slow and eventually peak has created a cottage industry of executives and commentators trying to predict the point at which demand will peak. In this Energy Insight, we argue that this focus seems misplaced. The date at which oil demand will stop growing is highly uncertain and small changes in assumptions can lead to vastly different estimates. More importantly, there is little reason to believe that once it does peak, that oil demand will fall sharply. The world is likely to demand large quantities of oil for many decades to come. Rather, the significance of peak oil is that it signals a shift in paradigm – from an age of (perceived) scarcity to an age of abundance – and with it is likely to herald a shift to a more competitive market environment. This change in paradigm is also likely to pose material challenges for oil producing economies as they try both to ensure that their oil is produced and consumed, and at the same time diversify their economies fit for a world in which they can no longer rely on oil revenues to provide their main source of revenue for the indefinite future. We argue that the extent and pace of this diversification is likely to have an important bearing on oil prices over the next 20 or 30 years. It seems likely that many low-cost producers will delay the pace at which they adopt a more competitive "higher volume, lower price" strategy until they have made material progress in reforming their economies. In particular, in reducing the "social costs" of oil production associated with using oil revenues to finance many other aspects of their economy, such as health care provision or public sector employment. More generally, it seems unlikely that oil prices will stabilise around a level in which many of the world's major oil producing economies are running large and persistent fiscal deficits. As such, the average level of oil prices over the next few decades is likely to depend more on developments in the social cost of production across the major oil producing economies than on the physical cost of extraction. Many thanks to Catherine Ojo for excellent research assistance and to Rystad Energy for supplying the data on oil


Pesticides are widely used in agriculture to control weeds, pests and diseases. Successful control is dependent on the compound reaching the target site within the organism after spray or soil application. This is influenced by a range of physiological and environmental factors. One such factor is uptake into foliar tissue and roots and subsequent movement through the plant. Uptake and translocation (and metabolism) can affect the speed and persistence of action, crop selectivity and weed spectrum, thus understanding these issues is of great importance. Conventional methods for determining uptake and movement of herbicides and pesticides include autoradiography, liquid scintillation and chromatographic techniques such as HPLC. Autoradiography using radiolabelled compounds provides the best indication of a compound's movement within the plant system which is an established technique but relies on radiochemical synthesis. The cost and time taken means that only a relatively few agrochemicals can be studied in this way.MALDI is a highly adaptable soft ionisation technique that was established in the late 1980's through the developmental research of Tanaka and Hillenkamp. The versatility of MALDI-MS has been extended in recent years with the advent of protein profiling and imaging directly from the surface of thin biological tissue sections. Research by Caprioli et al has resulted in the successful profiling and imaging of proteins from thin sections of healthy mouse brain and mouse brain containing tumor and the profiling of proteins from a neurotoxin induced rat modelof Parkinson's disease. Recently the imaging technique has been further developed by research groups to include the detection and imaging of small organic molecules on the surface of porcine epidermal tissue and the surface of rodent brain tissue. In preliminary studies undertaken to support the grant application for this project the detection and imaging of compounds on the surface of a plant leaf or inside a plant stem using MALDI-MS was demonstrated.In this project the technique of imaging matrix assisted laser desorption ionisation mass spectrometry has been used to examine the uptake and distribution of a range of compounds of agrochemical interest into growing plants. The agrochemicals of interest are azoxystrobin, mesotrione, fluazifop-p butyl and nicosulfuron. Azoxystrobin is a broad spectrum fungicide which inhibits mitochondrial respiration in fungi; the compound is absorbed through the roots and translocated in the xylem. Mesotrione is a selective phloem mobile herbicide which inhibits HPPD, an enzyme involved in carotene synthesis and results in bleaching of the leaves. Fluazifop-p butyl is absorbed as its ester, which is quickly hydrolysised to its carboxylic acid (fluazifop acid) that is mobile in the xylem and the phloem. Fluazifop acid works as a fatty acid synthesis inhibitor, by inhibition of acetyl CoA carboxylase (ACCase). Nicosulfuron is both xylem- and phloem-mobile which inhibits branched chain amino acid synthesis by means of the acetolactate synthase (ALS) enzyme.MALDI-MS images of mesotrione in tissue underlying the waxy cuticle layer following removal using a tape stripping method have been generated. MALDI-MS images have been generated from azoxystrobin following uptake via the roots in soya and sunflower plants. Nicosulfuron translocation following uptake via the0roots and foliar application has been determined in sunflowers and a phase I metabolite has been identified 48 hours following uptake via the roots and 24 hours following foliar application using MALDI-MSI. Nicosulfuron and azoxystrobin translocation has been determined in the same plant following application of the compounds to the plant stem. The methods developed were used to determine the extent of translocation of four sulfonylurea herbicides 24 hours following foliar application. Additionally, a preliminary method was assessed to determine whether MALDI-MSI can be used to assess translocation of agrochemicals.


Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) is an international initiative to map the world's glaciers and to build a geospatial database of glacier vector outlines that is usable via the World Wide Web. The GLIMS initiative includes glaciologists at 82 institutions, organized into 27 Regional Centers (RCs), who analyze satellite imagery to map glaciers in their regions of expertise. The results are collected at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and ingested into the GLIMS Glacier Database. A concern for users of the database is data quality. The process of classifying multispectral satellite data to extract vector outlines of glaciers has been automated to some degree, but there remain stages requiring human interpretation. To quantify the repeatability and precision of data provided by different RCs, we designed a method of comparative image analysis whereby analysts at the RCs and NSIDC could derive glacier outlines from the same set of images, chosen to contain a variety of glacier types. We carried out four such experiments. The results were compiled, compared, and analyzed to quantify inter-RC analysis consistency. These comparisons have improved RC ability to produce consistent data, and in addition show that in the lower reaches of a glacier, precision of glacier outlines is typically 3 to 4 pixels. Variability in the accumulation area and over parts of the glacier that are debris covered tends to be higher. The ingest process includes quality control steps that must be passed before data are accepted into the database. These steps ensure that ingested data are well georeferenced and internally consistent. The GLACE experiments and ingest time quality control steps have led to improved quality and consistency of GLIMS data. This chapter presents the GLACE experiments and the quality control steps incorporated in the data ingest process. More recent similar studies are referenced.


We propose a unified, fully general methodology to analyze and act on diversification in any environment, including long-short trades in highly correlated markets with complex derivatives. First, we build the diversification distribution, i.e. the distribution of the uncorrelated bets in the portfolio that are consistent with the portfolio constraints. Next, we summarize the wealth of information provided by the diversification distribution into one single diversification index, the effective number of bets, based on the entropy of the diversification distribution. Then, we introduce the mean-diversification efficient frontier, a diversification approach to portfolio optimization. Finally, we describe how to perform mean-diversification optimization in practice in the presence of transaction and market impact costs, by only trading a few optimally chosen securities. Fully documented code illustrating our approach can be downloaded from MATLAB Central File Exchange.


Subsistence small businesses (SSB) are very important in developing countries for reducing poverty. Companies in developing countries need innovation in order to compete, and innovation is particularly significant for SSBs, as they are usually less well-prepared for competition. Human capital is the key to improving the situation of poor countries as such human capital improves innovativeness in companies. Nevertheless, human capital is scarce in SSBs and these businesses possibly need the alignment of human capital with strategy to improve their performances. This alignment is achieved by exploiting the dynamic capabilities of human capital management. The aim of this paper is to analyse human capital management and innovativeness in SSBs in the timber industry in a region of Latin America using PLS techniques. The findings suggest that SSBs build human capital management and innovativeness as dynamic capabilities and use human capital management to improve innovativeness.


This article examines how Quine and Sellars develop informatively contrasting responses to a fundamental tension in Carnap's semantics ca. 1950. Quine's philosophy could well be styled 'Essays in Radical Empiricism'; his assay of radical empiricism is invaluable for what it reveals about the inherent limits of empiricism. Careful examination shows that Quine's criticism of Carnap's semantics in 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism' fails, that at its core Quine's semantics is for two key reasons incoherent and that his hallmark Thesis of Extensionalism is untenable. The tension in Carnap's semantics together with Quine's exposure of the severe limits of radical empiricism illuminate central features of Sellars's philosophy: the fully general form of the myth of givenness, together with Sellars's alternative Kantian characterisation of understanding; the full significance of Carnap's distinction between conceptual analysis and conceptual explication, and its important methodological implications; the specifically pragmatic character of Sellars's realism; and Sellars's methodological reasons for holding that philosophy must be systematic and that systematic philosophy must be deeply historically and textually informed. This paper thus re-examines this recent episode of philosophical history for its philosophical benefits and systematic insights.


Since the publication of Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism (Badiou 2003), much scholarly attention has been paid to the relationship between French philosopher Alain Badiou and the Apostle Paul. This fresh work has, for some, reanimated the discourse of Pauline biblical studies, and thus attracted many to explore a deeper connection between contemporary philosophy and Pauline biblical interpretation. However, few biblical scholars, theologians, and philosophers have attempted to extend Badiou's framework into other domains, such as the Book of Acts, or other books of the Bible.  While Alain Badiou might disavow the general usefulness of the Book of Acts, we suggest the Book of Acts contains all the formal elements necessary for the establishment of a truth procedure: 1) truth as evental 2) truth as generic multiple 3) truth as universal and 4) truth as militant proclamation. In this sense, perhaps the Book of Acts is a superior heuristic tool for articulating Badiou's notion of truth as it proceeds from an event, as it not only offers a window into the subject constituted by the event, but also the material effects of truth in established places of discourse.  It is the book of Acts that creatively organizes the event of the resurrection not in terms of philosophical speculation, but in terms of actual historical circumstances and sequences, which serve to elucidate Badiou's  model in even more profound ways.


Severe necrotizing myelitis secondary to localization and reactivation of Toxoplasma gondii within the spinal cord of a domestic shorthair cat was diagnosed by use of light and electron microscopy and immunohistochemistry. The cat also was infected with feline immunodeficiency virus. This case may have useful comparative features to T gondii infections in human patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.


The world contains objective causal relations and universals, both of which are intimately connected. If these claims are true, they must have far-reaching consequences, breathing new life into the theory of empirical knowledge and reinforcing epistemological realism. Without causes and universals, Professor Fales argues, realism is defeated, and idealism or scepticism wins. Fales begins with a detailed analysis of David Hume's argument that we have no direct experience of necessary connections between events, concluding that Hume was mistaken on this fundamental point. Then, adopting the view of Armstrong and others that causation is grounded in a second-order relation between universals, he explores a range of topics for which the resulting analysis of causation has systematic implications. In particular, causal identity conditions for physical universals are proposed, which generate a new argument for Platonism. The nature of space and time is discussed, with arguments against backward causation and for the view that space and time can exist independently of matter or causal process. Many of Professor Fales's conclusions seem to run counter to received opinion among contemporary empiricists. Yet his method is classically empiricist in spirit, and a chief motive for these metaphysical explorations is epistemological. The final chapters investigate the perennial question of whether an empiricist, internalist and foundational epistemology can support scientific realism.


We present a progress report on a new class of multigrid solver algorithm suitable for the solution of 5d chiral fermions such as Domain Wall fermions and the Continued Fraction overlap. Unlike HDCG \cite{Boyle:2014rwa}, the algorithm works directly on a nearest neighbour fine operator. The fine operator used is Hermitian indefinite, for example $\Gamma_5 D_{dwf}$, and convergence is achieved with an indefinite matrix solver such as outer iteration based on conjugate residual. As a result coarse space representations of the operator remain nearest neighbour, giving an 8 point stencil rather than the 81 point stencil used in HDCG. It is hoped this may make it viable to recalculate the matrix elements of the little Dirac operator in an HMC evolution.


Abstract. Cirrus are cloud types that are recognized to have a strong impact on the Earth-atmosphere radiation balance. This impact is however still poorly understood, due to the difficulties in describing the large variability of their properties in global climate models. Consequently, numerous airborne and space-borne missions have been dedicated to their study in the last decades. The satellite constellation A-Train has for instance proven to be particularly helpful for the study of cirrus. More particularly, the Infrared Imaging Radiometer (IIR) carried onboard the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) satellite shows a great sensitivity to the radiative and microphysical properties of these clouds. Our study presents a novel methodology that uses the thermal infrared measurements of IIR to retrieve the ice crystal effective size and optical thickness of cirrus. This methodology is based on an optimal estimation scheme, which possesses the advantage of attributing precise uncertainties to the retrieved parameters. Two IIR airborne validation campaigns have been chosen as case studies for illustrating the results of our retrieval method. It is observed that optical thicknesses could be accurately retrieved but that large uncertainties may occur on the effective diameters. Strong agreements have also been found between the products of our method when separately applied to the measurements of IIR and of the airborne radiometer CLIMAT-AV, which consolidates the results of previous validation studies of IIR level-1 measurements. Comparisons with in situ observations and with operational products of IIR are also discussed and appear to be coherent with our results. However, we have found that the quality of our retrievals can be strongly impacted by uncertainties related to the choice of a pristine crystal model and by poor constraints on the properties of possible liquid cloud layers underneath cirrus. Simultaneous retrievals of liquid clouds radiative and microphysical properties and/or the use of different ice crystal models should therefore be considered in order to improve the quality of the results.


Ontologies provide conceptual abstractions over data, in domains such as the Internet of Things, in a way that sensor data can be harvested and interpreted by people and applications. The Semantic Sensor Network (SSN) ontology is the de-facto standard for semantic representation of sensor observations and metadata, and it is used at the core of the open source platform for the Internet of Things, OpenIoT. In this paper we present a Schema Editor that provides an intuitive web interface for defining new types of sensors, and concrete instances of them, using the SSN ontology as the core model. This editor is fully integrated with the OpenIoT platform for generating virtual sensor descriptions and automating their semantic annotation and registration process.


Abstract The lack of enabling policies that would have ensured fair trade amongst various stakeholders of contrasting interests in Kenya became obvious when market liberalization was introduced in the 1990s. It created increased importation of cheap textiles and apparel products to the detriment of the local industry. Market liberalization became a common phenomena in developing countries in the 1990s, prompting the need for their documented assessment, hence this study. Data were collected from a random sample of 90 apparel traders drawn from three market centers in Nairobi according to the types of apparel they sold (new imported, second-hand, locally produced, and custom-tailored apparel). Lack of customers and stiff competition were the major challenges facing over 55% of the apparel traders. Most traders provided high quality merchandise as the main strategy to increase purchase of apparel. Chi-square analysis showed that the trader's age, employment position/designation, and source of fabric/clothing were the socioeconomic characteristics that significantly influenced the type of apparel sold. Therefore, the study recommends that other apparel traders adopt these factors, to increase their competitive edge and enhance growth of the local industry.


Formation of mammalian lip and palate involves multiple developmental steps that finally lead to the fusion of the two bilateral palatal shelves along the facial midline. Recent studies confirm that on the basis successful orofacial formation is coordinated interactions of several factors including genes, growth factors, enzymes and their natural inhibitors. The aim of our study was to investigate cleft disordered tissue in children with cleft lip and palate for detection of local expression of key regulators of palatogenesis. The study involved 10 patients with unilateral cleft lip and palate at the age of three months to four years and eight months. Tissue samples were collected during the surgical procedure from the borders of the cleft region. Material was proceed for detection of PAX9, RYK, TGFβ-3, MMP-8, MMP-9 and TIMP-2 with biotin-streptavidin immunohistochemistry. Distribution of immunoreactive structures was detected semiquantitatively. Expression of PAX9 and RYK was more pronounced in cleft lip and palate disordered epithelium. The relative number of PAX9 positive epitheliocytes was very variable, while RYK mainly stained few cells localized into middle layers. Expression of TGFβ-3 was detected in the tissue of all patients. We saw numerous positive epitheliocytes in eight cases, but underlying connective tissue mainly demonstrated few or moderate number immunoreactive cells. Expression of MMP-8 was found only in epithelium of eight patients and it was slight, while MMP-9 and TIMP-2 marked variable number of positive epithelial and connective tissue cells. Conclusions. Expression of Pax-9 is more characteristic for cleft lip and palate affected tissue and probably facilitates tissue reconstruction due to its mitogenic effect. Rich expression of TGFβ-3 in cleft lip and palate disordered tissue may play a role in successful tissue remodelling and scar-free healing. Cleft lip and palate disordered tissue are characterizied by more pronounced expression of MMP-9, it slightly predominate expression of TIMP-2, giving evidence to the involvement of mentioned factors in the postnatal tissue remodeling.


America's three most recent wars --in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq --have raised profound questions about when to use military force, for what purpose, and who should make the decision whether to go to war. These crucial questions have been debated around the world with increasing intensity, and by beginning to provide important answers, Beyond Preemption moves the debate forward in significant ways. During the past three years, the contributors to this volume have engaged in a global dialogue with political officials, military figures and strategists, and international lawyers from around the world on when and how to use force and in what way its use can best be legitimized. They found consensus that the world has changed so dramatically that much of the old way of thinking about when and how to go to use force to deal with new challenges has become largely obsolete. Drawing on these high-level discussions, Ivo Daalder and his colleagues make specific proposals for how to forge a new international consensus on the vexing questions about the use of force, including its preemptive use, to address today's interrelated threats of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and humanitarian crises. In Beyond Preemption, the authors also consider the critical matter of how these strategies could be best legitimized and be made palatable to domestic audiences and the international community at large. Contributors include Bruce W. Jentleson (Duke University), Anne E. Kramer (Brookings Institution), Susan E. Rice (Brookings Institution), James B. Steinberg (Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin).


It was one of the gravest challenges faced by any British government in peacetime. The banking system, taken for granted by most of the population to pay for life's essentials, came close to collapse. Yet nobody going about their business in October 2008 had any inkling how vulnerable the nation's financial infrastructure was. Nobody, that is, bar a small group of policymakers and ministers working frantically in Whitehall and the City of London. Royal Bank of Scotland, larger than the entire annual output of the UK economy, had toppled. Another banking giant Halifax/Bank of Scotland was in desperate need of a bailout. A staggeringly large bill had to be paid to stave off disaster. But could Britain afford it? Might foreign investors conclude that the UK's public finances could not take the strain and the game was up? Yet doing nothing might have seen cash machines closed, depositors panicking and troops on the streets. These were the appalling dilemmas facing Downing Street, the Treasury and financial regulators in the darkest hours of the crisis triggered by the crash of the US bank Lehman Brothers. As political leaders in the United States confronted challenges to their own system, their British counterparts could rely on nobody for help. A solution had to be found and fast. To their immense credit, a rescue package was unveiled and markets were reassured. But saving the banks was one thing - securing their future to the benefit of taxpayers and customers was another. Decisions made since the traumatic weeks of October 2008 have cast a long shadow. The UK economy is still bearing the scars. RBS is not repaired, some small businesses are struggling to get credit and public appetite for explanations of what happened remains high. This book is the definitive insider's guide to the UK banking crisis, the drama and characters involved in the collapse of some of the major pillars of British banking and the commitment of GBP66 billion of taxpayers' money. This as yet untold story is informed by conversations with highly placed policymakers, including many of the key players, and explains what really happened behind closed doors in Downing Street and the City.


The general objective of this study is to carry out a descriptive analysis of the general pattern of the segmental participation during the phase of final acceleration of the rotational shot.  Six elite putters have been analyzed in the final of the World Indoor Championship held in Valencia, 2008. Three dimensional photogrammetric techniques (3D) have been used by means of two cameras synchronized temporarily to 100 Hz. The registrations have been normalized in function of the time using the algorithms of splines of fifth grade and being interpolated their values with regard to the percentage of the total time, considering that the time used during the final movement of acceleration of the weight is different for each putter. The results show that the kinetic chain used during the final movement of acceleration of the put has two differentiated models: Until 60% of the total time a push model takes place or of simultaneous participation of the articulations of the ankle, the knee and the hip in extension and, next, the participation pattern is sequential, especially by means of the contribution of the extension of the elbow and wrist. The rotation movement through the vertical axis stays until the take off of the put. Key Words: kinetic chain, biomechanics, 3D photogrammetric.


An integrated, cascaded, asymmetric GaAs-AlGaAs Mach-Zehnder (MZ) interferometer, for use in wavelength filtering and time-domain multiplexing, has been designed, fabricated, and tested, This device employs several new passive components, including height-tapered Y-branches, for uniform splitting and recombining, and index-tailored waveguide bends, for low-loss operation. The waveguide bend is designed with a predistorted index profile for minimizing both transition loss and radiation loss. The circuit is fabricated with a resistless, light-induced local etching technique, which enables rapid iterative fabrication of the device geometry to achieve the desired operating path delays. Acting as a wavelength filter, the fabricated device has a -24.3 dB minimum-to-maximum extinction ratio and a -10.5 dB side-lobe suppression ratio. Acting as a pulse-rate multiplexer, the device generates a four-pulse train with a 10-ps pulse-to-pulse separation and an amplitude uniformity of 80% for each input pulse.


The problem of synthesis of missing image parts represents an interesting and challenging area of image
processing and computer vision with significant potential. This thesis, focuses on an adaptive
depth-guided image completion method that addresses the image completion problem using information
contained in the rest of the image. The completion process is separated into structure and texture
synthesis. A method is first introduced for completing the respective depth map through the use of a
diffusion-based operation, preserving global image structure within the unknown region. Building upon
the state of the art exemplar based inpainting technique of Barnes et al., we complete the target (unknown)
region by matching to and blending source patches drawn from the rest of the image, using the
reconstructed depth information to guide the completion process. Secondly, for each target patch, we
formulate an adaptive patch size determination as an optimization problem that minimizes an objective
function involving local image gradient magnitude and orientations. An extension to the coherence-
based objective function introduced by Wexler et al. is then introduced, which not only encourages
coherence of the respective target region with respect to the source region in colour but also in depth.
We further consider the variance between patches in the SSD criteria for preventing error accumulation
and propagation. Experimental results show that our method can provide a significant improvement to
patch-based image completion algorithms shown by PSNR and SSIM calculations as well as a qualitative
subjective study.


We study a quantum Otto engine operating on the basis of a helical spin-1/2 multiferroic chain with strongly coupled magnetic and ferroelectric order parameters. The presence of a finite spin chirality in the working substance enables steering of the cycle by an external electric field that couples to the electric polarization. We observe a direct connection between the chirality, the entanglement and the efficiency of the engine. An electric-field dependent threshold temperature is identified, above which the pair correlations in the system, as quantified by the thermal entanglement, diminish. In contrast to the pair correlations, the collective many-body thermal entanglement is less sensitive to the electric field, and in the high temperature limit converges to a constant value. We also discuss the correlations between the threshold temperature of the pair entanglement, the spin chirality and the minimum of the fidelities in relation to the electric and magnetic fields. The efficiency of the quantum Otto cycle shows a saturation plateau with increasing electric field amplitude.


Abstract The promulgation in 1960 of a new industrial relations ordinance in Aden was a singular event in the history of British decolonisation because it made many forms of strike action illegal. Earlier initiatives to liberalise trade union law in the colonies were intended to channel and manage the discontent of workers; but for nationalist movements, the new order in industrial relations provided an opportunity to mobilise workers in the cause of independence. Aden, which was the location of a significant British base, a major oil refinery and a key commercial port, became the site of a bitter confrontation between the nascent trade union movement and the colonial administration. Three aspects of the conflict were of particular significance. First, Aden's unique political status as a British colony in the Arab world and its strategic and economic value, contributed to the fractious industrial relations environment. Secondly, conflicts between workers and the colonial government demonstrate continuity with wider British efforts to suppress anti-colonial dissent and demonstrate that charges of appeasement in the last years of empire are not well founded. Lastly, the exceptional nature of the new legislation attracted the critical attention of the ILO and the major international trade union confederations, which internationalised the dispute over the IRO. An examination of the manner in which the British Government sought to regulate its relations with various labour organisations, including the British TUC, the colonial ATUC and the two rival international labour confederations of the WFTU and ICFTU, demonstrates that the conduct of industrial relations in Aden was significant in the context of both the cold war and decolonisation.


The beginning of the 21st century saw a widely publicized lawsuit against Napster. This was the first Peer-to-Peer software that allowed its users to search for and share digital music with other users. At the height of its popularity, Napster boasted 80 million registered users. This marked the beginning of a Peer-to-Peer paradigm and the end of older methods of distributing cultural possessions. But Napster was not entirely rooted in a Peer-to-Peer paradigm. Only the download of a file was based on Peer-to-Peer interactions; the search process was still based on a central server. It was thus easy to shutdown Napster. Shortly after the shutdown, Bram Cohen developed a new Peer-to-Peer
protocol called BitTorrent.

The main principle behind BitTorrent is an incentive mechanism, called a choking algorithm, which rewards peers that share. Currently, BitTorrent is one of the most widely used protocols on the Internet. Therefore, it is important to investigate the security of this protocol. While significant progress has been made in understanding the Bit- Torrent choking mechanism, its security vulnerabilities have not yet been thoroughly investigated. This dissertation provides a security analysis of the Peer-to-Peer protocol BitTorrent on the application and
transport layer.

The dissertation begins with an experimental analysis of bandwidth attacks against different choking algorithms in the BitTorrent seed state. I reveal a simple exploit that allows malicious peers to receive a considerably higher download rate than contributing leechers, thereby causing a significant loss of efficiency for benign peers. I show the damage caused by the proposed attack in two different environments—a lab testbed comprised of 32 peers and a global testbed called PlanetLab with 300 peers. Our results show that three malicious peers can degrade the download rate by up to 414.99 % for all peers. Combined with a Sybil attack with as many attackers as leechers, it is possible to degrade the download rate by more than 1000 %. I propose a novel choking algorithm which is immune against bandwidth attacks and a countermeasure against the revealed attack. This thesis includes a security analysis of the transport layer. To make BitTorrent more Internet Service Provider friendly, BitTorrent Inc. invented the Micro Transport Protocol. It is based on User Datagram Protocol with a novel congestion control called Low Extra Delay Background Transport. This protocol assumes that the receiver always provides correct feedback, otherwise this deteriorates throughput or yields to corrupted data. I show through experimental evaluation, that a misbehaving Micro Transport Protocol receiver which is not interested in data integrity, can increase the bandwidth of the sender by up to five times. This can cause a congestion collapse and steal a large share of a victim's bandwidth. I present three attacks, which increase bandwidth usage significantly. I have tested these attacks in real world environments and demonstrate their severity both in terms of the number of packets and total traffic generated. I also present a countermeasure for protecting against these attacks and evaluate the performance of this defensive strategy.

In the last section, I demonstrate that the BitTorrent protocol family is vulnerable to Distributed Reflective Denial-of-Service attacks. Specifically, I show that an attacker can exploit BitTorrent protocols (Micro Transport Protocol, Distributed Hash Table, Message Stream Encryption and BitTorrent Sync to reflect and amplify traffic from Bit- Torrent peers to any target on the Internet. I validate the efficiency, robustness, and the difficulty of defence of the exposed BitTorrent vulnerabilities in a Peer-to-Peer lab testbed. I further substantiate lab results by crawling more than 2.1 million IP addresses over Mainline Distributed Hash Table and analyzing more than 10,000 BitTorrent handshakes. The experiments suggest that an attacker is able to exploit BitTorrent peers to amplify traffic by a factor of 50, and in the case of BitTorrent Sync 120. Additionally, I observe that the most popular BitTorrent clients are the most vulnerable ones.


There are an estimated 90,000 – 120,000 German citizens living in Turkey. While laws and regulations pertaining to Turkey's immigration regime mainly stem from the early years of the Republic, they have increasingly come under scrutiny. In an effort to keep up with the transformation of Turkey from a country of emigration into a country of immigration and at the same time, to align Turkish laws with the EU's acquis communautaire, a reform process started in the late 1990s and is still going on today. This paper provides an overview of the heterogeneity of German citizens in Turkey, the general parameters shaping their transnational life-worlds and participation strategies, as well as citizenship issues and networking activities. The main conclusion is that there are heterogeneous groups of German citizens in Turkey with respect to their length of stay, civil and employment status etc., who have developed unique patterns of integration corresponding to their particular transnational life-worlds.


This paper presents the results of Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations of Cu60.0Zr32.5Ti7.5 alloy through the open source code LAMMPS. Amorphous samples were produced by quenching the molten metal from 2300 to 300 K. The pair distribution functions of the liquid and solid were calculated. Moreover, the atomic short-range order at 800, 700 and 300 K was obtained by using the Voronoi tesselation method. Cu-centered icosahedral clusters were the prevailing configuration. The tensile stress-strain curve showed that the material present plastic deformation, however, shear bands were not observed in the MD simulation. The evolution of viscosity in temperatures higher than its glass transition temperature was also determined. Furthermore, the fragility of the alloy at glass temperature was evaluated.


Signal transduction can be defined as the coordinated relay of messages derived from extracellular cues to intracellular effectors. More simply put, information received on the cell surface is processed across the plasma membrane and transmitted to intracellular targets. This requires that the activators, effectors, enzymes, and substrates that respond to cellular signals come together when they need to.


This paper analyses cross-border contagion in a sample of European banks from January 1994 to January 2003. We use a multinomial logit model to estimate the number of banks in a given country that experience a large shock on the same day ("coexceedances") as a function of variables measuring common shocks and coexceedances in other countries. Large shocks are measured by the bottom 95th percentile of the distribution of the first difference in the daily distance to default of the bank. We find evidence in favour of significant cross-border contagion. We also find some evidence that since the introduction of the euro cross-border contagion may have increased. The results seem to be very robust to changes in the specification.


The importance of different arsenic forms in public health is well recognized owing to its distinct physical characteristics and toxicity. Chronic arsenic exposure has left a trail of disastrous health consequences around the world. However, the mechanisms behind the toxicity and the consequential diseases occurring after acute or chronic exposure to arsenic are not well understood. The toxicity of trivalent arsenic primarily occurs due to its interaction with cysteine residues in proteins. Arsenic binding to protein may alter its conformation and interaction with other functional proteins leading to tissue damage. Therefore, there has been much emphasis on studies of arsenic-bound proteins, for the purpose of understanding the origins of toxicity and to explore therapeutics. This book chapter illustrates the molecular mechanisms of arsenic toxicity with a special emphasis on arsenic binding to proteins and its consequences in alteration of tissue homeostasis. of to in free


In dozens of cases each year alleging horizontal price fixing and other per se violations of Section 1 of the Sherman Act, the central issue is whether the defendants ever formed an agreement. One source of uncertainty in resolving this issue in litigation is the meaning of "tacit agreement," a term the Supreme Court has continued to include within the reach of Section 1, even as it has emphatically excluded "mere interdependence" or tacit collusion. In this article, I try to clarify the meaning of tacit agreement and show its practical significance in litigation. After examining how the Court used the term in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, I situate tacit agreement in the hierarchy of means of coordination, distinguishing it especially from mere interdependence on the one hand and express agreement on the other. Then I argue for a definition of tacit agreement — interdependent conduct coordinated by prior private communications of competitive intentions—and consider what forms of communication and conduct fit that definition. I argue that, so defined, tacit agreement is more effective than simple interdependence as a means of coordinating noncompetitive equilibria, and is easier for courts to penalize or enjoin without doing more harm than good. To show the analytical significance of the concept, I distinguish among four categories of communications based upon whether the communications are public or private on the one hand, and whether they relate to present or future conduct on the other. I then examine cases involving all four kinds of communication to show their relative importance in the identification and inference of tacit agreement. In the process, I consider the proper meaning and significance of "signaling" as communication that might form or implement an agreement. The clarified definition, illustrative cases, and categories of relevant communications will, I argue, help courts resolve, at every stage of litigation, whether rivals restricted competition by agreement.


Nanocarriers with tumor-acidity-activated charge-conversional ability are of particular interest for targeted drug delivery in the field of precision nanomedicine. Nevertheless, the key challenge of this strategy is the slowness of reversing the surface charge at the tumor tissue. As a proof-of-concept, we synthesized the amphiphilic triblock polymer poly(ethylene glycol)-block-poly(2-carboxyethylacrylate)-block-poly(2-azepaneethylmethacrylate) (PEG-b-PCEA-b-PAEMA) to prepare the cisplatin-loaded nanocarrier UCC-NP/Pt. The PAEMA block at the physiological pH values was hydrophobic, which formed the core of UCC-NP/Pt. In contrast, at the tumor acidity, the tertiary amine groups of PAEMA block rapidly protonated, resulting in the ultrafast charge conversion of UCC-NP/Pt within 10 s. Such ultrafast charge-conversional effect more efficiently enhanced tumor cell internalization of nanocarriers, thus achieving targeted drug delivery, which in turn exhibited superior anticancer efficacy even in the cisplatin-resistant cells. This approach provides new avenues for tumor-acidity-activated targeted drug delivery.

publisher-specific, author manuscript: http://rsc.li/journals-terms-of-use


This volume brings together historians, anthropologists and literary critics in a common project focused on maritime cultures and the history of the ocean in the modern era. It takes issue with the cultural myth that the ocean is outside and beyond history, that the endless roll of the sea obliterates sequence and temporality, that it necessarily corresponds to something in the human psyche that Freud named the 'oceanic' feeling: 'a sensation of "eternity", a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded' (Civilization and Its Discontents). The essays in this volume suggest a different perspective. They do not bear out traditional readings of the ocean as a cultural and historical void, traversed, circumnavigated, and fought over, but rarely inscribed other than symbolically by the self-proclaimed agents of civilization. Rather, taking their cue from contemporary debates about globalization, transculturation, transnationality, contact zones, the multiplicity and non-synchronicity of cultures and histories, the contributors to Sea Changes are united in their view that the ocean itself needs to be analyzed as a deeply historical location whose transformative power is not merely psychological or metaphorical - as its use as a literary motif would suggest - but material and real. The sea, whether as the Black Atlantic, the quasi-arcadian Pacific, or the Mediterranean omphalos, has been the site of radical changes in human lives and national histories: it has been an agent of colonial oppression but also of indigenous resistance and native empowerment, a site of loss, dispersal, and enforced migration but also of new forms of solidarity and affective kinship, a paradigm of modern capitalism but also of its creative reinterpretation, a figure of death but also of life. It has been crossed by vessels of discovery, by immigrant ships, slave ships, pirates, merchant ships, warships, and notorious pleasure steamers, many of which have left their mark on the bottom of the sea but which have also - and more importantly - decisively shaped human history. It is these diverse histories - national and international, individual and collective - of oceanic spaces which the book seeks to recuperate, set into critical contrast with each other, and thus put on the agenda of 'world history'.


I. INTRODUCTION Although the push for free trade among neighboring nations has been a reality for some time, as evidenced by the implementation of bilateral treaties between nations, the concept of free trade itself has taken on global proportions. The original bilateral trade agreements between neighboring countries have ballooned to encompass whole regions, and countries are implementing new treaties to cross hemispheric boundaries. Now that this commitment to increased free trade has been established, the only real questions are: "What form [free trade] will take, and who will be the traders?".(1) In 1992 the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).(2) between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, opened the doors to free trade among those nations. Many assumed that NAFTA's growth would naturally continue, linking its original members with Latin American nations, and eventually culminating in a hemispheric free trade agreement. For a time, NAFTA's promise seemed plausible, with the Latin American nation of Chile taking the necessary steps to become the trade group's fourth member.(3) However, NAFTA-Chile negotiations have stalled,(4) and current U.S. passivity regarding this issue has significant implications for the future direction of free trade in the Western Hemisphere. Many believed that an economically integrated hemisphere would occur through the NAFTA trade bloc vehicle.(5) However, now that the idea of expanding NAFTA has burned out, a more united Southern Hemisphere is emerging. Latin American nations are forming bilateral and multilateral trade agreements among themselves, in addition to forming trade ties with countries beyond Latin America. Some Latin American countries have united in trade blocs, comprised of larger groups of nations, which threaten to take over NAFTA's position as the leader of the crusade for hemispheric free trade. The Southern Cone Common Market (MERCOSUR)(6) exemplifies the potential rival NAFTA may face. It is the U.S. leadership role in NAFTA that places NAFTA in such a strategic position with regard to future hemispheric economic integration.(7) Until recently, NAFTA was poised to be the vehicle to greater hemispheric free trade; however, because the United States has "dropped the ball" on its membership negotiations with Chile, NAFTA may have lost its leadership position.(8) In fact, Chile's path has inadvertently become an important indicator of the route that may be taken to accomplish a unified hemisphere.(9) When Chile, a country with one of the fastest growing world economies,(10) a population of 13 million, a gross domestic product (GDP) of US$97 billion,(11) and a 1995 GDP growth of 8.4%,(12) felt NAFTA's scorn, it realized that it could take its business elsewhere: instead of waiting to join NAFTA, it has joined MERCOSUR as an associate member.(13) This new union strengthens an already growing MERCOSUR by enlarging affected consumers to 220 million, which is almost half of the Latin American population. It also increases the combined GDP to US$1 trillion, almost 65% of the combined Latin American gross national product (GNP).(14) Chile's membership "makes it [MERCOSUR] a potentially powerful counterpoint to NAFTA,"(15) and it could give MERCOSUR the additional momentum it needs to assume the role NAFTA seems to have abandoned in moving towards a more unified Western Hemisphere.(16) Of course, taking over NAFTA's role does not mean that hemispheric free trade must occur through a trade bloc such as MERCOSUR. It is possible that achieving the dream of hemispheric integration will take much longer to realize than initially planned. The rapid hitching of all the Latin American nations to either NAFTA or MERCOSUR is not necessarily the best means for achieving a more united economic hemisphere. Instead, freer trade and hemispheric integration might occur as it has occurred for years: at a slower pace, through bilateral and multilateral trade agreements between nations, and through the linking of regional and sub-regional trade organizations. …


OBJECTIVE
African Horse Sickness (AHS) is a vector-borne disease endemic to sub-Saharan Africa caused by African Horse Sickness Virus (AHVS). Infections in naïve horses have high morbidity and mortality rates. AHS pathogenesis is not well understood; neither the hematologic changes nor acute phase response occurring during infection has been fully evaluated. The study's objective was to characterize the hematologic changes and acute phase response during experimental infection with AHSV.

ANIMALS
4 horses negative for AHSV group-specific antibodies.

PROCEDURES
In this prospective, longitudinal study conducted between November 23 and December 2, 2020, horses were experimentally infected with AHSV, and blood samples were obtained before inoculation and then every 12 hours until euthanasia. Hematologic changes and changes for serum amyloid A (SAA) and iron concentration were evaluated over time using a general linear model including natural logarithm of sampling time.

RESULTS
All horses were humanely euthanized due to severe clinical signs typical of AHS. Median Hct increased significantly, and the median WBC count, monocyte count, eosinophil count, and myeloperoxidase index changed significantly in all horses over time. Horses developed marked thrombocytopenia (median, 48 X 103 cells/µL; range, 21 X 103 to 58 X 103 cells/µL) while markers of platelet activation also changed significantly. Median SAA increased and serum iron concentration decreased significantly over time.

CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Results indicated severe thrombocytopenia with platelet activation occurs during infection with AHSV. Changes in acute phase reactants SAA and iron, while significant, were unexpectedly mild and might not be useful clinical markers.


Lay counsellors provide valuable psychosocial support in many different circumstances, such as manning telephone helplines for cancer patients, assisting people after crisis events or giving focused support to refugees or other vulnerable groups. This paper describes the process that a consortium of four humanitarian organisations followed to develop a training guide for lay counsellors as it was found that no common training curriculum existed. The process was comprised of the following steps: 1) review of existing literature on lay counselling; 2) a mapping report to identify organisations and existing materials available on trainings for lay counsellors; 3) a needs assessment to identify the needs of trainers; 4) development of first drafts of the training material; 5) pilot trainings to gain further understanding of needs and expectations of participants and trainers from different organisational contexts; and 6) adaptation of the training materials based on pilot trainings. The final materials consist of a variety of didactic methods and allow integration of materials as a supplement to existing trainings, or for use as independent training for lay counsellors, within a wide variety of settings.


Article history: Received 23 April 2014 Received in revised form 19 May 2014 Accepted 26 May 2014 Available online 15 June 2014


Co‐aligning a collection of shapes to a consistent pose is a common problem in shape analysis with applications in shape matching, retrieval and visualization. We observe that resolving among some orientations is easier than others, for example, a common mistake for bicycles is to align front‐to‐back, while even the simplest algorithm would not erroneously pick orthogonal alignment. The key idea of our work is to analyse rotational autocorrelations of shapes to facilitate shape co‐alignment. In particular, we use such an autocorrelation measure of individual shapes to decide which shape pairs might have well‐matching orientations; and, if so, which configurations are likely to produce better alignments. This significantly prunes the number of alignments to be examined, and leads to an efficient, scalable algorithm that performs comparably to state‐of‐the‐art techniques on benchmark data sets, but requires significantly fewer computations, resulting in 2–16× speed improvement in our tests.


Summary Collision mountain belts have recently been interpreted as being large scale stacked sedimentary basins, where the wholesale reactivation of pre-existing normal faults exerts the primary control on orogenic style. This model is explored here using examples from the Western Alps. The use of stratigraphic separation across faults, in the absence of corroborative sedimentological data, provides an ambiguous criterion to determinate fault reactivation. Variations between 'compressional' and 'extensional' stratigraphic separations across the Frontal Pennine thrust are more likely to be due to regional unconformity patterns developed in lower Tertiary times rather than normal fault reactivation along the eastern margin of the external zones. Mesozoic-Tertiary basin structure has been important in controlling the sites of major thrust ramps where stratigraphic horizons suitable for activation as thrust detachment zones have been offset. Examples include the thrust front in the Jura (Triassic detachment dropped to W by faults bounding the Bresse basin) and Vercors (basement uplifted to W at Faille de l'Isere, bounding the Mesozoic sub-Alpine basin to W). Buttressing structures, where thrust displacement is converted into vertical pure shear, may indicate buried normal faults but can occur at either hinterland or foreland-directed basin faults. The overall structural style in the sub-Alpine thrust belt indicates detachment between basement and cover with basement involvement along the Sole thrust which carries the external basement massifs. There is no indication from surface geology that this thrust originates from reactivation of a Mesozoic basin fault although this process may have occurred at depth. Similar styles of detachment-dominated thrusting with large horizontal relative to vertical displacements also characterize internal Alpine structure. Preliminary results from the ECORS-CROP deep seismic reflection profile across the Western Alps support the detachment thrusting model although they do not rule out minor normal fault reactivation.


A simple process‐based approach to predict regional‐scale loading of nitrate at the water table was implemented in a GIS for Great Britain. This links a nitrate input function, unsaturated zone thickness, and lithologically dependent rate of nitrate unsaturated zone travel to estimate arrival time of nitrate at the water table. The nitrate input function is the loading at the base of the soil and has been validated using unsaturated zone porewater profiles. The unsaturated zone thickness uses groundwater levels based on regional‐scale observations infilled by interpolated river base levels. Estimates of the rate of unsaturated zone travel are attributed from regional‐scale hydrogeological mapping. The results indicate that peak nitrate loading may have already arrived at the water table for many aquifers, but that it has not where the unsaturated zone is relatively thick There are contrasting outcomes for the two main aquifers which have similar unsaturated zone velocities, the predominantly low relief Permo‐Triassic sandstones, and the Chalk, which forms significant topographic features. For about 60% of the Chalk, the peak input has not yet reached the water table and will continue to arrive over the next 60 years. The methodology is readily transferable and provides a robust method for estimating peak arrival time for any diffuse conservative pollutant where an input function can be defined at a regional scale and requires only depth to groundwater and a hydrogeological classification. The methodology is extendable in that if additional information is available this can easily be incorporated into the model scheme. British Geology Survey © NERC 2011. Hydrological Process © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd


During the past fifteen years, public deliberation has become an important focus of research, theory, and public practice. This has sometimes led to a variety of narrow conceptualizations that limit deliberation to particular forms of interaction, such as small group discussion, or to divergent conceptualizations deployed in different contexts, such as for media systems versus face-to-face discussions. To address this problem, we advance a flexible yet precise definition of deliberation that has the power to organize not only deliberation theory and research but also much of the larger body of work in political communication. As defined herein, deliberation includes both analytic and social processes and provides a unifying conceptual and critical framework for studying nearly the full range of political communication topics, including informal conversation, media and public opinion, elections, government institutional behavior, jury decision making, public meetings, and civic and community life. Using our flexible conceptualization, each of these research contexts amounts to a kind of deliberative critique and empirical analysis of public life.


Between 1982 and 1987, 1,500 outstanding schools were recognized by the School Recognition Program, based on an analysis of their leadership, order and discipline, community support, and high standards and expectations for all students. Following the assumption that the recognized schools collectively repreuent some of America's better elementary and secondary institutions, the administrative skills of the recognized schools' principals were studied and contrasted to the administrative skills of randomly selected school principals. During the 1987-88 school year, packets .ontaining Audit of Principal Effectiveness surveys were mailed to 483 of the 1986-87 recognized school principals for distribution among 10 of their teachers; and 375 identical packets were mailed to randomly selected schools (from seven different geographic regions) for distribution. For inclusion in the study, at least five of the school's teachers had to return completed surveys; the response rate was 36 percent from recognized schools, and 35 percent from the random sample. Results indicate that clearly, the teachers of the recognized schools perceive their principals as more effective than teachers of the random schools. The pattern of differences between the perceptions of the teachers surveyed in this study supports the belief that more effective schools are administered by more effective principals. (5


OBJECTIVE
To compare the quality of prenatal care provided to patients with traditional fee-for-service, health maintenance organization, and Medicaid insurance using an evidence-based, community-derived prenatal care guideline.

DESIGN
Retrospective cohort study.

SETTING
Seven private and hospital-based prenatal care sites in a suburban county in southeast Michigan.

PATIENTS
A stratified random sample of 267 patients (93 with Medicaid, 92 with health maintenance organization, and 82 with fee-for-service insurance) receiving prenatal care from community physicians (obstetricians-gynecologists and family practitioners) between January 1, 1991, and December 31, 1992.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE
Adherence to explicit prenatal care criteria as measured by an evidence-based prenatal care guideline developed by a community panel. "Quality scores" were compared across groups in 4 areas: performance of prenatal screening procedures or tests, visit-based screening, substance use screening, and clinician management of abnormal clinical findings.

RESULTS
Patients with Medicaid insurance presented for prenatal care significantly later in pregnancy (14.5 vs 10.5 weeks, P < .01). No significant differences were seen between groups in quality scores for screening tests, clinician management of abnormal clinical findings, visit-based screening, or substance use screening. The overall similarity in quality scores did obscure some significant differences in adherence to individual criteria, particularly in the area of screening tests. Significantly more patients with Medicaid were screened for genital infection (P < .001) and fewer for gestational diabetes (P < .001) or anemia (P < .001) than patients in the other 2 groups.

CONCLUSIONS
Although patients with Medicaid presented for prenatal care later in pregnancy and received a different "package" of screening tests than the other 2 groups, there was no overall measurable difference in the quality of prenatal care provided to patients with Medicaid, health maintenance organization, and fee-for-service insurance. Clinicians may have altered screening protocols based on preexisting perceptions of patient risk. Although summary quality measures are a promising tool for comparative research, they provide an incomplete picture of the quality of the prenatal care process and must be interpreted with caution.


A print counterpart to the IFLA Section on Art Libraries' web site (and the first new book edition since 1985), the Directory covers 2,781 art, architecture, and archeology libraries and library departments in 96 countries. While the book is especially useful for those researchers without convenient Internet access, the addition of individual e-mail addresses for over 4,000 individual librarians increases the opportunity for unrestricted international professional communication as well as more detailed information about individual libraries and their collections, which often feature remote access to their respective online catalogues. (IFLA Publication, Vol. 82)


The datafication of society is characterized by data abundance, the increasingly dominant position of algorithms that influence the lives of millions, and a secular belief in the beneficent power of quantitative data promising a new social order. Within this wider transformation process of society, the trend of datafication has been embraced, with some resistance (Lewis, Waters 2017), within the journalistic field as well, leading to new forms of data journalism. These changes in journalism offer new opportunities to analyse the datafication of society, relying on the same means - data and algorithms - that distinguish the datafied society itself. This entails a reflexivity between the instruments that characterize a datafied society, and their implementation in journalism in order to observe them. The proposed paper offers a framework to critically analyse the reciprocal relationship between journalism and the datafied society by deconstructing the notion of datafication into four specific functions of newswork: a) the observation of datafication-related issues like dataism; b) the investigation of data-surveillance; c) the generation of new data-networks by journalists; and d) unblackboxing algorithms in order to foster algorithmic accountability. Journalism is therefore not only a reflection of the broader datafication-related transformation in society, but the central means to critically showcase its problems - albeit not being immune to challenges of transparency on its own.


The effects of rectal distension on upper gastrointestinal motility were investigated in six healthy subjects. On a control day, gastric and duodenal motor activity was recorded for nine hours of fasting and for four hours after a meal, duodeno-caecal transit being assessed in both interdigestive and digestive states. Motor activity and transit were also measured on a test day during which the rectum was distended for one hour during fasting and for one hour postprandially. Control and test days were randomised. During fasting, rectal distension increased the incidence of migrating motor complexes (0.8 +/- 0.3 v 0.5 +/- 0.2 h; p less than 0.01) and reduced the duodenal phase 2 motility index to 66 +/- 45% of that observed on the control day (p less than 0.01). Further, duodeno-caecal transit time was increased by rectal distension (99 +/- 30 v 71 +/- 35 min; p less than 0.05). Postprandially, the period of rectal distension was marked by a reduction in the duodenal motility index to 24 +/- 13% of that observed during the comparable period on the control day (p less than 0.001) and a concomitant increase in duodeno-caecal transit time (113 +/- 22 v 80 +/- 17 min; p less than 0.01). We conclude that upper gastrointestinal motor activity, the effector of luminal transit, may be profoundly influenced by stimulation of distal afferents.


Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects can be considered as learning environments in which heterogeneous communities get together to exchange knowledge through discussion and put it into practice through actual contributions to software development, revision and testing. This has encouraged tertiary educators to attempt the inclusion of participation in FLOSS projects as part of the requirements of Software Engineering courses, and pilot studies have been conducted to test the effectiveness of such an attempt. This paper discusses two pilot studies with reference to several studies concerning the role of learning in FLOSS projects and shows how using FLOSS projects as E-learning tools has a potential to increase the quality of the software product.


The research for this thesis has been conducted in three consecutive studies: Fatigue in Teenagers-I (FIT-I) in 2002, FIT-II in 2004 and FIT-III in 2006. In each FIT-study different research questions were formulated on the basis of the biopsychosocial model. The three FIT-studies resulted in the chapters of this thesis. These chapters appear in the chronological order of the FIT-studies. FIT-I and FIT-II both have a cross-sectional study design in which adolescents with CFS are compared with healthy adolescents. FIT-III is a follow-up of the patients who participated in FIT-I and FIT-II. Chapter 2 focuses on a constitutional biological factor, which may partly explain the symptoms of fatigue and pain in the CFS. The main question is whether constitu-tional laxity of the connective tissues is more frequently present in adolescents with CFS than in healthy controls.
Chapter 3 investigates health beliefs, one of the psychological factors that determine health behaviour both in the adolescents and in their parents. Although health behaviour is often the focus of treatment, very little is known about the beliefs in families with an adolescent with CFS, neither as a predisposing nor as a maintaining factor.
Chapter 4 reports the findings of research in the relation between fatigue and other somatic symptoms, both in adolescents with CFS and healthy adolescents. Chapter 5 is the first article of the FIT-II study. In this chapter the association of symp-toms in children and in their parents is explored within the biopsychosocial model, with possible genetic contributions on the one hand, and possible psychosocial contributions on the other hand. The second goal of the study was to establish the relation between fatigue and psychological distress in the adolescents with CFS. Chapter 6 explores a set of symptoms in the CFS adolescents, namely neurocognitive symptoms, which are frequently present without a clear substrate. We applied a neuro-cognitive measurement tool for interference control. The tool measures the ability to protect a response from interruption by competing responses or events. The goal of the study was to investigate whether adolescents with CFS show a lesser degree of interference control than healthy adolescents. The second goal was to explore the importance of familial factors by examining the interference control in the parents of both groups.
Chapter 7 is another reflection on a possible neurobiological basis for CFS. Sensory gating is the ability to be protected from the load of sensory information by filtering sensory stimuli, and is a critical function of all sensory systems. We hypothesized that adolescents with CFS and possibly one of their parents would show deficient sensory gating. A deficient sensory gating might be one of the biological factors predisposing or maintaining CFS-like symptoms.
Chapter 8 is based on the hypothesis that children's early object relations may possibly have an etiologic relationship to CFS. It may be one of the psychological factors involved. Alexithymia, defined as an inability to recognize and describe emotions, has its origin in an insecure and disorganized development of attachment in childhood. It is hypothesized that adolescents with CFS exhibit more alexithymia than healthy adolescents. The second hypothesis is that alexithymia unfavourably affects the outcome of CFS. To answer this last question we used the data of the FIT-III study.
Chapter 9, finally, is the general discussion in which the findings from the three FIT-studies are discussed within the biopsychosocial model.


This book provides the first comprehensive study of the applications of stochastic geometry methods in cognitive radio networks. It elaborates the necessary mathematical tools and discusses the state of the art in geometrical modeling and analysis of cognitive radio networks and will be a first general book for the researchers in this field. Readers will be introduced to tools for managing the inherent uncertainty in the spatial locations of wireless nodes in cognitive radio networks, in order to satisfy the interference constraints on the primary receivers and to make the coexistence of primary and secondary networks possible.


Vision researchers often rely on visual display technology to present observers with controlled stimuli, usually by means of a calibrated computer screen. Virtual Reality (VR) may allow a similar level of control, together with higher realism of the stimulation and a visual field larger than what is achievable on a standard computer monitor. To produce the desired luminance and color of the stimuli, accurate characterization of the spectral properties of the display is necessary. However, this process might not be trivial on VR displays, because 1) the Head Mounted Displays (HMD) used in VR are typically designed to be light-weight and low energy consuming, thus they might not meet some of the standard assumptions in display calibration, 2) the VR software might affect the color and luminance signal in a complex way, further complicating the calibration process. Here we show that 1) a common, off-the-shelf display used in our experiments behaves similarly to a standard OLED monitor, 2) the VR gaming engine we tested (Unreal Engine 4) introduces a complex behavior, 3) which can be disabled. This allows to accurately control colors and luminance emitted by the display, thus enabling its use for perceptual experiments.


Ken Barris was born in Port Elizabeth and lives in Cape Town, where he works at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. His writing includes two collections of poetry, a collection of short stories, and five novels, the most recent being What Kind of Child (2006) and Life Underwater (2012). His work has been translated into Turkish, Danish, German and Slovenian, and poetry and short fiction have appeared in various anthologies. More recently, he has turned to writing for academic journals. His research interests are postapartheid fiction and language education.
He has won the Sydney Clouts Memorial Award and the Ingrid Jonker Prize for poetry, the Ad Donker/AA Life Award and Thomas Pringle Awards for short fiction, as well as the M-Net Book Prize and the University of Johannesburg Prize. He has also been shortlisted for the Caine Prize for Writing in Africa (2003, 2007), the Herman Charles Bosman Prize (2007, 2013), the PEN/Studzinski Award, and the Commonwealth Prize (Best Book Africa).


Abstract: Evidence is presented for Triassic rift-related palaeo-structures from the Alpujarride Complex carbonates of the Betic Cordillera, SE Spain. Direct evidence of synsedimentary extensional tectonics is provided by macro- to meso-scale normal faults overstepped by younger strata. Most faults define domino-like horst and graben structures. The faults are associated with an expanded synrift sedimentary prism in which soft-sediment deformation, gravity-flow deposits and unconformities are widely developed. Syntectonic mafic igneous intrusions also occur. The age of this phase of extension is constrained as Ladinian–Carnian (c. 237–216 Ma). From a palaeogeographical standpoint, the thick Triassic carbonates of the Betic Internal Zone, together with comparable successions in Northern Calabria (Southern Apennines), occupied a belt with elevated subsidence connecting the Neo-Tethys to the east with the eastern North American intracontinental rift system to the west. Their carbonate facies, intermediate between classical Alpine- and Germanic-type Triassic facies, recorded the main episodes of rifting affecting Central Pangaea.


Abstract: The US military's leadership is almost entirely composed of graying senior officers who were assigned their first command as junior officers on the front lines in Vietnam. Many of the brass harbor a residual sense of betrayal and paranoia toward the media, a quiet bitterness underscoring the perceived truth that, form the military's point of view, the press, above all bears responsibility for the US debacle in Southeast Asia. Post-Vietnam presidents apparently have agreed with the Pentagon that the media needs to be culled, vetted, and locked down into tightly controlled pools during war-time operations. Nonetheless, since Bill Clinton became commander-in-chief of the US armed forces in 1993, the distrust and polarization that have characterized the relationship between the military and the media for almost 3 decades have slowly eroded. A cautious atmosphere of mutual understanding and symbiotic exploitation has matured. Text: A Positive Dynamic for the US Media and Military During the Kosovo campaign this past April, I had the opportunity to ask General Hugh Shelton, the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to comment on the evolution of the relationship between the US military and the media. What do these two forces share in the "Age of Information "the Age of "Information Technology, "of "Info-Terrorism," and, as the military itself puts it, of "Information Dominance?" A month later, in Macedonia, a US Army field officer would confide to me off the record that Slobodan Milosevic was winning "the information ops, the perception management. He's the underdog," the officer insisted, "and everybody else looks like a bully ganging up on him." If you can breakup an alliance by somersaulting public opinion, he said, "You've won." The Parallel War There is a paradox at the center of the contemporary military-media dynamic, embodied by what pundits have labeled "the new military humanism." "The more you try not to hit civilians," the officer explained, "the worse the public-relations disaster is when you actually hit them." Every American soldier is keenly aware of how swiftly a public-relations disaster can mutate into military self-defeat. General Peter Schoomaker, Commander of US Special Operations, clearly understood this in April 1999 at the Special Forces' annual conference in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He remarked on Kosovo, "We're engaged in something here that has a lot more to do with information than with bombs dropped." General Shelton, who was the original field commander for Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti in September 1994, began his response to my query with an anecdote. Shelton had been ordered by his superiors at US Atlantic Command and at the Pentagon to deliver a top-secret briefing to an assembly of journalists on the eve of the scheduled invasion of Haiti. The general had balked at the order; perhaps the high command had lost its mind, he thought, but he was finally persuaded to give the briefing. "I don't like telling the media anything," Shelton said, "because your adversary will know everything." Yet the general was satisfied, and a little amazed, that not a word of his briefing had been leaked by those who heard it. Instead, the news was properly disseminated once the troops were safely ashore on Haitian soil and the news blackout ended. "The media was very responsible during Operation Uphold Democracy," Shelton concluded. "I've learned to trust them a little more." The issue of trust will likely persist forever as a fundamental source of tension between the media and the military. The debate, once centered on the delicate balance between maintaining operational security and keeping people informed, has expanded to include the more generic role the media plays in shaping and influencing events, or "driving the story." In managing the Kosovo campaign from the Pentagon, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was feeling the extraordinary pressure of the 24hour news cycle, as the frustration in his comments implied. …


French fries (chips) are increasingly becoming indispensable in menus of many restaurants and hotels in major Kenyan towns due to their relatively lower consumer prices compared to other foods. When foods are deep-oil-fried, the amount of oil absorbed by the food is important since nutritionally, the amount of oil absorbed has a marked bearing on the number of calories supplied by the food. Fried foods such as chips may contain a considerable amount of oil to such extent that their consumption is of concern to nutritionists who advocate for a decrease or an increase of fat content in the diet depending on the part of the world where they are based. Chips with lower oil content and equivalent sensory attributes are expected to be highly accepted by consumers. The influence of potato cultivar and stage of maturity on uptake of oil into chips was investigated using eight Kenyan cultivars including five varieties (Tigoni, Desiree, Dutch Robyjn, Kenya Karibu, and Kenya Sifa) and three promising potato clones coded as 393385.47, 391696.96 and 393385.39. The eight cultivars were grown under cultural standard conditions at the National Potato Research Centre, Tigoni. The crop was dehaulmed two weeks before harvesting and allowed to cure at ambient air conditions (15-19 oC/86-92 % RH) for three weeks. The potatoes were harvested at 90 or 120 days after planting. The variety of potato used had a significant effect (P≤0.05) on oil uptake, with Dutch Robyjn having the lowest oil content. The cellular structures may have affected the oil uptake into the chips by influencing solid content, moisture loss during frying or damage done to original anatomy during processing. Harvesting before maturity significantly (P≤0.05) increased oil content of chips when compared to those prepared from mature tubers. There is need for processors to wisely choose the potato cultivar in order to produce French fries with low oil content.


Copyright: © 2016 Pope John Paul II State School of Higher Education in Biała Podlaska. This is an Open Access journal, all articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.


The synthesis and electrochemical responses of [CpMo(CO)3]2, CpMo(CO)3I, CpMo(CO)3(OTf), and [CpMo(bpy)(CO)2] (Cp = cyclopentadienyl, bpy = 2,2'-bipyridine, OTf = trifluoromethansulfonate) in organic solvent are reported. Transition metal compounds such as Re(bpy)(CO)3Cl have been shown to be effective carbon dioxide reduction catalysts. The molybdenum metal complexes studied herein were examined under argon and carbon dioxide gas for the potential reduction of carbon dioxide. Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (H NMR) spectroscopy, infrared (IR) spectroscopy and an electrochemical method know as cyclic voltammetry were used to gather data on the complexes. Electrochemical response peaks under carbon dioxide were analyzed for the relative efficiency and potentials of the molybdenum catalysts. The addition of the bpy ligand to the molybdenum resulted in an unstable compound in solution. The molybdenum compounds studied were not found to be competent catalysts for the reduction of carbon dioxide. 1 Saucedo and Grice: Synthesis and Studies of Cyclopentadienyl Molybdenum Complexes Published by Via Sapientiae, 2016