Organizations are diverse workplaces where various beliefs, values and perceptions are shared to varying extents. How can spiritual leadership induce altruistic love and intrinsic motivation among diverse members within the organization and without being regarded as really yet another covert, sophisticated form of corporate exploitation of human vulnerability reflective of the "dark side" of organizations and leadership? This paper explores an approach to spiritual leadership from a Buddhist perspective focusing on the power of skilful means to tackle such concerns. In organizational pursuits such as appearance, reputation, fame, power, recognition and even leader–follower relationships are associated mostly with objectives and expectations, known in Buddhism as "attachment". In Buddhism, however, any kind of attachment may be a source of suffering that eventually leads to negative consequences. In reviewing the dark side of spiritual leadership practices and how Buddhism is commoditized for organizational purposes, we reaffirm on the importance of the notion of non-attachment in Buddhism. We unpack the application of the Buddhist metaphor of "the raft", non-attachment and other Buddhist stories of skilful means in spiritual leadership and their contribution to leadership studies.


There are more and more data from Human Genome Project that we need better methods to deal with. Some mathematical models have been presented to analyze gene regulatory networks, such as Boolean networks Bayesian networks, differential equation, weight matrices, etc. Some of the models could describe some rules of the genetic regulatory relations properly, such as Bayesian networks, differential equation, but the rest did not work very well. It is thus necessary to consider some new mathematical models to estimate the gene regulatory relations according to some experimental data. Here we have utilized the entropy information from gene data of breast cancer metastasis to get the weights of all the genes, and set up a RNINLP model in which minimum error is regarded as objective function to search for the regulatory relation in the genes, and then sieved regulatory genes by coefficient correlation model. Using the programs of LINGO8.0 and MATLAB7.0, we got a gene regulatory network of the 27 genes related to the breast cancer metastasis. We found that there were 25 pairs of genes exiting regulatory relation and 11 pairs of genes being mutual promotion effect. RNINLP utilizes almost all the information of the data, so it can describe the regulatory relation of genes with coefficient correlation model, and the model can be extended to even more complicated gene regulatory networks.


The objective of this work is to propose a machine learning-based methodology system architecture and algorithms to find patterns of learning, interaction, and relationship and effective assessment for a complex system involving massive data that could be obtained from a proposed collaborative learning environment (CLE). Collaborative learning may take place between dyads or larger team members to find solutions for real-time events or problems, and to discuss concepts or interactions during situational judgment tasks (SJT). Modeling a collaborative, networked system that involves multimodal data presents many challenges. This paper focuses on proposing a Machine Learning - (ML)-based system architecture to promote understanding of the behaviors, group dynamics, and interactions in the CLE. Our framework integrates techniques from computational psychometrics (CP) and deep learning models that include the utilization of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for feature extraction, skill identification, and pattern recognition. Our framework also identifies the behavioral components at a micro level, and can help us model behaviors of a group involved in learning.


INTRODUCTION The absence of memory or verbal recall for symptom acquisition, as well as the absence of successful coping for life events, is associated with a number of diagnoses, including traumatic brain injury (TBI), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), pain, and anxiety. Including the "absence of behavior" in the reasoning for assignment of such diagnoses can be important to the description of prior existing conditions, especially if a method of measuring it is outlined. However, while of possible diagnostic importance, the absence of behavior is nonquantifiable and does not address the significant issue of whether absence is because of the disruption or incapacity for behavior. A focus on the absence of behavior potentially introduces a further issue by treating nonobserved and observed behaviors equally. Confounding any effort is that assessment and treatment planning for highly variable events are not conducted at the time or context of the trauma(s). Therefore, such efforts must be undertaken without the benefit of being able to objectively differentiate the effects of the original and subsequent experiences on the current state [1-2]. Notably, the absence of verbal recall or memory of the initial trauma(s) does not preclude subsequent experiences from being remembered or having an effect on symptom expression. In addition, not having access to the individual's cognitive and emotional capabilities over the same time and context precludes measuring any variation and possible effect. The continuous process of the individual's attempts for adaptation introduces additional timeand context-dependent based efforts that can affect behavior in highly variable ways. Knowing these factors would provide both a historical and contemporary perspective of how the process affects an individual's current functional state [3]. Further complicating the process of attempting to document the effect of trauma is that the noted absence of behavior is commonly attributed to multiple causative explanations that include genes, "failure to learn," motivation, and neurological damage, all of which can affect prospective considerations for treatment. Genes take on a seemingly irrefutable power, even in the absence of the scientific demonstration of cause and effect. Often overlooked is that possessing the genetic characteristic does not determine the effect, as in the case of the gene associated with alcoholism, which still requires an individual to drink to sufficient excess. Parenthetically, alcoholism can occur without the requisite gene. Additionally, the fact that one monozygotic twin can develop normally and the other be diagnosed as autistic makes an effective case for consideration of additional contributing factors. Similarly, the attribution of failure to learn avoids the question of whether such failure is caused by lack of adequate training. The inferred and assigned construct "lack of motivation" further obscures the failure to improve by blaming the person being treated. Also widely assumed is that neural trauma of a known anatomical structure is sufficient reason not only for the absence but also for the prediction of recovery of behavior [4]. A conceptual model based on known scientific evidence would be beneficial so as to avoid resorting to the use of absence of behavior and potentially engaging in circular logic and self-fulfilling prophecy. The potential for doing no harm can also be improved on. METHODS Existing replicated scientific literature was reviewed for clinical applicability to the aforementioned conditions. The scientific-based relationships for structure and function, the relationship of environmental--and time-based influences on learning, and the presence or absence of declarative memory in fear--and trauma-based symptom acquisition was considered. Two areas of research, fear conditioning and learned nonuse theory, provided substantive findings addressing these criteria. …


The topic of this study is self-tracking. To "self-track" is to quantify steps, calories, heart rate, social interactions, geo-location, posture, and so on. The few monographs, academic papers, and conferences, concerned with this topic often deliver similar philosophical representations of self-tracking based on shared material and socio-cultural assumptions. Generally, these assumptions are wedded to a series of essentialist, absolutist, and deterministic tropes, as well as to neo-humanist and more traditionally humanist forms of discourse. The present study argues that these established discourses play against the predominant tendencies of much contemporary philosophical thought. Contemporary thought is more post humanist than humanist, draws attention to mediation more than media, qualities of indeterminacy more than determinacy, and dynamism more than stasis. The lack of imagination in current discourses of self-tracking, as well as their disengagement with contemporary thought, has resulted in the most pertinent philosophical insight of the phenomena of self-tracking being overlooked: namely the permanence of change. Unique to discourses of self-tracking, this study foregrounds the permanence of change as an already kinetic and transformative aspect of the natural world. As a result of this unique contribution, this study backgrounds the monotony of substance-metaphysical thought as a resistance to the established trends of self-tracking discourses. There are four parts to this process-oriented world view that make up the main features of this research. Firstly, the missing dynamism of self-tracking is rendered actual by its reframing in an event-based ontology, therefore emphasising the emergence, mutation, and inevitable excesses of self-tracking phenomena. Secondly, self-tracking is critically situated in anti-representational terms by focusing on the recent processual-turn in new media theory. Thirdly, via a genealogical method, self-tracking is rearticulated as something dynamic, with a long and plural history of transformative relations. Finally, by emphasising the political, relational, and fictional, a re-imagined speculative alternative to self-tracking is brought to focus through the optic of contemporary design theory.


The changes in structural arrangement in silicon oil based magneto-rheological fluids with carbonyl iron particles upon the effect of an external magnetic were studied by acoustic spectroscopy. The attenuation of acoustic waves was measured for a jump change of the magnetic field at temperature 20 °C for various magnetic particles concentrations. The relaxation effects for the acoustic attenuation after switching off the magnetic field and its decrease to the same value as for clean synthetic oil were observed. The change in attenuation coefficients of acoustic waves in magneto-rheological fluid versus angle between the wave vector and direction of the applied magnetic field has been measured, too. From the measured anisotropy of attenuation coefficient structural change of magneto-rheological fluid in the magnetic field is evident. The observed influences of the magnetic field and concentration on the investigated liquids structure are discussed.


The purpose of this study is to evaluate the progress and regional variations of crop production in Bangladesh. The secondary data were used and collected for the years 1980-81 to 2002-03 from the 'Statistical Yearbooks of Bangladesh', 'Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics' and population census of different years. The study was conducted during the period from September 2006 to February 2008. An analysis was done for twelve mutually exclusive agro-ecological zones by assigning various indicators of crop sector development. The remarkable progress of rural literacy rate, ratio of agricultural workers to population, number of farmer's co-operative societies and per capita regional domestic agricultural products in two decades was observed in different regions. Wide disparities in the level of crop sector development had been observed across the regions. The overall results reveal that some of the regions are in better positions in respect of socioeconomic progress, land use pattern, input use, growth performance of HYV rice and food-grains production. The developed regions were 'Old Himalayan Piedmont Plain and Tista Floodplain', 'Karatoya Floodplain and Atrai Basin', 'Brahmaputra-Jamuna Floodplain' and 'Middle Meghna River Floodplain' on the basis of land utilization pattern, input use and food-grains production. Analysis of regional disparities reveals that 'Sylhet Basin and Surma-Kusiyara Floodplain', Greater Dhaka', 'Middle Meghna River Floodplain' and 'Lower Meghna River and Estuarine Floodplain' regions has developed remarkably in the last twenty years.


This chapter examines key features of the three main stages in virus evolution with examples drawn from several virus groups. It then reviews specific results with picornaviruses, as well as implications of high mutation rates and quasispecies dynamics for this important and diverse group of pathogens. With the levels of heterogeneity and viral load often seen in infected individuals, RNA virus populations include potentially all possible single mutants and decreasing amounts of multiple mutants. There are probably many routes to drug resistance, including amino acid replacements in the wall of the pocket preventing accommodation of the drug into the pocket (termed "exclusion" mutants), and replacements elsewhere in the capsid that affect viral uncoating. Resistant mutants display decreased affinity for the drug or increased affinity for the receptor, and often show low fitness values relative to their parental counterparts. Studies with picornaviral RNA-dependent RNA polymerases (replicases) face limitations derived from the difficulties in obtaining purified enzymes capable of sustaining multiple rounds of template-dependent copying. Viral quasispecies show features of complex adaptive systems such as mobilization of minority components (individual genomes from the mutant spectrum) in response to external stimuli. New developments in biochemistry and structural biology, and a deeper understanding of the principles governing viral evolution can now be combined to produce practical developments following an extensive (and necessary) accumulation of results from basic research.


Abstract:Within the industry, it is an article of faith that consumers distrust advertising. One reason for that distrust may be that they fear being manipulated. Yet the debate about advertising and manipulation always seems to revolve around how much manipulation is really going on and whether consumer skepticism ensures that manipulation tactics will likely fail. But consumer skepticism is a flimsy defense in the face of decades of research, ever more sophisticated tactics of persuasion, billions of dollars spent, and data mining capabilities that permit increasingly detailed and granular analysis. The persuasion industry's tactics are tested in the field, by trial and error. If a tactic works, we get more of it. In this practice we are all the guinea pigs. In a university setting, research on human subjects must be approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB). The IRB process is supposed to ensure that research subjects' participation is voluntary and informed, and that the potential benefits of the research outweigh the potential harms. Yet there is no IRB for our present-day marketing environment. What if it is bad for our health? More ominously still in light of recent events, what if it is bad for democracy?


A method is described for computing optical properties of surfaces with a sparse distribution of submicroscopic bumps, pits, or foreign particles on or imbedded in them. The particles are assumed to be approximate figures of revolution about an axis normal to the surface. Surface and particle are assumed to have uniform, isotropic values of refractive index. Such foreign particles or roughness are equivalent in optical properties to a thin flat film of uniaxial material with its optic axis normal to the surface. The thickness of the equivalent film is arbitrarily made equal to the volume per unit area of all particles or bumps or pits. The principal values of refractive index of this equivalent film are determined by the shape of the particles and any surface irregularity associated with them, and by the refractive indices of particles and substrate, but not by particle size if size is small compared to wavelength of incident radiation. A recent experimental observation that silver tarnish in the form of isolated particles on a flat substrate gives about the same ellipsometric perturbation as would be expected from a flat film of the same refractive index and density appears to be only a rough approximation. Even that approximation would fail if the substrate were not metallic or if the tarnish particles were embedded in the surface. Differences of optical constants derived from measurements on thick and very thin films are explained.


The paper describes the application of a methodology and tools for early assessment of integrated system solutions for deep retrofit with a potential of 30-50% energy reductions across large building portfolio as well as at an individual building scale using information only about building characteristics, usage type and climate. The building energy consumption is estimated using a simple building description, and then the impact of energy conservation measures (ECMs) are estimated individually and in combination as integrated system packages. We demonstrate the tool application with two types of cases from the Department of Defense (DoD) real property database. The results illustrate both statistical analysis of the potential for deep retrofits at DoD portfolio level, which comprises nearly 250,000 facilities in the U.S., and also for a few representative existing DoD buildings.


Abstract. Recent years have witnessed the rapid development of navigation systems. They gradually become the default way of navigating in our daily life. Despite benefiting from their convenience, we may be negatively influenced by them (Parush et al. 2007). Current navigation systems usually draw too much of users' attention to the mobile devices, which leads to users' lacking interaction with the environment. It is often the case that people easily forget travelled route and get lost without navigation systems (Reilly et al. 2008). Empirical study shows that by dividing attention, navigation systems impair users' spatial memory, and thus impact their navigation skills (Gardony et al. 2013). Since a higher engagement with the environment can improve users' spatial knowledge acquisition without decreasing efficiency (Brügger et al. 2017), navigation systems should incorporate important environmental features.As objects of visual, cognitive or structural importance (Sorrows & Hirtle 1999), landmarks have been extensively studied, and considered as an important environmental feature to be incorporated into navigation systems (Nuhn & Timpf 2018, Richter 2017, Duckham et al. 2010, Raubal & Winter 2002). They serve as references to provide users with more natural and pleasant navigating experience (Richter & Winter 2014). However, most of landmark-related studies are in outdoor environment. Although researchers have attempted to classify and assess indoor landmarks (Ohm 2014, Viaene 2014), it is still very difficult to determine suitable ones. As a subset of semantic indoor landmarks, existing navigational aids (e.g. signs and floor plans) are designed to assist navigation. Among them, signs are most preferred by users (Wang et al. 2017). Being the signs that give necessary information to route users to possible destinations, directional signs contribute most to wayfinding (Gibson 2009). With route information explicitly presented by them, they are relevant environmental features to be incorporated into indoor navigation systems.In this study, we therefore propose to incorporate directional signs into indoor navigation systems, in order to guide users' attention back to the environment, to facilitate their spatial learning and improve their spatial knowledge acquisition.We incorporated directional signs into a proof-of-concept indoor navigation system. First, we integrated directional signs and their semantics into a graph-based model. A directional sign was modelled as a node. Each destination on the sign was linked with the sign by an edge. In order to differentiate it from the normal edge, it was marked as semantic edge. Thus, the semantics of the sign was modelled directly into the graph, instead of being stored as attributes in a previous version of our study (Wang & Gartner 2018). Then, a top-K shortest path algorithm was employed to find candidate routes (Yen 1971). In the end, the route with the largest coverage of semantic edges was suggested to the user. The users would then be explicitly guided to follow the directional signs in the environment.In the next step, we will evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed navigation system by an empirical study with human subjects. Within the experiment, we will also investigate on whether this kind of guidance can succeed in drawing users' attention back to the environment and support their spatial knowledge acquisition.


What sad, appalling, and surprising things people do in the name of love and for the sake of love. These short stories give us love won and love lost, love revenged, love thrown away, love in triumph, love in despair. It might be love between men and women, children and parents, even humans and cats; but whichever it is, love is a force to be reckoned with. This collection contains stories by Maeve Binchy, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, H.E. Bates, Graham Greene, Fay Weldon, Patricia Highsmith, John Morrison, and Somerset Maugham.


Since its founding in the 1960s, the Information Systems (IS) field has been involved in critical debates about the nature and future of the discipline. Many researchers feel that diversity in IS research is our strength; others fear that too much diversity leads to losing the field's core identity. Do the scholarly contributions of the IS community reveal either of these two phenomena? In order to address this question, we examine articles published in leading IS journals (MISQ, ISR, and JMIS) during the period of 2000 to 2006. Our analysis includes classifying the articles using a classification scheme that includes the consideration of IT artifact, the research methods used, and the research topics covered. We provide descriptive statistics following a content analysis procedure and results based on cluster analysis and association rule mining. Our results provide an update on previous findings on IT artifact and its consideration in IS publications. Our results further suggest that while our leading journals cover a broad range of research topics and methods, there is also evidence of popularity on some topics and research methods.


"We really ought to look into theories that don't work, and science that isn't science. I think the educational ... studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science. In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head for headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas -- he's the controller -- and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land." Richard P. Feynman, "Cargo Cult Science," Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character (Norton, 1985). AFTER MANY YEARS of educational research, it is disconcerting -- and also deeply significant -- that we have little dependable research guidance for school policy. We have useful statistics in the form of test scores that indicate the achievement level of children, schools, and districts. But we do not have causal analyses of these data that could reliably lead to significant improvement. Richard Feynman, in his comment on "cargo cult science," identifies part of the reason for this shortcoming -- that while educational research sometimes adopts the outward form of science, it does not burrow to its essence. For Feynman, the essence of good science is doing whatever is necessary to get to reliable and usable knowledge -- a goal not necessarily achieved by merely following the external forms of a "method." The statistical methods of educational research have become highly sophisticated. But the quality of the statistical analysis is much higher than its practical utility. Despite the high claims being made for statistical techniques like regression analysis, or experimental techniques like random assignment of students into experimental and control groups, classroom-based research (as contrasted with laboratory research) has not been able to rid itself of uncontrolled influences called "noise" that have made it impossible to tease out the relative contributions of the various factors that have led to "statistically significant" results. This is a chief reason for the unreliability and fruitlessness of current classroom research. An uncertainty principle subsists at its heart. As a consequence, every partisan in the education wars is able to utter the words "research has shown" in support of almost any position. Thus "research" is invoked as a rhetorical weapon -- its main current use. In this essay I shall outline some fundamental reasons why educational research has not provided dependable guidance for policy, and suggest how to repair what it lacks. On a positive note, there already exists some reliable research on which educational policy could and should be based, found mainly (though not exclusively) in cognitive psychology. In the end, both naturalistic research and laboratory research in education have a duty to accompany their findings with plausible accounts of their actual implications for policy -- as regards both the relative cost of the policy in money and time and the relative gain that may be expected from it in comparison with rival policies. Including this neglected dimension might wonderfully concentrate the research mind, and lead to better science in the high sense defined by Feynman. A tale of two studies THE NOVEMBER 2001 issue of Scientific American includes an article called "Does Class Size Matter? …


This paper presents an indexing system for spoken audio documents. The framework is indexing and retrieval of broadcast news. The proposed indexing system applies latent semantic analysis (LSA) and self-organizing maps (SOM) to map the documents into a semantic vector space and to display the semantic structures of the document collection. The SOM is also used to enhance the indexing of the documents that are difficult to decode. Relevant index terms and suitable index weights are computed by smoothing the document vectors with other documents which are close to it in the semantic space. Experimental results are provided using the test data of the TREC's spoken document retrieval track.


How much responsibility for providing health care to the poor should be devolved from the federal government to the states? Any answer to this critical policy question requires a careful assessment of the Medicaid program. Drawing on the insights of leading scholars and top state health care officials, this volume analyzes the policy and management implications of various options for Medicaid devolution. Proponents of devolution typically express confidence that states can meet the challenges it will pose for them. But, as this book shows, the degree to which states have the capacity and commitment to use enhanced discretion to sustain or improve health care for the poor remains an open question. Their failure to attend to issues of politics, implementation, and management could lead to disappointment. Chapters focus on such topics as Medicaid financing, benefits and beneficiaries, long-term care, managed care, safety net providers, and the appropriate division of labor between the federal government and the states. The contributors are Donald Boyd, Center for the Study of the States; Lawrence D. Brown, Columbia University; James R. Fossett, Rockefeller College; Richard P. Nathan, Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, State University of New York, Albany; Michael Sparer, Columbia University; James Tallon, United Hospital Fund; and Joshua M. Weiner, the Urban Institute.


Post-crisis banks are subject to two overlapping authorities: regulatory authority and resolution authority. Both are concerned with the survival of the bank in a crisis, and both have the power to instruct a bank as to how it should structure itself to address that possibility. Total Loss Absorbing Capital (TLAC) is the most significant point of overlap between these two authorities. Viewed from the perspective of a resolution authority, TLAC is simply a name for that proportion of the liabilities of a bank which can be converted into capital in a resolution. However, viewed from the perspective of a prudential supervisor, the TLAC requirement can be viewed as a capital requirement capable of being met with a wider range of instruments than those which qualify as Tier 1 or Tier 2. This chapter discusses TLAC requirements, composition of TLAC, treatment of TLAC holdings by other banks, and the EU's approach to TLAC.


Previous work has demonstrated a straightforward mapping from Conceptual Graphs CGs to Formal Concept Analysis FCA, and the combined benefits these types of Conceptual Structures bring in capturing and reasoning about the semantics in system design. As in that work, a CGs Transaction Model or `Transaction Graph' exemplar is used, but in the form of a richer Financial Trading FT case study that has its business rules visualised in Peirce's cuts. The FT case study highlights that cuts can meaningfully be included in the CGs to FCA mapping. Accordingly, the case study's CGs Transaction Graph with its cuts is translated into a form suitable for the CGtoFCA algorithm described in that previous work. The process is tested through the CG-FCA software that implements the CGtoFCA algorithm. The algorithm describes how a Conceptual Graph CG, represented by triples of the form source-concept, relation, target-concept can be transformed into a set of binary relations of the form target-concept, source-conceptnrelation thus creating a formal context in FCA. Cuts though can now be included in the same formal, rigorous, reproducible and general way. The mapping develops the Transaction Graph into a Transaction Concept, capturing and unifying the features of Conceptual Structures that CGs and FCA collectively embody.


Objectives The rising burden of preventable risk factors for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) among adolescents is a major public health challenge worldwide. We identified the preventable risk factors for NCDs in adolescents. Methods In a school-based study, pre-tested structured questionnaires were completed by 414 adolescents (14 to 17 years) at six schools in three cities in Pakistan. The chi-squared test and adjusted odds ratio (aOR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated in a multinomial logistic regression analysis. Results Over 80% of the adolescents had unhealthy diets, and 54% were physically inactive. Most adolescents were exposed to passive smoking, and 14% were also current smokers. More than one-third of participants chewed betel nut, and one-quarter used oral tobacco. More girls were physically inactive (OR, 4.07; 95% CI, 2.69 to 6.17), whereas a greater proportion of boys were current smokers (OR, 2.17; 95% CI, 1.19 to 3.91), exposed to passive smoking (OR, 2.57; 95% CI, 1.72 to 3.83), and using betel nut (OR, 2.03; 95% CI, 1.34 to 3.06). Only 3.1% of the participants were without any preventable lifestyle risk factor for NCDs, and over 80% had ≥2 factors. Co-existence of risk factors was independently associated with fathers being blue-collar workers (aOR, 3.57; 95% CI, 1.07 to 11.92) and parents not treating their child fairly (aOR, 5.05; 95% CI, 1.29 to 19.78). Conclusions Most of the adolescents studied had preventable risk factors for NCDs. These results warrant comprehensive and integrated interventions to prevent lifestyle risk factors, and parents are front-line stakeholders.


The Kyoto Protocol binds the level of greenhouse gas emissions in participating countries. It does not, however, dictate how the countries are to achieve this level. The economic costs of reaching emission targets are generally evaluated to be low. For example, evaluations with applied general-equilibrium models estimate the costs to be in the range of 0.2% to 0.5% of GDP, when international trade in emissions rights among governments is allowed for. We argue that important costs are overlooked since governments have an incentive to choose highly distorting tax schemes. This paper shows that governments generally choose different energy tax rates for households and for internationally operating firms as the result of tax competition or pollution competition: in the first case, governments try to undercut other governments to attract firms to their country, whereas in the second, they try to push dirty industries across the border. In both cases, the incentive for firms and households to use or save energy is different at the margin. Both cases call for coordination of climate change policies that goes beyond a binding ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions and international trade in permit rights among governments alone.


The thesis consists of four chapters, an Introduction and a Conclusion.
The Introduction considers the theoretical frameworks within which recent readings of the
late-eighteenth-century French homoerotic ideal male nude have been developed; and how
these readings have in turn emerged from a wider extra-art-historical discourse on the
sexual politics of representation and the representation of sexual politics. A clear picture
of the ideal male nude as a contested field emerges; and a justification of the materials
which will be used in the thesis clarifies their critical engagement with these polemical
debates surrounding the object of study. Chapter 1 is in two parts. Part one deals with the
possibilities of a textual representation of homosexuality in French neoclassical poetics by
focusing on the notion of 'anacreontisme' as a synonym for 'veiled' homoeroticism.
Contrary to the present understanding of the notion, it is argued here, by recourse to
successive French translations of the Greek source text, that homosexuality was explicitly
problematized in the development of anacreontisme as a critical term, rather than
consensually hidden.
Part two reviews a social history of homosexuality in eighteenth-century France, in order
to contextualize the preceding anacreontic debate.
A Kantian reading of the beau ideal, in Chapter 3, attempts to contradict the now
dominant understanding of this figure as being simply a high-cultural sign of patriarchal
dominance. The chapter traces the philosophical coordinates of the beau ideal from the
late seventeenth century until the moment when this figure coincides with the Kantian
transcendental aesthetic, and thereby propels it into an anti-ideological space.
Chapters 4 and 5 focus on a prime exemplar in current art-historical literature of the
homoerotic male nude, David's painting Leonidas at Thermopylae. Chapter 4 argues for a
newly politicized reading of the picture, by focusing on its sociohistorical moment.
Chapter 5 reads David's painting through selected texts, and commentary on, Sade, in
order to account for its 'perversity' in more ways than the simply sexual. Leonidas is
finally understood here as a repositary of the various histories which have been
precedingly traced.
the Conclusion reflects on how those methodological procedures may open out the study
of the homoerotic male nude and the construction of masculinity to further examination.


In this paper, we aim to learn associations between visual attributes of fonts and the verbal context of the texts they are typically applied to. Compared to related work leveraging the surrounding visual context, we choose to focus only on the input text, which can enable new applications for which the text is the only visual element in the document. We introduce a new dataset, containing examples of different topics in social media posts and ads, labeled through crowd-sourcing. Due to the subjective nature of the task, multiple fonts might be perceived as acceptable for an input text, which makes this problem challenging. To this end, we investigate different end-to-end models to learn label distributions on crowd-sourced data, to capture inter-subjectivity across all annotations.


The standard form of the Scherrer equation, which has been used to calculate the mean thickness of the coherent scattering domain (CSD) of illite crystals from X-ray diffraction (XRD) full width data at half maximum (FWHM) intensity, employs a constant, Ksh, of 0.89. Use of this constant is unjustified, even if swelling has no effect on peak broadening, because this constant is valid only if all CSDs have a single thickness. For different thickness distributions, the Scherrer "constant" has very different values.Analysis of fundamental particle thickness data (transmission electron microscopy, TEM) for samples of authigenic illite and illite/smectite from diagenetically altered pyroclastics and filamentous illites from sandstones reveals a unique family of lognormal thickness distributions for these clays. Experimental relations between the distributions' lognormal parameters and mean thicknesses are established. These relations then are used to calculate the mean thickness of CSDs for illitic samples from XRD FWHM, or from integral XRD peak widths (integrated intensity/maximum intensity).For mixed-layer illite/smectite, the measured thickness of the CSD corresponds to the mean thickness of the mixed-layer crystal. Using this measurement, the mean thickness of the fundamental particles that compose the mixed-layer crystals can be calculated after XRD determination of percent smectitic interlayers. The effect of mixed layering (swelling) on XRD peak width for these samples is eliminated by using the 003 reflection for glycolated samples, and the 001, 002 or 003 reflection for dehydrated, K-sa-turated samples. If this technique is applied to the 001 reflection of air-dried samples (Kubler index measurement), mean CSD thicknesses are underestimated due to the mixed-layering effect.The technique was calibrated using NEWMOD©-simulated XRD profiles of illite, and then tested on well-characterized illite and illite/smectite samples. The XRD measurements are in good agreement with estimates of the mean thickness of fundamental particles obtained both from TEM measurements and from fixed cations content, up to a mean value of 20 layers. Correction for instrumental broadening under the conditions employed here is unnecessary for this range of thicknesses.


To illustrate the advances made in permeability calculations combining X-ray microtomography and lattice Boltzmann method simulations, a sample suite of different types of pumices was investigated. Large three dimensional images at high spatial resolution were collected at three different synchrotron facilities (Elettra, SLS, and ESRF). Single phase gas flow simulations were done on computer clusters with a highly parallelized lattice Boltzmann code, named Palabos. Permeability measurements obtained by gas flow simulation were compared to lab measurements of pumices produced by the Kos Plateau Tuff eruption to validate the method. New permeability data for pumices from other silicic volcanic deposits is presented, and an empirical model for permeability is tested using geometrical and topological data, i.e. tortuosity, specific surface area, total and connected porosity.


Abstract. Land surface modeling, in conjunction with numerical weather forecasting and satellite remote sensing, is playing an increasing role in global monitoring and prediction of extreme hydrologic events (i.e., floods and droughts). However, uncertainties in the meteorological forcings, model structure, and parameter identifiability limit the reliability of model predictions. This study focuses on the latter by assessing two potential weaknesses that emerge due to limitations in our global runoff observations: (1) the limits of identifying model parameters at coarser timescales than those at which the extreme events occur, and (2) the negative impacts of not properly accounting for model parameter equifinality in the predictions of extreme events. To address these challenges, petascale parallel computing is used to perform the first global-scale, 10 000 member ensemble-based evaluation of plausible model parameters using the VIC (Variable Infiltration Capacity) land surface model, aiming to characterize the impact of parameter identifiability on the uncertainty in flood and drought predictions. Additionally, VIC's global-scale parametric sensitivities are assessed at the annual, monthly, and daily timescales to determine whether coarse-timescale observations can properly constrain extreme events. Global and climate type results indicate that parameter uncertainty remains an important concern for predicting extreme events even after applying monthly and annual constraints to the ensemble, suggesting a need for improved prior distributions of the model parameters as well as improved observations. This study contributes a comprehensive evaluation of land surface modeling for global flood and drought monitoring and suggests paths forward to overcome the challenges posed by parameter uncertainty.


OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this report was to update previous estimates of the association between mental disorders and earnings. Current estimates for 2002 are based on data from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R).

METHOD
The NCS-R is a nationally representative survey of the U.S. household population that was administered from 2001 to 2003. Following the same basic approach as prior studies, with some modifications to improve model fitting, the authors predicted personal earnings in the 12 months before interview from information about 12-month and lifetime DSM-IV mental disorders among respondents ages 18-64, controlling for sociodemographic variables and substance use disorders. The authors used conventional demographic rate standardization methods to distinguish predictive effects of mental disorders on amount earned by persons with earnings from predictive effects on probability of having any earnings.

RESULTS
A DSM-IV serious mental illness in the preceding 12 months significantly predicted reduced earnings. Other 12-month and lifetime DSM-IV/CIDI mental disorders did not. Respondents with serious mental illness had 12-month earnings averaging $16,306 less than other respondents with the same values for control variables ($26,435 among men, $9,302 among women), for a societal-level total of $193.2 billion. Of this total, 75.4% was due to reduced earnings among mentally ill persons with any earnings (79.6% men, 69.6% women). The remaining 24.6% was due to reduced probability of having any earnings.

CONCLUSIONS
These results add to a growing body of evidence that mental disorders are associated with substantial societal-level impairments that should be taken into consideration when making decisions about the allocation of treatment and research resources.


We experimentally demonstrate a record 4096 (=16 × 16 × 16)-ary optical code division multiplexing (OCDM) system at 2.5 Gbps using multidimensional phase shift keying (PSK) codes generated/processed by a single multiport optical encoder/decoder (E/D). To analyze the system performance, we evaluate the power margin and the data confidentiality. For application to access networks, we propose and numerically evaluate the performance of 10 Gbps, 4096-ary optical code division multiple access (OCDMA)-based passive optical network (PON).


If we look at Muslim Family laws in different countries or communities, we can see how different they are from one another and how more or less option-giving they are for women. There is obviously no such thing as the Sharia as a God given law, eternal and a-historical. The fact is there are many different Muslim Family laws and they are really man-made. One of the subtle but most pervasive areas of discrimination against women in the Muslim world today is the inequality that occurs within the context of the family. Throughout Muslim countries, Muslim women are speaking out about such discrimination and are fighting for reform of family laws to promote justice and equality within the family. This Article outlines key discriminatory provisions within Muslim Family Law in Indonesia which is called The Compilation of Islamic Law (1991) and the efforts being made by progress Indonesian Muslim to advocate for comprehensive reform of the Compilation. This effort includes developing an understanding of why and how reform of Muslim family laws is possible using the principle of justice and equality in Islamic perspective. The last part of this article will introduce a new draft of The Compilation of Islamic Law which is called the Counter Legal Draft of The Compilation of Islamic Law (The CLD) in 2004, that is based on the principle that the Quranic ideal for the Muslim family is founded on the fundamental Islamic values of human equality and freedom. The CLD is constructed on the premise that the realization of the Quranic vision of the family can be achieved only if the values of equality and freedom are reflected in all aspects of the regulation of marriage and family.


Background and purpose: One of the key components of social support is the role of family members and friends. The present study was designed to determine the effectiveness of family participation in providing primary care to reduce pain anxiety of burn ICU patients. Materials and methods: In a randomized controlled trial 110 patients were selected by non-random sampling from Zaare Hospital burn ICU in Sari, Iran. Based on random numbers table, they were randomly allocated to control and intervention groups (n= 55 per group). In the intervention group, on day 4 of hospitalization, one of the family members attended the patient's bedside before wound dressing for one-hour for five days. In control group, the practice was done according to the ward routine (non-family attendance). In both groups, burn pain anxiety scale was completed in days three to eight of hospitalization. Data analysis was done in SPSS V.20. Results: There was no significant difference between the two groups in gender, age, total burn surface area, and type of burn. Friedman test indicated significant difference in pain-induced anxiety in different days between the two groups (P<0.001). According to Mann Whitney-U test there was a significant difference between the two groups in mean value of pain induced anxiety during 5 days (P<0.001). Conclusion: In order to lower the anxiety caused by pain in ICU burn patients, non- medicinal methods such as family participation can be applied.


RATIONALE: An estimate of 3 million people present with the diagnosis of epilepsy in Brazil. Psychogenic Nonepileptic Seizures (PNES) are likely to occur in up to 2-33/100.000 people. Paradoxically, very few papers address this significant condition in the Brazilian literature. We describe a Brazilian PNES population and provide a review of the literature. METHODS: we reviewed the clinical history, video-electroencephalographic (VEEG) data, psychiatric diagnosis and prognosis in a series of 45 PNES patients, with emphasis on the demographics, as well as, PNES major clinical presentations and classification. RESULTS: PNES represent 5.2% of the patients referred to the VEEG monitoring at our institution; patients were mostly young with a mean age of 27y/o and a clear predominance of the female gender (78%); the majority of PNES last between 1-5 minutes, but duration was highly variable; 28/45 patients were referred due to "intractable epilepsy" and 14/28 had MR defined mesial temporal sclerosis; about a third of the patients present with the classically described PNES clinical presentation; conversive and dissociative seizures prevail on PNES classification (80%). CONCLUSIONS: clinical and VEEG data on this Brazilian population matches descriptions coming from other series, suggesting potential cross-cultural similarities in the clinical expression of this condition.


Self-incompatibility (SI) is a genetic mechanism in angiosperms that prevents selfing. The SI system in passion fruit (Passiflora edulis Sims) was investigated using hand pollinations. Pollen tube growth was inspected by microscopy, and sequence analysis of potential regulators of this process was carried out. The results revealed that the pollen tubes grew slowly and were often completely arrested in the stigma in an incompatible combination. Under these circumstances the pollen tube was rapidly and significantly rearranged, followed by the rapid deposition of callose in the stigma during the SI response. The structural changes in the pollen grain after an incompatible pollination were investigated using scanning electron microscopy. Furthermore, ultrastructural observations during incompatible interactions showed that the membrane system of the pollen tube was damaged, and fertilisation was not observed or was considerably delayed when compared to compatible interactions. The analysis presented here provides evidence that the passion fruit genome presents similar sequences to those encoding factors involved in SI in different species. These results suggest that, in the SI system of passion fruit, the rejection of an incompatible pollen grain is characterised by drastic structural changes in both pollen and pollen tube.


This essay examines why the diffusion of autocratic rule tends to unfold more slowly, yet with greater effectiveness ('success') than pro-democratic waves often do. A precedent of progressive regime change often inspires fairly unorganized crowds in many other countries to initiative spontaneous emulation efforts, as it happened in the revolutions of 1848 and the Arab Spring of 2011. Yet this lack of organization creates a high risk of failure. By contrast, the overthrow of democracy, which can also stimulate imitation attempts, is usually spearheaded by well-established organizations, such as the military, which jump on the bandwagon less rashly, but pursue their goals more effectively. Therefore, autocratic waves advance with lower speed, yet greater 'success' than pro-democratic riptides often do, as was evident in the diffusion of authoritarianism and fascism during the interwar years and the spread of military dictatorships in Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s.


Based on a lifelong professional and personal interest, "Traditional Buildings" presents a unique survey of vernacular architecture across the globe. The reader is taken on a fascinating tour of traditional building around the world, which includes the loess cave homes of central China, the stilt houses on the shores of Dahomey, the housebarns of Europe and North America, the wind towers of Iran, the Bohio houses of the Arawak Indians of the Caribbean, and much more. Professor's Noble's extensive travels have allowed him to examine many of the building at close quarters and the richly illustrated text includes photographs from his personal collection. With its comprehensive and detailed bibliography, the work will be welcomed by experts and non-specialists alike.


Hydration of tri-calcium silicate (C3S) and di-calcium silicate (C2S) precipitates calcium-silicate-hydrate (CSH) which is the bonding phase responsible for the strength of cementitious materials. Substitution of part of C3S and C2S with aluminum-containing additives alters the chemical composition of hydration products by precipitating calcium-aluminate-silicate-hydrate (CASH). Incorporation of aluminum in the molecular building blocks of CSH entails structural and chemo-mechanical consequences. These alterations can be measured through solid state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments. By conducting a wide spectrum of atomistic simulation methods on thousands of aluminum-containing molecular CASH structures, an overall molecular approach for determination of CASH nanostructure is presented. Through detailed analysis of different order parameters, it is found that aluminum can exhibit a tetra-/penta-/octahedral behavior which is fully consistent with the recent NMR observations. This corresponds to the formation of a class of complex three-dimensional alumino-silicate skeletons with partial healing effect in the CASH nanostructure potentially increasing durability and strength of hydration products. We explored the variation of mechanical observables by increasing aluminum content in CASH structures of varying calcium to silicon ratio. Finally, deformation of CSHs and CASHs of different chemical formula in a multi-scale fashion unravels the effect of chemical composition on the strength and kinematics of deformation in this particular type of composites.


Significant concern has been expressed regarding the potential link between various health problems (eg cancer) and exposure to radiofrequency (RF) electromagnetic energy (EME). In particular mobile phone base stations, commonly referred to as radio base stations (RBS) have attracted public attention.

With the number of these RBS increasing around the world, questions have been raised about the fields generated by these types of equipment. In particular the public and the industry are interested in the strengths of these fields and how they compare to the regulatory standards of various countries.

There are two approaches that can be used to determine the field strengths generated by the RF EME transmitting installations. They can be physically measured using expensive and sophisticated equipment, requiring a significant level of technical knowledge, or alternatively, they can be modelled theoretically using complex simulations.

 Due to the number of installations that already exist, and the rate at which their numbers are increasing, the physical measurement of these sites may be considered impractical and expensive. Therefore, simulation of the RF EME fields from these installations is often the preferred option.

In Australia, the industry code C564:2011 – Mobile Phone Base Station Deployment (CA 2011) ‐ requires that site RF EME assessments for Mobile Phone Radiocommunications Infrastructure must be completed in accordance with the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) prediction methodology Technical Report – Radio Frequency EME Exposure Levels – Prediction Methodologies (Bangay 2002).

 The purpose of the assessments is to provide affected persons in the community with a reliable, objective and near worst case, line‐of‐sight estimate of the maximum levels of RF EME likely to be emitted by the proposed or upgraded mobile phone base station installation, for full‐power operation without producing a gross over‐estimate (CA 2011).

The aim of this study is to test, using actual field measurements, whether the assumptions made in the ARPANSA prediction methodology result in achieving the stated purpose of the assessments as explained above.

This study compares the calculated RF EME levels by a number of commercial software packages, for a number of service providers and technology types (i.e. WCDMA850, GSM900 and 1800 and UMTS2100), at a number of locations, to the measured levels for those same locations.

As part of the measurement component of this study the applicability of a number of spatial averaging assessment techniques will also be considered. In particular the 3, 6 and 9 point spatial averaging techniques recommended in the IEC assessment standard and a 7 point spatial averaging technique, recommended by the Australian Radiation Protection Agency (ARPANSA) are compared and evaluated.

The main findings of this study are:
1. Overall, the ARPANSA prediction methodology does achieve its stated purpose.
2. The largest overestimation of the RF EME levels by simulation was 20.92 dB (124 times). Whilst, this appears to be quite large the largest simulated level was 624 times below the general public limit.
3. The use of a single measurement point to determine RF EME levels for a given location could result in an under estimation of the levels beyond the ±3 dB uncertainity of the measurements (‐8.18 dB). If completing measurements to confirm compliance to the regulatory limits it would be better to use the 9 pt averaging technique when the 1pt measured level is greater than 30% of the applicable limit.
4. Comparisons between the measurement and simulation results revealed that they do not always closely align with each other. However, in all cases where this occurred, the simulated levels did not under estimate the measured levels by more than 0.82 dB beyond the combined uncertainty of the measurements and simulations.


In this paper we consider various blends of implicit and explicit time integration schemes based on the well-known BDF2 method, applied to convection-diffusion problems with dominating convection. A fully implicit treatment of convection terms is often not very efficient. We shall deal with schemes that are implicit in the convection terms only locally in space, without introducing the internal inconsistencies that are common with many time-splitting methods. Along with implementation aspects of the implicit relations, we shall discuss accuracy of the schemes, positivity and monotonicity properties.


Economic globalization demands two important adjustments in how we understand and undertake efforts to protect the global environment. One critical but overlooked effect of globalization is its impact on the sustaining middlethe large but fragile stratum of the Earth's population that lives, works, and consumes in ways most closely approximating genuine sustainability. Although we tend to view the world in dichotomous North/South terms, perhaps the greatest challenge of global environmental protection is to stem the corrosive effects of globalization on both ends of this middle stratum. Second, we must understand and respond to the ways that globalization undermines traditional regulatory approaches to environmental protection. Power in global production systems has shifted both upstream and downstream from the factory floor, where environmental efforts traditionally have focused. Viewing the problem from the consumption angle calls attention to the importance of following economic power downstream in global commodity chains, to the ideologies, symbols, relationships and practices that drive consumption.


The aim of the present work is to obtain a chemical-mechanical pulp (CMP) from poplar wood with improved properties, to be used in packing papers in place of more expensive softwood or hardwood pulp. For improving the CMP quality indicators, a preliminary treatment of the pulp has been carried out with a mixture of oxidizing enzymes produced from Phanerochaete chrysosporium, including lignin peroxidase, manganese peroxidase, and laccase. The two types of fiber materials obtained were double-stage bleached and then ground to 30SR. It was found that preliminary enzyme treatment yielded CMP with improved physical, mechanical, and optical properties. The enzyme-pretreated CMP also refined faster, thus reducing the electricity consumption. Bleached CMP from poplar wood, obtained after preliminary enzyme treatment, could be successfully utilized at levels up to 40% in the composition of various packaging papers.


The binding of metal ions to self-assembled nitrilotriacetic acid (NTA)-modified thioalkane monolayers was monitored by impedance spectroscopy via a capacitance change of the blocking gold electrode. Binding to a fluorescent NTA-derivative and the native NTA, measured in bulk by fluorescence quenching and isothermal titration calorimetry, was determined for comparison. Surface and bulk absolute dissociation constants Kabs of metal ion−NTA complexes for these three derivatives showed no significant differences. Cu2+ concentrations as low as 0.5 nM (30 ppt) could be detected by impedance spectroscopy. This concept of metal ion trace detection might be further extended to other chelating groups for use in future applications.


&NA; Trophic level (TL)‐based indicators are commonly used to track the ecosystem effects of fishing as the selective removal of organisms from the food web may result in changes to the trophic structure of marine ecosystems. The use of a fixed TL per species in the calculation of TL‐based indicators has been questioned, given that species' TLs vary with ontogeny, as well as over time and space. We conducted a model‐based assessment of the performance of fixed TL‐based indicators vs. variable TL‐based indicators for tracking the effects of fishing pressure. This assessment considered three TL‐based indicators (the trophic level of the landed catch (TLc), the marine trophic index (MTI) and the trophic level of the surveyed community (TLsc)), three fishing scenarios that targeted specific model groups (the low TL scenario (LTL), the high TL scenario (HTL) and a scenario encompassing broad‐scale exploitation (ALL)) and ten contrasting marine ecosystems with four types of ecosystem modelling approaches that differ in their structure and assumptions. Results showed that, overall, variable TL‐based indicators have a greater capacity for detecting the effects of fishing pressure than fixed TL‐based indicators. Across TL‐based indicators, TLsc displayed the most consistent response to fishing whether fixed or variable species' TLs were used, as well as the highest capacity for detecting fishing effects. This result supports previous studies that promote the use of survey‐based indicators over catch‐based indicators to explore the impacts of fishing on the structure of marine ecosystems. Across fishing scenarios, the low trophic level fishing scenario (LTL) resulted in the lowest consistency between fixed and variable TL‐based indicator responses and the lowest capacity of TL‐based indicators for detecting fishing effects. Overall, our results speak to the need for caution when interpreting TL‐based indicator trends, and knowledge of the broader context, such as fishing strategies and exploitation history.


BACKGROUND
Asthma is a common chronic respiratory condition, the diagnosis of which depends on symptoms and objective evidence of variable airflow obstruction or airway hyperresponsiveness. The proportion of people who have had objective pulmonary function testing around the time of diagnosis and factors associated with receiving testing are not well understood.

METHODS
A retrospective cohort study was conducted using the health administrative data of all individuals aged 7 years and older with newly physician-diagnosed asthma living in Ontario, Canada between 1996 and 2007. Receipt of pulmonary function testing in the peridiagnostic period was determined and examined across patient sociodemographic and clinical factors.

RESULTS
Only 42.7% (95% CI, 42.6%-42.9%) of the 465,866 Ontarians newly diagnosed with asthma received pulmonary function testing between 1 year prior and 2.5 years following the time of diagnosis. In adjusted analyses, individuals 7 to 9 years old and those 70 years or older were less likely to receive testing than younger adults, individuals in the lowest neighborhood income quintile were less likely to receive testing than those in the highest, and individuals seeing a medical specialist were more likely to receive testing than those seeing only a general practitioner.

CONCLUSIONS
Less than one-half of patients with new physician-diagnosed asthma in Ontario, Canada received objective pulmonary function testing around the time of diagnosis. Further study is needed to determine why more pulmonary function testing is not being used to diagnose asthma and how barriers to its appropriate use can be overcome.


This is anaccount of a program of research cooperation within the field of publictransportation. The University of Gajah Mada in Yogyakarta, Indonesian andKarlstad University in Sweden has worked together in this program. The reformedand re-organized systems of public transportation in Sweden and Indonesia havebeen the topics of exchange. The program started around 2000 and has developedover some 10 years. The Service and Market Oriented Research Group (SAMOT) at Karlstad University conducts multidisciplinary and internationally recognized research via active collaboration with trade and industry, public sector players, and universities. In doing so, SAMOT will contribute to the long-term sustainable development of passenger transportation services.


Query autocompletion is an important feature saving users many keystrokes from typing the entire query. In this paper we study the problem of query autocompletion that tolerates errors in users' input using edit distance constraints. Previous approaches index data strings in a trie, and continuously maintain all the prefixes of data strings whose edit distance from the query are within the threshold. The major inherent problem is that the number of such prefixes is huge for the first few characters of the query and is exponential in the alphabet size. This results in slow query response even if the entire query approximately matches only few prefixes.

In this paper, we propose a novel neighborhood generation-based algorithm, IncNGTrie, which can achieve up to two orders of magnitude speedup over existing methods for the error-tolerant query autocompletion problem. Our proposed algorithm only maintains a small set of active nodes, thus saving both space and time to process the query. We also study efficient duplicate removal which is a core problem in fetching query answers. In addition, we propose optimization techniques to reduce our index size, as well as discussions on several extensions to our method. The efficiency of our method is demonstrated against existing methods through extensive experiments on real datasets.


Partially ionized fluids can gain net momentum under an electric field, as charged particles undergo momentum-transfer collisions with neutral molecules in a phenomenon termed an ionic wind. Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) thrusters generate thrust by using two or more electrodes to ionize the ambient fluid and create an electric field. We characterize the performance of EHD thrusters of single- (SS) and dual-stage (DS) configurations. SS thrusters refer to a geometry using one emitter electrode, an air gap and a collector electrode with large radius of curvature relative to the emitter. DS thrusters add a collinear intermediate electrode. SS thruster performance was shown to be consistent with a one-dimensional theory. Increasing the gap length requires a higher voltage for thrust onset, generates less thrust per input voltage, generates more thrust per input current and most importantly generates more thrust per input power. A thrust-to-power ratio as high as approximately 100 N kW−1 was obtained. DS thrusters were shown to be more effective than their SS counterparts at producing current, leading to a smaller total voltage necessary for producing equal thrust. However, losses involving ion collection at the intermediate electrode led to reduced thrust-per-power compared with the SS thruster of equal length.


Glutamate is a central metabolite in any living organism because it is the major amino group donor for nitrogen containing compounds. To ensure a constant glutamate supply, Bacillus subtilis tightly regulates glutamate metabolism in dependence of the available carbon and nitrogen sources. The only glutamate synthesizing reaction in B. subtilis is the reductive amination of 2-oxoglutarate by the glutamate synthase GOGAT. The glutamate dehydrogenases (GDHs) of B. subtilis are strictly devoted to glutamate degradation. The genome of the B. subtilis laboratory strain 168 contains the rocG and gudBCR genes, encoding the active GDH RocG and the highly instable and inactive GDH GudBCR, respectively. While transcription of the rocG gene is tightly regulated, the gudBCR gene is constitutively expressed. Upon deletion of the gene encoding RocG, B. subtilis forms suppressor mutants on complex medium. The suppressor mutants synthesize a stable and active GudB+ enzyme, thereby keeping the glutamate metabolism in balance. The aim of this work was to shed more light on the complex regulation of glutamate metabolism and to dissect the role of the GDHs within B. subtilis.
It has been unclear, why the gudBCR gene encoding the inactive GDH GudBCR is stably inherited over many generations in the B. subtilis laboratory strain 168. Here, for the first time a plausible explanation for the stable inheritance of the gudBCR allele under laboratory growth conditions is provided. Compared to a strain synthesizing the active GDHs RocG and GudB+, the laboratory strain producing only RocG has a selective growth advantage when glutamate is scarce. By contrast, with excess of exogenous glutamate the strain expressing the GDHs RocG and GudB+ rapidly outcompetes a strain synthesizing only RocG. Thus, the level of GDH activity strongly influences fitness of the bacteria depending on the availability of glutamate.
In the present work, a mechanism for the degradation of the inactive GDH GudBCR is also proposed. It could be demonstrated, that the arginine kinase McsB and the cognate phosphatase YwlE affect the stability of the GudBCR protein. Furthermore, interaction-studies suggest that the ClpCP protease complex is involved in the degradation of the GudBCR protein. Finally, in this work it could be demonstrated that like the GDH RocG also GudB+ acts as a trigger enzyme that controls the DNA-binding activity of GltC, which is the transcriptional activator of the GOGAT-encoding gltAB genes. Moreover, the essential role of glutamate for the GDH-dependent control of GltC was demonstrated. Only when the internal glutamate concentrations are sufficiently high, the GDH inhibits the DNA binding activity of GltC. Thus, the GDHs function as sensors of the cellular glutamate pool and regulate the glutamate synthesis through interaction with GltC. The finding of the synergistic control of glutamate biosynthesis by glutamate and the GDHs deepens our understanding of the regulation of glutamate metabolism in B. subtilis.


Introduction Libraries worldwide, especially university libraries are increasingly becoming digital conscious. Hundreds of libraries and allied institutions have been launching projects designed to digitize their collections in response to the global information exchange and for wide outreach. However, the process in the developing countries, Nigeria inclusive, has been very challenging. The digitization project has been slow and expensive. The world over, electronic resources are becoming preferred because of their inherent benefit of wide outreach. As a step forward in making prints in hard copy format available online for our teeming users, it becomes essentially necessary to digitally scan our library materials especially the newspapers, theses and court cases so that many users can gain access to a wide variety of information online. Digitization refers to all of the steps involved in the process of making collections of historical and other materials available online. In the world of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and globalization, digitization of materials is fast becoming the norm among libraries as each seeks to contribute its quota to the world information resource. Libraries embark on the digitization of their materials for various reasons. Digitization makes library's resources available electronically thereby providing a wider access to its collections. In a networked campus, users can access the library's digitized resources from their offices and halls of residence even when the library is physically closed. Also, as many people as possible can gain access to as much material as needed at any given time, a difficult situation with a text resource. Furthermore, digitization offers a solution for theft of items especially in developing countries where libraries have no electronic security systems to prevent theft of their collections. It is also a way of preserving aging materials which could have otherwise gone into extinction. It further allows users to search collections rapidly and comprehensively from anywhere at any time. Northwestern University, for instance, uses this to renew and replace on shelf their heavily-used, old and tattered books. The books are digitized, printed, bound and placed back on shelves. And when digitized materials are put on the web, they tend to increase the library's visibility as the users all over the world access the materials. Apart from the machines that act as interfaces, it is now possible to have most library resources stored virtually. The choice of materials to be digitized depends on the priority of each library but there are widely accepted criteria which are normally applied. These include materials that are on high demand by patrons especially when such materials are available in limited copies or are on restricted access; local and unique materials; items that are of immediate and curricular importance; aging materials that are on high demand by patrons; useful materials that are out of publication; and materials that are difficult to handle (1). Several websites exist which bring to light the reports of digitization efforts by several libraries all over the world. In the developed world, digitization appears to be moving towards collaborative efforts. The Portal to Texas History (2) reveals contributions to the project by several libraries including academic libraries, public libraries, museums and archives. The site also brings to focus the range of digitized materials such as weekly newspapers, historical materials, photographs of artifacts, maps, photographs of events, businesses and proceedings of the legislature of the State of Texas etc. There is also the Higher Education Resources On-demand (HERON) project which provides a national service for the UK Higher Educational Sector for copyright clearance, digitization and delivery of electronic articles and book extracts and build up a national database and resource bank of electronic texts (3). …


The protic ionic liquid ethylammonium nitrate [EtNH3+][NO3–] (EAN) can in some ways be considered as an archetypal IL. Certainly, since its first investigation 100 years ago by Walden, it is one of the best known. The study of the dynamics of EAN, with its relatively simple structure, provides an opportunity to better understand the behaviour of more complex ILs. However, there is another reason why EAN warrants special attention: this is because it has been proposed as an analogue of that truly mysterious but very important substance dihydrogen monoxide (aka water). The basis for this claim is an apparent similarity between various H-bonding modes that are observed in the far-infrared (THz) region of both substances. However, such spectra are difficult to measure and even more difficult to interpret without detailed knowledge of other possible modes that might exist in this spectral region. This talk will describe the dynamics of EAN and some closely-related compounds over the extraordinarily wide frequency range from 200 MHz to 10 THz (~350 cm–1) obtained by using a combination of dielectric relaxation and optical Kerr-effect spectroscopies. Detailed analysis of these spectra shows that the observed intensities are actually a complex combination of overlapping and probably coupled modes, including H-bond vibrations, cation and anion librations and possibly other cooperative effects; the relationships between EAN and water are not clear-cut.


The Earth's asthenosphere and lower continental crust can regionally have viscosities that are one to several orders of magnitude smaller than typical mantle viscosities. As a consequence, such shallow low-viscosity layers could induce high-harmonic (spherical harmonics 50-200) gravity and geoid anomalies due to remaining isostasy deviations following Late-Pleistocene glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). Such high-harmonic geoid and gravity signatures would depend also on the detailed ice and meltwater loading distribution and history. ESA's GOCE satellite mission, scheduled for launch summer 2008, is designed to map the quasi-static geoid with centimeter accuracy and gravity anomalies with milligal accuracy at a resolution of 100 kilometers or better. This might offer the possibility of detecting gravity and geoid effects of low-viscosity shallow earth layers and differences of the effects of various Pleistocene ice decay scenarios. For example, our predictions show that for a typical low-viscosity crustal zone GOCE should be able to discern differences between ice-load histories down to length scales of about 150 km. One of the major challenges in interpreting such high-harmonic, regional-scale, geoid signatures in GOCE solutions will be to discriminate GIA-signatures from various other solid-earth contributions. It might be of help here that the high-harmonic geoid and gravity signatures form quite characteristic 2-D patterns, depending on both ice load and low-viscosity zone model patterns.


Abstract. Biogenic influences on the composition and characteristics of aerosol were investigated on Bird Island (54°00' S, 38°03' W) in the South Atlantic during November and December 2010. This remote marine environment is characterised by large seabird and seal colonies. The chemical composition of the submicron particles, measured by an aerosol mass spectrometer (AMS), was 21% non-sea-salt sulfate, 2% nitrate, 8% ammonium, 22% organics and 47% sea salt including sea salt sulfate. A new method to isolate the sea spray signature from the high-resolution AMS data was applied. Generally, the aerosol was found to be less acidic than in other marine environments due to the high availability of ammonia, from local fauna emissions. By positive matrix factorisation five different organic aerosol (OA) profiles could be isolated: an amino acid/amine factor (AA-OA, 18% of OA mass), a methanesulfonic acid OA factor (MSA-OA, 25%), a marine oxygenated OA factor (M-OOA, 41%), a sea spray OA fraction (SS-OA, 7%) and locally produced hydrocarbon-like OA (HOA, 9%). The AA-OA was dominant during the first two weeks of November and found to be related with the hatching of penguins in a nearby colony. This factor, rich in nitrogen (N : C ratio = 0.13), has implications for the biogeochemical cycling of nitrogen in the area as particulate matter is often transported over longer distances than gaseous N-rich compounds. The MSA-OA was mainly transported from more southerly latitudes where phytoplankton bloomed. The bloom was identified as one of three sources for particulate sulfate on Bird Island, next to sea salt sulfate and sulfate transported from South America. M-OOA was the dominant organic factor and found to be similar to marine OA observed at Mace Head, Ireland. An additional OA factor highly correlated with sea spray aerosol was identified (SS-OA). However, based on the available data the type of mixture, internal or external, could not be determined. Potassium was not associated with sea salt particles during 19% of the time, indicating the presence of biogenic particles in addition to the MSA-OA and AA-OA factors.


Background: Rapid response nursing team assesses patients at an earlier stage of clinical deterioration and reduces mortality rate.
Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the effect of setting up rapid response nursing team on cardiopulmonary arrest and unexpected death in patients admitted to emergency department.
Methods: This randomized clinical trial was performed on 714 patients in the emergency department of selected hospital affiliated to Alborz University of Medical Sciences during 2013. Patients were randomly allocated to two groups. Rapid response nursing team consisted of a critical care nurse and an anesthesia technician that attended in the emergency department during work shifts 24 hours a day. The control group was cared by the department staff as routine. The intervention group was cared by the rapid response nursing team when the patient condition was deteriorating and after a careful evaluation. Results of the interventions were recorded for both groups. Data were analyzed using T- test, Chi-square test, and Fisher's exact test.
Findings: There was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of age and gender. There were significant associations between setting up rapid response nursing team and transfer rate to the intensive care units and mortality rate outside of the intensive care units.
Conclusion: With regards to the results, setting up rapid response nursing team was effective in reducing transfer rate to the intensive care unit, mortality rate and cardiopulmonary arrest.

Keywords: Nursing Team, Sudden Death, Heart Arrest, Hospital Emergency Service


GPUs have recently been used to accelerate data-parallel applications for they provide easier programmability and increased generality while maintaining the tremendous memory bandwidth and computational power. Most of those applications use CPU as a controller who decides when GPUs run the computing-intensive tasks. This CPU-control-GPU-compute pattern wastes much of CPU's computational power. In this paper, we present a new CPU-GPU cooperative pattern for bioinformatics applications which can use both of CPU and GPU to compute. This pattern includes two parts: 1) the load-balanced data structure which manages data to keep the computational efficiency of GPU high enough when the length distribution of sequences in a sequence database is very uneven; 2) multi-threaded code partition which schedules computing on CPU and GPU in a cooperative way. Using this pattern, we develop CuHMMer based on HMMER which is one of the most important algorithms in bioinformatics. The experimental result demonstrates that CuHMMer get 13x to 45x speed up over available CPU implementations and could also outperform the traditional CUDA implementations which use CPU-control-GPU-compute pattern.


Antimicrobial polymers as mimics of natural antimicrobial peptides are emerging as an alternative to classic antibiotics due to their potency, selectivity and lower susceptibility to resistance. The key chemical aspects necessary to confer high activity and selectivity to the polymer chain composition are largely known. However, little attention has been paid to how end-groups affect the overall biological activity. Here we report the use of RAFT polymerization to obtain eight well-defined cationic methacrylate polymers which bear either amine (PA1–4) or guanidine (PG1–4) pendant groups, while systematically varying the R- and Z-RAFT end-groups. These polymers were assessed in haemotoxicity assays as well as antimicrobial testing against clinically relevant pathogens; such as a vigorously biofilm forming strain of Staphylococcus epidermidis (S. epidermidis) and a vancomycin and methicillin resistant strain of Staphylococcus aureus (VISA) as well as the opportunistic fungus Candida albicans (C. albicans). The R-group was found to dominate the measured toxicity of polymers. Replacement of the anionic cyanovaleric acid R-group (PA1) with the neutral isobutyronitrile (PA3) led to over a 20 fold increase in the haemolytic activity of the polymers. The Z-group, however, was found to have more influence on the antimicrobial activity of the polymers against both VISA and C. albicans, whereby polymers with a long, lipophilic dodecylsulfanyl Z-group (PA1) were found to be more potent than those with either an ethylsulfanyl or no ZCS2-group. These results indicate that chemical control over the end-groups is a key element for achieving the desired high biological activity and selectivity, particularly when low molecular weights are required for maximum antibacterial activity.


Nitrous oxide derived from soils is a main contributor to the greenhouse gas effect and a precursor to ozone-depleting substrates; however, the source processes and interacting controls are not well established. This study was conducted to estimate the magnitude and source (nitrification vs. denitrification) of N 2 O production as affected by the form of N fertilizer, soil water content, and redox potential (Eh). Soils from continuous corn (Zea mays L.) experimental plots with a history of eight consecutive years of either side-dressed urea―NH 4 NO 3 (UAN) or fall liquid swine manure (FM) were collected and N 2 O evolution was traced in both aerobic and anaerobic incubations using 15 N labeling. Partitioning results were highly variable but suggested that enhanced denitrification occurred after an extreme increase in soil water content (from 45 to 90% water-filled pore space [WFPS]) while a more coupled nitrification-denitrification process drove N 2 O evolution at moderate water content (55% WFPS). Manured soils at high water contents registered shorter duration peaks but with higher overall N 2 O production rates than those observed at moderate water content (7-d weighted average of 0.61 vs. 0.09 μg N 2 O kg ―1 soil h ―1 ). Under anoxic conditions, manured soils showed higher N 2 O production rates than UAN soils (up to 336 and 145 μg N 2 O kg ―1 soil h ―1 , respectively) shortly after flooding, which coincided with a sharp drop in Eh (from 575 to 466 mV). Irrespective of the N source, a narrow, consistent Eh range for N 2 O production occurred under moderate reducing conditions (420-575 mV). These results indicate that soils receiving repeated manure application that are subject to intensive, recurrent soil rewetting events may be prone to higher N 2 O emissions.


The excitation of surface-localized polaronic states has recently been discussed as an additional photocatalytic channel to band gap excitation for rutile $\mathrm{Ti}{\mathrm{O}}_{2}$. A contribution from photoexcitation of bulk polarons could, in principle, provide a greater contribution because of their higher number and their protection from oxidation. However, determining such a contribution to the photoyield is challenging and has not been achieved thus far. Here we use two photon photoemission spectroscopy measurements to separate bulk and surface polaron photoexcitation. We find that bulk polarons are less bound by 0.2 eV compared with polarons at the surface, consistent with our results of hybrid density functional theory calculations. Because the excited state is also shifted to higher energy, bulk polarons have the same photoexcitation resonance energy as at the surface (3.6 eV) with a threshold at 3.1 eV. This is degenerate with the band gap, suggesting that bulk polarons could also provide an additional contribution to the photoyield.


ABSTRACT Rheumatic diseases affect about 20% of the population, leading to common symptoms such as joint problems, pain, fatigue, and stiffness. Loneliness is prevalent in individuals with rheumatic diseases. This could be due to not receiving social support and being stigmatized and invalidated, which might be most common in fibromyalgia, a rheumatic disease that lacks medical evidence. The aim of this study was to compare loneliness in distinct rheumatic diseases and to examine the association of loneliness with social support and invalidation. Participants were 927 patients with ankylosing spondylitis (n = 152), fibromyalgia (n = 341), osteoarthritis (n = 150), rheumatoid arthritis (n = 171), or systemic diseases (n = 113). They completed online questionnaires including an 11-point Likert scale assessing loneliness, the Illness Invalidation Inventory (3*I; Kool et al., 2010), and the Social Support Survey (SSS; De Boer, Wijker, Speelman, & De Haes, 1996; Sherbourne & Stewart, 1991). Patients with fibromyalgia experienced significantly more loneliness than patients with ankylosing spondylitis and patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Besides being younger, having lower education, and not working, in multiple regression analyses both lack of social support and invalidation were independently correlated with loneliness. This suggests that to decrease loneliness, therapeutic attention should be given to both increasing social support as well as decreasing invalidation in patients with rheumatic diseases, especially in patients with fibromyalgia.


Biologically active peptides are important for many physiological functions in the human body and therefore serve as interesting starting points in drug discovery processes. In this work the neuropeptide substance P 1–7 (SP1–7, H-Arg-Pro-Lys-Pro-Gln-Gln-Phe-OH), which has been demonstrated to reduce neuropathic pain and attenuate opioid withdrawal symptoms in animal models, has been addressed in a medicinal chemistry program with the overall aim of transforming this bioactive peptide into more drug-like compounds. Specific binding sites for this neuropeptide have been detected in the brain and the spinal cord. Interestingly, the smaller neuropeptide endomorphin-2 (EM-2, H-Tyr-Pro-Phe-Phe-NH2) also interacts with these binding sites, although 10-fold less efficient. In this work the structure–activity relationship of SP1–7 and EM-2, regarding their affinity to the SP1–7 binding site was elucidated using alanine scans, truncation, and terminal modifications. The C-terminal part of both peptides, and especially the C-terminal phenylalanine, was crucial for binding affinity. Moreover, the C-terminal functional group should preferably be a primary amide. The truncation studies finally resulted in the remarkable discovery of H-Phe-Phe-NH2 as an equally good binder as the heptapeptide SP1–7. This dipeptide amide served as a lead compound for further studies. In order to improve the drug-like properties and to find a plausible bioactive conformation, a set of rigidified and methylated dipeptides of different stereochemistry, and analogs with reduced peptide character, were synthesized and evaluated regarding binding, metabolic stability and absorption. Small SP1–7 analogs with retained affinity and substantially improved permeability and metabolic stability were identified. Beside peptide chemistry the synthetic work included the development of a fast and convenient microwave-assisted protocol for direct arylation of imidazoles. Furthermore, microwave-assisted aminocarbonylation using Mo(CO)6 as a solid carbon monoxide source was investigated in the synthesis of MAP amides and for coupling of imidazoles with amino acids. In a future perspective the present findings, together with the fact that some of the SP1–7 analogs discovered herein have been shown to reproduce the biological effects of SP1-7 in animal studies related to neuropathic pain and opioid dependence, can ultimately have an impact on drug discovery in these two areas.


What does it mean to be human? To be human is, in part, to be physically sexed and culturally gendered. Yet not all bodies are clearly male or female. Bodies in Doubt traces the changing definitions, perceptions, and medical management of intersex (atypical sex development) in America from the colonial period to the present day. From the beginning, intersex bodies have been marked as "other," as monstrous, sinister, threatening, inferior, and unfortunate. Some nineteenth-century doctors viewed their intersex patients with disrespect and suspicion. Later, doctors showed more empathy for their patients' plights and tried to make correct decisions regarding their care. Yet definitions of "correct" in matters of intersex were entangled with shifting ideas and tensions about what was natural and normal, indeed about what constituted personhood or humanity. Reis has examined hundreds of cases of "hermaphroditism" and intersex found in medical and popular literature and argues that medical practice cannot be understood outside of the broader cultural context in which it is embedded. As the history of responses to intersex bodies has shown, doctors are influenced by social concerns about marriage and heterosexuality. Bodies in Doubt considers how Americans have interpreted and handled ambiguous bodies, how the criteria and the authority for judging bodies changed, how both the binary gender ideal and the anxiety over uncertainty persisted, and how the process for defining the very norms of sex and gender evolved. Bodies in Doubt breaks new ground in examining the historical roots of modern attitudes about intersex in the United States and will interest scholars and researchers in disability studies, social history, gender studies, and the history of medicine.


This study investigated nutritive properties of aqueous extract of J. carnea leaves and its effects on haematological and biochemical indices of anaemia induced male Wistar albino rats. In the nutritional study, proximate composition, phytochemicals, antinutritonal factors, minerals and vitamins analyses were carried out using standard analytical procedures. Eighteen male Wistar albino mice were used for the acute toxicity study while 28 male Wistar albino rats were used for haematological and biochemical study. The rats were randomly distributed into seven groups of four rats each with group 1 as normal control. Group 2 was anaemia induced untreated, and group 3 was anaemia induced treated with 50 mg/kg b. wt. of Astyfer. Groups 4-6 were anaemia induced and treated with 100, 300 and 500 mg/kg b. wt. of the extract respectively. Group 7 was non-anaemic rats that received 500 mg/kg b. wt. of the aqueous extract. Nutritional study showed richness of the aqueous extract in proximate composition, phytochemicals, minerals and vitamins contents. The extract caused no adverse reactions or death in the animals indicating it is relatively safe for consumption. Significant (p<0.05) reduction in the levels of haematological indices observed in anaemic rats were significantly (p<0.05) reverted within 4 to 8 d of treatment with the extract when compared with group 2. There were no significant difference observed in the liver marker enzymes activities and renal function indices concentrations of all the anaemic rats treated with the aqueous extract when compared with normal control, which could be attributed to the aqueous extract lacking potentials of causing liver and renal damage. These findings suggest that aqueous of J. carnea leaves is safe, nutritionally rich with no toxic effects on liver and kidney function indices, and possesses anti-anaemic effects due to its blood boosting and replenishing properties.


Constellations are colored planar maps that generalize different families of maps (planar maps, bipartite planar maps, bi-Eulerian planar maps, planar cacti, ...) and are strongly related to factorizations of permutations. They were recently studied by Bousquet-Melou and Schaeffer who describe a correspondence between these maps and a family of trees, called Eulerian trees. In this paper, we derive from their result a relationship between planar constellations and another family of trees, called stellar trees. This correspondence generalizes a well known result for planar cacti, and shows that planar constellations are colored Lagrangian objects (that is objects that can be enumerated by the Good-Lagrange formula). We then deduce from this result a new formula for the number of planar constellations having a given face distribution, different from the formula one can derive from the results of Bousquet-Melou and Schaeffer, along with systems of functional equations for the generating functions of bipartite and bi-Eulerian planar maps enumerated according to the partition of faces and vertices.


From June to October 1987, JT-60 achieved fusion product (ne(0). tau E*.Ti(0)) of 6*1019 m-3.keV.s with hydrogen plasma at plasma current of 2.8 to 3.1 MA with neutral beam power of approximately 20 MW. The central electron density of 1.3*1020 m-3 was obtained at plasma current of 3 MA with 13 approximately 20 MW neutral beam power and the confinement time reached 0.14-0.18 s. An offset linear scaling law like the Shimomura-Odajima scaling on confinement time will be able to reproduce experimental data better than that of the Goldston type scaling. With low beam energy injection approximately 40 keV, confinement degradation was found. Many short periods (0.05 approximately 0.1 s) of H-mode phase were found in outside X-point divertor discharges with NB or NB+RF(LH or IC) heating power above 16 MW. However, improvement in energy confinement time was limited to 10 %. The ballooning/interchange stability analyses were also made for the outside X-point divertor equilibrium in connection with H0-phase capability. Heating powers of 9.5 MW and 1.9 MW were obtained by LHRF, ICRF injection, respectively. In combined LHRF and NB heating, the incremental energy confinement time of 0.064 s was obtained, which is the same level of that of NB heating only. In combined NB and on-axis ICRF heating of low ne discharge, an incremental energy confinement time of 0.21 s was obtained, which is three times as long as those of NB or ICRF heating only. High energy beam ions were accelerated by ICRF in the central region of the plasma.


Restoration of hearing is associated with resocialization of those affected and thus forms an important aspect of rehabilitation of individuals suffering from chronic suppurative otitis media. The surgeons with time have become more interested in returning back the hearing along with treating infection in the middle ear cleft. The zeal to restore hearing has lead to the evolution of newer surgical techniques as well as improved indicators of surgical outcome. However, even after six decades of introduction of tympanoplasty, the goal of achieving stable and long term hearing results continues to be ambiguous. Different authors in the past have used different methods to compare the postoperative hearing results. Lack of universal criteria and the shortcomings of the different variables used in different populations has been a major obstacle in reporting of improved hearing results after tympanoplasty. Postoperative air conduction threshold, average hearing gain, post-operative air-bone gap and air bone gap closure are few of the parameters commonly used to assess the hearing outcome of tympanoplasty. The article provides a comprehensive review of the parameters when used alone or in combination with others and the results in terms of success obtained in light of these variables.