Mobile data traffic is expected to increase 11-fold between 2013 and 2018. A more dynamic and flexible network is needed to cope with the growing data volume. Software defined networking (SDN) enabled by, for example, the OpenFlow protocol is a potential solution to improve the flexibility and agility of the mobile data network by decoupling the control plane from the user plane. By centralizing the control plane into data centers, the network elements may become more standardized, which lowers prices due to scale-benefits and competition. At the same time, SDN may ease network management and deployment, which further reduces mobile network operator's (MNO's) costs. On the other hand, data centers become more complex due to virtualization and increased control intelligence. To quantify the cost impact, the changes in capital (CAPEX) and operational expenditure (OPEX) from adding SDN into the LTE network are modeled in this paper by using a Finnish reference network. The quantitative results show that SDN reduces the network related annual CAPEX by 7.72% and OPEX by 0.31% compared to non-SDN LTE. These changes, though a small fraction of the total expenses of a Finnish MNO, may have a significant influence on the profit levels.


Essential oils of eight plants, selected after an ethnobotanical survey conducted in Bukusu community in Bungoma County, western Kenya (Tagetes minuta, Tithonia diversifolia, Juniperus procera, Solanecio mannii, Senna didymobotrya, Lantana camara, Securidaca longepedunculata, and Hoslundia opposita), were initially screened (at two doses) for their repellence against brown ear tick, Rhipicephalus appendiculatus, using a dual-choice climbing assay. The oils of T. minuta and T. diversifolia were then selected for more detailed study. Dose-response evaluations of these oils showed that T. minuta oil was more repellent (RD50 = 0.0021 mg) than that of T. diversifolia (RD50 = 0.263 mg). Gas chromatography-linked mass spectrometric (GC-MS) analyses showed different compositions of the two oils. T. minuta oil is comprised mainly of cis-ocimene (43.78%), dihydrotagetone (16.71%), piperitenone (10.15%), trans-tagetone (8.67%), 3,9-epoxy-p-mentha-1,8(10)diene (6.47%), β-ocimene (3.25%), and cis-tagetone (1.95%), whereas T. diversifolia oil is comprised mainly of α-pinene (63.64%), β-pinene (15.00%), isocaryophyllene (7.62%), nerolidol (3.70%), 1-tridecanol (1.75%), limonene (1.52%), and sabinene (1.00%). The results provide scientific rationale for traditional use of raw products of these plants in controlling livestock ticks by the Bukusu community and lay down some groundwork for exploiting partially refined products such as essential oils of these plants in protecting cattle against infestations with R. appendiculatus.


My first duty to the members of the Geological Society of Glasgow is to thank them for the honour they conferred some time ago upon me in electing me their President. I have, as they know, a keen interest in the welfare of their Society. It is now more than thirty years since my connection with them began, when one of my earliest papers was published in the first volume of their Transactions. Since that time, although I have been less frequently among them, my interest in their progress and prosperity has by no means lessened. This Society has done so much good service to the cause of geology in Scotland that when asked to become its President I felt it to be at once a privilege and a pleasure to consent. I have been unable until now to appear before you, and I am sorry to say that even now I have found it impossible to secure leisure enough for the preparation of any formal address for this occasion. I propose, therefore, to speak to you on a subject which, while it cannot fail to have some interest for you, has for myself the great advantage, that having occupied me pretty closely for the last twenty years, it is a topic on which I may venture to speak without special preparation—the story of the last volcanoes that have been in eruption in the British Isles. You are aware that these islands of ours are specially fortunate in the wonderfully This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract


Your quick, no-nonsense guide to building real-world apps with Angular 2About This Book The first and best overview of Angular 2 on the market this guide gathers together everything there is to know about Angular 2 and groups it into intuitive sections. This book is your detailed map of every feature and its use cases. The author has done all the hard work of fitting everything Angular 2 means for developers together for you, making this book the quickest way to learn Angular 2 from scratch. Who This Book Is ForThis book is targeted at web developers who want to build the next generation of state-of-the-art mobile and desktop web applications with Angular 2. This book does not require you to have prior exposure to either Angular 1.x or 2, although comprehensive knowledge of JavaScript is assumed. It's great for newcomers to Angular who learn best through clear explanations and definitions of concepts. What You Will LearnSet up your working environment in order to have all the tools you need to start building Angular 2 components with minimum effortGet up to speed with TypeScript, a powerful typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScriptTake full control of how your data is rendered and updated upon data changesBuild powerful web applications based on structured component hierarchies that emit and listen to events and data changes throughout the elements treeExplore how to consume external APIs and data services and allow data editing by harnessing the power of web forms made with Angular 2Deliver seamless web navigation experiences with application routing and state handling common features with easeDiscover how to bulletproof your applications by introducing smart unit testing techniques and debugging toolsIn DetailAngular 2 was conceived as a complete rewrite in order to fulfill the expectations of modern developers who demand blazing fast performance and responsiveness from their web applications. This book will help you learn the basics of how to design and build Angular 2 components right from the beginning, providing full coverage of the TypeScript syntax required to follow the examples included. From that point on, we will build upon our first components, interconnect them, and give shape to larger web applications. We will then move to implementing routing in Angular 2, analyzing how to handle application states, and navigating from one component to another in depth. After this, the book features full coverage of web forms and user input validation, later leveraging all of this information to go through the basics of implementing user authentication in Angular 2 and providing a bird's eye view of the different strategies at hand to secure pages and areas of your website. Animating components and DOM elements with Angular 2 is also covered in this book. The final part of this book provides broad insights into how to unit test components and other modules such as services, directives, routes or pipes. Style and approach This book covers everything there is to know about getting well-acquainted with Angular without bogging you down. Everything is neatly laid out under clear headings for quick consultation, offering you the information required to understand a concept immediately, with short relevant examples of each feature.


In the 20th century, thirteen distinct human immunodeficiency viruses emerged following independent cross-species transmission events involving simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIV) from African primates. In the late 1900s, pathogenic SIV strains also emerged in the United Sates among captive Asian macaque species following their unintentional infection with SIV from African sooty mangabeys (SIVsmm). Since their discovery in the 1980s, SIVs from rhesus macaques (SIVmac) and pig-tailed macaques (SIVmne) have become invaluable models for studying HIV pathogenesis, vaccine design and the emergence of viruses. SIV isolates from captive crab-eating macaques (SIVmfa) were initially described but lost prior to any detailed molecular and genetic characterization. In order to infer the origins of the lost SIVmfa lineage, we located archived material and colony records, recovered its genomic sequence by PCR, and assessed its phylogenetic relationship to other SIV strains. We conclude that SIVmfa is the product of two cross-species transmission events. The first was the established transmission of SIVsmm to rhesus macaques, which occurred at the California National Primate Research Center in the late 1960s and the virus later emerged as SIVmac. In a second event, SIVmac was transmitted to crab-eating macaques, likely at the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates in the early 1970s, and it was later spread to the New England Primate Research Center colony in 1973 and eventually isolated in 1986. Our analysis suggests that SIVmac had already emerged by the early 1970s and had begun to diverge into distinct lineages. Furthermore, our findings suggest that pathogenic SIV strains may have been more widely distributed than previously appreciated, raising the possibility that additional isolates may await discovery.


The aim of this study was to identify the best predictor of sleep quality (SQ) among physical behavior or capacity-related variables, namely physical activity, sedentary time, fitness, and physical function (activities of daily living) of independent elders using a representative sample of Portuguese aged 65 years and older (N = 437). SQ and activities of daily living were evaluated by a questionnaire, sedentary time, and physical activity through accelerometry, and physical fitness by means of the Senior Fitness Test. The logistic regression analysis revealed that activities of daily living measured by the Composite Physical Function was the only explanatory variable discriminating between poor SQ and good SQ. Receiver operating characteristic analysis showed that the best trade-off between sensitivity and specificity to discriminate older adults with poor SQ and good SQ was 20 points in the Composite Physical Function (sensitivity = 57.9%; specificity = 60.9%; area under the curve = 0.600, 95% confidence interval [0.536, 0.665], p = .003). Better physical function seems to be associated with better SQ in independent elders.


This paper discusses electrically controllable dispersion filters for optical radiation, based on a small-particle–liquid-crystal system. The transmission spectra of tunable dispersion filters are analyzed, using as an example the liquid-crystal-ZhKM-1289–SiO2-microparticle system. It is shown that such a system can be used to filter radiation in the near-UV, visible, and IR regions. The position of the transmission band maxima depends on the control voltage and can be smoothly tuned in the wavelength intervals 0.33–0.55µm and 1.8–3.2µm.


The youngest sampled submarine lava flow, which erupted June 1993 on the Juan de Fuca Ridge, provides the basis for a tight constraint on the initial or zero-age magnetization state of MORB. Detailed profiles of magnetic hysteresis parameters, Curie temperatures, and unblocking temperatures of NRM with respect to the chilled margin of a pillow fragment show evidence of significant oxidation, which preferentially affected the finest grain-size fraction and principal remanence carrier of the titanomagnetite magnetic mineralogy. The oxidation must have occurred during or immediately after initial cooling, implying that MORB is already appreciably magnetically altered before aging. Nevertheless, successful results of Thellier paleointensity experiments on the basalt sample lend support to the idea that crustal magnetization represented by MORB preserves a record of geomagnetic intensity variations that may be reflected in small-scale magnetic anomalies.


Advanced computer architectures rely mainly on compiler optimizations for parallelization, vectorization, and pipelining. Efficient-code generation is based on a control dependence analysis to find the basic blocks and to determine the regions of control. However, unstructured branch statements, such as jumps and goto's, render the control flow analysis difficult, time-consuming, and result in poor code generation. Branches are part of many programming languages and occur in legacy and maintenance code as well as in assembler, intermediate languages, and byte code. A simple and effective technique is presented to convert unstructured branches into hammock graph control structures. Using three basic transformations, an equivalent program is obtained in which all control statements have a well-defined scope. In the interest of predication and branch prediction, the number of control variables has been minimized, thereby allowing a limited code replication. The correctness of the transformations has been proven using an axiomatic proof rule system. With respect to previous work, the algorithm is simpler and the branch conditions are less complex, making the program more readable and the code generation more efficient. Additionally, hammock graphs define single entry single exit regions and therefore allow localized optimizations. The restructuring method has been implemented into the parallelizing compiler FPT and allows to extract parallelism in unstructured programs. The use of hammock graph transformations in other application areas such as vectorization, decompilation, and assembly program restructuring is also demonstrated.


HEAL stands for Humanism Evolving Through Arts and Literature. Bringing together writing and art from a variety of sources HEAL acts as a platform where medical students share their growth and development, where faculty and staff impart their knowledge gained from experience, and where members of the community express how health and healing have impacted their lives, so that when viewed together may promote humanism. HEAL strives to bridge the growing gap between patients and their providers while hoping to produce a meaningful creative outlet to those who participate in the publication of its bi-monthly newsletter and annual literary journal. Students, faculty, staff, and members of the community affiliated with the FSU COM are encouraged to submit their art and literary works. For each group, HEAL serves a different purpose.


We present mid-infrared spectra from individual enstatite silicate grains separated from primitive type 3 chondritic meteorites. The 2‐16 μm transmission spectra were taken with microspectroscopic Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) techniques as part of a project to produce a data base of infrared spectra from minerals of primitive meteorites for comparison with astronomical spectra. In general, the wavelength of enstatite bands increases with the proportion of Fe. However, the wavelengths of the strong En100 bands at 10.67 and 11.67 decrease with increasing Fe content. The 11.67-μm band exhibits the largest compositional wavelength shift (twice as large as any other). Our fits of the linear dependence of the pyroxene peaks indicate that crystalline silicate peaks in the 10-μm spectra of Herbig AeBe stars, HD 179218 and 104237, are matched by pyroxenes of En90−92 and En78−80, respectively. If these simplistic comparisons with the astronomical grains are correct, then the enstatite pyroxenes seen in these environments are more Fe-rich than are the forsterite (Fo100) grains identified in the far-infrared which are found to be Mg end-member grains. This differs from the general composition of type 3 chondritic meteoritic grains in which the pyroxenes are more Mg-rich than are the olivines from the same meteorite.


Background/Purpose: To study goal achievement among patients with chronic inflammatory arthritis after arthritis rehabilitation performed in multidisciplinary team rehabilitation programs.Methods: 146 consecutive patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and spondylarthritis (SpA), age 18 years or older, completing arthritis rehabilitation for 5 days or more at 2 rheumatology specialist units were included in this study. At admission and discharge the patients were evaluated with measures on functioning (HAQ), self efficacy (ASES), psychological health (Hopkins Symptom Checklist – HSCL-25), pain and fatigue (NRS) and on health related quality of life (HRQoL) as captured by the EQ-5D and the SF-36. Comorbidity and social demographics was also reported. The patients, in cooperation with the health professionals, set individual goals for their rehabilitation period. At discharge the patients reported if the goal was achieved completely, partially or not at all.Non parametric statistical analyses were performed and Chi2 and Kruskal-Wallis analyses were used to study the relationship between goal achievement and baseline and change variables. Results: 108/146 patients reported whether goals were achieved or not, and were included in further analyses. 76% were females and 55% had RA. At baseline median age was 54 years (IQR 17), median HAQ 0.88 (IQR 0.88), median HRQoL as captured by the EQ-5D 0.62 (IQR 0.57) and median psychological wellbeing according to HSCL-25 1.62 (IQR 0.68). The patients reported median fatigue 6.0 (IQR 4.0) and median pain 5.0 (IQR 3.0) when entering the rehabilitation program that lasted for median 18 days (IQR 2).58/108 patients (54%) rated their goal to be completely achieved, 40 patients (37%) reported partial goal achievement while 10 (9%) patients had not achieved their goal. Positive reporting of having followed the recommendations (compliance) during the rehabilitation period was obtained from 100 (93%) of the patients.Change after intervention and compliance did not affect reports of goal achievement after rehabilitation. Females reported goal achievement more often than men did (p=0.019). Those not achieving their goals reported less psychological wellbeing (HSCL-25, p=0.011) at admission together with reports of worse pain (SF-36bp, p=0.011). Conclusion: 54% of the included patients reported complete goal achievement after arthritis team rehabilitation. Neither change after intervention nor compliance affected patients' reports of goal achievement. Female patients were more prone to achieve their goals while patients experiencing less psychological wellbeing or more pain at baseline were less prone to report goal achievement.


The present thesis study is a systematic investigation of information processing at
sleep onset, using auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) as a test of the neurocognitive
model of insomnia. Insomnia is an extremely prevalent disorder in society resulting in
problems with daytime functioning (e.g., memory, concentration, job performance, mood,
job and driving safety). Various models have been put forth in an effort to better
understand the etiology and pathophysiology of this disorder. One of the newer models,
the neurocognitive model of insomnia, suggests that chronic insomnia occurs through
conditioned central nervous system arousal. This arousal is reflected through increased
information processing which may interfere with sleep initiation or maintenance. The
present thesis employed event-related potentials as a direct method to test information
processing during the sleep-onset period.
Thirteen poor sleepers with sleep-onset insomnia and 1 2 good sleepers
participated in the present study. All poor sleepers met the diagnostic criteria for
psychophysiological insomnia and had a complaint of problems with sleep initiation. All
good sleepers reported no trouble sleeping and no excessive daytime sleepiness. Good
and poor sleepers spent two nights at the Brock University Sleep Research Laboratory.
The first night was used to screen for sleep disorders; the second night was used to
investigate information processing during the sleep-onset period. Both groups underwent
a repeated sleep-onsets task during which an auditory oddball paradigm was delivered.
Participants signalled detection of a higher pitch target tone with a button press as they
fell asleep. In addition, waking alert ERPs were recorded 1 hour before and after sleep on
both Nights 1 and 2.As predicted by the neurocognitive model of insomnia, increased CNS activity
was found in the poor sleepers; this was reflected by their smaller amplitude P2
component seen during wake of the sleep-onset period. Unlike the P2 component, the Nl,
N350, and P300 did not vary between the groups. The smaller P2 seen in our poor
sleepers indicates that they have a deficit in the sleep initiation processes. Specifically,
poor sleepers do not disengage their attention from the outside environment to the same
extent as good sleepers during the sleep-onset period. The lack of findings for the N350
suggest that this sleep component may be intact in those with insomnia and that it is the
waking components (i.e., Nl, P2) that may be leading to the deficit in sleep initiation.
Further, it may be that the mechanism responsible for the disruption of sleep initiation in
the poor sleepers is most reflected by the P2 component.
Future research investigating ERPs in insomnia should focus on the identification
of the components most sensitive to sleep disruption. As well, methods should be
developed in order to more clearly identify the various types of insomnia populations in
research contexts (e.g., psychophysiological vs. sleep-state misperception) and…


Alternative approaches to conventional short-term cepstral modelling of speaker characteristics have been proposed and successfully incorporated to current state-of-the art systems for speaker recognition. Particularly, the use of adaptation transforms employed in speech recognition systems as features for speaker recognition is one of the most appealing recent proposals. In this paper, we also explore the use of adaptation transform based features for speaker recognition. However, we consider transformation weights derived from adaptation techniques applied to the Multi Layer Perceptrons that form a connectionist speech recognizer, instead of using transforms of Gaussian models. Modelling of the high-dimensionality vectors extracted from the transforms is done with support vector machines (SVM). The proposed method –named Transformation Network features with SVM modelling (TN-SVM)– is assessed and compared to GMM-UBM and Gaussian Super vector systems on a sub-set of NIST SRE 2008. The proposed technique shows promising results and permits further improvements when it is combined with baseline systems.


Spin-coated polyaniline (PANI) thin films can be made conductive following treatment with a dopant (reducing or oxidising agent). However, de-doping results in loss of electrical properties. We chemically doped PANI films using p-toluene sulfonic acid (pTSA) and camphor sulfonic acid (CSA) and examined their ability to retain these dopants and their conductive properties in physiological media. Changes in the protonation level of these films were assessed by N 1s core line spectra in X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). PANI films were found to de-dope with a decrease in the ratio of N 1s photoelectron signal corresponding to positively charged nitrogen (i.e. –NH2+, NH+) to the total N 1s signal. De-doping of PANI films was confirmed by depletion of the dopant fragment (–SO3−) as determined from both XPS and atomic distribution in Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) images. XPS has been successfully used as a tool to elucidate the deprotonation of PANI films and the loss of the dopant from the bulk.


We have successfully fabricated freestanding single-crystal 6H-SiC cantilevers of several microns size using bulk micromachining with an inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etching system. We have also used these SiC cantilever structures to measure Young's modulus through the use of an atomic force microscope. The measurements were performed on a series of 13 µm thick and 20 µm wide cantilevers with lengths ranging from 100 µm to 350 µm. The average measured Young's modulus of 441 GPa is in excellent agreement with the documented values in the literature.


Security has become a primary concern in order to provide protected communication between mobile nodes in a hostile environment. Unlike the wireline networks, the unique characteristics of mobile ad hoc networks pose a number of nontrivial challenges to security design, such as open peer-to-peer network architecture, shared wireless medium, stringent resource constraints, and highly dynamic network topology. These challenges clearly make a case for building multifence security solutions that achieve both broad protection and desirable network performance. In this article we focus on the fundamental security problem of protecting the multihop network connectivity between mobile nodes in a MANET. We identify the security issues related to this problem, discuss the challenges to security design, and review the state-of-the-art security proposals that protect the MANET link- and network-layer operations of delivering packets over the multihop wireless channel. The complete security solution should span both layers, and encompass all three security components of prevention, detection, and reaction.


Volume weighted average price (VWAP) options are a popular security type in many countries, but despite their popularity very few pricing models have been developed so far for VWAP options. This can be explained by the fact that the VWAP pricing problem is set in an incomplete market since there is no underlying with which to hedge the volume risk, and hence there is no uniquely defined price. Any price, which is obtained will include a market price of volume risk which must be determined from the corresponding volume statistics. Our analysis strongly supports the hypothesis that the empirical volume statistics of ASX equities can be described reasonably well by fitted gamma distributions. Based on this observation we suggest a simple gamma process-based model that allows for the exact analytic pricing of VWAP options in a rather straightforward way.


Excellence in education without equity risks leading to large economic and social disparities; equity in education at the expense of quality is a meaningless aspiration. The most advanced education systems now set ambitious goals for all students, focusing on both excellence and equity. They also equip their teachers with the pedagogic skills that have been proven effective and with enough autonomy so that teachers can use their own creativity in determining the content and instruction they provide to their individual students.
The fourth International Summit on the Teaching Profession brought together education ministers, union leaders and other teacher leaders from high-performing and rapidly improving education systems, as measured by PISA (the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment ). Their aim was to discuss equity, excellence and inclusiveness in education by exploring three questions:
• How are high-quality teachers developed, and how do schools with the greatest need attract and retain them?
• How can equity be ensured in increasingly devolved education systems? and
• What kinds of learning environments address the needs of all students?
To underpin the discussions, this publication identifies some of the steps policy makers can take to build school systems that are both equitable and excellent. The analysis is complemented with examples that illustrate proven or promising practices in specific countries.


The glamour of transvestite fashion is the epitome of 90s style, but the significance of cross-dressing and sex-changing goes much deeper than the annals of fashion. Ekins vividly details the innermost desires and the varied practices of males who wear the clothes of women for the pleasure it gives them (cross-dressers), or who wish to change sex and are actively going about it (sex-changers). This unique and fascinating book transforms an area of study previously dominated by clinical models to look instead at cross-dressing and sex-changing as a highly variable social process. Giving precedence to the processual and ermergent nature of much cross-dressing and sex-changing phenomena, the book traces the phased femaling career path of the 'male femaler' from 'beginning femaling' through to 'consolidating femaling'. Based upon seventeen years of fieldwork, life history work, qualitative analysis, archival work and contact with several thousand cross-dressers and sex-changers, the book meticulously and systematically develops a theory of 'male femaling' which has major ramifications for both the field of 'transvestism' and 'transsexualism', and for the analysis of sex and gender more generally. Male-Femaling provides social and cultural theorists with a lively case study for the generation of new theory. Social psychologists and sociologists interested in seeing grounded theory applied to a particular case study will be well rewarded. It will be essential reading for students of gender studies who seek to explore the interrelations between sex, sexuality and gender from the informants' point of view.


This new and exciting book offers a fresh approach to quantitative finance and utilises novel features, including stereoscopic images which permit 3D visualisation of complex subjects without the need for additional tools. Offering an integrated approach to the subject, A First Course in Quantitative Finance introduces students to the architecture of complete financial markets before exploring the concepts and models of modern portfolio theory, derivative pricing and fixed income products in both complete and incomplete market settings. Subjects are organised throughout in a way that encourages a gradual and parallel learning process of both the economic concepts and their mathematical descriptions, framed by additional perspectives from classical utility theory, financial economics and behavioural finance. Suitable for postgraduate students studying courses in quantitative finance, financial engineering and financial econometrics as part of an economics, finance, econometric or mathematics program, this book contains all necessary theoretical and mathematical concepts and numerical methods, as well as the necessary programming code for porting algorithms onto a computer.


The ATM guaranteed frame rate (GFR) service is intended for best effort traffic that can benefit from minimum throughput guarantees. Edge devices connecting LANs to an ATM network can use GFR to transport multiple TCP/IP connections over a single GFR VC. These devices would typically multiplex VCs into a single FIFO queue. It has been shown that in general, FIFO queuing is not sufficient to provide rate guarantees, and per-VC queuing with scheduling is needed. We show that under conditions of low buffer allocation, it is possible to control TCP rates with FIFO queuing and buffer management. We present analysis and simulation results on controlling TCP rates by buffer management. We present a buffer management policy that provides loose rate guarantees to SACK TCP sources when the total buffer allocation is low. We study the performance of this buffer management scheme by simulation.


Abstract The study distinguishes between three normative approaches that view diversity in the judiciary as a desirable ideal, outlines their expected empirical implications for judicial decision-making, and tests the implications against data from the Israeli Supreme Court. The "reflecting" approach suggests that diversifying the courts is important mainly as a means of strengthening the public's confidence in them and does not impact judicial decisions. The "representing" approach asserts that judges serve as representatives of their social sectors. Thus, they tend to rule in favor of their group's interest only in cases that are relevant to their in-group. The "social background theory" is based on the premise that people of different backgrounds develop distinct worldviews. Hence, social attributes are expected to influence judicial decisions across a wide range of socio-legal issues. The empirical investigation centers on the role of gender and religiosity in judging on five carefully selected socio-legal issues: petitions against the Great Rabbinical Court's rulings, constitutional disputes in all legal procedures, social welfare cases, and criminal appeals in sex offenses and in drug offenses. The results lend support to social background theory with regard to gender and are consistent with the representing approach with respect to religiosity. I further discuss the limitations and policy implications of the findings.


This paper presents a unified approach to fatigue damage in metals based on the theory of damage mechanics. The theory that takes into account the gradual material degradation or deterioration under load is ideally suitedfor characterizing material behaviors progressively damaged under fatigue loading. This is because fatigue damage is caused by material degradation resulting from the initiation, growth, and coalescence of microcracks/voids in real-life materials under repeated/cyclic loading. In addition, a unified fracture criterion based on the damage mechanics theory has been developed to predict the threshold conditions of macrocrack initiation and propagation as well as damage evolution in a material element with or without the presence of a macrocrack. This type of unified approach would not otherwise be possible using the conventional fatigue design methodology based on either the S-N diagram or the concept of fracture mechanics. The proposed fatigue damage model is based on the thermodynamic theory of irreversible processes with internal state variables. With the introduction of a new damage effect tensor, the necessary constitutive equations of elasticity and plasticity coupled with damage are developed. The constitutive equations derived enable the formulation of a fatigue damage dissipative potential function and a fatigue damage criterion. The criterion is designed to subdivide the overall damage into two domains, namely, "fatigue damage" and "plastic damage." The fatigue damage evolution equation is subsequently developed based on the hypothesis that the overall damage is induced by the summation of "fatigue" and ''plastic'' damages. The model has been applied to predict successfully the fatigue life of smooth, notched, and center-cracked specimens under a wide range of loading cycles.


We propose and demonstrate an advanced optical modulation format that makes use of both spectral and temporal phase encodings (2-D) for applications requiring exceptional security. The method combines modulation techniques used in direct-sequence spread-spectrum coding, spectral-phase encoding, and M-ary phase-shift keying with codes generated using cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generators. The wideband transmission signal is very difficult for an eavesdropper to record or analyze. Signal-to-noise ratio limitations imposed by quantum effects enhance the security further. The properties of the transmitted signal make it especially useful for physics-based key expansion systems. We have successfully used this setup to transmit encrypted 155 Mb/s data over 70 km of fiber with a BER value of 4E-5.


Aim: Long-distance dispersal (LDD) events occur rarely but play a fundamental role in shaping species biogeography. Lying at the heart of island biogeography theory, LDD relies on unusual events to facilitate colonisation of new habitats and range expansion. Despite the importance of LDD, it is inherently difficult to quantify due to the rarity of such events. We estimate the probability of LDD of the seagrass Heterozostera nigricaulis, a common Australian species, across the Pacific Ocean to colonise South America.

Location: Coastal Chile, Australia and the Pacific Ocean.

Methods: Genetic analysis of H. nigricaulis collected from Chile and Australia were used to assess the relationship between the populations and levels of clonality. Ocean surface current models were used to predict the probability of propagules dispersing from South East Australia to Central Chile and shipping data used to determine the likelihood of anthropogenic dispersal.

Results: Our study infers that the seagrass H. nigricaulis dispersed from Australia across the entire width of the Pacific (~14,000 km) to colonise South America on two occasions. Genetic analyses reveal that these events led to two large isolated clones, one of which covers a combined area of 3.47 km252. Oceanographic models estimate the arrival probability of a dispersal propagule within 3 years to be at most 0.00264%. Early shipping provides a potential alternative dispersal vector, yet few ships sailed from SE Australia to Chile prior to the first recording of H. nigricaulis and the lack of more recent and ongoing introductions demonstrate the rarity of such dispersal.

Main Conclusion: These findings demonstrate LDD does occur over extreme distance despite very low probabilities. The large number of propagules (100s of millions) produced over 100s of years suggests that the arrival of propagules in Chile was inevitable and confirms the importance of LDD for species distributions and community ecology.


Тhe aim of this study is to establish if there is a connection between the variables such as dominant time perspective, perceived stress, coping mechanisms and satisfaction with life on the one hand, and preferred leadership style on the other hand. The research was conducted with the whole sample consisting of 845 research participants of both genders, and subsamples consisting of managers and members of the workforce (non-managers). The instruments: Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory, (adapt); Cohen Perceived Stress Scale, Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations, (adapt.), Satisfaction with Life Scale, and Fiedler's Inventory for Preferred Leadership Style (adapt.). The research results indicate that by means of the selected psychological constructs a general tendency towards management, a tendency to work in state or private organisations as well as the preference of a certain leadership style can be predicted, with the period of time spent in the managerial position having a significant moderating influence. Due to the dynamics of development of managerial and governing skills, this connection and the possibility of prediction is the most prominent on the subsample of managers holding the position for 12-16 years. The obtained results were discussed in the context of contingency leadership model and were compared to the results from the previous research.


Background & Objectives: Chronic renal failure (CRF), also known as chronic kidney disease, caused by devastated nephron mass of the kidney results in uremia. Hypertension, diabetes mellitus and glomerulonephritis are common etiologic factors of CRF. This condition causes miscellaneous oral manifestations especially in diabetic patients. The aim of this study was to comparison oral manifestations of diabetic and non-diabetic uremic patients undergoing hemodialysis. Methods: A total of 95 patients who undergoing hemodialysis in Razi hospital in Rasht city participated in this descriptive analytical study. Patients were divided into two diabetic and non diabetic groups. Oral cavity examinations were done by latex gloves and single use mirror. Objective and subjective oral manifestations such as xerostomia, bad taste, mucosal pain, uremic odor, coating tongue, petechial, purpura, pale oral mucosa, ulcer, dental eros ion and candida infection were recorded in questionnaire. After gathering of information, the data were analyzed by SPSS 15 software using t-test and chi square statistical test. Results: About 60% of patients (57 person) were men and 40 % (38 person) were women. The mean age of patients was 48 years (range of 20 -76 years). Common subjective oral manifestation in both groups was xerostomia and most common objective oral manifestations were pale oral mucosa, uremic odor and coating tongue respectively. The DMFT index in diabetic group was significantly higher (17.3±7.63) than non -diabetic patients (12.4±8.26). There was no significant statistical correlation between the time of dialysis, number of dialysis appointment during the week and objective and subjective oral manifestations in two groups. Conclusion: Although, the present study has shown an increase in oral manifestations in diabetic patients undergoing hemodialysis relative to non-diabetic group, but this increase was not statistically significant. On the other hand results of our study have indicated significantly higher DMFT in diabetic group in comparison with the non-diabetic group. So patients with diabetes mellitus undergoing hemodialysis need to more oral and dental health care. Key word: Oral Manifestation; Diabetes Mellitus; Hemodialysis; Uremic


Background/Context Since 2002, U.S. federal funding for educational research has favored the development and rigorous testing of interventions designed to improve student outcomes. However, recent reviews suggest that a large fraction of the programs developed and rigorously tested in the past decade have shown null results on student outcomes and, often, intermediate variables. Scholars reporting on null results often explain such results by citing factors they informally identified while they either delivered or observed the program. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study In this paper, we argue for a more systematic approach to examining null results, and develop a framework for evaluating null results based on the policy implementation literature. We then illustrate this approach by examining why one professional development program failed to show impacts on measures of teaching and student learning in a recent study. Setting The professional development program took place in a mid-sized urban school district on the East Coast. The provider was fully scaled up, capable of providing professional development in most U.S. locations. Research Design The main study of this program was conducted as a cluster randomized trial with 105 teachers in 18 schools. Here, we engage in a qualitative case study, using multiple sources of evidence to assess the likelihood that specific reasons for null results are valid. Data Collection and Analysis The case study sources of evidence include observations of professional development; teacher surveys and logs; transcribed videos of teachers' mathematics instruction; and teacher interviews. Findings/Results Our analysis suggested that null impacts could result from district priorities and instructional guidance that compete with professional development goals; weaknesses in the intervention as well as its fit to teachers' needs; and the difficulty of implementing ambitious instructional practice. Conclusions/Recommendations Our findings suggest the need for further elaboration of the null-results framework. They also suggest that professional development providers consider both (a) both the organizations in which programs operate and (b) fit of the program to teachers' needs as potential barriers to success.


Background Alginate microcapsule swelling, which occurs as a result of increased hydrophilicity owing to the Ca++ that remains after rapid chelation of the inner alginate core, is a problem in encapsulation. We have previously shown that exchange of the residual divalent Ca++ with the monovalent Na+ through the use of 6 mmol/L Na2SO4 decreases swelling in chelated alginate-polylysine-alginate microcapsules, and this process enhances their durability. The purpose of the present study was to examine the morphology of Na2SO4-treated microcapsules in long-term incubation with the use of serum-supplemented culture medium. Methods Spherical beads of purified alginate (3%) that were gelled with 1.1% CaCl2 were first coated with polylysine, and then with 0.24% alginate. After rapid chelation of the inner alginate core with 55 mmol/L sodium citrate, the capsules were either incubated for 30 minutes in 6 mmol/L Na2SO4 or left untreated (control). Each group of capsules was then placed in a flask containing Ham's culture medium supplemented with 20% porcine serum and incubated at 37°C. Results The diameters of Na2SO4-treated capsules only increased modestly from a mean±SD of 635±22.08 to 684.53±17.86 μm (P <0.0001) by day 7, with no further increases thereafter. In contrast, control capsules showed a steady increase in their mean diameters, which changed from 639.55±21.44 to 735.48±108.85 μm (P<0.0001) by day 66. In addition, whereas treated capsules remained spherical, control capsules showed progressive polymorphism. Conclusion We have developed a new method of making more durable and stable microcapsules that can be used for islet cell xenotransplantation.


Background
Patient safety, including safe drug administration, is an essential component of the nursing profession. Mathematical competence is considered an essential skill for nurses. Drug administration is among the principle duties of nurses, therefore it is essential that nurses are able to carry out, drug dosage calculations, to assure patient safety. Nursing research indicates that a poor medication calculation skill is an international issue for the nursing profession.
Aim
To verify if calculator use in the written Maths Skill Test (MST) reduces errors in the test and improves undergraduate nursing students' performance. Methods This study compares the test results of the second year nursing students randomized into two groups: an experimental and a control group, respectively with and without a calculator, to understand if the calculator helps students to reduce mathematical errors.
Results
The range of the scores was different between the two groups. The experimental group had scores ranging from 16.15 to 29.25 out of a possible 30, the average score was 24.30 (SD 3.34) and the control group had scores ranging from 12.80 to 27.25, the average was 22.73 (SD 4.38).
Conclusions
Our study shows mathematical deficiencies in both groups, despite the use of a calculator. Implications for practice An integrated approach of several strategies will improve drug calculation skills of nursing students and ensure patient safety


ABSTRACT Obesity, known to cause a systemic elevation in monocyte chemotactic protein-1 (MCP-1), adversely affects normal ovarian function. The aim of this study was to determine whether MCP-1 plays a role in ovarian dysfunction that is related to obesity induced by high-fat (HF) diet intake. Wild type (WT) C57BL/6J mice were fed either normal chow (NC) (Group 1, control group) or HF diet (Group 2). To assess whether MCP-1 is involved in HF-diet-induced ovarian dysfunction, MCP-1 knock-out mice were fed HF diet (Group 3). Body weight, body fat composition, number of oocytes collected following ovarian superovulation with gonadotropins, ovarian macrophage markers and expression of genes important in folliculogenesis and steroidogenesis were quantified in the 3 groups of animals. Animals in Group 2 gained significant body weight and body mass, produced the fewest number of oocytes following superovulation, and had significant alterations in ovarian genes involved in folliculogenesis and steroidogenesis as well as genes involved in inflammation. Although animals in Group 3 had the highest body weight and body fat composition, they produced similar number of oocytes compared to animals in Group 1 but had different ovarian gene expression compared to Group 2. These findings suggest that MCP-1 gene knockout could reverse some of the adverse effects of obesity induced by HF diet intake. Future studies assessing ovarian histology in MCP-1 knock out mouse model will confirm our findings. MCP-1 inhibition could represent a future therapeutic target to protect ovarian health from the adverse effects of HF diet ingestion.


Asian Americans have a lot to gain from progressive immigration reform. Today, our relatives abroad make up the bulk of those who are on a waiting list that can last almost two decades in some categories. Many young men and women from our communities face deportation even though they have grown up in the United States. Some are subjected to harsh Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and detention policies. Of the estimated twelve million undocumented immigrants in the country, demographers tell us that more than 10 percent are from Asian or Pacific countries. Many undocumented Asian Americans are college or college-bound students who have been praying for the passage of the DREAM Act so that they can get legalized and contribute more fully to U.S. society.Perhaps most importantly, Asian Americans should care about immigration policies because even the most cursory review of Asian American history informs us that immigration laws and enforcement have shaped and reshaped our communities since the 1800s. Today, every Asian American subgroup, with the exception of Japanese Americans, remains predominately foreign-born. And when anti-immigrant restrictionists wage attacks on newcomers, it should not take much to realize that the targets could be us, because in fact, the target is us.In this essay, I first review a handful of policies that relate directly to issues affecting Asian immigration. Then I turn to other big immigration policy questions that all Americans, including Asian Americans, should contemplate. Addressing those questions directly and without delay is an important step in resolving the tension over immigration that affects all communities of color in the United States.


Minimizing cross-entropy over the softmax scores of a linear map composed with a high-capacity encoder is arguably the most popular choice for training neural networks on supervised learning tasks. However, recent works show that one can directly optimize the encoder instead, to obtain equally (or even more) discriminative representations via a supervised variant of a contrastive objective. In this work, we address the question whether there are fundamental differences in the sought-for representation geometry in the output space of the encoder at minimal loss. Specifically, we prove, under mild assumptions, that both losses attain their minimum once the representations of each class collapse to the vertices of a regular simplex, inscribed in a hypersphere. We provide empirical evidence that this configuration is attained in practice and that reaching a close-to-optimal state typically indicates good generalization performance. Yet, the two losses show remarkably different optimization behavior. The number of iterations required to perfectly fit to data scales superlinearly with the amount of randomly flipped labels for the supervised contrastive loss. This is in contrast to the approximately linear scaling previously reported for networks trained with cross-entropy.


ABSTRACT The need for analytical support in agricultural research and development has long been recognized, especially for soil fertility evaluation and management, assessment of crop and food quality, and selection and breeding of nutritious food staples. In addition, the demand for analytical research support in the general areas of agriculture interfacing with human health and environmental quality has greatly increased in recent years. The trend for increased demand for analytical support will most likely continue in the future. To meet such diverse, increasing demands for analytical support, we need to upgrade infrastructure facilities and simultaneously teach and train students and young researchers in the use of modern analytical tools. This is prerequisite to providing timely, efficient, and effective analytical support, as such support is the key to monitoring, assessing, and maintaining soil, food, and environmental quality and to breeding nutritious food staples.


Much emphasis in multiagent reinforcement learning (MARL) research is placed on ensuring that MARL algorithms (eventually) converge to desirable equilibria. As in standard reinforcement learning, convergence generally requires sufficient exploration of strategy space. However, exploration often comes at a price in the form of penalties or foregone opportunities. In multiagent settings, the problem is exacerbated by the need for agents to "coordinate" their policies on equilibria. We propose a Bayesian model for optimal exploration in MARL problems that allows these exploration costs to be weighed against their expected benefits using the notion of value of information. Unlike standard RL models, this model requires reasoning about how one's actions will influence the behavior of other agents. We develop tractable approximations to optimal Bayesian exploration, and report on experiments illustrating the benefits of this approach in identical interest games.


A digital holography interferometry was applied for in situ observation of the light-assisted domain reversal in the lithium niobate doped with MgO. The evolution of the light-assisted domain nucleation and growth was reconstructed, and we found a flat-top reversed domain state during the two stages: I. the reversed domain tip propagates in depth and progressively flattens its edge profile; II. the polarization reversal front abruptly changes shape with the formation of two fast-propagating lateral tips. According to experiments and analysis, we find a Gaussian-shaped space charge field and present a model based on a redistribution of the photo-excited carriers to explain the process of light-assisted domain reversal.


The objective of the study was to evaluate an efficacy of sows vaccination protocols in the herd with serious problems affecting efficacy of reproduction. The study was performed in a large pig herd with about 1200 sows. Before vaccination against PCV2, farrowing rate in this farm was about 65%. Sows, boar and replacement gilts were immunized using Circovac vaccine (Merial, France) according to producer's recommendations. Parameters of production were analyzed since 2007 until 2010 in selected batches of sows inseminated at the same weeks of the year (17th, 18th, 19th and 20th) to eliminate seasonal variability. In total, 940 sows were subjected to the study. No significant changes in management during these years were introduced. The applied protocol of sow herd long-term vaccination proved to be very efficient. All measured production parameters: reproduction rate, number of piglets born alive, birth weight of piglets and number of piglets weaned per a litter improved after implementation of immunization program. Moreover, further improvement was observed with vaccination in the following reproduction cycles. The most spectacular effect of vaccination regarded average farrowing rate that increased from 64.76% in control group to 86.93% after basic vaccination. Two years after implementation of vaccination program this parameter reached 93.6%. Number of piglets weaned per sow per a litter improved from 10.31 to 11.74 after one year of vaccination and remained relatively stable through the following year. Simultaneously, the percentage of newborn piglets with birth weight < 1 kg decreased significantly (p < 0.05). To summarize, vaccination against PCV2 influenced positively the insemination rate, number of piglets born alive and weaned per litter as well as birth body weight and percentage of piglets


This study deals with the effects of fireworks on the air quality over the major cities of India during the festival of light known as "Diwali". The effects of firecrackers during the festival was assessed from the ambient concentrations of various air pollutants such as sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and particulate matter (PM) with diameter less than 10 µm. The concentrations of gaseous pollutants such as SO2 and NO2 as well as particulate pollutants such as PM10 and PM2.5 was found about 2-6 times higher during the day of festival because of the use of huge quantity of firecrackers that emits a large amount of pollutants into the atmosphere. Previous studies indicated that the concentrations of above air pollutants during Diwali festival was found several folds higher as compared to the 24-h standard of National Ambient Air Quality Standards of India (NAAQS) given by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), India. Concentrations of metallic elements analysed in fireworks aerosol samples in previous studies in India reported its higher contribution during Diwali festival as compared to the limit value of NAAQS of India. The noise levels in the Indian cities during the night of Diwali festival were also found to be higher. The deterioration of ambient air quality due to the anthropogenic activity such as the use of firecrackers in the megacities of India has significant impacts on human health on a regional scale. This review suggested the development of serious strategies to control the use of firecrackers during the festival of light in the major cities of India to protect human health.


The proceedings contain contributions presented by authors from more than 30 countries at EURODYN 2002. The proceedings show recent scientific developments as well as practical applications, they cover the fields of theory of vibrations, nonlinear vibrations, stochastic dynamics, vibrations of structured elements, wave propagation and structure-borne sound, including questions of fatigue and damping. Emphasis is laid on vibrations of bridges, buildings, railway structures as well as on the fields of wind and earthquake engineering, repectively. Enriched by a number of keynote lectures and organized sessions the two volumes of the proceedings present an overview of the state of the art of the whole field of structural dynamics and the tendencies ot its further development.


The study of celebrity and fandom is a well-established area of inquiry into the field of online popular culture. Adolescent use of social media in practicing fandom and celebrity have been explored in particular detail. Most of these studies have used small data seta and focused on identity construction and the inter- personal dynamics of celebrity and fandom. The result has been an image of online fandom as transpiring in deliberative publics where actions can be understood as rationally motivated- whether in terms of the instrumental rationality of the 'neoliberal' branded self, or in terms of the communicative rationality of the fan community. In this study we have looked at the crowd dynamics of adolescent fandom by gathering a corpus of 110.000 tweets around the top ten trending teen-band tags on twitter during a week of May 2013. The result is an image of fan cultures as structured by cascades of imitation, with very little in terms of deliberation of information transfer. However, this dynamics differs from classic accounts of crowds in two ways. First, the directionality of crowding on twitter is given by the algocratic affordances of the platform itself: this way crowd behavior becomes directed towards the purposeful pursuit of individual visibility (defined as number of RT and @) and, at the collective level of turning a hashtag into a tending topic. Second, individual actors are reflexively aware of the power of the crowd in achieving celebrity and trend and frequently appeal to it in their attempt to pursue these aims. This gives rise to a collaborative ethic whereby individual make affective appeals to the collective identity of the crowd in order to attract mobilize its potential for the purpose at hand.


Leafy spurge is an exotic, noxious, perennial weed which is widely established in the north central United States and is an especially serious problem in the northern Great Plains. In 1997, the Agricultural Research Service and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), initiated a major Integrated Pest Management (IPM) research and demonstration project, TEAM Leafy Spurge (TLS), to develop and demonstrate ecologically based IPM strategies that can produce effective, affordable leafy spurge control. A key component of the project was to expand the use of biological control (biocontrol) agents, specifically flea beetles. To assess the level of insect establishment and the level of current and perceived future control of leafy spurge, a mail survey was conducted of 468 individuals who obtained biocontrol agents (insects) at TLS-sponsored events, as well as County Weed Boards in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. Respondents reported basic information about the number and characteristics of release sites, characteristics of leafy spurge stands, as well as the level of control to date and perceived level of eventual control. Substantial numbers of landowners and County Weed Boards have utilized biocontrol agents as part of their leafy spurge control efforts, as well as collected flea beetles from release sites for redistribution. Respondents indicated biocontrol efforts are affecting at least some level of control and, in some cases, reported substantial reductions in spurge stands.


This book is comprised of two parts, both of which explore modular systems: Pipe-Z (PZ) and Truss-Z (TZ), respectively. It presents several methods of creating PZ and TZ structures subjected to discrete optimization. The algorithms presented employ graph-theoretic and heuristic methods. The underlying idea of both systems is to create free-form structures using the minimal number of types of modular elements. PZ is more conceptual, as it forms single-branch mathematical knots with a single type of module. Conversely, TZ is a skeletal system for creating free-form pedestrian ramps and ramp networks among any number of terminals in space. In physical space, TZ uses two types of modules that are mirror reflections of each other. The optimization criteria discussed include: the minimal number of units, maximal adherence to the given guide paths, etc.


A claim attributes the onset of the Younger Dryas climate interval and a range of other effects ∼12,900 years ago to a comet airburst and/or impact event. One key aspect of this claim centers on the origin of carbonaceous spherules that purportedly formed during intense, impact‐ignited wildfires. Samples from Pleistocene‐Holocene sedimentary sequences in the California Channel Islands and other sites show that carbon spherules and elongate forms are common in samples dating to before, during, and well after the 12,900‐year time horizon, including from modern samples. Microscopic studies show that carbon spherules have morphologies and internal structures identical to fungal sclerotia (such as Sclerotium and Cenococcum). Experimental charring of fungal sclerotia shows that their reflectance increases with temperature. Reflectance measurements of modern and late Pleistocene spherules show that the latter indicate, at most, low‐intensity burning. These data cast further doubt upon the evidence suggesting a catastrophic Younger Dryas impact event.


Five years ago, the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy filing triggered a run on the shadow banking system, leading to cascading collapses here and abroad (D'Arista & Epstein, 2010). Credit markets froze, the stock market plummeted, residential real estate prices fell, and unemployment climbed to double digits. More than four million homes were lost to foreclosure (Blomquist, 2012). What started as a banking crisis stemming from the use of excess short-term leverage to finance high-risk mortgage-linked securities (Taub, 2011), became an economic crisis and the largest downturn since the Great Depression (FCIC, 2011).Members of the Bush administration (Paulson, 2008) made the promise of "never again" to justify the extraordinary government interventions to bail out and shore up the very institutions whose risky practices caused the collapse. The promise that the government would prevent future crashes was what helped Bush convince Congress to support the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, one small piece of the multi-trillion dollar bailout (Herszenhorn, 2008). Members of the Obama administration echoed this promise of never again, assuring the public that if their vision of reform legislation passed, the government would never again bail out the banks (McCarthy, 2010).Yet, today, the top banks are bigger and still borrow excessively in the short-term and overnight markets leaving them vulnerable to large scale, sudden runs. Whereas at the end of 2006, the top six bank holding companies had assets equivalent to 55 percent of GDP (Johnson, 2011), at the end of the second quarter of 2013 their assets were equivalent to 58 percent (National Information Center, 2013 and BEA, 2013). While banks have increased their equity capital slightly, and there are calls by regulators and reformers for even higher requirements, their legal obligation is merely three percent of total non-risk-weighted assets. That allows borrowing of $97 for every $100 in assets, or a 33-1 leverage ratio. Such levels of leverage were a key factor in the 2007-2008 crisis (Admati, DeMarzo, Hellwig & Pfleiderer, 2011), yet both permitted and actual leverage still remains far too high (Admati 2013). Experts like former FDIC Chair Sheila Bair call for a minimum of eight percent (Bair, 2012), and others, such as finance scholars Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig suggest between twenty to thirty percent (Admati & Hellwig, 2013) to help ensure banks internalize, not socialize their losses. In addition to size and leverage, banks are still dangerously interconnected and prone to wholesale runs due to their excessive dependence on short-term, often overnight borrowing through the repurchase agreement (repo) market. Today, repos remain a fragile source of funding (Lew, 2013), with roughly $1.8 trillion in collateral financed through just the tri-party repo segment of the repo market in July 2013 (New York Fed, 2013).


Agricultural cooperatives and producer organizations are institutional innovations which have the potential to reduce poverty and improve food security. This book presents a raft of international case studies, from developing and transition countries, to analyse the internal and external challenges that these complex organizations face and the solutions that they have developed. The contributors provide a greater understanding of the transformation of traditional community organizations into modern farmer-owned businesses. They cover issues including: the impact on rural development and inclusiveness, the role of social capital, formal versus informal organizations, democratic participation and member relations, and their role in value chains.


A decision theory framework can be a powerful technique to derive optimal management decisions for endangered species. We built a spatially realistic stochastic metapopulation model for the Mount Lofty Ranges Southern Emu-wren (Stipiturus malachurus intermedius), a critically endangered Australian bird. Using discrete-time Markov chains to describe the dynamics of a metapopulation and stochastic dynamic programming (SDP) to find optimal solutions, we evaluated the following different management decisions: enlarging existing patches, linking patches via corridors, and creating a new patch. This is the first application of SDP to optimal landscape reconstruction and one of the few times that landscape reconstruction dynamics have been integrated with population dynamics. SDP is a powerful tool that has advantages over standard Monte Carlo simulation methods because it can give the exact optimal strategy for every landscape configuration (combination of patch areas and presence of corridors) and pattern of metapopulation occupancy, as well as a trajectory of strategies. It is useful when a sequence of management actions can be performed over a given time horizon, as is the case for many endangered species recovery programs, where only fixed amounts of resources are available in each time step. However, it is generally limited by computational constraints to rather small networks of patches. The model shows that optimal metapopulation management decisions depend greatly on the current state of the metapopulation, and there is no strategy that is universally the best. The extinction probability over 30 yr for the optimal state-dependent management actions is 50–80% better than no management, whereas the best fixed state-independent sets of strategies are only 30% better than no management. This highlights the advantages of using a decision theory tool to investigate conservation strategies for metapopulations. It is clear from these results that the sequence of management actions is critical, and this can only be effectively derived from stochastic dynamic programming. The model illustrates the underlying difficulty in determining simple rules of thumb for the sequence of management actions for a metapopulation. This use of a decision theory framework extends the capacity of population viability analysis (PVA) to manage threatened species.


The development of the US manufacturing sector over the last half-century displays two striking and somewhat contradictory features: 1) the growth of real output in the US manufacturing sector, measured by real value added, has equaled or exceeded that of total GDP, keeping the manufacturing share of the economy constant in price-adjusted terms; and 2) there is a long-standing decline in the share of total employment attributable to manufacturing. The persistence of these trends seems inconsistent with stories of a recent or sudden crisis in the US manufacturing sector. After all, as recently as 2010, the United States had the world's largest manufacturing sector measured by its valued-added, and while it has now been surpassed by China, the United States remains a very large manufacturer. On the other hand, there are some potential causes for concern. First, though manufacturing's output share of GDP has remained stable over 50 years, and manufacturing retains a reputation as a sector of rapid productivity improvements, this is largely due to the spectacular performance of one subsector of manufacturing: computers and electronics. Second, recently there has been a large drop in the absolute level of manufacturing employment that many find alarming. Third, the US manufacturing sector runs an enormous trade deficit, equaling $460 billion in 2012, which is also very concentrated in trade with Asia. Finally, we consider the future evolution of the manufacturing sector and its importance for the US economy. Many of the largest US corporations continue to shift their production facilities overseas. It is important to understand why the United States is not perceived to be an attractive base for their production.


This watchfulness aim is that is to detects performance evaluation, employee performance at homework. hf. prima unlucky and to detect sejauhmana influence penilain performance towards employee performance at homework. HF. prima Malang. watchfulness use that want achieved especially for company serve the purpose of base deliberation in that decision making with performance enhanced companies.
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Suggestion that given to company that is supposed in order to to increase supposed employee performance companies in give evaluation on performance is done as according to procedure that appointed so that not found employee that feel getting disadvantage on performance evaluation that do by company. in effort to give guarantee that evaluation on performance that done pursuant to existing so supposed company always do evaluation on performance that achieved by employee. pass effort so serve the purpose of base in wisdom taking related to effort company to increase performance employees.


An environmentally benign, metal-free synthesis of sulfonyl chlorides and bromides from thiols in the presence of ammonium nitrate, an aqueous solution of HCl and HBr and oxygen as a terminal oxidant was developed. The reactivity of various substituted thiophenols, benzylic-, aliphatic- and heteroaromatic thiols was examined. Ammonium nitrate served as a source of nitrogen oxides (NO/NO2), which are the crucial players in a redox-catalytic cycle. Sulfonyl chlorides and bromides were isolated without extraction and "filtered" over a short pad of silica gel; the use of solvents was greatly reduced in comparison with traditional isolation and purification. A "one-pot" protocol for the conversion of thiol into sulfonamide is also demonstrated. Scale-up experiments on the preparation of sulfonyl chloride and bromide are shown. A possible reaction pathway is discussed.


Economic theory defines services as customisable, interactive processes that providers have the potential to carry out together with clients that benefit from their effects. It is understood that service transactions are best organised by means of virtual collaborative networks, where ICT allows configuring multiple providers and processes on a per-request basis. Existing conceptual models for virtual service enterprises propose service virtualisation to allow for flexible and agile regulation and enforcement of coordination between multiple providers and clients [ZEed]. It has also been shown that business service virtualisation can be achieved by means of software service technology and existing SOA models represent virtual business service processes as eservices [ZEar]. In this paper, we present a service-oriented development lifecycle model for planning and controlling virtualised business services and we combine both parts in an enterprise architecture and methodology framework for virtual service enterprises. We substantiate this approach by means of an e-service management methodology that we have implemented as a toolset and we demonstrate its application in an e-science scenario, where we show how to manage the life-cycle of e-services for virtual laboratories.


The energy analysis of wave motion in Lamb's problem for a poroelastic half-space in the framework of Biot's theory is presented. The results for the energy velocity and quality factor of poroelastic waves are revisited. In the case of no dissipation the approach originally established for perfectly elastic media by Miller & Pursey is generalized herein to include poroelastic waves. Special cases of the resonant excitation of the Rayleigh wave and the absence of the Rayleigh wave beyond the cut-off frequency are discussed in detail. Directional diagrams for the volumetric waves are presented. A quantitative picture of the energy partition among the traveling waves is provided for several driving configurations. In the general case of dissipative media the analysis is based on the semi-analytic solution of the Lamb's problem. In the near field, the surface load generates three wavetrains corresponding to the bulk modes. These wavetrains consist of waves which are longer and exhibit greater viscous attenuation than the corresponding volumetric modes, so that, P1, P2 and S modes emerge from the corresponding wavetrains at a certain distance from the source. For the far field, asymptotic expressions have been obtained and clearly indicate that it is only in the far field that the wave motion represents the superposition of the P1, P2, S and Rayleigh waves characterized by their corresponding wavelengths and attenuations. Moreover, these waves also exhibit geometric attenuation x (similar to the waves in a perfectly elastic half-space). To analyze the energy partition the total input power supplied by the source is decomposed into the contributions associated with the wavetrains and the Rayleigh wave. These results provide the means for controlling the excitation of the various wave modes via changes to the driving configuration. Biot's theory is a particular example of a non-conservative Lagrangian system with a Rayleigh dissipation function. The group velocities of poroelastic waves are complex and do not provide any information about the velocity of the energy transport. Moreover, in general the precise physical meaning of the complex group velocity is unclear. The analysis based on the detailed study of the coupled system of the damped Klein-Gordon equations (Biot's theory yields such a formalism in the low frequency limit) suggests that both precise and approximate physical interpretations of the complex group velocity are possible. Moreover, these considerations further allow the derivation of exact closed form expressions for the energy velocity and Q factor for both longitudinal and shear poroelastic waves from energy principles. Most notably, the analysis of the resulting expressions reveals that the energy velocity of both longitudinal and shear waves equals (exceeds) the corresponding phase velocity in the case of the low (full) frequency range Biot's theory. The exact expression for the Q factor contains an additive correction due to viscoelastic interphase interaction in the higher frequency range.


Background and Purpose:
 ST2, a member of the interleukin 1 receptor family, and its ligand interleukin 33 (IL-33) play critical roles in immune regulation and inflammatory responses. The engagement of ST2 has been shown to reduce myocardial infarction and preserve heart function. Recent study documented an increase in blood ST2 expression after stroke. The exact roles of ST2 in the ischemic brain injury, however, are not explored.

 Methods:
 C57/BL6 wild type and ST2 knockout mice were subjected to 60-minute transient cerebral ischemia (tMCAO). The expression of ST2 and IL-33 in the ischemic brain was measured at different time points after tMCAO using RT-PCR. Brain infarct was quantified using TTC staining and MAP2 immunostaing. Neurobehavioral tests were performed up to 14 days after tMCAO. Differences of immune cell components in blood, spleen, bone marrow and brain between wild type and ST2 knockout mice were assessed by flow cytometry analysis. For experiments with ST2 activation, IL-33 was injected intraperitoneally(i.p.) or intracerebroventricularly (i.c.v.) into wide type mice right after the induction of tMCAO.

 Results:
 In wild type mice, the mRNA expression of ST2 in the ischemic brainexhibited a delayed elevation 7d after tMCAO, while the mRNA expression of IL-33 was transiently increased 1d after tMCAO. The deficiency of ST2 resulted in enlarged infarct volume 3d after tMCAO and aggravated neurological deficits lasted out to 14d. The worsened stroke outcome was accompanied by dramatic changes in the number of Th1, Th2 and regulatory T cells in the spleen, bone marrow and brain. Further study showed that either i.p. or i.c.v. injection of IL-33 at the time of reperfusion attenuated the severity of brain infarct in wide type mice, suggesting that both systemic and central activation of ST2 could protect against acute ischemic brain injury.

 Conclusions:
 ST2/IL-33 signaling plays an essential role in restricting acute ischemic brain injury. Such protective effect of ST2/IL-33 involves both immune regulation in the peripheral immune system and a direct protection within the central nervous system. Our study may provide a new therapeutic target for stroke treatment.


Numerical computation of detonation stability Dmitry I. Kabanov Detonation is a supersonic mode of combustion that is modeled by a system of conservation laws of compressible fluid mechanics coupled with the equations describing thermodynamic and chemical properties of the fluid. Mathematically, these governing equations admit steady-state travelling-wave solutions consisting of a leading shock wave followed by a reaction zone. However, such solutions are often unstable to perturbations and rarely observed in laboratory experiments. The goal of this work is to study the stability of travelling-wave solutions of detonation models by the following novel approach. We linearize the governing equations about a base travelling-wave solution and solve the resultant linearized problem using high-order numerical methods. The results of these computations are postprocessed using dynamic mode decomposition to extract growth rates and frequencies of the perturbations and predict stability of travelling-wave solutions to infinitesimal perturbations. We apply this approach to two models based on the reactive Euler equations for perfect gases. For the first model with a one-step reaction mechanism, we find agreement of our results with the results of normal-mode analysis. For the second model with a two-step mechanism, we find that both types of admissible travelling-wave solutions exhibit the same stability spectra. Then we investigate the Fickett's detonation analogue coupled with a particular reaction-rate expression. In addition to the linear stability analysis of this model, we demonstrate that it exhibits rich nonlinear dynamics with multiple bifurcations and chaotic behavior.


Porosity and permeability are key variables that link the thermal-hydrologic, geomechanical, and geochemical behaviorin rocksystemsand arethusimportantinputparametersfor transportmodels. Neutronscattering studies indicate that the scales of pore sizes in rocks extend over many orders of magnitude from nanometer-sized pores with huge amounts of total surface area to large open fracture systems (multiscale porosity). However, despite considerable efforts combining conventional petrophysics, neutron scattering, and electron microscopy, the quantitativenature of this porosityintightgas shales, especiallyatsmallerscalesand overlargerrockvolumes, remains largely unknown. Nor is it well understood how pore networks are affected by regional variation in rock composition and properties, thermal changes across the oil window (maturity), and, most critically, hydraulic fracturing. To improve this understanding, we have used a combination of small- and ultrasmall-angle neutron scattering (U)SANS with scanning electron microscope (SEM)/backscattered electron imaging to analyze the pore structure of clay- and carbonate-rich samples of the Eagle Ford Shale. This formation is hydrocarbon rich, straddles the oil window, and is one of the most actively drilled oil and gas targets in the United States. Several important trends in the Eagle Ford rock pore structure have been identified using our approach. The (U)SANS results reflected the connected (effective) and unconnected porosity, as well as the volume occupied by organic material. The latter could be separated using total organic carbon data and, at all maturities, constituted a significant fraction of the apparent porosity. At lower maturities, the pore structure was strongly anisotropic. However, this decreased with increasing maturity, eventually disappearing entirely for carbonate-rich samples. In clay- and carbonate-rich samples, a significant reduction in total porosity occurred at (U)SANS scales, much of it during initial increases in maturity. This apparently contradicted SEM observations that showed increases in intraorganic porosity with increasingmaturity. Organic-rich shales are, however, a very complex material fromthe point of view of scattering studies, and a more detailed analysis is needed to better understand these observations.


The deployment of highly intelligent and efficient machine vision systems accomplished to achieve new heights in multiple fields of human activity. A successful replacement of manual intervention with their automated systems assured safety, security and alertness in the transportation field. Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) has become a common aspect of the intelligent transportation systems. In addition to the license plate information, identifying the exact make and model of the car is suitable to provide many additional cues in certain applications. Authentication systems may find it useful with an extra confirmation based on the model of the vehicle also. Different car models are characterized by the uniqueness in the overall car shape, position and structure of headlights etc. Majority of the research works rely on frontal/rear view of car for the recognition while some others are also there based on an arbitrary viewpoint. A template matching strategy is usually employed to find an exact match for the query image from a database of known car models. It is also possible to select and extract certain discriminative features from the region of interest (ROI) in the car image. And with the help of a suitable similarity measure such as euclidean distance it is able to demarcate between the various classes/models. The main objective of the paper is to understand the significance of certain detectors and descriptors in the field of car make and model recognition. The performance evaluation of SIFT, SURF, ORB feature descriptors for implementing a car recognition system was already available in literature. In this paper, we have studied the effectiveness of various combinations of feature detectors and descriptors on car model detection. The combination of the 6 detectors DoG, Hessian, Harris Laplace, Hessian Laplace, Multiscale Harris, Multiscale Hessian with the 3 descriptors SIFT, liop and patch was tested on three car databases. Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT), a popular object detection algorithm allows the user to match different images and spot the similarities between them. The algorithm based on keypoints selection and description offers feature independent of illumination, scale, noise and rotation variations. Matching between images has been executed using Euclidian distance between descriptors. For the given keypoints in the test image, the smallest Euclidian distance between corresponding descriptor and all the descriptors of the training image indicates the best match. Our experiments were carried out in MATLAB using the VLFeat ToolBox. It was found to achieve a maximum accuracy of 91.67% with DoG-SIFT approach in database 1 comprising cropped ROI of toy car images. For the database 2 consisting of cropped ROI of real car images, the Multiscale Hessian-SIFT yielded the maximum accuracy of 96.88%. The database 3 comprised of high resolution real car images with background. The testing was conducted on the cropped and resized ROI's of these images. A maximum accuracy of 93.78% was obtained when the Multiscale Harris-SIFT feature descriptor was employed. As a whole these feature detectors and descriptors succeeded in recognizing the car models with an overall accuracy above 90%.


Abstract Relative performance of bivariate ranked set sampling (BVRSS), with respect to ranked set sampling (RSS) and simple random sampling (SRS), for estimating the population mean using ratio and regression methods is investigated. Properties of the proposed estimators are derived. Simulation study is conducted to gain insight in the behaviour of the relative efficiency of BVRSS relative to other sampling scheme. Also, real data that consist of heights and diameters of 399 trees are used to illustrate the procedure. The result of the simulation study and the real data illustration indicate that using BVRSS for ratio and regression estimation is more efficient than using a SRS and an RSS in most of the cases.


What remains of the "national" when the nation unravels at the birth of the independent state? The political truncation of India at the end of British colonial rule in 1947 led to a social cataclysm in which roughly one million people died and ten to twelve million were displaced. Combining film studies, trauma theory, and South Asian cultural history, Bhaskar Sarkar follows the shifting traces of this event in Indian cinema over the next six decades. He argues that Partition remains a wound in the collective psyche of South Asia and that its representation on screen enables forms of historical engagement that are largely opaque to standard historiography.

Sarkar tracks the initial reticence to engage with the trauma of 1947 and the subsequent emergence of a strong Partition discourse, revealing both the silence and the eventual "return of the repressed" as strands of one complex process. Connecting the relative silence of the early decades after Partition to a project of postcolonial nation-building and to trauma's disjunctive temporal structure, Sarkar develops an allegorical reading of the silence as a form of mourning. He relates the proliferation of explicit Partition narratives in films made since the mid-1980s to disillusionment with post-independence achievements, and he discusses how current cinematic memorializations of 1947 are influenced by economic liberalization and the rise of a Hindu-chauvinist nationalism. Traversing Hindi and Bengali commercial cinema, art cinema, and television, Sarkar provides a history of Indian cinema that interrogates the national (a central category organizing cinema studies) and participates in a wider process of mourning the modernist promises of the nation form.


Demographic and educational characteristics of nurses and their role in relation to medicine leads to the classification of nursing as a semi-profession. Nursing of the acutely ill is basically hospital based. Hospitals are complex organisations with multiple goals of patient care, diagnostic and treatment services, and in many, education and training of doctors, nurses and other personnel. They are also professional organisations in which the primary goals are pursued by the health professionals rather than the line management. Semi-professionals are traditionally hierarchichally organised and heavily bureaucratised. The major professions, of which medicine is typical, are characterised by egalitarianism in the interests of professional autonomy. They are thus traditionally resistant to most forms of bureaucratic organisation. Because of these characteristics of hospitals and their personnel there is potential for conflict. This is exacerbated by the speed of change which has overtaken the health services along with society as a whole. The mechanistic systems of organisation, designed to meet the stable conditions prevailing at the time of the industrial revolution, are ineffective for management of modern complex organisations. There are now typically multiple vertical lines, and heads of departments. Effectiveness is dependent on an organismic structure capable of developing horizontal and vertical co-ordination essential for success. Nursing needs are accorded only secondary importance to the now major objective of maximum medical output to meet continually increasing demands and nursing is relatively powerless to correct the imbalance in a traditionally organised service. A study was carried out in a Provincial Teaching Hospital to attempt to identify organisational factors which may adversely affect the performance of nursing staff both within and above ward level. Questionnaires were completed by U2 Day Sisters concerning organisational problems and relationships. Analysis showed that the sisters were largely homogeneous in outlook despite certain differences. Excessive pressure owing, principally to the work load was widespread, and severity of pressure was significantly associated with age. Questionnaire's completed by 10 Night Sisters and 8 Nurse Administrators showed that the Night Sisters ranking of wards was closer to the Student Nurses than that of the Nurse Administrators. Night Sisters' perception of problems was specifically clinically orientated and Nursing Administrations' management orientated. Interviews with 9 Senior Nurse Administrators and 21 Medical Consultants revealed an almost total failure of co-ordination between the two on- management problems intrinsic to the effectiveness of nursing services and a corresponding failure of the Nursing Administrative function. There was evidence of medical complacency and non-involvement and of inadequate preparation of nurses for senior positions, within and above ward level. 240 Senior, Student and Pupil Nurses completed questionnaires from which wards were ranked according to evaluations on care, discipline and preference for working in them. Regression analysis produced highly significant correlations between the three variables. Reasons for preferences, interpreted in relation to Hertzberg's Motivation-Hygiene theory, suggested that motivators were poorly developed and dissatisfiers exaggerated, especially on least preferred wards. Analysis of a patient satisfaction survey of 4,000 discharged, patients contained significant differences between patients on male wards, female wards, and mixed wards, and between general medicine and surgery, specialties and accident wards. Highest and lowest student nurse rankings were within the patients' highest and lowest satisfaction rankings. Factor analysis of the patient data revealed three predominant discriminators of patient satisfaction. The UOH Management Structure was seen to be deliberately biased towards medical predominance and to lack the total organismic structure necessary for the development of co-ordination, constructive management and increased commitment at all levels. An alternative structure is proposed and further research recommended.


This case explores the use of the EVA - economic value added - methodology at Asahi Glass. EVA is among the changes initiated by the CEO aimed at transforming Asahi Glass from a traditional Japanese company to a global firm. Other changes included a corporate reorganization into worldwide business groups, the appointment of non-Japanese managers to key positions, and corporate governance reforms. The EVA methodology was introduced to improve resource allocation across Asahi's numerous businesses around the world and to evaluate the managerial performance of top executives. It examines how the company calculated EVA and, in particular, how it calculated the weighted average cost of capital for its different businesses in different countries. Is Asahi Glass gaining benefits from the EVA methodology, and does it contribute to the transformation of Asahi Glass into a truly international firm?


In Benin Republic, teak sector is the most active among the wood markets with a strong national demand. It is therefore necessary to improve its efficiency. This study aimed at modelling the perception and economic performance of teak plant production in some rural nurseries. To this end, a survey was conducted among 140 teak nurseries in northern, central and southern regions of Benin using the "snowball" sampling method. In terviews organized with plant nurserymen served to gather data on their demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, plant production techniques, production costs and output, and teak production perception. The perception of producers and the performance of teak plant production were modeled respectively from a logistic regression model and then from a linear regression model. The analysis of the results showed that the age of the nurseryman, unlike variables such as gender and seniority in production, negatively influences the economic performance of teak plant production. Household size also influences the economic performance of teak plant production and the perception of the nurseryman, but with a negative effect on the last variable. Nevertheless, the number of years of schooling and the nurseryman's assessment of the distance between the plant nursery and his home has a positive influence on his perception. Policies development aimed at improving the production of teak plants in Benin would therefore require particular attention to these different determinants.


In order to produce good quality seedlings it is necessary to use a mixture that presents appropriate physical, chemical and biological properties, which supplies the necessary conditions for the germination and the seedling's establishment. This experiment was carried out at the Agricultural Sciences Center, Paraiba Federal University (Brazil), whose objective was to evaluate the growth and the mineral composition of Hancornia speciosa seedlings in substrata composed by concentrations of coconut fiber from 0% to 40%, manure bovine from 0% to 25%, soil from 25% to 70%, sand 15% and triple superphosphate between 0 and 11 g dm-3. The soil and coconut fiber had beneficial effects on the H. speciosa seedlings with the increase of its concentrations in the mixture. The addition of the manure and the doses of triple superphosphate provoked a decrease in the matter and in the foliate area in the H. speciosa seedlings. There was an increase of the nutrients content in the seedlings in which there was an increase of the manure concentration in the mixture. It is recommended to use the concentrations of 14% of manure, 56% of soil, 15% of coconut fiber, 15% of sand and 4 g dm-3 of triple superphosphate, for the maximum estimated values of growth and nutritional composition.


A growing number of American children are exposed to gun violence at their schools, but little is known about the impacts of this exposure on their human capital attainment and economic well-being. This paper studies the causal effects of exposure to shootings at schools on children's educational and economic outcomes, using individual-level longitudinal administrative data from Texas. We analyze the universe of shootings at Texas public schools that occurred between 1995 and 2016, and match schools that experienced shootings with observationally similar control schools in other districts. We use difference-in-differences models that leverage within-individual and across-cohort variation in shooting exposure within matched school groups to estimate the short- and long-run impacts of shootings on students attending these schools at the time of the shooting. We find that shooting-exposed students have an increased absence rate and are more likely to be chronically absent and repeat a grade in the two years following the event. We also find adverse long-term impacts on the likelihood of high school graduation, college enrollment and graduation, as well as employment and earnings at ages 24-26. Heterogeneity analyses by student and school characteristics indicate that the detrimental impacts of shootings are universal, with most sub-groups being affected.