The work presented in this thesis is mainly focused on transport processes involved in service life predictions of concrete. Two papers and three reports deal with ion transport in pore solution of concrete. One paper and one report deals with moisture transport in concrete and the remaining papers and reports deal with absorption and physical properties related to adsorption for different materials. The fourteen contributions have the following contents: RI:1, Diffusion of a mixture of positively and negatively charged ions in pore solution of concrete is studied. Binding of dissolved ions in pore solution and leaching of ions from solid components into pore solution are included in the model. The material constants in the developed model are chosen to give the best match of simulation to experimental data. A finite element scheme is developed solving the governing coupled constituent equations. RI:2, The models established in RI:1 and P:1 are used to study the effect of different cements and pozzolans on chloride ingress into concrete. RI:3, The models established in RI:1 and P:1 are used to study the effect of curing conditions on chloride ingress in concrete. A drying period before exposure to chlorides is shown to decrease the penetration. RII:1, Capillary suction is studied using a Newtonian fluid assumption together with a momentum source term reflecting the influence of the pore walls on the capillary sucked fluid. RIII:1, The heat of adsorption of different molecule layers on dry surfaces is investigated using a calorimetric technique. Different types of BET-equations were used to predict the distribution of adsorbate among different discrete adsorbed layers. The classical way of calculating the adsorption heat and the measured values differed with about a factor of 2.5. RIII:2, The effect of different constant temperatures on the absorption isotherms and the heat of adsorption of first and second layer molecules on porous glass are investigated. P:1, Diffusion of a mixture of positively and negatively charged ions in water is studied. An electrical potential is included in the model, which makes it possible to study diffusion caused by internal electrical forces in a mixture of different types of ions. P:2, The paper presents a model for combined chloride ion diffusion and chloride ion convection caused by capillary suction. P:3, A numerical approach capable of solving diffusion-convection equations is discussed. The so-called Petrov-Galerkin weighting is shown to be a reliable method for the diffusion problem studied. P:4, Four different methods of measuring sorption isotherms are studied. P:5, The limit of the use of a quasi-static calorimetric technique measuring absorption is investigated theoretically by simulating the diffusion behavior in the instrument. Results shows that the material constant related to the sorption kinetics must exceed a certain value. P:6, Measurements of moisture storage capacity with sorption balance and pressure extractor are described in this paper. P:7, In this paper micro-structural changes caused by carbonation of cement mortar are discussed. P:8, Water vapor diffusion and transient condensation in cement mortar are treated in this paper. (Less)


'Why in this enlightened day would one choose to entitle a work Perversion, a term that is becoming passe? The great research published in the last decade or two has taught us that aberrant sexual behavior is found in other species, is ubiquitous in man, and is the product of brain and hormonal factors that can function independently of anything we might call psyche. Then too, their findings make researchers regret society's moral stance that sexual aberration is unnatural - sinful - and the repressive social action that follows. Thus, in ridding ourselves of the concept of perversion, we have the tempting combination of good research serving a humane cause. Yet it is my contention, explored in the body of this book, that perversion exists.The connotations of the word are unpleasant and have a flavor of morality and therefore of free will that is antiquated in these days of science and determinism. It is to avoid such connotations that the softer terms "variant", "deviation," or "aberration" are used. More and more these days, decent people - many of them scientists - are concerned about the price their fellows, and even more, whole societies, pay in their effort to suppress victimless aberrant sexual behavior. And so, in the name of decency, it has become the style, using the trappings of Science, to try and get rid of the concept of perversion. This is done not only by changing the terms to ones with less severe implications but by trying to show that there are no (or very few) states that fit the nasty connotations of "perversion". These workers reach their conclusions by objective means that they feel avoid the dangers of introspective material, such as by studying brain mechanisms an animal and man, which reveal capacities for aberrant behavior inherited and laid down in hormonal organizations of the central nervous system: by statistics that unmask how widespread are those allegedly heinous acts; by anthropological studies that show aberrant sexual behavior to have been the usual - not the exceptional - throughout history and across cultures; and by observation of or experimentation on intact animals. In all these cases, data have been gathered disclosing that aberrant sexual practices are found throughout the animal species and are ubiquities in human behavior. It is easy, then, to conclude that the widespread aberrance in man does not really signify willed behavior - that is, sinfulness, disobedience to accepted morality - but rather a natural tendency of the sexual impulse in the animal kingdom.- From the Introduction by the AuthorThus begins this classic work on perversion from Robert R. Stoller. Written in ordinary language, accessible for analysts and non-analysts alike, Stoller addresses the lack of information and discussion on perversion in a clear and concise way. His purpose is not to describe and discuss various perversions and their origins and dynamics, but rather to define the term "perversion" clinically; to be able to recognise the common factor throughout regardless of manifestation. His key contention is that in perversion the main clinical factor is hostility. It combines with sexual desire to produce the various forms that perversion can take on. Stoller shows that the perverse scene aims not only at denying castration, but also at securing a more solid basis for a jeopardized sexual identity. Risk, vengeance and trauma are some of the ideas that the author discusses while building up his argument.The book is divided into three parts - Definition, Dynamics and Social Issues - and through these Stoller successfully explores and concludes his theory.


Lippia origanoides Kunth. is a medicinal shrub native to some countries in South America, Central America and the Caribbean. This study aims to investigate the chemical composition of the essential oil and the genetic diversity of a natural population of Lippia origanoides in two seasons. Leaf samples were collected from 30 individuals in the dry and rainy seasons. The essential oil was extracted into a Clevenger apparatus and analyzed by gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The relative quantification of thymol and carvacrol was performed by gas chromatography coupled to a flame ionization detector (GC-FID). Multivariate analysis was used to evaluate the genetic divergence between plants. Carvacrol was the major compound found in most plants for both seasons. In the rainy season, plant 15 presented thymol as the major compound, and plants 16, 27, 28 and 29 presented camphor as the major compound. In the dry season, thymol remained the main compound of plant 15 and camphor remained the main compound of plants 16, 28 and 29; however, plant 27 presented carvacrol as the main compound in this season. After carvacrol, the compounds with the highest content were γ-terpinene, p-cymene and methyl-ether-thymol. Of the 30 plants studied, only five differed in their chemical composition, showing some degree of stability in relation to the dry and rainy seasons. There was no variation in the main compounds between the two seasons, but there was chemical diversity among the main compounds. Tocher grouping revealed five distinct groups, with group 1 including most of the plants in both dry and rainy seasons, indicating that the time of year evaluated did not significantly interfere with the essential oil composition of most plants.


Aeration is the process of bringing water and air into close contact in order to increase dissolved oxygen concentration. The concentration of dissolved oxygen is an important indicator of water quality because aquatic life lives on the dissolved oxygen in the water. The hydraulic structures can be accepted as the key components in increasing dissolved oxygen concentration because of the strong turbulent mixing associated with substantial air bubble entrainment at these structures. Closed conduit is a classic example of a hydraulic structure where aeration occurs. This work focused on determining the effect of conduit length on air-demand ratio and aeration efficiency in free-surface gated circular conduits. Experimental results showed that the Froude number had an important effect on the air-demand ratio and the aeration efficiency. The effect of the conduit length on the air-demand ratio and the aeration efficiency changed depending on the Froude number. It was demonstrated from the results that a free-surface gated circular conduit flow system had high efficiency in transferring oxygen from air bubbles to water. Moreover, a formula for the aeration efficiency was presented relating the aeration efficiency to the conduit length and the Froude number.


We combined experimental and numerical approaches, in order to constrain the rheology of ultramylonitic rocks characteristic of gabbroic high-temperature shear zones. Synthetic samples containing 70 vol% fine-grained anorthite matrix (<5 μm) and 30 vol% coarse diopside inclusions (<55 μm) were deformed in torsion at T = 1150 °C and P = 370 MPa. At modest shear stresses (<40 MPa) the data evidenced linear-viscous flow with a stress exponent n ≈ 1. The outermost rim of the samples exhibited substantial cavitation coalescence leading to ductile damage and ultimately to ductile failure at shear strains between γ = 2–3.5. The mechanical data and the microstructures indicate dominant grain boundary sliding (GBS) and diffusional mass transfer. However, extensive crystal slip plasticity (CSP), dislocation creep and dynamic recrystallization operated within and in the vicinity of the diopside inclusions. For instance, the inclusions presented an extremely fine-grained interfacial layer, resulting from their intense peripheral recrystallization. The latter crystal plasticity mechanism require differential stresses exceeding by far the overall flow stress supported by our specimens, which indicates substantial local stress enhancement related to the heterogeneous nature of the two-phase rock. In order to characterize the local mechanical responses we performed finite element numerical modelling of the shear deformation process, considering elastoviscoplastic behavior based on the constitutive laws for GBS and CSP of the constituent phases. We emphasized the effects of inclusion shapes and interactions. We show that even at relatively low concentrations (25 vol%) and for overall Newtonian flow, the important strength contrasts and the interactions between neighbouring and irregular inclusions rapidly induce significant local stress amplifications, allowing for twinning and dislocation creep. On the other hand, the simulations suggest that the presence of fine-grained recrystallized interfacial layers deforming by GBS allows for very efficient local stress relaxation. As a result, we suggest that whilst the overall material sustains fairly low stresses and presents GBS related Newtonian flow, locally the diopside inclusions and the surrounding matrix experience highly fluctuating stresses in relation with cycles of dislocation creep, peripheral recrystallization and interfacial GBS. On the one hand, from a stochastic point of view, the cyclic nature of the process may ensure a stable overall flow stress. On the other hand, at the local scale the sequential mechanism allows for continuous size reduction of the stronger inclusions, a process that we call "ductile abrasion".


Despite sustained progress in control since the formulation of new policy guidelines in 1996, tuberculosis still remains a major public health threat in South Africa. The effects of the rapidly growing concurrent HIV epidemic further compound the prominence of the tuberculosis epidemic and the proportion of TB patients co-infected with HIV is increasing. There is an urgent need to hasten the integrated management of these two epidemics.The promotion of voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) for HIV in TB treatment centres, provision of materials for advocacy and health education for TB/HIV/AIDS as well as the development of training and management guidelines for dually infected patients will go a long way towards achieving this goal. The introduction of combination anti-TB drugs during 1999 will assist in improving adherence to treatment as well as reduce the occurrence of drug resistant strains of tuberculosis. However, in order to achieve this, there is need to further the progress already made in delivering directly observed supervised treatment to TB patients, particularly within the context of community-based care.Improvement within the computerised recording and reporting system to make it simpler and uniform for all the provinces will further assist in more accurate documentation of the tuberculosis burden in the country and lead to targeted interventions where necessary. The National Tuberculosis Control Programme hopes to achieve its objective of reducing the tuberculosis burden in the country through increased collaboration with other role players at local and regional levels as will be discussed in this report.


Background: Suicide is a global public health concern, but it is preventable. Increased contact with primary care before the suicide or attempted suicide raises opportunities for intervention and prevention. However, suicide assessment and management are areas that many general practitioners (GPs) find particularly challenging. Previous research has indicated significant variability in how GPs understand, operationalize, and assess suicide risk, which subsequently has an impact on clinical decision making. Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) have been widely implemented across different health care settings, including primary care to support practitioners in clinical decision making. A CDSS may reduce inconsistencies in the identification, assessment, and management of suicide risk by GPs by guiding them through the consultation and generating a risk assessment plan that can be shared with a service user or with specialized mental health services. Objective: Our aim is to co-develop and test with end users (eg, GPs, primary care attendees, mental health professionals) an electronic clinical decision support system (e-CDSS) to support GPs in the identification, assessment, and management of suicidality in primary care. Methods: Ours is an ongoing embedded mixed-methods study with four phases: (1) qualitative interviews with GPs to explore their views on the content, format, and use of the e-CDSS, as well as consultation with two service-user advisory groups (people aged ≤25 and people aged ≥25) to inform the content of the e-CDSS including phrasing of items and clarity; (2) participatory co-production workshops with GPs, service users, and clinical experts in suicidality to determine the content and format of the e-CDDS; gain consensus of the relevance of items; establish content validity and identify pathways to implementation, using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research; (3) building the e-CDSS so that it guides the GP through a consultation; and (4) usability testing of the e-CDSS with GPs and service users in one primary care practice involving a nonlive and a live stage. Results: The study was funded for four years, to take place between 2015 and 2019, and is currently completing phase 4 data collection. The first results are expected to be submitted for publication in June 2019. The findings will enable us to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and usability of a suicide-specific, electronic, guided decision support system in primary care. Conclusions: This study will be the first to explore the feasibility, acceptability, and usability of an electronic, guided decision support system for use in primary care consultations for the improved assessment and management of suicidality.


This paper reviews recent studies on the links between competition, innovation and productivity growth in the long run. From a long-run perspective, one can see that gains from competition-enhancing regulatory reform are likely to exceed static gains observed in the short run since firms will continue to innovate in ways they would not have under regulation. By taking a dynamic perspective on competition and efficiency, one can also understand better the new modes of competition observed in "dynamically competitive" industries. This paper also attempts to cover some of relatively new research areas including: i) measuring welfare gains from product innovation; ii) competition and efficiency in e-commerce, education, and health care; and iii) interactions between product- and factor-market competition ...


Four outcrops of Late Cretaceous rocks are known in the East London region of the Eastern Cape Province, discovered at different times during the 20th century. These are at the Needs Camp upper and lower quarries, inland of East London; and at Igoda River mouth and a nearby road cutting close to the estuary, located to the south of East London, designated the Igoda Formation. All four sites contain similar foraminiferal assemblages, and the successions are interpreted as roughly coeval. The published record from the two Igoda Formation outcrops up to now consists of just one foraminifera species (Spiroplectinella sp.), and about 20 Cretaceous species have been reported from the Needs Camp quarries. However, examination of additional samples, as well as repeated reprocessing of previously-studied limestone samples from the four outcrops has led to the discovery of 87 species of foraminifera. Only five of these are planktic species, mainly very rare Heterohelix globulosa (Ehrenberg), Hedbergella spp., Hedbergella cf. H. simplex (Morrow), Globigerinelloides asper (Ehrenberg) and Rugoglobigerina rugosa (Plummer), the last-named indicating a Campanian-Maastrichtian age. These planktics indicate that surface waters were slightly better oxygenated, but the complete absence of keeled planktics yet diverse benthics suggests the majority of the lower water column, but not the sea-floor, was experiencing dysoxic conditions. Because of the different circumstances in the discovery of each of these outcrops, their contained foraminiferal assemblages and their interpreted foraminiferal ages and depositional environments have never before been effectively compared and contrasted. The Igoda / Needs Camp foraminiferal assemblages detailed here are compared with a greatly revised biostratigraphy for the southern African Campanian succession. The distinctive Igoda benthic assemblages, composed in the main of Gavelinella and Lenticulina species, are marked by small numbers of the age-diagnostic early Campanian (Campanian I and lowest Campanian II) benthic species, Valvulineria sp., and the Early Campanian (Campanian I) benthic species, thin Dorothia sp. The four outcrops are considered to expose parts of a somewhat siliciclastic-poor, carbonate-rich deposit. This accumulated in an inner (Needs Camp limestones) to middle (Needs Camp limey claystones) to outer neritic (Igoda limey claystones) setting on a relatively well-oxygenated sea-floor experiencing periodic inflows of inner neritic siliciclastics and shell hash. The majority of foraminifera tests preserved in these rocks have been the focus of post-depositional ferric iron precipitation, probably derived from oxidation and deterioration of pyrite, so that they are now a strong orange-red colour.


Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly used by emergency responders to support search-and-rescue operations, medical supplies delivery, fire surveillance, and many other scenarios. At the same time, researchers are investigating usage scenarios in which UAVs are imbued with a greater level of autonomy to provide automated search, surveillance, and delivery capabilities that far exceed current adoption practices. To address this emergent opportunity, we are developing a configurable, multi-user, multi-UAV system for supporting the use of semi-autonomous UAVs in diverse emergency response missions. We present a requirements-driven approach for creating a software product line (SPL) of highly configurable scenarios based on different missions. We focus on the process for eliciting and modeling a family of related use cases, constructing individual feature models, and activity diagrams for each scenario, and then merging them into an SPL. We show how the SPL will be implemented through leveraging and augmenting existing features in our DroneResponse system. We further present a configuration tool, and demonstrate its ability to generate mission-specific configurations for 20 different use case scenarios.


In this paper, simulated space-based high spectral resolution AIRS (Atmospheric Infrared Sounder) infrared radiances with different cloud top heights and effective cloud fractions are used to demonstrate measurement sensitivity and atmospheric profile retrieval performance. Simulated cloudy retrievals of atmospheric temperature and moisture derived from the statistical eigenvector regression algorithm are analysed with different effective cloud fractions and different cloud heights. The results show that knowledge of cloud height is critical to sounding retrieval performance and the root mean square error of retrieved temperature and the mixed ratio of water vapour below the cloud top increases with effective cloud fraction. When there is 50 hPa error in the cloud height the retrieval accuracy of temperature and humidity decrease, compared with when the cloud height is known perfectly; the temperature retrieval is more sensitive to cloud height error than humidity retrieval. Collocated cloudy AIRS and the associated clear MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) infrared observations within the AIRS field of view (FOV) are also used to demonstrate profile retrieval improvement below the cloud layer. It is demonstrated that using collocated clear MODIS multispectral imager data along with AIRS high spectral resolution infrared radiances can greatly improve the single FOV cloudy retrieval even under opaque cloudy conditions.


It remains incumbent on researchers to conceive novel treatments for the most common primary malignancy of the brain in adults, glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), as the standard of care for patients today fails to yield a median survival beyond two years following diagnosis. Recent studies have tended towards appreciating the cellular heterogeneity of GBM tumors, focusing on the subpopulation of highly plastic glioblastoma stem cells (GSCs). In the November 2016 issue of Cell, Hu and colleagues developed a de nova GBM model derived from immortalized neural stem cells and, using this model, they demonstrated that GSCs can generate CD133+/CD144+ cells with endothelial cell-like characteristics. Contrasts between the epigenetic state and gene expression level before and after oncogenic transformation of this utilized de novo model for GBM implicated WNT5A, which has been previously shown to play a role in endothelial cell proliferation and migration via non-canonical Wnt signaling, as a mediator of the process. The transdifferentiation was accompanied by alterations in the histone marks at the gene loci of WNT5A, and its transcription factors PAX6 and DXL5. The authors hypothesize that activation of AKT, an aberration of the RTK/PTEN/PI3K pathway observed in the majority of GBM cases, triggers these epigenetic changes causing WNT5A expression. This phenomenon is of obvious clinical significance, as it provides an insight into how GBM may circumvent therapies targeting angiogenesis to achieve the neovascularization required to sustain invasive growth. The unveiling of this atypical differentiation process also raises questions about its interaction with the radiotherapy and chemotherapy commonly used to counter GBM progression. Here, we review the recent efforts to understand the complex mechanisms behind the plasticity of GSCs.


Intramuscular supraspinatous cysts are rare and usually related to partial supraspinatous tendon tears. Conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and MRI arthrography are the most commonly used modalities for imaging such rotator cuff pathology. Treatment and follow-up of such cysts is not well documented in the literature. We report the successful conservative management and follow-up of a patient with a supraspinatous cyst. A patient presented with a 2-month history of right shoulder pain following painting and decorating. An MRI scan showed a supraspinatous cyst and thinning of the supraspinatous tendon. The patient was treated conservatively and at 6 months follow-up was found to be asymptomatic. A repeat MRI scan confirmed complete resolution of the supraspinatous cyst.


The goal of this article is to illustrate the application of self-organizing dynamics in the design of a model of lexical access. We focus particularly on the mapping of sound structure on to the lexicon and the influence of that structure on lexical access. The approach is tested in a series of two sets of simulations that explicate how lexical access might occur in normal subjects and aphasic patients. Both sets of simulations address the behavioral effects of both phonological and phonetic variability of prime stimuli on the magnitude of semantic priming. Results show that the model can successfully account for the behavioral effects associated with several kinds of acoustic manipulation, competitor presence, and the unfolding of those effects over timeprimarily because it balances three important control parameters: resting lexical activation, positive feedback, and negative feedback. These simulations are offered as support (in the form of an existence proof) that deficits in the degree of lexical activation can account for the lexical processing impairments shown by Broca's aphasics who have reduced lexical activation, and Wernicke's aphasics who have increased lexical activation. Overall, results suggest that the present approach promises to offer a coherent theoretical framework within which to link empirical evidence in language processing and cognitive neuroscience in terms of possible underlying mechanisms.


Since the late 1970s dramatic economic changes have taken place in the agricultural sector in the highlands of Guatemala. The introduction of new export crops, such as snow peas, broccoli, and miniature vegetables, has led to yet another agro-export boom. Unlike earlier booms, however, this one has included all but the smallest farmers. The high rate of smallholder participation in the boom, and the initial high profitability of nontraditional exports (NTXs), fueled initial optimism that NTX production could increase smallholders' ability to accumulate land and so decrease the highly skewed distribution of land in Guatemala, a country with one of the most unequal landholding patterns in all of Latin America. The picture that emerges from the analysis in this paper raises serious questions about the sustainability and equity effects of NTX crop adoption among smallholders in the long run. Two main findings illustrate the problems besetting NTX crop production. First, the land accumulation rates of adopters have dropped dramatically in the 1990s. NTX crop adopters accumulated close to three times more land than non-adopters in the 1980s. Although adopters are still accumulating more land than non-adopters in the 1990s, the gap between the two groups has narrowed substantially. Second, smaller adopters are no longer accumulating land at higher rates than their larger counterparts. In the 1980s the landholdings of smaller adopters grew significantly faster than those of the larger adopters, but this trend reversed itself in the


In this paper we address a question highly relevant for many companies developing and implementing ERP or other software internationally. These companies have to integrate subsidiaries all over the world by using standard business processes implemented within the software, while at the same time take care of country-specific and other local requirements. The paper presents a framework of three different strategies, evaluates these strategies, and reports case study results that allow the comparison of these strategies. It is shown, that these strategies are not only relevant for ERP projects, but also for other software projects, especially global e-commerce projects.


A principal problem with the use of integrity constraints for monitoring the integrity of a dynamically changing database is their cost of evaluation. This cost which is associated with the performance of the checking mechanisms is the main quantitative measure which has to be supervised carefully. We have developed an integrity constraint subsystem for a relational distributed database (SICSDD) which consists of several techniques that are necessary for efficient constraint checking, particularly in a distributed environment where data distribution is transparent to the application domain. In this paper, we will show how these techniques have effectively reduced the cost of constraint checking in such a distributed environment.


Abstract It is often reported that the physiological rotational limits of adjacent vertebrae in the cervical spine are exceeded in rear-end accidents which play a significant role in Whiplash Associated Disorders (WAD). This paper presents the first analysis of existing experimental and computational intervertebral displacement research. Existing techniques to capture intervertebral displacement in experimental studies can be grouped into three methods: visual targets method, electronic sensors method and X-Ray method. The analysis of intervertebral displacements has led to the development of the intervertebral neck injury criterion (IV-NIC); it has also shown an upward shift of the C5C6 instantaneous axis of rotation and that the flexion changes to extension point between C2 and C4. Furthermore, it is also shown that when a computational model is validated only for the head kinematics, it should not be assumed that the model provides good neck kinematics. Lastly, current rear-impact dummies are incapable of providing true neck kinematics.


Internet interventions, and in particular Internet‐delivered cognitive behaviour therapy (ICBT), have existed for at least 20 years. Here we review the treatment approach and the evidence base, arguing that ICBT can be viewed as a vehicle for innovation. ICBT has been developed and tested for several psychiatric and somatic conditions, and direct comparative studies suggest that therapist‐guided ICBT is more effective than a waiting list for anxiety disorders and depression, and tends to be as effective as face‐to‐face CBT. Studies on the possible harmful effects of ICBT are also reviewed: a significant minority of people do experience negative effects, although rates of deterioration appear similar to those reported for face‐to‐face treatments and lower than for control conditions. We further review studies on change mechanisms and conclude that few, if any, consistent moderators and mediators of change have been identified. A recent trend to focus on knowledge acquisition is considered, and a discussion on the possibilities and hurdles of implementing ICBT is presented. The latter includes findings suggesting that attitudes toward ICBT may not be as positive as when using modern information technology as an adjunct to face‐to‐face therapy (i.e., blended treatment). Finally, we discuss future directions, including the role played by technology and machine learning, blended treatment, adaptation of treatment for minorities and non‐Western settings, other therapeutic approaches than ICBT (including Internet‐delivered psychodynamic and interpersonal psychotherapy as well as acceptance and commitment therapy), emerging regulations, and the importance of reporting failed trials.


The L'Aquila earthquake occurred on April 6 2009 at 03:32:39 local time. The earthquake (Mw=6.3) was located in the central Italy region of Abruzzo. Much of the damage occurred in the capital city of L'Aquila, a city of approximate population 73000, although many small villages in the surrounding region of the middle Aterno river valley were also significantly damaged. In the weeks following the earthquake, the Geo-Engineering Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) international team, comprised of members from different European countries and the U.S., was assembled to provide post-earthquake field reconnaissance. The GEER team focused on the geological, seismological, and geotechnical engineering aspects of the event. We describe the principal seismological findings related to this earthquake including moment tensors of the main shock and two triggered events, the aftershock pattern and its variation with time, tectonic deformations associated with the main shock, surface fault rupture, and the inferred fault rupture plane. We describe damage patterns on a village-to-village scale and on a more local scale within the city of L'Aquila. In many cases the damage patterns imply site effects, as neighbouring villages on rock and soil had significantly different damage intensities (damage more pronounced on softer sediments). The April 6 mainshock was the best-recorded event to date in Italy. We present metadata related to the recording sites and then present preliminary comparisons of the data to GMPEs. Those comparisons support the notion of faster distance attenuation in Italy relative to the average for active regions as reflected in NGA GMPEs. Several incidents of ground failure are then discussed, including a number of rockfalls and minor landslides. Perhaps the most significant incidents of ground failure occurred at Lake Sinizzo, for which we describe a number of slumps and spreads around the lake perimeter. This is documented using field observations as well as LIDAR and bathymetric data.


The aim of the study is to determine the modal parameters of a prototype damaged arch dam by operational modal analysis (OMA) method for some damage scenarios. For this purpose, a prototype arch dam-reservoir-foundation model is constructed under laboratory conditions. Ambient vibration tests on the arch dam model are performed to identify the modal parameters such as natural frequency, mode shape and damping ratio. The tests are conducted for four test-case scenarios: an undamaged dam with empty reservoir, two different damaged dams with empty reservoirs, and a damaged dam with full reservoir. Loading simulating random impact effects is applied on the dam to crack. Cracks and fractures occurred at the middle of the upper part of the dams and distributed through the abutments. Sensitivity accelerometers are placed on the dams` crests to collect signals for measurements. Operational modal analysis software processes the signals collected from the ambient vibration tests, and enhanced frequency domain decomposition and stochastic subspace identification techniques are used to estimate modal parameters of the dams. The modal parameters are obtained to establish a basis for comparison of the results of two techniques for each damage case. Results show that approximately 35-40% difference exists between the natural frequencies obtained from Case 1 and Case 4. The natural frequencies of the dam considerably decrease with increasing cracks. However, observation shows that the filled reservoir slightly affected modal parameters of the dam after severe cracking. The mode shapes obtained are symmetrical and anti-symmetrical. Apparently, mode shapes in Case 1 represent the probable responses of arch dams more accurately. Also, damping ratio show an increase when cracking increases.


Response regulators (RRs) are crucial signalling components that allow plants to respond to fluctuations in their environment. ARR22 is a unique type-C RR previously identified in Arabidopsis that is hypothesised to be post-transcriptionally up-regulated in response to
wounding at the seed:funiculus junction and hence has a predicted role in assimilate partitioning. A putative orthologue known as SAC29 has been isolated in the economically important allotetraploid crop Brassica napus (B. napus). A total of 83 putative RRs in B. napus (BnRRs) have been identified which can be classified into type-A, -B and –C RRs comparable to Arabidopsis. A subset of putative type-A and type-B BnRRs were examined further and expression was detected in early seed development stages which may reveal novel functions for these genes in B. napus. In silico and expression analyses have identified and characterised four putative ARR22 orthologues (BnRR76 – BnRR79) that exhibit 81.25% amino acid similarity. Distinct differences in nucleotide and amino acid sequence were observed in BnRR76 and BnRR78 that originate from B. rapa and B. oleracea parental genomes respectively. All genes contain two introns, one located within the 5'UTR and one in the ORF, similar to ARR22. RT-PCR analysis revealed differences in spatial and temporal expression of BnRR76 and BnRR79 during seed development. Retention of an intron located within the open reading frame in BnRR77 and BnRR79 was also observed at different stages of seed maturation.Mechanical wounding of seeds did not elicit a change in seed storage
protein or cysteine protease expression even after 120 mins and hence does not support the hypothesis that putative B. napus orthologues of ARR22 are necessarily involved in assimilate partitioning. An antibody was designed to recognise an amino acid sequence present in ARR22, and BnRR76 – BnRR79, and was subsequently used in Western blot analysis. Expression of BnRR76 – BnRR79 proteins in seeds was rapidly up-regulated at 60 mins post-wounding while gene expression levels remained at a baseline level until 120 mins when protein level decreased suggesting that a rapid wound response occurs at the protein level rather than at the level of gene expression. Using a dexamethasone (DEX) inducible system, physiological effects of ARR22 overexpression were elucidated. DEX-induced overexpression resulted in severe phenotypes comparable to cytokinin receptor mutants such as reduced rosette area and stunted inflorescence. Transgenic lines in which a predicted phosphorylation site, hypothesised to be critical for protein function during stress response, had been mutated exhibited comparable phenotypic effects and hence suggests a possible different mode of mechanism of ARR22 when ectopically expressed. This project explores and characterises response regulators, with particular focus on their involvement in seed development, for the first time in the economically important oilseed crop B. napus. Future work should examine wounding effects at longer time points as well as aim to elucidate downstream components and targets of ARR22 and its putative B. napus orthologues BnRR76 – BnRR79.


ABSTRACT Recent studies have reported that dim light at night (dLAN) is associated with risks of cardiovascular complications, such as hypertension and carotid atherosclerosis; however, little is known about the underlying mechanism. Here, we evaluated the effect of dLAN on the cerebrovascular system by analyzing cerebral hemodynamic oscillations using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Fourteen healthy male subjects underwent polysomnography coupled with cerebral NIRS. The data collected during sleep with dim light (10 lux) were compared with those collected during sleep under the control dark conditions for the sleep structure, cerebral hemodynamic oscillations, heart rate variability (HRV), and their electroencephalographic (EEG) power spectrum. Power spectral analysis was applied to oxy-hemoglobin concentrations calculated from the NIRS signal. Spectral densities over endothelial very-low-frequency oscillations (VLFOs) (0.003–0.02 Hz), neurogenic VLFOs (0.02–0.04 Hz), myogenic low-frequency oscillations (LFOs) (0.04–0.15 Hz), and total LFOs (0.003–0.15 Hz) were obtained for each sleep stage. The polysomnographic data revealed an increase in the N2 stage under the dLAN conditions. The spectral analysis of cerebral hemodynamics showed that the total LFOs increased significantly during slow-wave sleep (SWS) and decreased during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Specifically, endothelial (median of normalized value, 0.46 vs. 0.72, p = 0.019) and neurogenic (median, 0.58 vs. 0.84, p = 0.019) VLFOs were enhanced during SWS, whereas endothelial VLFOs (median, 1.93 vs. 1.47, p = 0.030) were attenuated during REM sleep. HRV analysis exhibited altered spectral densities during SWS induced by dLAN, including an increase in very-low-frequency and decreases in low-frequency and high-frequency ranges. In the EEG power spectral analysis, no significant difference was detected between the control and dLAN conditions. In conclusion, dLAN can disturb cerebral hemodynamics via the endothelial and autonomic systems without cortical involvement, predominantly during SWS, which might represent an underlying mechanism of the increased cerebrovascular risk associated with light exposure during sleep.


In this study, the influence of yeast strain, immobilisation, and ageing time with yeast were examined in relation to the amount of free amino acids and amino acids in the peptides of wines. Free and immobilised Saccharomyces bayanus and Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeasts were used in sparkling wine production. Samples from the base wine and sparkling wines were taken at 20, 40, 90, 180, 270 and 365 days of ageing with yeast. It was observed that the majority of differences between wine samples in terms of the amount of free amino acids and amino acids in peptides were due to ageing time. The amount of total free amino acids in wine made with Saccharomyces cerevisiae was higher than in that made with Saccharomyces bayanus. In addition, no differences were observed between free and immobilised yeast in terms of amino acids and amino acids in peptides.


This paper reports on a study of e-book usage amongst students with an university library collection. The main objectives of this study were to: (i) investigate how easy or difficult students found it to use e-books by giving them the opportunity to interact with e-books in an operational environment; (ii) determine whether any differences existed in ease of use ratings between students that had and had not used an e-book before the survey; (iii) investigate which e-book features users valued in terms of shelf browsing and content browsing; (iv) measure students' preferences between e-books or printed books given several scenarios; (v) establish whether any differences existed in terms of book format preferences between students that had and had not used an e-book before the survey; (vi) explore students' perceptions and impressions regarding specific features, such as browsable and searchable book indexes and table of contents, in an online library catalogue. The respondents were selected using a systematic random approach from a list of respondents from a previous web survey who had agreed beforehand to participate in this study. A total of 18 participants consisting of undergraduate and postgraduate instructional students completed the study. The findings indicated that in general students found that interacting with e-books in the collection was very easy. Students indicated that their preferred book formats varied depending on the context. In general students were positive about incorporating certain additional e-book features into an online library catalogue. Despite their positive reactions and attitudes towards e-books, students commented that e-books needed to be promoted more strongly and that there were limitations with respect to their use.


We derive here Lagrangian fluctuation–dissipation relations for advected scalars in wall-bounded flows. The relations equate the dissipation rate for either passive or active scalars to the variance of scalar inputs from the initial values, boundary values and internal sources, as those are sampled backward in time by stochastic Lagrangian trajectories. New probabilistic concepts are required to represent scalar boundary conditions at the walls: the boundary local-time density at points on the wall where scalar fluxes are imposed and the boundary first hitting time at points where scalar values are imposed. These concepts are illustrated both by analytical results for the problem of pure heat conduction and by numerical results from a database of channel-flow turbulence, which also demonstrate the scalar mixing properties of near-wall turbulence. As an application of the fluctuation–dissipation relation, we examine for wall-bounded flows the relation between anomalous scalar dissipation and Lagrangian spontaneous stochasticity, i.e. the persistent non-determinism of Lagrangian particle trajectories in the limit of vanishing viscosity and diffusivity. In Part I of this series, we showed that spontaneous stochasticity is the only possible mechanism for anomalous dissipation of passive or active scalars, away from walls. Here it is shown that this remains true when there are no scalar fluxes through walls. Simple examples show, on the other hand, that a distinct mechanism of non-vanishing scalar dissipation can be thin scalar boundary layers near the walls. Nevertheless, we prove for general wall-bounded flows that spontaneous stochasticity is another possible mechanism of anomalous scalar dissipation.


In many ways the arts community in Peterborough is made up of various allied factions. However, curator Liz Fennell's call to all artists for site-specific work came with the intention of bringing those with a high degree of professional experience into proximity with emerging and amateur artists. This move could be read as an attempt to create some porosity between different degrees of artist recognition in order to demonstrate the full breadth of the community's practices. The City of Peterborough's future intent for St. Joseph's is for it to transition into affordable housing, gallery and performance spaces, community gardens and perhaps food programs. Site-specificity and interactivity were therefore integral to the Public Energy project as ways to facilitate public engagement with the site and draw support for its future use. Sculpture Projects MA¼nster (1997) achieved a similar result for the small German town, and there are other examples in Canada: Shorefast President Zita Cobb's rejuvenation of Fogo Island, Newfoundland, is a case in point, albeit on a different scale. Cobb's decision to leave her work in technology and finance, move back to Fogo, and establish the Fogo Island Arts residencies program is an example of the w ay local identity pulls one back to home. Artists in Peterborough are similarly resilient, and they remain rooted regardless of the day-to-day stresses of living in an under-resourced municipality. For the past 20 years, Peterborough has witnessed the decline of the small manufacturing industries upon which the local economy relied. The resulting increase in unemployment is acutely noticeable when one walks Peterborough's main streets, where at least a third of storefronts lie empty and for lease. While Peterborough residents experience nowhere near the level of economic hardship that those living on Fogo Island do, Erring on the Mount is a preliminary nod in the same direction and demonstrates the potential to rethink the messaging of the city. Public Energy Artistic producer Bill Kimball knows this, hence his 20+ years of efforts to bring cutting edge contemporary dance to a small university town.


In May 1986 I was one of a group of 20 University of New South Wales archive diploma students who travelled from Sydney to Canberra for a three day tour of facilities in the nation's capital. Memorably, the bus pulled up outside the National Film and Sound Archive, an art deco building formerly housing the Institute of Anatomy, but now with yellowing posters of Chips Rafferty, Peter Finch and Dad n' Dave lining its walls. Next stop was the suitably imposing Australian War Memorial, where we enjoyed an encounter with original warrelated maps, diaries, photographs and memorabilia. The National Library of Australia left the impression of a magnificent new Greek temple, whilst the Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies was a collection of weatherboard buildings, though both facilities contained a wonderful collection of manuscripts and assorted archival material. Our visit to the nation's premier archives of business and labour at the Australian National University brought us to a cavernous and dimly lit space built as an underground car park but never used as such and containing what seemed like hundreds of rows of shelves straining under the weight of pale brown and cream archive boxes. We were enthralled. Twenty years on, a reading of the Barry Howarth and Ewan Maidment edited Light from the Tunnel brings forth from the many personal reminiscences contained therein, fond memories of warming to archives as a profession, and of listening intently under that low concrete ceiling in 1986 to a doyen of Australian archives, the white-haired Michael Saclier. Beyond that, Light from the Tunnel reveals the often extraordinary effort required in preserving the archives of a nation.


This paper develops a dynamic duopolistic model of advertising and price competition. Advertising accumulates a stock of goodwill which enters directly into the demand functions and both the cooperative and predatory effects of advertising are considered. It is shown that firms invest more in advertising the higher the degree of cooperativeness of advertising and some comparative static results are provided. In the second, empirical part of the article, estimations of the demand equations are presented using data from the German automobile industry. The main conclusion drawn is that advertising plays an important role in this market and has a predatory nature.


The creative design of kinematic structures with excellent performance remains an open issue in the quest for developing novel multi-loop mechanisms. This study presents an automatic method to synthesize all nonisomorphic planar multi-loop mechanisms satisfying the required connectivity between the base and the end-effector. First, based on the connectivity matrix calculation, all multi-loop mechanisms are generated from synthesized kinematic chains. Second, the concepts of perimeter, canonical, and characteristic graphs of multi-color topological graphs are addressed to acquire the simplified characteristic hybrid code (SCHC) in order to eliminate isomorphic multi-loop mechanisms. Then, an automatic method to synthesize all nonisomorphic planar multi-loop mechanisms with the required connectivity between the base and the end-effector is provided. Finally, a practical application of this synthesis method is illustrated by taking the mechanical arm of a face-shovel hydraulic excavator as an example to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method.


The research work focuses on the development of a volumetric context-dependent classification technique and on a system architecture for image classification on a small-scale cluster computer. Future medical imaging systems will provide the medical practitioner with unique capabilities for rapidly analyzing a patient, however such systems will be required to automatically analyze and interpret massive patient datasets in real-time. Both effective image classification and a viable parallel-processing platform are viewed as essential to the successful development of these future systems.
In this research effort a context-dependent classification technique based upon a MRF model is developed along with several novel extensions to the MRF-Gibbs image classification approach. MRF models allow for spatial relationships between locations in an image to be used in the classification process and are viewed as more effective then context-independent approaches, however they have been traditionally applied to small planar images. Here a MRF-Gibbs image model is developed for volumetric datasets and is demonstrated on a massively large dataset. The novel extensions presented consist of an intelligent processing reduction technique along with methods for incorporating spatial consistency into the MRF-Gibbs classification process.
A robust system architecture for image classification and medical imaging on a cluster is also presented. Cluster computing has recently experienced a surge in popularity, since many computer engineers viewed them as an effective parallel-processing platform due to their low cost, fault-tolerance, and wide support. Classification application performance results using the proposed system architecture on a small-scale cluster, along with classification accuracy results of the MRF-Gibbs method are also presented.
In summary, the research described in this document represents a meaningful step towards obtaining real-time computational intensive applications for medical imaging and for extending the technology of image classification. The research specified represents a meaningful contribution in numerous areas of computer science (parallel processing, cluster computing, distributed processing, software engineering) as well as medical imaging itself.


The visual and auditory map alignment in the Superior Colliculus (SC) of barn owl is important for its accurate localization for prey behavior. Prism learning or Blindness may interfere this alignment and cause loss of the capability of accurate prey. However, juvenile barn owl could recover its sensory map alignment by shifting its auditory map. The adaptation of this map alignment is believed based on activity dependent axon developing in Inferior Colliculus (IC). A model is built to explore this mechanism. In this model, axon growing process is instructed by an inhibitory network in SC while the strength of the inhibition adjusted by Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity (STDP). We test and analyze this mechanism by application of the neural structures involved in spatial localization in a robotic system.


over the past century and a half, prison reformers have generally looked to the South with a mixture of rage, resignation, and despair. Southern prisons were long seen as a national embarrassment: a naked and entirely retrograde abuse of power, all in the name of states' rights. But that changed during the four decades following the election of Richard Nixon, as an increasingly conservative (and often southern) national leadership rewrote the playbook around criminal justice, as it did in so many other areas of our collective life. With overt racism no longer acceptable, large numbers of voters transferred their allegiance to politicians who made none-too-veiled references to "law and order," "moral decay," and "urban collapse," thereby harnessing white anxieties without ever explicitly talking about race. The respectable fears of Nixon's Silent Majority profoundly altered the national conversation about crime and punishment, drug addiction, policing, and prison expenditures. In so doing, they reshaped the lives of millions of Americans. Texas, as Robert Perkinson argues in his sprawling, ambitious Texas Tough, led the way. "All of Texas's principal institutions—its political and legal systems, its economy and cultural mores—rested on a bedrock fracture: exalted liberty secured through systematic debasement," he writes. "As in other southern polities that later coalesced into the Confederacy, Texas developed criminal justice traditions uniquely suited to the political economy of human bondage." Perkinson explores the ways in which Texan "justice" evolved its own patterns of behavior. There was the use of courts and prisons to "protect" a postwar white society from freed black slaves and their descendants; the rigid implementation of society's racial caste system behind bars; and a reliance on prisoners' hard labor. The state's jails and prisons encouraged a set of brutal and humiliating punishment rituals: guards were allowed to whip inmates with a leather strap well into the modern era, and rape was widely tolerated as a mechanism of institutional control. texas tough (the title of which was borrowed from an October 2000 report by the Justice Policy Institute) details a post-1968 sea change in the country's attitude toward crime and punishment. As America became more conservative during that period, national politicians and criminal-justice experts stopped looking to the South as a target for reform. Instead, the region began to be regarded as a no-nonsense paradigm that could serve as a model for the rest of the country. "After following a southern strategy to the White House," recounts Perkinson, "Republicans began making American criminal justice a lot more southern." Racism and racial stereotyping were core parts of this transformation. But as with so much else that is unpleasant in modern politics, it came with dollops of plausible deniability. The war on drugs, for example, had a racially disproportionate impact. Yet proponents could always claim that the law was color blind, that people were being sentenced to do hard time for their crimes, not their social status. For Perkinson, this trend reached its zenith during the tenure of George W. Bush. As Texas governor, Bush presided over more executions and built more prisons than any of his peers in other states. As president, he brought many of the worst traits associated with "Texas justice" to the Federal Bureau of Prisons—and, by extension, to the overseas prison camps institutionalized as a core component of the War on Terror. "Remarkably," Perkinson writes, "Mr. Bush twice presided over the largest and fastest-growing prison system in the nation, first as governor, then as president." And what has been the result of this expansion of Texas-style justice? There are more than two million Americans living behind bars on any given day, many of them for drug offenses that would have been better dealt with via treatment or community service than incarceration. We are stuck with burgeoning state budget deficits as criminal-justice expenditures run amok, and a growing mentalhealth crisis inside prisons. Even the very landscape has been physically altered by the construction of hundreds of prisons in recent decades, most of them in poor, remote regions of the country. book review


Issue 41 describes a new addition to the instrument collection on the mezzanine of the chemistry-biology library. Dating from the early 1970s, this desktop Varian E-4 Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) Spectrometer was donated by Dr. Albert Bobst of the UC Chemistry Department.


"John Diggins has put together a stimulating and provocative book filled with contributions of extraordinarily high quality."--Richard Gid Powers, City University of New York, College of Staten IslandFor more than half a century, the celebrated historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., has been the guiding force of American liberalism, both intellectually and in practice. The author of many critically acclaimed books, Schlesinger vigorously defended FDR's New Deal policies in his earliest writings and later served as a close advisor to President John F. Kennedy. In this volume, twenty of today's most eminent historians join forces to explore Schlesinger's unique brand of liberalism--one that has steered clear of ideological extremism and social fragmentation, favoring instead pluralism and the pragmatic use of state power. By engaging the reader in various aspects of his career and intellectual pursuits, these essays offer an exhilarating journey through American political history, from the Jackson era to multiculturalism, while demonstrating historical writing at its best.The volume opens with essays on Schlesinger as a historian and a political participant, contributed by William E. Leuchtenburg, Hugh Thomas, George Kennan, John Kenneth Galbraith, and John Morton Blum. The influence of the Jackson era is explored by Robert Remini, Sean Wilentz, and Jean V. Matthews. In a section on modern liberalism and governance, such topics as the New Deal, the Great Society, and the fate of liberalism under the Carter administration are discussed by Alan Brinkley, Kathleen D. McCarthy, Fred Siegel, Leo P. Ribuffo, and Richard C. Wade. Betty Miller Unterberger and Ronald Steel comment on liberalism andthe Cold War. Louis Menand and Eugene D. Genovese explore ideological controversies within liberalism, including pragmatic liberalism and relativism and multiculturalism. In the final section, George Cotkin, Neil Jumonville, and Sir Isaiah Berlin write on three figures whom Schlesinger greatly admired: William James, Henry Steel Commager, and Edmund Wilson.


Non-native plant species are increasingly being viewed as a threat to sub-alpine and alpine ecosystems, and the need to determine the causes and mechanisms of nonnative plant invasions in mountain systems has been recognized. This study was initiated to provide: 1) useful information for managers in the local area and, 2) information that can be used in concert with data from similar studies to help elucidate the causes and mechanisms of non-native plant species invasions in mountain systems at the global scale. Eighteen populations a non-native species (Linaria dalmatica) and 14 populations of a closely related native species (Castilleja miniata) were surveyed along an elevation gradient in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Climate, environmental, and species demographic data were collected from each site from 2008-2011. Climate and environmental predictors varied along the elevation gradient, with stem density of the two test species being explained by different sets of predictors. Vital rates of L. dalmatica were found to be more variable and more highly associated with climate and environmental predictor variables than those of C. miniata. The population growth rate of L. dalmatica did not show any consistent trend with elevation, but did appear to be influenced by extremely cold temperatures and predictors related to the vegetative community. Probability of occurrence of L. dalmatica was related to elevation. Percent cover of L. dalmatica was not associated with elevation, instead being strongly associated with vegetative community characteristics such as percent perennial cover. The current range of L. dalmatica was broader than the majority of native species in the study area, and the non-native plant community in the study area was significantly more nested with increased elevation than the native plant community. These results suggest that L. dalmatica is a broadly adapted species. Overall, our data fail to provide conclusive evidence of climatic limits for this species, but suggest that it may be limited from upward expansion by extremely cold winter temperatures. Until conclusive evidence of climatic limitation is provided, the upper populations of this species should be monitored and managed to prevent further spread into sub-alpine/alpine environments. 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES


Rapid increase in global energy requirements has resulted in considerable attention towards energy generation from the renewable energy sources. In order to meet renewable energy targets, harnessing energy from all available resources including those from urban environment is required. Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) are seen as a potential way of utilising distributed wind energy sources. Most of the research on the wind turbines constitutes performance analysis and optimisation of VAWTs, in a clean environment, using steady state approximations where the transient effects are not considered. Operations in dusty environments (such as in desserts) may change the nature of the flow field around the VAWT which could decrease its life cycle. This study is an attempt to use Computational Fluid Dynamic's based techniques to study and analyse the performance of a wind turbine under dusty environment. For this purpose, a novel modelling technique, known as Discrete Phase Modelling (DPM), has been used in the present study to introduce dust particles in the vicinity of a VAWT. The predicted results show that the instantaneous torque output of the VAWT decreases significantly in dusty environment. This abrupt change in the instantaneous torque output of the turbine may give rise to highly transient loads on the turbine's structure which may induce heavy stresses on the turbine, leading to structural failure.


The multimodal self-organizing network (MMSON), an artificial neural network architecture carrying out sensory integration, is presented here. The architecture is designed using neurophysiological findings and imaging studies that pertain to sensory integration and consists of interconnected lattices of artificial neurons. In this artificial neural architecture, the degree of recognition of stimuli, that is, the perceived reliability of stimuli in the various subnetworks, is included in the computation. The MMSON's behavior is compared to aspects of brain function that deal with sensory integration. According to human behavioral studies, integration of signals from sensory receptors of different modalities enhances perception of objects and events and also reduces time to detection. In neocortex, integration takes place in bimodal and multimodal association areas and result, not only in feedback-mediated enhanced unimodal perception and shortened reaction time, but also in robust bimodal or multimodal percepts. Simulation data from the presented artificial neural network architecture show that it replicates these important psychological and neuroscientific characteristics of sensory integration.


Modular approaches are widely used methods in AI and engineering. This approach reduces the difficulty of solving a complex problem by subdividing the problem into several smaller parts, i.e. modules, and tackle each independently. In this dissertation, we show how modular approaches can simplify grasping and manipulation problems of service robots. We use the modular approach to tame the difficulties in solving three main research problems in this field: grasp planning, object manipulation and reach motion planning. Different from industrial controlled environments, service robots have to handle abrupt changes and uncertainties occurring in dynamic and cluttered human centered environments. Planning behaviours in such an environment needs to be fast and adaptive to changing context. Programming robot with adaptive behaviours usually is a difficult task and takes a long time. By adopting modular approaches, the task difficulty is reduced as well as the programming time. The proposed approach is based on the method of imitation learning, sometimes referred to as the Programming by Demonstration (PbD). In this framework, we first let human or robot demonstrates possible solutions of the problem. After collecting the demonstrations, we extract multiple modules from the data. Each module represents a part of the system and their corresponding demonstrations are modeled with a statistical method. According to the environment condition, a set of appropriate modules are chosen to provide the final solution. In this dissertation, we present three different modular approaches in tackling three subareas in robot grasping and manipulation: grasp planning, object manipulation adaptive control and planning reaching motions. In Chapter 3, we propose a fast method for computing grasps for known objects and extend this method by a modular approach to work with novel objects. We implemented this method with two different robot hands: the Barrett hand and the iCub hand, and show that the computation time is always in the millisecond scale. In Chapter 4, we present our modular approach in extracting adaptive control strategies using human demonstrations of object manipulation tasks. We successfully implement this method to teach a robot an manipulation tasks: opening bottle caps. In Chapter 5, we present a method to model reaching motion primitives that would allow humans to modulate robot motions by verbal commands. This method is implemented to perform a bimanual lifting task. We show that the method can generate new motions to lift boxes with different sizes and at different locations. These three studies show that robot grasping and manipulation problems can indeed be divided into modules, the solutions of which can be combined to provide a whole solution to the original problems. With modular approaches, new solutions for novel scenarios can be integrated to the original solution without difficulty. This approach allows robots to accumulate their skills. In summary, we contribute three modular and learning hybrid methods in this dissertation: (1) a fast method for grasp planning; (2) a method to extract human manipulation skills from demonstrations for object manipulation; (3) a method to recognize motions and generate motions according to human commands.


Analysis of real datasets to characterize the local stability properties of the Internet routing paths suggests that extending the route selection criteria to account for such property would not increase the routing path length. Nevertheless, even if selecting a more stable routing path could be considered as valuable from a routing perspective, it does not necessarily imply that the associated forwarding path would be more stable. Hence, if the dynamics of the Internet routing and forwarding system show different properties, then one can not straightforwardly derive the one from the other. If this assumption is verified, then the relationship between the stability of the forwarding path (followed by the traffic) and the corresponding routing path as selected by the path-vector routing algorithm requires further characterization. For this purpose, we locally relate, i.e., at the router level, the stability properties of routing path with the corresponding forwarding path. The proposed stability model and measurement results verify this assumption and show that, although the main cause of instability results from the forwarding plane, a second order effect relates forwarding and routing path instability events. This observation provides the first indication that differential stability can safely be taken into account as part of the route selection process.


THE SOUTH African Listed Property Index (J253), commonly known as the SAPY, currently contains 22 counters with a total market capitalisation of R393 billion (3.8% of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange All Share Index, the ALSI) as at 14 December 2015. It is made up of the various types of listed Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITS) in SA. The sector has seen steady inflows, but has remained at around 4% of the JSE since its inception in March 2002.


Subtle distortions on electrocardiogram (ECG) can help doctors to diagnose some serious larvaceous heart sickness on their patients. However, it is difficult to find them manu ally because of disturbing factors such as baseline wander and high-frequency noise. In this chapter, we propose a method based on variational autoencoder to distinguish these distortions automatically and efficiently. We test our method on three ECG datasets from Physionet by adding some tiny artificial distortions. Comparing with other approaches adopting autoencoders [e.g., contractive autoencoder, denoising autoencoder (DAE)], the results of our experiment show that our method improves the performance of publi-cally available on ECG analysis on the distortions.


Supplementary to matter and energy, information is the third essence for modeling the natural world. An emerging discipline known as cognitive informatics (CI) is developed recently that forms a profound interdisciplinary study of cognitive and information sciences, and tackles the common root problems sharing by informatics, computing, software engineering, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, neuropsychology, philosophy, linguistics, and life science. CI focuses on internal information processing mechanisms and the natural intelligence of the brain. This paper describes the historical development of informatics from the classical information theory and contemporary informatics, to CI. The domain of CI, and its interdisciplinary nature are explored. Foundations of CI, particularly the brain versus the mind, the acquired life functions versus the inherited ones, and generic relationships between information, matter, and energy are investigated. The potential engineering applications of CI and perspectives on future research are discussed. It is expected that the investigation into CI will result in fundamental findings towards the development of next generation IT and software technologies, and new architectures of computing systems.


To date, only one empirically tested measure of the observed frequency of unethical behavior in the workplace exists. This widely used measure focuses on intraorganizational cheating and thus covers only a limited part of the much broader spectrum of unethical behaviors in the workplace. Given the importance of a valid measure, this article uses stakeholder theory as a conceptual basis to develop a broader and multidimensional measure of unethical behavior in eight consecutive steps. Exploratory factor analysis generates five subscales comprising 37 items of unethical behavior primarily related to financiers, customers, employees, suppliers, and society. Confirmatory factor analysis demonstrates that a five-factor model has a superior fit to a one-factor model. The subscales display good internal reliability. Preliminary evidence of nomological and criterion-related validity is also provided.


This thesis is an analysis of frequency-volume charts (FVCs) and International Prostate Symptom Scores (IPSS) and their relations, based on 2 large databases: one with 24-hour FVCs of 1152 volunteers of all adult age groups without urological complaints, and one with 7-day FVCs of 378 urological outpatients; both databases included symptom scores.

A review of the literature on FVCs through the end of 2011 showed that especially since 1995 there has been an increase in the number of publications on FVCs, although most of these articles discuss using FVCs to evaluate therapeutic interventions. Several studies have outlined differences between populations, but from a diagnostic point of view, clear cut-off points are obviously lacking.

We presented normal ranges of FVC parameters as well as of the IPSS, comparing age groups and sexes. The mean volume/void decreased significantly with age in both genders. The IPSS increased significantly in consecutive age groups, but more prominent in men.

Compliance with recording a 7-day FVC was high: for the first 5 days, the level of completion was above 80% in most patients. From day 2, compliance decreased significantly with each day. Reliability of FVC parameters increased by day: at 5 days, reliability of 90% was achieved for all parameters. Beyond 5 days, the yield of additional recorded days was limited. This is the first study taking into account both compliance and reliability. We advocated an FVC duration of 3 days, but the length of time may be shortened or extended depending on the goal of the FVC.

Nocturia, as estimated by the IPSS and 7-day FVCs, was determined by mean nocturia in the FVC, the nocturia bother score, and patient age. The IPSS nocturia score overestimated nocturia derived from a 7-day FVC in most patients. When scoring IPSS nocturia question 7, patients seemed to have included a degree of bother.

The nocturnal polyuria index had wide variation but a normal distribution with a mean of 30%. The increase in the nocturnal polyuria index by age was small. The 95th percentile of the values was 53%. This value contrasts with the ICS definition of 33% (by which the prevalence of nocturnal polyuria is overestimated) but agrees with several other reports. Therefore, a better definition of nocturnal polyuria would be when the nocturnal polyuria index exceeds 53%.

The nocturnal voiding frequency depended on sleeping time and maximum voided volume but most of all on the nocturia index (nocturnal urine production / functional bladder capacity). Therefore, nocturia index is the best predictor of nocturia.

Guidelines should indicate more precisely which kind and duration of FVC or diary is advocated, which parameters are most important, and how the generated data should be used. Despite disappointing results reported in some studies, future studies should aim at further elucidating the potential (additional) diagnostic value of FVCs. The use of digital recording and processing of data will most certainly contribute to the diagnostic value of FVCs.


Background Albendazole and mebendazole are increasingly deployed for preventive chemotherapy targeting soil-transmitted helminth (STH) infections. We assessed the efficacy of single oral doses of albendazole (400 mg) and mebendazole (500 mg) for the treatment of hookworm infection in school-aged children in Lao PDR. Since Opisthorchis viverrini is co-endemic in our study setting, the effect of the two drugs could also be determined against this liver fluke. Methodology We conducted a randomized, open-label, two-arm trial. In total, 200 children infected with hookworm (determined by quadruplicate Kato-Katz thick smears derived from two stool samples) were randomly assigned to albendazole (n = 100) and mebendazole (n = 100). Cure rate (CR; percentage of children who became egg-negative after treatment), and egg reduction rate (ERR; reduction in the geometric mean fecal egg count at treatment follow-up compared to baseline) at 21–23 days posttreatment were used as primary outcome measures. Adverse events were monitored 3 hours post treatment. Principal Findings Single-dose albendazole and mebendazole resulted in CRs of 36.0% and 17.6% (odds ratio: 0.4; 95% confidence interval: 0.2–0.8; P = 0.01), and ERRs of 86.7% and 76.3%, respectively. In children co-infected with O. viverrini, albendazole and mebendazole showed low CRs (33.3% and 24.2%, respectively) and moderate ERRs (82.1% and 78.2%, respectively). Conclusions/Significance Both albendazole and mebendazole showed disappointing CRs against hookworm, but albendazole cured infection and reduced intensity of infection with a higher efficacy than mebendazole. Single-dose administrations showed an effect against O. viverrini, and hence it will be interesting to monitor potential ancillary benefits of a preventive chemotherapy strategy that targets STHs in areas where opisthorchiasis is co-endemic. Clinical Trial Registration Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN29126001


Extracted from text ... HOW THE FAIS ACT PROTECTS YOU
Standards of Financial Advice and the Code of Conduct
The Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services (FAIS) Act became fully effective
on Thursday, September 30, 2004 and for the first time, gives you protection
against poor advice.
The legislation, however, does not mean that people with ill-intent will not try to
mislead you. You still have an obligation to protect yourself, and to ensure that
the person or institution giving you advice or selling you a financial product is
properly licensed and adheres to the requirements of the law.
STANDARDS YOU SHOULD EXPECT FROM YOUR ..


Thirteen isolates of Phytophthora infestans were grown on various solidified media. Growth of all isolates was best on rye A agar. Mean sporangia length and width ranged from 23.5 to 41.7 μm x 13.9 to 23.4 μm, respectively, with a length/width ratio of 1.69 to 1.92. All isolates were Al mating type and all isolates, except one isolate from potato, were classified race T1 because blight developed on three tomato lines with the Ph1 resistance gene. Area under the disease progress curve (AUDPC) differed significantly (P < 0.05) by isolate on both detached tomato leaflets and pot-cultured seedlings. Isolate Pill from potato had the lowest AUDPC values on detached leaves and seedlings. Late blight occurred on tomato seedlings transplanted monthly in the central highlands of Taiwan with greatest disease severity from March to June. Field-grown tomatoes sprayed with metalaxyl once and twice per week reduced late blight AUDPC values, decreased yield losses, and increased fruit numbers, compared with the results from fewer or no sprays. Disease, measured as AUDPC, correlated negatively (P < 0.05) to yield (r = -0.82) and number of fruit (r = -0.76).


Is it possible to piece together the confidential data of almost everyone in the US from statistics published by the Census Bureau—without breaching Census security or policy? Could someone—a doctor, a nosy neighbor, or a foreign state actor—determine whether a particular person participated in a genetic study of hundreds of individuals, when each individual contributed only tiny trace amounts of DNA to a highly complex and aggregated genetic mixture? Could police detectives re-trace a suspect's every movement over the course of many months and thereby learn intimate details about the suspect's political, religious, and sexual associations—without having to deploy any sort of surveillance or tracking devices? Could someone reliably deduce the sexual preferences of a Facebook user without looking at any content that user has shared?

Until recently, most people probably never imagined that their highly sensitive personal data could be so vulnerable to discovery from seemingly innocuous sources. Many continue to believe that the privacy risks from purely public, statistical, and anonymised data are merely theoretical, and that the practical risks are negligibly small. Yet all of the privacy violations described above are not only theoretically possible—they have already been successfully executed.

The foregoing examples of real-world privacy attacks all leverage one particular vulnerability that we refer to as composition effects. This vulnerability stems from the cumulative erosions of privacy that inhere in every piece of data about people. These erosions occur no matter how aggregated, insignificant, or anonymised the data may seem, and even small erosions can combine in unanticipated ways to create big risks.

Privacy and data protection failures from unanticipated composition effects reflect a type of data myopia—a short-sighted approach toward addressing increasingly-ubiquitous surveillance and privacy risks from Big Data analytics, characterized by a near-total focus on individual data processors and processes and by pervasive underestimation of systemic risks accumulating from independent data products. The failure to recognize accumulation of risk in the information ecosystem reflects a more general societal blind spot to cumulative systemic risks, with parallels in collective failures to foresee or forestall global financial crises, and to adequately address mounting risks to the natural environment.

As the volume and complexity of data uses and publications grow rapidly across a broad range of contexts, the need to develop frameworks for addressing cumulative privacy risks is likely to become an increasingly urgent and widespread problem. Threats to privacy are growing due to the accelerating abundance, and richness, of data about individuals being generated and made publicly available. Furthermore, substantial increases in computing power and algorithmic improvements are making the execution of such attacks more technically feasible. These threats will be impossible to overcome unless regulations are designed to explicitly regulate cumulative risk in a manner that is consistent with the science of composition effects.


A fragmented ecosystem contains communities of organisms that live in fragmented habitats. Understanding the way biological processes such as reproduction and dispersal over the fragmented habitats take place constitutes a major challenge in spatial ecology. In this thesis we discuss a number of mathematical models of density-dependent populations in inhomogeneous environments presenting growth, decay and diffusion amongst woodland patches of variable potential for reproductive success. These models include one- and two-dimensional analyses of single population systems in fragmented environments. We investigate and compute effective properties for single patch systems in one dimension, linking ecological features with landscape structure and size. A mathematical analysis of potential impacts on spread rates due to the behaviour of individuals in the population is then developed. For the analysis of the population dispersal between areas of plentiful resources and areas of scarce resources, we introduce a novel development that models individuals hazard sensitivity when outside plentiful regions. This sensitivity is modelled by introducing a term called endrotaxis that generates a dispersal gradient, resulting in realistically low migration between regions of plentiful resources. Numerical methods and semi-analytic results yield maximum patch separations for one and two dimensional systems and show that the velocity of spread depends on inter-patch distances and patch geometries. By introducing Allee effects (i.e., inverse density-dependent responses to the difficulty of finding mates at low density) over the population growth function, we find that dispersal is slowed down when combined with hazard sensitivity. In the final Chapter we sumarise the results of the previous chapters, concluding that the work performed in this thesis complements and enriches the current mathematical models of movement behaviour.


Policy backlash occurs when people or organizations mobilize against a policy during or after its enactment, diminishing the power of supporters and reducing the likelihood of the policy's subsequent entrenchment and expansion. This article analyzes backlash as a case of negative policy feedback and explores some of the mechanisms through which backlash occurs among elites, organized groups, and mass publics. The main focus is on the politics of "backlash prevention": using strategies to minimize the prospects of countercoalitions against policies serving diffuse or marginalized constituencies in an era of partisan polarization. These strategies include increasing the progressivity of programs after they have become embedded, recognizing that reforms can threaten the social identities and status of constituencies, and increasing reliance on low-visibility taxes. While countercoalitions cannot be completely neutralized in today's contentious political environment, these strategies can load the dice in favor of sustainable change.


The article discusses the notion of metrical dualism as a phenomenon of the reader's perception of verse. The author analyzes the prosody and metrics of Marina Tsvetayeva's poems " Неподражаемо лжет жизнь " ("How perfectly deceitful life is ….", 1922). However, the aim of this study is not to interpret the metre of Tsvetayeva's verse, but rather to obtain a model of reading verse and thus show how the reader's perception of metre changes. Thus, the author consciously has not considered the metric or the logaoedic interpretations of this poem, while approaching the text from the point of view of the reader's perception which is always aimed at the revealing of symmetric structures. This approach makes it possible to take into account such aspects as the variety of metric interpretations, the dynamic development of verse metre, the internal and external metrical boundaries in text, etc. The analysis of Tsvetayeva's verse reveals the interaction of two rhythmic patterns in the text, which is connected to the general meaning of the poem that tells the reader about the deceitfulness of life .


Novel fundamental research results provided new techniques going beyond the diffraction limit. These recent advances known as super-resolution microscopy have been awarded by the Nobel Prize as they promise new discoveries in biology and live sciences. All these techniques rely on complex signal and image processing. The applicability in biology, and particularly for live cell imaging, remains challenging and needs further investigation. Focusing on image processing and analysis, the thesis is devoted to a significant enhancement of structured illumination microscopy (SIM) and super-resolution optical fluctuation imaging (SOFI)methods towards fast live cell and quantitative imaging. The thesis presents a novel image reconstruction method for both 2D and 3D SIM data, compatible with weak signals, and robust towards unwanted image artifacts. This image reconstruction is efficient under low light conditions, reduces phototoxicity and facilitates live cell observations. We demonstrate the performance of our new method by imaging long super-resolution video sequences of live U2-OS cells and improving cell particle tracking. We develop an adapted 3D deconvolution algorithm for SOFI, which suppresses noise and makes 3D SOFI live cell imaging feasible due to reduction of the number of required input images. We introduce a novel linearization procedure for SOFI maximizing the resolution gain and show that SOFI and PALM can both be applied on the same dataset revealing more insights about the sample. This PALM and SOFI concept provides an enlarged quantitative imaging framework, allowing unprecedented functional exploration of the sample through the estimation of molecular parameters. For quantifying the outcome of our super-resolutionmethods, the thesis presents a novel methodology for objective image quality assessment measuring spatial resolution and signal to noise ratio in real samples. We demonstrate our enhanced SOFI framework by high throughput 3D imaging of live HeLa cells acquiring the whole super-resolution 3D image in 0.95 s, by investigating focal adhesions in live MEF cells, by fast optical readout of fluorescently labelled DNA strands and by unraveling the nanoscale organization of CD4 proteins on a plasma membrane of T-cells. Within the thesis, unique open-source software packages SIMToolbox and SOFI simulation tool were developed to facilitate implementation of super-resolution microscopy methods.


Abundant data is the key to successful machine learning. However, supervised learning requires annotated data that are often hard to obtain. In a classification task with limited resources, Active Learning (AL) promises to guide annotators to examples that bring the most value for a classifier. AL can be successfully combined with self-training, i.e., extending a training set with the unlabelled examples for which a classifier is the most certain. We report our experiences on using AL in a systematic manner to train an SVM classifier for Stack Overflow posts discussing performance of software components. We show that the training examples deemed as the most valuable to the classifier are also the most difficult for humans to annotate. Despite carefully evolved annotation criteria, we report low inter-rater agreement, but we also propose mitigation strategies. Finally, based on one annotator's work, we show that self-training can improve the classification accuracy. We conclude the paper by discussing implication for future text miners aspiring to use AL and self-training.


Computers with communicative artificial intelligence (AI) are pushing First Amendment theory and doctrine in profound and novel ways. They are becoming increasingly self-directed and corporal in ways that may one day make it difficult to call the communication ours versus theirs. This, in turn, invites questions about whether the First Amendment ever will (or ever should) protect AI speech or speakers even absent a locatable and accountable human creator. In this Article, we explain why current free speech theory and doctrine pose surprisingly few barriers to this counterintuitive result; their elasticity doctrine suggests that speaker humanness no longer may be a logically essential part of the First Amendment calculus. We further observe, however, that free speech theory and doctrine provide a basis for regulating, as well as protecting, the speech of nonhuman speakers to serve the interests of their human listeners should strong AI ever evolve to this point. Finally, we note that the futurist implications we describe are possible, but not inevitable. Indeed, contemplating these outcomes for AI speech may inspire rethinking of the free speech theory and doctrine that makes them plausible.


The origin and carbon content of the deep water mass that fills the North Atlantic Basin, either Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) or North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) is suggested to influence the partitioning of CO 2 between the ocean and atmosphere on glacial–interglacial timescales. Fluctuations in the strength of Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) have also been shown to play a key role in global and regional climate change on timescales from annual to millennial. The North Atlantic is an important and well-studied ocean basin but many proxy records tracing ocean circulation in this region over the last glacial cycle are challenging to interpret. Here we present new B/Ca-[CO 2 − 3 ] and boron isotope-pH data from sites spanning the North Atlantic Ocean from 2200 to 3900 m and covering the last 130 kyr from both sides of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. These data allow us to explore the potential of the boron-based proxies as tracers of ocean water masses to ultimately identify the changing nature of Atlantic circulation over the last 130 kyr. This possibility arises because the B/Ca and boron isotope proxies are directly and quantitatively linked to the ocean carbonate system acting as semi-conservative tracers in the modern ocean. Yet the utility of this approach has yet to be demonstrated on glacial–interglacial timescales when various processes may alter the state of the deep ocean carbonate system. We demonstrate that the deep ( ∼ 3400 m) North Atlantic Ocean exhibits considerable variability in terms of its carbonate chemistry through the entirety of the last glacial cycle. Our new data confirm that the last interglacial marine isotope stage (MIS) 5e has a similar deep-water geometry to the Holocene, in terms of the carbonate system. In combination with benthic foraminiferal δ 13 C and a consideration of the [CO 2 − 3 ] of contemporaneous southern sourced water, we infer that AABW influences the eastern abyssal North Atlantic throughout the whole of the last glacial (MIS2 through 4) whereas, only in the coldest stages (MIS2 and MIS4) of the last glacial cycle was AABW an important contributor to our deep sites in both North Atlantic basins. Taken together, our carbonate system depth profiles reveal a pattern of changing stratification within the North Atlantic that bears strong similarities to the atmospheric CO 2 record, evidencing the important role played by ocean water mass geometry and the deep ocean carbonate system in driving changes in atmospheric CO 2 on these timescales.


Context. The new VISual and Infrared Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) has started operations. Over its first five years it will be col lecting data for six Public Surveys, one of which is the near-infrared Y JKs VISTA survey of the Magellanic Clouds system (VMC). This survey comprises the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the Small Magellanic Cloud, the Magellanic Bridge connecting the two galaxies and two fields in the Magellanic Stream. Aims. This paper provides an overview of the VMC survey strategy and presents first science results. The main goals of the VMC sur vey are the determination of the spatially-resolved star-form ation history and the three-dimensional structure of the Magellanic system. The VMC survey is therefore designed to reach stars as faint as the ol dest main sequence turn-off point and to constrain the mean magnitude of pulsating variables such as RR Lyrae stars and Cepheids. This paper focuses on observations of VMC fields in the LMC obtained between November 2009 and March 2010. These observations correspond to a completeness of 7% of the planned LMC fields. Methods. The VMC data are comprised of multi-epoch observations which are executed following specific time constraints. The data were reduced using the VISTA Data Flow System pipeline with source catalogues, including astrometric and photometric corrections, produced and made available via the VISTA Science Archive. The VMC data will be released to the astronomical community following the European Southern Observatory's Public Survey policy. The analysis of the data shows that the sensitivity in each wave band agrees with expectations. Uncertainties and completeness of the data are also derived. Results. The first science results, aimed at assessing the scientific q uality of the VMC data, include an overview of the distribution of stars in colour-magnitude and colour-colour diagrams, the detection of planetary nebulae and stellar clusters, and the Ks band light-curves of variable stars. Conclusions. The VMC survey represents a tremendous improvement, in spatial resolution and sensitivity, on previous panoramic observations of the Magellanic system in the near-infrared, providing a powerful complement to deep observations at other wavelengths.