We discuss the current structure of card networks that facilitate transactions between merchants and consumers. We find that presently fees for this intermediation are considerably higher than costs. This is facilitated by rules imposed by the card networks on the merchants that do not allow merchants to steer competition to cards that have lower fees. It has also been facilitated by the requirement that a merchant has to accept all cards of the same network (honor all cards rule) -- recently abolished in the US, as well as by the fact that the networks set the maximum interface fee between issuing and acquiring banks. We propose the abolition of anti-steering rules so that merchants are able to pass on card holders the costs of the card they use. This will facilitate inter- and intra-network competition and will improve the competitiveness and efficiency of the market.


Scratch recovery is a desirable property of many polymer systems. The reason why some materials have demonstrated excellent scratch recovery while others do not has been a mystery. Explaining the scratch resistance based upon the hardness of a material or its crosslink density is incorrect.
In this thesis, novel polymers were tested in an attempt to discover materials that show excellent scratch recovery - one of the most important parameters in determining the wear of a material. Several hypotheses were developed in an attempt to give an accurate picture of how the chemical structure of a polymer affects its scratch recovery. The results show that high scratch recovery is a complex phenomenon not solely dependent upon the presence of electronegative atoms such as fluorine.


Doping is the use of drug for the purpose of improving performance in general and sports performance in particular. Rejection or acceptance of the use of banned substances by athletes is determined by internal factors that are subjective and external or social. Against this background, the present study examined social risk factors as determinants of intention (temptation) to use banned substances and explored the willingness of athletes at the national level, to report the use of substances that enhance performance. The survey method was a self-report questionnaire based on the Romanian National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) model of approaching risk factors associated with the use of prohibited substances, collection of demographic data and use of the Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale (PEAS). The subjects were 171 athletes (mean age = 19.75, std. error = 0.103) and 30 coaches in sporting institutions and universities. The results reveal a complex distribution of environment-specific social-proximity influences of athletes, including the family, social class or professional institution, leisure group, sports team, sports clubs and social representation. The rate of prevalence for performance-enhancing drugs (PED) was 1.23% to 12.0% for NADA (p < 0.05) and 1.1% to 15.0% for the PEAS (p < 0.001) and fall into ranges reported by recent studies (1.2% to 25.8%). The approach used took into account the assumption that doping is a rational behavior and intentional. As such, it provides points of intervention that influence decision-making. The findings reveal the need to consider the contribution of several social support factors that contribute to the trend abuse drugs that increase performance.


Black fathers are important advocates in addressing the underrepresentation of Black students in gifted programs, as well as the achievement gaps between Black and White students. Black fathers increasingly understand the important role that Black mothers have traditionally played in supporting their gifted children's school experiences. As a result, many are learning to value and embrace their fatherly role in nurturing their child's academic potential by establishing and cultivating relationships with gifted education teachers. Improving Black father and gifted education teacher partnerships requires examining assumptions about Black father involvement and acknowledging the shift in Black family images inspired by President Obama and the First [Black] Family. What are stereotypical views of Black men that undermine their motivation to become involved with schools or that hinder teachers' desire to work with Black men? What resources and support exist for gifted education teachers to engage Black fathers in the education of their children? In this article, the authors address these questions and related issues. Furthermore, they also share personal and professional insights to encourage teachers to understand and initiate Black father involvement through the lens of engagement, accessibility, and responsibility.


Objective: The aim of this study was to analyse the impact of gender differences using the Pediatric Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (PAQLQ) following daily inhaler corticosteroid therapy in children and adolescents with persistent asthma. Materials and Methods: Children between 7-17 years of age with a diagnosis of persistent asthma who were not on daily inhaler corticosteroid therapy were involved. At enrollment, sociodemographic and asthmatic characteristics were investigated and pulmonary function test (PFT), asthma control test (ACT) and PAQLQ were administered. Patients were reevaluated following six weeks of regular inhaler therapy and ACT, PAQLQ and PFT were repeated. The scores from these tests were compared by gender. Results: Out of 62 patients, 27 (43.5%) were female. Although the mean FEV1% and the mean FEV1/FVC ratios of PFT for girls both at enrollment and following 6 weeks of daily inhaler therapy were statistically higher than the ratios for boys, the mean symptom scores, and activity scores and total scores of PAQLQ were significantly lower in girls both at enrollment and following therapy. The mean ACT scores for girls and boys were similar at enrollment but were significantly higher in boys following daily inhaler therapy (p=0.025). The activities with the most limitation due to asthma were running (88.6%), going upstairs (54.3%) and climbing (22.9%) for girls and running (83.3%), playing football (73.8%) and going upstairs (28.6%) for boys. Conclusion: Gender affects the quality of life in children with asthma. The girls had lower quality of life. This could be due to girls being more emotional and more subjective about their illnesses.


This thesis presents a method for deriving time-continuous urban surface temperature and heat island assessments from hemispherical ground-based measurements of upwelling thermal radiation. The method, developed to overcome geometric and temporal biases inherent in traditional thermal remote sensing of urban surface climates, uses a sensor view model in conjunction with a radiative transfer code to derive atmospherically corrected, hemispherical radiometric urban surface temperatures. These are used to derive two long-term climatologies of surface urban heat island (sUHI) magnitudes for Basel, Switzerland and Vancouver, Canada. sUHI development shows significant variation based on time-of-day, season, and ambient and synoptic conditions. Results also show large differences in remote sensed sUHI from hemispherical, nadir and complete representations of the urban surface, with a nadir view overestimating seasonal sUHImax from a complete view by nearly a factor of two. In contrast, a hemispherical view provides significantly more representative, time-continuous urban surface temperature and sUHI analysis.


Mass Spring Model (MSM) is often used to model human liver due to its easy implementation and low computational complexity. This paper focuses on development of a real-time human liver simulation, which enabled an efficient implementation of liver mechanical response incorporating nonlinearity and viscoelasticity properties. Optimization of the computational problems is necessary to permit real-time liver simulation. Adam Variable Step-Size Predictor-Corrector (AVSPC) method is preferred to solve the governing differential equations and considerably more accurate than Fourth-order Runge-Kutta (RK4) method. AVSPC method with higher accuracy leads to higher quality of liver simulation. Reduction of local truncation error is needed to maintain accuracy as well as preventing model state from rapid change. Optimized time step size 0.0063 was implemented in CHAI 3D to simulate real-time liver deformation caused by surgical indenter. Deformation of liver with higher deformation rate appears to have higher stiffness and higher stress relaxation rate. In conclusion, this model is a plausibly significant liver tissue model which is more suitable for real-time interaction with lower computational cost, more accurate, realistic and acceptable to be used in the near future.


In many regions throughout the world, freight models are used to aid infrastructure investment and policy decisions. Since freight is such an integral part of efficient supply chains, more realistic transportation models can be of greater assistance. Transportation models in general have been moving away from the traditional four-step model into activity-based and supply chain-based models. Personal transportation models take into consideration household demographics and why families travel. Freight research has yet to fully identify the relationships between truck movements and company characteristics, so most freight models use the methodology of personal transportation models, despite situational differences. In an effort to classify freight companies into groupings with differentiated travel movements, a survey of licensed motor carriers was designed and conducted in Oregon. The survey consisted of 33 questions. Respondents were asked about their vehicle fleets, locations served, times traveled, types of deliveries, and commodities. An analysis of the data revealed clusters of company types that can be distinguished by determining characteristics such as their role in a supply chain, facilities operated, commodity type, and vehicle types. An assessment of how the relationships found can be integrated into state models is also presented.


Recent Social Security reform efforts focus predominantly on the establishment of personal retirement accounts either to supplement or partially replace the current Social Security program. An important issue related to these personal accounts is whether they will redistribute income and how any redistribution compares to that under the current Social Security system. The answer depends in part on how personal accounts are disbursed upon retirement. In particular, it depends on how mandatory annuitization would impact different groups, especially those with shorter life spans, and whether certain annuity features would offset the drawbacks associated with forcing even those with short life expectancies to annuitize. This paper presents a first step toward answering these questions. It first compares the distributional impacts of personal accounts to the current system. It then examines how different strategies for annuitizing personal account balances might change these distributional impacts. Of particular interest is whether certain annuity features can benefit workers with shorter life spans.


The peace process between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front is a showcase of a new type of conflict resolution. This process included development and a hybrid form of peacekeeping aside from peacemaking endeavors. Japan's assistance to the conflict-affected areas in Mindanao demonstrated the notion of human security with a tripartite cooperation arrangement consisting of the International Monitoring Team, the Mindanao Task Force, and the Japan-Bangsamoro Initiative for Reconstruction and Development. Above all, Japan's participation in the International Monitoring Team opened new pathways for the country to carry out comprehensive support to Mindanao by bridging peace and development. Japan remained in Mindanao even after the peace negotiations reached a stalemate in October 2008. That was the period when the empowerment of local communities and people were at stake under a volatile cease-fire agreement. Japan, in collaboration with local security providers, continued assistance in the conflict-affected areas. In parallel with this effort, the Consolidation of Peace Seminar played a role in introducing local consultation into the peace process; bridging the gap between local civil society and the negotiating panels. These multifaceted endeavors supported local communities in their quest for peace during a critical period of the peace process.


BACKGROUND & AIMS
Crohn's disease (CD) globally emerges with Westernization of lifestyle and nutritional habits. However, a specific dietary constituent that comprehensively evokes gut inflammation in human IBD remains elusive. Here, we aimed at delineating how increased intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) in a Western diet, known to impart risk for developing CD, impacts gut inflammation and disease course. We hypothesized that the unfolded protein response and anti-oxidative activity of Glutathione peroxidase 4 (GPX4), which are compromised in human CD epithelium, compensates for metabolic perturbation evoked by dietary PUFAs.

METHODS
We phenotyped and mechanistically dissected enteritis evoked by a PUFA-enriched Western diet in two mouse models exhibiting endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress consequent to intestinal epithelial cell (IEC)-specific deletion of X-box-binding protein 1 (Xbp1) or Gpx4. We translated findings to human CD epithelial organoids and correlated PUFA intake, estimated by a dietary questionnaire or stool metabolomics, with clinical disease course in two independent CD cohorts.

RESULTS
PUFA excess in a Western diet potently induced ER stress, driving enteritis in Xbp1-/-IEC and in Gpx4+/-IEC mice. ω-3 and ω-6 PUFAs activated the epithelial endoplasmic reticulum sensor IRE1α by toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) sensing of oxygen specific epitopes. TLR2-controlled IRE1α activity governed PUFA-induced chemokine production and enteritis. In active human CD, ω-3 and ω-6 PUFAs instigated epithelial chemokine expression and patients displayed a compatible inflammatory stress signature in the serum. Estimated PUFA intake correlated with clinical and biochemical disease activity in a cohort of 160 CD patients, which was similarly demonstrable in an independent metabolomic stool analysis from 199 CD patients.

CONCLUSION
We provide evidence for the concept of PUFA-induced metabolic gut inflammation which may worsen the course of human CD. Our findings provide a basis for targeted nutritional therapy.


While the design of sex robots is still in the early stages, the social implications of the potential proliferation of sex robots into our lives has been heavily debated by activists and scholars from various disciplines. What is missing in the current debate on sex robots and their potential impact on human social relations is a targeted look at the boundedness and bodily expressivity typically characteristic of humans, the role that these dimensions of human embodiment play in enabling reciprocal human interactions, and the manner in which this contrasts with sex robot-human interactions. Through a fine-grained discussion of these themes, rooted in fruitful but largely untapped resources from the field of enactive embodied cognition, we explore the unique embodiment of sex robots. We argue that the embodiment of the sex robot is constituted by what we term restricted expressivity and a lack of bodily boundedness and that this is the locus of negative but also potentially positive implications. We discuss the possible benefits that these two dimensions of embodiment may have for people within a specific demographic, namely some persons on the autism spectrum. Our preliminary conclusion—that the benefits and the downsides of sex robots reside in the same capability of the robot, its restricted expressivity and lack of bodily boundedness as we call it—demands we take stock of future developments in the design of sex robot embodiment. Given the importance of evidence-based research pertaining to sex robots in particular, as reinforced by Nature (2017) for drawing correlations and making claims, the analysis is intended to set the stage for future research.


Oil-exporting countries face challenges in the conduct of fiscal policy owing to volatile oil revenues, especially in countries with weak institutions. Many oil exporters have established oil funds to delink government expenditure from oil revenues; however, their effectiveness remains unresolved. This paper examines the roles of oil funds and institutional quality in reducing fiscal procyclicality and macroeconomic volatility in 42 oil-exporting countries from 1960 to 2014 using panel vector autoregression techniques. The results show that oil funds are effective in reducing fiscal procyclicality in countries with high institutional quality. There is also a reduction in the procyclical bias in those with low institutional quality but the statistical evidence is weak. Nevertheless, oil funds are associated with reduced volatility of government consumption and the real exchange rate in countries with low institutional quality. These findings give credence to the macroeconomic stabilization role of oil funds but also reinforce the importance of good institutions.


This article explores the beginning of the professionalization process of female lawyers in Estonia upon the example of the profession of a notary public. Here, women students were allowed to study law and female lawyers were allowed to practice professionally several decades later compared to many countries in Europe and the world. Women got access to a wider variety of educational lanes after the Republic of Estonia gained its independence and women students started to be accepted to the university on equal basis with male students. Between the two world wars, several offices in Estonia needed specialists with a higher education in law. The most natural potential career paths for a legal academic are usually working in the court system, bar association or as a notary public. Yet, the prejudices widespread in the society and later the economic crisis of the 1930s, alongside the competition with male lawyers made it difficult for women to get a job that corresponded to their education. During the interwar years 1,618 students graduated from the faculty of law: 1,475 of them were men. There were 143 women graduates in the period, i.e., 8.8% of the law students. About a half of the law graduates found work in the field, while several female lawyers worked as apprentices or low-paid office clerks at courts. No female lawyers were appointed judges in Estonia before World War II, 42 women were admitted to the Bar Association. The first woman to become notary public, Ilma Sarepera, was appointed to office as late as in 1936. It is remarkable that the first appointed woman notary public remained the only woman notary public until 1944 when the Soviet power in Estonia was restored and authorities actively started to appoint women notaries. There was no actual resistance to appointing women notaries before World War II. At the same time, female lawyers were not queueing to get an appointment. The faint interest female lawyers expressed towards the profession of notary public can be explained with objective reasons: in the conditions of an economic crisis women rather preferred a low-paying but stable job as an office clerk. Several women also decided to become advocates or found work in an entirely different field. Most women notaries were appointed to office by the Soviet power in Soviet Estonia. War losses, repressions and the replacement of the former body of law practitioners in the 1940s brought new employments perspectives. In April 1949 there were a total of 28 notaries in 26 offices in Estonia, 11 of them women, all of them Estonian. The next women notaries after Ilma Sarepera were appointed to office in 1944 when the work of notarial offices was rapidly restarted. Only one of the women who were appointed notary public in 1944–1949 had a higher education in law, which shows that women without a relevant education were also appointed to office. Most of the women went to three-month courses for the preparation of notaries public in the USSR rear zone in Yegoryevsk, Moscow oblast or in the Tallinn Law School before they started work as notaries public. During the Soviet period women had more opportunities to become a notary public, yet, at the same time, a legal education was not considered as important as loyalty to the Soviet power and membership in the Communist party.


Species composition and population densities of weed communities of arable land reflect agronomic practices. The trend toward reducing tillage in corn (Zea mays L.) and soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] production changes the environment where weeds are managed, survive, and reproduce. The shift from tillage systems that include extensive annual soil disturbance to systems that minimize soil disturbance will cause major changes in weed population dynamics. These changes often reduce the effectiveness of weed control practices. Reduced herbicide efficacy has slowed adoption of conservation tillage because many conservation tillage systems rely heavily on herbicides for weed management. Poor understanding of weed population dynamics and lack of suitable control alternatives often result in increased herbicide use in conservation tillage systems. While results have varied among experiments, some general trends in weed population dynamics have arisen as tillage is reduced. These include increased populations of perennial, summer annual grass, biennial, and winter annual species. Densities of large-seeded dicot species often decrease. The ecological and management aspects of these changes are varied and complex. Effective, economical, and environmentally sound weed management in conservation tillage systems will require integration of new information with established principles of weed management. New management systems and control technologies are needed to develop integrated weed management systems for the altered ecosystems created by conservation tillage production systems.


We analyze the linkages between irrigation and nutrition using data from irrigators and non-irrigators in Northern Ghana. The results show that (i) there is a modest difference in the overall household dietary diversity score between irrigators and non-irrigators, (ii) there are significant differences in the consumption of animal source foods between irrigators and non-irrigators, (iii) there are significant differences in the consumption of fruits and vegetables as well as sugar and honey between irrigators and non-irrigators, and (iv) the sources of food consumption differ between irrigators and non-irrigators. The analysis shows strong association between households' nutritional status and their access to irrigation, with evidences suggesting that the irrigation-nutrition linkages play out both through the income and production pathways in Northern Ghana.


It is no longer a secret--Africa is finally on the rise. For many decades, we have been used to associating the continent with the Six D's of horror: decay, disaster, drought, disease, despotism, and despair. They have not disappeared over night, but they are now being complemented by the Three E's: emergence, evolution, and emancipation. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Robust growth rates were hardly disturbed by the global crisis of 2008; armed conflict has declined; the middle class is growing; elections are improving and becoming more frequent; regional political integration is increasing; more girls are attending school; malaria and HIV/AIDS are being treated more effectively; and the old dinosaurs who used to fill their coffers while ruining their countries are beginning to disappear--could the worst finally be over for Africa? Will it follow most other regions of the southern hemisphere, and eventually emerge from poverty? The continent is not there yet, but we can see some interesting new trends. Africans have started to find answers to their burning questions. Consequently, some deeply rooted perceptions may need adjustment: both the West and Africa's Asian partners will at last have to accept Africa as an equal partner. This will require new thinking in a number of capitals, but old attitudes die hard. Africans are raising their voices in the global concert without obsolete liberation ideology, underdog rhetoric, or cries for more help. Instead, they are stating Africa's case persuasively, arguing at an Ivy League level, looking China in the eye, and reminding the rest of us that theirs is not an earth apart, but part of our One World. They come from all walks of life into Africa's emerging middle class. They should be listened to by all the global social engineers who still think that poverty can be reduced from outside, that Africa needs help and pity, and that foreigners should do all the thinking. Many of us haven't realized yet how fast foreign aid is losing its importance as a major factor in Africa's development. Why Africa Failed Previously Since the beginning of decolonization, sub-Saharan Africa has tried at least twice to find its way out of the doldrums--first, right after the independence of tropical Africa, around 1960; and again following the end of the Cold War when a number of "Big Men" were successfully challenged by democratic movements. Both times, hope was crushed--in the 1970s when military regimes took over, suffocating political emancipation and giving way to mismanagement and corruption, and in the 1990s, when the number of wars in Africa reached its post-independence peak, and foreign debt was at its highest. Between 1989 and 2004, UN peacekeeping missions had to intervene in 15 African countries. Commodity prices were down, and foreign debt was not yet forgiven. While Asia's small tigers first, and China later, stunned the world with impressive progress, Africa appeared to be trailing behind hopelessly. Optimists about Africa had a hard time. Africa's twice repeated failure to emerge confirmed its international reputation as a basket case. Seemingly unable to manage its affairs, it constantly required international intervention, which came in different shapes. While the United States and many European countries increased their aid, conceived the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and wrote off most of Africa's foreign debt, China began to develop infrastructure and take out unprocessed commodities. Western countries with strong Protestant traditions continued to see Africa through the distorting lens of their bad conscience, stemming from the distant past of colonialism and the slave trade. Africa's leaders did subscribe to the MDGs, but had they really participated in conceiving them? As late as 2004, the Brookings Institute published a study, "Ending Africa's Poverty Trap," which drew a grand picture of everything that needed to be done in and for Africa. …


In the last few years, much attention has been devoted to the control of the wettability properties of surfaces modified with functional groups. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation is one of the powerful tools for microscopic analysis providing visual images and mean geometrical shapes of the contact line, e.g., of nanoscale droplets on solid surfaces, while profound understanding of wetting demands quantitative evaluation of the solid-liquid (SL) interfacial tension. In the present work, we examined the wetting of water on neutral and regular hydroxylated silica surfaces with five different area densities of OH groups ρA OH, ranging from a non-hydroxylated surface to a fully hydroxylated one through two theoretical methods: thermodynamic integration (TI) and MD simulations of quasi-two-dimensional equilibrium droplets. For the former, the work of adhesion needed to quasi-statically strip the water film off the solid surface was computed by the phantom wall TI scheme to evaluate the SL interfacial free energy, whereas for the latter, the apparent contact angle θapp was calculated from the droplet density distribution. The theoretical contact angle θYD and the apparent one θapp, both indicating the enhancement of wettability by an increase in ρA OH, presented good quantitative agreement, especially for non-hydroxylated and highly hydroxylated surfaces. On partially hydroxylated surfaces, in which θYD and θapp slightly deviated, the Brownian motion of the droplet was suppressed, possibly due to the pinning of the contact line around the hydroxyl groups. Relations between work of adhesion, interfacial energy, and entropy loss were also analyzed, and their influence on the wettability was discussed.


The subfamily Asopinae of the stinkbug family Pentatomidae is revised for the Old World with a key to the genera and a review of the species with nomenclatural changes. The genus Tahitocoris is removed from the Asopinae and placed tentatively with the Podopinae. The genus Breddiniella is reduced to a synonym of Cazira. The genus Incitatus is reduced to a synonym of Martinina. The genus Platynopus is divided into three genera by the restriction of Platynopus to include only five Indo- Pacific species; the elevation of the subgenus Montrouzieriellus to the level of full genus, and the erection of a new genus Platynopiellus for the African species formerly placed in Platynopus. A new genus Australojalla is erected for Jalla versicolor. The genera Cantheconidea and Eocanthecona are defined and their respective species aligned in concordance with their definitions. Fourteen species are thus transferred from Cantheconidea to Eocanthecona creating the following new combinations: Eocanthecona japanicola, Eocanthecona binotata, Eocanthecona latipes, Eocanthecona mitis, Eocanthecona neotibialis, Eocanthecona ornatula, Eocanthecona parva, Eocanthecona plebeja, Eocanthecona robusta, Eocanthecona rufescens, Eocanthecona shikokuensis, Eocanthecona thomsoni, Eocanthecona tibialis, and Eocanthecona vollenhoveni. Eocanthecona migratoria is transferred to the genus Afrius creating the new combination Afrius migratorius. Also, Canthecona populusi is transferred to Eocanthecona giving the new combination Eocanthecona populusi. Anasida ikrami is transferred to the genus Pseudanasida giving the new combination Pseudanasida ikrami. Afrius discolor glypsoides is placed in synonymy under Cantheconada discolor. Asopus rufus is synonymized under Amyotea malabarica Arma neocusta and Arma neoinsperata are synonymized under Arma custos.


The movement known as neorealism lasted seven years, generated only twenty-one films, failed at the box office, and fell short of its didactic and aesthetic aspirations. Yet it exerted such a profound influence on Italian cinema that all the best postwar directors had to come to terms with it, whether in seeming imitation (the early Olmi), in commercial exploitation (the middle Comencini) or in ostensible rejection (the recent Tavianis). Despite the reactionary pressures of the marketplace and the highly personalized visions of Fellini, Antonioni. And Visconti, Italian cinema has maintained its moral commitment to use the medium in socially responsible ways--if not to change the world, as the first neorealists hoped, then at least to move filmgoers to face the pressing economic, political, and human problems in their midst. From Rossellini's Open City (1945) to the Taviani brothers' Night of the Shooting Stars (1982). The author does close readings of seventeen films that tell the story of neorealism's evolving influence on Italian postwar cinematic expression. Other films discussed are De Sica's Bicycle Thief and Umberto D. De Santis's Bitter Rice, Comencini's Bread, Love, and Fantasy, Fellini's La strada, Visconti's Senso, Antonioni's Red Desert, Olmi's Il Posto, Germi's Seduced and Abandoned, Pasolini's Teorema, Petri's Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion, Bertolucci's The Conformist, Rosi's Christ Stopped at Eboli, and Wertmuller's Love and Anarchy, Scola's We All Loved Each Other So Much provides the occasion for the author's own retrospective consideration of how Italian cinema has fulfilled, or disappointed, the promise of neorealism.


Vintage human capital models imply that young workers will be the primary adopters and beneficiaries of new technologies. Because technological progress in general, and computers in particular, may be skill-biased and because human capital increases over the lifecycle, technological change may favor experienced workers. This paper estimates the relationship between experience and technology adoption and the effect of technological change on the returns to experience. Estimates indicate that technological change is an important explanation for changes in experience premia. We find a complementarity between existing human capital and computer adoption and provide evidence that young workers are better able to adapt to new technologies. Our estimates also provide some evidence for creative destruction models of the productivity slowdown.


The Journal of STEM Arts, Crafts, and Constructions is a scholarly journal that seeks to engage professionals, including preK-12 teachers, in a conversation about the benefits of arts integration; the ways that the STEM subjects can be integrated with the arts to produce effective teaching (STEAM Education); and how the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), can be effectively implemented with integrated arts, crafts, or constructions. Manuscripts, including guest editorials, are blind peer-reviewed by usually two reviewers and an associate editor or by three reviewers. This editorial explains the Journal's origin in a faculty professional learning community. The Journal has a national reach with plans for two issues each year. The editorial discusses what the Journal is looking for in manuscript submissions, how the Journal may be of use to readers, and highlights of the articles in this issue. Finally, the editor explains the 5E's learning cycle lesson model, which is an effective format for inquiry lessons to readers who may be interested in incorporating this format into lessons and future manuscripts.


Parameters were identified for the rat which both made drinking more probable than running and running more probable than drinking. In the same subjects, depending upon which parameters were used, running reinforced drinking and drinking reinforced running. This relationship suggests that a "reward" is simply any response that is independently more probable than another response.


In the wake of digitalization, organizations are increasingly exposed to risks associated with security breaches and must take measures to preserve the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information, and to ensure business continuity. The international standard ISO/IEC 27001 assists organizations in setting up, maintaining and continuously improving their information security management systems. However, despite high growth rates, its international diffusion rates are quite heterogeneous. This paper explores why the diffusion of the international management system standard ISO/IEC 27001 differs across countries. We classify the adoption of ISO/IEC 27001 as a 'preventive organizational innovation' and draw from diffusion studies of other management system standards and information security research to develop a set of hypotheses. These relate to the impact of cultural dimensions and national ICT development. We use a negative binomial regression model with panel data covering 57 countries over a 12-year period from 2006 to 2017 to test our hypotheses. We find that the cultural dimensions future orientation, power distance, and institutional collectivism as well as high ICT development are driving factors for the diffusion of ISO/IEC 27001. We derive policy recommendations and avenues for future research.


It has long been recognized that there is considerable heterogeneity in individual risk taking behavior but little is known about the distribution of risk taking types. We present a parsimonious characterization of risk taking behavior by estimating a finite mixture regression model for three different experimental data sets, two Swiss and one Chinese, over a large number of real gains and losses. We find two distinct types of individuals: In all three data sets, the choices of roughly 80% of the subjects exhibit significant deviations from rational probability weighting consistent with prospect theory. 20% of the subjects weight probabilities linearly and behave essentially as expected value maximizers. Moreover, the individuals are assigned to one of these two groups with probabilities of close to one resulting in a low measure of entropy. The reliability and robustness of our classification suggest using a mix of preference theories in applied economic modeling.


By investigating the connections between the real, remembered and imagined, this
research project set out as an inquiry into the capacity of painting to function as a
mnemonic device. People who use such devices can be referred to as "memorists"
(Reber, Allen & Reber 2009). Through process-based drawing, collage and
painting, I placed objects, imbued with traumatic family histories, into
compositions that were visual attempts at remembering spaces of my childhood.
My intention was to test relationships that exist between drawing and collage and
how each of these processes could bring to painting the experience of
remembering. Painting, I concluded, was an articulate practice that benefited
from the disjointed and fragmentary nature of collage as a preparatory process.
The paintings draw on remembered events with the backdrop of the 1960s
and 1970s of my childhood. Inherited objects from this time provide evidence of
my ancestral trauma of penury, diaspora and war. In my hand these vestige objects
have the literal weight of their primary function and the metaphoric weight of
memories. Vestige describes a disparate group of inherited ancestral objects
including a bayonet from the Great War, a family bible, and whimsies such as a
ceramic figurine. The paintings are about these real objects and their histories
painted on canvas from life or photographs, coalescing in contextual spaces based
on uncertain childhood memories.
The project was supported by research into theories of memory, objects
and landscape. Each contribution, philosophical or clinical, co-acted for strategies and methodologies in making. Psychoanalytic theories (of van der Kolk,
Laplanche and Pontalis) provided working definitions of memory-recall that
aligned with painting strategies in the studio. The work of Maurice Halbwachs
offered insights into existential questions relating to physical objects in daily
contact and notions of permanence and stability. Ian Farr theorised on the role of
landscape in the consciousness of childhood. Jill Bennett, in her work Empathic
Vision, discusses the use of fiction and fantasy in art that endeavours to visually
register experience of traumatic memory.
Artworks discussed in the Context chapter, 2 are significant because they
exemplify the evocative potency of trauma, memory, banal objects and interior
spaces in collage and painting. The work explores various interpretive modes of
painting that challenge ways of perceiving the encounters between subjective
realities and the above topics. Examination of work by Albert Tucker and Imants
Tillers provided a perspective on trauma and diaspora. Paintings by Matthias
Weischer and Dexter Dalwood are used to discuss the relationship between
pictorial 'interior space' and memory. Historical perspectives on still life and
collage in the work of Picasso and Braque are contrasted with a contemporary
collaging of 'tabletop' space in the work of James Lynch.
In conclusion I found that vestige objects have the ability to draw
something out of the painter, more than could have been understood at the
beginning of the project. An intimate engagement was established with the objects.
They were near enough to be touched and constantly scrutinised. This intimacy
allowed me to reflect on their original intended functions: killing, advertising and story-telling, all being different from their banal utilitarian, domestic functions as
remembered from childhood. The paintings problematize the relationships
between real objects, their remembered banality and their representation in paint.
My thesis demonstrates that, with the techniques I have employed, I can
bring these things together. Paintings have considerable coherency (structurally)
to offer a plausible pictorial account of how one might visualise and make sense
of the snippets of childhood memory that have such a significant role to play in
psychological and social formation.


In recent years, research investigating strategies to reduce exercise-induced muscle damage have become popular, with acute carbohydrate-protein supplementation gaining interest. The results of these studies are equivocal. A review of published peer-reviewed articles in reference to acute carbohydrate-protein supplementation and their impact on alleviating exercise-induced muscle damage is provided, in addition to an overview of the exercise-induced muscle damage process and rationale for their use. It can be concluded that there is potential for acute carbohydrate-protein supplementation to reduce some symptoms of exercise-induced muscle damage. Primarily, there is evidence of reduced increases in intramuscular proteins in serum and attenuated reductions in concentric muscle actions. However, there is little evidence of muscle soreness being alleviated. There are also substantial gaps in the literature, with information lacking in: (i) optimal dosage; (ii) optimal timing of supplementation; (iii) the effect on all paradigms of muscle function; and (iv) make-up of supplement(s), although whey protein concentrate and milk-based protein appear to provide benefits. Due to the conflicting results and the lack of studies conducted in this area it is difficult to provide definitive advice to the exercising individual. However, consuming carbohydrateprotein supplements would be recommended as they have demonstrated potential for reducing exercise-induced muscle damage and may be beneficial for other aspects of recovery.


Childhood maltreatment is a significant risk factor for the perpetration of intimate partner violence (IPV) in adulthood. This study tested, in a clinical sample, a conceptual model suggesting that childhood maltreatment contributes to the development of anger personality traits, directly and indirectly via posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and that anger personality traits, in turn, are associated with IPV. Adults consulting for sex therapy (n = 114) completed self-report measures of childhood maltreatment, PTSD, anger, and IPV. Participants were exposed to high rates of childhood maltreatment (83%). Path analysis supported the hypothesized model: Exposure to child maltreatment was associated with anger personality traits, and this association was partially mediated by PTSD symptoms. Anger personality traits were highly correlated with IPV.


Over the past two decades, several fungal outbreaks have occurred, including the high-profile 'Vancouver Island' and 'Pacific Northwest' outbreaks, caused by Cryptococcus gattii, which has affected hundreds of otherwise healthy humans and animals. Over the same time period, C. gattii was the cause of several additional case clusters at localities outside of the tropical and subtropical climate zones where the species normally occurs. In every case, the causative agent belongs to a previously rare genotype of C. gattii called AFLP6/VGII, but the origin of the outbreak clades remains enigmatic. Here we used phylogenetic and recombination analyses, based on AFLP and multiple MLST datasets, and coalescence gene genealogy to demonstrate that these outbreaks have arisen from a highly-recombining C. gattii population in the native rainforest of Northern Brazil. Thus the modern virulent C. gattii AFLP6/VGII outbreak lineages derived from mating events in South America and then dispersed to temperate regions where they cause serious infections in humans and animals.


Traditional views of grammatical theory hold that languages are characterized by sets of constructions. This approach entails the enumeration of all possible constructions for each language being described. Current theories of transformational generative grammar have established an alternative position. Specifically, Chomsky''s Government-Binding theory proposes a system of principles which are common to human language. Such a theory is referred to as a ``Universal Grammar'''' (UG). Associated with the principles of grammar are parameters of variation which account for the diversity of human languages. The grammar for a particular language is known as a ``Core Grammar'''', and is characterized by an appropriately parametrized instance of UG. Despite these advances in linguistic theory, construction-based approaches have remained the status quo within the field of natural language processing. This thesis investigates the possibility of developing a principle-based system which reflects the modular nature of the linguistic theory. That is, rather than stipulating the possible constructions of a language, a system is developed which uses the principles of grammar and language specific parameters to parse language. Specifically, a system is presented which performs syntactic analysis and translation for a subset of English and German. The cross-linguistic nature of the theory is reflected by the system which can be considered a procedural model of UG.


Criminal behavior among executives is a complicated challenge in human resource management. Based on a sample of 305 convicted white-collar criminals in Norway, four groups of criminals are discussed in this paper: criminal entrepreneurs, corporate criminals, criminal followers, and female criminals. There are significant differences between these groups. Crime amount in terms of Norwegian kroner is highest for corporate criminals and lowest for female criminals. It is interesting to note than even if crime amount for corporate criminals is higher than for criminal entrepreneurs, corporate criminals receive a shorter jail sentence than criminal entrepreneurs. It seems that crime on behalf of the business is treated more mildly in court, when compared to crime on behalf of the person himself. When followers are involved in the crime, there are more persons participating in the crime. The lowest number of participants is found in cases of criminal entrepreneurship.


Title of dissertation: ESSAYS ON INFORMATION CONTAGION AND MEDIA OF EXCHANGE David McArthur, Doctor of Philosophy, 2013 Dissertation directed by: Professor John Rust Department of Economics CHAPTER 1: INFORMATION CONTAGION In social media, information spreads like a contagion from person to person. When many pieces of information are spreading and competing in the space of social media messages, their propagation rates become very unequal. This is because contagion creates a positive feedback which amplifies small, random differences in prevalence. A framework for modeling social media is developed that suggests how to infer the communication choices of social media participants from the observed heavy-tailed count distribution of messages containing different pieces of information. In a Monte Carlo simulation where agents with rational expectations make individually optimal communication choices, the feedback effect is only partially mitigated. Even with fully rational behavior, information that no-one has an especially high propensity to pass along can "go viral". CHAPTER 2: SEARCH AND BARGAINING WITH PLASTIC: MONEY AND CHARGE CARDS AS COMPETING MEDIA OF EXCHANGE Charge cards are introduced into the Lagos-Wright money search model as an alternative medium of exchange competing with money. I explore why cards and money may coexist, and examine the implications of intermediated exchange for monetary policy. Charge cards lower the social cost of inflation because they overcome the hold up problem with money that otherwise results in too little exchange. Some inflation can even be beneficial if a higher cost of holding money pushes agents to become cardholders. Moreover, higher nominal interest rates help card companies set higher spending limits, which can also increase the level of exchange and improve welfare. ESSAYS ON INFORMATION CONTAGION AND MEDIA OF EXCHANGE


We propose and demonstrate what is to our knowledge a novel technique of improving the spatial resolution of an optical coherence tomography (OCT) system given a non-Gaussian light source spectrum. By using dispersive materials in the reference arm of the OCT system, the resultant dispersion variation led to a full-width at half maximum (FWHM) of the interference fringe envelope smaller than the Fourier transform-limited value of a Gaussian spectral shape with the same spectral FWHM, at the expense of significant tails. The effects of the tails, which would blur the OCT images, were tremendously reduced with a retrieval algorithm. Simulation results and processed OCT scanning images have shown the capability of the proposed technique.


The bin-packing problem is to partition a multiset of n numbers into as few bins of capacity C as possible, such that the sum of the numbers in each bin does not exceed C. We compare two existing algorithms for solving this problem: bin completion (BC) and branch-and-cut-and-price (BCP). We show experimentally that the problem difficulty and dominant algorithm are a function of n, the precision of the input elements and the number of bins in an optimal solution. We describe three improvements to BC which result in a speedup of up to five orders of magnitude as compared to the original BC algorithm. While the current belief is that BCP is the dominant bin-packing algorithm, we show that improved BC is up to five orders of magnitude faster than a state-of-the-art BCP algorithm on problems with relatively few bins. We then explore a closely related problem, the number-partitioning problem, and show that an algorithm based on improved bin packing is up to three orders of magnitude faster than a BCP solver called DIMM which claims to be state of the art. Finally, we show how to use number partitioning to generate difficult bin-packing instances.


The Sioux Tribe's lawsuits and protests against the Dakota Access Pipelines (DAPL) received an incredible amount of international attention in ways that many Indigenous peoples' protests have not. This article argues that attention exists because the Sioux Tribe has been at the epicenter of the Indigenous peoples' rights movement in international law. Accordingly, they have invoked or claimed international human rights—particularly free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC)— to complicate, and perhaps destabilize, the DAPL's development. However, the importance of their activism is not merely in claiming human rights. Based upon a global map of law that involves multiple and overlapping legalities, this article tracks the Sioux Tribe's activism according to the problem-solving approach. Accordingly, the Sioux Tribe is advancing a different model of legality, one that is not based on a top-down command and control authority. This article reveals a complex, global network of intercommunal Indigenous peoples and nonstate actors by tracing the historical trajectory of the Sioux Tribe, its opposition to the DAPL, its role in the Indigenous peoples' rights movement, and the novel extra-national legalities the Sioux Tribe is helping to formalize. * Stephen Young is a sessional lecturer and PhD candidate in law at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.


Many hematopoietic cells die by apoptosis when deprived of specific cytokines, and this process requires active transcription. Using DNA microarrays to identify specific genes that are transcriptionally activated after cytokine withdrawal, Devireddy et al. discovered an important new player in this cell death pathway. In a study of interleukin-3 (IL-3)-dependent murine FL5.12 pro-B cells, they find that the gene showing maximal transcriptional activation upon IL-3 withdrawal is 24p3. The 24p3 gene encodes a small secreted protein with sequence motifs characteristic of lipocalins, a large family of proteins previously linked to diverse functions ranging from retinol transport to prostaglandin synthesis to modulation of the immune response. Addition of 24p3 to the culture medium induced apoptosis of a wide variety of leukocytes, and apoptotic sensitivity appeared to be determined by the presence or absence of a cell surface receptor for 24p3. L. R. Devireddy, J. G. Teodoro, F. A. Richard, M. R. Green, Induction of apoptosis by a secreted lipocalin that is transcriptionally regulated by IL-3 deprivation. Science 293, 829-834 (2001). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Suppose Alice owns a k-anonymous database and needs to determine whether her database, when inserted with a tuple owned by Bob, is still k-anonymous. Also, suppose that access to the database is strictly controlled, because for example data are used for certain experiments that need to be maintained confidential. Clearly, allowing Alice to directly read the contents of the tuple breaks the privacy of Bob (e.g., a patient's medical record); on the other hand, the confidentiality of the database managed by Alice is violated once Bob has access to the contents of the database. Thus, the problem is to check whether the database inserted with the tuple is still k-anonymous, without letting Alice and Bob know the contents of the tuple and the database, respectively. In this paper, we propose two protocols solving this problem on suppression-based and generalization-based k-anonymous and confidential databases. The protocols rely on well-known cryptographic assumptions, and we provide theoretical analyses to proof their soundness and experimental results to illustrate their efficiency.


Muscle contractile properties are history-dependent, and following a conditioning contraction, muscle tissue may be fatigued (slower, weaker) or potentiated (faster, stronger). Postactivation potentiation of evoked contractions, such as the electrically stimulated twitch, has been thoroughly studied. However, the effects of potentiation on voluntary contraction are not well understood, and prior study is largely equivocal. The following studies propose to determine the effects of potentiation during 1) submaximal contractions at different muscle lengths 2) ballistic contractions following tetanic and voluntary conditioning, and 3) motor evoked potentials following tetanic and voluntary conditioning contractions. Evoked twitch potentiation was assessed with all of the above voluntary measures to compare electrically evoked contractions to those involving the entire neuromuscular system. Study 1 illustrates that voluntary neuromuscular efficiency of the triceps brachii is greater in a shortened compared to lengthened muscle position. The results of Study 2 indicate that voluntary ballistic peak rate of torque development (RTD) is unchanged following a tetanic conditioning contraction, and is impaired following a voluntary conditioning contraction. This is observed concomitant to a 2-fold increase in twitch torque and peak RTD. Study 3 shows that despite failure of voluntary peak RTD to improve following potentiation, that RTD is enhanced at non-peak time points, implying that performance may adapt differentially throughout the time course of contraction. Study 4 used transcranial magnetic stimulation to provoke a cortical silent period to assess motor cortical inhibition. Following both voluntary and involuntary conditioning contractions, twitch potentiation was observed concurrent to cortical inhibition. This indicates that the conditioning contraction may simultaneously enhance muscular contractile properties and inhibit activity of the motor cortex. Together, these results indicate a limited opportunity for a conditioning contraction to enhance voluntary contractile properties, despite the substantial enhancement to twitch properties. In addition to the muscular fatigue to which the twitch is subject, the


This article presents an analysis of aspects guiding the management of risks associated with wildfires in territories governed by indigenous communities in Bolivia, and the crucial factors that contribute to responsive actions. These include: (i) indigenous worldviews regarding natural resources and the use of fire, (ii) strengthening of indigenous institutions for risk management, and (iii) autonomous, participatory and democratic indigenous community governance models. Using the Indigenous Territory of Lomerío of the Monkox nation as a case study, it also examines the advances, limitations and challenges in addressing wildfire threats, and the land management approach promoted by the indigenous territorial government.


Drawing on a significantly updated version co-authored by Reynolds and the originator of Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH), Werner Ulrich, CSH is regarded as part of a 'systems thinking in practice' framework for evaluating complex situations from different stakeholder perspectives. The situation under evaluation (e.g. a purposeful activity like a report, programme or project etc.) is framed as a reference system in CSH by a toolbox comprising four sets of questions evaluating (1) built-in values, (2) power structures, (3) expert assumptions, and (4) the moral basis on which an intervention operates as considered from the perspective of both intended beneficiaries and victims. This paper describes how CSH and the underpinning methodological process of boundary critique makes a contribution to Michael Patton's ideas on developmental evaluation. The focus here is on stakeholding development. CSH addresses three evaluation questions. It maps out (i) what's at stake in relation to (ii) who the stakeholders are - including intended beneficiaries, decision makers, experts, and 'victims' (those affected by but not involved with what is being evaluated). CSH further addresses questions of (iii) stakeholding issues as key problems anticipated for each stakeholder group. The metaphor of 'conversation' is used to describe how boundary critique helps the process of stakeholding development as against stakeholding entrenchment.


Few medical eponyms deserve perpetuation. Their origin often is obscure, their validity dubious, and the honor (if it be an honor) frequently undeserved. Not so for Chagas' disease.
The reason American trypanosomiasis is better known throughout the world by its eponym is recorded in these words of Miguel Couto (who was described as the best Brazilian clinician of his time):
"On that day it was up to me to give a name to those traditional diseases of the Minas backlands, which were now unified as one disease with cause and development clearly established. To name it after only one of its symptoms would be to limit its description, and to name it for all its symptoms would be impossible … And so, at dinner, while toasting Carlos Chagas, I … chosen because of my age, standing with Oswaldo Cruz on my right and surrounded by the men most representative of Brazilian medicine of that era, with a gravity equal to a liturgical act in our religion, such as a baptism, gave the name of Chagas' Disease to that illness … in the name of the entire delegation."


In the course of four poignant years between 1914 and 1918, more than ten million men died, commensurate to a generation. Even greater was a loss of hope, the defeat as much for the victors as for the vanquished in knowing that the world would not readily be made safe for democracy. Of course, World War I's deep destruction in Europe touched America less, but from the first shockwaves of the Sarajevo assassination through the armistice and League of Nations, the War was an ever-present horror for Americans. The foremost American illustrator of the day, J. C. Leyendecker, created in imagery for advertising clients and in magazine covers, especially those for The Saturday Evening Post, a stirring record of the socalled Great War. As always, Leyendecker created great images that might consolidate the feelings of many people. With respect to the First World War, he gave little image to the War's cataclysm, but he gave instead narrative, empathetic example, and a sense of optimism that was a war diary of profound hope and incorrigible belief in, if not civilization, the individual. In brutal times, Leyendecker believed and, in influential images, gave cause to believe in single figures and simple stories to keep faith in humankind. Leyendecker was a consummate patriot. He offered a compassionate chronicle for World War I and later reported on the Second World War. Of the latter, his habitual image of Baby New Year arrived with worldly engagement in the 1940s. His January 4, 1941, cover, for example, delivers a squalling new year held in the armored fist of Europe under fascism and Nazism. Two years later, on the cover of the January 2, 1945, issue, with America active in the war, Baby New Year is enlisted in the fight against the forces of evil as the baby's bayonet gashes the swastika. In these instances, war is abstracted in deference to the icon of the Baby New Year; these are not Murrow broadcasts, these are not specific tales, but they are representations of the hope implicit in birth and the new. Likewise, within days of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, Leyendecker was providing a Saturday Evening Post cover representing American military power in celebration of July 4, 1914 (Fig. 1). To be sure, this cover was indubitably in progress before the assassi-nation, but the coincidence of these armed men could only constitute a sign of power and preparedness in concert with its time. Customarily, Leyendecker had represented the Fourth of July in terms of history, often providing Colonial patriots and ragamuffin fifers and drummers. That in 1914 he seized his own time is, in some intuitional ways at least, an awareness of the tremulous world of Europe. If the American temper was one of detachment from the turmoil in Europe, it was a splendid isolation founded in a bravado of military power. Yet Europe's war would inexorably affect America, even in 1914. The cover of the October 24, 1914, Saturday Evening Post (Fig. 2) conveys the unavoidable message of the invasion of neutral countries in summer 1914 as a pig-tailed child witnesses the despair of a wooden-shoed European woman who has received the tragic news of a lost loved one. Not only does this most passionate cover suggest the narrative of such stories as are contained within the issue, but constitutes an allegory of war involvement. If the watchful child is the witnessing innocence of America, she looks onto a scene of despair and sadness that cannot be ignored. But this particular cover is a distinct exception. Leyendecker remained detached as long as America was not officially involved in the war in Europe. For many readers of The Saturday Evening Post, the Great War was still their tragedy and their problem in Europe, not something that America was a part of. President Wilson was, after all, insisting upon peace. Finally, on April 6, 1917, America declared war and the careful neutrality ended. America was immediately engaged in the war with troops arriving in Europe in the summer of 1917. …


Nowadays, in MPSoCs and NoCs, multicast protocol is significantly used for many parallel applications such as cache coherency in distributed shared-memory architectures, clock synchronization, replication, or barrier synchronization. Among several multicast schemes proposed in on chip interconnection networks, path-based multicast scheme has been proven to be more efficient than the tree-based, and unicast-based. In this paper a low distance path-based multicast scheme is proposed. The proposed method takes advantage of the network partitioning, and utilizing of an efficient destination ordering algorithm. The results in performance, and power consumption show that the proposed method outstands the previous on chip path-based multicasting algorithms.


Acoustic telemetry is being increasingly used to study the ecology of many aquatic organisms. This widespread use has been advanced by national and international tracking programs that coordinate deployment of passive acoustic telemetry networks on a regional and continental scale to detect tagged animals. While it is well‐known that environmental conditions can affect the performance of acoustic receivers, these effects are rarely quantified despite the profound implications for tag detection and hence the ecological inferences. Here, we deployed eight receivers at different depths within the water column and at different orientations (hydrophone up or down) and 12 tags 200–800 m from the receivers for 234 days to investigate how the tag detection range of acoustic receivers varied through time and under different meteorologic and oceanographic conditions. The study showed that receiver depth and orientation, and time since deployment had the largest effect on the detection range. Thermocline gradient and depth, and wind speed were the environmental factors most affecting detection range, while wind direction, precipitation and atmospheric pressure had negligible or no effect. Comparison of results to a proposed general acoustic theory model and previous studies showed that findings from specific habitat types cannot be generalised and applied across other habitats or environments. A good understanding of the acoustic coverage and temporal variations in relation to environmental conditions are crucial to accurate interpretation of results, and ensuing management recommendations. We recommend that each study include stationary reference tags to measure changes in detection probability with time, help refine detection range, and be used to improve confidence in the reporting and interpretation of the data.


This title lets you get guidance on evaluation, diagnosis, and management of a wide range of obstetric and gynecologic disorders from the most comprehensive and concise reference on the subject. The 5th edition of this popular and practical resource features additional clinical photos and material on vaccination and disease prevention. The full-color design with illustrations and photographs complement the text. Access the full text online, along with an additional image gallery, case studies, USMLE style review questions, and online note-taking via Student Consult for a better learning experience.


This paper discusses modern approaches to the design of multilayer optical coatings, based on the use of various modifications of the method of needle synthesis. The great possibilities of this method and the power of modern computer facilities make it possible to obtain practicable designs of the elements of multilayer optics with any complexity.


In 2002 Lotterywest made funds available for a joint project between Ruah Women's Support Service, the Social Justice Commission of the Uniting Church of Australia and the Centre for Social and Community Research, Murdoch University. The aim of the project was to explore the experiences of women in prison and their broader connections with society and family – areas that have historically received little attention. Following two years of close research with women in metropolitan and regional prisons, families of women in prison and recently released women, we are now pleased to present the findings of this study.

This study recognises the social and cultural diversity of its participants and the women have accordingly been grouped into six categories.

• Young, mainly non-Aboriginal, women, repeat offenders with chaotic lifestyles and no stable family or community connections.

• Urban Aboriginal women with strong kinship connections but questionable connections to mainstream society, often repeat offenders.

• Mainly middle class women, typically first time offenders engaged in white collar crime which is often work related.

• Aboriginal women from remote communities and regional towns with strong kinship and community connections, equally likely to be first time or repeat offenders.

• Foreign national women convicted while on visitors' visas to Australia, usually for drug importation. They suffer extreme social isolation and are spread across several socio-economic and cultural groups.

• Long-term and life sentenced women, also spread across several socio-economic and cultural groups.

The research shows that, although coming from vastly different backgrounds, these women share certain common experiences including histories of abusive relationships and mental illness. The women, many who are parents or caregivers, also share strong concerns regarding their ability to reconnect with children, family and community upon release. The factors making reconnection difficult include homelessness, social isolation, addictions, mental illness, abuse, self harm and suicide. And for some of the women in this study there was the threat of deportation.

The study, while giving due attention to the diverse backgrounds of women, examines their common experiences, identifies their concerns and considers the practical implications on both a personal level and in a broader social context. In doing so, it highlights the need for effective strategies to connect women with society both in prison and post-prison.


Cellular barcoding using nuclease-induced genetic mutations is an effective approach that is emerging for recording biological information, including developmental lineages. We have previously introduced the homing CRISPR system as a promising methodology for generating such barcodes with scalable diversity and without crosstalk. Here, we present a mouse line (MARC1) with multiple genomically-integrated and heritable homing guide RNAs (hgRNAs). We determine the genomic locations of these hgRNAs, their activity profiles during gestation, and the diversity of their mutants. We apply the line for unique barcoding of mouse embryos and differential barcoding of embryonic tissues. We conclude that this mouse line can address the unique challenges associated with in vivo barcoding in mammalian model organisms and is thus an enabling platform for recording and lineage tracing applications in a mammalian model system.


Abstract Silica aerogel, an extremely low-density and high-surface-area material, is a vital component of many target designs for inertial confinement fusion and high-energy-density physics experiments. Silica aerogel utilized in targets is found in a variety of densities and configurations. Material properties must be well characterized to minimize uncertainties in experimental data. In particular, density must be accurately known to predict shock velocity and timing of diagnostics. One potentially problematic attribute of silica is its hygroscopic nature. Here we describe adsorption of ambient moisture by silica aerogel, based on its density and processing parameters. Quick and simple methods of characterizing water uptake are needed to provide confidence in aerogel components. We find that aerogel manufactured using supercritical methanol is much more stable toward moisture (and therefore more suitable for use in targets) than that produced using supercritical carbon dioxide. Aerogel materials were characterized by thermogravimetric analysis and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy.


Global climate models fail to represent the annual cycle of tropical‐extratropical cloud bands and produce too much summer rainfall over subtropical southern Africa. This study demonstrates that running a regional convective‐permitting climate simulation alleviates these biases, counteracting biases that are present in the parent model. The improvement emerges from stronger vertical mass flux in the tropics, which forces a stronger local Hadley overturning into the summer hemisphere. This enhanced overturning increases upper‐level subsidence in the subtropics and amplifies the forcing of the local subtropical jet. Together, these improvements halve the wet subtropical rainfall bias and are associated with a 50% increase to an 80% match between the simulated and observed annual cycle of crucial tropical‐extratropical cloud band rainfall systems. The results advocate for the increased use of convective‐permitting climate models with domains that include regional tropical convection hot spots, in order to fully benefit from the explicit representation of deep convection.


Increasing concentrations of organic matter (OM) in surface waters have been noted over large parts of the boreal/nemoral zone in Europe and North America. This has raised questions about the causes and the likelihood of further increases. A number of drivers have been proposed, including temperature, hydrology, as well as SO 4 and Cl deposition. The data reported so far, however, have been insufficient to define the relative importance of different drivers in landscapes where they interact. Thirty-five years of monthly measurements of absorbance and chemical oxygen demand (COD), two common proxies for OM, from 28 large Scandinavian catchments provide an unprecedented opportunity to resolve the importance of hypothesized drivers. For 21 of the catchments, there are 18 years of total organic carbon (TOC) measurements as well. Despite the heterogeneity of the catchments with regards to climate, size and land use, there is a high degree of synchronicity in OM across the entire region. Rivers go from widespread trends of decreasing OM to increasing trends and back again three times in the 35-year record. This synchronicity in decadal scale oscillations and long-term trends suggest a common set of dominant OM drivers in these landscapes. Here, we use regression models to test the importance of different potential drivers. We show that flow and SO 4 together can predict most of the interannual variability in OM proxies, up to 88% for absorbance, up to 78% for COD. Two other candidate drivers, air temperature and Cl , add little explanatory value. Declines in anthropogenic SO 4 since the mid1970s are thus related to the observed OM increases in Scandinavia, but, in contrast to many recent studies, flow emerges as an even more important driver of OM variability. Stabilizing SO 4 levels also mean that hydrology is likely to be the major driver of future variability and trends in OM.


Introdution: Chronic liver diseases are characterized by inflammatory and fibrotic lesions of the liver that cause systemic complications. These complications can negatively interfere with the respiratory muscle strength and exercise capacity of developing children and adolescents. Objectives: To compare respiratory muscle strength and exercise capacity in children and adolescents with chronic hepatopathy, using reference values from healthy individuals of the same age. Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed. Children and adolescents from 6 to 16 years old with chronic hepatopathies were included. For the evaluation of respiratory muscle strength, the maximal respiratory pressures were measured through manovacuometry. A six-minute walk test was used to assess exercise capacity. The Wilcoxon test was used to verify the difference between the evaluated and predicted values of the distance traveled. Results: In total, 40 subjects were analyzed; 57.5% of the subjects were female, and the subjects had a mean age of 11.68±2.82 years. In the comparison between the measured and predicted maximal respiratory pressures, a difference of -17.71 cmH2O (p< 0.001) was found for the maximal inspiratory pressure, and a difference of -30.68 cmH2O (p< 0.001) was found for the maximal expiratory pressure. Regarding exercise capacity, the measured average distance traveled was 346.46±49.21 m, which was 185.54m (p< 0.001) less than the predicted value. Conclusions: Children and adolescents with chronic liver disease have reduced respiratory muscle function and exercise capacity.


Network security is very important when sending confidential data through the network. Cryptography is the science of hiding information, and a combination of cryptography solutions with cognitive science starts a new branch called cognitive cryptography that guarantee the confidentiality and integrity of the data. Brain signals as a biometric indicator can convert to a binary code which can be used as a cryptographic key. This paper proposes a new method for decreasing the error of EEG- based key generation process. Discrete Fourier Transform, Discrete Wavelet Transform, Autoregressive Modeling, Energy Entropy, and Sample Entropy were used to extract features. All features are used as the input of new method based on window segmentation protocol then are converted to the binary mode. We obtain 0.76%, and 0.48% mean Half Total Error Rate (HTER) for 18-channel and single-channel cryptographic key generation systems respectively.


Several aspects make today's transport system non-sustainable: • Production, transport and combustion of fossil fuels lead to global and local environmental problems. • Oil dependency in the transport sector may lead to economical and political instability. • Air pollution, noise, congestion and land-use may jeopardise public health and quality of life, especially in urban areas. In a sustainable urban transport system most trips are made with public transport because high convenience and comfort makes travelling with public transport attractive. In terms of emissions, including noise, the vehicles are environmentally sustainable, locally as well as globally. Vehicles are energy-efficient and the primary energy stems from renewable sources. Costs are reasonable for all involved, from passengers, bus operators and transport authorities to vehicle manufacturers. The system is thus commercially viable on its own merits. This thesis presents the results from three projects involving different concept buses, all with different powertrains. The first two projects included technical evaluations, including tests, of two different fuel cell buses. The third project focussed on development of a series hybrid-bus with internal combustion engine intended for production around 2010. The research on the fuel cell buses included evaluations of the energy efficiency improvement potential using energy mapping and vehicle simulations. Attitudes to hydrogen fuel cell buses among passengers, bus drivers and bus operators were investigated. Safety aspects of hydrogen as a vehicle fuel were analysed and the use of hydrogen compared to electrical energy storage were also investigated. One main conclusion is that a city bus should be considered as one energy system, because auxiliaries contribute largely to the energy use. Focussing only on the powertrain is not sufficient. The importance of mitigating losses far down an energy conversion chain is emphasised. The Scania hybrid fuel cell bus showed the long-term potential of fuel cells, advanced auxiliaries and hybrid-electric powertrains, but technologies applied in that bus are not yet viable in terms of cost or robustness over the service life of a bus. Results from the EU-project CUTE show that hydrogen fuelled fuel cell buses are viable for real-life operation. Successful operation and public acceptance show that focus on robustness and cost in vehicle design were key success factors, despite the resulting poor fuel economy. Hybrid-electric powertrains are feasible in stop-and-go city operation. Fuel consumption can be reduced, comfort improved, noise lowered and the main power source downsized and operated less dynamically. The potential for design improvements due to flexible component packaging is implemented in the Scania hybrid concept bus. This bus and the framework for its hybrid management system are discussed in this thesis. The development of buses for a more sustainable urban transport should be made in small steps to secure technical and economical realism, which both are needed to guarantee commercialisation and volume of production. This is needed for alternative products to have a significant influence. Hybrid buses with internal combustion engines running on renewable fuel is tomorrow's technology, which paves the way for plug-in hybrid, battery electric and fuel cell hybrid vehicles the day after tomorrow.


OBJECTIVE
Study 1. To compare paraspinal soft-tissue compliance in asymptomatic (healthy) adults with children and to define reference values in children. Study 2. To determine whether the reference values in asymptomatic children differ from children with juvenile chronic arthritis (JCA).

STUDY DESIGN
A tissue-pressure-compliance meter (TPCM) was used in the paraspinal region of 69 asymptomatic children, 28 asymptomatic adults and in 57 children with JCA. The tissue compliance was assessed paraspinally at level C6, T1, T3, T6, T10, L3 and L5.

MAIN FINDINGS
Study 1: Differences between asymptomatic children and adults were not significant, except for the thoracolumbar junction, i.e., area T10, L1 and L3. Asymptomatic men showed a greater amount of displacement at area C6; adult asymptomatic women at area L3 and L5. The cervical and lumbar areas were shown to have the greatest amount of displacement and the thoracic area the least. Study 2. No significant differences were found between the compliance of the JCA group and the asymptomatic group, except for paraspinal area L3.

CONCLUSION
Study 1. The curvature within the spinal region in adults and children may have influenced the amount of soft-tissue displacement; sexual maturation may have affected soft-tissue displacement as well. Study 2. Paraspinal soft-tissue compliance exhibited no alterations in JCA that could be segmentally related to inflamed joints.


Today's automotive manufacturing environment is dynamic. It is characterized by short life cycles of products especially in powertrain, due in part to changing Government regulations for fuel economy. In the USA, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA), Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) mandates an average of 29 miles per gallon (mpg), gradually increasing to 35.5 mpg by 2016 and 54.5 mpg towards 2025. Life cycles of engines and transmissions have consequently shortened, driving automakers to develop and manufacture more efficient powertrains. Not long ago, plants produced engines for decades, with minor modifications warranting slight manufacturing line rework. Conversely, today's changing trends require machines and complete engine line overhauls rendering initial setups obsolete. Automakers compete to satisfy government regulations for best mileage and also lower manufacturing cost, thus the adoption of Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS). Production lines follow modularity in designs, for hardware and software, to adapt to new business conditions, economically and time-wise. Information Technology (IT) and Controls are growing closer with the line of demarcation disappearing in manufacturing. Controls are benefiting from opportunities in IT, hardware and software. The advent of agent-based technology which are autonomous, cooperative and extendible in different production activities, helped to develop controls for RMS in academia. Component-based software suitable for RMS modularity and plug-and-play hardware/software components has gained decades of popularity in the software industry. This thesis implements distributed controls imbedding component-based technology and IEC 61311-3 function block standard for automotive engine assembly, which will contribute to these developments. The control architecture provides reconfigurability which is lacking in current manufacturing systems. The research imbeds: 1- Reconfigurability - Fitting RMS-designed hardware towards new manufacturing, 2- Reusability - Building software library for reuse across assembly lines, and 3- Plug-and-Play - Embedding easy to assemble software components (function blocks).


The biological function of a macromolecule often requires that a small molecule or ion is transported through its structure. The transport pathway often leads through void spaces in the structure. The properties of transport pathways change significantly in time; therefore, the analysis of a trajectory from molecular dynamics rather than of a single static structure is needed for understanding the function of pathways. The identification and analysis of transport pathways are challenging because of the high complexity and diversity of macromolecular shapes, the thermal motion of their atoms, and the large amount of conformations needed to properly describe conformational space of protein structure. In this paper, we describe the principles of the CAVER 3.0 algorithms for the identification and analysis of properties of transport pathways both in static and dynamic structures. Moreover, we introduce the improved clustering solution for finding tunnels in macromolecules, which is included in the latest CAVER 3.02 version. Voronoi diagrams are used to identify potential pathways in each snapshot of a molecular dynamics trajectory and clustering is then used to find the correspondence between tunnels from different snapshots. Furthermore, the geometrical properties of pathways and their evolution in time are computed and visualized.


A 2 × 2 equivalent statistical circuit model is presented to deal with sneak currents and random data distributions for n × m passive memory arrays of memristive devices. The data-dependent 2 × 2 circuit model enables a broad range of analysis, such as the optimum detection voltage margin, with computational efficiency and has no limit on the memory array size. In addition, we propose replica-based self-adaptable sense resistors to achieve both low-power reading and large voltage detection windowing.


Building the Tree of Life (ToL) is a major challenge of modern biology, requiring advances in cyberinfrastructure, data collection, theory, and more. Here, we argue that phylogenomics stands to benefit by embracing the many heterogeneous genomic signals emerging from the first decade of large-scale phylogenetic analysis spawned by high-throughput sequencing (HTS). Such signals include those most commonly encountered in phylogenomic datasets, such as incomplete lineage sorting, but also those reticulate processes emerging with greater frequency, such as recombination and introgression. Here we focus specifically on how phylogenetic methods can accommodate the heterogeneity incurred by such population genetic processes; we do not discuss phylogenetic methods that ignore such processes, such as concatenation or supermatrix approaches or supertrees. We suggest that methods of data acquisition and the types of markers used in phylogenomics will remain restricted until a posteriori methods of marker choice are made possible with routine whole-genome sequencing of taxa of interest. We discuss limitations and potential extensions of a model supporting innovation in phylogenomics today, the multispecies coalescent model (MSC). Macroevolutionary models that use phylogenies, such as character mapping, often ignore the heterogeneity on which building phylogenies increasingly rely and suggest that assimilating such heterogeneity is an important goal moving forward. Finally, we argue that an integrative cyberinfrastructure linking all steps of the process of building the ToL, from specimen acquisition in the field to publication and tracking of phylogenomic data, as well as a culture that values contributors at each step, are essential for progress.


Fiber nonlinearity limits the use of coherent optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (CO-OFDM) to upgrade wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) systems using legacy non-return-to-zero-on-off-keying (NRZ-OOK) channels. This letter proposes to compensate for the fiber nonlinearity of CO-OFDM with NRZ-OOK neighbors by combining digital signal processing (DSP)-based self-phase modulation (SPM) post-compensation with pilot-tone-based cross-phase modulation (XPM) compensation. The simulation results demonstrate that the optimum low-pass filter bandwidth for pilot-tone-based XPM compensation depends on the pilot-to-signal ratio value and launch optical power. Our method allows a 4-dB increase in the launch power for a 40-Gb/s single polarization CO-OFDM channel placed in the middle of six 10.7-Gb/s NRZ channels in a 50-GHz space and 1 200-km WDM system.


Diabetics are more vulnerable to cardiovascular diseases and therefore there is a need to look for new markers to assess the risk. Aims of the present study are to assess the C-reactive protein (CRP) and fibrinogen levels in type 2 diabetes mellitus subjects. In a case control study, stable type 2 diabetics were enrolled from pathology lab and controls were enrolled from free living population. Anthropometric profile, lipid profile, CRP and fi-brinogen levels were assessed on 27 stable type 2 diabetics and 30 normal subjects. Students t test and correlation analysis were done using excel package. The data showed that the mean CRP and fibrinogen values were 1.7mg/L and 242 mg% in diabetics and 1.16mg/L and 296mg% in controls. Both CRP and fibrinogen levels were not influenced by elevated levels of BMI, WC, Total cholesterol and triglyceride levels in controls as well as the diabet-ics. However, in case of CRP significant correlation was found with Triglyceride (r=0.3, p= 0.05) and TG/H (r=0.4 , p=0.01). No positive correlation existed with fibrinogen values with any of the lipid indicators monitored. Thus traditional markers of TG and TG/H should be monitored regularly to assess the risk of CVD.


Educational aims To improve and give structure to challenging end-of-life communication discussions. To examine the assessment and management of symptoms associated with end-of-life respiratory disease. To examine the structured frameworks for caring for patients with cancer and explore the effectiveness of their application to end-of-life respiratory disease. Summary This review on when, how and whether to talk with respiratory patients about dying has been developed from a recent 3-day course, entitled End of life care in respiratory disease, which was run jointly by the British Thoracic Society and the Association of Respiratory Nurse Specialists. Aimed at respiratory specialists, the purpose was to raise debate and awareness within the specialty of the skills, evidence and best practice in end-of-life care. Participants identified their learning needs as follows: dealing with anxiety, depression, emotions and breathlessness; symptom control; and navigating the social services benefit system. The course aimed to present the key clinical skills required in a workshop style for experienced respiratory practitioners. Five doctors, 19 nurse specialists and two physiotherapists attended the course, which was held over a period of 3 days 2 months apart in 2008. This article describes the skills of end-of-life care as applied to the care of people with advanced respiratory disease, and how these were explored in this short course. We hope it will help other respiratory professionals develop and extend the relevant knowledge base and communication skills in their own teams.


Objective: To describe the features and mechanisms of development of metabolic syndrome (MS), type 2 diabetes melitus (DM2) and intermediate states of glycemia in psychosis the occurrence of these disorders, the values of total cholesterol (TC), fractions of high density lipoproteins (HDL), very low density lipoproteins (VLDL), triglycerides (TG), values of atherogenic coefficient (AC), insulinemia, С-peptidemia, insulin resistance (IR) the level of glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) in a sample of patients with schizophrenia and in mentally healthy individuals. Materials and methods: The frequency of carbohydrate metabolism disorders (CMD) was studied. Fasting glycemia was determined, and in the presence of its violation, a glucose tolerance test was performed. MS components were studied in patients with DM2, plasma concentrations of TC, HDL, VLDL, TG, C-peptide (CP), insulin and HbA1c were determined in patients with DM2, AC values and IR indices were calculated using HOMA-IR and CARO criteria. Results: CMD in schizophrenia are more common than among mentally healthy subjects, amounting to 13.1% (p=0.02), and the main condition here is a significant number of individuals with impaired fasting glycemia (IFG) and impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) among women (CMD p=0.01; IGT p<0.001; IFG p=0.03). A feature of psychiatric sampling is a decrease in HDL by 16.4% (p=0.03) and an increase in AC by 52% (p=0.02). Mentally ill men with MS are characterized by a significantly large value of AC (p=0.019), insulinemia (p=0.02), CP level (p=0.02), HOMA-IR (p=0.01) and CARO (p=0.04) values than in mentally ill patients with DM2 without MS. In comparison with the control, regardless of gender, the schizophrenic patients with DM2 have significantly lower values of insulin (p=0.03), C-peptidemia (p=0.04) and IR, according to the criteria of HOMA-IR (p=0.01) and CARO (p=0.03).


International Technology Transfer (the transfer of technology across national borders) is extensively believed to be necessary for the industrialisation of any country. The experiences of some successful countries in rapid economic and industrial development show that the acquisition of a significant amount of foreign technology has played a crucial role in promoting their managerial and technical expertise as well as increasing their productivity level In particular, the experiences of some successful East Asian Newly Industrialised Countries (NICs) during the past three decades indicate that they could achieve rapid industrialisation and technological development through the adoption of a set of appropriate policies and strategies. The experiences of these countries can have valuable lessons and policy implications for other countries which wish to follow the same path of rapid industrialisation and technological development.

Although many Less Developed Countries (LDCs) have realised the great importance of technological transformation for their rapid economic and industrial development, they have not designed effective and efficient policies and strategies for the transfer of appropriate and high-level technologies. Therefore, it seems necessary for decision makers in these countries to formulate appropriate policies for effective and successful transfer of technology as well as rapid industrialisation. Iran, as a developing country with large natural and human resources has also attempted to adopt the best approach of technology transfer to improve and promote its technological capability and achieve rapid industrialisation. However, like many other countries, the industrial base of Iran can be characterised as being heavily dependent on importing their required parts and components for manufacturing outputs, which in tum is due to the assembly nature of many of its industries. In other words, Iran as wen as many other developing countries has been faced with heavy technological dependency.

The main purpose of this study is to identify and examine the critical success factors for the effective technology transfer and rapid industrialisation of the LDCs in general and Iran in Particular. Firstly, some of the most important and relevant theoretical frameworks as well as conceptual issues of technology transfer and industrialisation of LDCs are analysed. The empirical and practical experiences of some selected countries in particular East Asian first and second tier Newly Industrialised Countries (NICs) as well as Mexico and Turkey are also studied. The critical success factors of these countries in rapid industrialisation and technological development are identified. Moreover, the past and present industrialisation policies as well as technology transfer status of Iran is investigated in detail to identify and determine the most important strengths and weaknesses which are needed for designing its future plan. Finally, a framework of an appropriate policy and strategy for international technology transfer to LDCs in general and Iran in particular is proposed. Some overall recollections and suggestions derived from the research findings and results for the effective and succesful technology transfer and industrialisation of LDCs in general and Iran in particular is also included.


The early major products of Tertiary volcanicity in both Skye and Mull are transitional basic lavas, similar in their major-element chemistry to world-wide alkali basalt series. In contrast, their contents of incompatible trace elements bear more resemblance to those of olivine tholeiites. The Mull basalts have similar ranges of silica saturation, Mg/(Mg+Fe), Y and Yb, but lower overall abundance ranges of strongly incompatible elements than the Skye basalts. The variation of incompatible elements in the Mull and Skye lavas is consistent with a model of a mantle source from which a small amount of melt (no more than 1 % ?) had been extracted, with the pre-Tertiary upper-mantle fusion beneath Mull slightly greater than beneath Skye. Chemical and tectonic considerations suggest that this mantle was neither residual from the formation of the Archaean Lewisian complex, nor emplaced as a result of tension associated with the Gainozoic rifting of the North Atlantic. Data on major and trace elements for a mafic alkalic dyke of the Permian swarms that pass through western Scotland show that these have the requisite geochemical characteristics to have caused this depletion. Such dykes are more abundant in the region of Mull than Skye.


We estimate an option-based value of a fund manager's conditional market timing skill in bear market states. We combine this value with alpha based estimates of selection skill to give an overall valuation of active management. At the aggregate level, we estimate that the benefit arising from the option value of active fund management in bad times can be large enough to cover its unconditional overall cost. Our analysis suggests that by taking account of the option premium delivered by managers' bear market timing skills, the longstanding mutual fund underperformance puzzle could be largely rationalized.