MAKING POVERTY HISTORY Labour, Land, and Capital in Ghana: From Slavery to Free Labour in Asante, 1807-1956. By Gareth Austin. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2005. Rochester Studies in Africa and the Diaspora. Pp. xxiv, 598; maps, plates, and tables. $75.00. Live8 and G8 Bob Geldof's campaign to "Make Poverty History" reached a crescendo in July 2005, when Live8, the biggest rock concert in history, was held with the aim of influencing the G8 meeting in nearby Gleneagles. The idea was to raise voices rather than money for Africa: the sound, so it was reported, was deafening. Did the hard of hearing listen? It seems likely that the politicians responded with declarations and promises that were in excess of those that would otherwise have been made. But what matters, always assuming that the adopted policies are the appropriate ones, is whether they are acted on when the noise dies away. On this crucial issue no judgment can as yet be made.1 However, other significant dimensions of Live8 can be assessed. It was (and still is, if the organizers have their way) a mass movement dedicated to ending injustice done to others. In this respect, Live8 is an ideological and organizational descendent of the campaign in Britain to abolish the slave trade and slavery. Like the abolitionist movement, Live8 is a broad coalition held together by a single issue. In both cases, too, the issue lay abroad and involved no potentially divisive attack on the status quo at home. We now know that the abolitionist cause was also a popular one that involved men and women across regions and social classes. Today the scale is different because the technology available in the current, postcolonial phase of globalization has enabled Live8 to reach many more millions across the whole world. But the essential purpose remains, even though one organization mobilized an emerging national moral sensibility while the other draws on and also helps to create a new global civic consciousness. Both campaigns operated within, as well as outside, the established power structure. Wilberforce, like Geldof, counted a prime minister as a friend, moved easily in the corridors of power, and was an able publicist. For all the differences between them, the two advocates have in common the moral radicalism of privilege. This quality is not easily corrupted by material rewards. The hazards lie elsewhere: in the risk of being compromised by the forces they seek to influence, and in the danger of succumbing to what might be called philanthropy fatigue. There is also a connection between Live8 and academic purpose. When Bono writes a Foreword to Jeffrey Sachs's The End of Poverty (2005) and Geldof is quoted approvingly on the front cover of the Commission for Africa's Our Common Interest (2005), it is surely time for scribes and specialists to sit up and take notice. It is not that the role of scholars is being usurped, though it might be argued that the public intellectuals of yesteryear, such as Einstein and Russell, have no counterparts of comparable stature today. But even economists, who are particularly closely involved with development issues, have rarely had starring roles in publicity campaigns of this kind, while historians are habitually seen, when seen at all, as hewers of wood and drawers of water for the higher social sciences. What has happened is that the rules of the game have changed. Injustice remains, but the means of advertising it have been transformed by the rise to prominence and power of the new aristocracy of the media, which in turn has been made possible by the transformation of the means of communication and the consequent shrinkage of the world. The response to these developments, as I see it, should not be to regret the loss of academic innocence or to disdain the vulgarities that accompany popularization but to react positively to the opportunities they present. As far as historians are concerned, the huge and very visible publicity now being given to the plight of Africans in their own continent poses a challenge that ought to capture the imagination and engage the expertise of the next generation of researchers, as it has been very largely bypassed by the last one. …


A fast, reproducible, completely automatic and rather accurate way of quantitative determination of fluorescent microbial plankton is shown. in addition to the question about the organization of an image analyser, which should nearly work without any human inten/ention, some essential effects on enumeration and sizing of fluorescent cells are treated. Fine tuning between adjustment of the optical environment (camera intensity, dye concentration, focus level, magnification) and image interpretation algorithms as well as an object adapted application of image segmentation techniques (edge detection) are necessary. The edge detector should be able to separate adjacent objects on the basis of significant grey level distributions and changes within local image areas. Sources of error mainly caused by limited image resolution are made more transparent, whereby it is easier for the user to judge results of image analysis in epifluorescence microscopy.


Background: How axon guidance signals regulate growth cone behavior and guidance decisions in the complex in vivo environment of the central nervous system is not well understood. We have taken advantage of the unique features of the zebrafish embryo to visualize dynamic growth cone behaviors and analyze guidance mechanisms of axons emerging from a central brain nucleus in vivo. Results: We investigated axons of the nucleus of the medial longitudinal fascicle (nucMLF), which are the first axons to extend in the zebrafish midbrain. Using in vivo time-lapse imaging, we show that both positive axon-axon interactions and guidance by surrounding tissue control initial nucMLF axon guidance. We further show that two guidance molecules, transient axonal glycoprotein-1 (TAG-1) and laminin-α1, are essential for the initial directional extension of nucMLF axons and their subsequent convergence into a tight fascicle. Fixed tissue analysis shows that TAG-1 knockdown causes errors in nucMLF axon pathfinding similar to those seen in a laminin-α1 mutant. However, in vivo time-lapse imaging reveals that while some defects in dynamic growth cone behavior are similar, there are also defects unique to the loss of each gene. Loss of either TAG-1 or laminin-α1 causes nucMLF axons to extend into surrounding tissue in incorrect directions and reduces axonal growth rate, resulting in stunted nucMLF axons that fail to extend beyond the hindbrain. However, defects in axon-axon interactions were found only after TAG-1 knockdown, while defects in initial nucMLF axon polarity and excessive branching of nucMLF axons occurred only in laminin-α1 mutants. Conclusion: These results demonstrate how two guidance cues, TAG-1 and laminin-α1, influence the behavior of growth cones during axon pathfinding in vivo. Our data suggest that TAG-1 functions to allow growth cones to sense environmental cues and mediates positive axon-axon interactions. Laminin-α1 does not regulate axon-axon interactions, but does influence neuronal polarity and directional guidance. Published: 20 February 2008 Neural Development 2008, 3:6 doi:10.1186/1749-8104-3-6 Received: 6 August 2007 Accepted: 20 February 2008 This article is available from: http://www.neuraldevelopment.com/content/3/1/6 © 2008 Wolman et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Neural Development 2008, 3:6 http://www.neuraldevelopment.com/content/3/1/6


A critical step in the design of asphalt mixtures is laboratory compaction. Laboratory compaction should reflect field compaction and should produce mixtures that are economical and possess high structural sta- bility. During the compaction process, asphalt mixtures are subjected to certain amount of compaction energy in order to achieve the required density. The Superpave volumetric mix design is based on compacting HMA mixtures to a specified compaction level described by the number of gyrations from the Superpave gyratory compactor (SGC). This level is termed Ndes and represents the required energy (based on the traffic level expected) to densify the mixture to a 4% air voids level. This paper re-examines the Superpave compaction requirements through extensive laboratory investigation of the response of a number of asphalt mixtures to the applied compaction energy. It also presents an alternative method to estimate the number of gyrations at which a mixture first reaches an optimum aggregate interlock and hence prevents overcompaction problems that might result in unstable aggregate structures or dry asphalt mixtures. A total of 12 HMA mixtures were studied. During compaction, force measurement was made using the pressure distribution analyzer (PDA). The com- paction characteristics of the mixtures were analyzed using data from the PDA and the traditional Superpave Gyratory Compactor (SGC) results.


The main objective of the EU FP7 ICT i-Treasures project is to build a public and expandable platform to enable learning and transmission of rare know-how of intangible cultural heritage. A core part of this platform consists of game-like applications able to support teaching and learning processes in the ICH field. We have designed and developed four game-like applications (for Human Beat Box singing, Tsamiko dancing, pottery making and contemporary music composition), each corresponding to one of the ICH use cases of i-Treasures project. A first preliminary version of these applications is currently available for further validation, evaluation and demonstration within the project. We have encountered a number of issues, most of which derive from the peculiarities of the ICH domains addressed by the project, and many have already been resolved/ The evaluation results are expected to lead to further optimization of these


Abstract. In this paper, a coupled sea ice–wave model is developed and used to analyze wave-induced stress and breaking in sea ice for a range of wave and ice conditions. The sea ice module is a discrete-element bonded-particle model, in which ice is represented as cuboid grains floating on the water surface that can be connected to their neighbors by elastic joints. The joints may break if instantaneous stresses acting on them exceed their strength. The wave module is based on an open-source version of the Non-Hydrostatic WAVE model (NHWAVE). The two modules are coupled with proper boundary conditions for pressure and velocity, exchanged at every wave model time step. In the present version, the model operates in two dimensions (one vertical and one horizontal) and is suitable for simulating compact ice in which heave and pitch motion dominates over surge. In a series of simulations with varying sea ice properties and incoming wavelength it is shown that wave-induced stress reaches maximum values at a certain distance from the ice edge. The value of maximum stress depends on both ice properties and characteristics of incoming waves, but, crucially for ice breaking, the location at which the maximum occurs does not change with the incoming wavelength. Consequently, both regular and random (Jonswap spectrum) waves break the ice into floes with almost identical sizes. The width of the zone of broken ice depends on ice strength and wave attenuation rates in the ice.


Abstract. In the Arctic polar vortex of the 2009/10 winter temperatures were low enough to allow widespread formation of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs). These clouds occurred during the initial chlorine activation phase which provided the opportunity to investigate the impact of PSCs on chlorine activation. Satellite observations of gas-phase species and PSCs are used in combination with trajectory modeling to assess this initial activation. The initial activation occurred in association with the formation of PSCs over the east coast of Greenland at the beginning of January 2010. Although this area of PSCs covered only a small portion of the vortex, it was responsible for almost the entire initial activation of chlorine vortex wide. Observations show HCl (hydrochloric acid) mixing ratios decreased rapidly in and downstream of this region. Trajectory calculations and simplified heterogeneous chemistry modeling confirmed that the initial chlorine activation continued until ClONO2 (chlorine nitrate) was completely depleted and the activated air masses were advected throughout the polar vortex. For the calculation of heterogeneous reaction rates, surface area density is estimated from backscatter observations. Modeled heterogeneous reaction rates along trajectories intersecting with the PSCs indicate that the initial phase of chlorine activation occurred in just a few hours. These calculations also indicate that chlorine activation on the binary background aerosol is significantly slower than on the PSC particles and the observed chlorine activation can only be explained by an increase in surface area density due to PSC formation. Furthermore, there is a strong correlation between the magnitude of the observed HCl depletion and PSC surface area density.


A structural concept based upon the principles of adaptive morphing cells is presented whereby controlled bistability from a flat configuration into a textured arrangement is shown. The material consists of multiple cells made from silicone rubber with locally reinforced regions based upon kirigami principles. On pneumatic actuation these cells fold or unfold based on the fold lines created by the interaction of the geometry with the reinforced regions. Each cell is able to maintain its shape in either a retracted or deployed state, without the aid of mechanisms or sustained actuation, due to the existence of structural bistability. Mathematical quantification of the surface texture is introduced, based on out-of-plane deviations of a deployed structure compared to a reference plane. Additionally, finite element analysis is employed to characterize the geometry and stability of an individual cell during actuation and retraction. This investigation highlights the critical role that angular rotation, at the center of each cell, plays on the deployment angle as it transitions through the elastically deployed configuration. The analysis of this novel concept is presented and a pneumatically actuated proof-of-concept demonstrator is fabricated.


In order to have a standard for furnaces that includes electricity consumption or for the efficiency of furnace blowers to be determined, it is necessary to determine the airflow of a furnace or furnace blower. This study focused on airflow testing, in order to determine if an existing test method for measuring blower airflow could be used to measure the airflow of a furnace, under conditions seen in actual installations and to collect data and insights into the operating characteristics of various types of furnace blowers, to use in the analysis of the electricity consumption of furnaces. Results of the measured airflow on furnaces with three types of blower and motor combinations are presented in the report. These included: (1) a forward-curved blower wheel with a typical permanent split capacitor (PSC) motor, (2) a forward-curved blower wheel with an electronically-commutated motor (ECM), and (3) a prototype blower, consisting of a backward-inclined blower wheel matched to an ECM motor prototype, which is being developed as an energy-saving alternative to conventional furnace blowers. The testing provided data on power consumption, static and total pressure, and blower speed.


Durability is essential for outdoor structures to minimize life cycle costs. Timber beams and columns can get decay and cracks due to dimensional changes through shrinking and swelling by moisture changes during exposure. Cracks can lead water into wood and thereby increase the risk for decay and reduce strength and service life. This project deals with the assessment and prediction of development for timber structures with cracks. More than 100 test specimens are included in an outdoor test, glulam beams and columns made of Scots pine (Pinus Silvestris) or Norway spruce (Picea abies). Most specimens are placed in the north of Sweden, but also some in the southwest of Sweden. The project started during 2007. The beams and columns are measured regularly concerning cracks and surface treatment, moisture content and modulus of elasticity on-site. Weather is measured. This paper describes tests and measurements and reports some initial results. The results so far show that cracks develop for every year. Some beams, preferable the oil treated ones, have already after three years lots of cracks while some of the painted are rather intact. The moisture content and modulus of elasticity is relatively unchanged. The research will continue.


The purpose of this paper is to use the fifteenth anniversary of the accession of Portugal and Spain to the European Union as an opportunity to reflect on what has happened to both countries since 1986. It examines the integration process and how it has affected political, economic and social developments in Portugal and in Spain over the last fifteen years. In our view, and on balance, Spain and Portugal have benefited from accession. Since the last century, the obsession of Spanish and Portuguese reformists has been to make up the lost ground with modernized Europe. EU membership has been a critical step in this direction. The record of the past fifteen years is that this dream is becoming an economic reality. Despite impressive achievements, however, namely, since 1986, Portugal's average per capita income has grown from 56 percent of the EU average to about 74 percent, whereas Spain's has grown to 83 percent—both Iberian countries still have a long way to go to reach the EU average wealth. In addition, the question of Iberian and/or European citizenship, and its impact on the Portuguese and Spanish, remains open.


Preferential deposition of snow and dust over complex terrain is responsible for a wide range of environmental processes and accounts for a significant source of uncertainty in the surface mass balances of cold and arid regions. Despite the growing body of literature on the subject, previous studies reported contradictory results on the location and magnitude of deposition maxima and minima. This study aims at unraveling the governing processes of preferential deposition in a neutrally stable atmosphere and to reconcile seemingly inconsistent results of previous works. For this purpose, a comprehensive modeling approach is developed, based on large eddy simulations of the turbulent airflow, Lagrangian stochastic model of particle trajectories, and immersed boundary method to represent the underlying topography. The model is tested against wind tunnel measurements of dust deposition around isolated and sequential hills. A scale analysis is then performed to investigate the dependence of snowfall deposition on the particle Froude and Stokes numbers, which fully account for the governing processes of inertia, flow advection, and gravity. Model results suggest that different deposition patterns emerge from different combinations of dimensionless parameters, with deposition maxima located either on the windward or the leeward slope of the hill. Additional simulations are performed, to test whether the often used assumption of inertialess particles yields accurate deposition patterns. Results indicate that this assumption can be justified when snowflakes present dendritic shape but may generate unrealistic results for rounded particles. We finally show that our scale analysis provides qualitatively similar results for hills with different aspect ratios.


2'-O-methylation (Nm) represents one of the most common RNA modifications. Nm affects RNA structure and function with crucial roles in various RNA-mediated processes ranging from RNA silencing, translation, self versus non-self recognition to viral defense mechanisms. Here, we identify two novel Nm methyltransferases (Nm-MTases) in Drosophila melanogaster (CG7009 and CG5220) as functional orthologs of yeast TRM7 and human FTSJ1, respectively. Genetic knockout studies together with MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry and RiboMethSeq mapping revealed that CG7009 is responsible for methylating the wobble position in tRNAPhe, tRNATrp and tRNALeu, while subsequently, CG5220 methylates position C32 in the same tRNAs and targets also additional tRNAs. CG7009 or CG5220 mutant animals were viable and fertile but exhibited various phenotypes such as life span reduction, small RNA pathways dysfunction and increased sensitivity to RNA virus infections. Our results provide the first detailed characterization of two TRM7 family members in Drosophila and uncover a molecular link between enzymes catalysing Nm at specific tRNAs and small RNA-induced gene silencing pathways.


The purpose of this paper is to explain the way destination marketing works and whatneeds to be done to implant a destination image into the tourists mind. The marketingclaims that the occurrence of recognition and recall makes an image become activelyrecognized in the mind of customers. To visualize this case, the Swedish city Ostersund, isexamined to show how the responsible tourist information office succeeded with theimplementation of their image into the tourists mind. To clarify this, a comparison is madefrom questionnaires hold in the summer and winter 2010 as well as an qualitative interviewwith the managing director of the tourist office in Ostersund Camilla Olsson.


The main objective of the article is to show the process of the perspective financial analysis. It also demonstrates how presentation of results and possible conclusions can be changed when the description of financial point estimated parameters is declined and the possible probability distribution of those parameters is used instead. The article examines the mechanism of moving from the financial analysis using point estimated parameters to the determination of those parameters using possibility distributions, and the management of the corresponding event possibilities. In the article, the perspective financial ratio analysis using imitative technologies is performed. Also the financial analysis results are described and interpreted under the assumption as to the stochasticity of their nature. Evaluation of financial ratios using imitative technologies is complicated and requires additional knowledge. However, using imitative technologies is necessary, because this method adequately describes the analysed forecasted financial ratios. Financial analysis using point estimated parameters is quite simple, but important information for decision-making can be lost. This becomes evident by comparing point estimated values of the analysed financial ratios with possible probability distribution of the ratios, and by analysing main characteristics of these distributions.


The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, led to profound changes in societal viewpoints, political agendas, and the legal authorization to combat terrorism. The United States continues to struggle with keeping its population safe while maintaining the principles of democracy and the rule of law essential to the nation's character. The U.S. response to terrorism has been multifaceted and expansive, reflective of the U.S. role in global security; debate over these matters will continue for the foreseeable future. This report, prepared for the American Society of Comparative Law, offers summary, analysis and critique of many aspects of counterterrorism law, including the definition of terrorism and designation of terrorist organizations; application of international law; criminal law treatment of terrorism, including financing and material support; investigative powers of intelligence and law enforcement agencies; treatment of immigrants; executive power and the CIA targeted killing program; detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects; and access to courts and the treatment of classified information.


Article Info Background: Characterization of genes and precise assessment of the number of copies are crucial for understanding the basis of emergence, progression, and identification of predictive markers of tumor malignancy. This study aimed to investigate the role of the changes in some central genes in gastric cancer. Materials and Methods: In this experimental study, 30 patients with gastric surgery were selected by random sampling from four hospitals in Kerman to investigate BAX, BCL-2, P53, and MICAL-2 genes in cancerous and healthy tissues. They were then studied using real-time RT-qPCR, PCRSSCP, and sequencing. Results: Demographic analysis demonstrated that 66.6% of patients with gastric cancer were men. The age range of men and women was 26-93 and 33-83 years, respectively. In terms of tumor pathology, there was 93.3% adenocarcinoma, 6.6% gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST), 16.6% intestinal type, 10% diffuse type, and 73.3% unknown type. The two exons of the p53 gene showed a 2.04 and 3.81 fold increase in expression relative to normal adjacent tissue. Results showed the upregulation of Bcl-2 (1.54%) and MICAL2 (2.23%), while the expression of Bax was downregulated (0.87%). Bcl-2/Bax ratio was not solely correlated with the progression and clinical outcome of gastric cancer. Conclusion: The data suggest that the changes in BAX, BCL2, P53, and MICAL-2 genes play a key role in gastric cancer.


HIV-induced cytokine dysregulation, including overproduction of the antiproliferative and cytolytic IFN alpha cytokine, represents a major component of the immune disorders characterizing AIDS. To block the overproduction of IFN alpha we designed an AIDS vaccine combination which included both an anti-HIV and/or an anti-IFN alpha immunization. The safety and immunogenicity of this multicomponent vaccine were tested in mice, Cercopithecus, two HIV noninfected individuals, and six HIV-1 seropositive immunocompromised patients enrolled in a 1-year open clinical trial. We now report the result of a 9-month short-term randomized, blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial (Phase I/II) performed in HIV-1 patients (22 individuals) to confirm safety/tolerance of the anti-IFN alpha vaccine and its immunogenicity and to evaluate whether the complex vaccine initially used could be simplified by removal of HIV component(s). Three groups of patients received inactivated IFN alpha (i-IFN alpha) associated with the immunomodulator P40 with HIV-1 antigens (groups B and C) or without (group A), and one group (D) was placebo. The clinical follow-up documented among those receiving i-IFN-alpha showed that none developed AIDS and/or required antiretroviral chemotherapy. Viral load did not increase and CD4 cell count as well as cell-mediated immunity (CMI) stabilized or even significantly increased in group A. Immunogenicity of the preparations was determined by a positive delayed-type hypersensitivity (DTH) reaction to i-IFN alpha and the presence of serum antibodies to i-IFN alpha and to HIV-1 peptides, occurring only in treated patients. As previously planned, based on these safety data, the trial has been extended for an additional year and all patients were switched to protocol A (i-IFN alpha+P40). This second period of the trial, now open and ongoing, should allow us to evaluate further the innocuity of the i-IFN alpha preparation and whether anti-IFN alpha vaccine could provide a long-lasting CD4 cell count as well as CMI stabilization.


Epithermal precious metal mineralization develops within contemporaneously active tectonic and volcanic terranes in which co-active faults focus fluids from deep high-temperature reservoirs and magmas into shallower environments. Recognition of such structural controls through analysis of the architecture of prospective volcanic belts and basins is therefore important in the exploration for epithermal gold deposits. Field and high-resolution aeromagnetic data suggest that gold mineralization at Bimurra and Wirralie in the late Paleozoic Drummond Basin (northeast Queensland, Australia) is primarily controlled by reactivation of a northeast-striking strike-slip fault array that may have developed as a transfer fault in the early history of the basin. Gold mineralization is hosted by volcaniclastic and sedimentary rocks whose distribution was also controlled by this reactivated structure.


Across multiple measures of "liquidity" and a variety of methods to control for correlated characteristics of more- (less-) liquid bonds, the authors find only limited evidence of a liquidity premium in the cross section of corporate bonds. Specifically, although illiquid bonds have slightly higher credit spreads and directionally higher average returns, portfolios that tilt toward (away from) less (more) liquid bonds exhibit considerably higher levels of volatility. Economically, the low Sharpe ratios of illiquidity factor–mimicking portfolios are hard to justify for an investor. This is puzzling, as theory suggests investors should demand a risk premium for holding less-liquid assets.


—Data mining is the process of discovering actionable information from large sets of data. Data mining, or knowledge discovery, has become an indispensable technology for businesses and researchers in many fields. The data mining methods such as clustering, association rules, sequential pattern, statistics analysis, characteristics rules and so on can be used to find out the useful knowledge, enabling such data to become the real fortune for decisions and development. This paper introduces the significance of the application of data mining in different areas, challenges its future directions. Finally, it is pointed out that the data mining technology is becoming more and more powerful.


While error correcting codes (ECC) have the potential to significantly reduce the failure probability of post-quantum schemes, they add an extra ECC decoding step to the algorithm. As this additional computation handles secret information, it is susceptible to side-channel attacks. We show that if no precaution is taken, it is possible to use timing information to distinguish between ciphertexts that result in an error before decoding and ciphertexts that do not contain errors, due to the variable execution time of the ECC decoding algorithm. We demonstrate that this information can be used to break the IND-CCA security of postquantum secure schemes by presenting an attack on both the Ring-LWE scheme LAC and the Mersenne prime scheme Ramstake. This attack recovers the full secret key using a limited number of timed decryption queries. The attack is implemented on the reference and the optimized implementations of both submissions. It is able to retrieve LAC's secret for all security levels in under 2 hours using less than 2 decryption queries and Ramstake's secret in under 2 minutes using approximately 2400 decryption queries. The attack generalizes to other schemes with ECC's in which side-channel information about the presence of errors is leaked during decoding.


This paper discusses various challenges in the specification and implementation of "macro-finance" models in which macroeconomic variables and term structure variables are modeled together in a no-arbitrage framework. I classify macro-finance models into pure latent-factor models ("internal basis models") and models which have observed macroeconomic variables as state variables ("external basis models"), and examine the underlying assumptions behind these models. Particular attention is paid to the issue of unspanned short-run fluctuations in macro variables and their potentially adverse effect on the specification of external basis models. I also discuss the challenge of addressing features like structural breaks and time-varying inflation uncertainty. Empirical difficulties in the estimation and evaluation of macro-finance models are also discussed in detail. JEL Classification Numbers: E43, E44, E31, E37, G12


How do changes in market structure affect the US business cycle? We estimate a monetary DSGE model with endogenous rm/product entry and a translog expenditure function by Bayesian methods. The dynamics of net business formation allow us to identify the 'competition effect', by which desired price markups and inflation decrease when entry rises. We find that a 1 percent increase in the number of competitors lowers desired markups by 0.18 percent. Most of the cyclical variability in inflation is driven by markup fluctuations due to sticky prices or exogenous shocks rather than endogenous changes in desired markups.


This technical paper outlines a methodology for constructing estimates of the valueadded from exports by 4-digit SIC sub-industries within the UK car manufacturing industry while further extending the analysis to all 4-digit SIC sub-industries belonging to the manufacturing sector. More specifically, our estimates provide a measure of the direct domestic value-added component of exports, i.e., the difference between the value of exports and the expenditure on intermediates used to produce the exported goods. Currently, published estimates on the value-added of UK trade are only available for the car industry as a whole. Our estimates are available at a yearly frequency from 2012-2015. This methodology has been developed through collaboration between the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE), the ONS and HMRC. The ESCoE aggregate estimates are constructed using individual business data held by HMRC. These methods enable the value-added and exporting profile of each firm to be considered and so better estimates to be constructed than would have been the case if only aggregated data was used. ESCoE estimates suggest that at least that £3.93bn of UK car industry exports was value-added generated directly by the firms immediately prior before exporting. The 4 sub-industries comprising the UK car industry we analyse differ substantially in terms of their import and export intensities and our study provides a detailed picture of direct domestic value-added and direct domestic value-added content of exports from such subindustries. Furthermore, we also provides a way of measuring direct imports and exports, both within and outside the EU28, for subindustries belonging to the car industry thus allowing to gain better insights into the importance of global value chains for specific subindustries. Finally, we extend the above methodology and analysis to all 4-digit SIC sub-industries belonging to manufacturing sector while providing detailed results. These estimates form part of a wider project conducted by ESCoE, whose aim is to construct more highly disaggregated measures of value-added from trade for key sectors.


We propose a new approach that exploits the good properties of core-guided and model-guided MaxSAT solvers. In particular, we show how to effectively exploit the structure of unsatisfiable cores in MaxSAT instances. Experimental results on industrial instances show that the proposed approach outperforms both complete and incomplete state-of-the-art MaxSAT solvers at the last international MaxSAT Evaluation in terms of robustness and total number of solved instances.


The present article discusses the nature of the Latvian passive and, more specifically, the impersonal passive. It is argued that Latvian has indeed an impersonal passive that shows no signs of turning into an active impersonal, a development that has occurred in the history of Polish and could be an ongoing process in contemporary Lithuanian. Several lexical restrictions on the derivation of the Latvian constructions under discussion shows that they are indeed impersonal passives rather than active impersonals. Conspicuously absent, however, is a ban on the passivization of unaccusatives, as we find it in a number of languages that have a typical impersonal passive. It is suggested that the rise of an evidential passive might have played a certain role in the lifting of the restrictions on the passivization of unaccusatives in Baltic.


Background Refractory cancer pain is often difficult to manage. Ketamine is a drug with evidence of efficacy in the treatment of chronic cancer pain. Purpose To evaluate the efficacy and safety of ketamine rinse solution in paediatric patients with refractory cancer pain. Material and methods We report on a paediatric oncology patient who presented with painful conditions refractory to conventional analgesic treatment. Intravenous ketamine was diluted to a final concentration of 10 mg/mL in sterile water to rinse. Mouth rinses with 3 mL (30 mg) once daily was prescribed, specifying two rinses daily if required. Efficacy was measured on a visual analogue scale for pain (VAS pain), the Clinical Global Impression – Global Improvement (CGI-I) Scale, and the reduction of dose or withdrawal of analgesic drug base. Safety was measured in terms of variation in some clinical parameters (blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen saturation) and onset of drug-related symptoms (feeling drunk, drowsiness, nausea, vomiting, nystagmus or hallucinations). Results The case of a male patient 13 years of age [33 kg and 143 cm] is presented. The patient was receiving morphine chloride rescues until the treatment; morphine rescue was no longer needed on the second day of initiating treatment. The VAS pain score before rinsing was 9 and remained on 2 for 24 h after the rinse was applied, achieving a score of 0 on day four. CGI-I Scale at the end of the treatment score was 1 (Very much improved). The patient had no changes in clinical parameters. The total rinsing treatment time was four days, requiring two rinses the first day only. The pain stopped within 10 min of beginning the rinsing. Conclusion Ketamine rinsing was effective and safe in our paediatric oncology patient with painful conditions refractory to standard analgesic treatment. Further studies are needed to strengthen our results. References and/or acknowledgements Specially thanks Dr Manuel Cortinas No conflict of interest.


The importance of the pharmaceutical industry in Sub-Saharan Africa, its claim to policy priority, is rooted in the vast unmet health needs of the sub-continent. The book is a collective endeavour, by a group of contributors with a strong African and more broadly Southern presence, to find ways to link technological development, investment and industrial growth in pharmaceuticals to improving access to essential good quality medicines, as part of moving towards universal access to competent health care in Africa. We aim to shift the emphasis in international debate and initiatives towards sustained Africa-based and African-led initiatives to tackle this huge challenge. Without the technological, industrial, intellectual, organisational and research-related capabilities associated with competent pharmaceutical production, and without policies that pull the industrial sectors towards serving local health needs, the African sub-continent cannot generate the resources to tackle its populations' needs and demands.


This thesis will revisit Michel Foucault's original arguments on the ?urban problem? and the concomitant question of circulation, which I contend has been disassociated from more general renderings of his concept of governmentality. Throughout the 1970s, and particularly during his lectures at the Coll�ge de France, Foucault would regularly return to the problem of urban circulation; how it has been conceived, calculated and distributed. Foucault would ponder the ways that material infrastructures have canalised people and resources, and naturalised their complex coexistence, in the interests of urban economic restructuring and state aggrandisement. Here, the ?question of water? was not only incidental to Foucault?s analytics of government but absolutely integral. Indeed, according to Foucault, whether flowing through rivers, canals, pipes, pumps, sewers or fountains, or stagnating in swamps, marshes and ditches, water has required the especial attention of town planners attempting to optimise the contentious process of urbanisation. Using Singapore as a case study, I will consider how the circulation of water has been administered under the three technologies of power identified by Foucault, with the greater emphasis put on discipline and security. The overarching argument will be that the modern state was consolidated and subsequently decentralised through the material configuration of drainage infrastructure, reservoirs and distribution systems, where governmental programmes have been co-produced with the technological networks of water circulation.Although disciplinary techniques had initially been found effective in terms of pollution control and flood alleviation, counterproductive consequences of concrete modernism quickly emerged requiring a greater uptake of security mechanisms, where government would be increasingly exercised through practices of exposure rather than enclosure. Mosquitoes were now thriving in the subterranean network of drains, valuable land was being wastefully converted into dormant storm canals, whilst people had become socially and emotionally disconnected from water. Released and revalorised, water now serves as a mobile technology of government which can penetrate and pervade the urban form and the everyday life of its inhabitants, centrifugally unleashing the potency of water flows and human desire whilst facilitating Singapore?s transformation into a global city. With its methodological nominalism and commitment to concrete practices, I argue that once reoriented around the urban problem, Foucault?s analytics can advance environmental politics debates by demonstrating that government is a mundanely material process orchestrated through the everyday infrastructure of water management. In so doing, I also shift the emphasis from the urbanisation of nature to the naturalisation of the urban, of circulation and the art of government itself.


This paper contains a descriptionption of a new species of Elipsocus Hagen from Southern Rhodesia and further records of Elipsocus capensis Smithers; the localities given for E. capensis extend the known range of the species considerably, being the first records from Natal. This short paper is supplementary to that published previously (Smithers, 1962).


Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is an effective tool to measure the relative efficiency of decision-making units (DMUs) with multiple inputs and outputs. This study classifies the outputs into desirable and undesirable outputs, and then presents two DEA models, radial and non-radial models, to measure the environment efficiency for DMUs with undesirable outputs. Finally, two proposed DEA models are applied to evaluate the performance of 26 countries within OECD, in which two inputs (population and total energy consumption), two desirable outputs (GDP and total power generation) and one undesirable output ( 2 CO emission) are considered, and some managerial implications are


The Supreme Court of Canada's decision in Safarzadeh-Markhali holds great significance, beyond Criminal Law, in the area of Statutory Interpretation: in Markhali, the Court decisively endorses a new rigorous approach to construing legislative purpose. Previously, while legislation itself was long-interpreted utilizing rigorous approaches, legislative purpose was typically construed ad hoc while providing only summary justification. Markhali's new framework is distinct from prior approaches in at least four ways: (1) It expressly acknowledges the critical importance of purpose construction in many cases; (2) It is conscious of how a less-than-rigorous approach risks being self-defeating of larger legal analyses in which the legislative object is compared with legislative means, effects, etc.; (3) It prescribes overarching parameters that clarify what kind of "purpose" the construction seeks; and (4) It delineates the authoritative sources and analytical procedure to be employed in construing the purpose. The result is a "Rigorous Approach" in that it is structured and systematic, clear and capable of consistent application, and solicitous of disciplined adversarial debate and in-depth judicial justification. A salutary impact may be expected on the adjudication of claims emphasizing statutory purpose, including prominent Charter doctrines such as overbreadth, discrimination, and proportionality. This important advance will help strengthen the rule of law and shelter courts from unwelcome accusations of policymaking.


This paper studies code synchronization in time hopping (TH) ultra wideband
(UWB) systems. In TH UWB systems, narrow
pulses based on Gaussian pulse are positioned in
different locations in consecutive time frames.
The location of each frame is defined by a
spreading code. The receiver collects the energy
of the pulses using the same spreading code. To
be able to do that, it has to synchronize itself to
the incoming signal. Due to the large bandwidth
of the signal, several replicas of the signals arrive into the receiver. Thus, the energy of the
signal is spread in time domain causing extra
problems to the synchronization procedure. In
this paper, earlierly proposed method for direct
sequence spread spectrum system is applied for
time hopping system. The method is simulated in
a multipath environment. The performance
measure used is the mean acquisition time. Con-
stant false alarm rate criterion is used for the
threshold setting rule for comparator. The energies of the multipath components are combined
in the acquisition process. Therefore, diversity
combining is obtained in the acquisition process,
which also leads to performance improvement.


The aim was to determine diet selection of goats grazing/browsing in Zululand Thornveld. An experiment was done in spring (November 2007) and autumn (March/April 2008) at Owen Sitole College of Agriculture, KwaZulu-Natal. Diet selection was estimated using direct observation of animals and an indirect plant-based method. The browse species observed in the plant-based methods were: Gymnosporia senegalensis (Gs), Acacia nilotica (An), Acacia karroo (Ak), Scutia myrtina (Sm) and Dichrostachys cinerea (Dc). Selection was determined by observing at regular intervals 40 marked branches on 10 plants of each browse species. Direct observation of diet selection was done by observing two goats in a base herd of 24 castrated males when they were allowed to forage together in a paddock of 1 ha. Observations were made every minute for three hours in the morning and 1.5 hours in the afternoon. The relative abundance of the browse species in the veld was determined and used to estimate the selection index (utilization relative to availability). In both seasons, the three most selected species according to the plant-based observations were Sm, Ak and Dc. Consistently, An experienced moderate defoliation and Gs the least. However, on the basis of the selection index the species followed the order: An>Dc>Ak>Sm>Gs in spring and An>Sm>Dc>Ak>Gs in autumn. The selection index was negatively correlated to all fibre attributes although the correlation attained significance only for NDF, ADF and lignin but not for tannins and cellulose. Both methods did not rank species in the same order, thus suggesting the need for further methodological refinement.


We document that the structure of syndicates affects loan renegotiations. Lead banks with large retained shares have positive effects on renegotiations. In contrast, more diverse syndicates deter renegotiations, but only for credit lines. The former result can be explained with coordination theories. The puzzling effect of syndicate diversity in term loan renegotiations derives from the growth of collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) in the syndicated loan market and the coordination between these vehicles and lead banks. CLOs that have a relationship with the lead bank of the renegotiated loan are strong supporters of amount-increase renegotiations, arguably because this gives them access to attractive investments. Related CLOs fund not only their portion of the loan increase, but also the portion that was supposed to be funded by the lead bank. Our findings highlight the previously unrecognized role of the growing presence of non-bank lenders in corporate lending.


In the 1980s the future of public service broadcasting in

Britain was called into doubt. Technological developments in

cable, satellite and digital technologies were, it was argued,

poised to end the condition known as 'spectrum scarcity'; while

the emergence of a neo-liberal Conservative government, pledged

to rolling back the frontiers of the state', was of the opinion

that the current system of public service broadcasting provision

was no longer necessary given the number of broadcasting channels

now available; broadcasting, in its view, would increasingly be

able to mirror the publishing industry in its structure and

future regulation.

Critics however, were loathe to accept the argument that

technological considerations alone ought to drive broadcasting

policy; and two key questions emerged. Firstly, how was public

service broadcasting to be defended in a climate increasingly

hostile to public service ideals and institutions in general; and

secondly, and as a result of the first question, how was public

service broadcasting to be understood?

This thesis seeks to answer both these questions and argues

that in the process of clarifying the nature of public service

broadcasting in the past, that solutions for its defence in the

future will be found. Public service broadcasting, was not, it

will be argued, simply about institutions like the BBC, but

evidence of a much broader and widely shared (across the

political divides) understanding of the proper role of

broadcasting in a democratic society (at least until the 1980s).

In short, public service broadcasting in the past was never

simply a response to a set of technological conditions; instead

it was forged from a set of political, economic, Administrative

and cultural ideas about the nature of society and broadcasting's

role in it; and hence its ability to respond to the new

conditions of the 1990s and beyond.


The origin and evolution of the vertebrate skull have been topics of intense study for more than two centuries. Whereas early theories of skull origin, such as the influential vertebral theory, have been largely refuted with respect to the anterior (pre‐otic) region of the skull, the posterior (post‐otic) region is known to be derived from the anteriormost paraxial segments, i.e. the somites. Here we review the morphology and development of the occiput in both living and extinct tetrapods, taking into account revised knowledge of skull development by augmenting historical accounts with recent data. When occipital composition is evaluated relative to its position along the neural axis, and specifically to the hypoglossal nerve complex, much of the apparent interspecific variation in the location of the skull–neck boundary stabilizes in a phylogenetically informative way. Based on this criterion, three distinct conditions are identified in (i) frogs, (ii) salamanders and caecilians, and (iii) amniotes. The position of the posteriormost occipital segment relative to the hypoglossal nerve is key to understanding the evolution of the posterior limit of the skull. By using cranial foramina as osteological proxies of the hypoglossal nerve, a survey of fossil taxa reveals the amniote condition to be present at the base of Tetrapoda. This result challenges traditional theories of cranial evolution, which posit translocation of the occiput to a more posterior location in amniotes relative to lissamphibians (frogs, salamanders, caecilians), and instead supports the largely overlooked hypothesis that the reduced occiput in lissamphibians is secondarily derived. Recent advances in our understanding of the genetic basis of axial patterning and its regulation in amniotes support the hypothesis that the lissamphibian occipital form may have arisen as the product of a homeotic shift in segment fate from an amniote‐like condition.


As the demands placed on transport systems have increased relative to extensions in supply, problems of network unreliability have become ever more prevalent. The response of some transport users has been to accommodate expectations of unreliability in their decision-making, particularly through their trip scheduling. In the analysis of trip scheduling, Small's (1982) approach has received considerable support. Small extends the microeconomic theory of time allocation (e.g. Becker, 1965; De Serpa, 1971), accounting for scheduling constraints in the specification of both utility and its associated constraints. Small makes operational the theory by means of the random utility model (RUM). This involves a process of converting the continuous departure time variable into discrete departure time segments, specifying the utility of each departure time segment as a function of several components (specifically journey time, schedule delay and the penalty of late arrival), and adopting particular distributional assumptions concerning the random error terms of contiguous departure time segments (whilst his 1982 paper assumes IID, Small's 1987 paper considers a more complex pattern of covariance). A fundamental limitation of Small's approach is that individuals make choices under certainty, an assumption that is clearly unrealistic in the context of urban travel choice. The response of microeconomic theory to such challenge is to reformulate the objective problem from the maximisation of utility, to one of maximising expected utility, with particular reference to the works of von Neumann & Morgenstern (1947) and Savage (1954). Bates et al. (2001) apply this extension to departure time choice, but specify choice as being over continuous time; the latter carries the advantage of simplifying some of the calculations of optimal departure time. Moreover Bates et al. offer account of departure time choice under uncertainty, but retain a deterministic representation. Batley & Daly (2004) develop ideas further by reconciling the analyses of Small (1982) and Bates et al. Drawing on early contributions to the RUM literature by Marschak et al. (1963), Batley and Daly propose a probabilistic model of departure time choice under uncertainty, based on an objective function of random expected utility maximisation. Despite this progression in the generality and sophistication of methods, significant challenges to the normative validity of RUM and transport network models remain. Of increasing prominence in transport research, is the conjecture that expected utility maximisation may represent an inappropriate objective of choice under uncertainty. Significant evidence for this conjecture exists, and a variety of alternative objectives proposed instead; Kahneman & Tversky (2000) offer a useful compendium of such papers. With regards to these alternatives, Kahneman & Tversky's (1979) own Prospect Theory commands considerable support as a theoretical panacea for choice under uncertainty. This theory distinguishes between two phases in the choice process - editing and evaluation. Editing may involve several stages, so-called 'coding', 'combination', 'cancellation', 'simplification' and 'rejection of dominated alternatives'. Evaluation involves a value function that is defined on deviations from some reference point, and is characterised by concavity for gains and convexity for losses, with the function being steeper for gains than for losses. The present paper begins by formalising the earlier ideas of Batley and Daly (2004); the paper thus presents a theoretical exposition of a random expected utility model of departure time choice. The workings of the model are then illustrated by means of numerical example. The scope of the analysis is subsequently widened to consider the possibility of divergence from the objective of expected utility maximisation. An interesting feature of this discussion is consideration of the relationship between Prospect Theory and a generalised representation of the random expected utility model. In considering this relationship, the paper draws on Batley & Daly's (2003) investigation of the equivalence between RUM and elimination-by-aspects (Tversky, 1972); the latter representing one example of a possible 'editing' model within Prospect Theory. Again, the extended model is illustrated by example.


Intent. The intent of Learned Discourses is to provide a forum for open discussion. These articles reflect the professional opinions of the authors regarding scientific issues. They do not represent SETAC positions or policies. And, although they are subject to editorial review for clarity, consistency, and brevity, these articles are not peer reviewed. The Learned Discourses date from 1996 in the North America SETAC News and, when that publication was replaced by the SETAC Globe, continued there through 2005. The continued success of Learned Discourses depends on our contributors. We encourage timely submissions that will inform and stimulate discussion. We expect that many of the articles will address controversial topics, andpromise togivedissentingopinions a chance to be heard. Rules.All submissionsmust be succinct: no longer than 1000 words, nomore than6 references, andatmost 1 table or figure. Reference format must follow the journal requirement found at http://www.setacjournals.org. Topics must fall within IEAM's sphere of interest. Submissions.Allmanuscripts shouldbesentviaemailasWord attachments toPeterMChapman (firstname.lastname@example.com).


53 C linical judgment in nursing requires integration of a broad set of concepts from patho-physiological processes and situation-specific assessments to human caring and interpersonal communication. Nursing students consistently report difficulty in understanding and applying the complexities and ambiguities of care. They often perceive mixed messages and competing perspectives that cannot be resolved; their increasing frustration can produce anxiety about the conceptual tasks of scholarship. Honors research in nursing addresses this problem directly. Students have the opportunity to develop project ideas through all phases of the research process. They select a clinical question, relate it to nursing theory and current literature, design a project plan and implement the plan. In this process they experience first-hand how a single mode of thinking can be tracked through conceptualization to practice. Data-based research supports the student's transition to valuing evidence-based practice. As different students have considered different clinical questions, a variety of modes of thinking have been observed. Deductive, inductive and intuitive ways of understanding have been chosen for varied Honors research projects. This analysis looks at the process of Honors research in the discipline of nursing and how Honors students can use the process to provide an advanced foundation for practice in the discipline.


A new form of restitution has become a core aspect of criminal punishment. Courts now order defendants to compensate victims for an increasingly broad category of losses, including emotional and psychological losses and losses for which the defendant was not found guilty. Criminal restitution therefore no longer serves its traditional purpose of disgorging a defendant's ill-gotten gains. Instead, restitution has become a mechanism of additional punishment. Courts, however, have failed to recognize the punitive nature of restitution and thus enter restitution orders without regard to the constitutional protections normally attaching to criminal proceedings. This Article deploys a novel definition of punishment to situate restitution alongside other forms of punishment. Like all forms of punishment, restitution is imposed subsequent to a criminal allegation, pursuant to a statute motivated by morally condemnatory intent, and resulting in a substantial deprivation or obligation. Because restitution has become a form of punishment, this Article argues that judges should recognize criminal restitution for what it is — victim compensation imposed at the state's request as condemnation for a moral wrong — and extend to defendants in restitution proceedings all the constitutional protections they enjoyed in earlier criminal proceedings. This means submitting restitution to a jury for determination pursuant to the Sixth Amendment, and subjecting it to the excessive-fines analysis of the Eighth Amendment.


All-optical return-to-zero (RZ) to non-return-to-zero (NRZ) format conversion has been demonstrated using cross-phase modulation in a dispersion-shifted fiber, which can in principle work with different signal bit rates and does not require any external pulse duplicator. The output wavelength-converted signal is obtained from filtering of the broadened optical spectrum. A power penalty of 2 dB is obtained at 10-9 bit-error-rate level in a 10 Gb/s conversion experiment.


Although most of existing research usually detects events by analyzing the content or structural information of Web documents, a recent direction is to study the usage data. In this paper, we focus on detecting events from Web click-through data generated by Web search engines. We propose a novel approach which effectively detects events from click-through data based on robust subspace analysis. We first transform click-through data to the 2D polar space. Next, an algorithm based on Generalized Principal Component Analysis (GPCA) is used to estimate subspaces of transformed data such that each subspace contains query sessions of similar topics. Then, we prune uninteresting subspaces which do not contain query sessions corresponding to real events by considering both the semantic certainty and the temporal certainty of query sessions in each subspace. Finally, various events are detected from interesting subspaces by utilizing a nonparametric clustering technique. Compared with existing approaches, our experimental results based on real-life click-through data have shown that the proposed approach is more accurate in detecting real events and more effective in determining the number of events.


We investigated the influence of forest fragment size and isolation on the bird assemblages in the species- and endemic-rich sand forests of the Maputaland Centre of Endemism, southern Mozambique. Point-centre surveys were conducted across 12 sand forest patches that varied in size and isolation. Patch size and isolation had little influence on bird species richness, but the number of individuals decreased significantly with increasing isolation. Furthermore, bird abundances were correlated to a combination of the size and isolation of patches. Many forest specialists, in particular large-bodied frugivores, were highly sensitive to reduced patch size and increased distances between patches. Further fragmentation of the landscape may therefore impair the ability of these forests to support viable populations of forest specialists.


Abstract. Diagenetic processes are important drivers of water column biogeochemistry in coastal areas. For example, sediment oxygen consumption can be a significant contributor to oxygen depletion in hypoxic systems, and sediment–water nutrient fluxes support primary productivity in the overlying water column. Moreover, nonlinearities develop between bottom water conditions and sediment–water fluxes due to loss of oxygen-dependent processes in the sediment as oxygen becomes depleted in bottom waters. Yet, sediment–water fluxes of chemical species are often parameterized crudely in coupled physical–biogeochemical models, using simple linear parameterizations that are only poorly constrained by observations. Diagenetic models that represent sediment biogeochemistry are available, but rarely are coupled to water column biogeochemical models because they are computationally expensive. Here, we apply a method that efficiently parameterizes sediment–water fluxes of oxygen, nitrate and ammonium by combining in situ measurements, a diagenetic model and a parameter optimization method. As a proof of concept, we apply this method to the Louisiana Shelf where high primary production, stimulated by excessive nutrient loads from the Mississippi–Atchafalaya River system, promotes the development of hypoxic bottom waters in summer. The parameterized sediment–water fluxes represent nonlinear feedbacks between water column and sediment processes at low bottom water oxygen concentrations, which may persist for long periods (weeks to months) in hypoxic systems such as the Louisiana Shelf. This method can be applied to other systems and is particularly relevant for shallow coastal and estuarine waters where the interaction between sediment and water column is strong and hypoxia is prone to occur due to land-based nutrient loads.


This study investigated the effects of rhythm pattern instruction on the sightreading achievement of woodwind and brass instrumentalists. Subjects were members of the University Band concert ensemble (N = 50) at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Participants in this study volunteered to participate in a six-week treatment that included four weeks of rhythm pattern instruction. Assessment took place at the individual and ensemble levels. Three musical aspects of the ensemble's performance were evaluated: facility, ensemble, and flow. The results of the statistical analyses revealed no significant differences between experimental and control groups. There were, however, statistically significant differences between pretest and posttest scores, with improvement in all aspects from pretest to posttest. There were no statistically significant interactions. The ensemble assessments showed a similar pattern. There was significant improvement in all three areas (facility, ensemble, and flow) from pretest to posttest, but there were no statistically significant interactions between testing (pretest-posttest) and condition. Results of this study suggest that students' sight-reading of rhythmic patterns might improve through the ensemble experience alone. There was no evidence that teaching isolated rhythmic patterns over a brief period of time affected the students' sight-reading achievement. Further research should employ the approaches used in this study in more extensive time frames and with a larger number of participants.


The Biddle Physical Ability Test (BPAT) was developed to identify candidates who possess the physical ability to become structural firefighters. The test must be completed in ≤ 9:34 min:s before a candidate is admitted to an academy. Some community colleges offer semester-long training classes for candidates. This study analyzed whether candidates who completed a training class could perform the BPAT more effectively. Retrospective analysis of 30 males and 2 females who attempted the BPAT was conducted. BPAT tasks were: dry and charged hose drag; halyard raise, roof walk, and attic crawl; roof ventilation and victim removal; ladder removal and carry; stair climb with hose bundle; crawling search and tower exit; stair climb with air bottles; hose hoist; and return to ground floor with air bottles. Independent samples t-tests or Mann-Whitney U tests (p < 0.05) and effect sizes calculated BPAT time differences between candidates who completed a training class or not. Twenty-nine candidates passed the BPAT; 6 completed a training class. The 3 candidates (2 males, 1 female) who failed did not complete a class. There were no significant between-group differences in BPAT times (p = 0.054-0.829). There were moderate effects for faster roof ventilation and victim removal, ladder removal and carry, and hose hoist times for candidates who attended a class (d = 0.74-0.95). While training classes may not be necessary for all candidates, physically demanding BPAT tasks were finished faster by candidates who completed a class. For candidates who find the BPAT physicality difficult, participation in a task-specific fitness and skills class may prove beneficial.


In this paper, we describe a new multicountry open economy SDGE model named "SIGMA" that we have developed as a quantitative tool for policy analysis. We compare SIGMA's implications to those of an estimated large-scale econometric policy model (the FRB/Global model) for an array of shocks that are often examined in policy simulations. We show that SIGMA's implications for the near-term responses of key variables are generally similar to those of FRB/Global. Nevertheless, some quantitative disparities between the two models remain due to certain restrictive aspects of SIGMA's optimization-based framework. We conclude by using long-term simulations to illustrate some areas of comparative advantage of our SDGE modeling framework.


This thesis characterises species richness and community structure over a habitatpatch size gradient of a typical bog-pool complex, investigating the effect of pool size on aquatic invertebrate communities. In this study, twenty-two pools were surveyed ranging in area from 8.6 m to 280.9 m within a single complex at Forsinard in the north of Scotland. Three different sampling methods were used: baited and unbaited activity traps and a sediment sampler. Univariate and multivariate methods were used to investigate the effects of pool size and pool location within the complex on species richness and community structure. The research expands our knowledge of peatland pool invertebrates by providing a comprehensive survey of the aquatic invertebrate fauna representative of the Flow Country of northern Scotland. Two IUCN British Red Data Book species were recorded: the Northern Damselfly, Coenagrion hastulatum (Charpentier), and the cased caddisfly, Nemotaulius punctatolineatus (Retzius). Three species of aquatic Coleoptera were collected that have Nationally Notable status according to Ball (1986): Dytiscus lapponicus Gyllenhal, Ilybius aenescens Thomson and Gyrinus minutus Fabricius. All these species are typical of, and often restricted to, this habitat type. The three different sampling methods differed in their sampling efficiency and each gave a different species spectrum. A distinct seasonal change in the samples was also observed. The number of taxa caught per standardised sampling unit (taxon density) was investigated over the pool size gradient. Relationships between taxon density and area were weak or non-existent in both unbaited activity traps and sediment samples. However, the number of beetle species caught in baited activity traps increased significantly with pool size, indicating that the total number of beetle species per pool may also increase over the size gradient. Ratios of the number of predator taxa to prey (non-predator) taxa for each pool ranged from 0.34 to 0.78 with a mean of 0.49 and were not affected by pool area or total taxonomic richness. Taxa displayed a positive abundance-occupancy relationship and the possible underlying mechanisms involved in creating this pattern are discussed. Multivariate techniques showed that pool area, depth, and distance from the centre of the pool complex (periferality) all had a small but significant affect on community composition and that between certain taxa there were distinctly different optima along the pool size gradient. These results are discussed in the context of species area theory.


Linux distributions often include package management tools such as apt-get in Debian or yum in RedHat. Using information about package dependencies and conflicts, such tools can determine how to install a new package (and its dependencies) on a system of already installed packages. Using off-the-shelf SAT solvers, pseudo-boolean solvers, and Integer Linear Programming solvers, we have developed a new package-management tool, called Opium, that improves on current tools in two ways: (1) Opium is complete, in that if there is a solution, Opium is guaranteed to find it, and (2) Opium can optimize a user-provided objective function, which could for example state that smaller packages should be preferred over larger ones. We performed a comparative study of our tool against Debian's apt-get on 600 traces of real-world package installations. We show that Opium runs fast enough to be usable, and that its completeness and optimality guarantees provide concrete benefits to end users.


The growing importance of sustainable development and influence of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) on the performance of companies have forced companies to care more than ever about the environmental impact of their activities. Wide range of environmental legislations has been enforced by the European Union during recent years in order to ensure sustainable development of European cities. As a result, various initiatives have taken place to boost companies' interest to take control over the environmental performance. An environmental management area has developed strongly in recent decades and various systems and tools have been introduced to effectively manage sustainable environmental development of companies. More and more organizations both in Estonia and worldwide are initiating the ISO14001 certification process, which specifies requirements for environmental management systems, in order to develop and implement environmental policy and objectives. The main purpose of the present research was to identify the main factors of initiating the ISO certification process by Estonian companies and to get their opinion regarding the future of the ISO 14001 certification in Estonia. To achieve the aim of the research, the authors have set the following research tasks: to provide a wide overview of the scientific literature covering the main relevant studies in the selected research area; to research the implementation of standards in European Union and Estonia; to conduct a survey in the form of questionnaire among ISO 14001 certified enterprises; to reveal respondent's opinion about the current situation and future development of ISO 14001 certification in Estonia. The main methods applied in this article include analytical method and quantitative research method. Authors conducted a survey among ISO 14001 certified Estonian companies in September-October 2015 and collected 115 replies. The findings of the present research clearly demonstrate that Estonian companies are actively involved into the environmental management process; therefore, they initiated the ISO 14001 certification procedure and are willing to renew the certificate upon expiration. They also confirm that Estonian stakeholders are aware of the environmental management initiatives and their opinions are valued by companies and inspire them to show better performance in the field of environmental sustainability. The companies are also caring about their reputation and compliance with environmental laws and legislation, and believe that ISO 14001 certification will assist in this matter. However, it should be pointed out that surveyed companies do not identify a direct link between the ISO 14001 certification and reductions of certain costs and expenses. Therefore, there should be more workshops and training organized in order to explain how the sustainability helps to boost the effectiveness of the company by reducing various expenses and increasing profits. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eis.0.10.14490


Abstract Detrital chrome-spinels are contaminant grains within ilmenite concentrates produced from heavy- mineral deposits along the coast of southeast Africa. The presence of even minor levels of chromia in the predominantly ilmenite-rich concentrates, downgrades their market value as potential feedstocks for the production of titania pigment. An understanding of their composition can assist in their removal from the ilmenite concentrates. Compositions from a database of close to 900 chrome-spinel analyses shows the major element components and their ranges (in wt.%) are: Cr: 0.4-45.3, Al: 0.0-31.0, Fe: 8.5-69.6 and Mg: 0.0-12.2. Minor components include Ti: 0.1-11.4 and Zn: 0.0-13.7. The chrome-spinel data fall into two compositionally distinct groups. The first group of spinels is dominated by a strong trend reflecting the mutual substitution between Al3+ and Cr3+ in the spinel structure. The second group of spinels is characterized by compositions containing abundant Fe3O4 magnetite component. The clear division between chrome-spinel compositional types indicates the grains are derived from at least two chemically dissimilar provenances. The compositional differences between the chrome-spinel groups has a positive impact on subsequent ilmenite upgrading treatments as the spinels which contain the highest magnetite component are easily removed via low-intensity magnetic separation procedures.


This thesis describes the research and implementation details of an online storytelling application using novel web technologies, specifically designed for older adults. It integrates into an existing social network, with the goal of making it easier while still fun for older adults to remotely share life stories or general thoughts with family and friends. The Web already exists for more than two decades. Still, it's growth has since been continuous, expanding both in adopters and services. The Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the markup language used to create content for the web; recently the fifth version of the specification has been drafted and is already being implemented by most browsers. The term HTML 5, further than referring to this latest version of the specification, is indeed used as an umbrella term for a wider set of web-related specifications. Together, those bring the possibility to create complex applications that run inside any recent browser, taking web development a step further. With the dissemination of smart phones and tablets, we believe that web technologies might pose as an alternative to native software development, reducing the costs associated to developing and maintaining applications in multiple platforms. Additionally, these devices are usually easier to adopt due to their smaller size, reduced need for configurations and high interactivity, making them ideal for older adults. Despite the increasing rate of adoption of the Internet, older adults still generally resist to adopt it due to lack of motivation or not understanding how it can be used to improve their well-being, which has been observed by the satisfaction in those that do adopt it. Literature review show us that most people in their later life tend to be exposed to physical isolation or the loss of connections to friends and families for several reasons, such as relocation or mobility impairments. The internet can be an asset in fighting those situations by providing a new channel of communication between them and those who they like on a more frequent basis. We believe that, if provided with the appropriate design and technology, most older adults are able and motivated to create content in online social networks in order to communicate with their loved ones. This thesis verifies the readiness of HTML 5 for mainstream adoption, while using it to develop a prototype for an online storytelling application for older adults, integrated with an existing online social network. We attempt to facilitate their internet adoption and increase their well-being, by creating a new communication channel to their physically distant loved ones. We conclude that HTML 5 is a viable adoption for cross-platform development, as long as only devices with recent browsers are target. Also, we verify that with the right design and devices, the lack of familiarity between some older adults and technology can be overcome.


A long optical path has been folded between two 7.5-cm diam spherical or aspherical mirrors to provide an output beam which can be well separated from previous reflections with 1000 or more passes between the mirrors. The 3000-m path provides 10 μsec of delay. This system can be used as a dispersionless optical delay line for use in filtering or storage of information modulated onto the light beam. The pattern of beams between the two mirrors is obtained in one of two ways. A small perturbing mirror may be inserted to give a series of offset ellipses, or one or both of the mirrors can be made astigmatic to give a Lissajous pattern of spots on each mirror. The output beam can be separated from others by discriminating in both angle and position. The diffraction losses of the system are much lower than those for an open beam because of the periodic focusing of the spherical mirrors. The extreme dependence of the loss of the delay line upon the absorption and scattering loss of the mirrors makes the system dependent upon very low loss mirrors and also makes the system a suitable method for measuring mirror loss. Block diagrams are shown for some possible filtering and storage applications.


The low-density lipoprotein receptor mediates cholesterol homeostasis through endocytosis of lipoproteins. It discharges its ligand in the endosome at pH < 6. In the crystal structure at pH = 5.3, the ligand-binding domain (modules R2 to R7) folds back as an arc over the epidermal growth factor precursor homology domain (the modules A, B, β propeller, and C). The modules R4 and R5, which are critical for lipoprotein binding, associate with the β propeller via their calcium-binding loop. We propose a mechanism for lipoprotein release in the endosome whereby the β propeller functions as an alternate substrate for the ligand-binding domain, binding in a calcium-dependent way and promoting lipoprotein release.


The collection of deep-sea pebble crabs (Leucosioidea) during the BIOPAPUA Expedition, comprising 8 species, including a species new to science, is significant because although the previously described species had not been recorded from the Bismarck and western Solomon Seas, they occurred in at least one nearby location (New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Solomon Is). Praebebalia fungifera sp. nov. is described and illustrated. It differs from its closest congener, P. septemspinosa Sakai, 1983, in bearing fungiform granules dorsally on carapace, shorter chelipeds, the relatively stout male first gonopod with a preapical row of setae and the beak-like tip, as compared to the rounded granules dorsally on the carapace, greatly elongate chelipeds and the slim, elongate, distally curved gonopod of P. septemspinosa , preapically set with very long setae and a hook-like tip.


True Single-Phase Clock (TSPC) Flip-Flops, based on dynamic logic implementation, are area-saving and high-speed compared to standard static flip-flops. Furthermore, logic gates can be embedded into TSPC flip-flops which significantly improves performance. As a promising approach to keep the pace of Moore's Law, functionality-enhanced devices with multiple independent gates have drown many recent interests. In particular, Three-Independent-Gate Silicon Nanowire FETs (TIG SiNWFETs) can realize the functionality of two serial transistors in a single device. Therefore, they open new opportunities to compact designs in both arithmetic and control circuits. In this paper, we propose TSPC flip-flop implementation with asynchronous set and reset using the compactness of TIG SiNWFET. Electrical simulations show that TIG SiNWFET-based TSPC flip-flop improves nearly 20%, 30% and 7% in area, delay and leakage power respectively as compared to its LSTP FinFET counterpart at 22nm.


Although Support Vector Machine (SVM) is widely used in practice, it only takes the boundary information between classes into consideration while neglects the data distribution, which seriously limits the classification efficiency. In view of this, Minimum Class Variance Support Vector Machine (MCVSVM) is proposed by Zafeiriou. Compared with SVM, MCVSVM has better generalization ability because it takes both boundary information and distribution characteristics into consideration. While the above mentioned methods SVM and MCVSVM always neglect the local characteristics of each class. Based on the above analysis, this paper presents Minimum Manifold-based Within-Class Scatter Support Vector Machine (M2SVM), which not only focuses on boundary information and distribution characteristics, but also preserves the manifold structure of each class. By theory analysis, M2SVM is equivalent to SVM and MCVSVM in a certain condition. It is believed that compared with SVM and MCVSVM, M2SVM has the best generalization ability. Experiments on the man-made dataset and UCI datasets verify the effectiveness of the proposed method M2SVM.


AbstractThe structure of a melting layer associated with a mesoconvective system is examined using a combination of in situ aircraft measurements and a unique Doppler radar operated by the U.S. Navy that has a range resolution as fine as 0.5 m. Interest in this case was motivated by ground-based all-sky camera images that captured the transient development of midlevel billow cloud structures within a precipitating trailing stratiform cloud shield associated with a passing deep convective system. A sequence of high-fidelity time–height radar measurements taken of this storm system reveal that the movement of the billow cloud structure over the radar site corresponded with abrupt transitions in the observed low-level precipitation structure. Of particular note is an observed transition from stratiform to more periodic and vertically slanted rain shaft structures that both radar and aircraft measurements indicate have the same temporal periodicity determined to arise visually between successive billow cloud ...


PURPOSE
The aim of this study was to evaluate clinical usefulness and durability of continuous glass-fiber reinforcement in repair of acrylic resin removable dentures.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Fractured removable dentures without reinforcement, with conventional metal-wire reinforcement, or with mesh reinforcement were collected from two dental schools in Finland. The total number of dentures was 51 and the number of patients was 48. During the repair, the dentures were reinforced with a polymer-preimpregnated E-glass fiber at the region of the fracture. The fibers were used as partial fiber reinforcement, i.e., only the weakest part of the denture was reinforced. Follow-up time varied from 4 months to 4.1 years. After the follow-up period, possible fractures and discoloring were visually inspected. Possible irritation of oral mucosa by glass fibers and the general shape of the denture were also evaluated.

RESULTS
In 88% of the cases, there was no need for adjustment at the region of partial fiber reinforcement, and the clinical condition of the dentures was good. Glass fibers did not irritate the oral mucosa. In the case of refracture or hairline fracture, positioning of the partial fiber reinforcement was incorrect or the reinforcement had been used incorrectly (the wetting of the reinforcement with denture base resin was inadequate).

CONCLUSION
Polymer-preimpregnated partial fiber reinforcement seems to be useful in eliminating fractures of acrylic resin removable dentures. However, this study emphasizes the importance of correct positioning and accurate laboratory technique when partial fiber reinforcement is used.


The archaeological remains at Hacienda Tabi provide an opportunity to study the effects of large-scale societal changes on the lives of the Maya who worked on the hacienda. The households, represented by the ruins of the worker's village surrounding the main hacienda grounds, were at the core of late colonial/independence era Maya life. These households were subject to the forces of acculturation that accompanied the rise and supremacy of the hacienda system during the late eighteenth century.

Archaeological excavations at Hacienda Tabi have revealed a re-orientation of social organization during this period. Prior to the formation of the hacienda system, domestic and social organization focused on kinship and extended family subsistence organization. Social status, wealth, and power in pre-hacienda communities were predicated on issues of age, sex, and familial rank within both the extended family and community. The hacienda system brought about fundamental changes in the organization and relations of production. These changes, e.g. the separation of producer from the means of production and commodity based production versus subsistence based production, changed the basis and therefore the form of Yucatecan social organization. Under the new system, the nuclear family rather than the extended family or community became the prime unit of social organization. In the hacienda community status was based on occupation and one's place within the newly established labor hierarchy.

The changing realities of social organization found under the hacienda system are reflected in the settlement patterns and material remains of the workers' village at Hacienda Tabi. The material culture and types of housing excavated and recorded at Tabi underscore the inequalities engendered within the hacienda system of production. The research conducted at Hacienda Tabi has illuminated the changes associated with Yucatan's articulation into the greater world system.


In situ X-ray absorption spectroscopy has afforded detailed structural and electronic characterization of a newly developed stabilized Pt-skin/PtCo alloy nanoparticle catalyst for CO-tolerant H2 oxidation. The X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) results show the significant effects of H and CO adsorption on white lines for pure Pt nanoparticles, which are correlated with the depletion of the density of states (DOS) just below the Fermi level (FL) calculated with density-functional theory (DFT). In contrast, for the Pt-skin/PtCo surface, there is little effect on the XANES for either H or CO adsorption. The lack of effect is consistent with the lack of variation of the DOS near the FL. The extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) results for pure Pt nanoparticles have exhibited significant changes caused by H and CO adsorption. Such changes are suggested to be associated with the selected surface expansion of Pt atoms, as revealed from DFT-calculated radial distribution functions (RDFs). In contrast, for the Pt-skin/PtCo surface, there were negligible changes in the EXAFS, either with H or CO adsorption, which is consistent with the lack of changes in the DFT-calculated RDF. Notably, the rigidity of the Pt skin and the lower degree of overlap between Pt and CO orbitals, due to the narrowing of the d-band, are thought to be responsible for the weak adsorption.


Simple techniques developed for rooting stem cuttings of sapogenin-bearing yams were tested with edible species and their varieties. Rooting began within 5 weeks after initiation of treatment or not at all. Species and varietal differences were evident. Cuttings of most D. alata varieties root freely, those of D. rutundata are intermediate, and those of D. esculenta and D. trifida are very difficult to root. Cuttings taken early in the season develop roots and shoots readily, but those taken later develop a small tuber and roots but often do not develop shoots. Very young cuttings or cuttings from the mature stem do not root as easily as cuttings of intermediate age.


Technology influences the situation of people's every day life and this, in turn, has an impact on opportunities for health related quality of life. This paper presents how findings from two separate and distinct feasibility investigations under the SoundScapes body of research corroborate an important aspect of the original methodology of the concept such as to have influenced its future design and application in its health field context. The primary purpose of the independent studies was to test the potential of utilizing sensor technology to empower control of multimedia feedback across different sample groups of abilities and to test the effects on these participants.


CAPTCHAs are automated Turing tests used to determine if the end-user is human and not an automated program. Users are asked to read and answer Visual CAPTCHAs, which often appear as bitmaps of text characters, in order to gain access to a low-cost resource such as webmail or a blog. CAPTCHAs are generated by software and the structure of a CAPTCHA gives hints to its implementation. Thus due to these properties of image processing and image composition, the process that creates CAPTCHAs can often be reverse engineered. Once the implementation strategy of a family of CAPTCHAs has been reverse engineered the CAPTCHA instances may be solved automatically by leveraging weaknesses in the creation process or by comparing a CAPTCHA's output against itself. In this paper, we present a case study where we reverse engineer and solve real-world CAPTCHAs using simple image processing techniques such as bitmap comparison, thresholding, fill-flood segmentation, dilation, and erosion. We present black-box and white-box methodologies for reverse engineering and solving CAPTCHAs. As well we provide an open source toolkit for solving CAPTCHAs that we have used with a success rates of 99, 95, 61, 30%, and 27% on hundreds of CAPTCHAs from five real-world examples.


Drawing from two political and several literary homelands, this collection presents a remarkable series of trenchant essays, demonstrating the full range and force of Salman Rushdie's remarkable imaginative and observational powers. With candour, eloquence and indignation he carefully examines an expanse of topics; including the politics of India and Pakistan, censorship, the Labour Party, Palestinian identity, contemporary film and late-twentieth century race, religion and politics. Elsewhere he trains his eye on literature and fellow writers, from Julian Barnes on love to the politics of George Orwell's 'Inside the Whale', providing fresh insight on Kipling, V.S. Naipaul, Graham Greene, John le Carre, Raymond Carver, Philip Roth and Thomas Pynchon among others. Profound, passionate and insightful, Imaginary Homelands is a masterful collection from one of the greatest writers working today.


Using a standardized term bank in both authoring and translation processes can facilitate the use of consistent terminology, which in turn minimizes confusion and frustration from the readers. One of the problems of creating a standardized term bank, is the time and effort required. Recent developments in term extraction techniques based on word alignment can improve extraction of term candidates when parallel texts are available. The aligned units are processed automatically, but a large quantity of term candidates will still have to be processed by a terminologist to select which candidates should be promoted to standardized terms. To minimize the work needed to process the extracted term candidates, we propose a method based on using efficient editing tools, as well as ranking the extracted set of term candidates by quality. This sorted set of term candidates can then be edited, categorized and filtered in a more effective way. In this paper, the process and methods used to arrive at a standardized term bank are presented and discussed.


Link detection and analysis has long been important in the social sciences and in the government intelligence community. A significant effort is focused on the structural and functional analysis of "known" networks. Similarly, the detection of individual links is important but is usually done with techniques that result in "known" links. More recently the internet and other sources have led to a flood of circumstantial data that provide probabilistic evidence of links. Co-occurrence in news articles and simultaneous travel to the same location are two examples.We propose a probabilistic model of link generation based on membership in groups. The model considers both observed link evidence and demographic information about the entities. The parameters of the model are learned via a maximum likelihood search. In this paper we describe the model and then show several heuristics that make the search tractable. We test our model and optimization methods on synthetic data sets with a known ground truth and a database of news articles.


Myeloid neoplasms with ring sideroblasts are currently categorized within the myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) or myelodysplastic/myeloproliferative neoplasms (MDS/MPN) in the World Health Organization classification. Recent findings have identified that the presence of ring sideroblasts in these disorders has a unique molecular basis, i.e., the somatic mutation of SF3B1, a gene encoding a splicing factor. Mutations of SF3B1 occur in up to 90% of patients with refractory anaemia with unilineage dysplasia (RARS) and 70% of those with refractory cytopenia with multilineage dysplasia and ring sideroblasts or RARS associated with marked thrombocytosis. Experimental evidence has shown that mutant SF3B1 results in the abnormal splicing of several genes, primarily due to misrecognition of 3′ splice sites. The resulting aberrant mRNAs undergo nonsense‐mediated mRNA decay (NMD), resulting in haploinsufficiency of canonical transcripts and protein expression. In addition, it is also possible that NMD‐insensitive aberrant transcripts are translated into proteins with altered function. Patients with MDS carrying the SF3B1 mutation show a homogeneous disease phenotype characterized by isolated erythroid dysplasia and mild dysplasia in granulocytic or megakaryocytic lineages, supporting the notion that the SF3B1 mutation identifies a distinct entity within MDS. The available evidence suggests that these findings may have relevant impact on the diagnosis, classification and management of patients with these neoplasms.