Prologue. 1 Introduction. 1.1 Purpose of this Book. 1.2 Advocated Approach. 1.3 The Problem of System Modeling in Physiology. 1.4 Types of Nonlinear Models of Physiological Systems. 2 Nonparametric Modeling. 2.1 Volterra Models. 2.2 Wiener Models. 2.3 Efficient Volterra Kernel Estimation. 2.4 Analysis of Estimation Errors. 3 Parametric Modeling. 3.1 Basic Parametric Model Forms and Estimation Procedures. 3.2 Volterra Kernels of Nonlinear Differential Equations. 3.3 Discrete-Time Volterra Kernels of NARMAX Models. 3.4 From Volterra Kernel Measurements to Parametric Models. 3.5 Equivalence Between Continuous and Discrete Parametric Models. 4 Modular and Connectionist Modeling. 4.1 Modular Form of Nonparametric Models. 4.2 Connectionist Models. 4.3 The Laguerre-Volterra Network. 4.4 The VWM Model. 5 A Practitioner's Guide. 5.1 Practical Considerations and Experimental Requirements. 5.2 Preliminary Tests and Data Preparation. 5.3 Model Specification and Estimation. 5.4 Model Validation and Interpretation. 5.5 Outline of Step-by-Step Procedure. 6 Selected Applications. 6.1 Neurosensory Systems. 6.2 Cardiovascular System. 6.3 Renal System. 6.4 Metabolic-Endocrine System. 7 Modeling of Multiinput/Multioutput Systems. 7.1 The Two-Input Case. 7.2 Applications of Two-Input Modeling to Physiological Systems. 7.3 The Multiinput Case. 7.4 Spatiotemporal and Spectrotemporal Modeling. 8 Modeling of Neuronal Systems. 8.1 A General Model of Membrane and Synaptic Dynamics. 8.2 Functional Integration in the Single Neuron. 8.3 Neuronal Systems with Point-Process Inputs. 8.4 Modeling of Neuronal Ensembles. 9 Modeling of Nonstationary Systems. 9.1 Quasistationary and Recursive Tracking Methods. 9.2 Kernel Expansion Method. 9.3 Network-Based Methods. 9.4 Applications to Nonstationary Physiological Systems. 10 Modeling of Closed-Loop Systems. 10.1 Autoregressive Form of Closed-Loop Model. 10.2 Network Model Form of Closed-Loop Systems. Appendix I: Function Expansions. Appendix II: Gaussian White Noise. Appendix III: Construction of the Wiener Series. Appendix IV: Stationarity, Ergodicity, and Autocorrelation Functions of Random Processes. References. Index.


When three-year-old English girl Madeleine McCann went missing from a Portuguese resort in May 2007 while her parents were having dinner with friends at a nearby restaurant the world's news services carried rolling news bulletins about the 'story' of every parent's worst nightmare. This chapter looks at how the news about a child missing in sudden unexplained circumstances swiftly transformed from a high profile news report about the disappearance of a young child in a foreign country into a vitriolic media blaming discourse which placed the mother, Kate McCann, squarely in a Medea frame as a 'bad' mother. I will review the British press's coverage of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann over a twelve-month period to draw disturbing parallels with the 1980s case of the disappearance of baby Azaria Chamberlain in the Australian outback. Almost thirty years ago the creation of a blaming news discourse saw Lindy Chamberlain become the central figure in one of the worst miscarriages of justice in the 20th century. In 2007 that pattern was repeated with the creation of another highly prejudicial maternal news discourse that placed Kate McCann in the Medea frame when her daughter Madeleine went missing. This chapter will argue that the Medea frame continues today to reflect society's concerns about mothers who step outside what is considered acceptable maternal behaviour.


Fought as fiercely by the politicians and the public as by troops in south-east Asia, the Vietnam War - its origins, its conduct, its consequences - is still being contested. In what will become the classic account, based on newly opened archival sources, David Kaiser rewrites what we know about this conflict. reviving and expanding a venerable tradition of political, diplomatic, and military history, he shows not only why we entered the war, but also why our efforts were doomed to fall. This is the first book to draw on complete official documentation to tell the full story of how we became involved in Vietnam - and the story it tells decisively challenges widely held assumptions about the roles of Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. Using an enormous range of source materials from these administrations, Kaiser shows how the policies that led to the war were developed during Eisenhower's tenure and nearly implemented in the closing days of his administration in response to a crisis in Laos; how Kennedy immediately reversed course on Laos and refused for three years to follow recommendations for military action in south-east Asia; and how Eisenhower's policies re-emerged in the military intervention mounted by the Johnson administration. As he places these findings in the context of the Cold War and broader American objectives, Kaiser offers the best analysis to date of the actual beginnings of the war in Vietnam, the impact of the American advisory mission from 1962 through 1965, and the initial strategy of General Westmorland. A deft re-creation of the deliberations, actions and deceptions that brought two decades of post-World War II confidence to an ignominious end, this book offers unparalleled insight into the Vietnam War at home and abroad - and into American foreign policy in the 1960s.


The impacts of a dam on the river downstream in terms of hydrology and morphology are determined by a complex mix of variables that includes the patterns of release of water through the dam and the characteristics of the downstream channel. Scour of the downstream channel is a common response because large dams cause a significant interruption to sediment continuity. Here we show that in the case of China9s Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River the outcome is complicated, as is commonly the case in large rivers. The downstream channel and floodplain system compose an area of long-term sediment accumulation and unstable channels with seasonally contrasting erosion and deposition patterns related to the migrating seasonal monsoon rainfall zones. In achieving one of the main purposes of this dam, that of flood control in the middle and lower basins, the pattern of flows released from the dam will closely resemble those seasonal flows that are responsible for channel instability in the middle catchment, thus effectively making erosive conditions the most common during a year. There is obviously concern about the ultimate impact of sediment storage in the dam on the dynamics of the delta and adjacent coast, and we show that this depends on the trajectory and duration of the erosive responses in the middle Yangtze basin. In this particular case, the outcome is of great significance to the well being of the densely populated riparian areas of the river.


In this eloquent book, Daniel Barenboim draws on his profound and uniquely influential engagement with music to argue for its central importance in our everyday lives. While we may sometimes think of personal, social and political issues as existing independently of each other, Barenboim shows how music teaches that this is impossible. Turning to his intense involvement with Palestine, he examines the transformative power of music in the world, from his own performances of Wagner in Israel and his foundation, with Edward Said, of the internationally acclaimed West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. Music Quickens Time reveals how the sheer power and eloquence of music offers us a way to explore and shed light on the way in which we live, and to illuminate and resolve some of the most intractable issues of our time.


The Presence Information Data Format (PIDF) defines a basic format for
representing presence information for a presentity. This format
defines a textual note, an indication of availability (open or closed)
and a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) for communication. The Rich
Presence Information Data format (RPID) described here is an extension
that adds optional elements to the Presence Information Data Format
(PIDF). These extensions provide additional information about the
presentity and its contacts. The information is designed so that much
of it can be derived automatically, e.g., from calendar files or user
activity. This extension includes information about what the person
is doing, a grouping identifier for a tuple, when a service or device
was last used, the type of place a person is in, what media
communications might remain private, the relationship of a service
tuple to another presentity, the person's mood, the time zone it is
located in, the type of service it offers, an icon reflecting the
presentity's status, and the overall role of the presentity. These
extensions include presence information for persons, services
(tuples), and devices. [STANDARDS-TRACK]


1. Using the Falck-Hillarp histochemical technique for monoamines, evidence was found for the presence of a catecholamine in the salivary gland nerves of the moth, Manduca sexta. 2. The innervation was studied with the electron microscope. Only the fluid-secreting region of the gland is innervated and the nerve endings are characteristic of monoamine-containing terminals. 3. Using a sensitive enzymatic-isotopic assay for catecholamines, it was found that whole salivary glands contain 0.33 mug/g dopamine but no noradrenaline. 4. It seems likely that dopamine mediates fluid-secretion in the salivary gland of Manduca as it does a number of other arthropods.


ABSTRACT This article explores perceptions on the suitability and effectiveness of Lifetime Homes standards (LTHS) for those with visual impairment in Northern Ireland. LTHS are a series of mandatory United Kingdom public-sector housing design interventions, providing a model for ensuring accessible and adaptable homes throughout an occupant's life span. An aging demographic with increasing incidence of diabetes has led to rising numbers of elderly, visually impaired people wanting to remain in their homes for longer. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 key stakeholders and thematically analyzed. Although findings show that employing LTHS offers benefits to visually impaired residents, shortcomings were also identified. Evidence indicates a need for policy makers, health-care professionals, and housing associations to modify practices to better meet the housing needs of visually impaired people. Findings may also be applicable to those with other impairments and disabilities in relation to housing for elderly residents.


Loss and degradation of freshwater habitat reduces the ability of wild salmon populations to endure other anthropogenic stressors such as climate change, harvest, and interactions with artificially propagated fishes. Preservation of pristine salmon rivers has thus been advocated as a cost-effective way of sustaining wild Pacific salmon populations. We examine the value of freshwater habitat protection in conserving salmon and fostering resilience in the Kitlope watershed in northern coastal British Columbia —a large (3186 km2) and undeveloped temperate rainforest ecosystem with legislated protected status. In comparison with other pristine Pacific Rim salmon rivers we studied, the Kitlope is characterized by abundant and complex habitats for salmon that should contribute to high resilience. However, biological productivity in this system is constrained by naturally cold, light limited, ultra-oligotrophic growing conditions; and the mean (± SD) density of river-rearing salmonids is currently low (0.32 ± 0.27 fish per square meter; n = 36) compared to our other four study rivers (grand mean = 2.55 ± 2.98 fish per square meter; n = 224). Existing data and traditional ecological knowledge suggest that current returns of adult salmon to the Kitlope, particularly sockeye, are declining or depressed relative to historic levels. This poor stock status—presumably owing to unfavorable conditions in the marine environment and ongoing harvest in coastal mixed-stock fisheries—reduces the salmon-mediated transfer of marine-derived nutrients and energy to the system's nutrient-poor aquatic and terrestrial food webs. In fact, Kitlope Lake sediments and riparian tree leaves had marine nitrogen signatures (δ15N) among the lowest recorded in a salmon ecosystem. The protection of the Kitlope watershed is undoubtedly a conservation success story. However, "salmon strongholds" of pristine watersheds may not adequately sustain salmon populations and foster social and ecological resilience without more holistic and risk-averse management that accounts for uncertainty and interactions between ecosystem fertility, harvest, climate dynamics, and food web dynamics in the marine and freshwater environments encompassed by the life cycle of the fish.


Marine protected areas (MPAs) have been widely used as an effective conservation tool against anthropogenic threats. In 2003, the government of Palau established the Protected Areas Network (PAN) to effectively protect and sustain marine resources. In addition, as part of the Micronesia Challenge, Palau committed to effectively protected 30% of its marine habitat by 2020. Despite these great advances in protective management, since 2006, very few data have been collected on the baseline condition of MPAs. The main objectives of this study are (1) to show the baseline ecological conditions of coral-reef and seagrass MPAs in Palau, (2) to investigate the drivers of ecological conditions and (3) to recommend adapted management actions to improve the existing marine protective management. Our results demonstrated that 14% of coral reef and seagrass ecosystems areas were protected; 11.2% of which were under PAN legislation. The marine habitats the most protected were channel and outer reef (> 25 %) and the least protected were reef flat and lagoon (<10%). Fringing and barrier reef MPAs had relatively good ecological conditions that were mainly driven by the length of protection, the size of the MPAs and the remoteness of the MPAs. Inner reef MPAs displayed good ecological condition as opposite to nearshore seagrass beds MPAs, where more than half had a score lower than 50%. For both inner reef and nearshore MPAs, ecological conditions were driven by pollution caused by poor-land use. To increase the effectiveness of the marine PAN, we recommend that better land use practices that would minimize land erosion and sedimentation nearby MPAs should be implemented as soon as possible with a focus on location with the lowest scores. If new MPAs were to be implemented, they should be in the lagoon and reef flat habitats, as far as possible from the land and river discharges. PICRC Technical Report 16-06


With the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the relevance of the notion of sustainable development – that bridges environmental, economic and social dimensions - has risen to the status of programme for the international community. In this framework, a "fourth", legal leg of sustainable development has been envisioned as a necessary complement to realise the 2030 Agenda, through the role of inclusive and effective institutions.
The role of tribunals and of access to justice assumes a significance insofar as it guarantees the respect of the rule of law that has been highlighted as the fundamental aspect for achieving sustainable development. In this regard, experiences of national implementation of the principle of sustainable development in the field of human rights are crucial for understanding current developments and for studying legal systems that are mutually influencing and reinforcing each other.
Concerning the guarantee of environmental rights, three main strategies can be outlined: the maintenance of general jurisdictions; the establishment of "green benches" as sections of ordinary tribunals dealing with environmental cases; the creation of specialised tribunals, with experts in scientific subjects and judges specifically trained in this field.
In light of its experience of "low-yielding" judicial institutions, characterised by delays, backlogs and insufficient capacities of case management, India undoubtedly constitutes one of the leading cases for assessing the validity of institutional measures aimed at the application of the concept of sustainable development in the legal field. In this regard, the Parliament of India chose to pursue the third path and enacted the National Green Tribunal Act in 2010. The experience of India is thus analysed considering, on the one hand, the constitutional framework embodied in the protection of environmental rights within the right to life enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution, with Articles 48A and 51A(g) and, on the other hand, the interpretation of the courts regarding international law principles (sustainable development, polluter pays and precautionary principle), that are statutorily applied by the National Green Tribunal. The thesis thus analyses the advantages brought forward by the newly established tribunal - expanded access to tribunals, through new rules and a more flexible procedure; enhanced expertise due to the change in the composition of courts; consistency in decisions, thanks to the specialisation - as well as possible drawbacks caused by the resort to creeping jurisdiction and by the monopolisation of the interpretation of sustainable development by a single environmental court.


Background Body size is an important patient covariate in scaling drug doses. While total body weight has been the most commonly used size descriptor, fat free mass (FFM) has been advocated as an alternative size descrip-tor to scale drug doses in adults and children. FFM de-scribes the non-fat component of the body thus having a better correlation with the metabolic rate and drug clear-ance (CL). The aim of this work was to evaluate FFM as a covariate in a PK model of unfractionated heparin (UFH) developed in a paediatric population. Methods Data from 64 infants and children who re-ceived 75–100 IU/kg of UFH during cardiac angiography were analysed. Four plasma samples were collected at baseline and at 15, 30, 45, and 120 min post-dose. UFH concentration (231 measurements) was quantified using a protamine titration assay. UFH effect (164 mea-surements) was quantified using activated partial throm-boplastin time (aPTT). A PKPD model was fitted to the data using the non-linear mixed effects modelling (in NONMEM v7.2). Various patient covariates such as age, weight (Wt), body surface area, and FFM were tested. The final model was evaluated using the likelihood ratio test and visual predictive checks (VPCs). Results A one-compartment model with linear elimina-tion provided the best fit for the dose-concentration data. Wt and FFM had substantial influence on model fit; FFM was preferred statistically. A linear model provided the best fit for the concentration-effect data using the PPP and D sequential estimation method. Censored PD data (above the upper limit of quantification) were accounted for us-ing likelihood estimation. The PKPD model performed well using visual predictive checks. Conclusion A PKPD model to describe the time-course of UFH effect was developed in a paediatric population which received a high single bolus dose. FFM was shown to describe drug disposition well and can potentially be used in dose calculation after appropriate evaluation.


For a finite set $X$ of points in the plane, a set $S$ in the plane, and a positive integer $k$, we say that a $k$-element subset $Y$ of $X$ is captured by $S$ if there is a homothetic copy $S'$ of $S$ such that $X\cap S' = Y$, i.e., $S'$ contains exactly $k$ elements from $X$. A $k$-uniform $S$-capturing hypergraph $H = H(X,S,k)$ has a vertex set $X$ and a hyperedge set consisting of all $k$-element subsets of $X$ captured by $S$. In case when $k=2$ and $S$ is convex these graphs are planar graphs, known as convex distance function Delaunay graphs.
In this paper we prove that for any $k\geq 2$, any $X$, and any convex compact set $S$, the number of hyperedges in $H(X,S,k)$ is at most $(2k-1)|X| - k^2 + 1 - \sum_{i=1}^{k-1}a_i$, where $a_i$ is the number of $i$-element subsets of $X$ that can be separated from the rest of $X$ with a straight line. In particular, this bound is independent of $S$ and indeed the bound is tight for all "round" sets $S$ and point sets $X$ in general position with respect to $S$.
This refines a general result of Buzaglo, Pinchasi and Rote stating that every pseudodisc topological hypergraph with vertex set $X$ has $O(k^2|X|)$ hyperedges of size $k$ or less.


Transversal lines to lines and intervals, Jorge L. Arocha, Javier Bracho, and Luis Montejano on a shortest path problem of G. Fejes, Toth Donald R. Baggett and Andras Bezdek a short survey of (r,q)-structures, Vojtech Balint lattice points on the boundary of the integer hull, Imre Barany and Karoly Boroczky, Jr the Erdos-Szekeres problem for planar points in arbitrary position, Tibor Bisztriczky and Gabor Fejes Toth, separation in totally-sewn 4-polytopes, Tibor Bisztriczky and Deborah Oliveros, on a class of equifacetted polytopes, Gerd Blind and Roswitha Blind chessboard Ramsey numbers, Jens-P. Bode, Heiko Harborth, and Stefan Krause maximal primitive fixing systems for convex figures, Vladimir Boltyanski and Hernan Gonzalez-Aguilar the Newton-Gregory problem revisited, Karoly Boroczky, arrangements of 13 points on a sphere Karoly Boroczky and Laszlo Szabo on point sets without k collinear points, Peter Brass the Beckman-Quarles theorem for rational d-spaces, d even and d> 6, Robert Connelly and Joseph Zaks edge-antipodal convex polytopes - a proof of Talata's conjecture, Balazs Csikos single-split tilings of the sphere with right triangles, Robert J. MacG. Dawson vertex-unfoldings of simplicial manifolds, Erik D. Demaine, David Eppstein, Jeff Erickson, George W. Hart, and Joseph O'Rourke view-obstruction through trajectories of co-dimension three Vishwa C. Dumir and Rajinder J. Hans-Gill fat 4-polytopes and fatter 3-spheres, David Eppstein, Greg Kuperberg, and Gunter M. Ziegler arbitrarily large neighbourly families of congruent symmetric convex 3-polytopes, Jeff Erickson and Scott Kim on the non-solidity of some packings and coverings with circles, August Florian and Aladar Heppes on the mth Petty numbers of normed spaces Karoly Bezdek, Marton Naszodi and Balazs Visy cubic polyhedra, Chaim Goodman-Strauss and John M. Sullivan new uniform polyhedra, Branko Grunbaum on the existence of a convex polygon with a specified number of interior points, Kiyoshi Hosono, Gyula Karolyi and Masatsugu Urabe on-line 2-adic covering of the unit square by boxes, Janusz Januszewski and Marek Lassak an example of a stable, even order quadrangle which is determined by its angle function, Janos Kincses sets with a unique extension to a set of constant width, Marton Naszodi and Balazs Visy the number of simplices embracing the origin, Janos Pach and Mario Szegedy Helly-type theorems on definite supporting lines for k-disjoint families of convex bodies in the plane, Sorin Revenko and Valeriu Soltan combinatorial aperiodicity of polyhedral prototiles, Egon Schulte sequences of smoothed polygons, G.C. Shephard on a packing inequality, Graham, Witsenhausen and Zassenhaus, Jorg M. Wills covering a triangle with homothetic copies, Zoltan Furedi open problems, Andras Bezdek.


On a map or from the air, nothing defines New York City more clearly than the rectilinearity of Central Park at the heart of the curvilinear island of Manhattan. And nothing encodes the paradox of the thinking that created Frederick Law Olmsted's first great park – and simultaneously distinguishes it from many of the parks inspired by Central Park – than the virtually perfect geometry of its outline. The Park simultaneously confirms the grid structure of the streets of Manhattan and dramatically interrupts this structure: streets that run vertically uptown and downtown or horizontally across town must, when they reach the horizontal and vertical boundaries of the park, leave their verticality and horizontality behind to traverse the Park before rejoining the grid of streets and avenues at the far boundaries of the Park's expanse. If the Cartesian clarity of midtown Manhattan has come to represent the efficiency of American capitalism that was making the United States a major industrial power during the years when the Greensward Plan was designed and Central Park constructed, the Park represented (and continues to represent) a counter-sensibility: as Olmstead and Vaux predicted.


We recorded vertical profiles of size distributions of large particles (<100 µm) to a 1000‐m depth in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans and in the Mediterranean Sea with the Underwater Video Profiler. Of the 410 profiles used in our analysis, 193 also included temperature, salinity, and high‐performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)‐resolved pigments, which were used to characterize the size structure of the phytoplankton community. Classification analysis identified six clusters of vertical profiles of size distributions of particles. Each cluster was characterized by the size distribution of its particles in the mesopelagic layer and the change of the particle‐size distribution with depth. Clusters with large particles in the mesopelagic layer corresponded to surface waters dominated by microphytoplankton, and those with small particles corresponded to surface waters dominated by picophytoplankton. We estimated the mass flux at 400 m using a relationship between particle size and mass flux. Principal‐component regression analysis showed that 68% of the variance of the mass flux at 400 m was explained by the size structure of the phytoplankton community and integrated chlorophyll a in the euphotic zone. We found that coefficient k in the Martin power relationship, which describes the decrease in the vertical mass flux with depth, varies between 0.2 and 1.0 in the world ocean, and we provided an empirical relationship to derive k from the size structure of phytoplankton biomass in the euphotic zone. Biogeochemists and modelers could use that relationship to obtain a realistic description of the downward particle flux instead of using a constant k value as often done.


Our world is edging closer to the realisation of pervasive systems and their integration in our everyday life. While pervasive systems are capable of offering many benefits for everyone, the amount and quality of personal information that becomes available raise concerns about maintaining user privacy and create a real need to reform existing privacy practices and provide appropriate safeguards for the user of pervasive environments. This thesis presents the PERSOnalised Negotiation, Identity Selection and Management (PersoNISM) system; a comprehensive approach to privacy protection in pervasive environments using context aware dynamic personalisation and behaviour learning. The aim of the PersoNISM system is twofold: to provide the user with a comprehensive set of privacy protecting tools and to help them make the best use of these tools according to their privacy needs. The PersoNISM system allows users to: a) configure the terms and conditions of data disclosure through the process of privacy policy negotiation, which addresses the current "take it or leave it" approach; b) use multiple identities to interact with pervasive services to avoid the accumulation of vast amounts of personal information in a single user profile; and c) selectively disclose information based on the type of information, who requests it, under what context, for what purpose and how the information will be treated. The PersoNISM system learns user privacy preferences by monitoring the behaviour of the user and uses them to personalise and/or automate the decision making processes in order to unburden the user from manually controlling these complex mechanisms. The PersoNISM system has been designed, implemented, demonstrated and evaluated during three EU funded projects.


Critical infrastructure can be defined as privately and publicly run organisations such as energy systems, water systems, transportation, telecommunications, emergency services, banking and finance. The critical infrastructure (CI) on which society relies is now dependent on the interconnected communication networks the information age has spawned. With the evolution of the information age, not only has the communications landscape changed dramatically, the security landscape has changed too. With information technology being so ubiquitous, it has created new underlying concerns about the systems now reliant on them. The reliance and complexity of these interconnected systems has increased vulnerabilities confronting critical infrastructure. This means old risk based assessment models cannot fully satisfy the needs of the contemporary world. This research intends to understand the impact to Western Australia's critical infrastructure in the event of an information system failure in a company that is part of Western Australia's critical infrastructure supply chain. The results of this research were a failure in the information system in the company investigated (The Coventry Group) would not have a catastrophic effect on Western Australia's CI supply. This conclusion is due to the redundancy the Coventry Group has built in their standard operating procedures through the use of manual procedures, which aims to minimize the disruption an information system failure causes to their customer service levels.


Hierarchical SGD (H-SGD) has emerged as a new distributed SGD algorithm for multi-level communication networks. In H-SGD, before each global aggregation, workers send their updated local models to local servers for aggregations. Despite recent research efforts, the effect of local aggregation on global convergence still lacks theoretical understanding. In this work, we first introduce a new notion of "upward" and "downward" divergences. We then use it to conduct a novel analysis to obtain a worst-case convergence upper bound for two-level H-SGD with non-IID data, non-convex objective function, and stochastic gradient. By extending this result to the case with random grouping, we observe that this convergence upper bound of H-SGD is between the upper bounds of two single-level local SGD settings, with the number of local iterations equal to the local and global update periods in H-SGD, respectively. We refer to this as the "sandwich behavior". Furthermore, we extend our analytical approach based on "upward" and "downward" divergences to study the convergence for the general case of H-SGD with more than two levels, where the "sandwich behavior" still holds. Our theoretical results provide key insights of why local aggregation can be beneficial in improving the convergence of H-SGD.


Thanks to the high availability of data, professional sport represents a unique laboratory in order to test labour market theories and predictions. In particular, one of the most important propositions concerns the role that human capital plays in shaping the life-cycle earnings patterns of workers. To the extent that sport can be considered as a type of human capital investment, human capital theory can help to understand, and empirically assess, how the professional sports labour market rewards performance attributes of players. On this purpose, this piece of work reviews the most important economic contributions focused on the wage determination of professional athletes with the aim of outlining both the emerging common features and the main issues. In so doing, a distinction between professional team-sports and professional single-player sports is done, where the former is represented by the most popular sports in North America and Europe, such as baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer, whereas the latter is primarily represented by professional golf in the US.


This paper provides an analysis of what trade unions can offer to reduce the vulnerability of migrant workers to forced labour and human trafficking in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) and Malaysia as a key destination for GMS migrant workers. The exploration of the potential for the engagement of trade union partners is a timely contribution to the forced labour and anti-trafficking debate, given the shift towards a more holistic labour rights approach, and the ensuing search for more actors and partnerships to combat these crimes, which led to adoption of the Protocol of 2014 to the Forced Labour Convention, 1930, (Forced Labour Protocol) in June 2014. Examples from Malaysia and Thailand highlight the role that trade unions can play in policy development and service provision, and also some of the challenges associated with unionisation of a vulnerable, temporary, and often repressed, migrant workforce.


Precision agriculture provides important routes toward a more sustainable agriculture. Many farmers have the necessary technology to operate site-specifically, but they do not use it in practice, and available IT systems are not used to their full potential. This paper discusses how to reduce the so-called 'implementation problem' in order to improve the ongoing development process of a webbased fertilization project in Sweden. The intention of the project is to apply a participatory design approach, and some pitfalls on starting to use this approach in the development and implementation process are identified as well as some suggestions on how to reduce them.


The fiery mid-air collision of two U.S. Air Force planes in January 1966 caused a payload of hydrogen bombs to fall on the countryside near the village of Palomares in the southern Spanish region of Andaluca. Although no nuclear explosions resulted, the incident scattered small amounts of radioactive material. A more serious problem, however, was the loss of one of the hydrogen bombs in the nearby waters of the Mediterranean Sea. During the prolonged period in which U.S.military teams worked to recover the missing bomb, government of ficials hastily cobbled together an information policy to deal with members of the press. Their efforts were almost not enough to quell rising concerns in Spain and in other European countries. The Palomares incident is an excellent historical illustration of the need for a versatile information policy that can be organized and set into action almost immediately after a sensitive military incident.


Generalized joint signal representations (JSRs) extend the scope of joint time-frequency representations (TFRs) to a richer class of nonstationary signals, but their use, just as in the case of TFRs, has been primarily limited to qualitative, exploratory data analysis. To exploit their potential more fully, JSR-based statistical signal processing techniques need to be developed that can be successfully applied in real-world problems. We present an optimal detection framework based on arbitrary generalized quadratic JSRs, thereby making it applicable in a wide variety of detection scenarios involving nonstationary stochastic signals, noise and interference. For any given class of generalized JSRs, we characterize the corresponding class of detection scenarios for which such JSRs constitute canonical detectors, and derive the corresponding JSR-based detectors. Our formulation also yields a very useful subspace-based interpretation in terms of corresponding linear JSRs that we exploit to design optimal detectors based on only partial signal information.


Over the last several decades, Canadian law societies have significantly expanded their regulatory reach in relation to the post-entry competence of lawyers. In this article, a novel framework is proposed to trace the path to this current state of affairs: specifically, four different "waves" or models are identified. A Collegial Model of regulation is identified as existing for most of the twentieth century before being replaced with a Policing Model of regulation in the 1970s. It is submitted that contemporary regulation of post-entry lawyer competence is characterized by the emergence of a Coaching Model that supplements a continuing Policing Model. Most recently, Canadian law societies have proposed new forms of entity regulation that represent, it is argued here, an emerging Hybrid Model that encompasses the Policing Model and Coaching Model in a new relationship.In addition to providing this novel descriptive framework, this article also has normative ambitions and offers an evaluation of existing and future proposals to regulate post-entry competence. Regulatory theory and governance scholarship are both drawn upon to conduct this analysis. It is argued that the current approach represents a positive material regulatory shift towards focusing on the public interest as opposed to lawyer interests, which had dominated historically. At the same time, issues of transparency, expertise and costs remain of concern. The Hybrid Model approach embodied in new entity-based regulatory initiatives now under consideration is identified as one way to address these concerns. However, both the process used to implement such a model and the model's ultimate content will be key determinants of its success in any given jurisdiction.


Cuprate Analysis Despite more than 20 years of intensive effort, the mechanism providing superconductivity in the cuprates remains elusive and contentious, partly because the cuprates are inhomogeneous. Scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) and high-resolution, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy provide energy and momentum information about the excitations in the high-temperature cuprate superconductors. Pushp et al. (p. 1689, published online 4 June) provide a STS study of the cuprate Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ over a range of doping levels and temperatures. This methodology for analyzing the spectra takes into account the inhomogeneity and may provide insight into how a superconducting pairing mechanism evolves from the parent insulating state. Scanning tunneling spectroscopy reveals strong electronic correlations in the insulating state of a cuprate superconductor. Understanding the mechanism by which d wave superconductivity in the cuprates emerges and is optimized by doping the Mott insulator is one of the major outstanding problems in condensed-matter physics. Our high-resolution scanning tunneling microscopy measurements of the high–transition temperature (Tc) superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ show that samples with different Tc values in the low doping regime follow a remarkably universal d wave low-energy excitation spectrum, indicating a doping-independent nodal gap. We demonstrate that Tc instead correlates with the fraction of the Fermi surface over which the samples exhibit the universal spectrum. Optimal Tc is achieved when all parts of the Fermi surface follow this universal behavior. Increasing the temperature above Tc turns the universal spectrum into an arc of gapless excitations, whereas overdoping breaks down the universal nodal behavior.


Coastal dolphin populations are highly vulnerable due to their proximity to major urban centres and exposure to cumulative threats from anthropogenic activities. As bioindicators of environmental condition, it is crucial to understand and monitor the health of these coastal dolphin populations. Visual assessments of skin lesions on dolphins can provide useful insights into the health of these populations and exposure to environmental stressors. We examined the prevalence of skin lesions in Australian humpback dolphins (Sousa sahulensis) and Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) of different age classes inhabiting the near-urban embayment of Moreton Bay, Queensland. The prevalence and extent of nontraumatic and traumatic skin lesions on individual dolphins were assessed using photographs taken during 103 boat-based surveys completed between 2014 and 2016. A total of 15 primary skin lesion categories were identified from 126 humpback and 100 bottlenose dolphins. Differences in the prevalence of skin lesions were evident between age classes and species. Nontraumatic skin lesions were prevalent in 48.4% of the humpback and 61.0% of the bottlenose dolphins. Comparatively, traumatic lesions were evident in almost all humpback (92.3%) and bottlenose (99.0%) dolphins. Anthropogenic-related injuries from entanglement in fishing gear and vessel strikes were substantial and significantly differed between species (p < 0.05). Injuries from fishing and vessel activities affected 11.0% of humpback dolphins and 30.0% of bottlenose dolphins, suggesting that these activities pose a major threat to these populations. Findings from this study provide an important baseline to inform ongoing health monitoring and conservation efforts of these vulnerable dolphin populations inhabiting a near-urban embayment.


BACKGROUND
MA.17 evaluated letrozole or placebo after 5 years of tamoxifen and showed significant improvement in disease-free survival (DFS) for letrozole [hazard ratio (HR) 0.57, P = 0.00008]. The trial was unblinded and placebo patients were offered letrozole.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
An intent-to-treat analysis of all outcomes, before and after unblinding, on the basis of the original randomization was carried out.

RESULTS
In all, 5187 patients were randomly allocated to the study at baseline and, at unblinding, 1579 (66%) of 2383 placebo patients accepted letrozole. At median follow-up of 64 months (range 16-95), 399 recurrences or contralateral breast cancers (CLBCs) (164 letrozole and 235 placebo) occurred. Four-year DFS was 94.3% (letrozole) and 91.4% (placebo) [HR 0.68, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.55-0.83, P = 0.0001] and showed superiority for letrozole in both node-positive and -negative patients. Corresponding 4-year distant DFS was 96.3% and 94.9% (HR 0.80, 95% CI 0.62-1.03, P = 0.082). Four-year overall survival was 95.1% for both groups. The annual rate of CLBC was 0.28% for letrozole and 0.46% for placebo patients (HR 0.61, 95% CI 0.39-0.97, P = 0.033).

CONCLUSIONS
Patients originally randomly assigned to receive letrozole within 3 months of stopping tamoxifen did better than placebo patients in DFS and CLBC, despite 66% of placebo patients taking letrozole after unblinding.


We report the construction of a spectroscopic programmable array microscope capable of optical sectioning using Hadamard transform methods. Previously described Hadamard transform imaging consisted of first-order systems in which the mask was used for either illumination or detection. In this paper, a second-order Hadamard transform system is described in which a single one-dimensional mask serves for both illumination and detection. The system verifies earlier predictions that the optical spreading function along the transform axis can be inferred from the echoes arising in second-order systems using sequence lengths of 2 n -1. With a one-dimensional Hadamard mask, the system has an axial resolution of 1.3 μm and may be used with or without the subtraction of an appropriately scaled wide field image depending on the degree of sectioning required. The system was tested using thin films, fluorescent beads, and a fixed biological specimen.


ABSTRACT The food-borne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes can acquire enhanced resistance to lethal acid conditions through multiple mechanisms. We investigated contributions of the stress-responsive alternative sigma factor, σB, which is encoded by sigB, to growth phase-dependent acid resistance (AR) and to the adaptive acid tolerance response in L. monocytogenes. At various points throughout growth, we compared the relative survival of L. monocytogenes wild-type and ΔsigB strains that had been exposed to either brain heart infusion (pH 2.5) or synthetic gastric fluid (pH 2.5) with and without prior acid adaptation. Under these conditions, survival of the ΔsigB strain was consistently lower than that of the wild-type strain throughout all phases of growth, ranging from 4 orders of magnitude less in mid-log phase to 2 orders of magnitude less in stationary phase. Survival of both ΔsigB and wild-type L. monocytogenes strains increased by 6 orders of magnitude upon entry into stationary phase, demonstrating that the L. monocytogenes growth phase-dependent AR mechanism is σB independent. σB-mediated contributions to acquired acid tolerance appear to be greatest in early logarithmic growth. Loss of a functional σB reduced the survival of L. monocytogenes at pH 2.5 to a greater extent in the presence of organic acid (100 mM acetic acid) than in the presence of inorganic acid alone (HCl), suggesting that L. monocytogenes protection against organic and inorganic acid may be mediated through different mechanisms. σB does not appear to contribute to pHi homeostasis through regulation of net proton movement across the cell membrane or by regulation of pHi buffering by the GAD system under the conditions examined in this study. In summary, a functional σB protein is necessary for full resistance of L. monocytogenes to lethal acid treatments.


A new tungsten boride has been prepared and has been assigned the formula WB2. The assignment is based on comparison of the x-ray diffraction data of this boride with those of diborides of the AlB2 type structure. Values of a0 = 3.02 and c0 = 3.05 were calculated for a hexagonal unit cell.


It seems intuitively certain that in scientific articles, affirmative clauses far surpass negative clauses. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that there are few negative sentences in this type of written discourse. The aim of this article is to analyse negative polarity in biomedical English. By linking discourse analysis and corpus linguistics, it studies how negative polarity and the scope of negation in combination with discourse connectors can bring about systematic patterns in biomedical discourse. The analysis of the context, position in the clause and text distribution of some adjectives that appear in the negative in the data under analysis reveals how different rhetorical devices, such as hedging and polarity, contribute to the rhetorical weight of the multiword expressions selected in this study.


It is well known that Comparative Literature in Arabic can not look back at a long history; but still this fact should not be allowed to stand as a vindication of the paucity of writings that deal with the background and development of this young field of literary scholarship. Apart from two or three attempts at introducing some aspects of the emergence of the discipline, there is almost nothing on the subject, especially before the 1980's.(1) That is in Arabic of course, but when itcomes~o/8.ccountson 1Arabic Comparative Literature in other languages nothing of any significance exists. If one takes as an example The Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, which regularly reports on the development of comparative studies throughout the world, one finds in the whole series (1952-1985) only two entries on Arabic Comparative Literature.(2) Under the first entry (1959) there is something of an account,(3) whereas under the second entry (1964) there is nothing more than a misleading broad title(4) that turns to be simply a review of a small comparative book written by the author of the first entry, Mohamed Ghonemi Hilal. In other European languages, and even in French and Russian, nothing exists, to the best of my knowledge. In view of all this, the present paper has no choice but to pay the historical background more attention than what its author has originally wished.


Background Interethnic differences in genetic polymorphism in genes encoding drug-metabolizing enzymes and transporters are one of the major factors that cause ethnic differences in drug response. This study aimed to investigate genetic polymorphisms in genes involved in drug metabolism, transport, and excretion among Korean, Japanese, and Chinese populations, the three major East Asian ethnic groups. Methods The frequencies of 1936 variants representing 225 genes encoding drug-metabolizing enzymes and transporters were determined from 786 healthy participants (448 Korean, 208 Japanese, and 130 Chinese) using the Affymetrix Drug-Metabolizing Enzymes and Transporters Plus microarray. To compare allele or genotype frequencies in the high-dimensional data among the three East Asian ethnic groups, multiple testing, principal component analysis (PCA), and regularized multinomial logit model through least absolute shrinkage and selection operator were used. Results On microarray analysis, 1071 of 1936 variants (>50% of markers) were found to be monomorphic. In a large number of genetic variants, the fixation index and Pearson's correlation coefficient of minor allele frequencies were less than 0.034 and greater than 0.95, respectively, among the three ethnic groups. PCA identified 47 genetic variants with multiple testing, but was unable to discriminate ethnic groups by the first three components. Multinomial least absolute shrinkage and selection operator analysis identified 269 genetic variants that showed different frequencies among the three ethnic groups. However, none of those variants distinguished between the three ethnic groups during subsequent PCA. Conclusion Korean, Japanese, and Chinese populations are not pharmacogenetically distant from one another, at least with regard to drug disposition, metabolism, and elimination.


The eastern coast of peninsular India routinely receives the onslaught of devastating cyclonic storms. We suggest a novel method involving Envisat retrievals followed by application of the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Earth Observation Link Stand-Alone (EOLI–SA) catalogue for the calculation of cloud cover (CC) of tropical storms. In particular, we focus on the northeast monsoon, which is less studied as compared with the more regularly investigated southwest monsoon. We found that the CC was of the order of 946,598 km2 on 23 November 2011. In contrast, we also calculated the CC of tropical cyclone Thane that occurred on 31 December 2011, which was found to be 1,222,224 km2 – an increase of 197.5%. To further increase CC calculation accuracy, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) retrievals were used simultaneously over both visible and shortwave infrared (SWIR) spectra. The precipitable water levels were analysed using Tool for High-resolution Observation Review (THOR) and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) retrievals. Envisat data were then used to track Thane's trajectory. These multiple-image analyses are coupled with large-eddy simulation runs – large velocities from sheared eddies were obtained at landfall. The runs were simultaneously performed over two locales on 29 December 2011 – first at Karaikal, where the impact of Thane was severe, and then at Chennai, where the cyclone's fury had become somewhat curtailed. This procedural analysis, coupled with model simulations, can be used effectively by Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) personnel and decision-makers of the municipal corporations of vulnerable cities along coastal Tamil Nadu.


The MCNPX code offers options based on physics packages; the Bertini, ISABEL, INCL4 intra-nuclear models, and Dresner, ABLA evaporation-fission models and CEM2k cascade-exciton model. The study analyzes the main quantities determining ADS performance, such as neutron yield, neutron leakage spectra, and neutron and proton spectrain the target andin the beam window calculated by the MCNPX-2.5.0 Monte Carlo transport code, which is a combination of LAHET and MCNP codes. The results obtained by simulating different models, cited above and implemented in MCNPX are compared with each other.The investigated system is composed of a natural lead cylindrical target and stainless steel (HT9) beam window. Target has been optimized to produce maximum number of neutrons with a radius of 20 cm and 70 cm of height. Target is bombarded with a high intensity linear accelerator by a 1 GeV, 1 mA proton beam. The protons are assumed uniformly distributed across the beam of radius 3 cm, and entering the target through a hole of 5.3 cm radius. The proton beam has an outer radius of 5.3 cm and an inner radius 5.0 cm. The maximum of the neutron flux in the target is observed on the axis ~ 10 cm below the beam window, where the maximum difference between 7 different models is ~ 15 %. The total neutron leakage out of the of the target calculated with the Bertini/ABLA is 1.83×1017 n/s, and is about 14 % higher than the value calculated by the INCL4/Dresner (1.60×1017 n/s). Bertini/ABLA calculates top, bottom and side neutron leakage fractions as 20 %, 2.3 %, 77.6 % of the total leakage, respectively, whereas, they become 18.6 %, 2.3 %, 79.4 % with INCL4/Dresner combination.


The thesis involves empirical analyses of the language
of a sample of popular, daily newspaper editorials, ie. those which consider the national steel strike of late 1979/early 1980. The method used (ie. a form of very detailed qualitative content analysis) requires that readers of the analyses have access to a full copy of all the editorials. This necessitated the production of appendices; they are bound in a separate volume.

The theory that newspaper editorials re-produce community
involves the specific hypothesis that attempts to re-produce
(ie. maintain/legitimate/defend) the existing allegiances
associated with the newspapers and their readers take quasi-
scientific forms. More specifically, it is argued that an emphasis on explicit argumentative processes draws attention
to the important possibility that a crucial social process- attempts to re-produce a communal stock of knowledge in the
face of threats posed by events and alternative interpretations-involves, amongst other things,analyses of an empirical instance (ie. -the steel strike) which provide further evidence for the validity of a preferred stock of knowledge and reasoned adjudications between competing stocks.

It is suggested that whatever the limitations of the
specific focus of the research (eg.the emphasis an explicit
knowledge, the suspension of questions of ideology and truth
value), it is worthwhile because it facilitates a development of our theoretical/empirical knowledge of some of the crucial social processes found in media language.

The concluding chapter distinguishes different forms of
the re-production of community, assesses the senses in which
the re-productive processes identified are quasi-scientific,
and indicates the ways in which a variety of existing theories/findings- eg. common sense,consensus, evaluative/emotive ideas and images, inferential frameworks, ideology, populist language could be supported and/or significantly developed via a consideration of the senses in which some media language is amongst other things, quasi-scientific.


Superficial vein thrombosis is an integral part of venous thromboembolism (VTE) together with deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE). The incidence of SVT is 1.6 per 1000 persons per year. The incidence of DVT is about 1.0 per 1000 persons per year in the general population, 1.8 per 1000 persons per year at age 65 to 69 years and 3.1 per 1000 persons per year at age 85 to 89 years. First episodes of DVT are in two-thirds of cases elicited by risk factors, including varicose veins, cancer, pregnancy/ postpartum, oral contraceptives below the age of 50 years, immobility or surgery. Pain and tenderness in the calf and popliteal fossa may occur resulting from other conditions labeled as alternative diagnosis (AD) including Baker's cyst, ruptured Baker's cyst, torn plantaris tendon, hematoma, or muscle tears or pulls. The requirement for a safe diagnostic strategy of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) should be based on an objective post-test incidence of venous thromboembolism (VTE) of less than 0.1% with a negative predictive value for exclusion of DVT of 99.99% during 3 months follow-up. Modification of the Wells score by elimination of the "minus 2 points" for AD is mandatory and will improve clinical score assessment for DVT suspicion in the primary care and outpatient medical diagnostic setting. Compression ultrasonography (CUS) for proximal DVT overlooks distal DVT and is not cost-effective enough to rule in or out DVT. Complete CUS (CCUS) does pick up alternative diagnoses (AD) like Bakers cyst, muscle hematomas, old DVT, and superficial vein thrombosis (SVT). ADs with a negative CCUS include leg edema, varices erysipelas are easily picked up by physical examination. The sequential use of CCUS followed by quantitative rapid ELISA-D-dimer testing and modified Wells' clinical score assessment is cost-effective and objective diagnostic algorithm that can safely and effectively exclude and diagnose both DVT and AD in patients with suspected DVT. About 10 to 30% of patients with DVT develop overt PTS (CEAP, C4,5) at one year post-DVT. DVT has a recurrence rate of about 20% to 30% after 5 years. A scoring system for lower extremity venous thrombosis (LET) extension on CCUS related to therapeutic implications is presented to prevent DVT recurrence and the post-thrombotic syndrome (PTS).


... the solution of the Irish Question [is] the solution of the English, and the English [is] the solution of the European. --Karl Marx, Ireland and the Irish Question , 159 The Irish question was one with no easy answer. But the more Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels saw and studied Ireland, the more they became convinced that this small, then-insignificant nation on the outskirts of Europe could become a vital force in their international socialist revolution toward a classless society. The more they examined the centuries of foreign oppression suffered by the Irish and witnessed their steadfast Gaelic character, the more Marx and Engels believed that they had "the solution": a proletarian revolution in Ireland reverberating to England and throughout Europe. In light of subsequent history Marx and Engels did not have the solution. Still, it is undeniable both that Ireland occupied a central place in their mature thought and that the Marx family and Engels developed extraordinarily close personal relations with the Irish. Both of these matters have been largely overlooked in the voluminous secondary literature on the lives and political theorizing of the founders of Marxism. This essay contends that detailed attention to the crucial significance of Ireland for Marx and Engels warrants scrutiny. Admittedly, Marx and Engels's rosy scenarios concerning the revolutionary potential of Irish proletarians for triggering a European-wide revolution proved illusory. Still, Marx and Engels's theoretical formulations about Ireland in the nineteenth century offer insight into an important, passing moment in Irish colonial history and into Marxist ideology and praxis during the First International period. Indeed, any thorough assessment of the origins and development of Marxian socialism should ultimately take into account that Marx and Engels took a great theoretical and personal interest in Ireland, publicly advocated Irish independence from Britain, advanced a conception of the Irish Question and the nature of imperialism that bridged the gap between the classical era of capitalism and the writings of Lenin on the imperialist age, and radically misunderstood the implications of the collapse of Chartism in 1848 and the course that both Irish and European history would follow in the next three decades. One of the most difficult tasks for Irishmen and Englishmen has traditionally been to agree upon the precise meaning of the Irish Question. To Edmund Burke, it was more than a matter of religious oppression by the Protestant ascendancy: "It is not about Popes but about potatoes that the minds of this unhappy people are agitated. It is not from the spirit of zeal, but the spirit of whiskey that these wretches act" (Marx and Engels, 1). Marx agreed that the Irish Question was "an issue about potatoes, not popes." Beginning in the 1840s Marx and Engels argued that the Irish Question was essentially a materialistic, economic question of "haves" versus "have-nots," rather than a religious issue. Both men studied Ireland's domestic and international position in history in light of its current economic and political conditions. Engels, in fact, visited Ireland frequently and wrote an account of his 1856 and 1869 travels. After the death of his Irish consort, Mary Burns (whom he married on her death bed in 1863), her sister Lydia (Lizzie) became his second wife. So much did the island consume Engels's attention that he planned to write a monumental work entitled The History of Ireland, for which he did compose a few preliminary chapters. Both Marx and Engels also discussed the Irish Question in the press, argued about it with delegates to the First International, and confided to each other and associates about it in private letters. (Their preoccupation with Irish affairs also invited other Marxist thinkers--especially Irishman James Connelly, but also even Lenin and Stalin--to devote attention to Ireland. …


This document is part of the Air Technical Index [ATI] collection. The ATI collection is over 50 years old and was imaged from roll film. The collection has deteriorated over time and is in poor condition. DTIC has reproduced the best available copy utilizing the most current imaging technology. ATI documents that are partially legible have been included in the DTIC collection due to their historical value.


The liquidity crunch and the ensuing financial crisis have unambiguously affected all national economies and global currency exchange rates. In this article we ask whether the cross-currency correlation structure has changed since 2007. Using an extensive set of volatility surfaces implied from over-the-counter options on 11 different exchange rates, as well as recent advances in static and dynamic factor models, we are able to show that the number of factors that innovate the correlation structure has not changed in the last two and a half years. It is the volatility, the persistence and the significance of global systematic factors, vis-à-vis regional or economy-specific ones, that appear to have changed dramatically. The implications for the risk management of currency exposures and for the predictability of exchange rate volatility are also outlined.


Three open-ended questions based on Steiner-Adair (1986) were used to study gender concepts in relation to ideals in adolescent boys and girls and eating-disordered girls. The answers were coded according to themes emanating from the collected data and not predetermined. Dichotomous differences were found between the genders regarding perceived ideals of body size, but clinical and nonclinical girls perceived ideals of society and media similarly. Individual gender concepts differed substantially from the perceived ideals, and were most often focused on lifestyle and life conditions. However, the clinical girls were somewhat more likely to emphasize appearance and loving relationships.


This paper explores the short-term local labor market impact of the spread of COVID-19 in the United States, using the Current Employment Statistics survey and the Current Population Survey microdata. It uses the longitudinal aspect of both these surveys to measure changes in employment for business establishments and household members. I match the survey respondent to the measured local incidence of confirmed COVID-19 cases, using confidential information on county of location, to estimate the impact of the local incidence of the virus, after controlling for multiple measures of government intervention. I find the greatest declines in employment in counties with higher incidence of COVID-19. These effects vary by industry: leisure / hospitality and other services have large declines in employment relative to the effect of the incidence of the virus, while the employment decline in construction and transportation and warehousing depends more on the local incidence of the virus. Finance / insurance, a very telework-friendly industry, is unaffected by the incidence of the virus. These short-term employment effects have implications for future employment patterns as government restrictions are relaxed and business owners begin to decide whether to open their businesses while the virus is still active in the United States. JEL codes: J01, J21, J63


Thoroughly revised and updated analytical articles written by acknowledged experts covering the issues affecting the area as a whole. * Over 1,400 pages of economic and demographic statistics, wide-ranging directory material and authoritative articles * Contributions from over 50 leading experts on African affairs * Incisive analysis of the latest available information. General Survey * Thoroughly revised and updated analytical articles written by acknowledged experts covering the issues affecting the area as a whole: Reforming Africa: Continuities and Changes; Economic Trends in Africa South of the Sahara 2003; Health and Medical Issues in Sub-Saharan Africa; The Privatization of Security in Sub-Saharan Africa and European Colonial Rule in Africa * A political map of contemporary Africa and a chronological list of the dates of independence of African countries. Country Surveys Individual chapters on every country incorporating: * An introductory survey, containing essays on the physical and social geography, recent history and economy of each country * An extensive statistical survey of economic indicators, which include area and population, health and welfare, agriculture, forestry, fishing, mining, industry, finance, trade, transport, tourism, media and education * A full directory containing names, addresses and contact numbers for key areas such as the government, political organizations, diplomatic representation, the judiciary, religion, the media, finance, trade and industry, tourism, defence and education * A useful bibliography, providing sources for further research. Regional Information * Detailed information on the following: regional organizations; major commodities; calendars, time reckoning, and weights and measures; research institutes concerned with Africa and a select periodicals bibliography.


This research sought to build on and extend the 3,500-year progression of
calligraphy towards gestural abstracted marks derived from text. This project
provides input to the discourse regarding authenticity versus style in
contemporary painting, and is situated within the current blending of Eastern
calligraphic and Western abstract traditions.
Exploring this lineage allowed this research to identify two strands of calligraphy:
information transfer and gestural abstraction of text. While calligraphy began in
China, it has evolved throughout millennia to become an art form of the gestural
marking of a textual line. Exploring this niche defined the core structure of
calligraphy, which renders the traditional East/West cultural divide a moot point
because it speaks more in the language of paint—which is essentially the
language of gesture and material.
The intention of this research was to determine how drawing from ancient
calligraphic practices of body gesture and abstraction, filtered through strict
painterly strategies of compression/subtraction/erasure (C/S/E), can rethink
traditional forms and take text beyond semantics. This studio-based research
challenged calligraphic traditions with a respect for historic conventions, and
allowed traditional fundamentals to be summarised in the elemental essence of the
calligraphic structure, as follows:
1. the content of abstracted gestural line derived from text
2. the use of a reduced palette
3. the materials of ink and paper
4. the gesture of traditional body/brush
5. revisiting and refining the mark.
Personalising these elements by using my published poems as content, creating
book-ash ink derived from burning those books (reminiscent of traditional inkmaking
practice) and using body gesture (ranging from the intimate to the full-bodied) created a systematic, theoretical process that further highlighted the experimental results of the painterly strategies (C/S/E). Keeping these
fundamentals stable affected the other fundamentals of palette, gesture and
material, with series presentation illustrating the fifth fundamental. Studio
experiments conflated these fundamental elements with the strategies of C/S/E as
processing parameters, and ultimately resulted in a body of works collectively
titled The Continuing Ellipse.
Within the installation are thoughtful iterations and material reincarnations. I view
this as a poetic process that crosses cultural boundaries and initiates an intimate
poetic dialogue through individual gestural and material incantations. This
process was derived and defined from ancient methodology, was tested through
materiality and gesture, and ultimately created a procedural structure that can be
altered through the strategies (C/S/E). Restoring and revitalising ancient
calligraphic traditions through re-presentation in contemporary practice illustrated
the key finding that there is a structural difference between calligraphy as a
methodology, as opposed to calligraphy as a style. This is because calligraphy
gains its form from the line derived from text, rather than pure expression alone.
Incorporating the skeletal underpinnings of calligraphy as a methodology, while
extending material and gesture beyond strict adherence to traditional materials
alone, creates a point of difference to this continuum.


Generation of a high spectral power supercontinuum (SC) is reported from controlled multifilamentation of femtosecond pulses in fused silica. The use of a microlens array allows the manipulation of the filamentation pattern under very high-incident laser pulse energy without sample damage and, consequently, compared with using a single focusing lens, higher power of SC generation with a similar spectral broadening can be obtained. Moreover, the role of the interplay between diffraction pattern and proximity to the focus of the microlens array in SC generation is discussed.


Abstract This study explores the movements of some Swedish former education policy-makers that are currently active as commercial edu-business actors with the ambition to expand in the Global Education Industry (GEI). The aim is to map and analyze how a selection of Swedish edu-preneurs affiliated with a particular Swedish school chain enter the GEI and thereby market both their commercialized services and the policy ideas about so-called free schools, in its Swedish version. The study shows how these edu-preneurs move from the domestic to global arenas and how their business and policy advocacy activities are framed and represented. Mobilization and public exposure of previous and present policy advocacy networks are important assets for these edu-preneurs as they navigate the GEI. The study illustrates how these actors make use of particular forms of knowledge, from department ministerial work and party politics, which blends with work in public relations and various edu-businesses, pointing to the interrelatedness of politics, policy, business, power, and ideology. The paper concludes by raising issues in need of further exploration and debate, pertaining to our understanding of education policy-making and, ultimately, democracy.


This article explores patients' long-term experiences after undergoing bariatric surgery (BS) by individual interviews and the interplay between biographical disruption and biographical flow when the body's normal physiology and anatomy are intentionally altered. Based on interpretative phenomenological analysis the findings show that the bariatric body is still prominent in daily life, positively by displacing the overweight body and negatively due to the development of unexpected health problems after surgery. Due to individual informed consent to the treatment, the negative consequences are perceived as self-inflicted. The feelings of responsibility and shame make it difficult to seek help and to be open about undesirable long-term effects and other health problems after surgery. The study argues that undergoing BS is a disruptive event with uncertain long-term outcomes and living with a bariatric body as a vulnerable life continuously at the intersection of biographical disruption, flow and reinforcement. This study reinforces the importance of doing critical sociological studies of standardised medical interventions which aim to improve patients health problems. Included in these types of studies should be the patients' long-term experiences and the awareness not to uncritically present their experiences as universal and the treatment result solely as the patients' own responsibility.


Advanced mass spectrometry of glycosphingolipids takes the central stage in this thesis. Investigations focus on characterization of glycosphingolipid metabolism in health and disease with emphasis to the detection and accurate quantitation of known and so far unknown glycosphingolipids and closely regulated metabolites. Inherited defects in lysosomal degradation of glycosphingolipids, in particular the glycosphingolipidoses Gaucher disease (GD) and Fabry disease (FD), relatively common lysosomal storage disorders, are key topics of examination.
The thesis provides an introductory background on the field of research and contains three different sections describing conducted experimental work. Section one consists of studies reporting on the discovery of excessive occurrence of glycosphingoid bases in lysosomal storage diseases, the development of methods for their accurate quantitation in biological samples with UPLC-ESI-MS/MS and the use of these methods in diagnosis and disease monitoring. The great value of identical 13C-encoded (glyco)sphingolipids and their bases as internal standards in mass spectrometric quantitation of these lipids in biological materials is described. Section two introduces clinical aspects and challenges of GD and FD and provides examples of the practical value of lipid analyses in the GD and FD clinic. Section three concerns the pathophysiology of lysosomal disorders in glycosphingolipid metabolism and related fundamental investigations.


Abstract Winter balance is an important metric for assessing the change on glaciers and ice caps, yet measuring it using ground-based techniques can be challenging. We use the European Space Agency prototype Airborne SAR/Interferometric Radar Altimeter System (ASIRAS) to extract snow depths from the received altimeter waveforms over Austfonna ice cap, Svalbard. Additionally, we attempt to distinguish the long-term firn area from other glacier facies. We validate our results using snow depth and glacier facies characterizations determined from ground-based radar profiles, snow pits and a multi-look satellite synthetic aperture radar image. We show that the depth of the winter snowpack can be extracted from the altimeter data over most of the accumulation zone, comprising wet snow zone and a superimposed ice zone. The method struggles at lower elevations where internal reflections within the winter snowpack are strong and the winter snow depth is less than ∼1 m. We use the abruptness of the reflection from the last summer surface (LSS) to attempt to distinguish glacier facies. While there is a general correlation between LSS abruptness and glacier facies, we do not find a relationship that warrants a distinct classification based on ASIRAS waveforms alone.


The negative relationship between inflation and unemployment (also known as the Phillips curve) has been repeatedly challenged in the last decades: missing inflation in 2013-2019, missing deflation in 2007-2010, missing inflation in the late 1990s, stagflation in the 1970s, contrasting with always strong regional Phillips Curves. Using data from multiple sources, this paper helps to solve many empirical puzzles by distinguishing between fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes: in fixed exchange rate regimes, inflation is negatively correlated with unemployment but this relationship does not hold in flexible regimes. By contrast, there is a negative correlation between real exchange rate growth and unemployment, which remains consistent in both fixed and flexible regimes. These crucial observations have important implications for identifying the source of business cycle fluctuations and for normative analysis.


The rapid digitization of genealogical and medical records enables the assembly of extremely large pedigree records spanning millions of individuals. Such pedigrees provide the opportunity to answer genetic and epidemiological questions in scales much larger than previously possible. Linear mixed models (LMMs) are often used for analysis of pedigree data. However, LMMs cannot naturally scale to large pedigrees spanning millions of individuals, owing to their steep computational and storage requirements . Here we propose a novel modeling framework called S parse C holesky factor I zation LMM (SciLMM), that alleviates these difficulties by exploiting the sparsity patterns found in large pedigree data. The proposed framework can construct a matrix of genetic relationships between trillions of pairs of individuals in several hours, and can fit the corresponding LMM in several days. We demonstrate the capabilities of SciLMM via simulation studies and by estimating the heritability of longevity in a very large pedigree spanning millions of individuals and over five centuries of human history. The SciLMM framework enables the analysis of extremely large pedigrees that was not previously possible .


Image data are universal in life sciences research. Their proper handling is not. A significant proportion of image data in research papers show signs of mishandling that undermine their interpretation. We propose that a precise description of the image processing and analysis applied is required to address this problem. A new norm for reporting reproducible image analyses will diminish mishandling, as it will alert co‐authors, referees, and journals to aberrant image data processing or, if published nonetheless, it will document it to the reader. To promote this norm, we discuss the effectiveness of this approach and give some step‐by‐step instructions for publishing reproducible image data processing and analysis workflows.


Stable operation of a laser-plasma accelerator near the threshold for electron self-injection in the blowout regime has been demonstrated with 25–60 TW, 30 fs laser pulses focused into a 3–4 millimeter length gas jet. Nearly Gaussian shape and high nanosecond contrast of the focused pulse appear to be critically important for controllable, tunable generation of 250–430 MeV electron bunches with a lowenergy spread, � 10 pC charge, a few-mrad divergence and pointing stability, and a vanishingly small low-energy background. The physical nature of the near-threshold behavior is examined using threedimensional particle-in-cell simulations. Simulations indicate that properly locating the nonlinear focus of the laser pulse within the plasma suppresses continuous injection, thus reducing the low-energy tail of the electron beam.


At the Paris Exposition universelle of 1900, the tsarist pavilion included a section devoted to the empire's peripheries. The map prepared for the occasion traced an arc that stretched from the northernmost regions of European Russia to Siberia, the Steppe Region, Turkestan, and the Caucasus. The idea of the progressive "colonization" of these vast, sparsely populated territories became a political imperative in the last ten years of the empire. Prime Minister Petr Arkad'evich Stolypin assigned a central place to it in his program of reforms. By the eve of World War I, there was a sizable literature on "resettlement" (pereselenie) and "colonization" (kolonizatsiia), a body of knowledge built up over time through careful study of foreign models. It comprised theoretical treatises, manuals, and specialized periodicals such as Voprosy kolonizatsii (Questions of Colonization, 1907-17). In 1914, an authoritative semi-official publication proclaimed that the "lands of Asiatic Russia are an indivisible and inseparable part of our state and at the same time our only colony." (1) How did this terminology become part of the imperial lexicon? What exactly did Russian authors mean by "colonization" and what nuances did the meaning of the word acquire in the decades before the revolution? This article explores the colonization discourse articulated by Russia's intellectual and administrative elite, including unofficial and oppositionist components. It traces how a modern vision of resettlement emerged from older patterns of territorial transformation, careful study of the Western colonial experience, and the need to respond to the challenges created by the political and intellectual context of the postreform era. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "Colonization" is not understood here as a word describing centuries of spatial and demographic history. The subject of this analysis is not the socio-economic fact of peasant migration but the conceptualizations that accompanied it. The concept was adopted selectively from European literature around the middle of the 19th century. Here it is examined as it evolved through a discussion about populating and transforming the empire's peripheral, mostly eastern regions--a discourse about organizing population transfers, establishing a human presence, and assigning resources. Like other European expansions, the reality of Russian settlement in the east was the outcome of "a messy convergence of private impertinence and the coercive might of the state." (2) Government policy was merely one of the factors affecting the borderlands' development, and the examination of theories of colonization should not be confused with the history of the colonized regions, which depended on many local dynamics not examined here. The theme has drawn a good deal of attention in the historiography, from different viewpoints. (3) Mark Bassin investigated the relationship between geographical representations and national identity. Willard Sunderland explored how the public at large viewed resettlement and how it was perceived by peasants. He has rescued the topic of territorial transformation from pre-revolutionary historiography and constructed the long-term periodization essential for assessing the discontinuity of the late imperial approach. A. V. Remnev considered colonization as a process of institutional and mental appropriation of Siberia, Central Asia, and the Far East, a discourse about empire and nation building. His and N. G. Suvorova's analysis of contemporaries' perceptions of settlers is unsurpassed in depth and subtlety, helping to explain the particular intensity of colonization policies in the years before the war. Alexander Etkind has offered a cultural interpretation of imperial history in the light of the concept of "internal colonization." His analysis leaves open the question of what political forms this broad cultural paradigm assumed at different times, especially when the term "colonization" was used explicitly to describe migration to the peripheries. …


A new metallomicellar system containing cerium(III), a macrocylic polyamine ligand, and the nonionic surfactant Brij35(polyoxyethylene(23) lauryl ether) was prepared and used as a catalyst in the hydrolysis of bis(4-nitrophenyl) phosphate (BNPP). Catalytic rate of the BNPP hydrolysis was measured kinetically using the UV-VIS spectrophotometric method. The results indicate that the metallomicellar system has relatively high stability and excellent catalytic function in the BNPP hydrolysis; also, the reaction rate of the BNPP catalytic hydrolysis increased by a factor of ca. 1 × 1010 compared to the BNPP spontaneous hydrolysis due to the catalytic effect of the active species and the local concentration effect of the micelles in the metallomicellar system. Experimental results also showed that the mono-hydroxy complex containing the macrocyclic polyamine ligand and cerium(III) is the real active species in the BNPP catalytic hydrolysis, and that the micelles provide a useful catalytic environment for the reaction. On basis of the research results, the reaction mechanism of BNPP catalytic hydrolysis has been proposed.


A historical and comparative examination of ethnographic practice in sixteen nations around the globe reveals that theory-practice relations in anthropology and ethnography (A/E) have been shaped and re-shaped over time and space by complex contextual influences. This paper explores the evolution of theorypractice relationships in A/E over various regions of the world, tracing the beginning of a theory-practice 'split' from its origin under British colonialism, to its reappearance and institutionalization in post-World War II America, and postulating its absence in the 'Second and Third Worlds'. Global practice in ethnography now appears to be converging toward a re-integration of theory and application across multiple disciplines and professions (a 'hybrid' approach), as ethnographers work to address urgent and poorly understood problems that are not well theorized.


Environmentally assisted cracking (EAC), more specifically, stress corrosion cracking (SCC) has been a pipeline integrity concern since the 1960s. However, there were not many options for pipeline operators to effectively manage this threat on gas and liquid pipelines. SCC and other crack type defects have become a threat which is more widely understood and can be appropriately managed through in-line inspection (ILI). The two primary technologies for crack detection, developed in the 1990s and early 2000s respectively, are ultrasonic (UT) and electromagnetic acoustic transducer (EMAT). Although EMAT was originally developed to find SCC on gas pipelines, it has proven equally valuable for crack inspections on liquid pipelines.
 A case study with a gas and natural gas liquid (NGL) operator, ONEOK Inc. (ONEOK) demonstrates the effectiveness of using EMAT ILI to evaluate the potential threat of crack and crack-like defects on a 48 mile (77.2 km), liquid butane pipeline. By utilizing both 10-inch (254 mm) multiple datasets (MDS) technology and 10-inch (254 mm) EMAT ILI tools, ONEOK proved the effectiveness of ILI to identify critical and sub-critical crack and crack-like defects on their pipeline.
 This paper will present on the findings from the two technologies and illustrate the approaches taken by the operator to mitigate crack type defects on this pipeline.


In January 2008, the Swedish Government launched a new eGovernment action plan which was formulated to serve as "a new basis for IT-based organisational development in public administration". The main objective in the plan was formulated as "as simple as possible for as many as possible". The definition of eGovernment used in the action plan is the one agreed upon by many other European countries: "eGovernment is organisational development in public administrations that takes advantage of information and communication technologies (ICT) combined with organisational changes and new skills". Behind the suggested course of actions there is a rhetoric that Sweden was now entering a new path regarding eGovernment development. Taken together the declarations in the plan made it and the expressed expectations of profound changes in public administration an interesting target for critical review.Having identified the importance in critically discussing and analysing the action plan, the Swedish Researchers Network in eGovernment (www.egov.nu) arranged a network meeting at the national conference for public sector in Sweden June 2008. The theme for the meeting was "Reflections on the Swedish action plan for eGovernment". Several researchers and practitioners shared and debated their reflections during this meeting. In order to continue this very interesting discussion after the conference, we then invited authors to submit an article on the same theme, i.e. analysing different aspects of the Swedish action plan for eGovernment. This call for papers was directed both to participants at the network meeting and others, who wanted to contribute to this on-going debate. The call was to encourage authors to communicate and share their insights and opinions regarding the action plan in order to provide knowledge to decision-makers and other practitioners.


1. Metyrosine (l-α-methyl-p-tyrosine, Demser), an inhibitor of tyrosine hydroxylase, has moderate antihypertensive activity in spontaneously hypertensive rats (20–40 mmHg fall in mean arterial pressure) at 20–80 mg/kg intraperitoneally or 80 mg/kg orally. The maximal effect is reached at 4 h after treatment and the duration of action exceeds 12 h. 2. A peripheral inhibitor of amino acid decarboxylase, carbidopa ([—]-l-α-hydrazino-3,4-dihydroxy-α-methylbenzenepropanoic acid monohydrate), (25 mg/kg intraperitoneally) has little or no antihypertensive activity alone but if administered 5 min before metyrosine, it greatly enhances the antihypertensive potency of metyrosine. The relative potency of metyrosine + carbidopa (both intraperitoneally), as compared with metyrosine alone, was 74 with 95% confidence limits of 31 and 142. 3. In another series of experiments, the antihypertensive activity of metyrosine (80 mg/kg orally) was enhanced and prolonged by carbidopa, (25 mg/kg intraperitoneally). This effect was independent of the interval between administration of the two drugs (5 or 45 min). 4. Metyrosine (20 mg/kg intraperitoneally), reduced brain and heart noradrenaline concentrations in spontaneously hypertensive rats as determined 6 h after treatment. Carbidopa (25 mg/kg intraperitoneally) slightly enhanced the noradrenaline-depleting effect of metyrosine in the whole brain but not in the heart. 5. After metyrosine or carbidopa + metyrosine, low concentrations of α-methyldopamine were found in the brain of spontaneously hypertensive rats. Methyldopa at the same dose (20 mg/kg intraperitoneally) produced a 10 times greater increase in α-methyldopamine concentrations. 6. The inhibition by carbidopa of noradrenaline synthesis in sympathetic nerve endings in the heart and in peripheral blood vessels may be at least partially responsible for the carbidopa-induced enhancement of the antihypertensive action of metyrosine.


An enormously popular book of ideas and specimen exercises for trainee instructors and more experienced instructors, and for riders schooling their own horses or ponies. The book is divided into groups of related exercises, each exercise being accompanied by a full explanation, the aids, words of command, teaching hints, advice on likely problems, safety, and suggested variations. It shows how to make imaginative and constructive use of a 20m x 40m schooling area, adding variety and interest to lessons and riding sessions for riders, horses, and teachers.


The absence of an extensive series of Sc K-edge X-ray absorption near-edge structure spectroscopy (XANES) reference spectra and the scarcity of direct structural data on Sc are major hurdles to develop our understanding of Sc chemistry. However, this first step is essential to develop new Sc-based applications and to better understand the formation of Sc deposits. Here, we present a detailed comparative study of Sc K-edge XANES spectra of three Sc-bearing compounds: a garnet (Ca3Sc2Si3O12), an oxide (Sc2O3) and a phosphate (ScPO4·2H2O). First-principles calculations have been performed to interpret the origin of the K pre-edge spectral features. We demonstrate the validity of our approach by reproducing satisfyingly the experimental spectra. The densities of states projected on the absorbing Sc atom and its first neighbours give the possibility to interpret the position and intensity of the pre-edge XANES features in terms of Sc local environment. The pre-edge features provide information on p-d mixing of the absorber orbitals giving clues on the centrosymmetry of the site and on the mixing of the empty 4p orbitals of the absorber with empty 3d orbitals of the neighbours via the empty p orbitals of the ligands. We also show that these features give a first estimate of the crystal-field splitting energy (ca. 1.5 eV), inaccessible using other spectroscopic methods. Comparisons with K-edge spectra of other 3d0 ions from the literature reveal the specificities of the Sc pre-edge, indicating that core-hole screening is weaker than for Ti4+-bearing compounds. This study provides a dataset of spectral signatures and a theoretical basis for their interpretation, a requirement for future studies on Sc chemical form in synthetic and natural systems.


Exergy-based methods support the identification of thermodynamic inefficiencies and the discovery of optimization potentials in thermal engineering applications. Although a large variety of simulation software is available in this field, most do not offer an integrated solution for exergy analysis. While there are commercial products on the market with such capabilities, their access for research and educational purposes is limited. The presented open-source software offers an integrated and fully automated exergy analysis tool for thermal conversion processes. In a first step, physical exergy is implemented, and the tool is then applied to three different example plants to highlight its capabilities and validate the implementation: A solar thermal power plant, a supercritical CO2 power cycle, and an air refrigeration cycle. The respective models and the results of the analyses are presented briefly. By providing the results in modern data structures, they are easily accessible and postprocessible. Future work will include chemical exergy to enable analyses of applications with conversion of matter. Additionally, the implementation of the exergoeconomic analysis and optimization is envisaged.


In this paper, we explore new approaches to combining information encoded within the learned representations of autoencoders. We explore models that are capable of combining the attributes of multiple inputs such that a resynthesised output is trained to fool an adversarial discriminator for real versus synthesised data. Furthermore, we explore the use of such an architecture in the context of semi-supervised learning, where we learn a mixing function whose objective is to produce interpolations of hidden states, or masked combinations of latent representations that are consistent with a conditioned class label. We show quantitative and qualitative evidence that such a formulation is an interesting avenue of research.


Single crystal samples ofLiFwere irradiated at roomtemperaturewith different energy of 0.7- 4.1MeV/u Pb+53 ions in fluence range from109 and 4.1012 ions/ cm2. are characterized by optical absorption and photoluminescence (PL) techniques were used for characterisation of the irradiated samples. The damage is dominated by the creation of simple defects (F centers) and aggregated defects (Fn centers). Their concentration increase of a function of fluence and energy. On the other hand two very intense PLbands observed at around 545 and 665 nm which correspond to the emission of F+ 3 and F2 centers respectively and increase linearly in the same fluence range.


: Since the middle of the 1990's, higher education teaching, learning and research have evolved to include an ever greater digital presence. These digital developments in the humanities have lagged most other areas in academia, retaining a preference for the physical print. A team of Latin American scholars, faculty and digital librarians at a US institution of higher education has successfully collaborated since 2008 to publish the INTI: Revista de Literatura Hispánica journal's original, peer-reviewed literature and art as open-access digital resources for teaching, learning and research. What began as a collaborative digitization project has in 7 years evolved into a full-scale digital publishing enterprise including print-on-demand for INTI 's 350 continuing print-subscription libraries. Three leaders - the faculty-director, faculty head of digital publishing and faculty library director - have established a publishing platform and infrastructure with multimedia components, which present over 40 years of unique, highly-regarded and fully open-access digital collections of Latin American literature and art, most of which is available only in INTI . The contents are fully discoverable via all freely available search tools and are indexed in all the major indices, including the Modern Language Association / MLA and JSTOR. INTI content visibility has evolved exponentially from the 2008 print maximum of 350 libraries and individual subscriptions to over 12,000 readers (full PDF downloads) per month in 2015. The article relates the origin, process, value, sustainability and scalability of the unique collaborative digital publishing project. The formerly print-only access to INTI has been significantly enhanced for researchers through provisions of the open-access digital files for all issues of INTI since its 1974 inception.


This study aimed to find key factors influencing the decisions of farmers regarding the adoption of water-saving practices including the rice-controlling irrigation technique, drip irrigation under plastic film, and sprinkling irrigation in Heilongjiang Province, China. It was found that reliability of the water source and government promotion had very significant and positive associations with the probability of adoption. The number of household adults was a slightly significant factor that was positively associated with the probability of adoption. Risks of agricultural water-saving technologies, educational level of the respondents, soil texture, oil price, access to electric power, and access to labor were potential factors affecting the choice of agricultural water-saving technologies. Technical complexity, investment, water source, soil texture, oil price, and lack of electric power also impacted the adoption of these three agricultural water-saving technologies. These conclusions were obtained from a binary logistic model estimated from the results of a survey of 97 smallholder farmers from two typical cities in Heilongjiang Province. Finally, some recommendations are made to promoters of agricultural water-saving technologies.


Controlling long overland conveyors with multiple drive stations is a complex problem. The methods for controlling these belts in a steady state are well-covered in existing literature, but a discussion of starting and stopping strategies is absent. This paper outlines different control strategies for starting, stopping and running conveyors with multiple drive stations. To illustrate the benefits of applying the methods described in this paper, the authors show how their adoption corrected many of the control system problems at Essroc Cement's overland conveyor, which features three drive stations separated from each other by long lengths of continuous conveyor belt.