Generative adversarial networks (GANs), e.g., StyleGAN2, play a vital role in various image generation and synthesis tasks, yet their notoriously high computational cost hinders their efficient deployment on edge devices. Directly applying generic compression approaches yields poor results on GANs, which motivates a number of recent GAN compression works. While prior works mainly accelerate conditional GANs, e.g., pix2pix and Cycle-GAN, compressing state-of-the-art unconditional GANs has rarely been explored and is more challenging. In this paper, we propose novel approaches for unconditional GAN compression. We first introduce effective channel pruning and knowledge distillation schemes specialized for unconditional GANs. We then propose a novel content-aware method to guide the processes of both pruning and distillation. With content-awareness, we can effectively prune channels that are unimportant to the contents of interest, e.g., human faces, and focus our distillation on these regions, which significantly enhances the distillation quality. On StyleGAN2 and SN-GAN, we achieve a substantial improvement over the state-of-the-art compression method. Notably, we reduce the FLOPs of StyleGAN2 by 11× with visually negligible image quality loss compared to the full-size model. More interestingly, when applied to various image manipulation tasks, our compressed model forms a smoother and better disentangled latent manifold, making it more effective for image editing.


To produce cellulosic ethanol more economically, utilization of whole slurry of pretreated lignocellulose without separating liquid and solid fractions after thermal and/or chemical pretreatment of lignocellulose may be advantageous in terms of process economics. To carry out such processing on mixtures, which contain pretreatment byproducts, quantitative evaluation of the degree of inhibition of enzymatic hydrolysis and yeast fermentation by pretreatment byproducts are important. Therefore, in this study, the inhibitory effect of byproducts, focusing on sugar degradation products including furfural, hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), acetic acid (AA), formic acid (FA), and levulinic acid (LA), on enzyme and microbial performance was investigated. The experimental conditions for SSF media containing the inhibitors were optimized by response-surface methodology-ridge analysis. The saccharification using commercial cellulase was most remarkably inhibited (approximately 28%) by HMF. The ethanol production by Saccharomyces cerevisiae was nearly completely inhibited (approximately 80%) by furfural. The toxicity was noted as HMF > FA > furfural > AA ≈ LA for enzymatic hydrolysis, and furfural > HMF > FA > AA > LA for yeast ethanol production. The results indicated that the inhibitor accumulation during pretreatment should be controlled for subsequent effective saccharification and fermentation.


A sample of 178 children have been followed annually for the past five years, to assess the development of speech perception abilities in early deafened children using a multichannel cochlear implant. A subset of these children who acquired deafness prior to the acquisition of language (prelinguistic) have shown continued improvement on a hierarchy of pediatric speech perception tests throughout the follow‐up period. Implantation at an early age appears to improve the prognosis for development of more difficult speech perception skills. In addition, there appears to be a positive relationship between the emphasis on oral listening skills and the rate of acquisition of speech perception abilities. Throughout the duration of the longitudinal study, several new speech processing strategies have been introduced for the Nucleus implant system. The most recent (SPEAK) is an adaptive strategy that varies the rate of stimulation and the number of electrode is stimulated according to the frequency characteristics of the speech signal. SPEAK attempts to represent the dynamic nature of speech and provides improved spectral detail by virtue of 22 closely spaced electrodes. A sample of 34 prelinguistically deafened children demonstrated significant improvements in speech perception within six months of conversion to the new processing strategy.


This note seeks to demonstrate the ripeness of early American legal periodicals as a subject of further inquiry by reading the American Law Journal (1808-1817), the first American law review, as a reflection of the changing nature of the legal profession at a crucial time in American history. Close analysis of the content and editorial choices of the Journal suggests that the Journal both reflects and addresses three early nineteenth century professional needs: the need to practice in a variety of jurisdictions and areas of law; the need to give voice and content to the emerging idea of a professional self-consciousness, which some scholars suggest developed only later in the century; and the need to respond to the internationalization of American legal and political affairs, which undercuts the arguments of many legal historians that the period marked an increasing tendency in American jurisprudence to look inward. The few scholars who have attempted to paint a picture of legal affairs in this transformative period have typically focused on the dockets of particular jurisdictions while overlooking legal periodicals. But such sources can more accurately portray the state of the national legal profession given that a journal editor, unconstrained by state or regional boundaries, can incorporate cases and sources from a wide range of jurisdictions and on a varied array of topics. Furthermore, the fact that periodicals are necessarily dependent on a subscriber base suggests that such editors had to touch on issues of interest to subscribers from all across the country in order to stay afloat.


This book sketches an outline of Southeast Asian history from earliest times to the present, showing how the diverse political, economic, social, and cultural patterns developed over several thousand years and the role played by the region in the larger world. Approximately one third will be devoted to the centuries before 1500 CE, when civilizations and kingdoms emerged and some Southeast Asians became active in Asian and Pacific maritime trade networks. It discusses the connections to India and China, the great kingdoms such as Angkor, the maritime trade, and the emergence of diverse cultural traditions, including the Theravada Buddhist, Islamic, and Vietnamese realms. Another third covers the period of Western expansion and colonization between 1500 and 1941, when various Western nations began to gradually influence and then reshape the region and Southeast Asians became more deeply involved with world trade. This includes an extensive discussion of the impact of colonialism on Southeast Asian societies, cultures, economies and politics. The final third examines the rise of nationalism and independence movements, decolonization, the wars in Indochina, and the links between past, present, and future.... Download ebook, read file pdf Southeast Asia in World History


This paper studies the incentives to join or enlarge a monetary union under alternative assumptions about the extent of market reform within the union and in candidate countries. Lack of labour mobility, wage/price flexibility or fiscal reform brings costs for both new entrants and in the existing union. Countries will only want to join a union where there has been sufficient reform, and where markets are more flexible than their own. But existing members will want the same properties of their new partners as well. Fiscal restrictions, or a lack of fiscal flexibility, will exaggerate this incentive mismatch and may delay the necessary reforms.


The unambiguous perception of depth from motion parallax (MP) occurs with very brief temporal processing intervals. Observers require MP stimulus presentation durations on the order of 30 msec, which is increased to 75 msec with a high-contrast pattern mask. Since MP relies on an extra-retinal signal from the pursuit eye movement system, this later interval (with the mask) likely represents the time required to generate an internal signal regarding the impending pursuit signal. Alcohol intoxication is known to affect the pursuit eye movement system, the basis for a roadside sobriety test. Alcohol intoxication also increases MP thresholds, presumably due to pursuit dysfunction disrupting the integration of internal pursuit and retinal motion signals. Here we explored an alternative explanation: ethanol intoxication increases the temporal processing interval necessary for the unambiguous perception of depth from MP. To investigate this hypothesis, 16 participants completed a series of motion parallax and motion perception tasks while sober and moderately intoxicated (mean peak BAC = 0.084). These computer-generated tasks were used to assess the minimum temporal interval required to determine depth sign, stimulus window movement, and stimulus dot movements, with and without a subsequent stimulus mask. To avoid threshold issues, MP stimuli depicted stimulus geometry of about 28 cm. A step-ramp stimulus was used to assess pursuit gains and latencies at the stimulus velocities used in the psychophysical tasks. The temporal integration interval required for each of these tasks was not affected by alcohol intoxication. Curiously, while participants required the same stimulus presentation durations in both sober and intoxicated conditions, pursuit onset latency was affected by alcohol intoxication. We conclude that the ethanol intoxication does not affect the time it takes the visual system to create and integrate the component signals required for the unambiguous perception of depth from MP. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


Federal authorities have little experience in making law that governs wealth transfers, because that function is traditionally within the province of state law. Although state wealth-transfer law has undergone significant modernization over the last few decades, all three branches of the federal government — legislative, judicial, and executive — have increasingly gone their own way. Lack of experience and, in many cases, lack of knowledge on the part of federal authorities have not dissuaded them from undermining well-considered state law. This article appears in a symposium issue published by the Vanderbilt Law Review on The Role of Federal Law in Private Wealth Transfer. The Article covers these topics: federal preemption of several areas of state law, the development of federal common law as a sometime substitute for preempted state law, the federal tax exemption for perpetual trusts, and the right of posthumously conceived children of assisted reproduction to Social Security survivor benefits.


Results: A lack of sex education and awareness of the right to confidential health care with respect to sex-related issues were considered to be issues that may need to be resolved. Both teen acceptance and physician acceptance of the brochure were positive. Conclusion: Integration within a community is a first step to identifying a community problem that needs to be addressed. Meeting with community leaders and the target population, in addition to reviewing the latest medical literature, is useful for identifying a community problem such as teen pregnancy. Bringing attention to a community problem is essential for initiating an intervention.


The establishment of psychological health education course is an inevitable choice for psychological health education of school. Since it is unlike other subject teachings that are often employing the way of transference of static knowledge instead it applies various activities to carry out the teaching which decides the difference of teaching design between the psychological health education course and other courses. As long as teachers make an accurate positioning of psychological health education course the teaching design of the course would be feasible and effective. From the practices in recent years, we find that the implementation of psychological health education course in primary and middle high schools is unbalanced in which the mechanization and disciplinization are highly exposed in the course of psychological health education. In order to make the working system of psychological education more mature and comprehensive, the development and design of the course must be in accordance with the principle of student-centered so it would achieve its validity. The essay starts with the perspective of constructivism to analyze the activities of psychological health education of school. After analyzing the dilemmas of psychological health education has faced, the essay conducts the theoretical exposition on 'student-centered' teaching design of constructivism of psychological health education and provides the introduction and analysis of the development and practice of the course and the paradigms and analysis of teaching design.


Nonparametric methods for estimating the implied volatility surface or the implied volatility smile are very popular, since they do not impose a specific functional form on the estimate. Traditionally, these methods are two-step estimators. The first step requires to extract implied volatility data from observed option prices, in the second step the actual fitting algorithm is applied. These two-step estimators may be seriously biased when option prices are observed with measurement errors. Moreover, after the nonlinear transformation of the option prices the error distribution will be complicated and less tractable. In this study, we propose a one-step estimator for the implied volatility surface based on a least squares kernel smoother of the Black-Scholes formula. Consistency and the asymptotic distribution of the estimate are provided. We demonstrate the estimator using German DAX index option data to recover the smile and the implied volatility surface.


Hydrogen is a renewable energy source and has the potential to mitigate the green house gas effect and to meet the increasing global electricity demand. In the present study, a multicriteria methodology is developed by combining graph theory and analytic hierarchy process methods for the evaluation and selection of hydrogen energy systems. The hydrogen energy system alternatives are assessed with respect to economic, environmental, performance and social criteria by computing the hydrogen energy system preference index. A detailed procedure for determination of hydrogen energy system preference index is suggested. Two examples relating to hydrogen production processes and hydrogen energy technologies are cited in order to demonstrate and validate the effectiveness and flexibility of the proposed methodology. In each example, a list of all possible choices from the best to the worst alternatives is obtained taking into account different evaluation criteria.


In Scandinavia, tick-borne infections affecting humans include Lyme borreliosis (LB), tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) and human granulocytic anaplasmosis (HGA). Each of these infections can present with unspecific symptoms. In this prospective clinical study, we recruited patients based on two independent inclusion criteria; 1) patients with unspecific symptoms, i.e. fever (≥38.0℃) or a history of feverishness and/or any combination of headache, myalgia or arthralgia and 2) patients with erythema migrans (EM), following an observed tick bite or tick exposure within one month prior to onset of symptoms. A total of 206 patients fulfilled the study. Among these, we could identify 186 cases of LB (174 with EM), 18 confirmed and two probable cases of HGA and two cases of TBE. Thirteen of the HGA cases presented without fever. Furthermore, 22 of the EM patients had a sub-clinical co-infection with Anaplasma phagocytophilum, based on serology. Both TBE cases had co-infections, one with Borrelia burgdorferi and one with Anaplasma phagocytophilum. We conclude that it is important to consider several causative agents and possible co-infections in the clinical management of infectious diseases where ticks may be suspected as vectors.


Bacteriophages infecting Escherichia coli have been used as a proxy for faecal matter and water quality from a variety of environments. However, the diversity of coliphages that are present in seawater remains largely unknown, with previous studies largely focusing on morphological diversity. Here, we isolated and characterised coliphages from three coastal locations in the UK and Poland. This revealed a surprising genetic diversity, with comparative genomics and phylogenetic analysis of phage isolates facilitating the identification of putative new species within the genera RB69virus and T5virus and a putative new genus within the subfamily Tunavirinae. Furthermore, by combining this genomic data with proteomic and host range analyses a number of phage structural proteins were identified, one of which is likely to be responsible for the observed differences in host range.


This thesis studies the changes in the nature of critical writing on contemporary art, in the context of the British art world across a period from 1968 to around 1976. It examines the major shifts in the relationship between the artistic production of the period and the forms of writing that addressed it, through those publications that sought to articulate a public discourse on art in a period where divergent accounts regarding the criteria of artistic value, and the terms of critical discourse, came increasingly into conflict.

This thesis takes as its main subject a number of publication venues for art-critical writing of the time, and their responses to the rapidly changing scene of artistic production. It examines the forms of writing that attended emerging artistic practice and the theoretical and critical assumptions on which that writing depended, highlighting those moments where critical discourse was provoked to reflect self-consciously of the relation between discourse and artistic practice.

By tracing the repercussions of the cultural and political revolts of the late 1960s, it examines how the orthodoxies of art criticism came to be challenged, in the first instance, by the growing influence of radical artistic practices which incorporated a discursive function, and by leftist social critiques of art. It explores how, in the first half of the 1970s, radical and political artistic practice was promoted by a number of young critics, and sanctioned by its presentation in public art venues.

Examining the history of magazines such as Studio International and a number of smaller specialist and non-specialist magazines such as the feminist Spare Rib and the left-wing independent press, it attends to how debates over the cultural and social agency of art began to draw on continental theoretical influences that put into greater question the role of subjective experience and the nature of the human subject. It examines how this shift in the relation between practice and discourse manifested itself in the editorial and critical attitudes of publications both from within the field of artistic culture, and from a wider context of publications embedded in the radical political and social currents of the early 1970s. It gives particular attention to the careers of a number of prominent critics, while situating the later reaction against alternative artistic practices in the context of the politically conservative turn of the end of the decade.


A methodology for indexing river environmental condition was developed and applied to 269 subsections of national rivers located in the Republic of Korea, based on a river management perspective. The resulting index has been called the River Environment Index (REI). To develop the methodology, a total of 32 factors related to a river9s environment were initially investigated, from which 16 were chosen based on their measurability, predictability, measurement regularity and obtainability. Then, using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and based on a survey of 62 river management experts in Korea, the weighting coefficient for each of the 16 factors was determined. Finally, the REI values were estimated by linearly combining the 16 measured factors for the 269 river subsections and mapped using a geospatial information system platform. We expect that the REI will be used to increase the efficient allocation of national budgets for environmentally-friendly river restoration projects of the country9s national rivers. Through this new index, prioritization of these rivers will be made using an holistic river management perspective.


Introduction Neuromodulation therapies have gained recognition as effective treatment modalities for faecal incontinence. Sacral Nerve Stimulation (SNS) is the most widely used of these and has favourable short and medium term outcomes. No standard protocols exist for the follow up of these patients. This study aimed to audit our own practice and outcome`s in a tertiary referral centre. Method Retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data for all patients referred for SNS between January 2009–2013. Data collected included: demographics, test data, implant data, complications, and number of follow-up appointments (out-patient follow up was on a patient request only). Results 122 patients were referred for consideration of SNS (median age of 57 years (range 32–82)), of which 112 (91.8%) were female. 75 out of 122 patients underwent a test procedure. Of those that did not have a test, the reasons in 19 were unknown, 12 were no longer required after optimising other treatment modalities, 9 are still awaiting a test procedure, 3 patients were treated for prolapse and did not require SNS, 2 declined, and 2 failed to attend. Of the 75 patients who underwent a test procedure, 58 patients had a successful test, 17 failed the test. Of those patient who had a successful test 48 patients have been implanted to date. 1 patient declined implantation after a successful test and 9 patients are awaiting implantation. 47 of 48 patients (88%) have had a good result from implantation and 1 patient experienced treatment failure. The overall complication rate following implantation was 22.9% (11/48). 5 patients had wound infections, with 3 of these patients requiring device removal. 2 of these patients have been re-implanted successfully and 1 awaits re-implantation. 2 patients had post-operative pain, two required lead replacement, 1 had a superficial wound dehiscence, and 1 had a postoperative haematoma not requiring intervention. Median number of follow appointments was 1 (range 0–8). Conclusion Our success rates for SNS compare favourably with the published literature. Requests for out-patient follow up are low, suggesting patient-led follow up is feasible. Disclosure of interest None Declared.


Alternative fully DCT-based video codec architectures have been proposed in the past to address the shortcomings of the conventional hybrid motion compensated DCT video codec structures traditionally chosen as the basis of implementation of standard-compliant codecs. However, no prior effort has been made to ensure interoperability of these two drastically different architectures so that fully DCT-based video codecs are fully compatible with the existing video coding standards. In this paper, we establish the criteria for matching conventional codecs with fully DCT-based codecs. We find that the key to this interoperability lies in the heart of the implementation of motion compensation modules performed in the spatial and transform domains at both the encoder and the decoder. Specifically, if the spatial-domain motion compensation is compatiable with the transform-domain motion compensation, then the states in both the coder and the decoder will keep track of each other even after a long series of P-frames. Otherwise, the states will diverge in proportion to the number of P-frames between two I-frames. This sets an important criterion for the development of any DCT-based motion compensation schemes. We also discuss and develop some DCT-based motion compensation schemes as important building blocks of fully DCT-based codecs. For the case of subpixel motion compensation, DCT-based approaches allow more accurate interpolation without any increase in computation. Furthermore, a scare number of DCT coefficients after quantization significantly decreases the number of calculations required for motion compensation. Coupled with the DCT-based motion estimation algorithms, it is possible to realize fully DCT-based codecs to overcome the disadvantages of conventional hybrid codecs.


The invasive silver carp Hypophthalmichthys molitrix escaped from southern U.S. aquaculture during the 1970s to spread throughout the Mississippi River basin and steadily moved northward, now reaching the threshold of the Laurentian Great Lakes. The silver carp is native to eastern Asia and is a large, prolific filter-feeder that decreases food availability for fisheries. The present study evaluates its population genetic variability and differentiation across the introduced range using 10 nuclear DNA microsatellite loci, sequences of two mitochondrial genes (cytochrome b and cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1), and a nuclear gene (ribosomal protein S7 gene intron 1). Populations are analyzed from two invasion fronts threatening the Great Lakes (the Illinois River outside Lake Michigan and the Wabash River, leading into the Maumee River and western Lake Erie), established areas in the southern and central Mississippi River, and a later Missouri River colonization. Results discern considerable genetic diversity and some significant population differentiation, with greater mtDNA haplotype diversity and unique microsatellite alleles characterizing the southern populations. Invasion fronts significantly differ, diverging from the southern Mississippi River population. About 3% of individuals contain a unique and very divergent mtDNA haplotype (primarily the southerly populations and the Wabash River), which may stem from historic introgression in Asia with female largescale silver carp H. harmandi. Nuclear microsatellites and S7 sequences of the introgressed individuals do not significantly differ from silver carp. MtDNA variation is used in a high-throughput sequence assay that identifies and distinguishes invasive carp species and their population haplotypes (including H. molitrix and H. harmandi) at all life stages, in application to environmental (e)DNA water and plankton samples. We discerned silver and bighead carp eDNA from four bait and pond stores in the Great Lakes watershed, indicating that release from retailers comprises another likely vector. Our findings provide key baseline population genetic data for understanding and tracing the invasion's progression, facilitating detection, and evaluating future trajectory and adaptive success.


DBA/2J mouse has been used as a model for spontaneous secondary glaucoma. Here, we investigated changes in expression of NMDA receptor (NMDAR) subunits and Cdk5/p35/NMDAR signaling in retinas of DBA/2J mice using Western blot technique. The protein levels of NR1 and NR2A subunits in retinas of DBA/2J mice at all ages (6–12 months) were not different from those in age-matched C57BL/6 mice. In contrast, the protein levels of NR2B subunits, in addition to age-dependent change, significantly increased with elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) in DBA/2J mice at 6 and 9 months as compared with age-matched controls. Moreover, expression of Cdk5, p35 and ratio of p-NR2AS1232/NR2A progressively increased with time in both strains, suggestive of activated Cdk5/p35 signaling pathway. However, the changes in these proteins were in the same levels in both strain mice, except a significant increase of p35 proteins at 6 months in DBA/2J mice. Meanwhile, the protein levels of Brn-3a, a retinal ganglion cell (RGC) maker, remarkably decreased at 9–12 months in DBA/2J mice, which was in parallel with the changes of NR2B expression. Our results suggest that elevated IOP-induced increase in expression of NR2B subunits of NMDARs may be involved in RGC degeneration of DBA/2J mice.


Background Teamwork between clinical teachers is a challenge in postgraduate medical training. Although there are several instruments available for measuring teamwork in health care, none of them are appropriate for teaching teams. The aim of this study is to develop an instrument (TeamQ) for measuring teamwork, to investigate its psychometric properties and to explore how clinical teachers assess their teamwork. Method To select the items to be included in the TeamQ questionnaire, we conducted a content validation in 2011, using a Delphi procedure in which 40 experts were invited. Next, for pilot testing the preliminary tool, 1446 clinical teachers from 116 teaching teams were requested to complete the TeamQ questionnaire. For data analyses we used statistical strategies: principal component analysis, internal consistency reliability coefficient, and the number of evaluations needed to obtain reliable estimates. Lastly, the median TeamQ scores were calculated for teams to explore the levels of teamwork. Results In total, 31 experts participated in the Delphi study. In total, 114 teams participated in the TeamQ pilot. The median team response was 7 evaluations per team. The principal component analysis revealed 11 factors; 8 were included. The reliability coefficients of the TeamQ scales ranged from 0.75 to 0.93. The generalizability analysis revealed that 5 to 7 evaluations were needed to obtain internal reliability coefficients of 0.70. In terms of teamwork, the clinical teachers scored residents' empowerment as the highest TeamQ scale and feedback culture as the area that would most benefit from improvement. Conclusions This study provides initial evidence of the validity of an instrument for measuring teamwork in teaching teams. The high response rates and the low number of evaluations needed for reliably measuring teamwork indicate that TeamQ is feasible for use by teaching teams. Future research could explore the effectiveness of feedback on teamwork in follow up measurements.


Lactobacilli appear in the oral cavity during the first years of a child's life. Their presence depends on numerous factors such as the presence of ecological niches e.g. natural anfractuosities of the teeth. A strong correlation has been established between the saliva Lactobacillus count and dental caries, the higher the DMF index, the higher the number of children harbouring a high Lactobacillus count. Among children, the presence of lactobacilli in coronal caries is incontestable. Among adults, lactobacilli are found in root caries. Since 1999, taxonomical revisions make it difficult to interpret the results obtained in the numerous previous studies carried out on the identification of oral lactobacilli, but whatever the sampling method or the identification technique, the carious site or the age of sampled subjects, most species belong to the Lactobacillus casei group. This is important because if a specific correlation can be found between few species of lactobacilli and caries a better understanding of their properties could allow the development of new tools for prevention.


Pumpkins (Cucurbita spp. L.) can be used in large scale in the fresh-cut sector, due to their increasing consumption in many countries. The processing operations of pumpkins include peeling, portioning and packaging. A research has been conducted in order to study how the cutting shape (sliced or 2-cm diced), packaging permeance to O2 (P1=1990; P2=750; P3=560 cm3 m-2 d-1 bar-1) and storage temperature (4 or 8°C) can affect the physiology and quality of fresh-cut 'Cinderella' pumpkin (Cucurbita maxima Duchesne) stored for an 8-day shelf-life period (d8). The gas composition (O2; CO2), pigments, total phenolic content (TPC), antioxidant power (AP) and vitamin C (Vit. C) content were analyzed at processing and during the shelf-life period (d5 and d8). Fresh weight loss was recorded daily. During the shelf-life, the O2 and CO2 contents were found to only depend on the cutting shape and temperature. The O2 in the headspace decreased more significantly at 8°C than at 4°C, and more in the bags containing pumpkin dices than in the bags containing pumpkin slices. However, the O2 levels on d8 were similar and not statistically different in both bags containing dices and slices and in the bags stored either at 4 or at 8°C, respectively. The CO2 in the headspace increased more in the bags stored at 8°C than in the bags stored at 4°C, and more in the bags containing pumpkin dices than in the bags containing pumpkin slices. Fresh weight was affected by the film during the shelf-life, regardless of the storage temperature, with an increasing weight loss as the O2 permeance of the films decreased; P3 showed a more significant weight loss than the higher permeance films. A significant interaction between film and shape was observed from d6 to d8: the weight loss of the pumpkin slices continued to increase as the permeance decreased, whereas it decreased as the permeance increased. The Chlorophyll b, vitamin C and carotenoid contents were affected by the film × shape interaction on d5. All the variables of the pumpkin dices decreased as the O2 permeance increased, while they increased in the pumpkin slices packaged with the intermediate O2 permeance film. AP was affected by shape × O2 permenace on d8. Chlorophyll was not affected by the treatments. TPC and AP were only affected by temperature × shape on d8, while the vitamin C and carotenoid values were affected by the temperature, with higher values at 4°C of storage than at 8°C.


Buchi Emecheta's Destination Biafra chronicles happenings of the Nigerian civil war. The criticism in the novel is directed at the greed, corruption and sadism of many of the protagonists on all sides which suitably demonstrates the illogicality of seeking to explain the war. This paper articulates how Emecheta's Destination Biafra brings new perspectives to bear upon a significant aspect of Nigerian history that has been dominated by one segment of society. In this particular case, interpretations of the Nigerian civil war, hitherto controlled by men, are moderated by an essentially female account. The paper historicizes the trauma and scars borne  by women and children during the war, focusing mainly on how the war is stripped of the glamour which masculinist accounts often endow it with, and how this is seen in all its senselessness and brutality. Just as the belligerents fight over resources and territory, so are accounts of what took place during the conflict being fought over between those who prosecuted it and those who were its victims.


We study the relative importance of market governance and non-market governance in retirement investments using a sample of variable annuities. Variable annuity investors are significantly less sensitive to performance and fees than mutual fund investors. Consistent with a complementary role of market and non-market governance, other governance mechanisms play a stronger role for variable annuity funds. Variable annuity sponsors add alternative investment options and replace advisors on behalf of their investors after poor performance and high fees. These other governance mechanisms are ineffective, however, whenever conflicts of interest exist between variable annuity sponsors and fund advisors.


We propose an analysis of the impact of the deployment of small base stations in a wireless network constituted of macro base stations. This analysis is particularly focused on the influence of the position and the transmitting power of small base stations on the performance of the network. In this aim, we consider an analytical model for heterogeneous cellular networks, composed of macro cells and small cells. The network model framework developed allows to derive closed form formulas for the Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) received by a mobile, whatever its location. Moreover, the proposed analytical model is validated by numerical simulations and it is shown that it is a good approximation of the SINR. Performance and quality of service (QoS) in terms of throughput and coverage can therefore be analyzed in a simple way. It makes it possible to analyze the deployment of small cells in an existing macro cells network.


A model is presented to investigate the optimal economic life cycle of grass leys with winter damage problems in northern Norway and to determine the threshold of winter damage before it is profitable to reseed. A two-level hierarchic Markov process has been constructed using the MLHMP software. The model takes uncertainty concerning yield potential, damage estimation and weather dependent random fluctuations into account. A Kalman filter technique is used for updating of knowledge on yield potential and damage level. The application of the model is demonstrated using data from two commercial Norwegian farms. Since parameter estimates vary considerably among farms, it is concluded that decision support concerning optimal economic life cycle of grass leys should be done at farm level. The results also show the importance of using a flexible dynamic replacement strategy. Use of the model for a specific farm situation is illustrated.


Abstract In lieu of an abstract, below is the article's first paragraph. Written between the years of 1898 and 1899, Joseph Conrad's famous novella, Heart of Darkness, fictionalized the historical reality of an area secretly steeped in colonial rule by the viciously greedy and cruel King Leopold II. Between the years of 1885 and 1908, the Belgian ruler transformed the African Congo into his personal empire by exploiting not only the Congo's natural resources (rubber and ivory), but also the Congolese Africans' slave labor. Joseph Conrad published Heart of Darkness in response to his own experiences while traveling in the Belgian Congo. For decades Heart of Darkness was hailed a literary masterpiece written with a critical attitude towards tl1e colonization of Africans by foreign powers, and especially the denunciation of Belgium's justified ownership of the Congo. However, during the twentieth century critical debates began to arise around the novella's narrator, Charles Marlow, and whether or not his view of the Africans is racist, and by extension, whether or not Heart of Darkness is a racist novella altogether that does not deserve the literary credit it has gained in the past.


Most of our Q-estimation investigations in previous work are based on the analytical signal method. Surprisingly large Q-factors at shallow depths had been observed for a Ross Lake VSP. In this report we are comparing the analytical signal approach to the spectral ratio method for two different VSP data sets. The two Q-estimation methods compare well when equal depth intervals are chosen for the analysis. Stratigraphic (apparent) Q appears to dominate the estimated "Q versus depth" functions in both VSP locations.


The effects of multifrequency-mode laser radiation on polarization-spectroscopy signal generation are investigated by direct numerical integration of the time-dependent density-matrix equations. The numerical solution of the density-matrix equations allows us to incorporate a physically reasonable model for pulsed dye-laser radiation in our analysis of the laser–resonance interaction. The laser radiation is modeled as the sum of electric fields from a finite number of modes that are assumed to have random pulse-to-pulse phases and exponentially distributed amplitudes. Calculations are performed for a homogeneously broadened resonance (only collisional broadening) and for a resonance that is both collision and Doppler broadened. The effect of the multimode laser radiation on polarization-spectroscopy line shapes and saturation curves is investigated for different values of the laser bandwidth and mode spacing and resonance collision and Doppler widths. The saturation parameter for the resonance is strongly dependent on the ratio of the laser bandwidth to the resonance collision width when the laser bandwidth is greater than the collision width. The pulse-to-pulse fluctuations in polarization-spectroscopy signal levels are found to decrease substantially for saturating pump intensities. The inclusion of the multimode laser structure into our density-matrix equations represents a significant advance in modeling the nonlinear interaction of laser radiation with atomic or molecular resonances.


There is a growing global concern over the future of the world"s water resources due to the preceding vulnerability. Some of the factors contributing to the increase in water resources vulnerability include population growth and poor land use practices. This study assessed the local uses and management of water resources and the local coping mechanisms, identified the drivers of water resources scarcity and evaluated the opportunities and challenges of managing water resources in Chahi sub-catchment, Kisoro District, Uganda. To achieve the objectives of the study, the following empirical tools were used; a structured questionnaire, key informant interviews and field observation guides. A total of 100 households and 20 key informants were interviewed. Numerical tools for data analysis comprised descriptive statistics and non-parametric test. SWOT analysis tool was used to examine the challenges and opportunities. The study identified pipe borne water (89%), stream (58%), rain (40%) through roof catchment and vendors (8%) as the major sources of water in the sub-catchment, with domestic (100%) and agricultural (24%) being the major local uses of water. Women played a key role in the management of water sources, making use of the water and fetching of water from the water sources. Construction of water points, maintenance of available water points, fencing of the water source, participatory planning in water management, equitable distribution of water tanks and training on water management were identified by households as interventions to ensure sustainable water supply and management in the sub-catchment. Drivers of water resources scarcity in the sub-catchment included climate change (98%), poverty among the households (80%), population growth (77%), pollution (41%), inadequate information on water management (33%), land use practices (20%) and deforestation (16%). Various coping mechanisms; domestic rainwater harvesting (DRWH), water storage during plenty, water pricing, use of earthen pots, moving long distances and innovative agricultural practices were being used by the households. However, not any of all these coping mechanisms considered depicted a significant relationship with the households" longevity in the sub-catchment. Major challenges hindering water resources management (WRM) in the sub-catchment are; low coverage of rainwater harvesting technology at household level, lack of internal training on WRM technologies and inadequate support of water initiatives by the households. Conversely, the opportunities established include; location, support from the Central Government through the District Local Government and involvement of different stakeholders in water management. The study concludes that water shortage appears as a powerful incentive to change, eliciting major adaptations and coping strategies from users. This study recommends focus on building more water infrastructure and involvement of the households in the planning and allocation of water resources. This will contribute to improved understanding of the need for efficient water resources utilization and management on household livelihoods and also help design appropriate WRM strategies for the poor peasant farmers and provide guidance for policy makers for similar situations in Uganda and beyond.


The Curtius rearrangement is a versatile reaction in which a carboxylic acid can be converted to an isocyanate through an acyl azide intermediate under mild conditions. The resulting stable isocyanate can then be readily transformed into a variety of amines and amine derivatives including urethanes and ureas. There have been wide-ranging applications of the Curtius rearrangement in the synthesis of natural products and their derivatives. Also, this reaction has been extensively utilized in the synthesis and application of a variety of biomolecules. In this review, we present mechanistic studies, chemical methodologies and reagents for the synthesis of isocyanates from carboxylic acids, the conversion of isocyanates to amines and amine derivatives, and their applications in the synthesis of bioactive natural products and their congeners.


A hybrid artificial boundary condition (HABC) that combines the volume-based acoustic damping layer (ADL) and the local face-based characteristic boundary condition (CBC) is presented to enhance the absorption of acoustic waves near the computational boundaries. This method is applied to the prediction of aerodynamic noise from a circular cylinder immersed in uniform compressible viscous flow. Different ADLs are designed to assess their effectiveness whereby the effect of the mesh-stretch direction on wave absorption in the ADL is analysed. Large eddy simulation (LES) and FW-H acoustic analogy method are implemented to predict the far-field noise, and the sensitivities of each approach to the HABC are compared. In the LES computed propagation field of the fluctuation pressure and the frequency-domain results, the spurious reflections at edges are found to be significantly eliminated by the HABC through the effective dissipation of incident waves along the wave-front direction in the ADL. Thereby, the LES results are found to be in a good agreement with the acoustic pressure predicted using FW-H method, which is observed to be just affected slightly by reflected waves.


Transmedia Directors focuses on artist-practitioners who work across media, platforms and disciplines, including film, television, music video, commercials and the internet. Working in the age of media convergence, today's em/impresarios project a distinctive style that points toward a new contemporary aesthetics. The media they engage with enrich their practices – through film and television (with its potential for world-building and sense of the past and future), music video (with its audiovisual aesthetics and rhythm), commercials (with their ability to project a message quickly) and the internet (with its refreshed concepts of audience and participation), to larger forms like restaurants and amusement parks (with their materiality alongside today's digital aesthetics). These directors encourage us to reassess concepts of authorship, assemblage, transmedia, audiovisual aesthetics and world-building.

Providing a vital resource for scholars and practitioners, this collection weaves together insights about artist-practitioners' collaborative processes as well as strategies for composition, representation, subversion and resistance.


Analyses of skill are widely used for assessing weather predictions, but the time scale and lack of validation data mean that it is not generally possible to investigate the predictive skill of today's climate models on the multidecadal time scale. The predictions made with early climate models can, however, be analyzed, and here we show that one such forecast did have skill. It seems reasonable to expect that predictions based on today's more advanced models will be at least as skillful. In general, assessments of predictions based on today's climate models should use Bayesian methods, in which the inevitable subjective decisions are made explicit. For the AR4, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommended the Bayesian paradigm for making estimates of uncertainty and probabilistic statements, and here we analyze the way in which uncertainty was actually addressed in the report. Analysis of the ensemble of general circulation models (GCMs) used in the last IPCC report suggests there is little evidence to support the popular notion that the multimodel ensemble is underdispersive, which would imply that the spread of the ensemble may be a reasonable starting point for estimating uncertainty. It is important that the field of uncertainty estimation is developed in order that the best use is made of current scientific knowledge in making predictions of future climate. At the same time, it is only by better understanding the processes and inclusion of these processes in the models, the best estimates of future climate will be closer to the truth. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Chronic stress represents a prolonged state of dyshomeostasis caused by intense and frequently imposed stressors. Obesity constitutes a chronic dysmetabolic state, leading progressively to a spectrum of metabolic complications, such as diabetes, dyslipidemia, hypertension and cardiovascular disease. A growing body of evidence supports the existence of significant interactions between stress and obesity, with chronic stress promoting weight gain, and consequently excessive fat accumulation especially visceral, all these factors contributing to the development of a chronic stressful state. Maintaining body homeostasis is a prerequisite for normal reproductive function, which is vital for the survival of the species and an important process of natural selection. Under chronic stress, reproductive function is suspended and disrupted due to central and peripheral actions of hormones, adipokines and pro-inflammatory cytokines that inhibit the activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary gonadal (HPG) axis at various levels. Clinical and experimental data link both obesity and chronic stress to dysregulation of the gonadal axis, via independent and synergistic mechanisms, which may chronically lead to reproductive dysfunction and reduced fertility.


Abstract: Provenance, the ownership history of an artifact or work of art, has become one of the primary mechanisms for determining the legal status and authenticity of a cultural object. Professional associations, including museum organizations, have adopted the "1970 standard" as a means to prevent the acquisition of an ancient object from promoting the looting of archaeological sites, which is driven by the economic gains realized through the international market. The Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), one of the museum world's most influential professional organizations, requires its members to list the ancient artworks and artifacts that they have acquired after 2008 that do not conform to the 1970 standard in an online object registry. The study presented here of the AAMD's Object Registry for New Acquisitions of Archaeological Material and Works of Ancient Art analyzes the extent to which AAMD member museums do not comply with the 1970 standard and, perhaps of greater significance, the weaknesses in the provenance information on which they rely in acquiring such works. I argue that systematic recurrences of inadequate provenance certitude are symptomatic of the larger problem of methodology and standards of evidence in claiming documented provenance. A museum's acceptance of possibly unverifiable provenance documentation and, therefore, its acquisition of an object that may have been recently looted, in turn, impose a negative externality on society through the loss of information about our past caused by the looting of archaeological sites.


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Proper fertilization is important in realizing the great potential from the annual grasslands of California. One of the first studies indicated that forage production on improved dry-land pasture fertilized with nitrogen and phosphorus increased ten-fold over untreated pastures during the winter months of feed shortage. In another study it was found that fertilized pastures yielded about 3 1/2 times as much meat and wool as unfertilized pastures over the growing seas on.


In the field of "Data Exploration" many approaches have been developed to solve the problem of management of big data that are also semantically rich. Nowadays, there is a strong need to support the discovery-oriented applications where data discovery is a highly ad hoc interactive process to support the users by assisting the navigation in the data to find interesting objects. In this work starting by a theoretical data exploration system, where we identified the main features that a data exploration system must have to an efficient exploratory experience, we propose a combination of two data exploration techniques faceted navigation and data mining with the aim to improve the discovery information during exploration. This approach is contextualized better in Information Mining. Information mining, in fact, aims at discovering knowledge, i.e. more general patterns within objects or collections of objects.


In the medical field, accelerometers are often used for measuring inclination of body segments and activity of daily living (ADL) because they are small and require little power. A drawback of using accelerometers is the poor quality of inclination estimate for movements with large accelerations. This paper describes the design and performance of a Kalman filter to estimate inclination from the signals of a triaxial accelerometer. This design is based on assumptions concerning the frequency content of the acceleration of the movement that is measured, the knowledge that the magnitude of the gravity is 1 g and taking into account a fluctuating sensor offset. It is shown that for measuring trunk and pelvis inclination during the functional three-dimensional activity of stacking crates, the inclination error that is made is approximately 2/spl deg/ root-mean square. This is nearly twice as accurate as compared to current methods based on low-pass filtering of accelerometer signals.


Two types of concrete overlays silica fume concrete (SFC) and latex-modified Type III portland cement concrete (LMC-III) were installed ant tested as part of the Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP) Project C-206: Optimization of Highway Concrete Technology—Bridge Deck Overlays. The two different overlay types were chosen for their ability to fill two different needs: use of SFC as a long-term, low-permeability overlay; and use of LMC-III as a high early-strength concrete when traffic had to be restored after as little as 24 hours. This report summarizes the 5-year study to evaluate the long-term performance of the overlays. Evaluation and comparison of SFC and LMC-III overlays were performed at four locations. The test sites were in Ohio and Kentucky. Each location included SFC and LMC-III overlays on opposite directions of a bridge structure. All overlays were installed in 1992. This study evaluated the overlays each year between 1994 and 1998. All overlays had high initial bond strengths, and the bond strengths remained high over the study period when tested away from delaminations. The overlays were generally rated as good condition in 1998, after 6 years of service, though some individual sites were rated as fair due to extensive cracking. Though good performance was achieved from both SFC and LMC-III overlays, the service life of the overlays tended to vary based on the site location. Generally, cracking and delamination of the overlays tend to increase with time. Typically, all overlays should be inspected biannually for cracking and delamination and routine maintenance, including consideration of crack and delamination repairs to extend the service life of the SFC and LMC-III overlays.


ackground: subfertility is a common medical problem affecting about 15-20 % of women consulting the gynecological outpatients in the whole world. Vitamin C is an important substance that plays different roles in the body and part of this action is in relation to subfertility. Objective: to evaluate the effect of vitamin C supplementation on the ovarian hormones estrogen and progesterone in subfertile women. Methods: This prospective study was carried out on thirty women attending private gynecological clinics, twenty of them were infertile and the other ten were normal fertile women as control group. They were subjected for the measurement of serum concentrations of both estrogen and progesterone. At the start, The investigations began at the 23 rd day of a regular menstrual cycle(B), 5 ml of blood was taken for the measurement of the serum concentrations of both ovarian hormones. Each woman then took vitamin C tab. 1.5 gm (orally) daily and continued for the next 23 rd day (AI), At the same day serum E & P was repeated and the vitamin C supplementation continues to the next 23 rd dayof second period, a total period of 58±2 days (AII). So at this day hormonal assessment was repeated and vit C supplementation was stopped. Results and Discussion: The results showed that vitamin C supplementation causes an increased serum progesterone concentration significantly(p<0.05)after two months supplementation of oral vit C, as compared with the baseline serum level in both fertile and infertile women, while the effect of vitamin C supplementation on serum estrogen is increased significantly after the second months of the vitamin supplementation as compared with the baseline level in fertile women only. In this study, we found a role of vitamin C supplementation to affect the subfertility through increasing the endometrial thickness either directly by its antioxidant effect on endometrial cell or through increasing the level of progesterone. Conclusion: our study shows an effect of vitamin C on the progesterone level and hence this may play a role in infertility treatment as it will increase the receptivity and preparation of the endometrium to the fertilized ovum.


Ventricular septal defect (VSD) is the most common type of cardiovascular developmental anomaly and is an important risk factor for the substantially increased morbidity and mortality in newborns. Aggregating evidence implicates genetic defects in the pathogenesis of congenital VSD. However, VSD is genetically heterogeneous and the genetic determinants for VSD in most patients remain to be identified. In this study, the whole coding region of the GATA4 gene, which encodes a zinc-finger transcription factor pivotal to cardiogenesis, was initially sequenced in 210 unrelated patients with VSD. The relatives of the index patient carrying the identified mutation and 200 unrelated ethnically-matched healthy individuals used as controls were subsequently genotyped. The functional effect of the mutant GATA4 was characterized in contrast to its wild-type counterpart using a luciferase reporter assay system. A novel heterozygous GATA4 mutation, p.G296R, was identified in a family with VSD inherited as an autosomal dominant trait. Absent in 200 control individuals, the mutation co-segregated with VSD in the family with 100% penetrance and was completely conserved evolutionarily across species. Functional analysis displayed that the p.G296R mutation of GATA4 was associated with a decreased transcriptional activity. The findings expand the spectrum of mutations in GATA4 linked to VSD and provide more insight into the molecular mechanism involved in VSD. The results of the present study imply the potential implications in the genetic diagnosis and gene-specific therapy of this common malformation in infancy.


In this article, we analyse whether technological change induces skill obsolescence and early labour market exit, and to what extent training participation and on the job learning reduce these risks. Using panel data on older workers, we find that workers report skill obsolescence more often when learning is a structural characteristic of the job. This perceived skill obsolescence is not related to a higher probability of losing employment. Instead, workers who experience skill obsolescence appear to learn more on the job and participate more often in training, which decreases the risk of losing employment. These results are consistent with the dynamic model of skill obsolescence and employment loss we develop in this article. Moreover, we find that when workers with long job tenures decrease their training participation, this is an early indicator of future job loss.


Abstract In this paper I examine the epistemic function of agent-based models (ABMs) of scientific inquiry, proposed in the recent philosophical literature. In view of Boero and Squazzoni's (2005) classification of ABMs into case-based models, typifications and theoretical abstractions, I argue that proposed ABMs of scientific inquiry largely belong to the last category. While this means that their function is primarily exploratory, I suggest that they are epistemically valuable not only as a temporary stage in the development of ABMs of science, but by providing insights into theoretical aspects of scientific rationality. I illustrate my point with two examples of highly idealized ABMs of science, which perform two exploratory functions: Zollman's (2010) ABM which provides a proof-of-possibility in the realm of theoretical discussions on scientific rationality, and an argumentation-based ABM (Borg et al. 2019, 2017b, 2018), which provides insights into potential mechanisms underlying the efficiency of scientific inquiry.


Because of the hydrophobic end blocks, micelles of triblock BEB copolymers (E denotes an oxyethylene unit, B an oxybutylene unit) formed in aqueous solution show effects attributable to intermicellar bridging. The formation of mixed micelles with a diblock EB copolymer reduces but does not eliminate the effect. Light scattering methods applied to dilute solutions have been used to show that this is the case for mixed micelles of B12E114B12 and E43B11 (the subscripts denote block lengths). This work focuses on 20 wt% aqueous solutions and on the effect of mixing on properties relating to the gel state, i.e. dynamic storage modulus (G′) and yield strength (σy). There are two contributory factors determining the gel properties: micelle bridging and micelle packing, with just the latter operative for a diblock gel. Increasing the proportion of diblock copolymer in the mixture reduces the contribution from micelle bridging. Considering 20 wt% solutions at 5 °C, the diblock copolymer solution does not gel at this temperature and values of G′ and σy fall away monotonically to zero. For 20 wt% solutions at 25 °C, the diblock copolymer solution does gel at this temperature and values of G′ and σy pass through minima as the system is changed from 100% triblock to 100% diblock copolymer.


To respect physics and nature, cellular automata (CA) models of self-organisation, emergence, computation and logical universality should be isotropic, having equivalent dynamics in all directions. We present a novel paradigm, the iso-rule, a concise expression for isotropic CA by the output table for each isotropic neighborhood group, allowing an efficient method of navigating and exploring iso-rule-space. We describe new functions and tools in DDLab to generate iso-groups and iso-rules, for multi-value as well as binary, in one, two and three dimensions. These methods include filing, filtering, mutating, analysing dynamics by input-frequency and entropy, identifying the critical iso-groups for glider-gun/eater dynamics, and automatically classifying iso-rule-space. We illustrate these ideas and methods for two dimensional CA on square and hexagonal lattices.


Objective: This study aimed to (1) characterize morphological characteristics of the electrically evoked cortical auditory event-related potentials (eERPs) and explore the potential association between onset eERP morphology and auditory versus nonauditory stimulation; (2) assess test–retest reliability of onset eERPs; (3) investigate effects of stimulation level on onset eERPs; and (4) explore the feasibility of using the onset eERP to estimate the lowest stimulation level that can be detected for individual stimulating electrodes in patients with auditory brainstem implants (ABIs). Design: Study participants included 5 children (S1 to S5) and 2 adults (S6 to S7) with unilateral Cochlear Nucleus 24M ABIs. Pediatric ABI recipients ranged in age from 2.6 to 10.2 years (mean: 5.2 years) at the time of testing. S6 and S7 were 21.2 and 24.6 years of age at the time of testing, respectively. S6 and S7 were diagnosed with neurofibromatosis II (NF2) and implanted with an ABI after a surgical removal of the tumors. All pediatric subjects received ABIs after being diagnosed with cochlear nerve deficiency. The lowest stimulation level that could be detected (behavioral T level) and the estimated maximum comfortable level (C level) was measured for individual electrodes using clinical procedures. For electrophysiological measures, the stimulus was a 100-msec biphasic pulse train that was delivered to individual electrodes in a monopolar-coupled stimulation mode at stimulation levels ranging from subthreshold to C levels. Electrophysiological recordings of the onset eERP were obtained in all subjects. For studies evaluating the test–retest reliability of the onset eERP, responses were measured using the same set of parameters in two test sessions. The time interval between test sessions ranged from 2 to 6 months. The lowest stimulation level that could evoke the onset eERP was defined as the objective T level. Results: Onset eERPs were recorded in all subjects tested in this study. Inter- and intrasubject variations in morphological characteristics of onset eERPs were observed. Onset eERPs with complex waveforms were recorded for electrodes that evoked nonauditory sensations, based on feedback from subjects, as well as for electrodes without any indications of nonauditory stimulations. Onset eERPs in patients with ABIs demonstrated good test–retest reliability. Increasing stimulation levels resulted in increased eERP amplitudes but showed inconsistent effects on response latencies in patients with ABIs. Objective and behavioral T levels were correlated. Conclusions: eERPs could be recorded in both non-NF2 and NF2 patients with ABIs. eERPs in both ABI patient groups show inter- and intrasubject variations in morphological characteristics. However, onset eERPs measured within the same subject in this study tended to be stable across study sessions. The onset eERP can potentially be used to estimate behavioral T levels in patients with ABIs. Further studies with more adult ABI recipients are warranted to investigate whether the onset eERP can be used to identify electrodes with nonauditory stimulations.


In contrast to settler colonial legal understandings of Aboriginal rights and title as existing within the Canadian state, BC Aboriginal political actors in the 1970s and 1980s relied on philosophical notions of Aboriginal rights as stemming from the inherent, pre-colonial sovereignty and nationhood of First Nations peoples. These concepts run throughout the history of Aboriginal experience and remained foundational to the discourse of Aboriginal sovereignty in British Columbia during debates surrounding the patriation of the Canadian constitution. Existing Canadian historiography has located Aboriginal activists as key and yet marginal figures in the constitutional debates, while a broad range of interdisciplinary scholarship has helped us understand the concept of Aboriginal sovereignty in theory. Building on these insights, our work shifts Aboriginal people into the foreground and emphasizes their centrality in the patriation debates, which, as an example, grounds and historicizes the theoretical work on Aboriginal sovereignty. As we argue, between 1975 and 1983 Aboriginal peoples relied on oral histories and traditions of sovereignty and mobilized these in response to the settler colonial state's push for constitutional patriation. In this sense, BC Aboriginal peoples who protested constitutional patriation were not ahistorical agents participating in an isolated movement, but were informed by both their knowledge of their communities' embedded sovereignties, and generations of historically entrenched Aboriginal resistance.


Abstract Narrow framings of development founded on GDP growth have led to multiple ecological, social and political-economic crises across the world that threaten the survival of humans and socio-ecologies. With the growing recognition that an expansionist trajectory is no longer viable, a burgeoning global discussion on degrowth has emerged. However, a limited number of living societal solutions exist in response the emergent crisis of over-consumption, deep inequality and resource depletion. The driving development philosophy of Gross National Happiness from the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan is a unique living alternative that challenges GDP metrics. With societal happiness as the primary lens for viewing human progress within planetary limits, GNH places socio-cultural, political-economic and spiritual-ecological wellbeing at the center of national development. Based on five years of research in Bhutan, the article discusses GNH as a holistic development alternative in relation to degrowth. It highlights the role of local insights, conceptual innovations, tested methodologies and policy experiences in constructing a unique society, as well as how GNH influences other nations and global debates. The article reflects on challenges that GNH faces in negotiating powerful forces of globalization, geopolitical shifts, climate change and skewed relations of power and privilege that influence scholarship, development and knowledge production. Keywords: Gross National Happiness, degrowth, holistic development, Bhutan


Background: Lyme borreliosis (LB) is the most frequent vector-borne disease in France. Since 2009, surveillance of LB is conducted by a sentinel network of general practitioners (GPs). This system, in conjunction with the national hospitalisation database was used to estimate the incidence and describe the characteristics of LB in France. Aim: To describe the estimated incidence and trends in GP consultations and hospital admissions for LB in France and identify risk groups and high-incidence regions. Results: From 2011 to 2016, the mean yearly incidence rate of LB cases was 53 per 100,000 inhabitants (95% CI: 41–65) ranging from 41 in 2011 to 84 per 100 000 in 2016. A mean of 799 cases per year were hospitalised with LB associated diagnoses 2005–16. The hospitalisation incidence rate (HIR) ranged from 1.1 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in 2005 to 1.5 in 2011 with no statistically significant trend. We observed seasonality with a peak during the summer, important inter-regional variations and a bimodal age distribution in LB incidence and HIR with higher incidence between 5 and 9 year olds and those aged 60 years. Erythema migrans affected 633/667 (95%) of the patients at primary care level. Among hospitalised cases, the most common manifestation was neuroborreliosis 4,906/9,594 (51%). Conclusion: Public health strategies should focus on high-incidence age groups and regions during the months with the highest incidences and should emphasise prevention measures such as regular tick checks after exposure and prompt removal to avoid infection.


Polyaniline (PANI) is a conducting polymer with very diverse applications in the areas of sensing, bioelectronics, biofuels, toxic metal recovery and rechargeable batteries. In this work, monodispersed PANI microspheres in the semi-conducting range are facilely synthesized via chemical oxidation by using droplet microfluidics. These PANI microspheres are characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), UV-visible spectroscopy and conductivity measurements with three different molar concentrations of the polymer. The effect of the molar ratio of ammonium persulfate to aniline on the morphology, chemical structure and conductivity of the PANI microspheres is investigated. The conductivity of the PANI microspheres is on the order of 10−3 S cm−1 by using our microfluidic platform, comparable to that of the existing PANI nanostructures. In comparison with the existing self-assembly or template methods for PANI synthesis, our droplet microfluidics based procedure provides an inexpensive, rapid, and higher throughput one-step synthesis route for the fabrication of PANI microspheres with controlled size, functionality and biomolecule encapsulation capacity for biosensing and controlled drug release applications.


Thermal infrared (TIR) remote-sensing and field-based observations were used to study aeolian systems, specifically sand transport pathways, dust emission sources and Saharan atmospheric dust. A method was developed for generating seamless and radiometrically accurate mosaics of thermal infrared data from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument. Using a combination of high resolution thermal emission spectroscopy results of sand samples and mosaic satellite data, surface emissivity was derived to map surface composition, which led to improvement in the understanding of sand accumulation in the Gran Desierto of northern Sonora, Mexico. These methods were also used to map sand transport pathways in the Sahara Desert, where the interaction between sand saltation and dust emission sources was explored. The characteristics and dynamics of dust sources were studied at White Sands, NM and in the Sahara Desert. At White Sands, an application was developed for studying the response of dust sources to surface soil moisture based on the relationship between soil moisture, apparent thermal inertia and the erosion potential of dust sources. The dynamics of dust sources and the interaction with sand transport pathways were also studied, focusing on the Bodele Depression of Chad and large dust sources in Mali and Mauritania. A dust detection algorithm was developed using ASTER data, and the spectral emissivity of observed atmospheric dust was related to the dust source area in the Sahara. At the Atmospheric Observatory (IZO) in Tenerife, Spain where direct measurement of the Saharan Air Layer could be made, the cycle of dust events occurring in July 2009 were examined. From the observation tower at the IZO, measurements of emitted longwave atmospheric radiance in the TIR wavelength region were made using a Forward Looking Infrared Radiometer (FLIR) handheld camera. The use of the FLIR to study atmospheric dust from the Saharan is a new application. Supporting data from AERONET and other orbital data enabled study of net radiative forcing.


As bounded rational agents, consumers face many uncertainties during the process of innovation adoption. The consumers that face most uncertainties are the ones that first adopt new products. These so-called 'innovators' are important for the innovation diffusion process. They take the risks for others by adopting early, they partly test the products' functionality, they contribute to further improvement of the product, they familiarize others with the product and they can contribute to the build-up of sufficient critical mass for the diffusion process to become self sustaining. To reduce the uncertainties that are attached to innovation adoption, consumers engage in a search for information prior to adoption. When searching, consumers can consult multiple information sources. Since innovative individuals are the ones that first take the risk of innovating, it is crucial to understand how their information search patterns using various channels differ from other individuals. Based on a literature review and empirical findings four external sources of information are identified: interpersonal sources, mass media, the World Wide Web (WWW) and retailers. Until now the link between innovativeness and the use of information sources was only poorly understood. To improve this understanding, this thesis consists of five empirical studies that investigate the relationship between consumer innovativeness and the use of information sources in two product domains: consumer electronics and automobiles. In the first two studies, based on qualitative and quantitative survey data, it is found that consumer electronics is a low risk multiple product domain f in which several clusters of products can be identified that are owned in combination together. Automobiles are considered to be a high risk single product domain. In the third study it is found that in a low risk domain such consumer electronics, innovative consumers get their information from outside a social system through specialized channels such as mass media and the WWW. In the fourth study it found that in a high risk domain such as cars consumers balance their search effort among the different information sources. A final study reveals that within the domain of automobiles three types of preferences for cars be identified: preferences for environmental friendly cars, for high performing cars and for convenient cars. These preferences were found to be related to consumer innovativeness and use of information sources: consumers with strong preferences for a high performance car are more innovative and make more use of mass media and WWW when searching for information. These media can be used to target the specific segment of consumers with a preference for high performance (and often more polluting) cars, using communication campaigns, in order to influence their preferences. The result further demonstrates that the preferences of innovators are not always representative for the entire population. For more successful innovation development it is recommended that, explicit attention is paid to the preferences of non-innovative consumers in the innovation process.


With the publication of the UK White Paper (BIS, 2011) focusing onstudent experience, together with the increase in tuition fees and the changing landscape of higher education, there is an interest within the sector to explore initiatives that enhance the learning process. Coaching, as already used in management and some NHS settings, offers an approach which seeks to enable and empower learners and has the potential to contribute to their personal development, facilitating solution-focused approaches which are transferable to the workplace. Teaching staff in a Higher Education Institution were offered training in coaching techniques and formed a peer support coaching network. They were subsequently encouraged to use coaching skills in a range of student settings. This paper focuses on an evaluation of a teaching and learning initiative that used coaching approaches with two groups of healthcare students (totalling 19) over 2 semesters in the 2012-2013 academic year. The aim was to enhance the student experience in relation to self-motivation, personal development planning and the development ofsolution-focused approaches. The evaluation drew upon student feedback and conversations with staff in the coaching network.The evaluation highlighted the benefits of coaching; student preferences and expectations; new learning experiences of staff and the relevance of coaching approaches in other specific educational settings. The evaluation demonstrated how coaching adds value; providing students with the opportunity to develop workplace skills; and offering staff a solution-focused tool which may be particularly useful when facing change in workplace settings. Importantly it gives participants a creative space to engage with contemporary challenges and educators a 'œnew' tool to facilitate participation and nurture engagement in a non-directive way. Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE


An Agenda for Understanding On August 20,1998, the United States attacked the Al-Shifa (Health,) Company, a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan. The nighttime strike completely destroyed the factory, killing the night watchman and his family. The US government offered three justifications for the attack: the "facility" was heavily guarded by the military; it was owned by Osama bin Laden, or by the "fundamentalist" government of Sudan, or by a frontman for these; and it had started to produce precursors to chemical weapons (CW). The next day, when journalists flocked to Al-Shifa, they found no indication that it was a military facility. Neighbors had never seen any military personnel there. The factory had been open to visitors. Western businessmen, wishing to sell pharmaceutical equipment, had been free to tour the insides of the factory at will. Within a few days it was determined that the factory belonged to a private businessman who was not a fundamentalist. On the contrary, he was found to be a prominent opposition figure who had financed a newsletter in exile, and who even had on his payroll an old schoolmate of his who was a leader of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement. The factory had even been partly financed with an official international-development loan. Normally, it would be almost impossible to disprove allegations of CW-precursor production, but in this case a witness stepped forward. At a press conference, the owner's lawyer declared that he had handled his client's purchase of the factory some months earlier and that he had personally checked every detail. He could testify that there was nothing related to CW in the factory, but that it genuinely was a pharmaceutical plant. And who was this lawyer? Ghazi Sulayman, Sudan's most respected human-rights advocate, who had been imprisoned several times for his advocacy work against the government. Even US officials had publicly praised him for his unfaltering commitment to democracy and human rights. There could not have been a more credible witness. It is difficult to assess how many people in this poor African country died as a consequence of the destruction of the Al-Shifa factory, but several tens of thousands seems a reasonable guess. The factory produced some of the basic medicines on the World Health Organization list, covering 20 to 60 percent of Sudan's market and 100 percent of the market for intravenous liquids. It took more than three months for these products to be replaced with imports. It was, naturally, the poor and the vulnerable who would suffer from the plant's destruction, not the rich. Universalism vs. Relativism This article is about human rights, or rather the way the West uses the idea of human rights in foreign policy. The underlying issue, however, is not human rights, but politics. The discussion is usually framed in terms of universalism vs. cultural relativism, an antithesis of massive ideological weight. The debate opened in 1979 with the stunning research of Adamantia Pollis and Peter Schwab in Human Right: A Western Construct with Limited Applicability. The book spelled out what many in the human-rights field had felt, albeit vaguely, and provided the tools for an intellectual analysis of this uneasiness. The book has become even more influential since 1990. Pollis and Schwab have continued to enrich and direct the debate--however, certainly to their credit, in a volume published in 2000, they have extensively rethought and modified their previous positions. Although they feel that their previous thesis is still correct, they now feel that "modernization" has encompassed so much of the world that distinctive cultures have more or less disappeared and have become integrated in the mainstream; countries can therefore no longer claim the right to be judged by a different set of human-rights criteria. The other dominant personality in the academic debate is Abdullahi Ahmed an-Na'im. …


Natural language reflects the affective nature of the human mind. Accordingly, expressions of affect and opinion appear profusely in natural language utterances—either explicitly or implicitly. Recognizing and interpreting the subjective information, beyond factual information such as topics and events thereby constitute an important aspect of natural language understanding. Indeed in recent years, there has been a great surge of research interest to help computers understand the subjective side of natural language.
In this dissertation, we explore computational methods that can push the envelope for sentiment analysis in text. There are two distinctive themes in our contributions: First, our focus will be on fine-grained opinion analysis, which has been relatively less explored than coarse-grained analysis (e.g., document-level classification). Second, the approaches developed in our work are structure-aware in that we design the inference and/or learning algorithms reflecting the task-specific linguistic structure. We tackle five different sets of problems under these themes, and the key results are summarized in the paragraphs below:
Joint extraction of opinion elements and relations. In this work, we present a system for extracting fine-grained opinion elements such as opinion expressions and the sources of opinions, and the relations among those elements, using machine learning techniques and integer linear programming. The extracted opinion elements can then be used as building blocks for various opinion applications, such as opinion summarization or opinion-oriented question answering.
Joint extraction of opinions and their attributes. We recognize that the task of determining polarity is related to the task of determining intensity. Based on this observation, we develop a hierarchical sequential learning technique to extract opinion expressions and their attributes—polarity and intensity—simultaneously.
Polarity inference in light of compositional semantics. In this work, we investigate methods for fine-grained polarity classification by drawing a connection to compositional semantics, one of the classic branches of research across linguistics and logic. This work attempts to bridge the gap between theories in compositional semantics and practical approaches based on machine learning techniques, by incorporating simple compositional rules based on syntactic patterns as structural inference for the learning algorithm.
Lexicon adaptation as constraint optimization. Although there has been plentiful research in the creation of lexical resources for sentiment analysis, most is conducted in isolation from actual applications. As a result, a purportedly better lexical resource might not lead to better performance when utilized for a specific natural language application. To address this problem, we develop a method that adapts a general-purpose polarity lexicon into a domain-specific one in the context of a specific NLP task, by casting the problem as a constraint optimization problem using integer linear programming.
Structured local training for coreference resolution. Once we have identified fine-grained opinion elements in text, we need to determine whether some of the extracted phrases are referring to an identical entity—namely, coreference resolution. In this work, we develop "structured local training", a machine learning technique based on Conditional Random Fields (CRFs) that directly incorporates the interaction between local decisions and global decisions into the learning procedure. We also propose "biased potential functions" that can empirically drive CRFs towards performance improvements with respect to the preferred evaluation measure.


The interfacing between optical cavities and mechanical systems has given rise to the rapid development of cavity optomechanics, which aims to confine light into small volumes by means of high-Q resonant recirculation [1], [2]. The purpose of an optomechanical system is to investigate the interaction of light with a mechanical oscillator. Its highly interdisciplinary nature leads to several potential applications in various fields of research, especially in quantum processing.


This paper presents an analysis of the stimulants and consequences of money demand dynamics. By assuming that household?s money holdings and consumption preferences are not separable, we demonstrate that the interest-elasticity of demand for money is a function of the household?s preference to hold real balances, the extent to which these preferences are not separable in consumption and real balances, and trend infl?ation. An empirical study of U.S. data revealed that there was a gradual fall in the interest elasticity of money demand of approximately one-third during the 1970s due to high trend in?flation. A further decline in the interest-elasticity of the demand for money was observed in the 1980s due to the changing household preferences that emerged in response to ?financial innovation. These developments led to a reduction in the welfare cost of infl?ation that subsequently explains the rise in monetary neutrality observed in the data.


In this letter, we investigate a multimodal system for simultaneous energy harvesting from stray magnetic and mechanical energies by combining magnetoelectric and piezoelectric effects. The system consists of a cantilever beam with tip mass and a magnetoelectric laminate attached in the center of the beam. At 2 Oe magnetic field and mechanical vibration amplitude of 50mg, both at frequency of 20 Hz, the system was found to generate open circuit output voltage of 8 VP.P.. An equivalent circuit model is proposed that predicts a summation effect for both mechanical and magnetic energies.


The Portfolio presented here is concerned with the subject of Authentic Leadership Development. This subject has become the focus of much attention in the last 10 years by both researchers and practitioners in the leadership and leadership development field. Over the decades there has been a variety of leadership themes and concepts that have garnered similar attention, for example, Transformational & Transactional Leadership, Situational Leadership, Servant Leadership, Contingent Leadership, Ethical Leadership…and now Authentic Leadership. It has probably come to the fore as a result of high profile examples of poor leadership on a global scale. Even before the financial crisis of 2008 there were the examples of Enron and Worldcom and since 2008 there have been the examples of Arthur Andersen and Lehman Brothers (http://www.accounting-degree.org/scandals) and more recently Toshiba, Volkswagen and even FIFA (http://fortune.com/2015/12/27/biggest-corporate-scandals-2015).

Although over this last decade there has been this considerable interest in the idea of Authentic Leadership, both as a construct and an effective form of leadership practice, what has been notably lacking, particularly in the academic field, are ideas of how to actually develop authentic leaders. Both anecdotal evidence from the practitioners and empirical evidence from the researchers all point towards Authentic Leadership achieving desirable organisational and business benefits. Yet there is almost a complete absence of any research demonstrating how Authentic Leadership is actually developed. This is the sole purpose of this piece of research, to investigate one particular approach to Authentic Leadership Development (ALD) to see if it works and if so, to try and understand how it works.


Spread-F is caused by the presence of ionospheric electron concentration irregularities of scale-size of order 5 km at F-region altitudes. Estimates of spread-F in the vicinity of the maximum plasma frequency of the Flayer (foF2) have been determined at 15 min intervals from ionograms recorded over a ten day period (1–10 May 1986) both at Marsh (62.2°S, 58.9°W), King George Island, and Faraday (65.2°S, 64.3°W), Argentine Islands. The interval, at low solar activity, includes periods of quiet and disturbed geomagnetic activity. Spread-F is observed on every night at both stations. It is more frequent, slightly more intense and starts earlier at Argentine Islands than at King George Island. On most nights, spread-F ceases about local sunrise at 120 km altitude at both stations. On the days of highest geomagnetic activity, the onset of spread-F is delayed compared with days of lower activity. Spread-F is usually most intense on the night(s) following largest geomagnetic activity level, as measured by the geomagnetic index, Kp. The growth rate of the plasma instability processes causing the ionospheric irregularities is inversely related to electron concentration (foF22), amongst other parameters. Thus the lower foF2 values over Argentine Islands are consistent with more spread-F being observed by the higher latitude observatory. However, no firm relationship between the absolute value of foF2, the horizontal gradient of foF2 between the two observatories, and the onset of spread-F, is found. Thus it has not been possible to determine uniquely the instability process responsible for the formation of the plasma irregularities.


Introduction: Adolescent pregnancy is a global public health problem, for which healthcare providers (HCPs) play a critical role to prevent unintended pregnancy. This study investigated the knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of HCPs towards the use of contraceptives in adolescents. Results: Of the 101 eligible for the study, 79.2% HCPs from the selected clinics and hospital responded. The majority (91.2%) of respondents felt confident to explain to adolescents how to use old contraceptive methods such as oral contraceptives or IUCD, less than half of the respondents (41.3%) were confident to explain how to use new contraceptive methods such as transdermal contraceptive patches or vaginal rings. Medical doctors felt more confident to prescribe new contraceptive methods compared with nurses, both vaginal rings (p-value = 0.0006) and transdermal contraceptive patches (p-value = 0.0003). More than two-thirds of the respondents disagreed that beliefs influenced their ability to offer contraceptive services to adolescents, half of the respondents strongly disagreed that it was morally wrong for adolescents to use contraceptives. Although three-quarters of respondents strongly agreed (median = 5, [IQR 5–6]) that they were comfortable with prescribing contraceptives to adolescents, only 23% of the respondents very much prescribed or always prescribed contraceptives to adolescents. Conclusion: Most of the HCPs prescribed contraceptives irregularly, and had limited knowledge about newer methods. To change HCPs' KAP, in addition to continuing medical education (CME), the establishment of family planning clinics for adolescents and more undergraduate contraceptive teaching for medical and nursing students could result in the increased utilisation of contraceptive services by adolescents.


The paper presents a research tool for studying semantic change and polysemy patterns in Russian adjectives and adverbs. It is based on a corpus analysis of high-freqency polysemous units. For each of them we describe the meanings it can have, assign to each meaning a corresponding taxonomic class, identify types of semantic shifts between individual meanings (metaphor, metonymy; besides, a full-scale approach reveals non-canonical cases of semantic shifts), describe context conditions of these shifts (semantic and grammatical restrictions on co-occurring words). The results gained from this analysis are implemented in a database, which allows for various generalizations on the regularities of change in adjective and adverb meaning. Several examples are given to illustrate what kinds of queries can be performed on the database. Keywords: polysemy; semantic shift; metaphor; metonymy; semantics of adjectives; Russian language; lexical database


Web 2.0 makes headlines, but how does it make money? This concise guide explains what's different about Web 2.0 and how those differences can improve your company's bottom line. Whether you're an executive plotting the next move, a small business owner looking to expand, or an entrepreneur planning a startup, Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide illustrates through real-life examples how businesses, large and small, are creating new opportunities on today's Web. This book is about strategy. Rather than focus on the technology, the examples concentrate on its effect. You will learn that creating a Web 2.0 business, or integrating Web 2.0 strategies with your existing business, means creating places online where people like to come together to share what they think, see, and do. When people come together over the Web, the result can be much more than the sum of the parts. The customers themselves help build the site, as old-fashioned "word of mouth" becomes hypergrowth. Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide demonstrates the power of this new paradigm by examining how: Flickr, a classic user-driven business, created value for itself by helping users create their own value Google made money with a model based on free search, and changed the rules for doing business on the Web-opening opportunities you can take advantage of Social network effects can support a business-ever wonder how FaceBook grew so quickly? Businesses like Amazon tap into the Web as a source of indirect revenue, using creative new approaches to monetize the investments they've made in the Web Written by Amy Shuen, an authority on Silicon Valley business models and innovation economics, Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide explains how to transform yourbusiness by looking at specific practices for integrating Web 2.0 with what you do. If you're executing business strategy and want to know how the Web is changing business, this book is for you.


The internal dynamics driving the relationship between the state and local society during the Southern Song and Yuan dynasties has both captivated and baffled scholars. In this book, Sukhee Lee posits an alternative understanding of the relationship between the state and social elites in the middle period of Chinese imperial history. Directly challenging the assumption of a zero-sum competition between the power of the state and that of local elites, Negotiated Power" shows in vivid detail how state power and local elite interests were mutually constitutive and reinforcing. It was precisely the connectedness of social elites to the state, as well as the presence of the state in local life, that was essential to the rise of a self-conscious local elite society during this period. In probing the historical trajectory of Mingzhou prefecture (today s Ningbo), Lee makes extensive use of local gazetteers from the Southern Song and the Yuan dynasties, and the abundant literary collections that still survive from this area, including some 280 epitaphs written for Mingzhou people of the time."


We defend the idea that a floating quantifier observes syntactic locality with its associated noun phrase. This idea has given rise to a number of important empirical insights, including the VP-internal subject position, intermediate traces, and NP-traces. Recently, this syntactic locality of floating quantifiers has been questioned in a number of languages. We take up evidence from Japanese that purports to disprove the locality requirements on floating numeral quantifiers and their associated NP, and we demonstrate that the arguments in fact give evidence for syntactic locality, not against it. Our conclusions suggest that evidence against the locality of floating quantifiers given in other languages should be reexamined.